Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade

by Barthe DeClements

  After Elsie left, I asked Mother if she could keep Kenny out of the dining room while we worked because it was embarrassing the way he stared at Elsie.

  “I can hardly blame him,” Mother answered. “She’s the fattest little girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “She’s lost a lot of weight,” I said.

  “Lost a lot of weight! How much did she weigh before?”

  “I don’t know, but now you can see her eyes. Before, they were all squished up. Anyway, Mother, can you keep Kenny away?”

  “I’ll try,” Mother said.

  She didn’t try hard enough. When Elsie and I got to my house the next day, Kenny was playing with his Tonka truck in the kitchen. Before we had two problems finished, the dining room door opened and Kenny came through, crawling on his knees, pushing his truck ahead of him.

  “Kenny, get out of here!” I ordered.

  “It’s my house,” Kenny mumbled into the top of his truck.

  “That’s O.K. We’re in here. You go into your kitchen.”

  Kenny continued around the dining room rug.

  “Mo-ther!” I yelled.

  Mother came to the door. “Come on, Kenny. You play in the kitchen with me.”

  “I don’t want to,” he said.

  “Well, come on anyway.” She leaned down to pick him up. Kenny scooted himself and his truck out of reach.

  “Come with me, Kenny,” Mother coaxed. “You’re bothering the girls.”

  “No, I’m not,” Kenny said and moved under the table.

  “Oh, Mother, he’s taking up the whole hour,” I told her impatiently. She lets him get away with anything.

  “Help me get him out then,” she said.

  Good! I reached under the table, grabbed him by an ankle, and shoved him toward Mother.

  Kenny started to bawl. Mother picked him up. “Really, Jenifer, that wasn’t necessary.”

  “You’ve got him, haven’t you?” I sat down to start another problem as Mother carried Kenny out the door. Elsie hadn’t said a word.

  “He’s spoiled,” I told her.

  “So’s my little sister,” Elsie replied.

  A big howl came from the kitchen. Mother hurried through the dining room door, pulled the truck from under the table, and hurried back to the kitchen. The howling stopped.

  “How old’s your sister?” I asked Elsie.

  “She’s seven. How old’s Kenny?”

  “He’s three and a half. He acts like he’s two.”

  “All my sister has to do is cuddle up to my mother and tell her she’s pretty and she gets anything she wants and I get nothing.”

  “Why don’t you tell your mother she’s pretty?”

  Elsie put her chin, or chins, on her hand. “I tried once. I told her that the blue dress she had on made her eyes look bluer. She snapped back at me that the sweater I was wearing made me look fatter and to go change it.”

  “That was mean!” It was so mean it made me feel bad. I guess it made Elsie feel bad, too. She sat up straight.

  “Let’s get your problems done,” she said.

  Every day for a week I got one hundred in arithmetic. The day before the test I was confident I would pass it. Mrs. Hanson reviewed fractions for us. I understood everything she said. If I started to get mixed up in the dividing and multiplying, I would think of Elsie’s advice, “In multiplication, multiply across the top and multiply across the bottom. In division, turn the second fraction upside down and then multiply across the top and multiply across the bottom.”

  After math Mrs. Hanson let us choose groups to work on first aid skits for health. I got to choose a group, and I chose Sharon, Diane, and Elsie. No one acted like it was any big thing that I chose Elsie. Our group decided to do a skit on cuts. Diane was the girl who cut her arm going through a sliding glass door. Sharon was the owner of the house with the door. I was the friend of the girl who cut her arm. Elsie was the nurse in the doctor’s office.

  I thought our skit was the best in the class. Mrs. Hanson must have thought so, too, because she gave us all A’s. She said Diane’s acting was excellent, that I knew the proper pressure points in giving first aid, that Sharon was correct in hurrying the patient to the doctor, and that Elsie made an efficient nurse. It was a nice day.

  It was a nice day until Mrs. Hanson couldn’t find the Scholastic Book Club money. She was scrabbling around at her desk during reading. I looked up several times, wondering what she was doing. Finally she interrupted the class. “Did anyone see a large manila envelope on my desk?”

  No one answered.

