Love, Penelope

by Joanne Rocklin

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-2861-7

  eISBN 978-1-68335-248-8

  Text copyright © 2018 Joanne Rocklin

  Cover and illustrations copyright © 2018 Lucy Knisley

  Cover and book design by Siobhán Gallagher

  Cover copyright © 2018 Amulet Books

  Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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  In Memory of Zoe. Those who knew

  and loved her understand.

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2014

  Dear You,

  Mama is going to have a baby. That baby will be you. Right now you are just a tiny poppy seed inside of her.

  You look like this:

  I have known about you for days. Mama and Sammy had to tell me, because of all their happy hooting and hollering.

  Sammy said: “Don’t tell anyone else about it yet.” In case you don’t make it, You. But Mama says she doesn’t feel the same as those other times. She thinks you are going to be fine.

  But you are not an “it”!

  You are a Somebody. You are a You.

  Dear You.

  You are a tiny speck inside Mama, but you are a speck of importance.

  So hold on tight, You.

  But here’s the thing: When you are finally born, your age will be reset to zero! All that holding on and growing for nine months, as if it never happened.

  Zero! Zilch! Nada!

  You feel real to me right now. I can’t stop thinking about you.

  Mama saw me staring out the window. She said: “Your bran flakes have gotten mushy. What’s going on with you?”

  So I told her I had a lot of thoughts about the world and maybe I should write them down. I always feel better when I write things down.

  And Mama went to her wobbly little kitchen desk and pulled out this fat notebook from the messy top drawer. As if she had been saving it just for me. It has a golden retriever on the cover, my favorite breed of dog, so cheerful and loving.

  Mama said, “Here you go, Penny.”

  Mama understands how sometimes my thoughts sprout like little green shoots in my brain, squishing out words that could be used for normal conversation.

  But Sammy knows a thing or two about me, too. Sammy: “Whoa, maybe don’t write about the whole WORLD, Penny. That’s a lot. Don’t overwhelm yourself.”

  I did feel a little whelmed when I saw the fat blank notebook. It is an awesome responsibility to introduce somebody to the world even though I didn’t tell them I was writing to YOU, specifically.

  Sammy continued: “Just get some words down, hon. Write about your own world, a little bit more each time. The things that are important to you and what’s on your mind.”

  My OWN world. Phew! Because THEIR world is big and has wars and angry protests and elections and things like that in it.

  OK, I think I can write some words to you about my own world.

  I know reams about you already. That’s because I am following your progress in Mama’s book What to Expect When You’re Expecting. There are lots of details in that book about all your growing activity, week by week and month by month. According to the book, at your age, less than a month old, you are now officially known as a BLASTOCYST. Blastocyst! What a fancy word for teeny-tiny you!!!

  Words are so interesting to me. It is kind of wonderful that a bunch of alphabet letters arranged in different combinations can make you have different thoughts and feelings.

  Words such as rain, R-A-I-N, make you feel good after a dry spell like we’re having in California.

  But not P-A-I-N, for example.

  Also, when words are true, they are facts. When they are not true, they are lies. Or stories.

  It’s complicated.

  And when words float along with musical notes, they are songs. We can harmonize, Mama, Sammy, and I. We do have room for a fourth singer.

  You.

  I just realized that W-O-R-L-D has the word word in it, when you cross out the L. That probably means something important, but I’m not going to try to figure it out at the moment.

  I have to go to sleep now. Good night, Speck. Hold on tight. Remember, I am rooting for you.

  Eight months until you are born, so eight months to write in this journal! Phew! But I vow to do it for you.

  Love,

  Penny

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2014

  Dear You,

  How great to be you! No worries. Nothing to do except grow inside Mama.

  I have worries.

  Sometimes they don’t feel so little.

  One worry is a heritage project I have to do for school, about where my family lived before they came to California.

  I should be working on it right now. I am off from school for Thanksgiving and have some extra hours. We have a whole school year to do the project, which sounds like a lot of time, but we have to do something every month or so. Our teacher, Mr. Chen, is training us to do a big project in small bits, which is a very mature thing to learn how to do, now that we are in fifth grade.

  But I will tell you that my project got off to a rocky start because there was a minor FABRICATION involving my teacher.

  Well, my teacher didn’t fabricate. I did.

  A fabrication has nothing to do with fabric or clothes, You. It basically means that I lied about something.

  Correction: My fabrication wasn’t so minor.

  Another worry involves the new girl, Hazel Pepper. She is an annoying BRAGGART. In other words, she brags.

  My best friend, Gabby, doesn’t agree that Hazel is an annoying braggart. This bothers me, because Gabby and I have agreed about every single thing for a long, long time, ever since Gabby’s family moved to our street when we were both in first grade.

  For example, Gabby and I agree that the Golden State Warriors is the greatest basketball team in the NBA. On the planet, probably! We call them the “Dubs,” short for that W in Warrior. Golden State stands for the state of California, because we get a lot of golden sun.

