Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade

by Barthe DeClements

  Her mouth was stretched into a thin line. “He’ll learn,” she said.

  On Friday, I put the macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven. Kenny put the spoons, knives, and forks on the table, all in the wrong order. Daddy sat in the living room, waiting to be served, as usual. I added dishes of canned peaches because the table looked so bare. We had Oreo cookies for dessert.

  When Mother came home, she said the dinner was lovely. She looked pooped. At bedtime she gave me an extra-long hug and told me I was a doll.

  Saturday morning when I got up, Mother was gone. I waited around for Daddy to say something about shopping. He didn’t. He was fiddling with his calculator, which wouldn’t work. I got tired of playing with D.D., so finally I asked him if I could go over to Diane’s. He said sure and to take Kenny with me.

  “What am I going to do with him at Diane’s?” I asked.

  “Well, what am I going to do with him here?” Daddy asked back.

  I dragged Kenny to Diane’s. She wasn’t pleased.

  Daddy came back from bowling about five. He sat down in his big chair with the paper. At six Kenny began to whine.

  “Aren’t we going to have dinner?” I asked Daddy.

  He folded his paper to look at his watch. “Your mother should be here pretty soon.”

  “No, she won’t,” I told him. “She called when you were bowling and said they were having a rose sale and she wouldn’t get home until about seven.”

  “Oh, for ...” He put down his paper, went into the kitchen, and started opening and closing cupboard doors. He piled cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, and butter on the counter. He sliced the cheese, I toasted the sandwiches, and Kenny set the table.

  We were eating when Mother got home. While she took off her shoes, I made her a fresh, hot sandwich. She gave me a tired smile.

  The next Saturday it dawned on me that I had a whole afternoon without a parent around. As soon as Daddy left for bowling, I spread a bunch of newspapers on the living room floor. I went down to the basement, found some scraps of wood, Daddy’s hammer and nails, and brought them upstairs. I dumped the whole mess on the newspapers and told Kenny to go to it. He whacked away happily for an hour and fifteen minutes while I called up every friend I had.

  We had toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner, again.

  The following Saturday Elsie called me. She was stuck with her little sister for the day. I told her to come on over; I was stuck with Kenny. I phoned Diane and Sharon and asked them over, too.

  First we drank up all the pop in the house. Then we went up to Mother’s room to try on her earrings and shoes.

  Diane flopped around on Mother’s bed. “This is boring, staying in the house.”

  Elsie turned away from the mirror. Mother’s amber earrings dangled down her plump neck. “There’s a carnival in the shopping center,” she said.

  Sharon unbuckled Mother’s high-heeled sandals. “I haven’t got any money.”

  “I have,” Elsie told her. “I saved all my tutoring money this week. I’ll share it.”

  Diane bounced off the bed. “Neat-o! Let’s go.”

  I made sure Kenny went to the bathroom before we started off to the carnival. Poor Elsie might have been better off if I hadn’t. Maybe we would have turned back. But we didn’t.

  The Hitchhikers

  We sang with Elsie down the first six blocks to the shopping center. Her little sister, Robyn, danced ahead of us, swinging her new red purse by the chain. It was the end of April, no clouds in the sky for a change. We walked the seventh block. We dragged down the eighth. I was carrying my sweater and Kenny’s sweater. Pretty soon, I knew, I’d be carrying Kenny. We moved more and more slowly.

  A flatbed truck came up the road. Diane hopped to the curb and put out her thumb. Elsie yelled, “No, Diane,” and went after her.

  The truck came to a halt. The driver leaned out of his cab. “Where are you kids headed?” He was a grayhaired man with greasy lines on his face.

  Elsie backed away.

  “We’re going to the Lynnwood shopping center,” Diane answered him.

  “I’ll be ending up there,” he said. “Hop in the back.”

  We all clambered up on the flatbed except Elsie and her sister. Elsie yanked on her sister’s sleeve. “Let’s walk.”

  Her sister pulled away. “I’m tired of walking.” She climbed in the truck.

  Elsie still hung back.

  “Get in, Fatty, or get off the curb,” the driver yelled.

