Fleabrain Loves Franny by Joanne Rocklin

Fleabrain Loves Franny by Joanne Rocklin

Author:Joanne Rocklin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2014-06-27T16:00:00+00:00


Poster Child

Franny’s mother shook the newspaper at the breakfast table.

“Listen to this,” she said. “ ‘If you lined up a bunch of dimes, you would need exactly 92,160 of them to make a mile. That’s $9,216.’ Whoever figured that out has a lot of time on their hands! ‘This week, mothers in Pittsburgh will be collecting money for the March of Dimes, trying to amass a Mile of Dimes like other cities in the U.S.’ Well, I believe I’m going to be one of those marchers.”

The March of Dimes was like a great big tzedakah box—an organization collecting dimes for the unfortunate victims of polio and for polio research. Franny used to think of the “unfortunate” as people who were hungry or cold and very poor, like the boy in her song with blistered feet who had to wear his sister’s clothes. Sometimes she’d see photographs of those unfortunates in the newspaper: children with huge eyes, wrapped in dingy blankets and holding empty bowls. Or photographs of unshaven older men eating a holiday dinner at a long table in a church hall.

But, of course, polio victims were unfortunates, too. There were posters of the March of Dimes poster children everywhere, it seemed—in libraries, stores, and banks. There was a photograph of one of them in that day’s newspaper.

When Franny looked at the top half of the poster child, ignoring the bottom half showing the little boy’s braces and wheelchair, he was a regular kid, laughing with joy. A kindly nurse laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. There were other children in the photo, children who didn’t have polio, crowding around the poster child’s wheelchair like really good buddies.

She herself would make a terrible poster child. And the only good buddy in her newspaper photo would be Fleabrain, who would look like a speck of dust on the page. No, not even a speck of dust. You wouldn’t even see him at all.

Fleabrain. Dear, dear Fleabrain.

As if reading Franny’s mind, Min said, “If you were a poster child, you’d stick out your tongue at the camera. Or bury your head in a book, foaming at the mouth.”

That made Franny laugh, because it was sort of true. Sometimes only a sister was allowed to say something sort of true, and then it became funny.

“Or I’d play ‘Yankee Doodle’ over and over on my clarinet until the photographer ran away screaming,” said Franny.

Fleabrain himself had put forth his opinion about all of this.

“Francine, those happy poster children are part of a giant marketing campaign to collect funds! Don’t get me started on modern advertising! It’s too unpleasant for people to open their newspaper and see a crabby poster child. That, my dear, would be an oxymoron, like a giant shrimp. Or a wise fool.”

Now Franny’s father glanced at the poster child’s photo. “A photo should encourage people to donate money, and this one is doing its job. The newspapers and the March of Dimes are educating the public about polio, as well as saving the Katzenbacks from debtors’ prison.



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