Read The Mighty Miss Malone Online
Authors: Christopher Paul Curtis
The Mighty Miss Malone (2 page)
“You know, a lot of people are saying her not coming back to teach is the best thing that ever happened at Lincoln Woods School.”
“James Malone, if I ever give one-half a hoot what a lot of
people are saying, you have my permission to slap me silly. Mrs. Needham is the best teacher in the world. Now, if you don’t mind. I never bother you when you’re singing, don’t bother me when I’m writing.”
“But lots of people love listening to me sing, Deza, seems to me like only you, that little pest Clarice Anne Johnson and Mrs. Needham like reading what you write.”
Jimmie is one of those people who can say something that might sound mean at first, but when he smiles and makes his eyebrows jump up and down you can’t help smiling. He gets this deep, deep dimple in his right cheek and you end up laughing right along with him.
My dearest friend, Clarice Anne Johnson, has a horrible and completely un-understandable crush on Jimmie. She says she bets you could pour cornflakes in his dimple and eat them out with a spoon.
I’m hoping Clarice’s taste in boys improves as she gets older.
“Jimmie, please.”
“Sorry, sis. I’m heading out, can I do anything for you before I split?”
“No, thanks. Just make sure you’re back for supper.”
I looked at Mrs. Needham’s instructions again. “What is the most annoying trait of some of your family members?”
That was easy to come up with for Father and Jimmie, but I couldn’t think of a single annoying trait for Mother. I wrote:
Mother’s pet peeve is that she hates the way a lot of people are mean to Jimmie for no reason
.
Her dreams are to see Father get a job where he doesn’t always get laid off, for Jimmie to start growing again and be happy and to watch me graduate from college and be a teacher
.
My father, Mr. Roscoe Malone, was born in a village in Michigan called Flint, which is geologically located 250 miles northeast of Gary. For some reason that none of us can understand he is very proud of this. He is tall and strikingly handsome, he’s also intelligent and well-read
.
He toils and labors mostly for the Company doing work in a horribly hot furnace and sometimes being a janitor
.
His most annoying trait is the way he uses alliteration every chance he has
.
I looked up from my paper. That is so true, but I wondered for a minute if I should put it in the essay. It isn’t like he can help himself.
He always calls me his Darling Daughter Deza, and I’m supposed to answer that he is my Dearest Delightful Daddy. He calls Jimmie the Genuine, Gentle Jumpin’ Giant, and Jimmie’s supposed to call him his Fine Friendly Father Figure. Father also calls Mother the Marvelous Mammalian Matriarch, but she says she won’t respond because she refuses to play silly word games with such a “hardheaded husband who hasn’t heard how horrible he is.”
Mother told me, “Such nonsense is in the blood of the Malones and you should be happy that so far it looks like you haven’t inherited any of it.”
She says Jimmie is a different story.
I tapped the pencil on my teeth. I know it’s rude and
disloyal to discuss family business with other people, but Mrs. Needham says good writing is
always
about telling the truth.
Father’s most endearing trait is that he is the best storyteller and poet in the world. He can come up with a poem at the most inappropriate times. His pet peeve is that even though he’s smart it’s very hard to find a job
.
His dream is to do what he was trained to do in Flint, being a carpenter
.
The oldest child in our family, Mr. James Edward Malone, is fifteen years old and has been blessed with the singing voice of a angel
.
Jimmie’s most annoying trait is that he has what Mother says is a napoleon complex. That means Jimmie is not as tall or robust as most boys his age and tries to make up for it by being as loud and full of braggadocio as he can. He also gets in lots of fights
.
Jimmie’s most endearing trait is that he loves me more than any big brother has loved a little sister since time immoral
.
Jimmie
is
the best big brother in the world.
On my last birthday we had just finished eating and I could barely sit still because after supper the birthday person gets something special.
It was my turn to clear the dishes and I stalled around in the kitchen to give them lots of time to get my surprise ready, then walked back into the dining room.
There were two cupcakes with a candle in the middle of them sitting at my and Jimmie’s spots! A chocolate frosted one for me and a vanilla frosted one for Jimmie!
I was speechless.
Jimmie said, “Wow, Ma, these are store-bought!”
Mother must’ve been putting pennies aside for a long time to buy two such beautiful little cakes.
Father said, “James, please do the honors.”
Jimmie closed his eyes, then settled into singing “Happy Birthday.”
I got chills. I wasn’t sure if it was because of Jimmie’s voice or because I was so excited.
Mother and Father joined in on the last chorus.
When they were done I smiled so hard it felt like my cheekbones were crushing my eyeballs!
Jimmie said, “I got you two gifts. One, I’ll wash
and
dry dishes for a week, and two …”
He looked at Father and they walked into the other room.
When they came back each one of them was carrying a heavy package wrapped in newspapers.
They set them down in front of me.
I said, “Flint style or Gary style?”
Father always tells us Mother opens packages and envelopes Gary style. He says we Gary people pry and poke and pull the envelope so carefully and daintily and take so long doing it that we might as well be doing brain surgery. He says we do it that way because Indiana people are so cheap that we want to use the same envelope over and over.
“Word has it,” he said once, “that there’ve only been two envelopes used in the whole state of Indiana since the War of 1812.”
Then he showed us what he called opening something
Flint style. It was a race to see how quick you could get what was inside the envelope or package out.
“To be officially Flint style,” Father says, “the envelope or the wrapping paper has to be shredded into at least six different pieces. It’s got to look like confetti.”
I glanced at Mother.
