Gooney Bird on the Map (5 page)

Mrs. Pidgeon held out the bag and Gooney Bird reached in. "Perfect!" said Gooney Bird. "It says
Puppy Love
!" She hurried off to find the custodian.

By the time school ended for the day, and the children were heading for the buses, Mr. Furillo had painted the oceans. Already the temperature was dropping, and the new pale blue had begun to freeze into a shiny crust around North America. Bruno had been told firmly that he must not approach the map. He could lie down on Antarctica if he wanted. He could pee on Antarctica if he wanted. But not on the United States. That included Hawaii.

For homework, each child was taking home a rolled-up map of the United States. They were each to locate where they would be spending their February vacation.

Malcolm was sulking. He said he didn't even want to take his map home. He said he might
burn
his map. He might let the triplets chew on it. He might make a huge paper airplane out of it. He might use it for origami and make an enormous cootie-catcher. He might...

He was still grumbling loudly when he boarded his bus.

Gooney Bird, who was a walker, called toward Malcolm's bus as its door hissed closed.

"William Henry Harrison never even
had
a map when he was eight years old!" she said. "Moment of silence!"

But through the bus window she could see that Malcolm wasn't listening. He was using his rolled-up map as a weapon and had begun a swordfight with a fifth-grader, who was stabbing back at him with a ruler. The driver, a gray-haired woman, got up from her seat with an impatient look and went down the aisle to separate the two boys before she began to drive.

Bruno yawned and lay down with his tail end on Antarctica and his head very, very close to the border but obediently not touching the map. While Mr. Furillo put a few pale blue finishing touches on the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii, and the yellow school buses left the driveway one by one, Bruno slept.

The next morning, the entire school was talking admiringly about the second-graders' playground snow map. Overnight the Pacific and Atlantic oceans had frozen into shimmery blue. The United States was a lovely vast landmass, and Mrs. Pidgeon, in doing the outline, had even shoved some snow to create a ridge down the center, where the Rocky Mountains would be.

Hawaii was tiny hard bumps of snow out in the Pacific, and a plastic palm tree from the turtle bowl in the classroom was now wedged onto it. Humphrey the turtle had died in October, and the children had never gotten around to creating a memorial for him. They felt, now, that Humphrey would be proud to be part of Hawaii.

"Moment of silence for Humphrey," Gooney Bird announced, and they all stood reverently for a brief period, staring at the palm tree and remembering what a happy life Humphrey had had in his plastic bowl with its small island until he got the mysterious fungus that had ended it all.

"I brought this," Ben announced, and showed them the small artificial snow-covered pine tree that he'd taken out of his backpack. "It's from my train set."

"What's it for?" asked Malcolm.

"Well, I thought I'd put it in Vermont. There are a whole lot of pine trees there. I'm going to be snowboarding down trails that wind in and out among a zillion pine trees. So..." Ben stepped over the border of the second grade territory, walked carefully up into the Atlantic Ocean, crossed onto land at New York, and began to head north with his little tree.

"Wait!" Gooney Bird commanded, and Ben stopped where he was, with one foot in Connecticut and the other in New York State.

"What?" he asked.

"We have a beautiful map here, and I think it cheapens it to set up this fake plastic stuff. If you put your tree in Vermont, then next I bet anything Beanie will—" She glanced over at Beanie, who had already taken something out of her jacket pocket.

"Hold it up, Bean," Gooney Bird said with a sigh.

Beanie held up a Mickey Mouse with long thin black legs and huge white feet. "It's not plastic; it's rubber," she said defensively.

"It's junky," Chelsea said, wrinkling her nose.

"If we let Ben stand his tree in Vermont," Gooney Bird said, "and Beanie put her rubber mouse in Florida, then everyone will bring some vacation thing, and—let's see, we can make a math problem here..."

"Good point, Gooney Bird. Eleven second-graders," Mrs. Pidgeon said, "plus me, because I'm part of this class. That makes twelve. And if three people—Barry, Beanie, and Ben—have already put their, ah, vacation objects down, how many more vacation souvenirs—"

"—will it take to ruin our beautiful map?" Chelsea said.

