Gooney Bird and All Her Charms (3 page)

“Not the bread,” Nicholas said in a loud whisper. “I just gave him the bologna.”

“Shhh. Pay attention to Mr. Leroy.” Mrs. Pidgeon put her finger to her lips.

“Next: remind your parents. Bake sale at lunchtime next Tuesday! We're all hoping that someone's mom will make those delicious lemon squares again! The proceeds will go toward new music for the school band, and our music director, Mr. Bornstein, says thank you in advance!”

“Now he's going to say about Napoleon, I bet!” Malcolm said.

“Shhh.”

But he didn't. Instead, Mr. Leroy said, “Finally, our special treat this morning: Lielit Brehanu is going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Lielit's mother and father have just officially become American citizens!”

Everyone clapped. They all liked the quiet fourth grade girl who had come with her parents from Ethiopia last year. The children stood beside their desks and repeated the pledge with Lielit, who said the words proudly but sounded a little nervous over the intercom.

“Thank you, Lielit. And have a good day, everybody!” Mr. Leroy said, as he did every morning, and the speaker fell silent.

“I bet Napoleon's feelings are hurt,” Beanie said. “He didn't even get
mentioned!
”

They all looked sympathetically at the skeleton.

“I'm starting to have an idea,” Gooney Bird announced.

“What sort of idea?” Mrs. Pidgeon asked. They all knew that Gooney Bird's ideas were always good ones.

“About how we can make Napoleon famous in our school, but also it will be educational, and it won't be dangerous or anything.”

“Sounds terrific,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “Ready to tell us about it?”

“Not quite. My brain is still at work.”

“Fair enough. And actually, class, I was going to start our study of the human body with exactly that!”

“With what?” the children asked.

“With the brain!” Mrs. Pidgeon announced.

Keiko raised her hand and Mrs. Pidgeon said, “Yes, Keiko?”

“Napoleon doesn't have a brain,” Keiko said sadly in a soft voice.

“He did
once!
” Barry said.

“Yes, he certainly did. And what protected it?” Mrs. Pidgeon used her pointer and pointed to the chart, where the outlined head showed a wrinkled pinkish brain. Then she pointed to Napoleon's head.

“Skull!” all the children called.

Gooney Bird reached into her desk and pulled out her bracelet. She held it up so they could all see the small silver skull.

“Mrs. Pidgeon! Mrs. Pidgeon!” Malcolm was waving his hand. “Guess what!”

“What, Malcolm?”

“Last summer, at Little League, the pitcher hit me in the head with the ball! But I had a helmet on, and under my helmet was my skull, so I had lots of protection, and my brain was okay!”

“I'm glad to hear that, Malcolm. Not glad that you got hit by the ball, but glad that you didn't get hurt. Now, class—”

“He did it on purpose! It was Jamie Morrissy who was pitching, and he always hits people on purpose! My dad said that if he does it again—”

Mrs. Pidgeon went to Malcolm and put her calm-down arm across his shoulders.

 

 

“Malcolm's brain is at work right now, class,” she said. “He's remembering last summer, and it is our brain that stores our memories.”

“Lielit used her brain to remember all the words to the Pledge of Allegiance,” Felicia Ann said.

“And to say them,” Mrs. Pidgeon added. “Our brains control talking, and—what else?”

“Seeing!”

“Smelling!”

“Hearing!”

Every child had a hand in the air.

“The brain is like Command Central,” Mrs. Pidgeon said. “Messages zoom around brain cells faster than we can even imagine. And we have billions of brain cells! They're called
neurons
.

“They tell us if we're hungry or thirsty, or if we hear an airplane—”

“Our ears tell us that!” Ben said.

Mrs. Pidgeon used her pointer and tapped on the left ear of the figure on the chart. “Correct. Our ears take in the vibrations that cause the sound, and then the inner parts of the ear process the vibrations and send them to the brain so that Command Central can decide what the sound is. A jet engine? A mosquito? A baby crying?”

“
Triplets
all crying at once!” Malcolm said, and put his hands over his ears.

“And if the brain tells you it's a jet flying over, it also tells you to—”

“Look up at the sky?” said Nicholas.

“Right. But if the brain says, ‘Mosquito zooming in'?”

“Then Command Central says to slap it!” Beanie said. The children all slapped at their own arms and necks.

“Right. The brain tells your muscles to move your arm into a slapping position.”

“Never fast enough,” Tricia said. Everyone laughed.

“Let's begin reading this chapter. Tyrone? Will you read the first paragraph aloud?”

Mrs. Pidgeon paused and looked at Gooney Bird. “Gooney Bird? You with us? Or is your brain still working on its idea?”

Gooney Bird looked up. “Nope,” she said. “My idea is all worked out.”

“Tell us! Tell us!” all the second-graders called.

“I will,” she said, “after we read about the brain. Go ahead with your turn, Tyrone. Is your brain making a rap?”

Tyrone grinned. “Tryin' to,” he admitted. “But I always tell it to stop when we're workin' on serious stuff.”

He stood and began to read aloud as the other children followed the words in the book.

They took turns. Tyrone stood beside his desk and read about how important the brain was, and how it never stopped working, not even when you were asleep.

“I think it makes dreams,” Felicia Ann whispered.

“And nightmares?” asked Keiko nervously.

“Yes, nightmares too.”

“Oh dear,” said Keiko.

“Why don't you go next, Keiko?” Mrs. Pidgeon suggested.

So Keiko stood and read about how the eyes are connected to the brain, and the brain explains to us what we are seeing.

Then Malcolm read to the class the paragraph about hearing. He still wanted to tell the class about the noise the triplets in his family made. All that screaming, Malcolm described, came in through your ears as vibrations, and if there were too many vibrations, and therefore too much noise, the person whose brain was hearing it might get a terrible headache.

