Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade

by Barthe DeClements

  “How does that prove Elsie took the money?” Daddy asked.

  “Because Elsie’s mother never gives her money. She knows she’d spend it on food.”

  “I bet her grandma gave her money!” Kenny butted in.

  “You stay out of this,” I told him.

  “Well, maybe her grandmother did,” Mother said.

  “No, you don’t understand. We saw Elsie in the fifth grade unit during recess. And recess is when the money gets stolen.”

  “Did you see her take the money?” Daddy asked.

  “I didn’t see her, but no money’s ever been stolen in our room—until Elsie came.”

  “All circumstantial evidence,” Daddy announced importantly.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Just hearsay. You don’t have solid proof. You just have Elsie under suspicion. You can’t arrest her.”

  “I don’t want to arrest her! Anyway, Mrs. Hanson said we were to tell her if we saw any little thing.”

  “It sounds like Elsie has enough troubles already.” Mother started clearing the table as if the subject were closed.

  “Mrs. Hanson said it isn’t good for the thief not to be caught.”

  “Being accused wouldn’t be good for Elsie if she wasn’t the thief,” Mother replied.

  I didn’t feel like doing my homework that night. I sat on my bed with my arithmetic book open to the page of fractions. I hate changing fractions to common denominators. I always get the numbers mixed up and backwards. I felt like sneaking downstairs to get the calculator. I wished I could call Diane. Most girls get to talk on the phone. My dad won’t let me touch ours. It’s not fair.

  The Office Jail

  The next morning Diane, Sharon, and I walked to school, figuring out what to do about Elsie. Diane thought I should go right smack to the principal’s office. Sharon thought I should tell Mrs. Hanson I wanted a conference with her. I couldn’t decide what to do. The closer I got to school, the more my breakfast lumped in my stomach.

  “The terrible threesome!” a boy’s voice called out behind us.

  “Which one do you think’s the cutest?” another boy asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Depends on if you like short hair, long hair, or curly hair.”

  We girls glanced at each other. We knew it was Chris Johnson and Mark Howard. In the girls’ bathroom where we went to comb our hair, Sharon asked the mirror, “Which do you think is the cutest?”

  “Mark is the fairest of them all,” Diane announced.

  “I think Chris is,” I said.

  “You would,” Diane said, putting Chapstick on her lips. We weren’t allowed to use lipstick. Chapstick made our lips shiny. Diane passed it around.

  I was at my desk watching Elsie fit her body into her seat before I remembered that I hadn’t talked to Mrs. Hanson or the principal about the licorice whips.

  Mrs. Hanson started class by telling us to take out our arithmetic papers and pass them to the person behind us. I shrugged my shoulders when Sharon poked me in the back for my paper. After the papers were corrected, Mrs. Hanson asked for our scores. Sharon said, “Zero,” when my name was called. Mrs. Hanson stopped with her pencil above her grade book and peered at me. I know I turned red. Elsie got her usual one hundred.

  I was poky about getting my coat on at recess. I thought I’d wait around while the other kids went out and maybe get a chance to say something to Mrs. Hanson. But she herded us all quickly out the door, locked it with her key, and went off to the faculty room.

  At lunch I sat chewing my hot dog bun and wondering if Elsie would get away free. If Mrs. Hanson locked the door every day that might be the end of the stealing. I looked over at Elsie and saw she was chewing on a licorice whip.

  Mrs. Hanson saw her, too. She came up behind Elsie and took the whip out of her hand. “What is this?”

  “It’s mine,” Elsie said.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It was in my lunch box.”

  “In your lunch box? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t buy it?”

  “No, I don’t have any money.” Elsie kept her eyes on the licorice whip dangling above her.

  I raised my hand. Mrs. Hanson ignored me.

  “I’ll just keep this for now and give your mother a call,” Mrs. Hanson said. “If she’s changed your diet, I want to know about it.”

  I put my hand down. Elsie was going to get it for sure.

  At lunch recess Diane decided she would do something about Elsie’s taking her money. Otherwise, she said, she’d never get it back. She marched up to Elsie with Sharon and me trailing behind.

