Harriet the Spy (3 page)

Miss Elson stood at her desk. She was their homeroom teacher. Harriet looked at her curiously, then wrote:

I THINK MISS ELSON IS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE YOU DON’T BOTHER TO THINK ABOUT TWICE.

She slammed the notebook shut as though she had put Miss Elson in a box and slammed the lid. Miss Elson called the roll and her voice squeaked: “Andrews, Gibbs, Hansen, Hawthorne, Hennessey, Matthews, Peters, Rocque, Welsch, Whitehead.”

Everyone said “Here” dutifully.

“And now, children, we will have the election for officer. Are there any nominations?”

Sport leaped to his feet. “I nominate Harriet Welsch.”

Janie yelled, “I second it.” They always did this every year because the one that was officer controlled everything. When the teacher went out of the room the officer could write down the names of anyone who was disorderly. The officer also got to be the editor of the Sixth Grade Page in the school paper.

Rachel Hennessey got up. “I nominate Marion Hawthorne,” she said in her prissiest voice.

Marion Hawthorne shot Beth Ellen Hansen a look that made Harriet’s hair stand on end. Beth Ellen looked terrified, then got timidly to her feet and, almost whispering, managed to stammer, “I second it.” It was rigged, the whole thing, every year. There were no more nominations and then came the vote. Marion Hawthorne got it. Every year either Marion or Rachel Hennessey got it. Harriet wrote in her book:

YOU’D THINK THE TEACHERS WOULD SMELL A RAT BECAUSE IT’S FIVE YEARS NOW AND NEITHER ME NOR SPORT NOR JANIE HAS EVER GOTTEN IT.

Marion Hawthorne looked terribly smug. Sport, Janie, and Harriet scowled at each other. Janie whispered, “Our day will come. Just wait.” Harriet wondered if she meant that when she blew up the world Marion Hawthorne would see what they were made of. Or maybe Janie meant to blow up Marion Hawthorne first, which wasn’t a bad idea.

It was finally three thirty-seven and school was over. Sport came up to Harriet. “Hey, whyncha come over this afternoon?”

“After the spy route, maybe, if I’ve got time.”

“Aw, gee, Janie’s working in the lab. You both are always working.”

“Why don’t you practice? How’re you ever going to be a ball player?”

“Can’t. Have to clean the house. Come over if you get time.”

Harriet said “okay,” then “good-by,” and ran toward the house. It was time for her cake and milk. Every day at three-forty she had cake and milk. Harriet loved doing everything every day in the same way.

“Time for my cake, for my cake and milk, time for my milk and cake.” She ran yelling through the front door of her house. She ran through the front hall past the dining room and the living room and down the steps into the kitchen. There she ran smack into the cook.

“Like a missile you are, shot from that school,” screamed the cook.

“Hello cook, hello, cooky, hello, hello, hello, hello,” sang Harriet. Then she opened her notebook and wrote:

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. I ALWAYS DO CARRY ON A LOT. ONCE OLE GOLLY SAID TO ME, “I COULD NEVER LOSE YOU IN A CROWD, I’D JUST FOLLOW THE SOUND OF YOUR VOICE.”

She slammed the notebook and the cook jumped. Harriet laughed.

The cook put the cake and milk in front of her. “What you always writing in that dad-blamed book for?” she asked with a sour little face.

“Because,” Harriet said around a bite of cake, “I’m a spy.”

“Spy, huh. Some spy.”

“I
am
a spy. I’m a
good
spy, too. I’ve never been caught.”

Cook settled herself with a cup of coffee. “How long you been a spy?”

“Since I could write. Ole Golly told me if I was going to be a writer I better write down everything, so I’m a spy that writes down everything.”

“Hmmmmmmph.” Harriet knew the cook couldn’t think of anything to say when she did that.

“I know all about you.”

“Like fun, you do.” The cook looked startled.

“I do too. I know you live with your sister in Brooklyn and that she might get married and you wish you had a car and you have a son that’s no good and drinks.”

