by Galia Oz
After we ate, we went out to play behind our building and Shakshuka came with us and I showed Effie and Brody how you could stroke her fur so that she looked like a princess with her hair tied back, and then Brody had an idea about how to get Effie’s knee back in shape for the race, and all we needed was some help from Shakshuka.
Have you ever seen a race between a girl and a dog? It was true that Effie was the fastest runner in the class and that she beat all the boys, but Shakshuka ran like the bravest warrior princess and that was even better. Brody told Shakshuka that if she was smart and took advantage of Effie’s injury, she could win, but Shakshuka didn’t pay any attention to him.
Just when the race started, she stopped to smell an old tire lying on its side with some weeds growing in the middle, and then she started barking at a cat that was hiding under a car, and Effie won easily.
Brody said we had to try something else, and we thought about it for a long time until we decided that I would stand at the finish line and call Shakshuka, and Brody would hold her at the starting line so she couldn’t move, and then he would say “On your mark, get set, go!” and release her, and they would both start running toward me.
“Come on, little one,” I called to Shakshuka from far away, while Brody was still holding her. “Come fast.”
“Fast isn’t enough,” Brody said. “You also have to know which way to run.”
Shakshuka wriggled in his grasp because she wanted to get to me, and Brody said, “Okay, ready?”
I looked over at Effie and saw she was busy braiding her hair, not paying attention to anything else, and I realized that this was our chance to beat her, so I answered quickly, “Ready.”
“Set, go!” said Brody, and he let Shakshuka go, and she ran straight to me like a good girl, and that was how she managed to do what no one in our school had ever dreamed of—she beat Effie.
“I didn’t even realize that we were supposed to start running,” Effie said, and I knew that was true, and that I could have jolted her out of her daydream, but I didn’t do it because it was about time Effie lost for once. Why shouldn’t she? She always won.
Brody told her that it was a race, not a space mission, so there was no reason to be spaced out, and I petted Shakshuka and sang:
“Blue Dawn may rise and shine,
But the winning dog is mine.”
“But Effie won the first race,” Brody said.
“Yes,” I said, “but that race doesn’t count because Shakshuka barked at a cat.”
“No,” Brody said, “it’s not Effie’s fault that your dog barks at cats when she’s supposed to run.”
“And it’s not my dog’s fault that Effie falls asleep on her feet,” I said.
Brody and I almost got into a fight, but then I noticed that Effie and Shakshuka had started to run around in circles, the two of them with their hair streaming behind their ears, and they both had such happy faces, like they didn’t want or need anything, as if running was the best thing in the world.
That was all very nice, I thought, but it couldn’t be for real. In a race, there’s only one winner.
Everything seemed to be going well. Effie managed to get rid of the bandage on her knee and went back to training, and lots of kids thought she had a good chance of beating Donna Silver from Pine Way School, who was better known as the Jet. Effie saw her once a week in the afternoon when they both practiced the shot put and threw these heavy iron balls, always with their left arms, and the rumor was that at the last practice Donna Silver said that Effie’s legs were strong but the rest of her wasn’t too impressive, and everyone in our class heard about it and was really angry because we never talked that way about Effie, we all looked out for her, except for Danny, who didn’t look out for anyone, but maybe even that was beginning to change these days. I couldn’t tell for sure.
Anyway, Effie didn’t say anything to Donna Silver because she didn’t know how to react to that kind of talk, and it really wasn’t her fault that she had legs like that, and Brody said he was sure that Effie would win easily because Donna Silver may have been a jet, but Effie was a spaceship, and a spaceship was much faster than any jet. Brody said things like that to make fun of Effie, but Effie couldn’t care less.
Principal Blue Dawn walked into our class a few days before the race and said she would be substituting for our teacher, Mrs. Brown, who came down with the flu, and first of all, she wanted to remind us that in her class gum chewing was forbidden, and absolutely no trading stickers at recess, and she warned us that she would confiscate everything and we would never see it again, simple as that, and mobile phones weren’t allowed, and at morning recess we could only have sandwiches and no candy, and we were not allowed to bring balloons onto school property, even if it was our friend’s birthday, because it wasn’t fair to the kids who didn’t get balloons, and you, excuse me, Effie, what is that you’re eating in the middle of a lesson?
“Chocolate,” said Effie.
We all turned and looked. On Effie’s desk there was a giant, double-size chocolate bar with nuts, and Effie answered the principal with her mouth full of chocolate, and even smiled when she noticed that all the kids were looking at her, but then she realized that she was in trouble because Blue Dawn was definitely not Mrs. Brown and she didn’t find these kinds of things funny, so she quickly put away the chocolate in her schoolbag and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and Blue Dawn the principal said, “Give that to me, please.”
“But it’s mine,” Effie said.
“Don’t you know that you’re not allowed to bring chocolate to school?” asked our principal.
“I didn’t bring it,” Effie said.
“But you just said it’s yours,” the principal said.
Effie shrugged. She didn’t have anything else to say. The principal didn’t know Effie and couldn’t guess that she wasn’t much of a talker, and to her Effie seemed plain rude, and she informed her that this was the last time she would accept such behavior and next time things would be very unpleasant.
