It's Not the End of the World

It's Not the End of the World - Blume, Judy.

I don't think I'll ever get married. Why should I? All it does is make you miserable. Just look at Mrs. Singer. Last year she was Miss Pace and everybody loved her. I said I'd absolutely die if I didn't get her for sixth grade. But I did-and what happened? She got married over the summer and now she's a witch!

Then there are my parents. They're always fighting. My father was late for dinner tonight and when he got home we were already at the table. Daddy said hello to me and Jeff. Then he turned to Mom. "Couldn't you have waited?" he asked her. "You knew I was coming home for dinner."

"Why didn't you call to say you'd be late?" Mom asked.

"It's only twenty after six. I got hung up in traffic."

"How was I supposed to know that?" Mom asked.

"Never mind!" My father sat down and helped himself to a slice of meat loaf and some Spanish rice. He took a few mouthfuls before he said, "This rice is cold."

"It was hot at six o'clock," Mom told him.

Me and Jeff kept on eating without saying a word. You could feel what was going on between my parents. I wasn't hungry any more.

Then Daddy asked, "Where's Amy?"

"In the den," Mom said.

"Did she eat?"

Mom didn't answer.

"I said did she eat her supper?"

"Of course she did," Mom snapped. "What do you think I do-starve her when you're not around?"

My father pushed his plate away and called, "Amy . . .Amy. . ."

Amy is six. When she doesn't like what we're having for dinner she eats a bowl of cereal instead. Then she races into the den to see her favorite TV show. But when Daddy called her she ran back to the kitchen. She gave him a kiss and said, "Hi Daddy."

"How's my girl?"

"Fine."

"Sit down at the table and drink your milk," he said.

"First a riddle," Amy told him.

"Okay, but just one."

Amy is driving us crazy with her riddles. Ever since she started first grade it's been one riddle after another. And you can't tell her you already know the answer because she doesn't care. She'll keep asking anyway.

"Why did the man put Band-Aids in his refrigerator?" Amy asked.

"I give up," my father said.

"Because it had cold cuts!" Amy laughed at her joke. She was the only one who did. "You get it now? Cold cuts. The refrigerator had cold cuts'. Like bologna. . . get it?"

"I get it," Daddy said. "That's a very good riddle. Now sit down and drink your milk."

As Amy sat down she accidentally shook the table and her milk spilled all over the place. Mom jumped up to get the sponge.

"Don't be mad, Mommy. It was an accident," Amy said.

"Who's mad?" my mother shouted. She mopped up the mess. Then she threw the sponge across the kitchen. It landed on the counter, next to the sink. "Who's mad?" she hollered again as she ran out of the room and down the hall. I heard a door slam.

My mother's temper is getting worse. Last week she baked a cake. When she served it my father said, "That's not mocha icing, is it?" And my mother told

him, "Yes, it is." So Daddy said, "You know I can't stand mocha. Why didn't you make chocolate?" And Mom said, "Because I'm sick of chocolate, that's why!"

I love dessert and by then my mouth was really watering. I wished they would hurry and finish talking about it so I could start eating.

But my father said, "I'll have to scrape off the icing."

Mom looked right at Daddy and told him, "Don't do me any favors!" Then she picked up that beautiful cake, held it high over her head and dropped it. It smashed at my father's feet. The plate broke into a million pieces and the chips flew all around. It was one of our ordinary kitchen plates. I'll bet if it was an antique, my mother never would have dropped it like that.

Later, when nobody was looking, I snitched a piece of cake off the floor. Even though it had fallen apart it was still delicious.

But that was last week. Tonight Mom didn't throw anything but the sponge. As she ran out of the kitchen my father cursed, crumpled up his napkin and got up from the table. Jeff pushed his chair away too, but my father hollered, "You stay right where you are and finish your dinner!" He grabbed his coat and went out the back door. In a minute I heard the garage door open and the car start.

"You really picked a great time to dump your milk," Jeff told Amy. He is fourteen and sometimes very moody.

"I didn't do it on purpose," Amy said. "You know it was an accident."

"Well, I hope you're happy," he told her. "Because the whole rotten night's ruined for all of us now!" He cursed like my father and Amy started to cry.

