Gooney Bird and All Her Charms (6 page)

Tyrone was wiggling at his desk.

Mrs. Pidgeon interrupted him. “No,” she said, firmly. “We are not sitting Napoleon on the toilet. And that's that. It might be educational. And it might be funny. But it would be sexist.”

“Sexist? What does that mean?” Nicholas asked.

“It means not fair to one of the sexes.”

“Huh?”

“For example, what if only women were allowed to be president of the United States? And no men allowed?”

“That wouldn't be fair! I want to be president when I grow up!” Barry said huffily.

“I might, also,” Gooney Bird commented. “I haven't decided yet.”

“I'd like to be
king
,” Malcolm said.

“Good luck with that, Malcolm,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “Anyway: males and females are considered equal in this country. They have equal opportunities.”

“So? What's wrong with our plan for Napoleon? What's sexist?” Ben asked. Then he thought for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “I get it.”

The other boys all got it too. “Oh,” they said, one after another. “No girls would get to see him.”

“Yeah,” Barry said, in a disappointed voice. “It wouldn't be fair. We need to think of something
fair
.”

“And,” Gooney Bird pointed out, “it should demonstrate another body system. We did his brain. And we did digestion. Remember what we learned about next?” She lifted one arm.

Today she was wearing a short-sleeved white blouse and a man's necktie. She bent her arm and posed like a strongman.

“I find that humerus,” Felicia Ann said, and giggled. The other children groaned.

“Muscles!” they all called.

“Right. Let's do his muscular system next. Doesn't that make sense, Mrs. Pidgeon?”

“It does!” the teacher agreed. “And of course we know where we should take him to demonstrate his muscles!”

“The gym!”

“Right. We'll move him there at the end of the school day, so he'll surprise everyone in the morning. Let's review what we know about muscles so that we can plan to make our signs. Who wants to tell me where our muscles are located, and what they do? Ben?”

“They're all over our skeleton, and they make our bones move,” Ben said.

“Tendons attach them to our bones,” Nicholas added.

“And they're stretchy, and rubbery!” Tricia said. “Like this!” She was holding a wide rubber band in both hands. She stretched it until her hands were far apart. “Ouch!” she said when the band snapped back.

“Right,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “Very stretchy. And they work in pairs. One muscle pulls and the other relaxes. So I can bend my arm, and then I can unbend it.” She held up her arm and all the children imitated her. Together they bent and unbent their arms. “Tighten, relax. Tighten, relax.

“And please,” she added, “I don't want to hear a single person say that they find this humerus!”

Malcolm began to whisper it, but everyone said, “Shhh.” They were all tired of the humerus joke.

“Oh,
no!
” Barry said suddenly. He groaned, and put his head into his hands. Everyone was startled. They all looked at Barry. “I may throw up!” he wailed.

Mrs. Pidgeon rushed the large wastebasket to Barry's side. “Do you want to go to the nurse's office? What's wrong?”

After a moment Barry looked up. “My grandma and grandpa came to visit us this weekend,” he said, “and we all went out to a fancy restaurant for dinner. My grandpa said we could have whatever we wanted. And he paid.”

“Well, that's nice,” Felicia Ann said. “I would get spaghetti.”

“I'd get a cheeseburger,” Tyrone said.

“Lobster!” Chelsea announced. “It's
very expensive!
”

“I think I'd have caviar,” Gooney Bird announced. “I have never once had caviar. And I would wear a fur hat.”

Barry looked stricken. He took a deep breath. Then he moaned, “I ate muscles.”

“Yuck!” the second-graders responded. “You ate
muscles?
”

He nodded. “They were stretchy and rubbery,” he told them. “And remember we learned that it takes up to three days for food to go through your digestive system? It was just Saturday night that I ate muscles.”

Everyone fell silent. They were murmuring, “Saturday, Sunday, Monday . . .”

“Dude,” Tyrone said in an ominous voice, “you may still have some muscles in there.”

Mrs. Pidgeon was laughing. “Barry, Barry, Barry,” she said. “Look! Lift your head and look at the chalkboard!”

In big letters she wrote:
MUSCLES
. Then, beside it, she wrote:
MUSSELS
.

“Two different things! Sound the same, spelled differently,” Mrs. Pidgeon explained.

“We'll learn more about mussels when we get to the ‘Creatures of the Sea' chapter in our science book.”

“Oh,” said Barry, brightening. “Good. Actually, I liked them quite a bit.”

“How shall we dress Napoleon for the gym?” Keiko asked. They had already removed his Digestive System outfit, the bow tie and the bib.

“Baseball cap!” called Malcolm. “Yankees!”

“Red Sox!” Ben said loudly. He was wearing a red shirt that said
BIG PAPI
on the back.

Mrs. Pidgeon, aware that a serious argument was about to develop, quickly went to the piano and played the opening chords to a song the whole class knew.
“Take me out to the ball game,”
the children began to sing.
“Take me out with the croooowd . . .”

They were still singing bits and pieces of the song at the end of the school day when they wheeled Napoleon into the gym, but by then they had agreed that a gym was not a place for baseball. Carefully they lifted the skeleton from his stand and sat him on the floor leaning against the bottom row of the bleachers with a basketball wedged between his knees. On his bony feet were an enormous pair of bright green sneakers that they had borrowed from Mr. Goldman, the boys' gym teacher. And around his skull, across his forehead, was a sweatband.

Napoleon looked as if he was waiting for the coach to send him into the game.

The sign that Tyrone and Felicia Ann had made for the door of the gym read:

 

COME SEE NAPOLEON'S MUSCULAR

SYSTEM! IT IS AMAZING!

 

Taped to the bleacher seat beside Napoleon, another sign read:

 

HE HAS MORE THAN 600 MUSCLES!

