Penelope Crumb

by Shawn K. Stout

  “I thought that was because of my big head,” I say.

  “Or that you can’t eat an ice cream cone without it getting all over your nose?”

  “Good gravy. That happens to everybody on account of the fact that your mouth lives here and your nose lives one floor up,” I say, pointing to them both. “Doesn’t it? Happen to everyone, I mean?”

  He shakes his head at me in the mirror. “Nope,” he says with a smile that’s all puppy dogs and rainbows.

  My word. “Well, since you know so much,” I sputter, “how come nobody’s ever said anything before?”

  Terrible doesn’t even take any time to think about this one. “There are so many things about you that are weird, Penelope. If I had to point them all out, it would take me the rest of my life.”

  I wonder if Mister Leonardo da Vinci ever had a brother who was an alien.

  3.

  Littie Maple is knocking at my bedroom door. I keep my face pressed down on my drawing pad and tell her to get in here pronto because I am in need of some help. She does. Which is the good thing about Littie: She’s a doer.

  Littie lives in the apartment across the hall, but she spends more time in ours because she’s a Lonely Only. Which is what she calls herself on account of the fact that she is an only child and is homeschooled and doesn’t have a TV. “What do you have your face on that paper for?”

  “Trace it, would you?” I say, shoving a pencil at her.

  She steps over the Heap on the floor and kneels beside me. She doesn’t ask why or what for or anything like that, she just grips the pencil and starts tracing. Her tongue wags in the corner of her mouth as she steers the pencil. When she gets to my forehead, she clamps down on her tongue with her teeth like she’s keeping it from running off to Texas.

  “There,” she says when she’s through. She stands up and claps her hands. “That’s a keeper.” Littie is eleven, which is almost two years older than I am, but most people think she’s younger on account of the fact that she’s on the short side. (But don’t ever say anything about her being short because she will bend your fingers back until you say you’re sorry like you mean it.)

  I look at the drawing. Mostly I look at my nose. It’s sticking out like it’s trying to get somebody’s attention. And here’s the thing: You have to admire a nose like that.

  I imagine Mister Leonardo da Vinci would be happy to draw a nose such as mine. If he saw it, he would grab his pencils and say, “Drawing a nose of this size would use up all of my pencils, and my hand would surely get a cramp. But it would be worth it, yes indeed, lucky stars, it would.” Because that is how dead artists talk.

  “Do me next,” Littie says.

  I flip to a new page on my drawing pad and press Littie’s tiny head to it, then I trace. When I’m done, I hold them up side by side. Littie’s nose has no bumps and is round and short, sort of like the letter C if it had swallowed a coat hanger.

  My nose, on the other hand, is a Big Rock Candy Mountain. I draw a tiny person on skis right at the top. The tip of my nose is more pointy than round. And that’s a good thing because that skier can go flying off the end instead of tumbling into my mouth. Blech.

  “It’s a Crumb nose,” I inform Littie. “From my dad’s side of the family. Whose nose do you have?”

  Littie shrugs. “Everybody says I’m the spitting image of my momma, but when I get into trouble, Momma says I’ve got my pap’s disposition.”

  While I think about whose disposition I have, I catch her staring. “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m just having a look,” she says. “All this talk about your nose makes me notice it more now.”

  “That’s all right,” I tell her, sticking it in the air. “I don’t mind.”

  Littie looks it over real close. So close that I can tell she had bologna for lunch. “Don’t you mind having a boy’s nose?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said it’s from your dad’s side of the family,” she says. “You know, the boy side.” She sticks her tongue out of her bologna-smelling mouth like she’s going to upchuck.

  Which makes me say this not-so-nice thing: “I’d rather have a boy’s nose than a pea-size head.”

  “Who has a pea-size head?” she says with her hands on her hips.

  “Nobody,” I say, shrugging. “Definitely not you, Littie Maple.” If she doesn’t know she has a pea-size head, I’m sure not going to be the one to tell her.

  Boy’s nose or not, I really wish I did have my dad’s, on account of the fact that besides the toolbox and the shoehorn and some pictures, there’s hardly any proof that Dad was ever here. I used to pretend that he was just away on a trip, like Littie’s dad is sometimes, and that he’d be right here waiting for me when I got home from school, asking for his toolbox back. But Mom says I’m getting too old for pretending.