"Twelve minus three!" shouted Malcolm.

"NINE!"

"It would be a mess. Let's not do it," Tricia said.

"Can we leave the palm tree?" Barry asked.

"Yes," Gooney Bird said. "In memory of Humphrey."

"In memory of Humphrey," all of the children said mournfully.

"Well, all right." Ben reluctantly returned his little pine tree to his backpack. Beanie sighed and folded her rubbery mouse so that he would fit in her pocket again.

"Instead," Gooney Bird explained, "we're going to do something that will be very tasteful and appropriate and artistic and unusual. And also educational.

"Keiko," she asked, "did you bring the special things that I asked you for?"

Keiko nodded happily. "Yes, they're all in my cubby."

"Okay, guys," Gooney Bird said. "Back to the classroom. We have work to do."

 

"Eleven pairs of mittens equals how many individual mittens?" asked Mrs. Pidgeon as the children hung up their outdoor things. She was still trying to get some math done.

"Twenty-two," Barry said. He was faster than anyone at math.

"Right! Good, Barry. Now, if four children lost their mittens—"

"Lost just one, or the whole pair?" Tricia asked. She draped her knitted scarf over its hook.

"Well, just one. Let's say four mittens had been lost. So how many mittens would remain, out of the twenty-two?"

"I lost both of my mittens at the Harry Potter movie," Nicholas said. "They fell under the seat. And my mom called the theater, but they didn't have them, so my mom thinks someone stole them!"

"Those weren't mittens, Nicholas," Malcolm said. "Those were
gloves
you lost. Those were your Spider-Man gloves!"

"Yeah, and somebody
stole
them! Now look what I have to wear—these dumb baby mittens!" Nicholas glared at the blue knitted mittens he had just put into his cubby.

"Back to our math problem, children!" Mrs. Pidgeon said. "Twenty-two minus four?"

"What if an octopus had mittens?" Malcolm shouted. "It would have
eight!
"

"Octopuses don't have hands," Ben said.

"It's
octopi
" Barry reminded him.

Chelsea went over to where Mrs. Pidgeon was standing. "
U Go, Girl,
" she whispered.

Mrs. Pidgeon, whose shoulders had begun to slump, straightened herself, went to the piano, and played a loud chord. When everyone had fallen silent, she said firmly, "Twenty-two minus four?"

"Eighteen!" the second-graders replied.

"Correct! Good job! Everyone in your seats now, please!"

"
Lost your mittens? You naughty kittens!
" Tyrone sang as he went to his desk.

"That's a baby song!" Malcolm told him.

Tyrone poked Malcolm in the shoulder as he sauntered past. "So? Who cares? I'm a
Cool Dude
!"

"Mrs. Pidgeon! Mrs. Pidgeon! Tyrone hit Malcolm!" Tricia called.

"Tyrone, sit down
now.
Malcolm? You are a
Class Act,
remember? So let's behave like one."

Malcolm scowled. So did Tyrone. But they both remained silent.

"Go ahead, Gooney Bird," Mrs. Pidgeon said when all of the children were seated and waiting.

Gooney Bird went to the front of the classroom. "All right, Keiko,
Sweet Thing,
pass them out," she said.

Keiko had taken a package wrapped in brown paper from her cubby. Carefully she removed the paper. "My uncle gave me these," she explained. "They came from his restaurant."

"Those are chopsticks!" Malcolm announced, recognizing the narrow wooden sticks. "Are we going to eat Chinese food? Are you going to make us eat rice? I
hate
rice!"

Mrs. Pidgeon went to Malcolm and placed her calm-down hand on his shoulder.

"No Chinese food," Gooney Bird explained.

"These are going to be our flagpoles. You can pass them out, Keiko. One for each person."

Carefully Keiko distributed the chopsticks.

"NO SWORDFIGHTING!" Gooney Bird commanded when she saw Malcolm and Nicholas beginning to aim their chopsticks.

"Next, you each get some construction paper. Sorry, Mrs. Pidgeon, but we're going to make a mess again. You can each choose the color you want." Gooney Bird walked around the desk and waited while each child chose a colored sheet of paper.

