The Best School Year Ever

The Best
Worst
School Year Ever

Barbara Robinson

This book is for my daughters—
Carolyn and Margie,
who brighten all the corners of my life. . . .

—B.R.

Contents

“Miss Kemp already wrote this year’s assignment on the board,” I told Imogene, “and it isn’t a science project.”

“Fine time to tell me,” Imogene grunted. “What is it? The assignment.” She shook the oatmeal box she was holding. “Is it mice?”

“No,” I said, “it’s about people.”

“Mice would be better,” Imogene said.

Later that morning Miss Kemp explained her assignment, and I thought Imogene might be right.

W
hen we studied the Old West, everybody had to do a special report on A Cowboy’s Life or Famous Indian Chiefs or Notorious Outlaw Families like the James brothers. Boomer Malone picked the James brothers, but then he couldn’t find them in the children’s encyclopedia.

“That’s all right, Boomer,” Miss Kemp said. “It doesn’t have to be the James brothers. Pick another outlaw family.”

So Boomer did. He picked the Herdmans.

Of course, the Herdmans weren’t in the Old West, and they weren’t in the children’s encyclopedia either. They were right there in the Woodrow Wilson School, all six of them spread out, one to a class, because the only teacher who could put up with two of them at once would have to be a Miss King Kong. My father said he bet that was in the teachers’ contracts along with sick leave and medical benefits: only one Herdman at a time.

Boomer’s paper was the best one, three whole pages of one crime after another. He should have gotten A plus, but Miss Kemp made him do the whole paper over.

“I’m ashamed of you, Boomer,” she said, “calling your own schoolmates an outlaw family.”

The Herdmans didn’t care. They knew they were outlaws. So did Miss Kemp, but I guess she had to pretend they were like everybody else.

They weren’t, and if they
had
been around in the Old West, they would have burned it all down or blown it all up and we wouldn’t have to study about it.

Plus, of course, we wouldn’t have to live with Herdmans every day, in school and out. . . .

U
nless you’re somebody like Huckle-berry Finn, the first day of school isn’t too bad. Most kids, by then, are bored with summer and itchy from mosquito bites and poison ivy and nothing to do. Your sneakers are all worn out and you can’t get new ones till school starts and your mother is sick and tired of yelling at you to pick things up and you’re sick and tired of picking the same things up.

Plus, the first day of school is only half a day for kids.

My little brother, Charlie, once asked my mother what the teachers do for the rest of the day.

“They get things ready—books and papers and lessons.”

“That’s not what Leroy Herdman says,” Charlie told her. “Leroy says as soon as the kids are gone, they lock all the doors and order in pizza and beer.”

“Well, they don’t,” Mother said, “and how would Leroy know anyway?”

“He forgot something,” Charlie said, “and he went back to get it and he couldn’t get in.”

“They saw him coming and locked the doors,” Mother said. “Wouldn’t you?”

Well, yes. Anyone would, because the Herdmans—Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys—were the worst kids in the history of the world. They weren’t honest or cheerful or industrious or cooperative or clean. They told lies and smoked cigars and set fire to things and hit little kids and cursed and stayed away from school whenever they wanted to and wouldn’t learn anything when they were there.

They were always there, though, on the first day, so you always knew right away that this was going to be another exciting Herdman year in the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School.

At least there was only one of them in each grade, and since they never got kept back, you always had the same one to put up with. I had Imogene, and what I did was stay out of her way, but it wasn’t easy.

This time she grabbed me in the hall and shoved an oatmeal box in my face. “Hey,” she said, “you want to buy a science project?”

I figured that Imogene’s idea of a science project would probably explode or catch fire or smell really bad or be alive and bite me— and, in fact, I could hear something squealing and scratching around in the oatmeal box.

“Miss Kemp already wrote this year’s assignment on the board,” I said, “and it isn’t a science project.”

“Fine time to tell me,” Imogene grunted. “What is it? The assignment.” She shook her oatmeal box. “Is it mice?”

So I was half right—Imogene’s science project was alive, but it probably wouldn’t bite me unless it was great big mice, and I didn’t want to find out.

“No,” I said, “it’s about people.”

“Mice would be better,” Imogene said.

Later that morning Miss Kemp explained her assignment, and I thought Imogene might be right, because the assignment sounded weird.

“For this year’s project,” she said, “we’re going to study each other. That’s the assignment on the blackboard, Compliments for Classmates.”

All over the room hands were going up and kids were saying “Huh?” and “What does it mean?” and “How many pages?” But Miss Kemp ignored all this.

“It means exactly what it says,” she said. “You’re to think of a special compliment for each person in this class, and please don’t groan”—a lot of people did anyway— “because this is the assignment for the
year.
You have all year to think about it, and next June, before the last day of school, you’ll draw names from a hat and think of more compliments for just that one person.”