  Terrible sticks his head in my door. “Hey, wombat. Mom wants me to tell you to get your dirty clothes together. She’s doing laundry.”

  “I don’t have any,” I say, drawing goggles on my skier.

  He points to the Heap. “What about all that?”

  “That’s not dirty.” I pick up a shirt from the pile and sniff it. “See?”

  Littie takes a whiff, nods, and says, “Smells like hamburgers. I’m just saying.”

  I sniff my shirt again, and somehow it does smell like hamburgers. Delicious ones that we sometimes get at the White Star Luncheonette. I hold the shirt out for Terrible to smell, but he shoves my hand away and tells me I’m both gross and disgusting.

  Well then. Aliens don’t like the smell of hamburgers. That’s going on my list. I throw the shirt back on the Heap and get back to my drawing.

  “Fine,” he says. “I’m telling Mom.”

  “Fine,” I say, shrugging and sticking my nose in the air. But when he turns to leave, I follow. “Wait. What are you going to tell her?” I’m close behind him, down the hall. Littie is right behind me with the shirt in her hands.

  Terrible comes to a stop beside Mom at the kitchen table. “She won’t pick up her clothes.”

  Tattle-telling alien.

  “Penelope.” Mom keeps her eyes on a family photo album that’s open in front of her.

  “Tell her about the hamburgers,” Littie whispers as she shoves the shirt at me. But I give her a look that says, Now Is Not the Time for Meat.

  “What are you looking at?” I ask Mom.

  Terrible answers, “Pictures, duh. What does it look like?”

  Mom sighs and tells the alien he ought to be nice to his sister. I say, “Yes, he ought.” Even though I know he won’t ought. I slide into the chair next to Mom and lean in close as she turns the pages. My nose twitches. “Where’s Grandpa Felix?”

  As my family goes by in pages, Littie squeezes in beside me and chews on her thumbnail. Mom points to a picture. “There,” she says.

  I’ve seen pictures of Grandpa Felix before, but my dad is in most of them. So, I never really paid much attention to the grandpa part.

  “And that’s your nose,” Terrible says, smirking.

  “My grandpa’s got hair growing inside of his nose,” says Littie. “In his ears, too. Looks like spider legs.”

  I give her a look that says, What Does That Have to Do with the Color of Mud? She says, “You’ve got a grandpa nose. I’m just saying.”

  I nudge her with my elbow. “Maybe so. But my nose doesn’t have spider legs.” Then I stick my finger up in there just to be sure.

  “Not yet it doesn’t,” Littie says, nudging me back. “I’m just saying.”

  I look at the picture up close, nose to nose. No spider legs, thank lucky stars. When you’re Graveyard Dead, I bet there are spider legs, real ones, in your nose. And other places, too. Then my eyes go to the smiling face right beside Grandpa. “I wonder why Dad’s nose isn’t the same.”

  Littie rattles on about how she doesn’t have some mole the shape of a lima bean on her neck even though her momma and grandmother do,
but I’m barely listening because I’m tracing my dad’s nose with my finger. His nose is thin and regular looking, and makes him look like the kind of person who would let a stray dog have a lick of a lollipop, just because.

  Grandpa looks like the kind of person who would call the dog catcher, but I’m not sure if that’s because of our nose or something else. “When Grandpa Felix was alive…”

  Mom clears her throat. “Penelope Rae.” (Colon.)

  “What?”

  “Grandpa Felix is not dead. Why would you think he’s dead? Why do you always think that everybody is dead?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “A lot of the time they just are.”

  Mom says she hasn’t talked to Grandpa Felix in a long time, not since I was a baby, not since Dad got sick. But then I want to know, “Well, if you haven’t talked to him, how do you know Grandpa Felix isn’t Graveyard Dead?”

  Mom gives me a look that says, If You Don’t Stop Talking about Dead Things, I’m Going to Pull My Hair Out by the Roots.

  So I do, for now. Because Mom looks a lot better not bald.

  4.

