Fabulous Five 015 - Melanie's Identity Crisis Read Free

teasing again. "Now in my family everybody has always been
serious, and hardworking, and the sort of people who stayed out of mischief."
They had laughed hard over that, and the warm feeling had washed over Melanie
again. Still, she wanted to know more.
    "Tell me about Great-great-grandmother Cordia,"
Melanie insisted. "What do you mean, she was a character?"
    Her mother was thoughtful for a moment. "Well, I don't
really know very much about her. I've just always heard stories from my mother
and grandmother about how she was always getting into mischief when she was
young, especially where boys were concerned."
    "Boys?" Melanie whispered as little tingles
traveled up her spine.
    "That's right," said her mother. "According
to the stories, she had so many boyfriends that her girlfriends were jealous."
    But that was all her mother had been able to tell her about
Great-great-grandmother Cordia, and now, sitting in class and looking at the
chart with over half of the blanks filled in, Melanie was curious again about
the ancestor who had gotten into mischief because of boys. She couldn't help
remembering Mrs. Clark's words: "What you are is partly because of your
ancestors, who each contributed a little bit of themselves in the form of the
genes they passed on to you. You are all of them, and you are like no one else.
You are yourself ." What had her great-great-grandmother really been
like? she wondered. And had some of Cordia Mae Lee's personality been passed on
down to her?
    Just then Mrs. Clark came bustling into the room. "Good
afternoon, class," she called. "How many of you filled in at least
part of your family trees? Let me see hands."
    Hands shot up all over the room. In fact, as she glanced
around, Melanie could only see two kids who had not raised theirs, Funny
Hawthorne and Joel Murphy. Joel was late handing in his homework half the time,
she mused, so it wasn't strange that he hadn't filled in his family tree. But
why hadn't Funny?
    Melanie looked closely at her. Funny's usually smiling face
was serious now and her eyes were downcast. That's strange, thought Melanie.
Jana had told her that Funny's real name was Karen Janelle Hawthorne, but her
family had nicknamed her Funny because of her sunny disposition. She had liked
to laugh so much when she was a baby that they had started calling her Funny,
and the name had stuck. Melanie couldn't remember ever seeing her before
without a smile on her face.
    "Good," said Mrs. Clark. "I'm glad so many of
you have gotten started because the next thing you're going to do is get to
know the relatives on your charts."
    Melanie blinked in surprise. Had her teacher been reading
her mind about her great-great-grandmother? But how could she possibly get to
know someone who had been born and died years ago?
    Across the room Clarence Marshall asked almost the same
question. "How can we get to know someone who's dead?"
    "That's a very good question, Clarence," said Mrs.
Clark. "We're going to do what other good detectives do, ask questions."
    A few kids giggled, and someone whispered loudly, "But
if they're dead, how are they going to answer?"
    "I heard that," Mrs. Clark called out good-naturedly.
"The answer is, you're going to talk to the people in your family who are
still alive and ask them to tell you any stories they know about the ancestors
on your chart. You can ask your parents or your aunts and uncles or even your
grandparents or great-grandparents, if they're still alive. In fact, sometimes
it's more fun to talk to older relatives because they can remember people and
things that no one else in the family even knows about."
    For the next few minutes Mrs. Clark gave them suggestions
for ways to talk to their relatives about the ancestors who especially
interested them, and Melanie began to make plans to find out about Great-great-grandmother
Cordia. Had her girlfriends accused her of being boy crazy? Melanie wondered,
feeling instant sympathy for this relative who had lived so long