Gooney Bird Greene Read Free Page A

waited. Gooney Bird looked at them all sternly. Then she did some breathing exercises and began again.
     
     
    They had always lived in China. But now Mr. Greene had a new job, and his new job was in Watertower.
    So they packed carefully. It took many days. First Mr. Greene had to pack forty-three sets of false teeth. Then Mrs. Greene had to pack her dancing shoes and her bathing suits. And Gooney Bird had to pack all of her belongings, which included a money collection.
    Finally their furniture was loaded onto a moving van, and the Greene family waved goodbye as the moving van drove away from China and started its journey to Watertower.
     
     
    Gooney Bird stopped. Every child in the classroom had a hand raised. And even Mrs. Pidgeon was waving her arm.
    "I'll have an intermission now, for questions," Gooney Bird said. "Chelsea? Yours first."
    "Why did Mr. Greene have forty-three pairs of false teeth?" Chelsea asked.
    "The false teeth are not part of this story," Gooney Bird said. "Malcolm?"
    Malcolm had looked up from his "I will not put anything in my nose" paper. His eyes were very wide. "Tell about the money collection!" he said.
    "That's another story," Gooney Bird said. "Beanie?"
    "When are you going to tell about the prince and the diamonds?" Beanie asked.
    Gooney Bird thought it over. "On Monday I'll tell it," she said. "Now, there's time for one more question before I continue. Mrs. Pidgeon? Did you have your hand raised?"
    Mrs. Pidgeon nodded. "Gooney Bird," she said in a nice voice, "you have an amazing imagination and we think you are wonderful at telling stories. Don't we, class?" She looked around, and almost all of the children nodded.
    "But I want to be certain that the children understand that these are made-up stories. So I want to point out—"
    "My stories are all absolutely true," Gooney Bird said.
    "I want to point out," Mrs. Pidegon went on, "that of course we all know that China is a foreign country across the ocean, and that a moving van could never drive from China to Watertower."
    Gooney Bird rearranged her pearls and sighed. "Mrs. Pidgeon," she said, "why don't we take a few minutes for research? Is there an atlas in the bookcase?"
    Mrs. Pidgeon laughed and said, "Of course." She went to the bookcase and took out a book of maps called an atlas.
    "Now," said Gooney Bird, "would you find out if there are other Chinas?"
    "Other Chinas? I don't think—" Mrs. Pidgeon began turning the pages of the atlas. She found the index at the back.
    "My goodness!" Mrs. Pidgeon said after a minute. "There's a China in Texas!"
    "Correct," said Gooney Bird. "And? What else?"
    "There's a China in Maine!"
    "Correct," said Gooney Bird. "And?"
    "California! There's a China Lake! Oh, and my goodness, look! In North Carolina—"
    "And now it is time to continue the story," Gooney Bird announced. "Where were we? Oh, yes. I remember. The moving van had just left China—"
    She took up the story again.
     
     
    After the moving van left China, the Greene family loaded up their station wagon with five big suitcases. Then they added a lawn mower that they had forgotten to put in the moving van, a cooler full of ham sandwiches and iced tea, a bundled-up stack of National Geographics, and an orange and white cat named Catman, who had no tail because he had flicked his former tail once under the lawn mower. The last thing they put into the station wagon was a rolled-up rug from the front porch of their house. It was too long to fit. They tried it sideways, and folded, and upside down, but it still wouldn't fit.
    "Let's leave it behind," Mr. Greene suggested.
    But Mrs. Greene began to cry. "It was my mother's," she said. "There's a stain on it where my mother spilled some black bean soup forty years ago. I feel sentimental about this rug."
    So Mr. Greene agreed to take the rug because it made him cry, too, if his wife cried. He decided to put the back window of the station wagon down so that the end of the rolled-up rug could