Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade

by Barthe DeClements

  When I got called up to her desk, I was scared but still hoping for a miracle. I didn’t get a miracle. I got a D minus. Two A‘s, three B’s, and a lousy D minus. Diane wrote a note asking me what I got.

  Elsie was the next one called up. I didn’t really see what happened. I was too busy writing a note back to Diane, telling her I was going to get killed when I got home. What jerked me out of my note writing were the yells and laughter and Mrs. Hanson saying over and over, “May I please have your attention? May I please have your attention!”

  I looked to the front of the room and saw Elsie frantically pulling up her skirt over her white underpants. I poked Roy in the back. “What’s going on? This some kind of striptease?”

  Roy could only shake his head. He was laughing so hard tears wobbled in his eyes.

  I turned to Diane. “What’s going on?”

  “When Elsie stood up, her skirt fell off,” Diane answered me.

  And then Jack let out a whoop.

  This did it for Mrs. Hanson. She got her P.E. whistle out of her desk and blew it sharply. The room quieted.

  “That is absolutely enough! I am ashamed of this class. Elsie ...”

  But it was too late to say anything to Elsie. She bunched the top of her skirt with one hand and pulled the classroom door open with the other. The door slammed behind her.

  “Take out your arithmetic books and do page 360,” Mrs. Hanson ordered. Page 360 was in the back of the book with solid pages of exercises.

  “The whole page?” Roy asked.

  “The whole page,” Mrs. Hanson said firmly.

  Slowly we all took out our books and paper and pencils. Diane stared at Mrs. Hanson hatefully. “She just likes to see us work.”

  “For talking, you may do page 360 and page 361, Diane,” Mrs. Hanson told her.

  I could see Diane draw air into her chest, getting ready to object, but the cross look on Mrs. Hanson’s face changed her mind.

  Page 360 was solid multiplication. Two numbers times four numbers. It was going to take all day. I hadn’t even seen what happened, and I had to do forty-two problems. Mrs. Hanson gave me a pain. When I was on problem 3, she tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Jenifer, will you please go to the girls’ lavatory and see if Elsie is all right,” she whispered to me.

  Elsie was slumped against the wall at the end of the sinks. Her head was tipped back and her face tilted up. Tears were streaming from her eyes, but she didn’t bother to brush them away. One hand hung at her side. The other still clutched her skirt. She looked sad and hopeless and alone.

  I had never thought of Elsie as a human being. Just a fat girl.

  “Are you O.K.?” I asked her. “Mrs. Hanson wanted me to see if you’re O.K.”

  Elsie closed her eyes. The tears dripped from under her eyelids.

  I stood there for a while. “I’ll go get a safety pin from Mrs. Hanson so you can pin up your skirt.”

  Elsie didn’t answer.

  The classroom was silent. Everyone’s head was bent over an arithmetic book. I tiptoed up to Mrs. Hanson’s desk.

  “Can I have a safety pin for Elsie’s skirt?”

  “Certainly,” she said and messed around in her top drawer until she found one.

  When I returned to Elsie, she still had her eyes closed. I held out the pin. “Here. You can fix your skirt.”

  Elsie didn’t seem to hear. She slid down the wall to the floor and sat there in a huge lump, her head drooping over her lap, tears falling onto her skirt.

  I went into one of the stalls, came out, and fiddled with my hair in the mirror. She was still crying. I sat down on the floor beside her. “Elsie, it isn’t that bad.”

  “What do you care?” she asked.

  “Well, I don’t want to see you cry.”

  “Then get out of here.”

  “No. Hey, Elsie, come on. Let’s fix your skirt ” I reached for her hand.

  She pulled it away. “What do you care, Jenifer? Everyone likes you.”

  “Some people like you, too.”

  “Who?”

  “Well ... your mother and your sister and your friends.”

  “Not my mother, not my sister, and I don’t have any friends.” Elsie wiped her nose with her arm.

  I got her a paper towel. “Somebody liked you once.”

  “No, they didn’t. One person. Once my daddy did. That was five years ago.”

