Gert Fram was running out of paper. It was time to wrap up the novel with a bang. Gert Fram always liked to end her novels with a bang.

  “So one day Susan the jerk decided that one jerk on the earth was enough, and it better be the soda jerk because everybody likes him, and so she left the earth and flew off on a rocket. But because Susan was a jerk the rocket crashed and blew up the sun and everybody had to use flashlights all the time from then on because without the sun it was always night and everytime their flashlights ran out of batteries they would shake their fists and yell, boy that Susan is sure a jerk.”

  Gert Fram had some space left, so she drew a picture of Susan’s rocket ship crashing into the sun.

  Then she got up (with dignity) from the desk and walked to her dresser, where there were a lot of things stacked. There was the china elephant with the broken trunk because she had dropped it. There was the library book that Mother had had to buy because Susan had dropped it in the gutter and the pages had gotten all thick and wrinkly even after they dried. There was the watch with the broken glass because Susan had accidentally scraped it against a cement wall during class break at junior high. There was a ripped picture of Jesus from Sunday School that the teacher had given her because after she ripped it Susan had felt so bad she had cried. This was when she was seven and sometimes let herself cry.

  Susan remembered that the Sunday School teacher had hugged her and said, “Hey, Susan, don’t cry like that. You’re sorry you ripped the picture, aren’t you?”

  Susan had nodded and said in her squeaky trying-not-to-cry voice, “I didn’t even mean to.”

  “I know you didn’t mean to,” said the Sunday School teacher. “And when you say you’re sorry about something, Jesus said that people are supposed to forgive you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Susan had said, and cried again, even louder.

  The Sunday School teacher gave her an even bigger hug. “That’s all right. I forgive you.”

  But Susan had cried even louder.

  “Why are you still crying?” asked the Sunday School teacher.

  “Because I ripped Jesus’s picture and he’ll be mad at me.”

  Susan remembered that the teacher had gotten tears in her eyes. “Jesus is never mad at you,” Susan remembered hearing the teacher tell her. “And to show you, I want you to keep this picture, and every time you see it, you remember that even when you make mistakes Jesus still loves you and forgives you.”

  Susan set down the picture on her dresser. If I say I’m sorry maybe they’ll forgive me, she thought.

  So she opened the door and started down the stairs. Then she remembered Vanessa and Raymond by the front door and she coughed. She kept coughing all the way down the stairs.

  “What is it, you got pneumonia?” said Jonathan, who was sitting in the living room. Vanessa and Raymond were gone. Susan chose to ignore Jonathan’s comment.

  Mother was in the kitchen. Father was in the den. Susan decided to go in and say she was sorry to Mother. Then if it went OK she’d go in and say it to Father.

  Mother was finishing up the refreshments for the party. She didn’t look up when Susan came into the kitchen, but that never stopped Mother, she always knew when somebody came into the kitchen. “Are you feeling better now, Susan, dear?” Mother asked.

  Mother sounded so kind that Susan ran right over and leaned on the counter and said, “Mother, I’m sorry I’ve been acting like such a creep and doing everything wrong and I’m sorry I pulled the stupid petals off the stupid flowers and spilled the lemonade and bought eggs and cut out the crossword puzzle and didn’t announce I was coming and everything.”

  Mother looked at her with horror in her eyes. “Susan, for heaven’s sake, look where you’re leaning!”

  Susan looked where she was leaning. Her elbows were crushing the jello and whipped cream and pineapple dessert that Mother had all ready for the party. Her elbows were covered with jello. The dessert was completely smashed. Susan looked up at her mother.

  “What in the world am I going to do now!” her mother said, wringing her hands. “They’ll all be here in half an hour and there’s not a hope in the world of making anything else! Susan, sometimes I think we ought to build a bomb shelter for all of us to hide in whenever you’re around!” Mother had meant that last sentence to be a kind of joke, but Susan didn’t notice that. She just stood there, deciding not to cry, and then deciding that she couldn’t help it, and then with tears running down her cheeks and her face all crinkled up she ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs and slammed the door.

  In the living room Jonathan said, “Well, that’s two slammed doors tonight, tying the world’s record. If we make three slammed doors it’ll be a new champion!”

  Mother said, “Jonathan, I’m getting very cross with you.” Then she went upstairs and tapped on Susan’s door.

  “Susan,” Mother said.

  “Go away and leave me alone,” Susan’s voice said. Susan’s voice sounded like there was a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes and a pillow in front of her face. Mother thought about going in anyway, and then she decided that it was not a good idea. Instead she went to the den and asked Father to go to the store and buy something for dessert for the party tonight.

  The party was fun and noisy and all the adults played games and talked and ate the store-bought dessert and said thank you for the wonderful evening and went home.

  Then Mother and Father talked quietly for a few minutes and they decided that Father would go up and talk to Susan.

  Father knocked on the door. “May I come in?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” answered a voice.

  Father came in.

  “Susan, I want to talk to you for a couple of minutes.”

  Susan turned around on her chair and looked at him in dignified surprise. “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but you must have the wrong address. There is no Susan here.”