“What do you do, child? Listen at doors?”

“Yes,” said Harriet.

“Well, I never,” said the cook. “I think that’s bad manners.”

“Ole Golly doesn’t. Ole Golly says find out everything you can cause life is hard enough even if you know a lot.”

“I bet she don’t know you spooking round this house listening at doors.”

“Well, how am I supposed to find out anything?”

“I don’t know”—the cook shook her head—“I don’t know about that Ole Golly.”

“What do you mean?” Harriet felt apprehensive.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I wonder about her.”

Ole Golly came into the room. “What is it you don’t know?”

Cook looked as though she might hide under the table. She stood up. “Can I get you your tea, Miss Golly?” she asked meekly.

“That would be most kind of you,” said Ole Golly and sat down.

Harriet opened her notebook:

I WONDER WHAT THAT WAS ALL ABOUT. MAYBE OLE GOLLY KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT COOK THAT COOK DOESN’T WANT HER TO KNOW. CHECK ON THIS.

“What do you have in school this year, Harriet?” asked Ole Golly.

“English, History, Geography, French, Math, ugh, Science, ugh, and the Performing Arts, ugh, ugh, ugh.” Harriet rattled these off in a very bored way.

“What history?”

“Greeks and Romans, ugh, ugh, ugh.”

“They’re fascinating.”

“What?”

“They are. Just wait, you’ll see. Talk about spies. Those gods spied on everybody all the time.”

“Yeah?”

“‘Yes,’ Harriet, not ‘yeah.”’

“Well, I wish
I’d
never heard of them.”

“Ah, there’s a thought from Aesop for you: ‘We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.”’ Ole Golly gave a little moo of satisfaction after she had delivered herself of this.

“I think I’ll go now,” Harriet said.

“Yes,” said the cook, “go out and play.”

Harriet stood up. “I do not go out to PLAY, I go out to WORK!” and in as dignified a way as possible she walked from the room and up the steps from the kitchen. Then she began to run, and running furiously, she went past the first floor with the living room and dining room, the second floor with her parents’ bedroom and the library, and on up to the third floor to her little room and bath.

Harriet loved her room. It was small and cozy, and the bathroom was a little one with a tiny window which looked out over the park across the street. Her room had a bigger window. She looked around, pleased as always by the order, the efficiency of it. She always picked up everything immediately, not because anyone nagged at her—no one ever had—but because it was her room and she liked to have it just so. Harriet was just so about a lot of things. Her room stood around her pleasantly, waiting for her. Her own small bed next to the window, her bookcase filled with her books, her toy box, which had been filled with toys but which now held her notebooks because it could be locked, her desk and chair at which she did her homework—all seemed to look back at her with affection. Harriet put her books down on the desk and hurriedly began to change into her spy clothes.

Her spy clothes consisted first of all of an ancient pair of blue jeans, so old that her mother had forbidden her to wear them, but which Harriet loved because she had fixed up the belt with hooks to carry her spy tools. Her tools were a flashlight, in case she were ever out at night, which she never was, a leather pouch for her notebook, another leather case for extra pens, a water canteen, and a boy scout knife which had, among other features, a screwdriver and a knife and fork which collapsed. She had never had occasion to eat anywhere, but someday it might come in handy.

She attached everything to the belt, and it all worked fine except that she rattled a little. Next she put on an old dark-blue sweatshirt with a hood which she wore at the beach house in the summer so that it still smelled of salt air in a comforting way. Then she put on an old pair of blue sneakers with holes over each of her little toes. Her mother had actually gone so far as to throw these out, but Harriet had rescued them from the garbage when the cook wasn’t looking.

She finished by donning a pair of black-rimmed spectacles with no glass in them. She had found these once in her father’s desk and now sometimes wore them even to school, because she thought they made her look smarter.

She stood back and looked at herself in the full-length mirror which hung on her bathroom door. She was very pleased. Then she ran quickly down the steps and out, banging the front door behind her.