  Hazel is from Colorado, and she supports the Denver Nuggets.

  By the way, I know you can’t read this, little Speck. Except whenever I write the word You, it feels like you are listening. Right this minute.

  Of course, you’re not.

  But it feels like it.

  I don’t have time to write more about my worries right now, because I have to start working on my school project.

  Anyway, today is Thanksgiving Day, and I should be writing about things I am thankful for, not things I am worried about.

  We are having a fifteen-pound turkey with Sammy’s cornbread stuffing and cranberry-orange relish. By the time you are born, you will probably weigh about half that, and that’s p
retty big for a former poppy seed. I am celebrating every one of your days on Earth today. Even if those days don’t count officially.

  Sammy is calling me for Thanksgiving dinner now. Oh, well. No time left to work on my project today.

  Hold on, Speck.

  Your sister,

  Me, Penny

  PS. I did tell Gabby my secret about you being in our lives.

  (PS stands for POST (after) SCRIPT (my writing).)

  LATER, SAME NIGHT

  PPS. WOW! I just took a few minutes to figure out something amazing! You will be born this summer, soon after the Golden State Warriors win the National Basketball Association finals! The Warriors haven’t won since 1975, when Gabby and I were MINUS twenty-nine years old!!!! (Hee-hee.) We will all be celebrating like crazy!

  Many superstitious fans would never make a flat-out prediction about the Warriors’ win, but Gabby and I are NOT superstitious.

  So I think I will also use this journal to record the Dubs’ march to victory. That way, you will be able to appreciate their victory when you are a Dubs fan, too, You.

  Warriors beat the Orlando Magic last night 111–96! And the night before, we beat the Miami Heat, because Steph Curry scored 40 POINTS!

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2014

  Dear You,

  I know a lot about you from that book I told you about. But you don’t know that much about me.

  So.

  I am Penelope Victoria Bach.

  Nobody in our family is related to Johann Sebastian Bach, a German composer from the eighteenth century. You will find out about him one day. His music is CLASSICAL. There are many different kinds of music, for example RAP, HIP-HOP, POLKA, and others that I don’t have time to get into right now because of my heritage project.

  Which I am about to work on.

  Anyway, we’re not related to that Bach. Sorry to digress. DIGRESS means to go off the subject.

  In about half a year, I will be eleven years old. OK, I’m still ten. My birthday is coming up in May.

  I’ve been told that I sometimes seem beyond my years because of my vocabulary and how I express myself. I hang around adults a lot. But I do not appear beyond my years physically. I actually appear below my years physically. The word for that is SHORT (compared to other fifth graders). I am hoping that will change in the near future, especially for basketball reasons. I’m a good dribbler, but not a good shooter, mostly because I am so short. Gabby and I are working on our shooting skills. We have a hoop in the driveway.

  I will now attempt a drawing of myself, below. I am not that good an artist.

  Anyway, here’s me:

  I actually don’t understand why I’m not a better artist. I practice a lot. I have asked Mama and Sammy to buy me a set of colored pencils for Christmas. Professional quality.

  The new girl, Hazel Pepper, can draw anything she wants without practicing at all. She says she feels incredibly blessed that she has that talent, because a picture can say a thousand words.

  I don’t know why she’s worried about those thousand words. Hazel Pepper talks all the time.

  Mama says everyone has her own gifts, and words can paint pictures just as well as colored pencils and markers and paint. The right words can have amazing power, Mama always says.

  I guess I agree with her, because you can’t really tell from the above drawing that I am not tall.

  Or that I have a cowlick at the back of my head that sticks out like a chicken feather (unless I brush really hard).

  Or that I like lots of people, except braggarts . . . not so much. Or that I like to read. And sing songs. Or that I play the ukulele in our school ukulele band. (Ukuleles are hard to draw.)

  The only thing you can tell about me is that I’m a Golden State Warriors fan.

  But everyone thinks Hazel Pepper’s drawings are so awesome! I sound jealous. Really, I’m not.

  Maybe a little bit.

  As I said, Hazel Pepper is a Nuggets fan because she moved here from Colorado. I told her that Nuggets always makes me think of chicken nuggets (hee-hee).

  I hate it when somebody doesn’t laugh at a joke. Hazel Pepper didn’t even crack a smile. She just replied that now that she lives in Oakland, she will work hard on changing her allegiance and learning about the Golden State Warriors. She said she has an excellent memory and it won’t be hard.

  Gabby said she would lend her a book about the Warriors and that her brother, Mike, has some extra posters of the players for Hazel Pepper’s room. Hazel Pepper said she would also study about them online.

  You can’t just learn about the Dubs by reading! You have to have been watching them play for a lot of your life.

  Forgot to work on my project again.

  Tonight, the Warriors beat the Charlotte Hornets, 106–101!!! Marreese Speights got hot with twenty-seven points!