  Father looked at her for a moment and said, “I’m afraid I must have been given the wrong address. Who does live here?”

  “No one lives here. This is the office and studio and den of Gert Fram, the world-famous author.”

  Father smiled. “I’ve never been in the office and studio and den of a world-famous author before.”

  “Well, you needn’t ask for an autograph,” Gert Fram replied. “I gave up signing autographs years ago. It was such a bother.”

  “I don’t want an autograph,” Father said. “I think I want an exclusive interview.”

  Gert Fram tilted her head. “For that, I’m afraid you’ll need to consult my agent. I never grant interviews on the spur of the moment.”

  Father looked at the floor. “You’re not making this very easy for me,” he said.

  A funny look passed across Susan’s face, but it was Gert Fram who answered him. “That’s because it shouldn’t be any easier for you than it is for me,” she said disdainfully. “Fair is fair and right is right. Besides, I know what you’re really here for.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course. You’re like all the others. You want a sneak preview of my latest novel.”

  “I don’t really think that’s why I came up here, Susan,” Father said.

  “Oh, you’ll definitely want to read it when you hear the title. It’s called Susan the Jerk.”

  This time it was Father’s face that got the funny look. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I really do want to read it.”

  Susan handed him the book with a shaking hand. Gert Fram’s voice was steady, however, when she said, “I knew it would work. My titles are irresistible.”

  Father sat on the bed and read Susan the Jerk from the beginning, to the end. He looked at the picture of the rocket ship crashing into the sun for a long time.

  When he looked up at Susan, he saw Gert Fram watching him carefully, one eyebrow raised. Father sighed.

  “Gert Fram, you’re a fine author and I’m very impressed with your book. But there’s been a terrible mistake made here. I really came to this address to see somebody else. You see, I respect you and admire you but you’re just not in my class, Miss Fram. I was looking for a woman named Susan Parker. I wanted to tell her that I’m sorry that I’ve been cross with her. I wanted to tell Susan Parker that her father and her mother love her so much that when they know she’s unhappy and it’s their fault, they feel terrible until they can make it right. Can you pass that message along for us?”

  “I hardly run a messenger service here,” Gert Fram answered. But then her voice cracked and she said, “But I’ll try to let her know. I don’t think she’ll believe that message, though.”

  Father bowed his head. “I hope she believes it. Because Susan just might be thinking right now that she’s a jerk. And it just isn’t true. She’s a wonderful person. It’s just that her parents and her brother and sisters are so used to having her around that they forget how wonderful she is. They forget to treat her like a wonderful person. But oh, Miss Fram, if they ever lost Susan they’d miss her so much—”

  And suddenly Susan realized that the reason that Father had stopped talking was because he was crying. She had never seen her father cry before. And he was crying because he loved Susan Parker so much and right then Gert Fram disappeared and Susan Parker was back and she was crying and hugging her father but mostly letting him hug her. He was saying, “My little girl, my little girl.”

  Finally Susan said, very softly, “I’m not a little girl, Father.”

  Father took her by the shoulders and held her away from him a little and looked into her eyes. He looked a long time into her eyes and then he smiled, even though he still had tears, and he said, “You’re absolutely right. And to think I didn’t realize it until this moment.”

  Then they both said a lot of things and didn’t say other things and went downstairs for family prayer. Then Mother and Father kissed Susan good-night and she went back upstairs. She undressed for bed and said her prayers and got under the covers and turned off the light.

  A few minutes later she turned the light back on and got up and went to the desk. She picked up the book Susan the Jerk and turned it over and on the last page, in little letters where there was still some space left, right after where it said, “boy that Susan is sure a jerk,” she wrote:

  “But whenever they said that, Susan’s father said, you better watch it, that’s my dauter you’re talking about, and they didn’t say it anymore.”

  That was a better ending to the novel. Susan turned off the light and went to sleep. In the morning she would realize that she had never washed the jello dessert off her elbows and it was now all over her bedroom, but tonight it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter in the morning.

  Middle Woman

  Ah-Cheu was a woman of the great kingdom of Ch’in, a land of hills and valleys, a land of great wealth and dire poverty. But Ah-Cheu was a middle person, neither rich nor poor, neither old nor young, and her husband’s farm was half in the valley and half on the hill. Ah-Cheu had a sister older than her, and a sister younger than her, and one lived thirty leagues to the north, and the other thirty leagues to the south. “I am a middle woman,” Ah-Cheu boasted once, but her husband’s mother rebuked her, saying, “Evil comes to the middle, and good goes out to the edges.”

  Every year Ah-Cheu put a pack on her back and journeyed for a visit either to the sister to the north or to the sister to the south. It took her three days to make the journey, for she did not hurry. But one year she did not make the journey, for she met a dragon on the road.

  The dragon was long and fine and terrible, and Ah-Cheu immediately knelt and touched her forehead to the road and said, “Oh, dragon, spare my life!”

  The dragon only chuckled deep in his throat and said, “Woman, what do they call you?”

  Not wishing to tell her true name to the dragon, she said, “I am called Middle Woman.”

  “Well, Middle Woman, I will give you a choice. The first choice is to have me eat you here in the road. The second choice is to have me grant you three wishes.”