S
he was particularly excited as she ran along, because today she was adding a new spying place to her route. She had discovered a way into a private house around the corner. Private houses were much more difficult to get into than apartment buildings, and this was the first one Harriet had managed. It belonged to a Mrs. Agatha K. Plumber who was a very strange, rather theatrical lady who had once married a man of considerable means. She was now divorced, lived alone, and apparently talked on the telephone all day. Harriet had found this much out from first listening to several conversations between Mrs. Plumber’s maid and an overly friendly garbage man. Harriet had pretended to play ball while the garbage was being picked up.

Just yesterday she had discovered that by timing it exactly she had just enough time to jump in the dumbwaiter and slide the door closed before the maid completed one of her frequent trips up and down the stairs. The dumbwaiter was no longer used but fortunately had not been boarded up. Since there was a small crack in the door, Harriet could see and hear perfectly.

She approached the house, looked through the kitchen windows, and saw the maid preparing a tray. She knew then that the next step would be to take the tray to the second floor. Not a moment to lose. The maid went into the pantry. Harriet stepped through the kitchen door and in one jump was in the dumbwaiter. She barely got the door slid down again before the maid was back in the room. The maid was humming “Miss Am-er-i-ker, look at her, Miss Amer-i-ker” in a tuneless sort of way.

Then the tray was ready. The maid picked it up and left the room. Simultaneously Harriet started pulling on the ropes that hoisted the dumbwaiter. Terrified, she heard a lot of creaking. This would never do. Maybe she could bring some oil.

She arrived at the second floor. Her heart was beating so fast she was almost unable to breathe. She looked through the crack. The first thing she saw was a huge four-poster bed in the middle of which Mrs. Plumber sat, propped against immense pillows, telephone in hand, surrounded by magazines, books, candy boxes, and a litter of pink baby pillows.

“Well,” Mrs. Plumber was saying decisively into the telephone, “
I
have discovered the
secret
of
life
.”

Wow, thought Harriet.

“My dear, it’s very simple, you just
take
to your
bed
. You just refuse to leave it for
anything
or
anybody
.”

Some secret, thought Harriet; that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Harriet hated bed anyway. In and out was her motto, and the less time there the better.

“Oh, yes, darling, I
know
. I
know
you
can’t
run away from life, I
agree
with you. I
loathe
people that do that. But you see, I’m
not
. While I’m lying here I’m actually
working
because, you see, and this is the
divine
part, I’m
deciding
on a profession!”

You must be a hundred and two, thought Harriet; you better get going.

The maid came in with the tray. “Put it down there,” said Mrs. Plumber rather crossly, then went back to the phone.

Harriet wrote in her notebook:

IT’S JUST WHAT OLE GOLLY SAYS. RICH PEOPLE ARE BORING. SHE SAYS WHEN PEOPLE DON’T DO ANYTHING THEY DON’T THINK ANYTHING, AND WHEN THEY DON’T THINK ANYTHING THERE’S NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT THEM. IF I HAD A DUMBWAITER I WOULD LOOK IN IT ALL THE TIME TO SEE IF ANYBODY WAS IN IT.

As though she were reading Harriet’s mind, Mrs. Plumber said to the maid, “Did you hear a creak just now in that old dumbwaiter?”

“No, ma’am,” said the maid.

“It was probably my imagination.” She went back to the telephone. “My dear, I have
infinite
possibilities. Now don’t you think I would make a
marv-e-lous
actress? Or there’s
painting
; I could
paint
. What do you think of that?… Well, darling, I’m only
forty
, think of
Gauguin
.…”

Harriet started, very slowly, heart pounding, to pull the ropes that would start her downward. It had occurred to her that she’d better exit while Mrs. Plumber was blathering away or she would certainly be heard. There was a tiny creak as she got near the bottom, but she was fairly certain no one heard it. There, the main floor. She peeked into the kitchen. Empty. Could she make it? She scrambled down and ran for her life.

I have never run so fast, she thought as she careened around the corner. Panting, she sat on some steps and took out her book.

