Iggy and Me and the Baby

by Jenny Valentine

  I asked Iggy how long she was going to hang there for, not running or skipping or squealing or hula-hooping or darting about.

  Iggy sighed. “As long as it takes.”

  At home, Mum and Dad asked me how my day had been. They asked me how Iggy’s day had been, I was just going to tell them about the monkey bars, when Iggy came into the room with two very big and heavy-looking bags. She was huffing and puffing with the effort of carrying them, but she didn’t put them down.

  “What have you got in there?” Dad said.

  Iggy looked down at the bags and blew her fringe out of her eyes. “Books.”

  “What books?” said Mum.

  “My books,” said Iggy.

  “What are you doing with them?”

  “Growing my arms.”

  Mum and Dad looked at each other. Dad’s face said, “Can I laugh?” and Mum’s face said, “NO.”

  I asked Iggy if it was harder or easier than hanging from the monkey bars all playtime. She tried to shrug, but the bags were too heavy. She couldn’t move her shoulders.

  “About the same,” she said.

  “Why do you only want to grow your arms?” Dad asked.

  “I don’t,” Iggy said. “I want to grow the rest of me as well. I’m just starting with my arms.”

  “Then what?” said Dad. “Shall we make you some extremely heavy shoes from bricks, to grow your legs?”

  “OK,” said Iggy.

  “Or better still, you could have a bath and then we could wring you out like a jumper. Mum’s good at making all my jumpers really big when she washes them.”

  “Good idea!” Iggy said, and she dropped her books on the floor with a loud thud. “Can I have a bath now?”

  “No,” said Mum. “I wouldn’t risk that. I’m good at shrinking jumpers too.”

  Iggy shuddered. She definitely was not interested in getting any smaller. She sighed and slumped into a chair. She looked around the kitchen. She was exasperated.

  “When am I ever going to grow?” she said. “Everyone is taller than me.”

  “You will grow,” Mum said. “You’ll be as tall as me one day, maybe taller. You are doing all the right things.”

  “Like hanging from monkey bars and carrying books?” Iggy said.

  “No, like eating and drinking good things, and running and swimming.”

  “And sleeping,” I said. “Don’t forget sleeping.”

  “I won’t,” Iggy said. “I’m going to go and do some of that right now.”

  Iggy had never gone to bed without being told before. Not once. Usually she makes lots of excuses why she shouldn’t, and has lots of reasons to stay up for five more minutes.

  Mum and Dad looked at each other.

  Mum said, “That’s not like you,” and Dad said, “Is this a trick?”

  “It’s not a trick. I just want to do some growing, that’s all,” Iggy said, and she dragged her heavy bags of books up the stairs to bed.

  “Oh dear,” said Dad.

  “Poor thing,” said Mum. “It’s hard being small.”

  In the morning, while we were eating our cornflakes, Mum said something that surprised us. “Hurry up and eat your breakfast. We are going to let you draw on the wall.”

  I stopped crunching. Iggy swallowed, and her mouth closed up tight and she frowned up at Mum.

  “No you’re not,” she said. “You never let us draw on the wall. It is absolutely forbidden.”

  “Quite true. But today we are making an exception.”

  “What’s one of those?” Iggy asked, and I told her it’s when a grown-up changes their mind.

  “OK,” said Iggy. “What are we drawing? Can we draw anything we like?”

  “No,” Mum said. “We are drawing a height chart.”

  “What for?”

  “We are going to measure ourselves and make marks on the doorframe to show how tall we are.”

  Iggy shook her head. “No thanks. I don’t want to. I already know how tall I am and it’s not very.”

  “You know how tall you are now,” Mum said. “But you don’t know how tall you will be in one month’s time. We can measure you again then, and compare.”

  “I will probably be exactly the same,” Iggy said, “because I am not growing.”

  Mum got a pen. “Well, let’s make a mark on the doorframe and see.”