  I searched around in my head for something encouraging. “The kids will forget about this in a couple of days.”

  “So what?” Elsie’s tears started coming again. “They all hate me. You hate me, too.”

  “No, I don’t, Elsie. I did, but I don’t now. I guess I didn’t think about your having feelings.”

  Elsie’s mouth drooped down on both sides. She stared ahead of her at the stall doors. I couldn’t think of anything more to say. There was no point in trying to lie to her and say all the kids would learn to like her. Because they didn’t and they wouldn’t and she knew it.

  Elsie heaved a shuddering sigh. “None of it matters anyway. I’ll only be at this school a couple more months.”

  “Is your family moving away?”

  “No, I am.”

  “How come?”

  “Because the principal said I could just stay till the end of the school year on probation, and my mother doesn’t want me anyway so she’s sending me to a boarding school next fall.”

  “Maybe if you’re good she’ll change her mind.”

  “No, she won’t. She wrote for all the boarding school pamphlets after I got caught with the licorice whips.”

  “She could still change her mind.”

  Elsie didn’t bother to answer. We sat there beside each other, silently.

  “Elsie,” I said, “I’ll be your friend.”

  She turned her head slowly to look at me. “What for?”

  “Because I want to.”

  “Why do you want a thief for a friend? Why do you want a fat slob who sits and stuffs her face?”

  “I’m sorry I said those things. Can we be friends?” I smiled cheerfully at her.

  She did not smile back. “As soon as you stop feeling sorry for me, you won’t want to be seen with me.”

  “Are you girls all right?” It was Mrs. Hanson at the door.

  I scrambled up. Elsie lugged herself up, holding onto her skirt.

  “Here, Jenifer,” Mrs. Hanson said briskly, “give me the pin and I’ll fix Elsie’s skirt. You go on back to class.”

  I felt things were unfinished between us so I lingered a minute, but Mrs. Hanson turned her back on me and started pinning Elsie’s waistband.

  At recess the kids clotted up into groups and began going over Elsie. I noticed Marianne back off toward the tetherball and start swinging it by herself. She was the only one who cared about Elsie’s feelings.

  “Why are we all standing around raking over Elsie?” I demanded. “What’s so interesting about this?”

  Sharon looked at me, surprised. “Skirts don’t fall off every day in school, you know, Jenny.”

  “Well, how would you like yours to fall off? How would you like the whole class laughing at you?”

  “I don’t spend all my time eating,” Sharon told me.

  “Her skirt didn’t fall off because she was eating,” I informed Sharon. “It fell off because she wasn’t eating.”

  “You mean because she couldn’t eat,” Diane put in.

  “That’s right,” I said. “She gets jailed in the office every recess ... for the whole semester! I never heard of anyone getting punished that long. Did you ever hear of anyone getting punished that long in this school, Sharon?”

  “I never heard of anyone stealing so much.” Sharon was getting mad.

  “O.K., so she did. She can change. I remember you wet the bed in third grade and you were afraid of sleeping over at Diane’s house. Do you still wet the bed, Sharon?”

  Sharon’s face turned bright pink. Her nostrils turned white. She
was really mad now. I stalked over to the tetherball and asked Marianne if she wanted to play.

  I felt bad the rest of the day. I didn’t want to fight with my friends. I didn’t want Sharon to be mad. I didn’t want to take that report card home. I watched Elsie sitting at her desk reading and yanking on her hair. It was an ugly, ugly day!

  The Tutor

  I went in the front door, put my report card on the coffee table, and headed upstairs to my bed.

  “That you, Jenny?” Mother called.

  I kept going.

  Mother came up after me. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” My face was in my pillow. “I want to be left alone. Is that O.K.?”

  “Where’s your report card?”

  “It’s on the coffee table. Close the door. You can scream at me at dinner.”

  Mother left.

  At dinner Daddy served me. “Having a little trouble with math, eh?” he asked.

  “That’s right. I’m stupid!”

  Daddy put down his fork.

  “We’ll discuss the report card after dinner,” Mother said hurriedly. “Kenny, do you want some peas?”

  “What for? I got peas.”