  “It was right here this morning. It looks like this.” She held up a yellow envelope about the size of a piece of school paper.

  “What was in it?” Jack asked.

  “All the book money you students turned in. I was going to mail the order today, and I’m ready to count the money. The envelope was right here on my desk this morning. Does anyone remember seeing it?”

  “Elsie sat at your desk when she was playing nurse,” Jack said.

  My heart thumped. My heart really, really thumped.

  “Elsie, did you see the envelope on my desk?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Elsie answered.

  The room was quiet.

  She wouldn’t take it, I thought to myself. How could she have gotten it back to her desk?

  Mrs. Hanson stood there thinking. She obviously didn’t know what to do.

  “I didn’t take the money,” Elsie announced loudly.

  “Sure you didn’t,” Jack said.

  “That isn’t necessary, Jack,” Mrs. Hanson told him. “I’ll look some more after school. Take out papers for your spelling test.”

  Mrs. Hanson asked Elsie to stay a minute after the class was dismissed. I told Diane and Sharon to go on without me. Diane said O.K. and started walking. Sharon stopped to tell me I’d better get another tutor. I waited outside the classroom until Elsie came out. Her eyes looked sad. Her mouth was drooping down again.

  “What did Mrs. Hanson say?” I asked as we left the building.

  “She made me take everything out of my desk, and she felt through my clothes. Listen, I don’t feel like tutoring today.”

  “Oh, that’s O.K.,” I said.

  Elsie turned in the direction of her house. As she walked away, I saw her poking a finger into her hair, getting ready to yank on a curl. Mean things happen to Elsie. It isn’t fair.

  I tried to do my math in the dining room when I got home. I got all mixed up trying to cancel. I scrunched up my paper. Mother came in with diet pops.

  “Where’s Elsie?” she asked.

  “She went home,” I said.

  “Jenifer, did you and Elsie have a fight?”

  “No. She just didn’t feel like tutoring today.”

  She started to hand me one of the cans of pop. Then she pulled it back. “Wait a minute. You don’t need diet soda if Elsie isn’t here. Go get a glass of milk.”

  “I don’t want milk.” I gathered up my book and papers and went up to my room. I wandered around my room, thinking. She just wouldn’t take the money now. If she did, she was doomed in that classroom. She was doomed in the school, too. Mr. Douglas would probably kick her out.

  At dinner Daddy told me there was a Bill Cosby special on TV.

  “I can’t watch TV tonight,” I said.

  “How come?” Daddy seemed disappointed. He and I like a lot of the same programs.

  “I haven’t finished my math, and we have a test tomorrow.”

  “What happened to your fat friend?”

  “She couldn’t tutor today. And I don’t think it’s very nice to say ‘fat friend.’ ”

  “Are you sure you didn’t have a fight with her?” Mother asked.

  “No, I didn’t have a fight with her, Mother.”

  “It seems too bad she couldn’t come before a test,” Mother said. “Well, we’ll see tomorrow if you’re caught up with fractions.”

  I swallowed my bite of meat loaf. “You can’t
expect me to get caught up in a week. That isn’t fair.”

  “I didn’t mean that you’d get an A. But don’t you think you can pass the test?” Mother wiped Kenny’s mouth with her napkin. He’s old enough to wipe his own mouth.

  He pushed her hand away. There was still a smear of tomato sauce on his upper lip. She wet her napkin in her water glass and went at him again. Kenny clamped down on her fingers with his teeth. Mother yelped and pulled her hand away.

  I laughed.

  “Jenifer, that isn’t funny!” Mother took Kenny off his chair, swatted his bottom, and told him to go to bed.

  “Can’t blame him,” Daddy said when Kenny was gone. “You should let him wipe his own mouth.”

  “Is that any excuse for biting me? If the children are dirty, you criticize me. If I try to keep them clean, you criticize me.”

  “I wasn’t criticizing you. I was only...”

  I left the table. I didn’t need to hear the rest. I put Elton John on my record player. I sat in the middle of my bed with my arithmetic book and papers. The part I hated was changing mixed numbers to improper fractions before multiplying. I kept thinking of Elsie. If she hadn’t taken the envelope, she must be feeling awful right now.

