Mitch and Amy (5 page)

“Good-bye. Have a nice day.” Mrs. Huff sounded a little tired as Amy followed her brother out the back door with her lunch money, check for accident insurance, and the peanut-butter jar. “And after this, please remember things the night before,” she called after them.

“Sure, Mom,” Mitchell called back, light-footed in his new sneakers.

“Sure, Mom,” answered Amy, lighthearted because once again she had escaped drill in her multiplication facts. The fall morning was the kind she liked best—patches of sun shining through the morning fog and the pungent smell of damp eucalyptus leaves heavy in the air. Who could care
about multiplication on a morning like this one?

School started happily enough with Amy setting the phonograph needle in the right groove of the
America the Beautiful
record, but when the class had sung the song and Amy had returned to her seat, Mrs. Martin started passing out paper. “Class, we are going to have our test on multiplication facts the first thing while our minds are fresh.”

There was a murmur in the classroom. A lot of pupils felt Mrs. Martin was not being fair. Amy had a sinking feeling in her stomach that felt like the sound her cello made when she dragged her bow across the strings.

“Mrs. Martin, there aren't any problems on my paper. Just rows of numbers,” someone said.

Mrs. Martin smiled. “I have a surprise
for you. Today a phonograph record is going to give us our problems. The numbers on your papers are the numbers of the problems. You all know enough to put your first answer by number one.”

This procedure was a surprise to Amy, who had not expected an audio-visual aid to give tests.

Fog still hung like a gray veil outside the windows of the little wooden building. Mrs. Martin turned on the lights. “When we all have our papers in front of us and our pencils in our hands, I will play a record of a man reading the multiplication problems. Can anyone tell me why we are taking our test this way?”

“So we get to use our audio-visual aids?” suggested Mike, who was always the first one in the class to speak.

“So you can do something else while we take the test?” asked Bonnie Puckett.

Mrs. Martin shook her head. “We're taking the test from the record, because all the fourth-grade classes are going to take the same test and it is important for all classes to be tested at the same speed. This way one teacher cannot read the problems faster than another teacher.”

Amy had to admit to herself that this reason sounded fair, but still she did not like the idea. She held her pencil beside the first space on her paper so she would be ready.

Mrs. Martin set the record on the turntable. “Let me give you a hint,” she said. “If you don't know an answer, skip it and go on to the next problem.” Then she set the needle in the groove on the record.

“Are you ready?” asked the phonograph in a man's voice. His voice was as calm as the voice on the birdcall record. Here was another man who had never hit his sister or cheered at a baseball game.

“No!” shouted the class.

The record ignored this response. “Four times six,” it said, sounding so much like the man on Mrs. Huff's birdcall record that for a moment Amy expected to hear a chirp or a trill. Four times six, four times six, Amy thought frantically. I can do it if you'll just give me time.

The record did not care how Amy felt. It was not interested in giving her time. “Three times five,” it said evenly.

Wait! a voice within Amy cried. I don't have four times six yet. She could hear Mike Melnick's pencil scratch on his paper. Mike knew four times six. Mike also knew three times five. Mike was the smartest boy in the class.

“Five times eight.” The record was not interested in what Mike or Amy or anyone else knew. It had no heart. It isn't fair, thought Amy rebelliously. The record doesn't ask anything I can answer fast.

“Two times two,” said the record.

Four! thought Amy triumphantly in spite of her dismay that the record seemed to read her thoughts. She managed to write down the answer and think, I got you that time.

The record, ignoring her turmoil, said, “Six times six.” Before she even had time to think it went on and said, “Four times five.”

This answer Amy knew, but when she wrote it down she was not sure she wrote it in the right space.

“Three times nine,” said the machine.

I
hate
you, thought Amy, growing more and more panicky. If a real live teacher had been giving the test, she could have raised her hand and asked to have the problem repeated in order to gain time. All around her she heard pencils scratch on paper. Knowing that Marla was able to write down answers
hurt, and Amy felt as if Marla were almost disloyal to get ahead of her. “Nine times two.” If only you would stop for a minute so I could catch up, thought Amy. Just one teeny little weeny little minute. That's all I ask.

“Seven times four,” said the relentless machine, feeling not the least bit sorry for Amy.

Seven times four, seven times four. Amy's thoughts were spinning. I hate you, I hate you, I
hate
you. She had forgotten all the multiplication facts she had ever known. All she could do was sit and hate the machine for not caring and herself for not knowing the answers.

Amy gave up. Her eyes filled with tears. Everyone in the class would finish the test but Amy. She would be put in the lowest arithmetic group, and all because of that machine. It wasn't fair. She never thought
an audio-visual aid could treat her this way. The fourth grade had started out so happily, too, in the little building like an old-fashioned school. Well, no pioneer girl in a book ever had to take a test from a machine that would not slow down.

“Three times four.”

Oh shut up, thought Amy, blinking away her tears. Her pride was hurt. Now Marla was better than she was in arithmetic. And Mitchell was sure to shine in a test given by a machine, the way he loved things that plugged in and turned on. Amy was left behind.

Suddenly the lights went out. “Fi-ive—” drawled the machine. Amy looked up from her paper. “—t-ime-ss—se-ev-en-n-n,” the machine dragged the words out, before it died. Amy flopped back in her seat, glad of a moment's rest.