“As if they’re pleasant now,” whispered Brody, who was sitting in front of me.
Effie couldn’t explain how the chocolate came to be on her desk. Apparently it just appeared there. Adam said that things like that really happened, and he even read once in some book about a girl who had chocolate bars materialize in her pockets. “And sometimes,” Adam said, “wh-wh-when she wore clothes with especially big p-p-pockets, whole b-b-b-boxes of chocolates would just g-g-grow there.”
I could see that Brody really wanted to imitate Adam and play around with p-p-pockets full of b-b-b-boxes, but Adam was already on his next story, this time about a gardener in Belgium who managed to grow pink eggplant that smelled and tasted like strawberries, and everyone in town thought that was fantastic, but then they discovered that whoever ate them couldn’t stop petting cats, and people quit their jobs, forgot about everything else, and spent all their time chasing any cat they could find so they could cuddle it, and in the end the government decided to destroy all the pink eggplant, but when they got to the field they saw that a pack of wild boars had already scarfed down the whole lot—
I dragged Effie away from there. As usual she was standing and listening, her mouth slightly open, her wide eyes unblinking, as if Adam’s crazy talk was the most interesting thing she had ever heard in her life. “Beware the mighty Blue Dawn,” I told her.
“Fine,” said Effie, but she wasn’t listening, and a minute later she asked, “Beware the what? Why should I be afraid of her?”
“Because she can make our lives difficult,” I said. “Let’s hope Danny’s afraid of her too and starts acting like a good kid.”
Danny was coming toward us. Right beside him, as always, was Duke, his loyal number two. When Danny reached us, I quickly moved in between him and Effie so he couldn’t get to her. But Danny only mumbled, “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,” and looked at us with a little grin on his face, and when Duke finished off “If a woodchuck could
chuck wood,” Danny jabbed him with his elbow so he’d keep quiet. Danny sometimes had these nice moments, but it didn’t happen often, and you could never tell if those moments were the real thing and all the rest was just an act to impress his friends, or if it was the other way round.
Effie didn’t pay any attention to Danny, just like she didn’t really pay attention to Blue Dawn, and for once they left us alone. I asked her if it was true that she didn’t know who had given her the chocolate, and she said she had no idea. There was a scrap of paper on her desk but nothing was written on it; there were just some scribbles she couldn’t read properly, so she threw it away along with the chocolate wrapper.
We went out to the school yard and played hopscotch, and after that we jumped rope with some other girls and it was fun, and then Effie remembered Adam’s story and asked me what would happen to the cats now, after the wild boars had eaten all the pink eggplant. The poor kitties.
And on the far fence, the one next to the nature teacher’s greenhouse, a big black cat was moving its tail just above the rhyme that someone had written in chalk:
Principal Dawn
Has a hole in her shoe.
You can see right through.
And her stockings are blue!
In the evening, after I showed Dad how to brush Shakshuka so she looked like the most gorgeous princess, I asked him what to do about the toy I was building for Max and Monty. I wanted it to be a perfect wooden cube with a ball inside that played music when you shook it. At our last woodworking class, it actually looked pretty good.
I used a hot-glue gun to stick the sides together and left it to dry, but when I tried to shake it, it fell apart again and the musical ball came flying out.
Dad suggested using a hammer and nails so that it would hold together better, but Monty was getting a little too interested in the hammer, so I put it in my schoolbag really fast, and then I gave him a big kiss on the forehead so he wouldn’t feel bad. Monty was interested in everything except for kisses. When he crawled past Shakshuka, he lifted up her ear and tried to peek inside. When you gave him a baby bottle, he sometimes managed to twist off the top and open it and turn it upside down so that everything spilled all over the floor. And if he got his hands on one of my notebooks, he destroyed it in a second. Max was actually very interested in kisses. And when he really liked me, he pulled my hair, and I let him.
In the morning the two of them came to wake me up, and Max crawled under my covers and said, “Up, Julie, up,” and Monty sat on the floor and checked what happened when you put your hand in a cup of water, and tried to figure out why in the end the water always spilled, and I got up quickly because I wanted to be the first one in class to see if more chocolate would appear on Effie’s desk. But this time there were five big balloons, all of them tied to her chair, and on each one was written in block letters: “Effie’s the Champ!”
Stuck to her chair was a note that Effie tried to read, but she couldn’t make it out and she didn’t care anyway. She folded it into a paper airplane, and Brody laughed and said that Effie’s airplane looked like a spaceship, but Effie didn’t mind about that either. She loved those balloons, you could see it on her face, and she even got up on a table and did a headstand, which was really something that didn’t happen every day.
When Mrs. Brown walked into the classroom, Brody explained to her that even though everyone knew balloons weren’t allowed at school, this was a special case and that should be taken into consideration.
“A special case?” said Mrs. Brown, laughing as Effie sat down looking like a queen on her throne and above her head in every direction floated the words Effie’s the Champ!, Effie’s the Champ!, Effie’s the Champ!, Effie’s the Champ!, Effie’s the Champ! on five balloons.
