Fleabrain Loves Franny , livre ebook

To my dear friend Arlene Moscovitch, kindred spirit and book sharer since third grade
PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rocklin, Joanne. Fleabrain loves Franny / by Joanne Rocklin. pages cm Summary: This middle-grade novel takes place in Pittsburgh in 1952-53. The protagonist is Franny, a young girl of imagination, curiosity, and stubbornness. While recovering from polio, she begins a correspondence with a flea named Fleabrain -Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4197-1068-1 (hardback) [1. Poliomyelitis-Fiction. 2. People with disabilities-Fiction. 3. Family life-Pennsylvania-Fiction. 4. Fleas-Fiction. 5. Friendship-Fiction. 6. Jews-United States-Fiction. 7. Pittsburgh (Pa.)-History-20th century-Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.R59Fle 2014 [Fic]-dc23 2014006380
Text copyright 2014 Joanne Rocklin Book design by Kate Fitch
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CONTENTS
I SUMMER 1952: QUESTIONS
What Franny Knew
II AUTUMN 1952: CORRESPONDENCE
The Note from Nowhere
What Fleabrain Knew
Franny s Answer
Waiting
Other Things Fleabrain Knew
Believing
By the Light of the Moon
The Bookcase
The Vista from Alf s Left Ear
Revenge, Then Disaster
Last Words
Nothing, Then Something
Sparky s Finest
Nee-cheh
III WINTER 1952-53: ADVENTURES
The Bath
The Meeting
A Ride in the Night
FB Saliva #1
What the Professor Knew
Blisters
Holiday Headlines
Truths of the Universe
How Did Our Cars Travel Without Us?
FB Saliva #2
Miniaturized
Poster Child
Proud Pittsburgh
Dr. Engel, Who Thought He Knew Everything
Horsey! Horsey!
Happy Birthday to Franny
FB Saliva #1-X
A Wondrous Travel Journal
What Lightning Knew
Who Is the Gateway Angel?
IV SPRING 1953: HOPE
What the World Knew, Finally
FB Saliva #2-X
The Good News and the Bad
Reading
Professor Doctor Gutman and the Pack
Rereading
Rereading
The Buckeye Amendments
Happy for Her
What Fleabrain Knew but Wished He Didn t
An Envelope Like Many Others
No Wheelchair
Three Little Words
Zadie s TOTU
A Statement
Author s Note
Bibliography
Other Resources
Songs
Acknowledgments
I SUMMER 1952: QUESTIONS
What Franny Knew
O ne thing Franny knew. Angels did not exist in real life.
But there they were, floating all around her. Some leaned close, almost touching Franny s nose. Others waved at her from an impossible distance, whizzing about a cathedral ceiling. Their long white robes rustled. Their tiaras sparkled. They hummed and smiled and moved their lips without saying anything, or sometimes they murmured words Franny didn t understand, such as pachay and fee-lee-ah.
Then, one day-
WOOF!
-one of the angels barked, sounding remarkably like Franny s dog, Alf.

And Franny awoke from her feverish dreams. She d only imagined Alf. Pets weren t allowed to visit patients at Children s Hospital, and that s where Franny was, wearing a plastic wristband with FRANCINE KATZENBACK printed on it. She d imagined those angels, too, who were actually nurses in white uniforms and peaked caps.
Franny s parents had also been angels in the dreams. They d stood in the doorway of her hospital room, wearing white masks and worried looks. They couldn t come near her bed because Franny was infectious.
She had polio, everyone told her.
Franny already knew about polio because of her wide and fast reading habits, wider and faster than those of most ten-year-olds. She knew that polio was short for poliomyelitis . She knew that even though po-lee-oh sounded jolly, like roly-poly, it wasn t.
Franny knew that polio was a disease from a tiny, invisible virus that entered your mouth, stowed away in your intestines, then sometimes burrowed into the nervous system, chomping on nerves so that your limbs became paralyzed. And she knew that the poliovirus could attack your lungs so they couldn t work on their own. When that happened, you needed to lie inside a big, wheezy, green iron tube called an iron lung. The iron lung squeezed your lungs to help you breathe.