I THINK THIS MIGHT BE TOO DANGEROUS AN ASSIGNMENT. BUT I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT JOB SHE TAKES. BUT HOW CAN YOU WORK LYING DOWN? HOW DOES SHE PAY FOR ANYTHING JUST LYING THERE? I GUESS SHE JUST LIVES ON HER HUSBAND’S MONEY. DOES MY MOTHER MOOCH OFF MY FATHER? I’LL NEVER DO THAT. LOOK AT POOR SPORT. HE HAS TOO MUCH TO DO ALREADY WITHOUT ME LYING UP IN THE BED ALL DAY EATING.

Harriet had three more stops before she was finished for the day, but before she continued she decided to stop by and see Sport. On the way there she got thirsty and stopped in her favorite luncheonette for an egg cream. It was her favorite because it was there that she had first begun to hear what peculiar things people say to each other. She liked to sit at the counter with her egg cream and let the voices from the tables behind her float over her head. Several conversations were always going on at once. Sometimes she would play a game and not look at the people until from listening to them she had decided what they looked like. Then she would turn around and see if she were right.

“A chocolate egg cream, please.”

“Certainly, Harriet. How are you?”

“Okay.” Harriet sat down, pleased that she was known. She put her twelve cents down and sipped away as she listened.

“My father is a rat.”

“So, I have to admit, I handled that case in a perfect way, a really perfect way. I said to the judge…”

“He’s a rat because he thinks he’s perfect.”

“Listen, Jane, we have to go to Orchard Street and get that material. I can’t live in that house one more minute without shades. Anyone could see in.”

Harriet had to restrain herself at this point from looking around at a new possibility for the spy route. If
anyone
could see in…

“You know, I’ve lost very few cases in my time, even if I do say so.”

“He’s such a rat he never lets my mother open her trap.”

Rat trap, thought Harriet.

“You have no idea what it’s like to hide all the time. Geez, I can’t even walk around in a slip.”

Her egg cream finished, Harriet summed up her guesses. The boy with the rat father would be skinny have black hair, and a lot of pimples. The lawyer who won all his cases would be short, puffy-looking, and be leaning forward. She got no picture of the shadeless girl but decided that she must be fat. She turned around.

At first she couldn’t tell. Then she saw the boy with black hair and pimples. She felt a surge of triumph. She looked at what must be the lawyer, one of two men. Then she listened to see if he were the one. No, the other one was the lawyer. He wasn’t short and fat, he was long and thin, with a handsome face. She consoled herself with a faint puffiness he had around the eyes.

Well, no wonder she won’t walk around in a slip, Harriet thought, looking at the girl with no shades; she’s the fattest thing I ever saw.

Enough. Only two out of three. Some days were better than others. She slid off the stool and went on her way to Sport’s house. Sport lived in an apartment that was up four flights of stairs. He opened the door, wearing an apron and carrying a dishtowel. “Hi, Harriet, come in, I just got to do these dishes.”

“Then whataya gonna do?”

“Then I sweep.”

“Aw, Sport, you got too much work to do.”

“Yeah, but what can I do? Somebody’s got to do it. Once I didn’t do it, and after a week I couldn’t find the living room.”

They went into the kitchen and Sport continued to do the dishes. Harriet pointed toward a closed door to the right of the kitchen. “Is
he
in there?”

“Yeah, he worked all night, so he’s sleeping. I got to go to the store and then get back in time to fix his dinner.”

“I couldn’t even
fix
dinner, much less for my father. How do you do it?”

“Well, lots of times, you know, it’s Eggsville.”

“Doesn’t he care what he eats?”

“Writers don’t care what they eat. They just care what you think of them. Here, Harriet, hold this.”

“I sure care what I eat.” Just as she was saying this, Harriet heard a loud groan from the bedroom. She almost dropped the plate. “Hey, what’s that?”

Sport looked totally unconcerned. “Nothing, just a bad dream. He has them all the time. Writers have a lot of bad dreams.”