Somebody asked if it could be a famous person instead, and somebody else asked if it could be a dead famous person, like George Washington.

Miss Kemp said no. “This is a classroom project, so it has to be people in this class. We know all about George Washington’s good points, but . . .” She looked around and picked on Boomer. “We don’t know all Boomer’s good points. More important,
Boomer
probably doesn’t know all his good points.”

“How many compliments?” Junior Jacobs wanted to know.

“Up to you,” Miss Kemp said.

Alice Wendleken raised her hand. “Would beautiful hair and shiny hair count as one compliment?”

This sounded to me as if Alice planned to compliment herself, which would save someone else the trouble, but Miss Kemp said, “I’m not talking about beautiful hair and nice teeth, Alice. I mean characteristics, personal qualities, something special.”

This could be hard, I thought. Take Albert Pelfrey. When you think of Albert Pelfrey, you think
fat.
Even Albert thinks
fat.
It’s hard to think anything else, so I would really have to study Albert to find some special personal quality that wasn’t just about being fat. And besides Albert there were twenty-eight other people, including Imogene Herdman.

“What’s a compliment?” Imogene asked me.

“It’s something nice you tell someone, like if someone is especially helpful or especially friendly.”

Alice looked Imogene up and down. “Or especially clean,” she said.

“Okay.” Imogene frowned. “But mice would still be better.”

Mice would probably be
easier
for Imogene because the Herdmans always had animals around. As far as I know they weren’t mean to the animals, but the animals they weren’t mean to were mean all by themselves, like their cat, which was crazy and had to be kept on a chain because it bit people.

Now and then you would see Mrs. Herdman walking the cat around the block on its chain, but she worked two shifts at the shoe factory and didn’t have much time left over to hang around the house and walk the cat.

There wasn’t any Mr. Herdman. Everybody agreed that after Gladys was born, he just climbed on a freight train and left town, but some people said he did it right away and some people said he waited a year or two.

“Gladys probably bit him,” my friend Alice Wendleken said.

“Not if she was a baby?” I asked. “Babies don’t have any teeth.”

“She probably had hard, hard gums.” Alice knew what she was talking about, because Gladys bit her all the time. Mrs. Wendleken always poured iodine all over the bites, so Alice had to go around for days with big brown splotches on her arms and legs. Alice was always afraid she would die anyway (of Gladys-bite) and have to be buried looking splotched up and ugly instead of beautiful in her blue-and-white dress with the ruffles.

It wasn’t all that special to get bitten by Gladys. She bit everybody, including my little brother, Charlie. Charlie came home yelling and screaming that Gladys bit him, and Gladys came too, which shows you how fearless they were. Any other kid who bit a kid and broke the skin and drew blood would go hide somewhere, but not Gladys.

“Gladys Herdman!” It’s always your whole name when my mother is mad. “Do you know what I think about a little girl who bites people? I think she ought to have to wear a sign around her neck that says ‘Beware of Gladys.’”

I guess Mother thought that would really put Gladys in her place, but Gladys just said “Okay” and went home and made the sign and wore it for a week. Nobody paid much attention—we didn’t need a sign to make us beware of Gladys.

Besides everything else they did, the Herdmans would steal anything they could carry, and it was surprising what all they could carry—not just candy and gum and gerbils and goldfish. They even stole Mrs. Johanneson’s concrete birdbath, for the goldfish, I guess. And last spring they stole my friend Louella McCluskey’s baby brother, Howard, from in front of the grocery store.

Of course Howard wasn’t supposed to be in front of the grocery store. Louella was supposed to be baby-sitting him, which she did every Tuesday afternoon while her mother went to the beauty parlor. Louella got paid fifty cents to do this, and on that particular Tuesday we were in the grocery store spending her fifty cents.

When we came out—no Howard. The stroller was still there, though, and that’s why we didn’t think of the Herdmans right away. Usually if you missed something, you would just naturally figure the Herdmans had it. But when they stole a thing, they always stole all of the thing. It wasn’t like them to take the baby and leave the stroller.

Louella turned the stroller over and looked underneath it as if she thought Howard might have fallen through, which was pretty dumb. Then we walked up and down the street, hollering for Howard, which was also dumb. How could Howard answer? He couldn’t even talk. He couldn’t walk either, or crawl very much. He couldn’t get out of the stroller in the first place.

“Well, somebody must have taken him,” Louella said. “Some stranger has just walked off with my baby brother.”

“You better tell a policeman,” I said.

“No, I don’t want to. They would get my mother out of the beauty parlor and I don’t want her to know.”

“She’ll know when you come home without Howard,” I said.

