7th Grade Reading The Pesky Goat

The Pesky Goat

Translated and retold by Marisa Montes

Doña Josefina lived on the outskirts of Ciáles, a small town in the highlands of Puerto Rico. Her tiny house was as spotless as a porcelain teacup. Although she lived alone, except for her dog, Ladrón, and her cat, Misifú, Doña Josefina was too busy to ever be lonely.

She spent all her waking moments tending her beloved garden. Doña Josefina was known throughout the island for her mano santa--the blessed hand that turned all plants she touched into breathtaking specimens of splendrous color and robust good health.

In the garden, she grew prize-winning roses and orchids, hibiscus and hydrangea, and dozens of jewel-colored flowers that grow only in the tropical climate of the lush Caribbean Islands. The garden air was forever perfumed with the scent of roses and honeysuckle.

Since Doña Josefina had no children of her own, she watched over her garden as a mother watches over her children. Each of her flowers was precious to her. She thanked God daily for the gift of being the caretaker of such a delightful paradise.

During the day, her paradise attracted butterflies and hummingbirds, bees and ants, and nightingales whose song was as sweet and pure as the water from a secret spring. At night, the garden attracted worms and toads and coquíes, tiny Puerto Rican tree frogs. One unfortunate night, the garden paradise also attracted a pest.

The next morning, Doña Josefina noticed, much to her distress, that the blossoms and tender branches of several young hydrangea plants had been badly chewed. The following morning, the leaves and flowers at the bottom of the large vine in front of the house had disappeared. On the third morning, Doña Josefina discovered that her begonias were gnawed almost to the root. Only stubby, mangled fingers remained, protruding from the rich, black soil.

On each occasion, Doña Josefina searched the ground for footprints or other signs as to what was destroying her precious garden. But she could find no clue.

That night, Doña Josefina didn't sleep. She stayed up all night watching from her window for the culprit to appear. Just before dawn, something crept into the garden. Doña Josefina held her breath and waited. As she watched, the thing seemed to rise into the air and take the shape of a small white goat. The goat floated toward a hydrangea plant. When it reached the plant, the goat began to feast on the large balls of blossoms.

"Ay, ay, ay!" cried Doña Josefina. "A cabra is destroying my precious darlings!"

Doña Josefina ran through the living room and out the front door. When she raced down the slick, tile-covered steps, her heel slipped, and she twisted her ankle.

"Oh, no!" she cried. "What shall I do?"

Unable to continue into the garden, Doña Josefina hobbled back into the house and called her dog.

"Ladrón, I will give you an extra helping of meat today if you'll go into the garden and chase away that cabra."

"¡Seguro!" Ladrón replied with an enthusiastic bark. "Of course I'll do it!"

Ladrón raced to the garden, his jowls drooling at the thought of an extra helping of meat. He sniffed loudly as he trotted around the flower beds, searching for the goat.

The goat heard him and prepared herself for an attack. She climbed onto a boulder that was hidden behind a bush. Then she took a deep breath to make herself appear larger and said in a deep, loud voice:

"Heed my words

and stay away.

I'll devour the first

to disobey!"

To Ladrón, the tiny goat seemed to have grown ten times its size. He swore that the goat's evil eyes glowed like burning coals. Its teeth would put a crocodile to shame. He didn't want to put those terrible teeth to a test, not for all the delicious meat in Puerto Rico!

Ladrón became a blur of spots and dust. He didn't stop running until he was safely under Doña Josefina's bed. There, he turned into a mass of trembling fur and clattering teeth. He refused to come out until morning, untempted by Doña Josefina's promises of roasted meats and spicy sausages.

"Ay, ay, ay!" cried Doña Josefina. "Now, what shall I do?"

At that moment, Misifú rubbed up against the old woman's leg.

"Ah, Misifú!" said Doña Josefina, stooping to pick up the white cat. "I'll give you two extra helpings of fish tonight if you'll just go into the garden and chase away that pesky cabra."

"Why not?" Misifú replied with flick of her tail. "¿Porqué no? It might be interesting to chase a goat."

In no particular hurry, Misifú sauntered out to the garden. Because she made no effort to hide herself, the goat spotted her strolling down the main garden path.

