“Bernadette’s not calling your mother a show-off,” Jodi whispers. “She’s just kidding.”
“I heard that!” Bernadette announces. “Margie’s mom didn’t go to college to be a show-off, she was just keeping busy until the war was over, right? Lots of women did crazy things during the war, like work in factories and drive trucks. But now things are back to normal. Only men can be doctors, Marjorie. Girls can be nurses, teachers, or secretaries, and those are just the poor girls who no one wants anyway.”
“Yeah,” Piper says. Even though I can’t see her in the dark room, I know she’s twisting her hair around her finger as she tells us about her Aunt Louise. “She was a nurse in the war and had the idea that she could go to medical school on the GI Bill when she landed back in Toledo, but the school wouldn’t let her. They said it wouldn’t do for a woman to take a place in the school that a man could have because she’d just drop out eventually anyway to have babies. There’s only so much room in those kinds of schools.”
Even though Dad likes to tell his joke about Army nurses wanting to steal his boots, I can tell he really liked them. He always smiles when he calls them tough cookies. When I imagine a tough cookie, I think of a woman who smokes cigars and can spit like a baseball player. But being an Army nurse would be like knowing how to drive a tank. What do you do with that experience when the war’s over?
“Did she?” I ask. “Did she get married and have babies?”
“Nah. She takes tickets at the movie theater in Toledo now. When we go there, she lets us in for free.”
“Free popcorn, too?” Jodi asks.
“All you can eat.”
“Let’s go!” Jodi says. “We could watch movies all the time and not think about anything.”
“Yeah, right now,” Mary Virginia says. “Grab your dad’s car keys, Bernadette. We’ll be back by morning, no one will even know.” We all laugh, and say, “You first,” but no one moves, and we snuggle deeper into our covers. Even though there’s a rolled-up towel on the window, we can still feel a breath of cold coming through when the wind gusts and blows.
In the quiet that surrounds us, my mind is carried away with the image of Frank on his motorbike trying to steer through the snow and wind outside. Where is he going to stay when he reaches the prison in Jackson? They aren’t going to let him see his brother. He’s going to have to wait until visiting hours on Saturday. He should have just let Dad drive him like he did at Christmas. He should have stayed home on a night like this.
Mostly, I think he should not have jammed his greasy, stupid head under my bed and put his grubby hands in that box of books, and if he crashes that stupid bike of his in this snowstorm, it’s his own stupid fault. But Mom is going to kill me. And then she’s going to be arrested. I think about her being led off in that ugly pink bathrobe, flapping around for all the neighbors to see. I imagine Carol Anne screaming and kicking. That makes me think about whacking Frank in his sleep with the coal shovel that leans up against the furnace. I think I could get in at least two good whacks before he murdered me.
I pull my hands into fists and tell myself not to imagine things that haven’t happened yet. That works for about half a minute and then my mind takes off again.
I wish I had said something to Mom about Frank and the books. Bernadette’s right. My mom is smart. She could have thought of something. The box of books is important, but is it as important as a boy falling off his motorcycle in a snowstorm and freezing to death in a ditch?
I remember the look on Mrs. Kirk’s face when she had Owen by the collar. “Kids burn,” she’d told him. I shrink a little when I also remember how she told me, “You’re nothing.”
I never saw a kid burn, but I expect she’s right. But kids can also freeze. Even big kids who act tough in their leather jackets. The inside of my head is swirling, echoing the storm outside, and suddenly lightning flashes in my brain.
I stand straight up. “I need to use the phone,” I say.
“It’s eleven-thirty. Your parents are in bed. Go to sleep,” Bernadette says.
“I’ll be right back.” I step over sleeping bodies and race for the phone in the kitchen.
CHAPTER 25
On Saturday morning after the sleepover, Mom tells me it’s good that I called because it gave Dad a chance to put his pants on before the Michigan State Patrolman rang the doorbell. Frank had hit a patch of black ice on the highway and laid the bike on its side, skidding under an eighteen-wheeler.
“The only reason he wasn’t torn up worse than he was is because he was wearing his pop’s padded hunting overalls and that dreadful black leather jacket,” says Mom. She doesn’t ask why I didn’t call them earlier. I had maybe lied a little and told Dad he better check Frank’s bed, that maybe (only maybe) he might have gone someplace on his motorcycle and that just maybe that someplace was over to the prison in Jackson. But I told him I wasn’t sure.
The truth was, I was exactly sure where he had gone.
Dad had followed the patrol car to the hospital where Frank was having his arm set in a cast and his broken collarbone taped up. “They didn’t pull in here until after four this morning, so don’t go making a lot of noise,” Mom says.
“Did he say anything?” I ask. I think about the books. About Frank’s threat to tell Dad. I chew on my nail and try to read my mother’s face.