"We're each going to cut a rectangle just big enough for a flag at the top of our flagpole. Not yet, Malcolm! Wait!" Malcolm had pulled his scissors out of his desk and was ready to begin cutting a rectangle of dark blue construction paper.

"But we have to be sure that the flag is just big enough for this!" Gooney Bird picked up a small stack of photographs from Mrs. Pidgeon's desk. She held up the top one, a small school photo of Felicia Ann, grinning, with her top teeth missing.

"I'll give you each your own photo, and you'll paste it onto your flag. Carefully cut out your face so that it just fits on your flag, okay?"

The children nodded. They had all gotten their scissors out.

"You too, Mrs. Pidgeon. You'll have a flag, too." Gooney Bird handed the teacher her photograph.

Mrs. Pidgeon looked at it and made a face. "My hair looked awful that day," she said.

"When your flag is done, with the picture on it, then we'll use the stapler to attach it to the flagpole," Gooney Bird explained. "I've already tested this. See?" She held up her own flag. Her chopstick had a purple rectangle attached to it, with Gooney Bird's picture carefully glued to the purple. "My hair looked awful that day too, Mrs. Pidgeon," she said. "I had a bad case of hat hair.

"Okay, start cutting out your faces, and your flags. Mrs. Pidgeon will come around with paste, and then we'll do the stapling really carefully. And be sure to put your flag on the square end! We need the pointy end to stick into the snow."

Chelsea looked up from her photograph, from which she was carefully cutting out her head. "Where are we going to stick them?"

"We'll each plant our flag at the place where we'll be spending our vacation! Barry?
Whiz Kid
? Yours will be right beside Humphrey's palm tree!"

"YES!" said Barry.

The class became very quiet. Everyone, including Mrs. Pidgeon, was carefully creating a flag.

Toward the end of the day, the playground was empty. Two crows sat on the limb of a bare tree and watched as the class, each person carrying a flag, made their way to the snow map. One of the crows made a cawing sound as if he were annoyed at the interruption. Then he and his partner lifted their large wings and flew away.

"Look! A piece of Humphrey's palm tree broke off! Hawaii's all messed up!"

"I bet a bear walked through and broke it while we were having lunch," Tricia said.

"Really?" asked Keiko nervously. "A bear?"

"No,
Sweet Thing,
" Gooney Bird reassured her. "I think those crows snapped it off. They're probably looking for nest material."

"Let's get started, class!" Mrs. Pidgeon suggested. "We'll use up all our time just talking and our feet will get cold. How shall we do this, Gooney Bird? Who'll go first?"

Gooney Bird thought for a moment. "Alphabetical," she decided.

"Yay!" Barry shouted. "I always go first alphabetically!"

"I always go last," Tyrone said with a pout.

Felicia Ann went shyly over to Tyrone. "
It maybe be a blast, when you always goin' last,
" she said to him, softly, and Tyrone's face brightened.

"
Run my engine pretty fast, 'cuz I be always goin' last,
" he replied with a grin.

"
Cool Dude,
" Felicia Ann added.

Barry plunged his chopstick in the snow beside the broken palm tree. "Ta-da!" he said. "Hawaii for
Whiz Kid
!" He wiggled his hips in a brief hula.

"Okay. Who's next?" asked Mrs. Pidgeon. "Let me think. Barry, Beanie, Ben, Chelsea..."

"Beanie!" Gooney Bird called. "You next,
Sunshine
!"

Beanie, carrying the little flag with her photograph on it, stepped forward onto the map and found Florida. "M-I-C-K-E-Y!" She sang the letters. "M-O-U-S-E!" She leaned down and poked her flag into the snow in the center of Florida.

"Ha! Barry and Beanie both get really bad sunburns," Malcolm said loudly, "and Beanie, she has to wear stupid mouse ears!" Mrs. Pidgeon put her hand gently on Malcolm's shoulder.

"Do you think William Henry Harrison used sunscreen at the beach?" Keiko asked in a curious voice.