  Diane put out her hand. “Come on, Elsie. We’ll help you.”

  Reluctantly Elsie lugged herself up and squatted down with us.

  As the truck lumbered down the street, Diane said to Elsie, “See, isn’t this better than walking?”

  Elsie held onto the slats on the side of the truck. “Bad things can happen to kids who hitch rides.”

  “I can run faster than that old man can,” Elsie’s sister said. She stood up to lean over the railing, leaving her purse on the truck floor.

  “We’ll get there in five minutes,” Diane stated. “It would have taken an hour walking.”

  Five minutes passed. When ten minutes passed, Elsie’s face pinched up with worry. I watched the buildings swish by. We weren’t anywhere near the shopping center. I didn’t want to seem chicken, but I was getting an uneasy feeling in my stomach. “It’s taking a long time,” I said.

  Sharon looked out through the slats at the street. “We aren’t even going the right way.”

  “He’s probably got to do an errand first,” Diane assured her. “He said he’d end up at the shopping center.”

  The truck rumbled on and on. This wasn’t right at all.

  “You’d better make him stop, Diane,” Sharon said.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll stop,” Diane replied.

  Elsie inched over to the cab’s back window and rapped on the glass. The truck kept going.

  “Diane, I’m scared.” Sharon began to cry.

  “Don’t be a baby,” Diane said. I noticed, though, that she had her finger in her mouth, pulling on her bottom teeth.

  Elsie rapped on the cab window some more. It didn’t do any good. She inched back to us. “We’d better jump.”

  “Are you crazy?” Diane demanded. “We’d break our legs.”

  I was thinking that Elsie wouldn’t break her leg. She’d just bounce off and roll. I snickered to myself.

  “This isn’t funny, Jenny,” Sharon told me. “How are we going to get home?”

  Kenny twisted around in my lap and put his hands up on the sides of my face. “Jenny, how are we going to get home?”

  “I don’t know, Kenny. How are we going to get home, Diane?” I asked.

  Diane didn’t answer. Her eyes were shifting from side to side. She was scared. The only one who wasn’t scared was Elsie’s sister. She was still leaning over the rail, waving to cars that passed by. I caught a glimpse of a street sign. The number was in the hundreds. The houses were getting farther apart. We were way out of town. I shivered with fear.

  We sat there like dummies, not talking or moving. Kenny crouched in my lap, whimpering for Mama. I searched in my mind for an escape. If we tried to signal a car, the driver would just wave back, thinking we were friendly like Elsie’s sister. We weren’t passing any police cars. The truck was going too fast to jump. What could we do? I wasn’t watching houses flash by now. I was watching trees. Sharon kept crying and rocking back and forth, bumping my legs. I didn’t dare cry with Kenny in my lap.

  “We’ll wait for a red light and jump,” Elsie said.

  “What?” Diane said stupidly. “What red light?”

  “There aren’t any red lights out here,” Sharon whined.

  “There might be,” Elsie said. “There might be at a highway or an intersection. I’ll watch ahead. You get on the edge ready to jump.”

  Sharon, Diane, Kenny, and I crawled to the end of the truck and dangled our legs over the edge. Elsie lifted herself up by the slats to stand next to he
r sister. She tried to make Robyn sit down with us, but Robyn wouldn’t. Elsie gave up and stuck her head over the railing to watch for a traffic light.

  I held Kenny’s hand tightly in mine while I banged my feet on the truck’s license plate to entertain him. Every once in a while I’d look back at Elsie. She was staring straight ahead. When the sun went behind the trees, Kenny complained he was cold. I put on my sweater and helped Kenny with his.

  “There’s a light! There’s a light!” Elsie yelled. “Get ready.”

  The truck slowed. I jumped off before it stopped. A car behind the truck screeched to a halt. The driver hollered out his window, “What do you kids think you’re doing?”

  I ignored him and lifted Kenny out. Sharon and Diane jumped down. Elsie came last, pulling her sister after her. Robyn was screaming, “My purse! My purse!”

  “Forget your purse,” Elsie told her. “Come on!”