  After dinner I stacked the dishes in the dishwasher and then went into the living room to sit down on the davenport.

  Daddy looked over his paper. “What’s the trouble with math?”

  “I can’t do fractions.” A quaky feeling stirred inside me that meant I was going to cry.

  “Don’t you understand the problems when Mrs. Hanson explains them?” Mother asked.

  I blinked my eyes fast. “No.”

  “Do you tell her when you don’t understand?” Daddy asked.

  “No.”

  “It seems to me that’s the first thing to do, isn’t it?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good. She just explains it again the same way. I don’t ...” My throat stuck. I couldn’t get any more words out. I sat there blinking my eyes, but the tears came anyway.

  “Jenny,” Mother said, “we’re not scolding you. We’re trying to help you.”

  All I could do was shrug my shoulders.

  “You’d better get her a tutor,” Daddy said.

  Mother sighed.

  “Can I go to bed?” I asked.

  “You might as well,” Mother said.

  She came up before I was asleep. I made room for her to sit on the edge of my bed.

  “Maybe you do need a tutor. What do you think, Jenny?”

  “I thought you and Daddy didn’t have enough money.”

  “Well, we can always arrange money for important things.”

  Money. Math. Elsie. I sat straight up with the perfect solution. “Mother, Elsie can tutor me! She’s way better than Mrs. Hanson or you. You won’t have to pay her very much, and she needs the money to pay back what she stole.”

  “We weren’t thinking of just helping, Jenny. We were thinking of hiring a real tutor, maybe a retired teacher.”

  “But, Mother, I’m not that bad. I just don’t get fractions. Elsie gets one hundred every time. All I need is help for a few weeks. We go on to decimals next month.”

  “I don’t think...”

  “Mother, you could pay her fifty cents an hour, and she could help me an hour every day. You could afford that, couldn’t you? She’ll know what the assignment is and just how to teach me.”

  “Jenny, I thought you didn’t like Elsie. Why do you want her all of a sudden?”

  “She’s not so bad. You said yourself she had problems. Mother, why don’t we try Elsie until the next test? Then if I don’t pass the test, you can get a real teacher.”

  “Hmm, I guess that’s possible—if Elsie wants to.” Mother kissed me good night.

  I flopped back on my pillow. I was satisfied with myself. Then, before I could get to sleep, doubts crept in. Sharon was still mad at me. What would she say if I brought Elsie home? I didn’t want the kids to hate me. I wasn’t as popular as Diane. What if I got stuck with Elsie as my only friend? I remembered Elsie saying when I got over being sorry for her I wouldn’t want to be seen with her.

  I decided that the best thing to do was to tell Diane what had happened in the girls’ bathroom. If she started to feel sorry for Elsie, maybe she’d be on my side. In the morning I’d stop at Diane’s house early so she’d be sure to walk with me, and then I could tell her.

  That’s just what I did. It looked like rain, so I hurried even faster than I’d planned. I got to Diane’s before she’d finished her boiled eggs and soy-bread toast. Diane’s mother is into nutrition. I sat down at the kitchen table and started right in with my story. I was lucky Diane was sort of sleepy. That way she listened instead of talked.

  Diane’s mother listened, too. “I remember after Jim died I got fat,” she said slowly. “Every time I felt lonely, I went to the refrigerator.”

  Diane perked up. “I remember that, too. You got real porky.”

  “Maybe if you girls were friends with Elsie, she wouldn’t have to eat all the time,” Diane’s mother suggested.

  “She’s good in math,” I put in. “My mother was going to get me a tutor, but I got her to agree to pay Elsie to help me with fractions.”

  “You could use some help, too,” Diane’s mother told her. “Why don’t you all work together?”

  Diane didn’t answer. She went for her coat. I waited on the porch. Everything had worked O.K. with her mother, but Diane hadn’t said much. Sharon came up the walk. She stopped when she saw me.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry I was so crabby yesterday. Elsie was crying all over the bathroom and I felt sorry for her.”

  Sharon stood stiffly in her pink plastic raincoat. “That was really embarrassing for me to have the whole school know I used to wet the bed. My mother said a real friend would never tell that to anyone.”

