The Enemy

by Sara Holbrook

  Then Owen asked for the lighter back. I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to even ask, but looking at his face, he looked like he might cry. He didn’t cry, because he’s Owen, but he looked like he might. He said it was engraved and that it had gone to the Philippines and back with his dad. “It’s his lucky lighter,” Owen pleaded. Hawkins turned the lighter over in his hand to look at the engraving.

  “Well, out of respect to your dad and all the boys who went overseas, I’m going to give this back to you. You just come by and see me after school and then you go straight home with it and don’t be setting anything else on fire.”

  Owen promised again, scout’s honor.

  Then Hawkins told us we should sit in the lobby for fifteen more minutes before returning to class. Finally he told Owen to try to go a little easier on Mrs. Kirk because he was this close to stretching her nervous system to the breaking point. Owen agreed. Owen said he didn’t want to break Mrs. Kirk. Really.

  It wasn’t until Hawkins stood up because it was time for us to leave that he finally he looked at me and asked, “And what’s your name, little lady?”

  “Marjorie Campbell,” I whispered.

  “Okay, Miss Campbell. I don’t ever want to see you in my office again unless it’s to use the pay phone, is that understood?” I nodded, and that was that.

  Now, it’s Friday night, school’s locked up tight for the weekend, and there are four girls looking straight at me. We are in the Fergusons’ basement rec room, taking a break from dancing to Bernadette’s new record player. Mary Virginia, Piper, Jodi Solomon, and even Bernadette want to hear what it’s really like in the principal’s office.

  “It’s like a dungeon,” I say.

  “Really?” says Mary Virginia. All the girls bend into my words, waiting to hear about the horrors of Hawkins’s dungeon.

  “He pulls the curtains first, so no one can see in. It’s almost totally dark.”

  Everyone gasps. “Did he torture you and Owen at the same time?” Piper asks. She’s chewing her lip like bubble gum.

  Everyone knows Mr. Hawkins has a paddle hanging prominently on his wall. You can see it from the hallway when his door’s open. The paddle has holes in it so he can smack harder with less wind resistance.

  “Did you get the paddle?” Jodi asks. “Girls first?”

  “You aren’t allowed to paddle girls,” Bernadette says. “Not even if you’re a principal.”

  Bernadette always talks like she knows so much. Only this time I know more about something than she does, even though she has two older sisters, two cars, and a record player. I know because I have been there, and everybody else knows it, too.

  “Weeellll,” I begin slowly. “First he made both of us—”

  “Kneel on the ground,” says Piper. “That’s what he does, right?” Piper is nervously chewing on her thumb cuticle.

  “Right,” I say.

  “I knew it,” Piper says. “He puts gravel on the floor and makes you kneel on it.”

  “And then did he take the paddle down off the wall?” asks Jodi.

  I nod.

  “I would have been so scared, I would have peed my pants,” says Mary Virginia.

  “I almost did,” I say.

  “But he didn’t hit you,” Bernadette says.

  “He didn’t have to,” Mary Virginia says. “You don’t have to smack people if you already have them scared to death.”

  “Exactly,” Jodi says, slapping her thighs.

  “That’s his whole plan, don’t you see? To keep everyone scared. Then he doesn’t really have to swat us because we’re too scared to do anything wrong,” Bernadette says. “He has so many kids in that school, what’s he supposed to do? He’s one against hundreds.” She shrugs. Obviously she’s not scared of Mr. Hawkins.

  “Well, I think it’s a pretty good plan,” Jodi says. “Did he hit Owen at least?”

  Before I can answer, Bernadette plops a square spiral notebook down in the middle of our little conversation circle on the floor. “Guess what this is?”

  The obvious answer is that it’s a spiral notebook, but none of us bothers to say that. Clearly, it must be something else.

  Bernadette looks at each of us before saying, “It’s called a slam book.”

  “A what?” We all answer together.

  “A slam book. It’s something they have in junior high and my sister told me all about them. You have to know about them.” Bernadette lays her hand on the book like she’s swearing on a Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  “What’s in it?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” says Bernadette. “Nothing yet, that is.”