She shook her head and said, “I suppose you can’t fight the fact that half of your blood is from Flint.”
I tore into the newspaper on the first present and was shocked!
It was old and tired and I had used it a million times before. How did Jimmie get this?
Jimmie said, “The library was selling books they didn’t want anymore. Here’s the receipt for these two.”
He handed me a piece of paper.
He’d paid three cents for the dictionary and two cents for a thesaurus.
Inside the first page of the dictionary someone had stamped in red ink
WITHDRAWN
.
Jimmie had written underneath that,
Febarery 14, 1935, happy twelve brithday sis
.
The dictionary and the thesaurus are the best birthday presents I will ever get. The best “brithday” presents too.
I looked back over my essay.
Jimmie’s pet peeve is when people call him Shorty, Little Fella, or worst of all, Pee-Wee
.
His dream is to start growing again until he is a six-foot-tall man who is covered with bumpy muscles. Jimmie’s other dream
is to be the first boy to drive a rocket ship to the moon. He is very disillusional
.
The youngest Malone child, your devoted author of this essay, Deza, is twelve years old, which makes me the third-oldest child in my class. I didn’t flunk, but two years ago I had to sit out a year of school because Mother was struck down by a horrible disease called Tic Do La Roo. That is a French word that means “Pain of the Devil.” Her face felt like it was on fire and she needed a very responsible person to look after her all day. I did it. My teachers said I could skip fourth grade to stay with my class but being a year behind meant I could be in class with the dearest friend anyone’s ever had, Miss Clarice Anne Johnson. I fought to stay. And I won
.
I am neither very intelligent nor very tall. I also have not been blessed with a beautiful singing voice. I have a pleasingly even disposition unless it’s one of those times that I become very angry or scared and have embarrassing wishes to hurt someone real bad
.
In the next part of the essay I was supposed to tell about
my
most annoying trait. I really did try, but I couldn’t think of even one. I thought about making one up, but even with my good imagination nothing came to mind that anyone with a whit of sense would believe.
Clarice and I had been walking home. “What do you think is my most annoying trait, Clarice?”
She said, “Ooh, Deza, you’re not done with the essay yet?”
“I was just having trouble with that part.”
“You know that I don’t think you have any annoying traits, Deza, but …”
She stopped.
“But what?”
“But maybe you could use some of the things other people say about you behind your back.”
I don’t pay a bit of attention to anything people say behind my back, but Mother tells me and Jimmie that we can learn something from anybody, even from a big idiot.
I said, “What do they say?”
“Well …”
I thought Clarice might have a problem coming up with something, but she held up a finger. “First, they think you’re too friendly with teachers.…”
Her next finger went up.
“Second, they say you think you’re so smart.…”
Another finger came up.
“Third, they say you think your family is so great.…”
Another finger.
“Fourth, they say you talk too much and that you talk all proper.…”
Her thumb came up.
“Fifth, they think you’ve got your nose stuck up in a book most of the time.…”
Clarice raised a finger on her left hand. “Sixth …”
I stopped her before we had to sit so she could take off her shoes and start counting on her toes. I said, “Maybe I do talk a little too much.”
At home I put in my essay:
My most annoying trait is that some of the time I might talk a little too much, I can be very verbose. I also exaggerate but that is
because I come from a family of great storytellers which is not the same as great liars
.
My most endearing trait, and being as modest as I am I had to ask my brother Jimmie for this, is that I have the heart of a champion, am steady as a rock and can be counted on to do what is required. Jimmie also said I am the smartest kid he has ever met, but my all-encompassing and pervasive humility prevents me from putting that on this list
.
My first pet peeve is when people don’t pronounce my name right. They’ll say Dee-za instead of Dez-uh, just like the first syllable of a desert, like the Sahara, which is geologically a arid, huge part of Africa. And they do it on purpose. My second pet peeve is that the Gary Iron-Head Dogs, the best baseball team in the world, have been cursed and will never win the Negro Leagues championship
.
My dream is to read every book in the Gary Public Library and to be a teacher who has the reputation for being tough but fair. Just like Mrs. Needham
.
I had the perfect ending for the essay.
In summation and conclusion, the Malone family has four members who are very bright, very good-looking and uniquely talented, just not all in one person at the same time. We are the only family in the world, in my ken, that has a motto of our own! That motto is “We are a family on a journey to a place called Wonderful.”
I can’t wait until we get there!
The Pie Thief
Jimmie said, “So, what’s for dessert, Ma?”
We had just finished supper and Chiefs’ and Children’s Chow Chat, something Father had made up where we told each other what our day had been like.
Mother’s eyes locked on Jimmie’s. She saw he was serious. “Well, Master Malone, this evening the chef has prepared for your dessert a lovely stack of dishes which Deza will wash and you will dry.”
Jimmie said, “How ’bout tonight we just let those dishes drip themselves dry?”
Mother said, “How ’bout tonight, just like every other night, we let ’em be dried by a little drip?”
Jimmie was still smiling. Most times if any of us forgot and
called him anything that had the word “little” in it he’d get pouty and would quit talking.
“Can I be excused for a second?”
Mother nodded and Jimmie went into the living room.
Father said, “Dessert? Where did that come from?”
From the porch Jimmie yelled, “Hey!”
He walked back through the dining room and into the kitchen holding something behind his back.
A second later he came back smiling like a Cheshire cat, still with his hands behind his back.
He said, “Ma, I’ma give you one more chance. What would have to happen for me to take a month or two off from drying the dishes?”