But even if Franny hadn t been a wide reader and a fast reader, even if she read only superhero comics like her friend Walter Walter, she d still know about polio. In her Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, that summer of 1952, the poliovirus had been practically the only topic of conversation. Polio spread faster during the hot summers. That s what their neighbor Professor Doctor Gutman had told her parents. He was a university professor as well as a researcher, with a long string of letters after his name on the business card he gave Franny s parents. He worked in a lab with the famous polio researcher Dr. Jonas Salk. Everyone knew that Salk and his family also lived in Squirrel Hill, but no one was exactly sure where.
With all that wonderful brainpower in her neighborhood, Franny had felt safe, as if superheroes were ready to protect her from terrible things. How babyish she d been! Now she knew that nobody, nobody, nobody, not even the brainiest people in the world, knew how to prevent and cure polio. Or why some people got it and the rest didn t.
Lying in her big iron lung, she had a lot of time to think.
Did she get polio by watching The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men three whole times at the Manor Theater? Franny and her friends loved that movie. They d even taken to spelling merry the old-fashioned way and threatening to give each other drubbings as they swashbuckled around Frick Park. Many people said the evil virus often lurked in crowded movie theaters, but none of the kids believed that.
Or maybe she got it from eating that cherry Popsicle at Sol s Ye Olde Candy Shoppe. Popsicles were absolutely forbidden by all parents because there was a possibility they could be made from contaminated water. So how come other kids in her neighborhood didn t get polio? Teresa Goodly ate more Popsicles than anyone, but she always confessed about it to the priest at her grandmother s church. Maybe that had helped. Jewish kids like Franny didn t go to confession, although Franny was sure it could have been arranged.
The evil virus lurked in pools and lakes, people said, so hardly anyone went swimming anymore, even when the air felt like a hot, wet towel. Franny hadn t swum once that summer.
Walter Walter had said the virus would never get him, because he had a strong constitution. Of course, when your parents give you a first name the same as your last name, and everyone calls you Walter Walter because it s funny, and you feel you have no choice but to go along with the joke, well, that makes you as tough as a tiger, as tough as nails, as tough as raw meat. Double-dose courage and pizzazz. That s what Walter Walter liked to tell everyone.
So how come her own constitution was so weak?
By the time autumn arrived, none of Franny s summer questions had been answered. When she turned her head toward the hospital window, she could see the leaves falling from a scrawny elm tree, disappearing like all the days she d missed as she lay in her iron lung. An entire Pittsburgh Pirates baseball season, come and gone. Poof! The Pirates had stunk-the worst team of the bunch, people told her. Cellar dwellers! But now she knew that worse things could happen.
Other kids lay in other iron lungs, just their heads sticking out, all together in one big room with Franny, as if they were in a bunch of lifeboats bobbing about in the same rolling ocean. Sometimes the children talked to one another, but most of the time they didn t.
There was a lot of time to think.
There was also a lot of time to cry.
The only good part of Franny s day was when the tutors came, a group of nuns who brought them schoolbooks and storybooks. Franny s tutor was Sister Ed, short for Sister Mary Edberga.
Sister Ed was the first nun Franny had ever known personally. Franny loved her. She was positive Sister Ed was an angel in disguise, even though she smelled a bit like onions, had bushy eyebrows that wriggled like mustaches, and wore a long, dark robe. Franny was sure there were angel wings squashed underneath Sister Ed s habit.
Sister Ed read books out loud like nobody s business. Franny had always imagined that nuns spoke with European accents, like the actress Ingrid Bergman in the movie The Bells of St. Mary s . But Sister Ed talked like everyone else in Pittsburgh, except when she was acting out all the parts in the books, using funny voices.
One day Sister Ed arrived, hugging a brand-new book to her chest. This book is hot off the presses. Just published! You re going to love it! As soon as I read it, I knew it was written for an imaginative kid like you.
The book was about a girl named Fern, who lived on a farm. Fern had a little scared pig named Wilbur. Wilbur s best friend was a kindly spider named Charlotte, who protected him and wrote compliments inside her web. For example, SOME PIG . Everyone on the farm was just knocked out and flabbergasted by Charlotte s talents! Ot