  But Robyn wouldn’t forget her purse. She yanked loose from Elsie and scrambled back in the truck after it. Elsie tried to climb up to get her. The light must have changed because the truck lurched forward and Elsie fell to the ground.

  The driver behind us blasted his horn and started coming. We scrambled out of the way. The truck went down the road with Elsie’s sister still in the back. We huddled together on the side of the road, watching it disappear.

  The Outcast

  “Jenny, Jenny.” Kenny pulled at my sweater. “Where are we, Jenny?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. There were no houses nearby. There was an old garage across the street and a tavern at the corner on our side of the road.

  “We better call the police,” Diane said.

  I took Kenny’s hand and we headed for the tavern. Diane and Sharon walked with me. Elsie stumbled after us. The tavern was dark inside. It smelled sour. I could see a man in a white apron behind the counter. Another man on a stool turned to stare at us.

  “You kids can’t come in here,” the man with the apron said.

  Diane pointed at Elsie, who was standing behind us, shaking. “Her sister’s been kidnapped. We have to call the police.”

  “Who kidnapped her?” the man asked.

  “A truck driver,” Diane answered.

  “A truck driver?”

  “Yes, you see ...” Diane walked up to the counter. The rest of us hung back at the door. “We were hitch-hiking and a man in a truck picked us up. Only he went the wrong way so we jumped out of the truck, but her sister’s still in it.”

  “Where are you kids from?” the man wanted to know.

  “We live in Brier.”

  “Brier! Where were you going?”

  “To the Lynnwood shopping center.”

  “You’re way out of your territory.”

  “I know. The truck driver went the wrong way and he’s still got her sister.” Diane pointed at Elsie again.

  “You kids go sit in that booth. I’ll get the police.”

  We slid onto the wooden benches in the booth. Elsie sat in the corner pulling on her hair. Tears dripped down her face.

  “The police will get your sister, Elsie,” I said.

  Elsie shook her head.

  “Sure they will,” Sharon put in. She was feeling braver.

  “Even if they do, Mama will be through with me.”

  “It isn’t your fault your sister’s dumb,” Diane said. “You tried to get her out.”

  Elsie took a paper napkin out of the metal holder and blew her nose. “It doesn’t matter. Mama won’t keep me now.”

  “Your mother can’t give you away,” I said.

  “She’ll send me to boarding school and never bring me back.”

  “You aren’t that bad,” I said.

  Elsie’s face crumpled. “Yes, I am!” She put her head down on the table and sobbed.

  I felt awful for her, but I didn’t know how to make her feel better. I just sat there patting her back sort of helplessly.

  After a while a tall policeman pushed open the tavern door. He looked at the man in the apron. The man in the apron was pouring beer. He nodded toward us. The policeman walked over to our booth. “Which one of you lost your sister?”

  “She did.” Diane pointed at Elsie. “We were hitch-hiking ...”

  “You look old enough to know better than to hitch-hike.”

  That rattled Diane for a minute. She took a big breath before she went on with our story. Kenny didn’t listen to Diane. He stared, popeyed, at the big gun in the policeman’s belt.

  When Diane finished, the policeman asked how old Elsie’s sister was.

  Elsie lifted her teary face. “My sister’s seven,” she whispered.

  The policeman wanted to know what Elsie’s sister looked like, what the truck driver looked like, what kind of truck he drove, and the truck’s license number. I remembered I had kicked the license plate, but I hadn’t thought of looking at it.

  The policeman closed his tablet. “You kids wait here. I’ll be back to get you in a minute.” He went outside, leaving the tavern door open. We could hear him talking on his car radio, something about heading east, seven-year-old girl, blond hair.

  When he came back he said he was going to give us a ride in his patrol car to the police station. Our parents could pick us up there. We were quiet in the back of the patrol car. Kenny whispered to me that he had to go to the bathroom. I whispered back that he’d have to wait.

  Inside the police station the policeman left us standing at the counter while he disappeared through a door marked “No Admittance.”

  Kenny was wiggling beside me. I asked one of the uniformed ladies at a desk behind the counter if she could tell me where the bathroom was. She said down the hall and to the right.