  Kenny pushed open my door. He had on his yellow pajamas with airplanes printed on them. He padded to my bed.

  “I didn’t get any dessert, Jenny.” His mouth turned down like Elsie’s.

  I pulled him up on the bed beside me. “I didn’t get any dessert, either.”

  He looked up in my face. “Were you bad, too?”

  “No, I left the table before Mother served it.”

  “Don’t you feel good? I don’t feel good.”

  I cuddled him close to me. “I guess I don’t feel so good.” I rested my chin in his soft brown hair. He wasn’t such a bad little brother.

  When I got to school the next morning, Elsie was reading a library book.

  “Hi,” I said as I sat down at my desk.

  She kept reading.

  I didn’t want to make a big show of talking to her. Yet I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t still her friend. I didn’t know what to do.

  Mrs. Hanson stood at the front of the room waiting for our attention. “Students, I have a confession to make. You have a rather dumb teacher.”

  “No kidding,” Diane said under her breath.

  “It turns out,” Mrs. Hanson went on, “that I didn’t lose the book money after all. I thought I had left it on my desk, but when I went to the faculty room after school it was on the table there. Then I remembered I had taken it to the faculty room before school yesterday to count the money and give it to the secretary so she could give me a check to mail. I got talking to Mr. Douglas and forgot all about it.”

  I looked at Elsie. Her face was stony. I expected Mrs. Hanson to apologize to Elsie next. She didn’t.

  She said, “Take out your social studies books. We’ll have the arithmetic test after recess.”

  “That was mean,” I told Diane and Sharon at recess. “She made Elsie stay after school yesterday and searched her desk and searched all over her and then she didn’t even apologize.”

  “Well, you can’t blame her for thinking Elsie did it,” Sharon said.

  “Come on,” Diane said. “Let’s get in the baseball game.” Diane was the best hitter among the girls. She always liked to play. I still wanted to talk about Elsie, but I guess no one else did.

  While Mrs. Hanson passed out the test papers, I chewed my fingernails. I leaned over to Elsie.

  “I’m not sure about cancellation,” I whispered.

  “Don’t do it,” Elsie whispered back. “You can multiply without canceling.”

  When you don’t cancel you have to multiply and divide with bigger numbers. I was the last one to hand in my test. All the other kids were reading their library books. No one was allowed to talk or move around until everyone had finished.

  Mrs. Hanson corrected our papers while we were at P.E. with Mr. Marshall. Just before school ended, she passed them out. I got a B minus, Elsie got an A, Sharon got a C, and Diane got a C minus. We weren’t supposed to discuss our grades. They were nobody’s business but our own, Mrs. Hanson said. We did anyway.

  On the way home Elsie didn’t even talk about her A. I was crowing about my B minus so much that Diane finally told me to shut up—a B minus wasn’t that great.

  Mother thought it was, though. She beamed at the paper, she beamed at me, and she beamed at Elsie. “Elsie, you’re marvelous,” my mother told her, sitting down at the dining room table with us. “You’re absolutely marvelous. When I try to teach Jenny, I mix her up worse.” Mother pushed her chair back. “Come on. Dad’s working tonight. I’ll take us all to the Dairy Queen for sundaes.”

  Elsie stayed seated. “Thank you, Mrs. Sawyer, but I can’t go. I’m on a diet.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I forgot. I’m sorry, dear.” Mother put her hand on Elsie’s shoulder. “You’ve been so good about it, too. It must be hard. I’ll think of some way to celebrate.”

  It was sort of stupid of Mother to forget Elsie’s diet. I could see why she did, though. The more I knew Elsie the more I forgot she was fat. She had the prettiest teeth when she smiled, which wasn’t very often.

  Mother went humming happily out of the room, taking my paper with her.

  “You have a nice mother,” Elsie said.

  “She is most of the time,” I agreed. “Sometimes she gets crabby.”

  “You’re lucky. Mine’s crabby all the time. At least to me.”

  Mrs. Hanson didn’t give homework on test days. It was raining so we decided to go up to my room to listen to records. I got out my pile of records and Elsie sat down on the bed with me. The bed creaked under her weight.