The pesky little goat prepared herself for battle. She climbed halfway up a sturdy trellis, poking her head between the vines. In a deep, loud voice, the pesky goat said:

"Heed my words

and stay away.

I'll devour the first

to disobey!"

Misifú froze in her tracks. Her luminous eyes widened and searched the darkness like lanterns for the owner of the voice. High above her head, Misifú saw a horrible head, the shape and size of a dragon's. Huge horns stuck out above its eyes. At its sides flapped large, wide wings. Its serpentine body entwined itself around the trellis. Misifú swore that from the creature's nostrils flames escaped and licked the sky.

This was no pesky goat--this was a dragon! And there weren't enough helpings of fish in all of Puerto Rico to tempt Misifú to tangle with a dragon. Misifú became a streak of white in the darkness and didn't stop running until she was safely under Doña Josefina's bed next to Ladrón. No promises of sweet cream and tender giblets could entice her out.

Doña Josefina placed her hands on top of her head. "Ay, ay, ay! ¿Qué haré? What shall I do?"

In the meantime, a bee had flown into the house through an open window. "¿Qué pasa, Doña Josefina? What's the problem?"

"Ah, brave abejita," began Doña Josefina, feeling some hope returning, "I'll give you ten drops of honey if you'll chase that pesky, pesky cabra from my garden."

The bee considered Doña Josefina's proposition, and replied: "¡Seguro! It'll be easy. The pesky goat will be gone in no time."

The bee buzzed out the window and into the garden. He buzzed in and out of the flowers and vines looking for the pesky goat. But the goat heard him and was ready. Rearing up on her hind legs, she said in a deep, loud voice:

"Heed my words

and stay away.

I'll devour the first

to disobey!"

The bee stared at the white phantom that loomed up before him. Never had he seen anything so large and hideous! It had to be the ghost of a dreadful ogre. No amount of honey was worth standing up to a phantom ogre!

In the next instant, the bee zoomed from the garden and didn't stop flying until he had passed two barrios. He had no intention of ever returning to Doña Josefina's garden paradise.

Doña Josefina waited and waited for the bee to announce that the pesky goat was gone for good. When the bee did not return, Doña Josefina began to cry.

"Ay, ay, ay! My beloved garden. That pesky, pesky, pesky cabra is going to destroy it all!"

The elderly woman felt a sting on her ear. "No llores, Doña Josefina. Please, don't cry," said a tiny voice. "Tell me your problem and perhaps I can help."

Doña Josefina flicked her ear and a little black ant dropped onto the palm of her hand. She stared at the little ant in disbelief. If her faithful Ladrón, her irascible Misifú, and a brave little bee could not chase away that pesky goat, how could a tiny little ant?

"Hormiguita," began Doña Josefina, feeling desperate, "are you brave enough to chase that pesky, pesky, pesky cabra from my garden?"

"I'm willing to try," said the little ant.

She crawled off Doña Josefina's hand and into the garden. Because the little ant was so tiny and quiet, she was able to sneak up on the pesky goat. Before the goat realized what was happening, the little ant climbed onto the goat's hind leg. She stung the goat in the leg, then on the stomach, then on the chest, and headed for her ear.

All the while, the pesky goat jumped and kicked and scratched. She rolled and rolled on the ground. But she couldn't make the stinging stop. Suddenly, a voice sang out:

"Heed my words

and go away.

I'll sting the one

Believing the garden had been invaded by an army of nasty stinging ants, the pesky goat ran off, never to be heard from again.

Doña Josefina rewarded the spunky little ant with all the sugar and bread crumbs she and her friends could carry to their ant hill. When her ankle healed, Doña Josefina went back to tending her beloved garden. With her help, the flowers and vines that the goat had chewed quickly mended and all traces of the pesky goat disappeared.

8th. Grade Reading - The First Day of School

The First Day of School

Edward P. Jones

Directions: As you’re reading, stop and make INFERENCES.

On an otherwise unremarkable September morning, long before I learned to be ashamed of my mother, she takes my hand and we set off down New Jersey Avenue to begin my very first day of school. I am wearing a checkered-like blue-and-green cotton dress, and scattered about these colors are bits of yellow and white and brown. My mother has uncharacteristically spent nearly an hour on my hair that morning, plaiting and replaiting so that now my scalp tingles.