  And that is just what we did. We had to stand very straight and still while Mum and Dad made a mark. Next to the mark, we wrote down our name and the date. We measured everyone. Dad was at the top, then Mum, then a big gap, then me, then Iggy.

  “See?” she said, not smiling. “I’m still the smallest. I’m always the smallest,” and she stomped up the stairs to brush her teeth.

  “Oh dear,” Mum said. “The measuring door didn’t quite work.”

  At playtime, Iggy still wasn’t running about like a pony, or skipping and squealing and hula-hooping with her friends. She was alone again, hanging from the monkey bars. She was upside down this time, with all her hair falling towards the ground. Her face was as red as a beetroot, and she looked very glum.

  She looked glum on the way home too. When we got there, instead of playing in the garden with me or rooting about in the kitchen for biscuits, Iggy went straight to her bedroom on her own. Iggy doesn’t often go anywhere on her own. She is usually very fond of company.

  One thing Iggy likes to do on her own is play schools. She takes the register and she gives homework and there is no misbehaving in her class. I think she likes it because she gets to be the boss of everyone. She says, ‘Stop fidgeting, Polly. And, Mumble, I’m very disappointed. Your handwriting is usually much better than that.’

  I remembered this I sat in the kitchen and looked at the marks we had made that morning. I hoped Iggy was playing schools in her room with all her teddies. Suddenly I knew how to make Iggy feel better.

  I ran upstairs and knocked on her door.

  “Come in,” she said, in a glum voice. She wasn’t playing anything. She was sitting on her bed.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” I said, “but I’ve just remembered something about the measuring door.”

  Iggy sighed and looked at the carpet. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “But we haven’t measured everyone yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I picked up some of Iggy’s best teddies.

  “Will you help?” I asked her.

  We took them into the kitchen, to the measuring door. We started to measure them.

  “Keep still, Mumble,” I said. “No wriggling.”

  Iggy stopped frowning.

  We made little marks and wrote down the teddies’ names and the date, just like we had done with Mum and Dad.

  When we had finished, we stepped back to have a look.

  “See? You’re not the smallest,” I said to Iggy. “You are much, much taller than Mumble and Polly and Ranger.”

  “True,” Iggy said, stretching a bit.

  “And you are a giant compared to Hunter and Gloria.”

  “I am, aren’t I? I am actually very tall in toy world.”

  We looked at the height chart that we had made. Iggy wasn’t the smallest any more.

  “Thanks, Flo,” Iggy said.

  “That’s OK,” I said, and I put my arm around her. She stood on tiptoes and she nearly almost rested her head on my shoulder.

  Most of the time, Iggy comes out of her classroom with a hop and a skip and a smile. She talks at a hundred miles an hour and she nearly always has good news to tell us on the way home.

  But the other day, Iggy came out of her classroom with a face like thunder. She stomped over to where I was waiting for Dad, and with every stomp her frown got darker and her bottom lip stuck out further.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I said. I thought maybe somebody else’s mum was having a baby.

  Iggy stopped stomping and folded her arms high across her chest. Her cheeks were flushed pink with fury. She took a dee
p breath in.

  “Frankie Day and Ella James and Louis Green and Marouane Saddowi and Jacob Warner all got a special letter to take home, and I didn’t get one.”

  “Why didn’t you get one?” I asked.

  “Because we’re saving paper,” Iggy said, and she put her arms out like the branches of a tree and rolled her eyes, as if saving paper was the craziest idea she’d ever heard.

  “That’s good,” I told her. “Saving paper is a good thing. Saving paper saves trees. You know that.”

  At home, we are only allowed to draw on the back of Mum’s used work paper, and we make a lot of things out of old magazines. This is called recycling.

  Iggy nodded. “Yes I know about saving trees. But what I don’t know,” she said, through gritted teeth, “is what was in that letter.”

  Iggy hates not knowing things when other people do. Nothing makes her madder than not being in on a secret.