  “Oh, I get it. We use this book to slam boys in the head just to get their attention,” says Mary Virginia. Mary Virginia is quick—with seven brothers and sisters, she has to be. If you asked our class to point out the most sarcastic person in the room, everyone would point to Mary Virginia.

  “Okay,” Bernadette sighs, “It goes like this. We decide a person we want to write about and put her name in the front of the book. Then we take turns asking questions about that person and also take turns writing answers to the questions. We pass it around. The only rule is that the questions and answers all have to be about the person whose name is in the front of the book. Oh, and one question per page, so you leave plenty of room for answers.”

  “That’s two rules,” says Mary Virginia.

  Bernadette gives her a playful push and says, “Be serious, this is going to be so much fun. Only we have to keep it secret.”

  That’s three rules, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. “Is the person who the book is about allowed to answer the questions?” What if someone made a slam book about me and asked how I wound up with a big brother with a motorcycle? I’d want to be the one to answer the question before someone else had a chance to make something up.

  My brain skips to wondering how Frank is doing, riding in the cold. I wonder if his face has frozen off or if his hands are numb. I see the taillight of his motorcycle disappearing into the darkness and shrinking smaller and smaller until it’s only a blood red pinprick in the night. If I didn’t hate Frank so much, I might even be a little worried about him, but I shrug that off. Like he said, he’s old enough to look out for himself.

  “You don’t get it,” Bernadette says. “She doesn’t see the book until it’s all done, and then we can give it to her or not. We decide that later. Here, look.” Bernadette opens the spiral. Inga Scholtz is written on the first page in purple crayon. Bernadette flips the first page over to where she’s already written the first question.

  Why does Inga wear her braids wrapped around her head like a crown?

  “I know,” Jodi says. “She thinks she’s queen of the universe.”

  “No,” Mary Virginia says, shifting up onto her knees. “She does that to cover her horns. She’s a red devil.”

  “She’s not a red devil,” Piper says. Piper’s been very quiet, more quiet than usual. I hope she’ll say what I’m thinking: This slam book sounds pretty mean.

  Piper knows what it’s like to be on the wrong side of mean. She used to be banned from the Ferguson house in no uncertain terms. It’s only recently Bernadette’s mom decided to make an exception for her. Piper’s Lutheran. Not being able to visit Bernadette’s house with the rest of us used to make Piper cry.

  “A red devil is a Chinese communist. I don’t know what Inga is, but she’s definitely not Chinese,” says Piper.

  “She’s German. A germ. She might be contagious, and if she is, you know who’s going to catch her disease, don’t you?” Mary Virginia points at me.

  “Stop that,” Jodi says. “Marjorie didn’t do anything. Kirk made them sit together.”

  “All the questions in the slam book have to be about Inga. That’s the whole point. That’s a good question, though. Write that one down.” Bernadette passes a pen to Piper.

  “Is Inga Chinese? That’s ridiculous.”

>   “No, silly. What is she? Is she Canadian? Is she a germ? Is she Looney Tunes? You can ask whatever you want.”

  And then Piper whispers the question everybody wonders, “Is she a Nazi?”

  “My dad says that not all the Germans were Nazis,” I say quickly. When everyone else just looks at me, I add, “And he should know.”

  “Not all the Japanese were out to get us, either, but the government locked them up all the same,” Jodi says. “I read about it in Look magazine. They sent all the Japanese to live in these camps after Pearl Harbor, even if they were living here for their whole lives.”

  “Like concentration camps?” asks Piper.

  “Not like concentration camps. Don’t be silly. Americans don’t have concentration camps. They were just camps with food and stuff,” Jodi says.

  “Nazis invented concentration camps, Piper. Don’t be a dolt. And I think finding out what kind of Nazi Inga is, well, I think that’s pretty important, don’t you? Write your question down.” Bernadette points to the slam book.

  “I can’t write that down,” Piper says. “What if she sees it?”

  “That’s the whole point. Maybe she will see it and then she’ll start to get it.”