Whenever I turn my head quickly, my nose fills with the faint smell of Dixie Peach hair grease. The smell is somehow a soothing one now and I will reach for it time- and time again before the morning ends. All the plaits, each with a blue barrette near the tip and each twisted into an uncommon sturdiness, will last until I go to bed that night, something that has never happened before. My stomach is full of milk and oatmeal sweetened with brown sugar. Like everything else I have on, my pale green slip and underwear are new, the underwear having come three to a plastic package with a little girl on the front who appears to be dancing. Behind my ears, my mother, to stop my whining, has dabbed the stingiest bit of her gardenia perfume, the last present my father gave her before he disappeared into memory.

Because I cannot smell it, I have only her word that the perfume is there. I am also wearing yellow socks trimmed with thin lines of black and white around the tops. My shoes are my greatest joy, black patent-leather miracles, and when one is nicked at the toe later that morning in class, my heart will break.

I am carrying a pencil, a pencil sharpener, and a small ten-cent tablet with a black-and-white speckled cover. My mother does not believe that a girl in kindergarten needs such things, so I am taking them only because of my insistent whining and because they are presents from our neighbors, Mary Keith and Blondelle Harris. Miss Mary and Miss Blondelle are watching my two younger sisters until my mother returns. The women are as precious to me as my mother and sisters. Out playing one day, I have overheard an older child, speaking to another child, call Miss Mary and Miss Blondelle a word that is brand new to me. This is my mother: When I say the word in fun to one of my sisters, my mother slaps me across the mouth and the word is lost for years and years.

All the way down New Jersey Avenue, the sidewalks are teeming with children. In my neighborhood, I have many friends, but I see none of them as my mother and I walk. We cross New York Avenue, we cross Pierce Street, and we cross L and K, and still I see no one who knows my name. At I Street, between New Jersey Avenue and Third Street, we enter Seaton Elementary School, a timeworn, sadfaced building across the street from my mother’s church, Mt. Carmel Baptist.

Just inside the front door, women out of the advertisements in Ebony are greeting other parents and children. The woman who greets us has pearls thick as jumbo marbles that come down almost to her navel, and she acts as if she had known me all my life, touching my shoulder, cupping her hand under my chin. She is enveloped in a perfume that I only know is not gardenia. When, in answer to her question, my mother tells her that we live at 1227 New Jersey Avenue, the woman first seems to be picturing in her head where we live. Then she shakes her head and says that we are at the wrong school, that we should be at Walker-Jones.

My mother shakes her head vigorously. ”I want her to go here,” my mother says. ”If I’da wanted her someplace else, I’da took her there.”

The woman continues to act as if she has known me all my life, but she tells my mother that we live beyond the area that Seaton serves. My mother is not convinced and for several more minutes she questions the woman about why I cannot attend Seaton. For as many Sundays as I can remember, perhaps even Sundays when I was in her womb, my mother has pointed across I Street to Seaton as we come and go to Mt. Carmel. ”You gonna go there and learn about the whole world.” But one of the guardians of that place is saying no, and no again. I am learning this about my mother: The higher up on the scale of respectability a person is—and teachers are rather high up in her eyes—the less she is liable to let them push her around. But finally, I see in her eyes the closing gate, and she takes my hand and we leave the building. On the steps, she stops as people move past us on either side.

“Mama, I can’t go to school?”

She says nothing at first, then takes my hand again and we are down the steps quickly and nearing New Jersey Avenue before I can blink. This is my mother: She says,”One monkey don’t stop no show.”

Walker-Jones is a larger, newer school and I immediately like it because of that. But it is not across the street from my mother’s church, her rock, one of her connections to God, and I sense her doubts as she absently rubs her thumb over the back of her hand. We find our way to the crowded auditorium where gray metal chairs are set up in the middle of the room. Along the wall to the left are tables and other chairs. Every chair seems occupied by a child or adult. Somewhere in the room a child is crying, a cry that rises above the buzz-talk of so many people. Strewn about the floor are dozens and dozens of pieces of white paper, and people are walking over them without any thought of picking them up. And seeing this lack of concern, I am all of a sudden afraid.

“Is this where they register for school?” my mother asks a woman at one of the tables.

