Blubber (2 page)

The bell rang then. We pushed back our chairs and ran for the row of lockers behind our desks. Mrs. Minish has to dismiss us at exactly two thirty-five. Otherwise we’d miss our buses.

It’s very important to get on the right one. On the first day of school my brother, Kenny, got on the wrong bus and wound up all the way across town. Since my mother and father were both at work the principal of Longmeadow School had to drive Kenny home. I would never make such a mistake. My bus is H-4. That means Hillside School, route number four. I’m glad Kenny doesn’t go to my school. Next year he will, but right now he is just in fourth grade and only fifth and sixth graders go to Hillside.

When I got on the bus Tracy was saving me a seat. Caroline and Wendy found two seats across from us. Before this year I’d never been in either one of their classes but this is my second time with Linda Fischer and I’ve been with Donna, Bruce and Robby since kindergarten.

“We had the best afternoon,” Tracy said. “Mr. Vandenburg invented this game to help us get our multiplication facts straight and I was
forty-eight
and every time he called out
six times eight
or
four times twelve
I had to jump up and yell
Here!
It was so much fun.”

“You’re lucky to be in his class,” I said. “I wish he’d give Mrs. Minish some ideas.”

“She’s the wrong type.”

“You’re telling me!”

As Linda climbed onto the bus Wendy shouted, “Here comes Blubber!” And a bunch of kids called out, “Hi, Blubber.”

Our bus pulled out of the driveway and as soon as we turned the corner and got going Robby Winters sailed a paper airplane down the aisle. It landed on my head.

“Pass it here, Jill,” Wendy called. When I did, she whipped out a magic marker and wrote
I’m Blubber—Fly Me
on the wing. Then she stood up and aimed the plane at Linda.

The group of girls who always sit in the last row of seats started singing to the tune of “Beautiful Dreamer,”
Blubbery blubber … blub, blub, blub, blub …

At the same time, the airplane landed on two sixth-grade boys who ripped it up to make spit balls. They shot them at Linda. Then Irwin grabbed her jacket off her lap. “She won’t need a coat this winter,” he said. “She’s got her blubber to keep her warm.” He tossed the jacket up front and we played Keep-Away with it.

“Some people even eat blubber!” Caroline shrieked, catching Linda’s jacket. “She said so herself.”

“Ohhh … disgusting!” Ruthellen Stark moaned, clutching her stomach.

“Sick!”

The girls in the back started their song again.
Blubbery blubber … blub, blub, blub, blub …

The bus driver yelled, “Shut up or I’ll put you all off!”

Nobody paid any attention.

Linda picked the spit balls out of her hair but she still didn’t say anything. She just sat there, looking out the window.

When we reached the first stop Wendy threw Linda’s jacket to me. She and Caroline ran down the aisle and as Linda stood up, Wendy called back, “Bye, Blubber!”

Linda stopped at my row. I could tell she was close to crying because last year, when Robby stepped on her finger by mistake, she got the same look on her face, right before the tears started rolling.

“Oh, here,” I said and I tossed her the jacket. She got off and I saw her race down the street away from Wendy and Caroline. They were still laughing.

Linda lives in Hidden Valley. So do Wendy, Caroline, Robby and a bunch of other kids. It’s a big group of houses with a low brick wall around it and a sign that says W
ELCOME TO
H
IDDEN
V
ALLEY
—S
PEED
L
IMIT
25 M
ILES
P
ER
H
OUR
. Across the street there is another sign saying W
ATCH
O
UR
C
HILDREN
. It’s called Hidden Valley because there are a million trees and in the summer you can’t see any of the houses. Nobody told me this. It’s something I figured out by myself.

My stop is next. Me and Tracy are the only ones who get off there. The Wu family lives across the road from us. They have a lot of animals. All of this doesn’t mean we live in the country. It’s kind of pretend country. That is, it looks like country because of all the woods
but just about everyone who lives here works in the city, like my mother and father. I don’t know one single farmer unless you count the woman who sells us vegetables in the summer.

“Can you come over?” Tracy asked, as we collected the mail from our mailboxes.

“As soon as I change,” I told her.

“Bring your stamps,” Tracy said.