  “Get what?” I ask. My face is in a frown. I can feel it. I don’t like this slam book idea one bit.

  “Get that she doesn’t fit in. That she’s not like the rest of us, and she better either do something about it or just go back to where she came from, because we don’t like her the way that she is. Who wants to go first?” Piper doesn’t take the pen from Bernadette.

  “I will,” Mary Virginia says.

  “What are you going to write?” asks Jodi, leaning in to watch.

  “None of your beeswax. You can see when I’m done. Do I have to sign my name?”

  Bernadette shakes her head no. “It’s secret and it’s anonymous. So you can be really honest.”

  “It’s not honest to say that she’s a germ or that she has horns,” I say. If someone wrote that about me and I saw it, I would never come to school again. I remember the look on Inga’s face when those boys pushed her mom and told her they didn’t want her here. When they called her a DP. I remember how water puddled in the corners of Inga’s eyes and her shoulders hunched up to protect her ears. I imagine Inga’s reaction as she sees the words in this spiral, worse words written in black and white. Then I imagine her turning to me and asking, “What is horns?”

  The imagining makes my eyes burn and my teeth ache.

  “It’s honest to say that she acts like she has horns, or that you think that she has horns,” says Bernadette, laying lots of emphasis on certain words. And then she adds, talking like a patient teacher, “Margie, you can’t be a baby about these things, or you will never survive in junior high. I’m just trying to help you prepare yourself, so you’re not so hopeless.” Bernadette doesn’t bother to pat me on the head like a two-year-old, but that’s how I feel.

  “And this could be really helpful to Inga, when you think about it. It’s just, the truth hurts sometimes.” Bernadette passes the spiral and the pen to Mary Virginia. “Okay, you first.”

  As Mary Virginia takes the book, everyone’s eyes peek forward to see what she’s going to write.

  “No fair,” proclaims Bernadette. “It’s anonymous, remember? No one’s supposed to know who says what. Oh, I almost forgot.” She rips a page out of the spiral notebook and writes in big, loopy letters across the top: Loyalty Oath. And then she signs her name.

  “Here.” Bernadette holds the paper out in front of her. “Everybody has to sign this.”

  “I thought it was anonymous,” I say. This whole thing is making me itchy. I pinch my lips together.

  “I will keep the piece of paper someplace safe. Only we will know who signed it.”

  “What does that mean?” asks Piper, tipping her head to read the paper. “‘Loyalty Oath.’ What’s that?”

  “It means we won’t be commies or undermine the government,” I say.

  “Don’t be a dip brain, Marjorie. A loyalty oath means you will be loyal to whoever asks. Sign this paper and it means you will be loyal to your friends and no one else. Particularly enemies of your friends.” She taps the pencil on the paper twice. “And you will not tell who wrote in this slam book, even if they put you in front of a firing squad.”

  “You going to write all that down? ’Cause I don’t want to sign anything unless I know the fine print.” Mary Virginia folds her arms.

  “That is the fine print. And as long as we are in agreement, we don’t have to write it down. Just sign our names. Agreed?” Bernadette looks straight at me. No one else, just me.

  “What are you looking at?” I ask.

  “Well, you’re the only one who’s really talked to the enemy, Marjorie. We just need to be sure whose side you’re on.”

  “I didn’t know there were sides when I talked to her,” I say. I’m mad, but the words come out kind of whiny.

  “Well, there are. And you’re either on our side or you’re on the side of the enemy.” Bernadette puts the paper on the floor in front of my folded knees. Then she puts the pen down carefully, like she’s trying to make it float. Silence eats up the rest of the room.

  I only hesitate for a second before I snatch up the pen and paper. “Okay, but I think this is really dumb. I just want to say that. I’ve been friends with you guys since forever, and …” I scribble my name on the page and put a period at the end. “And I shouldn’t have to sign a dumb piece of paper to prove it. There.”

  I slap the paper back down on the floor in the circle of our knees. One by one, Mary Virginia, Piper, and Jodi sign. Bernadette folds the paper in half. “Good, now we have this just in case.”