The woman looks up slowly as if she has heard this question once too often. She nods. She is tiny, almost as small as the girl standing beside her. The woman’s hair is set in a mass of curlers and all of those curlers are made of paper money, here a dollar bill, there a five-dollar bill. The girl’s hair is arrayed in curls, but some of them are beginning to droop and this makes me happy.

On the table beside the woman’s pocketbook is a large notebook, worthy of someone in high school, and looking at me looking at the notebook, the girl places her hand possessively on it. In her other hand she holds several pencils with thick crowns of additional erasers.

“These the forms you gotta use?” my mother asks the woman, picking up a few pieces of the paper from the table. ”Is this what you have to fill out?”

The woman tells her yes, but that she need fill out only one.

“I see,” my mother says, looking about the room. Then: “Would you help me with this form? That is, if you don’t mind.”

The woman asks my mother what she means.  “This form. Would you mind help in me fill it out?” The woman still seems not to understand.

“I can’t read it. I don’t know how to read or write, and I’m asking you to help me.” My mother looks at me then looks away. I know almost all of her looks, but this one is brand new to me.

“Would you help me, then?” The woman says “Why sure,” and suddenly she appears happier, so much more satisfied with everything. She finishes the form for her daughter and my mother and I step aside to wait for her. We find two chairs nearby and sit. My mother is now diseased, according to the girl’s eyes, and until the moment her mother takes her and the form to the front of the auditorium, the girl never stops looking at my mother. I stare back at her. ”Don’t stare,” my mother says to me. ”You know better than that.”

Another woman out of the Ebony ads takes the woman’s child away. Now, the woman says upon returning, let’s see what we can do for you two.

My mother answers the questions the woman reads off the form. They start with my last name, and then on to the first and middle names. This is school, I think. This is going to school. My mother slowly enunciates each word of my name. This is my mother: As the questions go on, she takes from her pocketbook document after document, as if they will support my right to attend school, as if she has been saving them up for just this moment. Indeed, she takes out more papers than I have ever seen her do in other places: my birth certificate, my baptismal record, a doctor’s letter concerning my bout with chicken pox, rent receipts, records of immunization, a letter about our public assistance payments, even her marriage license—every single paper that has anything even remotely to do with my five-year-old life. Few of the papers are needed here, but it does not matter and my mother continues to pull out the documents with the purposefulness of a magician pulling out a long string of scarves. She has learned that money is the beginning and end of everything in this world, and when the woman finishes, my mother offers her fifty cents, and the woman accepts it without hesitation. My mother and I are just about the last parent and child in the room.

My mother presents the form to a woman sitting in front of the stage, and the woman looks at it and writes something on a white card, which she gives to my mother. Before long, the woman who has taken the girl with the drooping curls appears from behind us, speaks to the sitting woman, and introduces herself to my mother and me. She’s to be my teacher, she tells my mother. My mother stares.

We go into the hall, where my mother kneels down to me. Her lips are quivering. ”I’ll be back to pick you up at twelve o’clock. I don’t want you to go nowhere. You just wait right here. And listen to every word she say.” I touch her lips and press them together. It is an old, old game between us. She puts my hand down at my side, which is not part of the game. She stands and looks a second at the teacher, then she turns and walks away. I see where she has darned one of her socks the night before. Her shoes make loud sounds in the hall. She passes through the doors and I can still hear the loud sounds of her shoes. And even when the teacher turns me toward the classrooms and I hear what must be the singing and talking of all the children in the world, I can still hear my mother’s footsteps above it all.

8th. Grade - Reading - LEONA

 

  “Leona”

From Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman

Directions: As you read, stop and make PREDICTIONS. Underline clues from the story that helped you make your predictions.

Mama believed in doctors, but not Granny. Not even if they were black. No, ma’am. I grew up in her house, back in Atlanta. She drank down a big cup of goldenrod tea every morning, with a nutmeg floating in it, and declared she didn’t need no other medicine. Dr. Bates tried to sell her his iron pills and told her straight out that that tea of hers would raise her blood pressure and burst her heart. He passed away that very same summer. Next doctor said it would give her brain fever.