  Nighttime is the best time to think about dead people, because in the dark and hush quiet, it’s easy to imagine my Graveyard Dead dad patting my foot under the covers and saying, “Oh, little darling. Oh, my heart.”

  But this night, when I’m supposed to be asleep, I get to thinking a lot about Grandpa Felix not being Graveyard Dead. Why don’t we talk to him if he’s not dead? And if he’s not dead, why doesn’t he talk to us?

  Me and Terrible asked about him before, I know so, but Mom always said he was just gone. Just gone like Gram Trudy, my dad’s mother, who I never met. Just gone like Dad.

  That’s what I thought, anyhow. But maybe there are reasons other than being dead for somebody to be gone.

  Terrible’s bedroom is across the hall from mine. His door is covered in stickers that say things like NO TRESPASSING! and DANGER! KEEP OUT! and ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK! with lots of exclamation points on account of the fact that aliens really don’t like visitors. The door is open a crack, so I poke my head inside. All of the lights are out except for one by his bed, and I can see half of his face lit up in the dark. He’s got one eye open, but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to aliens (Number 7). “Are you asleep?” I whisper.

  He gets up, and two steps later he’s at the door in front of me. “Did you think Grandpa Felix was dead?” I ask him through the crack.

  He looks at me for a second and says, “Yes, dork.” Then he closes the door on me, and my nose nearly gets pinched off.

  “Me too,” I say quietly, after the door closes. I run my finger over the ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK! sticker. Of all the dead people I know, Grandpa Felix is the only one who’s turned out to be alive. The only one. And I think it’s too bad that I don’t know him.

  Down the hall, Mom’s room is all dark. She’s snoring, and it sounds like slurping chocolate milk through a straw when you get to the bottom of the cup—cwuuurgh!—which I’m not allowed to do on account of the fact that it’s not polite. But cwuuurgh! when you’re sleeping must be different from cwuuurgh! when you’ve got a straw, because Mom is allowed to do it all the time.

  I climb in bed beside Mom and hug one of her extra pillows to my chest. It smells like cinnamon spice. Then real gentle, I touch the side of Mom’s face with my finger, right next to her ear. This is something I do to see how many touches I can get in before she wakes up. Twenty-four is my world record. (Note: Do not try this game with aliens.)

  I get to eighteen when she sits up in bed and says, “Margarine!” like she’s been dreaming about groceries.

  So I say, “Butter!” like we’re playing that game where one person gives a clue about something and the other person has to guess what it is.

  But Mom must not be in the mood to play that game right now, because she looks at me, rubs the sleep out of her eyeballs, and says, “What in the world are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” I say, sitting on my finger.

  She props herself up on a pillow and yawns. “You weren’t doing that touching thing again, were you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Penelope Rae.” (Gallbladder.)

  “Why did you always say that Grandpa Felix was gone when he was not gone?” I ask.

  “What?” says Mom. I repeat the question, and she says, “Do we have to talk about this now?”

  “You said he was gone,” I say. “You said so. But he’s not dead and I have his nose and still I don’t know him.”

  “I never said Grandpa Felix was dead,” she says.

  “You never said he was not dead.”

  “Penelope Crumb.”

  “Mom Crumb,” I say. “So, where is he if he’s not dead?”

  She yawns and then rolls over on her side so that I’m talking to the back of her head. “Where’s who?”

  “Grandpa Felix. The not-dead grandpa that we’ve been talking about.” I poke my finger at the back of her head to wake up her brains.

  “Stop doing that,” she says once they get awake. She looks at me over her shoulder. “I don’t know where he is. I lost track of him over the years, but the last time we spoke he was living in Simmons.”

  “Simmons? That’s where Nanny and Pop-Pop used to live.”

  When she doesn’t say anything, I give her brains another poke. She turns over then and grabs my cinnamon-spice-smelling pillow right out from under me. “Go to sleep,” she says, pointing to the door. “Now.” And then she pulls the pillow over her head.

  5.

  When I get to school, Miss Stunkel’s got our drawings hanging above the chalkboard. This would normally be a good thing because famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci have their drawings stuck up on walls for lots of people to see. But this is not a good thing on account of the fact that Patsy’s bad drawing of me is up there.