“Hooray!” said Mike Melnick right out loud, and the rest of the class laughed.

“Oh dear. And right in the middle of our test,” said Mrs. Martin.

Of course, everyone was delighted, and when Mrs. Martin sent Mike into Miss Colby's room to find out if her lights had gone out too, they learned that in all the temporary buildings the electricity had gone off because Miss Colby had blown a fuse when she had plugged in her slide projector. She had already notified the custodian. Minutes went by and still the lights did not go on. Finally a message arrived saying the custodian was out of fuses and had to drive downtown for a new supply.

“I'm sorry this had to happen,” said Mrs. Martin. “There is nothing we can do but start the test another time. Pass in your papers, please.”

Amy went limp with relief. She hoped the school would be without electricity
for a long, long time, perhaps forever. After all, why did they need it? Pioneers managed without electricity, didn't they? The thought crossed her mind that she had never read any stories about pioneer girls balking at their multiplication tables either. Pioneer girls were always thirsty for learning.

That afternoon when Amy returned home she found her mother listening to the birdcall record. “Bobwhite,” said the man's calm voice from the spinning record.
“Bobwhite. Bobwhite. Ka-loi-kee,”
answered the bird Amy dropped into a chair. For a moment she had expected the bird to say, “Six times seven.”

“Why, what's the matter, Amy?” Mrs. Huff sounded concerned as she turned off the phonograph.

“Nothing,” said Amy sadly. She enjoyed being alone with her mother, but the
memory of the test on multiplication facts spoiled everything.

“Yes, there is. Something is bothering you. I can tell.”

Amy managed a half smile. “I just…expected the bird to say something else, is all.”

Mitchell's sneakers came pounding up the driveway, and Amy heard her brother burst in through the kitchen door.

“Hi, lucky people,” said Mitchell, appearing in the living room, banana in hand and his shirttail hanging out.

Amy knew at once from the cheerful look on her brother's face and from the jaunty way in which he peeled his banana that everything was all right. Alan Hibbler had not bullied Mitchell that day.

“Hello, Mitchell. What kind of day did you have?” asked his mother.

“Pretty good,” said Mitchell through a mouthful of banana.

“I'm glad to hear that,” said his mother. “Don't take such big bites.”

“We had a keen test in arithmetic this afternoon,” said Mitchell, when he had gulped down the bite of banana. “It was on a record and—”

“Oh, be quiet,” Amy muttered under her breath, more annoyed with herself than with her brother. Mitchell should talk. He knew his multiplication facts. He
liked
multiplication facts.

Unfortunately, Mitchell caught her remark and became dramatic. When Mitchell was feeling good about something, he was inclined to be dramatic. “How do you like that?” he demanded. “Here I am, minding my own business, eating a banana, when my stupid old sister—”

“I am not your stupid old sister! And you shut up!” Amy flared up, arguing out of habit. She had not been angry with Mitchell and was quite certain that he was not angry
with her. Still, she couldn't very well let him call her his stupid old sister and get away with it.

“I don't have to shut up,” Mitchell informed his sister. “This is a free country, isn't it?”

“It doesn't mean it's a free country to call people names,” said Amy, taking up the familiar argument.

Mitchell was all exaggerated innocence. “What did I do? I just walk in here, minding my own business, eating a banana, and all of a sudden my stupid old sister tells me to be quiet.”

Mrs. Huff groaned. “Both of you, be quiet! Mitchell, stop teasing. Amy, you were rude. And as for me, I'm tired of your old ‘it's-a-free-country' argument. It has been going on since kindergarten.”

Mitchell was irrepressible. “Okay, Mom. I guess Amy hasn't heard of freedom of speech.”

Now Amy turned dramatic. “Mom! You see what I mean? Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to—”

Mrs. Huff interrupted. “Let me tell you something. Mothers are free to tell their children to stop bickering. Now both of you go to your rooms until you calm down.”

In her room Amy sat down and faced the unpleasant truth. Mitchell had no trouble with the test because he knew the answers, and she could not let her brother get ahead of her. She was going to have to learn her multiplication facts and she was going to have to learn them fast, because sooner or later she would have to face that record player again, and the only way to beat it was to know the answers. Amy got up and rummaged through a drawer full of jacks, yo-yos, a plastic box of baby teeth, her junior fire marshal's badge, and a lot of old
birthday cards until she found the bundle of multiplication flash cards she had made in the third grade. They were not really cards but slips of paper with a multiplication problem on one side and the answer on the other.

For the first time, as she slipped the rubber band from the packet, Amy really wanted to learn the multiplication tables. If Mitchell and Marla and everyone else could keep up with a machine, she could too. She would overcome this hardship by being a brave pioneer girl huddled in front of the fireplace while the blizzard raged and the wolves howled…she was thirsty for learning….

A sound caught Amy's attention, and she looked up just in time to see Mitchell's arm reach around from his room, which was next to hers. A paper airplane came sailing onto her bed. The airplane bore one word printed in large letters with a ballpoint
pen. The word was
Stoopid
.

Amy giggled and was about to say in her pat-the-little-fellow-on-the-head voice, “Funny little boy. Doesn't even know how to spell stupid,” but instead she settled down to face a cold winter evening of hardship
testing herself on multiplication facts while the howling wolves moved closer and closer to the little log cabin in the clearing in the forest….