He died on his fiftieth birthday. I believe, right during the party. Had him a real nice funeral, later. Granny lived to ninety-nine, by her count. She kept a scrapbook with the obituaries of all the doctors she outlived and could recite the list of names by heart, like a chapter out of Genesis. We took to going to their funerals right regular over the years. She always laid some goldenrod on their graves.

I was thinking about her one day, walking home from the grocery store on Gibb Street. Then I came to the vacant lot and saw three people in different parts of it. I thought maybe they were looking for money.

Turned out they had shovels, not metal detectors. When I saw they had little gardens going, I said to myself, “I believe I’ll plant me a patch of goldenrod right here.”

There was a man standing and watching from the sidewalk and a gril looking down out a window. There were probably lots of folks who’d want to grow something, just like me. Then I studied all the trash on the ground. Don’t know why anyone called that lot “vacant.” The garbage was piled high as your waist, some of it from the neighborhood and some dropped off by outside people. The ones who don’t want to pay at the dump, or got dangerous chemicals, or think we’re such slobs down here we won’t mind another load of junk. We can’t get City Hall to pick up our trash, but we got it delivered just fine. The smell’s enough to curl up a crocodile’s nose, especially in the summer. The gardeners had made some trails through it. But I knew precious few would join ‘em until that mess was hauled away. Looking at it, I knew this wasn’t a job for no wheelbarrow. This was a job for the telephone.

I marched on home. I’ve got two kids in a high school that has more guns than books, so I know all about complaining to officials and such about things that need changing. Next morning was Monday. At nine o’clock I drank me a tall glass of water. I knew I’d be having to say the same thing to fifteen or twenty government folks. I put Miles on the CD player and stretched out on the bed. Might as well be comfortable when you’re on hold. Then I opened the phone book and started dialing.

You ever watch a sax player close? They push down a key and way at the other end of the instrument something moves. That’s what I was looking for – the key that would make that trash disappear.

I tried the City of Cleveland, then Cuyahoga County, then the State of Ohio, and finally the U.S. government. Six and a half hours later I found out the lot was owned by the city. But the people running Cleveland don’t usually come down here, unless they take a wrong turn on the freeway. You can’t measure the distance between my block and City Hall in miles.

Just the same, I kept working on it the next day. That Citizens’ Information Center told me to call the Public Health Department. They sent me to someone else. They’re all trained to be slippery as snakes. And to be out to lunch, to not return messages, and to keep folks on hold till they get gray and die. I had the feeling I was getting farther from the key I needed instead of closer. Then on the third day, I thought on it. When people talk to you on the phone, you’re nothing but a voice. And when you’re on hold you’re not even that. I had to make myself real to ‘em.

That morning I took a bus downtown and walked into the Public Health Department. Told about the trash all over again to this dolled-up receptionist. Let her see me up close and personal and hear me loud and clear. She just told me to sit down with the others waiting. I did. Then I opened the garbage bag I’d picked up in the lot on the way. The smell that came out of it made you think of hog pens and maggots and kitchen scraps from back when Nixon was president.

It was amazing how quick people noticed it, including that receptionist. And even more amazing how quick I was called in to have a meeting with someone. I was definitely real to them now. I brought that bag along with me into the meeting, to keep it that way.

 

8th. Grade Reading - THE YELLOW RIBBON

Name: __________________________                                                           Date: ______________