  I walked down the porch steps. “I never told anyone before. I got a D minus on my report card in arithmetic. I was just all unglued yesterday.”

  “D minus!” That interested Sharon. “What did your parents do?”

  “They said I should get a tutor.” I didn’t add the part about Elsie. I wanted to wait until Sharon and I were good friends again.

  Diane came out the door. She was wearing the new blue spring coat her grandma had made for her, and she carried an umbrella. You can never trust it not to rain in the Northwest where we live. As we started off to school, Sharon moved to walk on one side of Diane. I had to walk on the other. Sharon wasn’t ready to be good friends yet.

  I was glad Elsie couldn’t go out for recess. I had time to play with Diane and Sharon just as if nothing had happened. Sharon didn’t talk to me as much as usual, but she didn’t not play with me, either.

  In P.E. I got a chance to ask Elsie about the tutoring. We were in line for our ups in a baseball game. She said she would have to ask her mother first before she could come over to my house. She said her mother would probably call my mother because her mother checked up on everything.

  I invited Diane and Sharon over to my house after school. I hoped that would be O.K. with my mother. It was. She had baked cookies and she let us take some up to my room. Eating chocolate chip cookies and listening to my records thawed out Sharon.

  While I was changing records, Diane suddenly asked, “Is Elsie really going to tutor you in arithmetic?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “She has to ask her mother.”

  “How much are you going to pay her?”

  “I think Mom will pay her fifty cents an hour.”

  “How long will she work each day?” Diane was sitting on my bed, looking at me intently. Sharon was sitting on the floor, sorting through records.

  “I guess about an hour,” I replied.

  “At fifty cents an hour,” Diane figured, “she can pay everybody back in a week. Maybe your mother should give us the money until she gets her debts paid.”

  “No, Diane, she’ll pay everyone back. She doesn’t like the kids to hate her.�
��

  “Why doesn’t she act like it then?” Diane got up and opened my closet door. “Let me try on the housecoat you got for your birthday.”

  Sharon looked up. “How come Elsie’s going to teach you?”

  “Because she’s cheaper than a real teacher,” I told her.

  “Oh,” Sharon said. She handed me a record. “Play the Bee Gees.”

  I played the Bee Gees. Everything was going to be all right, I thought. I’d keep my friends, learn fractions, and Elsie would get skinny.

  It didn’t turn out to be quite that easy.

  Mone’s Gone Again

  Elsie’s mother called my mother after dinner. I left the dishes and stood around the living room to listen. My mother can be very sweet to people. She was extra sweet to Mrs. Edwards, explaining how I had had the flu and had gotten behind, and since Elsie was so good in arithmetic, could she just come over after school for a few weeks to help me catch up? I didn’t hear Mrs. Edwards’ reply, but Mother widened her green eyes, laughed her phony laugh, and said, “Oh, heavens, of course you do. I only want to give Elsie a little tangible thanks for her kindness.”

  When Mother hung up, I asked, “What’s tangible?”

  “Something you can touch. Like money.”

  “Is Elsie’s mother going to let her come?”

  “Reluctantly. She wanted to be sure I know they have plenty of money, so it wouldn’t be necessary to pay Elsie.”

  “She probably doesn’t want to admit she can’t trust Elsie with money.”

  “Jenifer,” Mother said, “you’d better make it clear to Elsie that she pays her debts back first.”

  “I will,” I promised. “Diane will kill her if she doesn’t.”

  Mother needn’t have worried. Each day Elsie went up to one of the kids she’d ripped off, said she was sorry, and handed over the money. Luckily, she paid Diane back first.

  Elsie and I tried working on our dining room table, but Kenny was so fascinated by Elsie that he kept standing around staring at her. Elsie pretended she didn’t notice. She was quite businesslike about teaching me. She carefully explained the steps I was to go through to do each problem and then had me do it. If I started to make a mistake, she stopped me immediately. She carefully explained again, did a problem just like it for me, and then had me start over. My whole assignment was finished in less than an hour.