  I tell my eyeballs not to look at it, and try to get them to look at Miss Stunkel’s Friday lizard pin or the “Math is stupid” that somebody wrote on the corner of my desk in permanent marker. (Which was not me even though I also think that math is stupid.) But my eyeballs don’t listen, and they keep looking at Patsy’s bad drawing of me.

  The next thing I know, Miss Stunkel is saying my name. Twice.

  I put a look on my face that says, I Really, Really Have Been Paying Attention to Every Word You Have Been Saying. (Even though I really, really have not.)

  But it doesn’t work because Miss Stunkel says, “We are on page twenty-two…where are you?”

  Everybody laughs, except for me and Patsy Cline. “Umm,” I say, looking at Patsy for help. But Patsy is staring up at Friday Lizard like her tongue is starting to swell.

  Miss Stunkel says, “Eyes on your book.” And that’s when I know I have to fix that drawing if I’m going to make it through the rest of the day without Miss Stunkel sending a note home.

  So, during recess, when everybody is outside playing and Miss Stunkel is eating her pickled ham sandwich (because that’s what teachers eat) in the teachers’ lounge, I sneak back into the classroom. I am an excellent sneaker. Stepping onto a chair, I pull a No. 2 Hard drawing pencil and eraser from my back pocket and get to work on my nose. And when I’m done, I can practically hear Mister Leonardo say: “Yes indeed, a mighty fine work. Much improved.”

  And he would be right.

  After recess, my eyeballs have no trouble paying attention to Miss Stunkel when she scribbles on the chalkboard. Especially when she pulls out a plaid hat with earflaps from her pocket and slides it on. Like Miss Stunkel’s all of a sudden worried that the chalk dust might make the faces in the drawings start sneezing on her head.

  I give Patsy Cline a look that says, Miss Stunkel Has Gone and Lost Her Marbles. Patsy’s eyes get wide, and the next thing I know, Miss Stunkel’s got a magnifying glass up to her face. “Who am I?” she says.

  “You’re Miss Stunkel,” says Angus Meeker.

  I roll my eyes and try my hardest to hold bac
k a duh. Then I raise my hand.

  “Well, of course,” says Miss Stunkel. She puts the magnifying glass real close to her face now, which makes her eyeball look so big and bulgy that I can see the red squiggly lines in the white parts. “But who am I now?”

  I raise my hand higher still.

  “I am a detective,” she says, without giving me a chance. “And you all are going to be detectives, too. I want you to do some digging and find out about your family history.” She hands Angus a box of small magnifying glasses and tells him to pass them around. “Maybe your family came here from another country, or maybe your family has special celebrations or traditions.”

  Angus Meeker tries to hand me a magnifying glass that’s got a crack in it, but I push his hand away and take a good one from the box. I hold it up to my eye, and through the looking glass everything is great big: my toolbox, the Hairy Stink Eye that Angus is giving me, the hole in Miss Stunkel’s panty hose.

  Then Miss Stunkel pounds on the chalkboard at what she’s written:

  Become a Detective!

  1. Discover what you don’t know about

  your family. Find out about your family’s

  traditions and customs.

  2. Make a coat of arms for your family.

  Use pictures or drawings to show your

  family’s history.

  “You will take what you’ve learned about your family,” she says, “and make a coat of arms.”

  “An arm coat?” I say. “You mean with elbows and everything?” Angus Meeker laughs, but I know he doesn’t know any more about it than I do.

  “Penelope Crumb,” says Miss Stunkel, “you know my rule. Pupils in my classroom must raise their hands if they want to say something.”

  I raise my hand like a good pupil and say, “Whose arms are they? And how do you put them on a coat?” Because that seems like kind of a creepy thing to do.

  Miss Stunkel takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She looks just like Mom does when we’re halfway to the store and she realizes she left her grocery list on the counter. Then Miss Stunkel opens her eyes again. She explains that a coat of arms is not a coat made of arms or elbows at all. It’s a picture, or a bunch of pictures, usually drawn on the shape of a shield, that show things about a family. A family’s history, for example, she says.