The Yellow Ribbon

My Notes

Jane wore a yellow ribbon around her neck everyday. And I mean everyday, rain or shine, whether it matched her outfit or not. It annoyed her best friend Johnny after awhile. He was her next-door neighbor and had known Jane since she was three. When he was young, he had barely noticed the yellow ribbon, but now they were in high school together, it bothered him. Why do you wear that yellow ribbon around your neck, Jane?? He would ask her every day. But she would not tell him. Still, in spite of this aggravation, Johnny thought she was cute. He asked her to the soda shop for an ice cream sundae. Then he asked her to watch him play in the football game. Then he started seeing her home. And come the spring, he asked her to the dance. Jane always said yes when he asked her out. And she always wore a yellow dress to match the ribbon around her neck. It finally occurred to Johnny that he and Jane were going steady, and he still didn't know why she wore the yellow ribbon around her neck. So he asked her about it yet again, and yet again she did not tell him. Maybe someday I'll tell you about it, she'd reply. Someday! That answer annoyed Johnny, but he shrugged it off, because Jane was so cute and fun to be with. Well, time flew past, as it has a habit of doing, and one day Johnny proposed to Jane and was accepted. They planned a big wedding, and Jane hinted that she might tell him about the yellow ribbon around her neck on their wedding day. But somehow, what with the preparations and his beautiful bride, and the lovely reception, Johnny never got around to asking Jane about it. And when he did remember, she got a bit teary-eyed, and said: We are so happy together, what difference does it make?? And Johnny decided she was right. Johnny and Jane raised a family of four, with the usual ups and downs, laughter and tears. When their golden anniversary rolled around, Johnny once again asked Jane about the yellow ribbon around her neck. It was the first time he'd brought it up since the week after their wedding. Whenever their children asked him about it, he'd always hushed them, and somehow none of the kids had dared ask their mother. Jane gave Johnny a sad look and said: Johnny, you've waited this long. You can wait awhile longer. And Johnny agreed. It was not until Jane was on her deathbed a year later that Johnny, seeing his last chance slip away, asked Jane one final time about the yellow ribbon she wore around her neck. She shook her head a bit at his persistence, and then said with a sad smile: Okay Johnny, you can go ahead and untie it. With shaking hands, Johnny fumbled for the knot and untied the yellow ribbon around his wife's neck. And Jane's head fell off.

8th. Grade Reading- ELEVEN

ELEVEN

By Sandra Cisneros

Directions: Read the story carefully. As you read, make inferences by using the clues in the text. Underline the clues that help you make your inference.

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth.

NOTES:

“Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.”

“Not mine,” says everybody. “Not me.”

“It has to belong to somebody, ”Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so.

Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.

“That’s not, I don’t, you’re not…Not mine.” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four.

“Of course it’s yours, ”Mrs. Price says. “ I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.

Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.

But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine.

In my head I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now, Rachel, that’s enough, ”because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.

“Rachel, ”Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense.”

“But it’s not –“

“Now!” Mrs. Price says.

NOTES:

This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and stand there with my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren’t even mine.

That’s when everything I’ve been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of me until there aren’t any more tears left in my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast.

But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers. I take it off right away and give it to her, only Mrs. Price pretends like everything’s okay.

Today I’m eleven. There’s a cake Mama’s making for tonight and when Papa comes home from work we’ll eat it. There’ll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you, Rachel, only it’s too late.

I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven. Because I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny—tiny you have to close your eyes to see it. 

8th. Grade Reading - STORY OF AN HOUR

The Story of An Hour

By Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

 Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

STORY OF AN HOUR RE-WRITTEN

The Story of An Hour

By Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

8th. Grade Readings - The Window

Name: ____________________________________               Date: _________________

The Window by Harry Buschman

Directions: As you read the story, stop and make predictions.

Two men, both seriously sick, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour a day to drain the fluids from his lungs. His bed was next to the room's only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their hobbies, where they had been on vacation. And every afternoon when the man in the bed next to the window could sit up, he passed the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed lived for those one-hour periods when his world was brightened and enlivened by all the images of the activity and color of the outside world. The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake, the man had said. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Lovers walked arm in arm amid flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance. As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room closed his eyes and imagined the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by.  Although the other man could not hear the band, he could see it in his mind as the man by the window explained it with descriptive words. Unexpectedly, a new thought entered his head: Why should he have all the pleasure of seeing everything while I never get to see anything? It didn't seem fair. As the thought fermented, the man felt ashamed at first. But as the days passed and he missed seeing more sights, his envy became resentment and soon made him angry. He   began to think about it more and more and found himself unable to sleep. He should be by that window - and that thought now controlled his life.

Late one night, as he lay staring at the ceiling, the man by the window began to cough. He was choking on the fluid in his lungs.

The other man watched in the dimly lit room as the struggling man by the window groped for the button to call for help. Listening from across the room, he never moved, never pushed his own button, which would have brought the nurse running. In less than five minutes, the coughing and choking topped, along with the sound of breathing. Now, there was only silence--deathly silence.

The following morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths. When she found the lifeless body of the man by the window, she was saddened and called the hospital attendant to take it away. She said no words, didn’t make a big deal of it. As soon as it seemed appropriate, the man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it all himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed. It faced a blank wall.