"I'm going to my room," she told us. "Nobody loves me any more!"

Jeff was the next one to walk out of the kitchen, leaving me there alone. I knew where he was going. To his private hideaway. It's on the third floor and it used to be the spare room. The ceiling is low on one side and the windows are small and up high. I don't see why anybody would want to sleep in there if he didn't have to.

Jeff spent a lot of time decorating it. There's a big sign on the door that says Jeff's Hideaway / All Who Enter Do So at Their Own Risk. Then there's a purple light hanging from the ceiling and a million posters all over the walls. It's very messy too. In the fall we had to have the exterminator because of Jeff. He took so many cookies and crackers and cans of soda up there we got bugs. My father was really sore! Jeff doesn't throw his garbage under the bed any more. And he's not supposed to drink soda anyway. It's bad

for his zits. My mother calls them pimples and says he's lucky that he's only got one or two.

His zits don't stop the girls from calling though. They call all the time. My father has threatened to limit Jeff's phone conversations to two minutes. Jeff doesn't care. There's only one girl he wants to talk to anyway. That's Mary Louise Rumberger. She's in his homeroom. I've only seen her once. She has very nice hair and she smells like Noxzema.

I know what Jeff does up in his room. He lifts weights. Isn't that the dumbest thing! He wants to be on the wrestling team next year. My mother's worried sick because she's afraid he'll get hurt. I wonder if maybe Mary Louise Rumberger likes big muscles?

The house was very quiet. I was still sitting at the dinner table, making little designs on my plate with the Spanish rice. I thought about clearing away the dishes and even stacking them in the dishwasher. But why should I? I didn't start the fight. It wasn't my fault dinner was ruined. I wondered if my mother had something special planned for dessert. I wasn't about to ask her though. She was probably locked up in her bathroom.

I went to the pantry and took down a box of chocolate-chip cookies. On my way upstairs I scooped up Mew, who was sitting on her favorite chair in the living room.

She is supposed to be the family cat but she loves me best. Probably because she knows I love her more than anything in the world. From far away it looks as if Mew's coat is dark gray, but when you get up close you can see that she's really striped-black,

gray, a tiny bit of white and even some red here and there. She is also very fat. She wears a collar with bells around her neck. This helps do two things: One is, it warns the birds, which Mew loves to chase. And two is, it keeps her from sneaking up on you. She's very good at sneaking around. Sometimes she hides under our beds and when we walk by she jumps out. That's just her way of playing. Neither my mother or my father is crazy about Mew and her games.

When I got to my room I closed the door with my foot and put Mew down on my bed. I flopped next to her and she stretched out. She likes me to scratch her belly. I ate my cookies and let Mew lick up the crumbs. She has never put out her claws at me. And she doesn't rip up the furniture like other cats do. It's a good thing too, because if she did we wouldn't be able to keep her.

Some people might think Mew is a dumb name for a cat. But when she came to our door two years ago she was just a tiny kitten. She called mew mew mew and I gave her a dish of milk. She's been ours ever since. At first we all tried to think up clever names for her. But while we were thinking we got used to calling her Mew. So finally we gave up and agreed that would be her name forever.

She curled up and went to sleep as I sat down at my desk. My desk is very special. It used to be a part of somebody's dining-room set. Mom bought it for

five dollars and refinished it herself. She's very good at that. Now it's bright yellow and has small gold handles on every drawer. My friends think it's neat.

I opened my middle drawer and took out my Day Book. My father gets one in the mail every December and he gives it to me. It has a plain black cover with gold letters that say Global Insurance Company. Inside there's a half page for every day in the year. It's not really a diary because it has no lock. It's more of an appointment book, but I don't keep a record of my appointments. If I have to go to the dentist or something like that my mother marks it on her calendar. I'm not interested in writing down that stuff.

I do keep a bunch of rubber bands wrapped around my Day Book just in case anyone happens to be snooping in my desk. They are arranged in a special way that only I understand. I took off all six of them and opened to Thursday, February 25. At the top of the page I wrote: Fight-E.N.'s fault.