“My mom always has a headache,” he said.

“But sometimes those babies are laughing, Malcolm,” Mrs. Pidgeon pointed out. “Does your mom have a headache then?”

“Well, no,” Malcolm admitted. “She starts to laugh. We all do.”

One by one the children stood and read aloud about the many things that the brain can do. When Chelsea read about the sense of smell, they held up different things that had different smells: an eraser, a jar of paste, an open marking pen, and an orange from Ben's lunch. They read about taste.

“The brain has to work
hard
,” Barry said.

“And it has to remember everything!” Chelsea pointed out. “It has to
memorize!
”

“It's how we learn, isn't it, Mrs. Pidgeon? With our brains?” Tyrone asked. His foot began to tap a bit. He snapped the fingers on one hand.

Mrs. Pidgeon started to laugh a little. “Tyrone, I can tell that your brain is at work. You have a rap coming on, don't you?”

He nodded, with a grin.

“Okay, let's hear it,” she said.

Tyrone stood, snapped his fingers, wiggled his hips, and chanted,
“Stuffing it full don't cause no pain
,
cuz that be the job of Mister Brain”!

“Lemme hear it!” he called to the class.
“Mister Brain!”
they all chanted.

Tyrone twirled in a circle and began his next verse.
“That noise you hear, is it a car or a train? Who knows the difference?”
He cupped his ear with his hand as if to listen.

“Mister Brain!”

“You eat fried clams, or you eat chow mein?”
Tyrone twirled again and made an eating motion as if he were lifting a fork to his mouth.
“Who knows the difference?”

“MISTER BRAIN!”
the second-graders called loudly, laughing.

Tyrone bowed, and they all applauded. “I got more,” he said. “But I'll save it.”

“Save it in your brain!” Gooney Bird said. “And my brain's ready now with my idea.”

The class was silent, waiting.

“We need to take Napoleon traveling,” Gooney Bird said, “so that the other classes can meet him and learn about him.”

“Traveling?” Chelsea said. “How can he travel?”

Gooney Bird pointed out the small wheels that allowed Napoleon's stand to move. “We roll him to his destination,” she explained. “Then we'll lift him down and put him in his place. Remember Uncle Walter said we could sit him in a chair if we were careful?”

“What place? Where are we taking him?” Barry asked.

“You look worried, Barry,” Gooney Bird said. “But look at Napoleon. He's not worried at all.”

It was true. “He's smiling,” Keiko said. All of the children stared at Napoleon's head. They made big smiles, showing their teeth.

“As for where we're taking him? We've been studying his brain. So we need to show him
using
his brain. Where would that be, in this school?”

Mrs. Pidgeon smiled. “I know!” she said. “The library! Of course,” she added, “I hope you all use your brains
everywhere
. But I bet anything the library is what Gooney Bird has in mind.”

Gooney Bird nodded.

“Gooney Bird,” Mrs. Pidgeon went on, “I think you should go consult with Mrs. Clancy to be sure it's all right with her.”

Gooney Bird was already at her cubby, looking for the hat that she always wore when she paid a call on someone important. And Mrs. Clancy, the school librarian, was certainly important.

“While I'm gone,” Gooney Bird suggested, “maybe you could think about how Napoleon should be dressed in a brain-using outfit for his visit to the library.”

She adjusted the flowered hat over her red hair, left the classroom, and disappeared down the hall.

“Dressed?”
said Mrs. Pidgeon, turning to the class. “
Brain-using outfit?
Oh, dear.”

Barry and Ben, who had lifted Napoleon very carefully from his stand, sat him down in the chair that the class had selected. The library was filled with tables and chairs, but it also had a cozy reading corner furnished with a soft couch and a comfortable rocking chair. Sometimes Mr. Leroy sat there and read the newspaper in the middle of the morning, but not very often. He really liked drinking coffee with the newspaper, and Mrs. Clancy said, “Absolutely not. No coffee in the library.” She let Mr. Leroy take the newspaper to his office, instead.

“Yes, that one's fine,” Mrs. Clancy agreed when the second-graders pointed out the rocking chair they had chosen for Napoleon. “I think he'd look very contented there. Let's give him a cushion.” She took a soft pillow from the corner of the couch and placed it on the seat of the rocker.

Napoleon's ball-and-socket hip joints allowed his legs to bend at the hips so that he could sit with ease on the cushion. Then Ben bent one leg at the knee joint so that Napoleon's foot rested on the ground. Gently Tricia and Chelsea lifted his other leg, bent the knee, and rested his ankle across the opposite leg.

“That's exactly how Mr. Leroy sits in that chair,” Mrs. Clancy said. “When I let him sit there,” she added. “When he doesn't have a cup of coffee.”

Napoleon's spine leaned against the back of the chair, and each arm, bent at the elbow joint, rested on a wooden chair arm.

“Look, Mrs. Pidgeon!” Malcolm stroked the long bone of Napoleon's upper right arm. “Do you find this
humerus?
”

Mrs. Pidgeon groaned at the joke. She had explained to the children that the human arm had this one oddly named bone. “Yes, very
humerus
, Malcolm,” she said with a laugh.

“We need to show him using his brain,” Gooney Bird said. “So he should be reading something
really hard
.”

“How about this?” the librarian asked. “It couldn't be more appropriate. Mr. Furillo just returned it. He loves history, but he said this was pretty tough going.” She went to her desk, held up a book, and read the title aloud. “
The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
.”

“He wouldn't be reading about
himself!
” Malcolm said loudly. “That's dumb!”

“But, Malcolm,” Mrs. Pidgeon said, “if there were a book in this library called
Malcolm: The Difficult Life of an Eight-Year-Old Boy with Triplets at Home
, don't you think you would read it?”