  Love,

  Your sibling,

  Penny

  SAME DATE, EXTRA THOUGHTS BEFORE BED

  Dear You,

  PENNY is my NICKNAME, short for Penelope. Nicknames are supposed to be “fun” names, but I like Penny for more than fun reasons.

  It is a relief to be called Penny, because then I don’t have to explain how my real name, PENELOPE, is spelled.

  And I don’t have to say, no, Penelope is not supposed to be pronounced like cantaloupe.

  And I don’t have to say that it is pronounced “PEN-EL-O-PEE.” Sometimes, highly immature individuals make remarks (OK, laugh) about that last syllable. So that is another reason I like to be called Penny. When I, myself, was immature, a while ago, I used to punch people out for laughing at that last syllable.

  Well, not that long ago and not that many people. Fourth grade and Kenny Walinhoff. And I only TRIED to punch him, because I missed.

  When I told Mama and Sammy about that incident, they said Kenny was probably teasing me because he likes me. I don’t mean to criticize our parents, You, but sometimes they think ILLOGICALLY.

  That’s it for now.

  I have so much to talk to you about.

  PS. I do have a secret impossible love. Maybe I will reveal it to you one day.

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2014

  Dear You,

  Mama’s name is Becky, short for Rebecca.

  Sammy’s name is short for Samantha.

  We have two mamas, You. And I love them both the same.

  Sammy adopted me when I was a toddler. I started off calling her Sammy when I was little, and it stuck. If I called her Mama or even Mom, we would all get a little mixed up.

  Did you know all this already? It feels like you did. But let me tell you more about our family anyway.

  Mama and Sammy are called “domestic partners.” They were once allowed to get married legally in California, but they didn’t get around to it. And then the government said they were no longer allowed to, so they missed their chance. Then they were allowed to again. But, by that time, they’d decided that they were tired of listening to the government tell them what they were allowed to do.

  Sometimes, I wish Mama and Sammy would get married. But they always say they have a “marriage of the heart,” and that is just fine with them.

  Mama is a college history professor. HISTORY means the story of what happened. Sammy stays home and works on websites. I will explain what a WEBSITE is one day. It’s complicated, Speck.

  Mama was an orphan who was raised by several foster families in the little town of Junoville, Wyoming. Mama married another orphan, my daddy, William Wolney.

  It’s kind of romantic that two orphans fell in love.

  Mama says my dad was a friendly guy with a big smile and a gap between his two front teeth. I have a photo of him and Mama on the motorcycle they rode on, all the way to Oakland from Wyoming, for Mama’s job.

  Then they had me. Then my dad crashed that motorcycle on Highway 24.

  And, sadly, he died.

  I don’t remember my dad at all. Mama doesn’t like to talk about their lives in Junoville. I gues
s it’s pretty sad to think about one’s orphaned fate. My own memories are all of Mama and Sammy Bach.

  Here is a drawing of Mama and Sammy:

  They look much, much better in real life, which you will see for yourself eventually.

  Love,

  Me, Penny

  PS. Sammy has lots of relatives here in Oakland. Many of Sammy’s relatives have been here forever. Ohlone forever. OH-LO-NEE. As in native Californian. Sammy is 50 percent Ohlone.

  When I was in third grade, we first learned about the Ohlone, who have lived in this area for thousands of years. They are real Californians—more than anybody else who came later. I hadn’t realized how cool it was, having an Ohlone family member. Now I do.

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2014

  Dear You,

  Oakland is my city, and yours, too, in an inside-somebody-else kind of way. Gabby and I think the Golden State Warriors should be called the Oakland Warriors because they play right here in Oracle Arena. Except we call it “ROARACLE Arena.” Oakland fans really ROAR! We are the best fans in the world.

  Mama and Sammy are not basketball fans. That’s their biggest flaw, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion). Other than that, they’re pretty cool. They are fans of other things, such as blues music and golf and Antiques Roadshow on PBS.

  I am hoping you will be a basketball fan, You. Actually, I just know you will. I will inspire you. It’s lonely being the only fan in this house. Gabby and her older brother, Mike, watch games together all the time. She got her basketball enthusiasm from Mike and passed it on to me.

  Mama and Sammy say I shouldn’t care so much about winning. Admission: I hate to say this about our own parents, You, but that is HYPOCRITICAL of them. Hypocritical is when you say you believe something but you act like you don’t.

  For example, when there’s an exciting Dubs game on (like tonight when we beat the Detroit Pistons 104–93), and there’s a lot of hooting and hollering from yours truly, Mama and Sammy will slide into the room at the very end, just to see who wins, because that’s all they care about. They skip all the other good stuff leading up to the end. How weird is that? But true fans, such as me and Gabby, and her brother, Mike, root for our team from beginning to end, through up and down, thick or thin, and everywhere in between.