  In case of what? I want to scream. Why do we all have to sign a stupid paper saying we will be friends with our friends? And why does Bernadette get to keep the piece of paper? I swallow my questions.

  “You can write in the slam book at home and bring it to school on Monday and then we can pass it around. Only we’ll have to be really careful so that Kirk the Jerk doesn’t snatch it away.” Bernadette stands up and opens the top drawer of her dresser, slides the paper in the front and thumps it shut like she’s closing a safe instead of her sock drawer.

  As we settle into our blankets and sleeping bags on the floor of Bernadette’s bedroom, Jodi says, “I hope tomorrow is just like today.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Mary Virginia points out. “No school.”

  “No, I mean, I hope nothing happens. Like, I hope the snow and ice don’t make the lights go out.” Jodi leans back on her pillow. “I definitely hope that stupid siren doesn’t go off and blow our ears out again anytime soon.”

  “That only happens on school days,” Bernadette says.

  “That’s a relief,” Mary Virginia says. “At least we know that if the commies are going to drop an H-bomb and evaporate us, it won’t happen on a Saturday.”

  “Mary Virginia, don’t talk like that,” says Piper.

  “Hey, it’s 1954, haven’t you heard? We only have weekday wars now, weekends off.” Mary Virginia laughs. The rest of us kind of chuckle along, not really sure if it’s okay to laugh about something as serious as the H-bomb.

  “I hope there’s never another big war,” says Jodi. “Seriously. I just want things to stay, I don’t know, even. Forever.”

  “Oh, don’t be a drag. You want things to change. Are you kidding? I mean you want to grow up, don’t you? You don’t want your mother to be telling you to make your bed and brush your teeth for the rest of your life, do you?” Mary Virginia asks.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do when I grow up anyway,” says Jodi. “What do you want to do when you grow up?” We are talking in total darkness, but I can tell she’s turned her head and is pointing her question at me.

  The truth is, I never think about what I want to do when I grow up. I have never been exactly certain I will grow up. Sometimes I think the world could erupt any min
ute, just like Owen’s volcano, with sparks flying everywhere. They say when the A-bomb went off in Japan, it melted people’s skin off and their faces dripped on the ground. I am not sure what the difference is between an A-bomb and an H-bomb, only that the H kind is supposed to be worse. How can something be worse than that?

  “That’s easy,” says Bernadette. “You want to grow up and get married in a white dress and have four perfect babies. A perfect husband who goes to work every day and comes home every night for dinner and a cocktail. It’s what every girl wants.”

  “Four babies?” asks Mary Virginia.

  “That’s the perfect number, family of six. Any more than that and you won’t fit into a station wagon.”

  “I think I might want to be a doctor,” I hear myself say. The fact is, I have never thought about being a doctor until that very moment. Something about Bernadette laying out my life plan for me made that thought just pop out of my mouth.

  “Really?” Jodi says. “If you’re a doctor, I can bring my babies to you when they’re sick.”

  “If we have a chance to grow up,” Piper says, “I’m not even sure I want to bring a baby into a world with the Bomb in it.” Everyone knows that Piper is a worrier. She wears it on her face. She chews her lips until she has a chapped circle around them and bites her nails until they bleed. Sometimes she has to wear gloves in school when her fingers are so bad no one can stand to look at them.

  “I know what you mean,” Jodi says. “My mom says you never know if the wrong somebody is going to push the button, and then we’ll all be fried like chicken in bacon fat.” She makes a sizzling noise and we all laugh, only not too hard because what she says could really happen.

  “Yeah, well, my mom says I have to practice the piano anyway,” Mary Virginia says. “She says if we hear bombers, then I can stop playing scales. Not one minute before.” We all bust up laughing over that one.

  “Just because your mom went to college, that doesn’t mean you have to, Marjorie,” Bernadette says. “A woman doesn’t have to show off that she’s smart, there are other ways of getting what you want, right?” She puts one hand behind her head and strikes a pose. Everyone laughs. Even me.