E.N. are my mother's initials. They stand for Ellie Newman. Her real name is Eleanor but nobody ever calls her that. My real name is Karen and nobody ever calls me anything else. It's hard to make a nickname out of Karen.

I try to be very fair about my parents' fights. Tonight was definitely my mother's fault. She should have been nicer to Daddy when he came home. She

knows he likes to relax with a drink before dinner. And she shouldn't have hollered when Amy spilled her milk. That can happen to anyone.

The time Mom dropped the cake on the floor was my father's fault. He started that one by saying he hates mocha icing. So that night I wrote: Fight- B.N.'s fault. My father's name is Bill-well, really William, but that's beside the point.

I put my pencil in my mouth and chewed on it for a while. When I was in first grade we had a contest to see who had the fewest teeth marks on his pencils at the end of the year. I lost. Biting on a pencil helps me think better.

I flipped back through the pages of my Day Book. I always give each day a mark, like on a report card. Practically every day this month has gotten a C.

My last A+ day was December 14. That was a really perfect one. First of all, Gary Owens, who is a boy in my class, chose me as his partner in a spelling bee. I hope it wasn't just because I am a good speller. And second of all, Mrs. Singer acted practically human. She didn't yell once. But the best thing about that day was the snow. We usually don't get that much snow so early in the season. It started in the morning and didn't stop until dinnertime. As soon as we finished eating, my father and Jeff went outside to shovel the walk. Me and Amy were dying to go out too. Finally Mom said, "Okay . . . if you bundle

up good and promise to come inside when you get cold."

I helped Amy get ready. She has trouble with her boots. I tied up her hood and found her a pair of mittens. Then we went out together.

When Jeff saw us he called, "How about a snowball fight? Me and Amy against Karen and Dad."

"Okay," we called.

Daddy and I hurried around to the side of our house and I made the snowballs for him to throw. Jeff and Amy hid behind the big tree and pretty soon the snow was flying. I think Daddy and I won but it didn't matter because it was such fun. When we got tired of throwing snowballs Amy and me lay down in the snow and made angels. I was moving my arms back and forth to make really good wings. Then I looked up at the sky. There were a million stars. I wanted everything to stay just the way it was- still and beautiful.

When we got up we were both soaked and I was sure Mom would yell at us. But we ran inside and she just laughed and told us we looked like snowmen. After we got into our pajamas Mom made us hot chocolate with little balls of whipped cream on top. As I drank it I thought, I have never felt so good. Absolutely never!

Later I went up to my room and marked my Day Book A+. I didn't have to chew on my pencil to

think it over. December 14 was perfect in every way.

But things have been going downhill since then. I'll bet my father will sleep in the den tonight. He's been doing that more and more. He tells us it's because my mother sits up in bed half the night watching the late show. But my mother says she can't get to sleep because Daddy snores so loud.

I marked Thursday, February 25 C-. Then I put the rubber bands back on my Day Book and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Maybe tomorrow will be an A+ day. I hope so.

3.

Debbie Bartell has been my best friend since kindergarten. She lives two blocks away. We've only been separated twice in school-in second grade and fifth. This year we're both blessed with Mrs. Singer. Debbie has a younger brother the same age as Amy, so we really have a lot in common.

The trouble with Debbie is, she takes a million lessons. I only take piano, on Thursdays. But Debbie is busy five days a week plus Saturday mornings. I know her whole schedule. On Monday she's got piano. On Tuesday it's ballet. On Wednesday, Girl Scouts-on Thursday, ice-skating-on Friday, allergy shots-and art every Saturday morning.

It's all her mother's idea. Mrs. Bartell wants her to try out everything. Thank goodness we're in Girl Scouts together or I'd never see Debbie after school. I happen to know that Debbie wishes she had more free time to fool around and do nothing, but she

doesn't want to hurt her mother's feelings. Now Mrs. Bartell has found out the indoor tennis club is giving lessons to kids every Sunday afternoon. Guess what Debbie got for Christmas? A tennis racket!

When I met her at the bus stop this morning Debbie said, "I don't need my allergy shots today."

"How come?" I asked. "It's Friday."

"My doctor's on vacation. If I start to wheeze my mother's supposed to call some other doctor."