“I will.” Me and Tracy are practically professional stamp collectors. We both have the
Master Global Album
. And I have this deal going with my father—if I let my nails grow between now and Christmas he will give me $25 to spend in Gimbels, which has the best stamp department in the whole world. So even though it is just about killing me, I’m not going to bite my nails. Sometimes I have to sit on my fingers to keep from doing it.

When I got home Kenny was waiting at the front door. He was holding his
Guinness Book of World Records
in one hand and with the other was shoving a cupcake into his mouth. “Did you know the oldest woman to ever give birth to a baby was fifty-seven years old?” As he talked he blew crumbs out of his mouth.

“So?” I said, to show I wasn’t interested, because if Kenny gets the idea I’m interested he will tell me facts from his
Book of World Records
all day.

“So … that means Grandma is too old to have a baby.”

“Well, of course she is! She’s past sixty.”

“And Mrs. Sandmeier’s too old, too.”

Mrs. Sandmeier is our housekeeper. She takes care of me and Kenny after school.

“Too old for what?” she asked, as we walked into the kitchen.

“Too old to have a baby,” Kenny said.

Mrs. Sandmeier laughed. “Who says so?”

“My
Book of World Records
,” Kenny told her. “The oldest woman to give birth was fifty-seven and you’re fifty-eight.”

“Don’t remind me!” Mrs. Sandmeier said.

Mrs. Sandmeier is always telling us she’s getting old but she can still take on Kenny and his friends at basketball and beat them single-handed.

“How was your day, Jill?” Mrs. Sandmeier asked me in French, as she poured a glass of milk.

I answered in English. “Pretty good.”

Mrs. Sandmeier made a face. Part of her job is to teach me and Kenny to speak French. She’s from Switzerland and can speak three languages. I understand what she says when she speaks French but I always answer in English because most of the time I’m too busy to think of the right words in French.

After my snack, I changed into my favorite jeans, collected my stamp equipment, and
headed for Tracy’s. Kenny and Mrs. Sandmeier were already outside, practicing lay-ups.

“Be back at five-thirty,” Mrs. Sandmeier called, as I walked up the driveway.

“I will.”

Our street isn’t big enough to have a name. There’s just a sign saying P
RIVATE
R
OAD
, and our house and Tracy’s. Dr. Wu was outside planting tulip bulbs. Tuesday is his day off.

“Hi, Dr. Wu,” I said. He is our family doctor and makes house calls only to us. I like him a lot. He’s always smiling. Also, he doesn’t gag me with a stick when he looks down my throat.

“Hi, yourself,” he called to me.

Tracy was in the backyard, feeding her chickens. She has ten of them and a beautiful white rooster called Friendly, who I love. Sometimes Tracy lets me hold him. His crown is red and it feels like a cat’s tongue. I know this because last year one of Tracy’s cats licked me. She has seven cats but they don’t live in the house. They come into the garage to get food and water and the rest of the time they stay outside. Tracy also has two dogs. They live in the house.

When the chickens were fed we went inside to Tracy’s room to look over our latest approvals from the Winthrop Stamp Company. We decided we’d each buy two stamps.

Tracy showed me the Halloween costume
her mother is making for her—Big Bird from Sesame Street. It has yellow feathers and everything.

“It’s beautiful!” I said. I still didn’t have an idea for my costume.

We went to work on our albums, trading doubles and fastening loose stamps to the page. And then, right in the middle of licking a stamp hinge, I thought up a costume so clever I didn’t even tell Tracy. I decided it would be a surprise.

That night, when my mother and father got home, they brought two big pumpkins with them.

I waited until we were halfway through with dinner before I brought up the subject of my Halloween costume. “I don’t think I want to be a witch this year,” I said. I hoped I wouldn’t hurt Mom’s feelings because the witch’s costume was hers when she was a kid. It has funny, pointy-toed shoes with silver buckles, a high black silk hat and a long black robe with a bow at the neck. The whole thing smells like mothballs. Besides, the shoes hurt my feet.

“You can be whatever you want,” my mother said and she didn’t sound insulted.

“If she doesn’t want to wear the witch’s suit, can I?” Kenny asked.

“A boy witch?” I said.

“Sure. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Mom told him. “I’d love to have you wear my costume.”

