"Oh, no!" Keiko squealed. "The ones with the yucky bright blue and pink bottoms! I hate those!" She made a face.
Malcolm stopped jumping around. He announced his fable's title.
The Mandrill and Its Young
Once there was a female mandrill who was expecting a baby. She got very fat. Then one day her baby was born. It was pretty cute. She liked it.
But then, suddenly, she had
another
baby.
And then, suddenly,
another.
Well. That was pretty surprising. Now she had three mandrill babies. They were very noisy. They wanted to be fed every minute. They made a big mess. They threw things and broke things.
The father mandrill was never home. Sometimes the mother was so nervous and tired that she screamed.
And the worst thing was, the mother mandrill didn't have any time to take care of her older mandrill child.
"Oh, I wish I could get rid of a couple of these babies," she said. "Maybe I can sell them."
She asked all around the jungle, but no one wanted to buy a baby mandrill.
"Well, maybe I can give them away," she thought.
But no one wanted those babies, even as a gift.
She couldn't figure out what to do. She sat on the jungle floor, thinking.
Suddenly one of the babies smiled at her.
Then the next one did.
And then the third. All three baby mandrills were smiling for the first time.
"Hey, look!" the mother said to her older mandrill child. He was up in a tree, hiding, because he hated the babies. But he came down when his mom called.
He looked at the smiles. He reached over and tickled one of the babies. It laughed.
Another one puckered up its mouth and blew him a kiss.
The third one climbed into his lap, curled up, and began to sleep very quietly.
The older mandrill child was surprised at how much, suddenly, he had begun to like the babies.
"Let's keep them," he said to his mother. "They're cute."
So they did. After that, when the babies cried, the mother mandrill and her older mandrill child just covered their ears. They knew it wouldn't last.
"Oh, I love that fable," Keiko said with a sigh. "It was so sweet."
"Yeth," said Felicia Ann. "Tho thweet."
"Did the babies have purple bums?" asked Tyrone.
Malcolm shrugged. "I guess so," he said. "They were mandrills."
Gooney Bird went to the front of the class. "There is nothing whatsoever wrong with a purple bottom," she said. "Colorful is always good. I'm planning on dyeing part of my hair purple sometime.
"Thank you for your fable, Malcolm. Do you want to tell us the moral?"
"Okay. It's this," Malcolm said. "Things get better."
"They do indeed," Mrs. Pidgeon said, smiling. "And it sounds as if things are getting better at your house, Malcolm."
He nodded happily. Then he stopped smiling. "It'll be bad when I get home today, though," he said. "My mom will scream."
"Why is that?" asked Mrs. Pidgeon.
"Because I used an indelible marker on my nose," Malcolm said.
12.
"Who's left?" Mrs. Pidgeon looked around the room. "Just Gooney Bird and Nicholas, I guess. Goodness, we've done a lot of fables!"
"When do we do the parade?" Beanie asked.
"Tomorrow. It's the last day of school before vacation. Have you all saved your costumes? I have my panda vest right here in my desk drawer."
The children all nodded.
"Can I do us a rap for the parade?" Tyrone asked. "Most parades got a band. We need some kind of music."
"Yes!" the children called. "A rap!"
"Of course," said Mrs. Pidgeon. "But we'll all need to learn it, Tyrone, and we don't have much time."
"Ain't no problem, nuthin' to learn, just follow me and take your turn ..." Tyrone chanted.
"All right, I guess we can do that," said Mrs. Pidgeon. "We'll have a little practice time before we start the parade." She looked toward the corner of the classroom. "Gooney Bird?
Nicholas? Are you ready?"
Gooney Bird and Nicholas had been whispering to each other in the corner by the gerbil cage, planning the presentation of their fable. Now they nodded and came to the front of the room. Nicholas was grinning. It was already hard to remember how sad he had been, how he had stopped eating, and how he had sulked and refused to discuss his fable just a few days before.
They stood side by side and put on their costumes, dark beards that attached by plastic pieces that hooked around their ears.
"They're being Abe Lincoln!" Ben called. "That's not fair!"
"Anyway," Barry pointed out, "Abe Lincoln is A and L! They're supposed to be G and N!"
Gooney Bird held up a quiet-please finger. Eventually the class calmed down, though some of the children were still laughing at the sight of Gooney Bird and Nicholas wearing the dark brown beards, which did not match Gooney Bird's bright red hair, or Nicholas's blond curls, at all.
"We are not Abe Lincoln," Gooney Bird told the class. Her beard wobbled a little as she talked. "We are two animals who live in a large herd on the plains of Africa. Nicholas, will you write our name on the board?"
The list on the board was very long by now. Nicholas had to lean down to add the final animal at the end of it. Carefully, with the chalk, he made a capital G.
"I knew you were going to let Nicholas cheat!" Malcolm called. "He can't be a G animal!"
"Wait, Nicholas," Gooney Bird said. "Do not write any more until I deal with this." She put her hands on her hips and looked sternly at Malcolm.
"Malcolm," she said, "it is very important to have all the information before you come to a conclusion.
"For example," she went on, "if a stranger looked at you, that stranger might think, 'That poor boy has a very bad cold. See how bright pink his nose is.'"
"I don't have a cold," Malcolm argued.
"Of course you don't. The stranger wouldn't have all the information. The stranger wouldn't know that your very pink nose was a leftover mandrill."
"My mom scrubbed it," Malcolm said.
"Nonetheless," Gooney Bird replied, "do you see what I mean, about needing the information?"