  “Well, that’s easy,” I said. “It’s about the School Fair. You didn’t get a letter, because I did. The people in your class who got a letter are the ones without big brothers and sisters. You didn’t get one, because you can read mine.”

  Iggy’s frown lifted a bit. She un-gritted her teeth. Her hands turned into pincers, like a little lobster or a crab.

  “Can I read it now?” she said, and her pincers opened and shut double quick while I looked for it in my bag.

  When I gave her the letter, Iggy clasped it with both hands. There were too many words in it for her to read all at once, but she looked it over and then hugged it to her chest and smiled.

  “I love the School Fair,” she said.

  I love the School Fair too. Everyone’s at school, but it’s not a school day. There is more laughing and running about than normal, and more food and colour and noise, and much less getting told off. Everything’s the same and everything’s different.

  When Dad collected us, Iggy waved the letter at him, right up close so it tickled his nose.

  “The School Fair is coming!”

  Dad lifted Iggy and the letter up on to his shoulders. “Great,” he said. “The School Fair again.” But he didn’t sound even half as happy as we were.

  Iggy beamed from up high. “It is great. It is very exciting.” She waved the letter in the air like a flag.

  Dad walks very fast, because of his long legs. I had to skip every fifth step to keep up.

  “Tell me why it’s exciting,” Dad said. “Tell me exactly why.”

  So we did.

  “The whole playground gets transformed,” Iggy said “As if by magic,” and she forgot to hold on to Dad’s head while she made a magic spell in the sky.

  “It’s always fun and there’s something for everyone,” I said.

  “There’s a cake stall. And a book stall. You like books.”

  “There’s face painting,” Iggy said. “And crazy hair colours.”

  “And a fancy-dress parade. This year the theme is The World.”

  “Well,” said Dad. “That narrows it down a bit.”

  “There’s throwing wet sponges at teachers,” I said.

  “Oh, now I do like that,” said Dad.

  “Me too.” Iggy covered her face with the letter and peeped out. “It’s very naughty.”

  “There’s a climbing wall,” I said.

  The climbing wall is my favourite. Last year, I got to the very top. When I looked around me, I could see the whole fair down below. I could see my friends eating ice cream and playing skittles. I could see the canal behind the playground, and the cars on the road, and the school roof with all the footballs and things that get lost on it.

  “I couldn’t go on the climbing wall,” Iggy grumbled. “I wasn’t allowed because I was too small.”

  “But you are growing,” I said, “and it was a whole year ago.”

  Iggy looked down at us. “Oh yes! I have. I’ve grown loads. I’m taller than Dad, see?”

  “Then you’re definitely tall enough,” Dad told her.

  Iggy squinted at the letter. “There’s a raffle, but I don’t know what that is. It sounds silly.”

  “It’s not silly,” I told her. “It’s got really good prizes.”

  “Can I win a wet weekend in February?” asked Dad.

  “No,” I said. “But I think there’s a meal for two.”

  When we got home, we still weren’t tired of talking about the fair. Mum made us some toast, and Iggy read the whole letter out loud. I helped her with the difficult bits. It was full of important information about the things we needed to make and do.

  “For the first time,” Iggy read, “there will be an art com-pet-it-ion, with two cat-eg-or-ies – a garden on a plate and a self-portrait.”

  Iggy stopped reading. “Why would you put a garden on a plate?”

  Nobody said anything, because nobody knew why.

  I said, “I’m going to do a self-portrait.”

  “Me too.” Iggy nodded. “I’m going to do mine with pasta.”

  Nobody said anything to that either.

  I thought about doing my self-portrait. To make one of those, you have to look in the mirror for a long time. It is a funny feeling, like having a staring competition with yourself, and nobody wins.

  Iggy thought about what costume to wear for the fancy-dress parade. Dressing up is one of Iggy’s favourite things ever. First she said she would go as the Sahara Desert, then as an Indian lady in a sari, and finally as an Egyptian Pyramid.

  “We can make me out of a cardboard box,” she said. “It’ll be easy.”