  “So, Elsie,” she said sarcastically, “that licorice whip came in your lunch box.”

  “What’s it to you, Diane?”

  “It’s plenty to me, Elsie. I got cheated out of my lunch because of you. You owe me fifty cents!”

  “You have lots of money,” Elsie mumbled.

  “Oh, you think so, huh?” Diane tossed her head back, flicking her bangs out of her eyes. “Well, my mother’s a widow and she works for our money. We don’t even have ten dollars to fix our TV. So you just give me my money, Elsie Edwards.”

  “How come you have so many dresses and pants if you’re so poor?”

  “Because my grandma’s a good sewer, that’s why. Now give me my money!”

  Elsie looked up at the sky. “I don’t have any money,” she said.

  “Come off it. Your mother isn’t poor and you know it.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have any money.” Elsie kept looking up, and then I figured out why. She was trying to keep from crying.

  The playground teacher came over and asked what we were doing.

  “Just talking,” Diane said.

  “Let’s get into a game.” The playground teacher took Diane’s hand.

  Diane jerked loose. “Is there a school rule against talking at recess?”

  “Listen, missy, sometimes you’re too smart-mouthed for your own good.”

  The bell rang. Elsie moved toward the classroom. The playground teacher had to go back to the field to blow her whistle.

  “Gee, Diane,” Sharon said, “you could get yourself in trouble.”

  Diane shrugged. “Oh, she’s just a teacher’s aide.”

  The boys in our class came over and wanted to know what was going on.

  “I was just trying to get my money back from that thief Elsie,” Diane told them.

  “Elsie’s the thief?” Lester said. “That scrounge! We should beat her up.”

  “Go ahead and beat her up,” Jack told Lester. “If she falls on you, you’ll be smashed dead.”

  While we were doing oral reading, the principal came into the room. He walked down the middle aisle to Elsie’s desk.

  “You come with me, young lady,” he said to Elsie. Then he turned to Mrs. Hanson and said, “This young lady won’t be back for a while.”

  Mrs. Hanson nodded. “All right, Mr. Douglas, that will be fine.”

  Elsie didn’t come back all afternoon.

  After school we saw a fancy sports car in the visitors’ parking lot.

  “I bet she’s in the office,” Diane said.

  So Sharon, Diane, and I trooped back to the building and peeked in the principal’s window. The blinds were closed, but we could see through the slits. Sure enough. There sat the principal, Elsie’s mother, and Elsie. Elsie didn’t look too happy. Neither did Mrs. Edwards. She was pointed straight up in her chair like a missile ready for take off.

  “Elsie got caught today,” I crowed at my mother when I got home.

  “What happened?” my mother asked.

  “You know that candy I told you she bought at the 7-Eleven? She ate it in school, and Mrs. Hanson asked her where she got it. Elsie said it was in her lunch box. Mrs. Hanson said she’d call her mother. Then we saw Elsie and her mother with the principal in the principal’s office after school.”

  “Well, that
doesn’t prove she took the money.”

  “Really, Mother,” I said and scooped up D.D. to play with in my room.

  After dinner I didn’t feel like doing my arithmetic again. I tried doing some of the problems and got them all wrong. I forgot how to change my answers to mixed numbers. I wished I were one of the kids who could finish the assignment at school.

  I went downstairs to ask Mother to help me. First she fiddled around putting Kenny to bed, and then she picked up all his toys from the floor.

  “Why don’t you make Kenny do that? He’s not a baby any more.” I was tired of waiting for her.

  Daddy looked up from his paper. “I thought I heard you ask your mother to help you. If you’re in a hurry, why don’t you help her?”

  I picked up Kenny’s truck and lugged it to his play-box.

  Mother sat down on the davenport and opened my book. “I’d better read the directions first. The school’s always changing the math.”

  “It’s just fractions,” I told her crossly.

  Daddy looked up again. Silently I waited for her to read through the three pages.

  “Oh, it’s the same as I remember. When you have an improper fraction in your answer, you divide the numerator by the denominator and add the whole number to the number you already have.”