  Surprised, Ah-Cheu raised her head. “But of course I take the second choice. Why do you set me a problem with such an easy solution?”

  “It is more amusing,” said the dragon, “to watch human beings destroy themselves than to overpower them quickly.”

  “But how can three wishes destroy me?”

  “Make a wish, and see.”

  Ah-Cheu thought of many things she might wish for, but was soon ashamed of her greed. “I wish,” she finally said, having decided to ask for only what she truly needed, “for my husband’s farm to always produce plenty for all my family to eat.”

  “It shall be done,” said the dragon, and he vanished, only to reappear a moment later, smiling and licking his lips. “I have done,” he said, “exactly what you asked—I have eaten all your family, and so your husband’s farm, even if it produces nothing, will always produce plenty for them to eat.”

  Ah-Cheu wept and mourned and cursed herself for being a fool, for now she saw the dragon’s plan. Any wish, however innocent, would be turned against her.

  “Think all you like,” said the dragon, “but it will do you no good. I have had lawyers draw up legal documents eight feet long, but I have found the loopholes.”

  Then Ah-Cheu knew what she had to ask for. “I wish for all the world to be exactly as it was one minute before I left my home to come on this journey.”

  The dragon looked at her in surprise. “That’s all? That’s all you want to wish for?”

  “Yes,” said Ah-Cheu. “And you must do it now.”

  And suddenly she found herself in her husband’s house, putting on her pack and bidding good-bye to her family. Immediately she set down the pack.

  “I have changed my mind,” she said. “I am not going.”

  Everyone was shocked. Everyone was surprised. Her husband berated her for being a changeable woman. Her mother-in-law denounced her for having forgotten her duty to her sisters. Her children pouted because she had always brought them each a present from her journeys to the north and south. But Ah-Cheu was firm. She would not risk meeting the dragon again.

  And when the furor died down, Ah-Cheu was far more cheerful than she had ever been before, for she knew that she had one wish left, the third wish, the unused wish. And if there were ever a time of great need, she could use it to save herself and her family.

  One year there was a fire, and Ah-Cheu was outside the house, with her youngest child trapped within. Almost she used her wish, but then thought, Why use the wish, when I can use my arms? And she ducked low, and ran into the house, and saved the boy, though it singed off all her hair. And she still had her son, and she still had her wish.

  One year there was a famine, and it looked like all the world would starve. Ah-Cheu almost used her wish, but then thought, Why use the wish, when I can use my feet? And she wandered up into the hills, and came back with a basket of roots and leaves, and with such food she kept her family alive until the Emperor’s men came with wagons full of rice. And she still had her family, and she still had her wish.

  And in another year there was a great flood, and all the homes were swept away, and as Ah-Cheu and her son’s baby sat upon the roof, watching the water eat away the walls of the house, she almost used her wish to get a boat so she could escape. But then she thought, Why use the wish, when I can use my head? And she took up the boards from the roof and walls, and with her skirts she tied them into a raft large enough for the baby, and setting the child upon it she swam away, pushing the raft until they reached high ground and safety. And when her son found her alive, he wept with joy, and said, “Mother Ah-Cheu, never has a son loved his mother more!”

  And Ah-Cheu had her posterity, and yet still she had her wish.

  And then it was time for Ah-Cheu to die, and she lay sick and frail upon a bed of honor in her son’s house, and the women and children and old men of the village came to keen for her and honor her as she lay dying. “Never has there been a more fortunate woman than Ah-Cheu,” they said. “Never has there been a kinder, a more generous, a more god favored woman!” And she was content to leave the world, because she had been so happy in it.

  And on her last night, as she lay alone in darkness, she heard a voice call her name.

  “Middle Woman,” said the voice, and she opened her eyes, and there was the dragon.

  “What do you want with me?” she asked. “I’m not much of a morsel to eat now, I’m afraid.”

  But then she saw the dragon looked terrified, and she listened to what he had to say.

  “Middle Woman,” said the dragon, “you have not used your third wish.”

  “I never needed it.”

  “Oh, cruel woman! What a vengeance you take! In the long run, I never did you any harm! How can you do this to me?”

  “But what am I doing?” she asked.

  “If you die, with your third wish unused, then I, too, will die!” he cried. “Maybe that doesn’t seem so bad to you, but dragons are usually immortal, and so you can believe me when I say my death would cut me off with most of my life unlived.”

  “Poor dragon,” she said. “But what have I to wish for?”

  “Immortality,” he said. “No tricks. I’ll let you live forever.”

  “I don’t want to live forever,” she said. “It would make the neighbors envious.”

  “Great wealth, then, for your family.”

  “But they have all they need right now.”

  “Any wish!” he cried. “Any wish, or I will die!”

  And so she smiled, and reached out a frail old hand and touched his supplicating claw, and said, “Then I wish a wish, dragon. I wish that all the rest of your life should be nothing but happiness for you and everyone you meet.”

  The dragon looked at her in surprise, and then in relief, and then he smiled and wept for joy. He thanked her many times, and left her home rejoicing.