“Don’t you want to be a writer, Sport? Gee, your father could even help you.”

Sport almost collapsed at the sink. “Are you kidding? You
know
I want to be a ball player. And if I’m not a
good
ball player, I’ll tell you something, I’m going to be a C.P.A.”

“What’s
that?
”

“You don’t know what a C.P.A. is?” Sport screeched.

“No,” said Harriet. She never minded admitting she didn’t know something. So what, she thought; I could always learn.

“Well, I’ll show you what that is. Come with me.” Sport put the dishtowel down, took Harriet by the hand, and led her into his room. You would have known it was Sport’s room because it was as neat as a pin. There was a little cot, made up army fashion, one straight chair, and a little desk. The desk was absolutely bare. Sport took a ring of keys out of his pocket and started unlocking the drawers to the desk. “You see these books? These are my books.” He stepped back proudly. Harriet looked. Each drawer was filled with large ledgers. One drawer held a cashbox, which was also locked.

“My, my,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

“A C.P.A. is an accountant, for your information,” Sport said pompously, pulling back Harriet’s hand sharply because she had started to reach for one of the ledgers.

“What’s in all those?” asked Harriet, suspecting that they were empty.

“Our FINANCES. What do you think?” Sport was getting irritated.

“I hate money,” Harriet said.

“Well, you’d jolly well like it if you didn’t have any,” Sport said arrogantly. Harriet considered this. It was true. She’d never had to think about it.

“Well, gee, Sport, do you like to do that? Isn’t it just a lot of math?”

“Well, the math isn’t hard; that’s not it. I can’t explain. Don’t you know what I mean? Then you know where everything
is
.”

“Oh,” said Harriet, who did not understand at all.

“I mean, see, my father gets a check, and if I don’t take it, then the next day it’s gone and he just throws up his hands and goes in his room and shuts the door. Then we don’t eat.”

“Really?”

“Really. This way I take the check and I cash it and I plan what to do with all the money piece by piece and then we have enough to eat. See?”

“Yeah. That’s very sensible.”

“Well, I don’t know what would have happened to us if I hadn’t started doing that.”

“Yeah. Gee, I never knew this about you, Sport.”

Sport kind of kicked a foot around on the floor. Then they both felt embarrassed, so Sport went back into the kitchen, and Harriet, in the living room, seized this opportunity to try to see through the keyhole into Sport’s father’s room. She saw nothing but an old gym sock lying on the floor. Sport came into the living room and Harriet jumped back, then said quickly, “Well, I got to get back to my spy route. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’ll see ya,” said Sport as he opened the door for her.

When the door closed behind her Harriet stood a minute thinking. Then she ran down the steps. When she got outside, she sat on the steps and wrote in her notebook:

SPORT’S HOUSE SMELLS LIKE OLD LAUNDRY, AND IT’S NOISY AND KIND OF POOR-LOOKING. MY HOUSE DOESN’T HAVE THAT SMELL AND IS QUIET LIKE MRS. PLUMBER’S. DOES THAT MEAN WE ARE RICH? WHAT MAKES PEOPLE POOR OR RICH?

She walked along a little way, then was suddenly struck by another idea.

ARE RICH PEOPLE EVER GOING TO GROW UP TO BE WRITERS OR ARE WRITERS ALL LIKE MR. ROCQUE WITH NO MONEY?

MY FATHER IS ALWAYS SAYING
STARVINGARTIST
OR
STARVINGWRITER
. MAYBE I BETTER REDUCE.

Harriet headed toward the Dei Santis’ grocery, the first stop on her regular spy route. The grocery was on York Avenue, and there was a little alleyway beside it that provided three vantage points from which Harriet could watch. One was a window facing the alley, affording a view of the rear of the counter at which Papa Dei Santi stood. The other window on the alley showed the back of the store with the table around which the family ate lunch. The third window was around the back, in the courtyard, and showed the storeroom where Little Joe Curry worked all day.