  “I could go as the Sphinx,” I said.

  “Good idea, Flo,” said Dad. “Me and Mum will dress up as a camel.”

  Iggy sniggered.

  “Will we?” said Mum. “I don’t think so.”

  “But will you be a volunteer?” I asked. “The letter says we need lots of those.”

  “What’s a volunteer?” asked Iggy.

  “It’s someone who does something out of the goodness of their own heart,” Dad said.

  Iggy smiled. “I like the sound of that.”

  On the day of the fair, we got up early and iced sixty cupcakes. Iggy put on her cardboard Pyramid costume. I put on my Sphinx headdress, and Mum painted our faces so we looked as if we were made out of stone. The walk to school took forever, because Iggy could only take tiny steps in her box. She carried her pasta self-portrait and I carried my painted one. Mum carried the cupcakes and Dad carried three boxes of books.

  When we got there, the playground had been transformed. The tables from our classrooms were all outside, piled high with things and prizes. There was a white tent filled with all the gardens on plates and the portraits for the art competition.

  Iggy bought a one-eared rabbit from the toy stall, and six tickets for the raffle. I bought a book about dolphins, and a bracelet.

  Suddenly Iggy came running towards me out of the crowds. “Quick,” she said. “We need to get Dad.”

  “What for?”

  “Mr Hawthorne is looking for a volunteer.”

  We found Dad and told him.

  “I told Mr Hawthorne you would do it,” Iggy said.

  Dad looked worried. “Do what?”

  Iggy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  We pulled Dad by the hands over to where Mr Hawthorne was waiting. It was the throw-a-wet-sponge-at-the-teacher stall.

  “Oh no,” said Dad.

  “Oh yes,” said Mr Hawthorne.

  There was a big queue of people ready to throw sponges, and nobody to throw them at.

  Mr Hawthorne was dripping wet. “All the teachers are soaked. It’s throw-a-wet-sponge-at-the-parent now.”

  Dad looked up at the sky. “What have I done to deserve this?” he said, and he took his coat off.

  “You’ve volunteered,” Iggy told him, and she clapped her hands together with excitement and delight.

  Dad bent down. He put his arms through the armholes and his head through the headhole of the throw-a-wet-sponge stall
.

  “Ready?” asked Mr Hawthorne.

  Dad tried to nod.

  “Steady?”

  And before anyone could say, “GO!” a big fat dripping-wet sponge flew through the air and landed on Dad’s head, sliding down his nose and hitting the ground with a splosh.

  “OOF!” said Dad. His hair was all plastered down. He tried to blow the water off his face, the way Iggy blows on her fringe. He was blinking furiously.

  Iggy and me jumped up and down and hid our eyes.

  “Mum!” we shouted. “Mum! Come and see this!”

  The next wet sponge was already on its way.

  “AWF!” said Dad. The water ran down his neck and inside his shirt and made him wriggle.

  Mum arrived just in time to see the third sponge land, and the fourth and the fifth and sixth. She thought it was the funniest thing she had seen all day. Even after Mr Hawthorne had let Dad go, and he’d dried himself a bit on a towel and had a hot cup of tea, Mum was still laughing.

  Iggy asked me to take her to the climbing wall. We left her cardboard-box Pyramid with Mum at the cake stall. We crossed our fingers behind our backs while the man measured her, and we held our breaths.

  “On you go,” he said, with a smile, as he helped us into our harnesses.

  “Am I tall enough?” Iggy asked him.

  “Just about.”

  Iggy beamed. She punched the air. She did a little dance, until the man told her to stay still while he tightened the straps.

  “I’ve grown,” she told him. “I’ve grown quite a lot.”

  Then Iggy and me went together to the top of the climbing wall. I showed her the canal and the cars and the stuff on the school roof. We looked down at the whole noisy, colourful, fluttering, perfect fair, with Dad helping Mum sell cupcakes, and our friends running about flying miniature kites.