  “Don’t you have any Rolling Stones?” she asked, going through the pile.

  “No, do you?”

  “I don’t. But my mother does. I listen to them when she goes out. I like that one, ‘As Tears Go By.’ ” Elsie tilted her head back and sang.

  I was amazed. “Elsie, you sound like a real singer. Where did you learn to do that?”

  “My sister and I practice singing along with Mother’s records when we’re home alone.”

  “Does she leave you alone much?”

  “Yeah, she’s got a new boyfriend.”

  “Is he neat?”

  “He’s O.K., I guess. I haven’t seen him much. He’s got a Porsche, and Mama likes that.”

  “We’ve got an eleven-year-old Volkswagen, and my mother doesn’t like that,” I said.

  Elsie laughed. Then her face drooped into its sad lines again. “I wish we could keep on going to school together.”

  “We probably can,” I said. “If you’re real good at school and keep on your diet, the principal and your mother will probably change their minds.”

  “Maybe,” Elsie said, looking down at my bed and picking at the yellow yarn in my quilt.

  “Sure they will. If you’re good,” I insisted. I really believed that then. Sometimes my mother’d get mad at me or crabby, and sometimes I thought she loved Kenny more. Sometimes she might even scream at me, but I always knew she wanted me.

  Elsie was still looking sadly at my bed, and I was trying to think of something else to convince her we’d keep on going to school together, when Kenny pushed open my bedroom door with Mother behind him. Mother had that happy, bustling look she gets around Christmas and birthdays.

  “Get your coats on, girls. We’re going shopping,” she announced.

  “I think it’s about time for me to be going home.” Elsie got up off the bed and the mattress sprang back up.

  “No, no,” Mother corrected her. “First we’re going shopping and then I’ll drive you home. We’re going to get a present for each of you.”

  “Me, too,” said Kenny.

  “No, you didn’t get a B or an A on a test today,” Mother told him.

  “I didn’t have a test,” Kenny said.

  “You’re
too little to have a test. You only get tests when you go to school. Come on, girls. Let’s go.” Mother waved us toward the door.

  Kenny took my hand. “You’ll give me a test. Won’t you, Jenny?”

  “We’ll give you a test in the car,” I promised him.

  Elsie and I sat in the back seat. Kenny sat in front with Mother. He peeked at us through the two front seats.

  “Give me my test now, Jenny,” he demanded.

  “O.K.,” I said, “count to ten.”

  Kenny counted, “One, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, ten!”

  “You only get a B,” I said. “You missed number seven.”

  “Oh!” Kenny started to cry.

  “Don’t worry. Don’t worry, a B gets you a present,” I assured him.

  Kenny peeked through the crack in the seats again. “You give me a test, Elsie.”

  Elsie’s sad mood seemed to drop away. She licked her upper lip in thought. “All right, here’s your test. What color is Jenny’s sweater?”

  “Yellow,” Kenny said.

  “Right,” Elsie said.

  “I got it right, Mama.”

  Mother was trying to park in the shopping center evening traffic. “Umm-hmm, dear,” she murmured as she turned the wheel hard to squeeze the car into a small space.

  “Give me another test, Elsie.”

  “What color is your mother’s coat?”

  “Red!” Kenny shouted.

  “Right!” Elsie shouted back. “You get an A.”

  “I got an A, Mama! I got an A, Mama,” Kenny kept yelling as we piled out of the car.

  “Yes, dear.” She took his hand. “Where do you girls want to go?”

  “Where can we go?” We had stopped under the eaves in front of a line of stores.

  “Let’s see. Pay‘n’Save or Woolworth’s,” Mother suggested.

  “Pay‘n’Save,” I decided. “Can we both get a record?”

  “I think that would be perfect.” Mother led us into the store.

  Elsie and I flipped through the bins of records while Kenny hopped up and down, telling Mother to get him a record, too. She picked out a Burl Ives for him. Elsie picked out a Rolling Stones record. I picked out an Elton John I didn’t have.

  Riding back to Elsie’s house, I told Mother that Elsie could sing.