“I won’t go home. Not till I find him. Now let’s just think. Who would take Howard?”

I couldn’t imagine who would take Howard. Even my mother said Howard was the homeliest baby she’d ever laid eyes on, but she did say that he would probably be just fine once he grew some hair. That was his main trouble—having no hair. Here he was, bald as an egg, and Mrs. McCluskey kept rubbing his head with Vaseline to make the hair grow. So when you looked at Howard, all you saw was this shiny white head. Not too good.

“Probably someone who just loves babies,” Louella said, but that could be anybody. It would be easier to think of someone who hates babies, but if you hated them you certainly wouldn’t steal one.

Then Louella had another idea. “Let’s just walk down the street,” she said, “pushing the stroller. Maybe someone has seen Howard and when they see us with an empty stroller they’ll figure we’re looking for him and tell us where he is.”

I was pretty disgusted. “Louella,” I said, “you know that won’t happen.”

But it did. The first person we met was my little brother, Charlie, and the first thing he said was “If you’re looking for Howard, the Herdmans have got him.”

Louella looked relieved, but not very, and I didn’t blame her. If you had to choose between a total stranger having your baby brother and the Herdmans having him, you would pick the total stranger every time.

“What have they done with him?” Louella asked.

“They’re charging kids a quarter to look at him.”

“Why would anybody pay a quarter to look at Howard?” I said. “We can look at Howard anytime.”

“They don’t tell you it’s Howard. They’ve got a sign up that says, ‘See the Amazing Tattooed Baby! 25 cents.’”

“They tattooed him!” Louella yelped. “My mother will kill me!”

Actually, they didn’t tattoo him. What they did was wipe off the Vaseline and draw pictures all over his head with waterproof marker.

Charlie was dumb enough to fall for their sign. He paid his quarter to see an amazing tattooed baby, and of course he was mad as could be when it turned out to be Howard McCluskey with pictures drawn all over his head.

So he tagged along behind us, insisting that Louella get his money back, but we both knew that Louella would have all she could do just to get Howard back.

“If it was anything but the baby,” she said, “I wouldn’t even
try
to get it back—not from the Herdmans.”

“They already collected six-fifty,” Charlie said. “You ought to make them pay you some of that for the use of Howard.”

“I’ll probably have to pay them,” Louella grumbled.

She was right. When we got to the Herdmans’, there were three or four kids lined up outside the fence, and Louella marched up and said to Imogene Herdman, “You give me back my baby brother!”

But Imogene pretended not to hear her and just went on collecting money. “You want to see the tattooed baby?” She jiggled the money box at Louella. “It’ll cost you a quarter.”

“It’s no tattooed baby,” Louella said, “It’s my little brother.”

Imogene squinched her eyes together. “How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“You do not. It could be anybody’s baby. It could be some baby you never heard of. It’ll cost you a quarter to find out.”

Sure enough, it was Howard and he was a sight. The whole top of his head was red and green and blue and purple with pictures of dogs and cats and trees and tic-tac-toe games.

“I don’t know what you’re so mad about,” Leroy Herdman said. “He looks a lot better than he did.”

In a way Leroy was right. Howard looked a lot more
interesting
, but nobody expected Mrs. McCluskey to think so.

We took Howard out back of my house and tried to wash off his head, which is how we found out the pictures were all waterproof.

“Now what’ll I do?” Louella asked.

“Tell your mother the Herdmans did it,” Charlie said.

“She’ll just want to know why I let them do it, and how they got hold of him in the first place. Maybe we should use some soap.”

We tried all kinds of things on Howard, but the only thing that worked at all was scouring powder, and that didn’t work too well. It made his head gritty and it didn’t take off all the purple.

“If you don’t stand too close to him,” Louella said, “and then squint your eyes . . . does the purple look to you like veins?”

It didn’t to me. “But after all,” I told Louella, “I
know
what it is. Your mother doesn’t know what it is, so maybe it will look like veins to her.”

It didn’t. Mrs. McCluskey was so mad that she got a sick headache and spots before her eyes and had to lie down for two days. The first thing she did after she got up was go to work on Howard’s head to try and get the purple off, and she discovered two or three patches of soft fuzz.

So then she wasn’t mad at the Herdmans anymore. She said that something about all the drawing or the Magic Marker ink must have started his hair to grow. But she was still mad at Louella, which didn’t seem fair. After all, it
could
have been the scouring powder.

I said that to my mother, and I knew right away that it was a mistake, because she said, “What scouring powder?” and then, “Beth Bradley, come back here! What scouring powder?”

So then I got punished for putting scouring powder on Howard’s head, and Louella got punished for leaving him in front of the grocery store, and Charlie got punished by not having any Choco-Whoopee bars from the ice cream man till next week.