  “Whaat?” I said.

  “Look, I’ll show you.” She showed me three times. I sort of caught on.

  “Here, we’ll try a problem now.” She wrote out.

  I got it all mixed up, of course. I dropped the pencil on the floor.

  “I’ll never get it. It isn’t fair. That thief Elsie always gets a hundred.”

  “I don’t like to hear you call her that, Jenifer,” Mother said. “She’s just a girl who’s got a lot of problems.”

  “You mean she’s just a girl who’s giving a lot of people problems.”

  “If you’re going to argue, go up to your room,” my father said. “We don’t need that down here.”

  I took my book and went up to my room. I lay down on my bed. I felt awful. I was tired. I wished I hadn’t eaten two pieces of fried chicken for dinner. I could taste them. I dragged my clothes off slowly, didn’t brush my teeth or wash my face. I got into bed and pulled the covers over me.

  I shivered. I thought of those TV commercials where the man’s stomach balloons in and out and his face turns green. His pill wouldn’t have helped me. I knew what I had. The flu. I wanted to tell Mother, but I felt too weak to get out of bed. I knew I was going to throw up pretty soon. I wished it would hurry up.

  I made it to the bathroom, barely. I was on the bathroom floor with sweat running down my forehead when Mother came in.

  “Oh, honey, you’re sick.” She got a washcloth and wiped my forehead with cold water. She helped me back to bed and brought a towel, a glass of water, and a pan to put beside me.

  “Do you want anything else?”

  I shook my head. I just wanted to die.

  I stayed that way for four days. Mother would come in and coax me to drink water or juice. I’d drink it and throw up. The doctor came. He told Mother I was dehydrated—that means dried out. He said if I couldn’t keep fluids down in the next twenty-four hours he’d feel better if I was in the hospital.

  After he left, I asked Mother what good it would do to be in a hospital. Mother said they would feed me intravenously—that meant with a needle stuck in my arm.

  I took a sip of apple juice, lay on my back, and waited. It came up. I took another sip of apple juice, lay on my back, and waited. It came up. I took a tinier sip of apple juice, lay on my back, and waited and waited and waited. It stayed down.

  It was two days before I felt strong enough to be propped up on pillows and read a book—and it wasn’t the arithmetic book. On the third day Mother wobbled into my room in her nightgown to ask me if I thought I could manage alone. I took one look at her stringy hair and white face and told her I’d be fine. She wobbled back to bed.

  Kenny brought me my breakfast. It was three pieces of toast piled with jam, a glass of milk, and a bowl of applesauce. It tasted good.

  He tried to give Mother breakfast, but that didn’t work. He brought her an empty pan instead. To entertain me, Kenny stacked his picture books on my bed and read me Green Eggs and Ham from memory. The phone rang in the afternoon. Kenny ran to answer it. It was Diane wanting to talk to me I took my first trip downstairs in a week.

  Diane was chock-full of school news. We talked for an hour. I didn’t hear a peep from upstairs. I guess Mother wasn’t in any condition to object.

  Diane gave me all the latest on Elsie. She said Elsie had to sit in the office during every morning recess and lunch recess. She wasn’t ever allowed to be alone in the school building. Mrs. Hanson didn’t have to lock the classroom door any more. Diane said she met a girl from Elsie’s old school at a church skating party. The girl said Elsie had stolen at that school. Only there she mostly stole food. They even caught her in the school kitchen eating up the cinnamon rolls. Diane said the kids hated Elsie at her old school, too.

  I wasn’t the only one with the flu. A whole bunch of kids were absent. Diane said that Elsie was out, Marianne was out, and Jack was out. Diane wanted to know when I’d be back. I guessed in a couple of days.

  It was more than that because the next day Kenny was sick. I took care of him till Mother could get up.

  Fat Girls Can’t Dance

  School was the same when I got back. Mrs. Hanson was still strict. Jack was well again and throwing crayons. Elsie was back, too, fat as ever.