  When Kenny and I got back from the bathroom, another policeman was standing at the counter writing down Sharon’s name and phone number. After I gave him my name and phone number, he told us to wait on the bench for our parents. Elsie sat on the end of the bench. I held Kenny in my lap until he wriggled so much I let him down. He raced around the shiny floor. Every once in a while his feet slipped and he crashed into our legs.

  Diane told him to cut it out when he landed on her. Elsie didn’t complain. Her eyes were open, but I don’t think she saw anything. I heard her sigh once in a while. I thought how awful it would be to be sent away.

  Diane’s mother was the first to come. She kissed Diane and then hugged all of us in turn. When she got to Elsie, Elsie looked up at her dumbly. I thought Elsie acted like an animal that has been run over. Diane’s mother kept an arm around Elsie as she listened to the whole story. I noticed Diane left out the part where she stuck out her thumb for the truck to stop. When Diane finished, her mother went up to the counter and talked to one of the policemen.

  Sharon’s mother and my parents came in next. Kenny flew into Mother’s arms, yelling, “Mama, Mama, Mama!” She picked him up and they walked over to our bench.

  Sharon and I interrupted each other trying to tell the story. We put in the part about Diane thumbing the ride. Diane’s mother was sitting right on the bench with us, and when she heard that, she raised one eyebrow and looked at Diane.

  Sharon’s mother said quietly to my mother, “I hope they get Robyn in time.”

  I spoke up. “What will happen if they don’t?”

  Mother patted my head. “Don’t worry. The police will find her.”

  The police station door flew open. Elsie’s mother swished through and went straight to the counter. She and the policeman talked together for a long time. When the policeman left the counter to answer the phone, Elsie’s mother walked over to our bench and said coldly to Elsie, “This is it for you, Elsie.”

  I felt a shudder move through Elsie. I put my arm around her. Her mother walked to the opposite wall. She stood there by herself with her arms folded and her head facing the counter. My mother put Kenny down and went over to Mrs. Edwards. She talked softly to her. Mrs. Edwards reached in her purse for her hanky and carefully wiped under each e
ye. I thought she was pretty. She had yellow curly hair and a dimple like Elsie. Only she wasn’t fat like Elsie. She was very, very skinny.

  “I’m starving,” Sharon told her mother.

  Sharon’s mother leaned over to Diane’s mother. “Do you suppose we should feed them?”

  Diane’s mother said, “Let’s wait a little longer.”

  Kenny crawled up in Daddy’s lap and fell asleep.

  The policeman left the counter to talk with Mrs. Edwards. I wondered what he was saying. Mother returned to our bench, smiling. “They’ve got Robyn. She’s O.K.”

  Elsie let out a big breath.

  “Good,” Sharon said. “Now we can eat.”

  We all stood up, stretched, and got ready to leave. Before we reached the door, Elsie’s little sister bounced through, licking an orange Popsicle and swinging her red purse. She was followed by the truck driver and a state patrolman. The truck driver and the patrolman went on through the No Admittance door. Mrs. Edwards swooped up Robyn into her arms.

  “Are you all right? Are you all right?” Mrs. Edwards asked.

  “Sure,” Robyn said. There were dried tearstains on her cheeks, but the Popsicle seemed to have erased them from her memory.

  Mrs. Edwards peered into her daughter’s face. “What did he do to you?”

  Robyn held up the dripping stick. “The policeman bought me this.”

  “No,” Mrs. Edwards said. “What did the truck driver do to you?”

  “Nothing. I was just sitting in the back of the truck and a patrol car came up and hollered on his loudspeaker to pull over, so the truck driver did. Then the policeman brought us here in his car.”

  Cats Go Out at Night

  After we left the police station, our family went out to dinner. Mother ordered Kenny a plain little hamburger. I ordered a big juicy one with all the fixings. I asked Daddy what the police would do to the truck driver.

  “Maybe nothing,” Daddy said, “if he has a good excuse for being out that far.”

  “Poor Elsie,” I said, “her mother’s so mad at her she’s going to send her away to boarding school.”

  Mother looked at me sternly. “Elsie was supposed to be watching her little sister. I’m not too pleased about your going off with Kenny without permission.”