THEY WORK IN PAIRS.

THEY MAKE HIS BONES MOVE.

 

A sign beside one of his green sneakers read:

 

HE HAS 26 BONES IN EACH FOOT! AND 27 IN EACH HAND!

BUT THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO MOVE WITHOUT HIS MUSCLES.

 

There was one more sign taped beside Napoleon's hip. It had an arrow pointing to Napoleon's behind. It read:

 

HE EXERCISES A LOT

SO HIS MUSCLES ARE STRONG.

HIS LARGEST MUSCLE IS IN

HIS BUTT.

 

Mrs. Pidgeon looked at that sign and frowned.

 

“I wonder if anyone might object to that one,” she said.

“But it's
true
, Mrs. Pidgeon,” Felicia Ann pointed out. “We read it in our science book.”

“But the science book didn't use the word
butt
,” the teacher said. “Anybody remember what it said instead? I wish I'd brought the book with me.”

“Maybe it said
bottom
,” Keiko suggested.

“Or
backside
,” Malcolm said. “But that's not very scientific.”

“Gooney Bird?” Mrs. Pidgeon asked. “You're the one with the photographic memory. What did the book say?”

Gooney Bird was able to remember things by seeing them in her mind as if she were looking at a photograph. With her eyes closed, she took several deep breaths in and out. Then she reopened her eyes and said, “It just showed the big muscle and told its official name.
Gluteus maximus
. There was an arrow pointing to it and the label said it was the biggest muscle but it didn't say the name of the body part it was pointing to.

“Of course,” she added, “it was pointing to the butt.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Pidgeon after a moment. “Let's leave it.”

“Good!” Tyrone said. “Because I was already making up a rap. And it goes:
Hey
,
Napoleon, you know what? Your biggest muscle be right in your butt!
” He placed his hands on his own behind and wiggled his hips.

“We could do a whole show! We could do a show with raps about body parts! We could sell tickets! I bet we could make a lot of money!” Malcolm was dancing with excitement. “And it could be called, ah,
The Body Show
! Or maybe—”

“I know! I know!” Chelsea called. We could call it—”

She was interrupted by the ringing of a bell and the intercom announcement that it was time to line up for school buses.

“Yikes! We'd better go get our coats!” Barry said.

The second-graders waved to Napoleon, smiling toothy grins at him, and hurried from the gym.

Unfortunately Mrs. Pidgeon's prediction had come true. By the time Napoleon had been in the gym for several days, Mrs. Gooch had telephoned Mr. Leroy six times to complain about what she called a “bad word.” She meant
butt
.

On Thursday the second-graders crumpled up the sign that told about the largest muscle and threw it away.

“We could make another sign that says the name of that big muscle,” Tricia suggested.

“What was it, Gooney Bird?”

“
Gluteus maximus
. It's Latin,” Gooney Bird said.

“We could put that on his butt sign.”

“Or,” Gooney Bird pointed out, “we could say Napoleon's
derrière
. That's French for ‘butt.'”

“But then Mrs. Gooch would say we were being un-American. She thinks everything is un-American,” Chelsea said.

“Like what?” Malcolm asked. He found a wastebasket in the corner of the gym and tossed the crumpled sign into it.

“Spaghetti,” Chelsea said.

“
Spaghetti?
That's everybody's favorite! How can it be un-American?”

Chelsea shrugged. “It's Italian. And also: french fries. She thinks we shouldn't eat french fries because they're French.”

“So she'd
really
object to
derrière
,” Mrs. Pidgeon said with a sigh. “And by the way, the real reason we shouldn't eat french fries is because they're very greasy.”

Malcolm looked worried. “What about hot dogs? Are they American?”

“German,” Mrs. Pidgeon told him. “
Frankfurters
. They originated in Germany.

“I think ketchup is American, though,” she added.

“You know what?” Beanie said. “We could have told all about that when we did Napoleon's digestive system. We could have said that he eats French food and German food—”

“And Italian food—” Barry added.

“And Japanese food—” Keiko said.

“And ketchup—” Malcolm said.

“Yes! Because all of us have the same kind of insides,” Gooney Bird said. “It doesn't matter what country we come from.”

“We're all alike,” Felicia Ann said in her small voice, with a tiny smile.

“Speaking of Napoleon,” Mrs. Pidgeon pointed out, “it's time to move him to his next location. Roll his stand over here. Barry and Nicholas, can you take his sneakers off very carefully? And, Ben, put the basketball over there in the corner with the others. We'll have to dress him in a new outfit and make some new signs for . . . Who remembers?”

Everyone did. “Respiratory System!” they shouted.

They rolled Napoleon back to the second grade classroom and began to prepare him for his next demonstration. On Monday the skeleton would be going outside for the first time.

The lion part of March—the very cold and blustery part—was ending. It was a little warmer, though there was still some old snow on the ground. Very small buds had appeared on some of the bushes. They could tell that spring was coming. Tricia said that she had seen a robin.

But it was still chilly. They wrapped a warm scarf around Napoleon's neck and pulled a knitted blue hat over his skull.

“He should have gloves,” Felicia Ann suggested. But they all looked at his long bony hands and agreed that it would be too difficult to fit gloves on him.

“Anyway, he wouldn't be able to hold his cigarette if he has gloves on,” Nicholas pointed out.

“No!” the other children shouted. They had been arguing with Nicholas all day. Nicholas thought it would be a good idea to explain the respiratory system by showing Napoleon smoking.

“See, he goes outside to have a cigarette. My dad does that at work,” Nicholas said. “He stands out on the sidewalk and smokes. Then we can make signs saying how the smoke goes in Napoleon's lungs and makes them all black and yucky, so he shouldn't do it.”