  The school was having a yearly clean-up campaign. We drew “Don’t Litter” posters in the morning. In the afternoon our class had to clean up the south playfield. Mrs. Hanson said Marianne, Elsie, Jack, and I were to go to the library instead of picking up litter. She said it was too chilly outside for us.

  Jack sat in the back of the library. Marianne and I chose a front table. Elsie plopped herself in the middle chair, which meant Marianne and I had to move our chairs out to give her body room. Elsie read a library book. Marianne and I were struggling with our arithmetic assignment.

  After a while Marianne said, “I just can’t get this junk.”

  Elsie stopped reading. “I’ll show you how if you want me to.”

  “I sure do,” Marianne agreed.

  I pretended to be working while I listened to Elsie explain the problems to Marianne. She certainly could teach better than my mother. Elsie turned my way and offered to help me, too.

  “I don’t need a thief helping me,” I told her.

  Marianne leaned over toward me. “Jenny, you could forget about that.”

  “Do you want to forget about it?” I asked. “She owes you a lunch. Elsie, when are you going to pay everyone back?”

  “When I get the money,” Elsie replied.

  “What about your allowance?”

  “I don’t get any,” Elsie said.

  “I bet.”

  “You really don’t get an allowance?” Marianne asked.

  “No, I don’t,” Elsie answered.

  “You just sit and stuff your mouth,” I put in.

  “Ohh,” Marianne murmured.

  The rest of the time in the library, Elsie kept her nose in her library book and pulled on her hair. I still couldn’t do the fractions.

  Mrs. Hanson took us to gym three days a week. But on Tuesdays and Fridays Mr. Marshall, the school P.E. teacher, took us. It was a lot more fun with Mr. Marshall. To make us eager to come to P.E., Mr. Marshall usually told us about the next week’s lesson. But when he announced we were going to start folk dancing, we weren’t eager. Some of the boys complained about being made to dance.

  “You’ll love it,” Mr. Marshall told them. “You’ll love it. How do you think a running back learns to make those swivel turns?”

  The boys were not convinced.

  Whenever we choose sides for baseball or basketball, the good athletes and the popular kids are chosen first. The kids who can’t th
row a ball have to stand around for last picks. When we chose partners for square dancing, you can imagine where that left Elsie.

  “Come on, Elsie,” Mr. Marshall said cheerfully, “you be my partner.” He never let her get out of P.E. like Mrs. Hanson did.

  First Mr. Marshall taught us to Allemande left. Then he told us to watch Elsie and him do a do-si-do. Mr. Marshall is very tall, and when Elsie skipped toward him she looked like a beachball rolling toward a flag-pole. Jack and Lester laughed so hard they fell down. Mr. Marshall stopped everything.

  “Jack,” Mr. Marshall said, “do you like people to laugh at you?”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Lester,” Mr. Marshall said, “do you like people to laugh at you?”

  “I guess not,” Lester said.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Yes ... no, I don’t like it.” Lester fumbled around with his belt.

  “Look at me, Lester, Jack.”

  The boys looked at him.

  “If you don’t like people to laugh at you, then don’t you make fun of other people.”

  We went on with the folk dancing. Elsie still looked ridiculous, and plenty miserable, but no one dared laugh.

  We did folk dancing for three weeks. I guess Elsie’s diet was finally working. She didn’t have much choice except to keep to it. Unfortunately, her mother didn’t buy her new clothes or fix the old ones. While she danced, she kept hitching up her pants. When she bowed to her partner, her blouse went up and her pants slipped down, showing her blubbery back. Jack said she looked like a hog ready for slaughter. But he only said that when we got back to Mrs. Hanson’s room.

  Mrs. Hanson worked on our report cards at her desk. It was March and about that time again. I was worried. I knew I couldn’t even get a C in arithmetic because of fractions. I’d never had a bad report card before.

  The morning of the day report cards came out, Mrs. Hanson called each of us to her desk. She wanted us to look at the report card and discuss it with her if we didn’t think it was fair. If some kid complained, Mrs. Hanson wrote down all his scores and asked him to average them. No one objected to a grade unless it was a real mistake. Nobody wanted to do all that math for nothing.