“And I’m going to carry a broom,” Kenny said. “And remember that fake cigar from my last year’s disguise … I’m going to use that too. I’ll bet there aren’t many witches around who smoke cigars.”

“Smoking is dangerous to your health!” I said.

“My cigar’s fake, stupid!”

I gave him a kick under the table and was pleased to see that Mom ground out the cigarette she’d been smoking.

“What about you, Jill?” my father asked. “What do you want to be?”

“Oh … I’ve been thinking I might like to be a flenser.”

“What’s that?” Kenny asked.

“You mean you don’t know?” I said.

“Never heard of it.”

“With all your facts in the
Book of World Records
you never learned about the oldest flenser and the youngest flenser and the flenser who did the best job and all that?”

“Dad …” Kenny said. “She’s starting in again.”

I absolutely love to tease Kenny.

“Jill, that’s enough,” my father said. “Tell Kenny what a flenser is.”

“Yes,” Mom said. “I can hardly wait to hear myself.”

“You mean you don’t know either?” I asked my mother.

“Never heard the word. Did you, Gordon?”

“Nope,” Dad said.

Kenny jumped up. “I’ll be right back,” he told us, as he ran out of the room.

I knew where he was going—to look up “flenser” in his dictionary.

In a few minutes he was back, carrying it. “A flenser strips the blubber off whales,” he read, looking at me. “That’s what you’re going to be for Halloween?” he asked, like he couldn’t believe it.

I smiled.

“Where did you get that idea, Jill?” Mom asked.

“From this girl in my class. She gave a report on whales.”

“Well … that’s certainly original,” Dad said.

“What kind of costume does a flenser wear?” Kenny asked.

“A flenser suit,” I told him.

“Yeah … but what’s it made of?”

“Oh … jeans and a shirt and a special kind of hat and a long knife.”

“No knife,” my father said. “That’s too dangerous.”

“Not a
real
knife,” I said. “One made out of cardboard.”

“What kind of hat?” Kenny asked.

“A flenser hat, naturally,” I told him.

“Yeah … but what’s it look like?”

“I can’t begin to describe it. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I’d wear boots if I was a flenser,” Kenny said.

“What for?” I asked him.

“Because of walking around in all that yucky blubber stuff.”

Kenny was right. I’d have to wear boots too.

After dinner we went into the living room for our family poker game. I handed out the Monopoly money. We each get $150 from the bank. My father shuffled the cards, Mom cut them and Kenny dealt.

I got a pair of kings and three junk cards. I’m careful not to give my hand away by the expression on my face. You can always tell what Kenny is holding. If it’s something good he makes all kinds of noises and he laughs a lot. Even if he doesn’t have anything good he stays in and takes three new cards. He never drops out when he should because he can’t stand not betting against the rest of us.

When it comes to bluffing my father is the best. Every time he stays in and starts raising I think he has three aces and unless I have something really great I drop out. Then I’ll find out Dad didn’t even have a pair. My mother is not an experienced poker player. She can never remember which is higher—a flush or a straight. Sometimes I have to help her out.

Later, when me and Kenny were in our pajamas and ready for bed, my father said we could carve our pumpkins. Mom had to go to her room because the smell of pumpkin guts makes her sick to her stomach.

Last year, when I cut out my pumpkin’s face, it was all lopsided, but this time I got both eyes even and the nose in between. Dad made the teeth for me. Kenny wouldn’t let anyone touch his pumpkin, which is why it turned out looking like it had three eyes and no teeth.

The next night I turned my mother’s old beach hat into part of my flenser suit. Mom didn’t mind because she’d worn the hat for four years and was getting tired of it. My mother never sets foot on the beach without wearing a floppy hat. She thinks it’s very bad to get sun on her face. She’s always saying that sun makes wrinkles and wrinkles make people look older and that someday I will know what she means. My father doesn’t worry about wrinkles so he never has to wear anything on his head. I’ll be like him when I grow up. How can you dive under the waves with a floppy hat on your head?

I look much older in the beach hat. I could pass for twelve, I think, maybe even thirteen with sun glasses. The beach hat is so big it covers
most of my face. It used to be lots of different colors but now it’s faded into a kind of bluish-gray.