“Extra-special,” Brody said. He was good at that kind of talk. “She was injured, her knee was in bad shape, but now she’s back to training and she can run in the race. We have to keep her happy, you know.”
Mrs. Brown knew. Everyone understood. At recess kids came from the other classes to see the balloons and everyone thought they were great, and no one paid any attention to Danny and Duke, who tried to put up a barrier by the door and charge the kids for looking at the balloons.
At the end of the day we had free time and everyone went out to the school yard, except for Effie—who stayed to guard her balloons and draw in her notebook—and me and a few other kids. Danny sat on his desk, drumming with his pencil on an empty plastic bottle, and Duke sat next to him, staring into space.
“Why do you two always have to make so much noise?” I asked Danny. “Could you maybe stop doing that?”
“Could you maybe stop doing that?” Danny said to Duke, trying to sound like me.
Duke just rolled his eyes. When it came to keeping quiet, he was even worse than Effie.
I asked Danny why they weren’t outside in the school yard, and he said he’d had enough of the principal, she always managed to find him, and she had this thing she did that was meant to stop fights before they even got started, when she put a heavy hand on your shoulder, and all you wanted to do was escape from that hand, and that was why he would sometimes rather stay in the classroom, even at recess.
I took the pencil from Danny and started to drum on the bottle, and Danny said I couldn’t keep the beat, and I said it wasn’t possible to mess up the beat with a pencil and a bottle, and then the bell rang and Brody came in and said to Effie, “If you want to take those balloons home, you’d better come now. I heard that the principal left early.”
Effie, who was rocking back and forth on her chair, almost flipped over. I tossed the pencil to Danny and said, “Let’s go.”
We walked fast, and when we passed the blue door of the teachers’ room, Brody imitated the principal and said in a mock-serious voice:
“Dawn’s door won’t let evil through
Because it’s painted a lovely blue.”
As Effie, Brody, and I were leaving the building, we saw the principal standing by the gate, talking to some of the parents.
Brody and I pushed Effie and her balloons back into the building. “She’s standing there so the parents will think she’s so nice and be impressed because she pats the little kids on their heads,” Brody said, “but what she really wants is to catch the kids who aren’t wearing the school uniform.”
We told Effie that she couldn’t walk out with the balloons because the principal would take them away, and that she had to get rid of them, but there was no way Effie was going to let go of those five promises of success. How could she just give up those balloons, with “Effie’s the Champ!” written all over them, even before she had actually won the race? Who cared if almost all the air had already leaked out of one of them? I saw she was holding on to the strings really tightly, and I said, “Let’s go. Maybe Blue Dawn won’t want to grab the balloons in front of those moms.”
But at that exact minute the two mothers who were standing and talking to the principal said goodbye and left, as if all at once everyone had been ordered to leave, and the school yard was empty. As we drew nearer to the principal, who was standing alone by the gate, I felt as if my toes wanted to escape from my shoes, and I tried to calm down by repeating, like Danny, “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck…” But it didn’t help.
Blue Dawn the principal stopped us as we walked by. “Effie, do I need to congratulate you on winning the race?”
“The r-r-race hasn’t even happened yet…,” Effie stammered.
“And at this rate, there may not be a race,” the principal said. “If this is the way you behave, you can’t represent the school. You’re not allowed to bring balloons to school.”
“Someone gave them to her,” Brody said.
“Apparently whoever gave them to her doesn’t want her to compete. What’s this—‘Champ, Champ, Champ’? Let’s make sure we’re being humble, especially since the race hasn’t happened yet.”
Effie stood there silently holding the balloons. She w
as actually very modest, and she was my cousin. I had to think of a way to help her. “It’s not her fault,” I said.
“Is that so? Then she’d better hand over those balloons this instant. Simple as that.”
“But they’re mine,” Effie said.
I hoped the principal wouldn’t punish Effie for answering back because Effie wasn’t rude at all, she just said whatever was on her mind and she didn’t think first. And I thought that in that way she was a bit like my brothers and Shakshuka, but then I remembered that Shakshuka and the twins didn’t know how to talk, and I remembered that my mom was one of those parents who thought that Blue Dawn was a good principal, and thanks to her there was less fighting and things ran more smoothly, and I knew she would agree with Blue Dawn about the balloons because we did need rules and that was just the way it was.
Even though I was deep in thought, I noticed Effie move, raising the hand that was holding the balloons. Everyone looked up. The sky was its usual blue, like always, and gradually I realized what all of us were thinking at that minute, and just then Effie sighed and handed over the balloons to the principal.
On the way home, Brody said to Effie, “It’s good that you didn’t let go of the balloons because if you had, she wouldn’t have let you run in the race.” Effie didn’t say anything, she just opened and closed her fist, as if her hand was practicing the move that would have released her balloons into the clear blue sky, where they would have disappeared and not belonged to anyone.
“The air would have leaked out pretty soon, anyway,” Brody said, and I told him to shut up, but it was too late, Effie had already started walking really fast. I ran after her and tried to make her feel better about the principal’s punishment—no recess tomorrow—and I told her it was no big deal, she could train inside as well, and we would all move the desks out of the way for her.