I look at her eyes for signs that they’ve been crying. I look at her mouth to see if it’s angry. I look for any sign that someone found a dangerous book in Frank’s gym bag when he was scraped up off the highway.
“I think Frank is just grateful to be back home in his own bed. He’s beat up pretty badly.” Only my mom would say “badly” and not just “beat up pretty bad.” She can’t be too upset if her grammar’s right. “They think they might be able to straighten out the bike.” She sighs. “Unfortunately.”
“Mom?” I lower my voice to a whisper. “We need to talk about those books under my bed.”
“Oh, sweetheart. That’s the least of our worries today. Consider those books just parked there till this whole book-banning thing blows over, which it will. Things always do. Don’t give it another thought. Oh, don’t look at me like that.” She wrinkles her nose and makes a bug-eyed face. “You know what Grandma Mona would say.”
“Grandma Mona knows about the books?” I gasp.
“Cripes, no. But she’d be quick to tell you if you don’t wipe that look off your face, it will stay that way permanently.”
“But Mom.” I know I am sounding pathetic. I just want the books to be gone. “They can’t park there forever.”
“Sweetie, when you live as long as I have, you’ll learn. Everything passes eventually. This country’s survived revolution, a civil war, two world wars; we can survive this Cold War nonsense. Let’s just not get arrested in the meantime,” she adds in a whisper, finger to her lips. “So mum’s the word.”
“Mom!” I cry. Arrested? I can just imagine what Bernadette would have to say about that. I would be a total goner at school.
“Oh, I’m just kidding. Cheer up, sweetie. There’s a new baby to celebrate! Forget the books. Here, pick up a towel and help me dry these dishes.” Mom, Carol Anne, and I are in the kitchen with the door closed, trying to be quiet.
“Mom,” I singsong. “What if we just put them on the doorstep of the library in the middle of the night?” Then I whisper, “Arrested?”
“Shh, nobody’s going to be arrested. Just stop talking about it. We have enough to worry about right here.”
Carol Anne has built another Empire State Building on the floor, this one out of cracker and cereal boxes.
“Neeeeyoowww,” she whines as she circles a raisin box around like one of the airplanes sent to shoot at King Kong. She stutters like a machine gun, “Tatatatat.” Pretty soon the building topples over and she starts building it again.
Mom has made a pile of cookies for the baby shower later today. I pick up a dish towel to help with the pans.
&nbs
p; After a few are passed between us hand to hand, I ask her, “Why did you go to college?”
Mom looks out the window. “I was in college when I met your dad.” She stops washing and stares at a place somewhere beyond the Fergusons’ backyard. “He was working at the gas station by campus. He wasn’t so worried about following all the rules like he is now. I thought he was daring and fun and that he looked just like Frank Sinatra. So, we were married and had you. I had to drop out, of course.” She sloshes some rinse water onto the dish rack. “When he volunteered for the army and went away, I moved back in with my parents, Grandpa Henry and Grandma Ethel. Grandpa Henry told me to go back and finish, so I did.”
“Yeah, but why did you go in the first place? Did you want to be a doctor or something?” Mom’s washing and passing me bowls one at a time.
“I didn’t think that far ahead, I guess. It was Grandpa Henry’s dream for me to be the first one in the family to go to college. Grandpa Henry could be very convincing.” She looks at me.
“You don’t remember my father at all, I don’t expect.” I shake my head. “Such a shame. You were only a baby when we lived with him. He was the kindest man in the world. He only had a barbershop in Zanesville, Ohio, but everyone treated him like he was the mayor of Main Street. When the war came around, he was too old to serve. He did his duty by being on the draft board. All the boys had a number, and they’d draw the numbers out in Washington and send them to the local draft boards. The draft boards would meet and announce who was going to go. At first they had some say in the matter. They could offer some of the boys deferments. The board would balance it against how many boys that family had sent already and how many they could still keep on the farms. Raising food was considered war work at first. Every time after they made up the list of who’d be drafted next, he’d come home, sit at the kitchen table, and just cry.”
She’s using a steel wool pad and scrubbing hard on a pan that looks clean to me. “By the end of the war, they were taking anybody who had a pulse. Daddy even tried to volunteer. ‘Wherever you have men, you need a barber,’ he said. But he was almost sixty years old, and they wouldn’t take him. The war broke him.
“It also fell to the draft board to put the notices in the paper of the boys who weren’t coming home, boys he felt like he’d sent to their deaths. He died of a broken heart—just before the armistice.”
“Here,” I say and reach for the scratched-up pan so she can start on the next one.
“Just let me get this little bit here.” And she scrubs at a spot I can’t see.
“I thought all the GIs just signed up to go fight the Nazis like Dad did.”
She finally finishes with the pan and passes it under the rinse water. “A lot of those Ohio farm boys were from German stock. Others had the view that the Europeans had been fighting among themselves for centuries and that’s why they’d come to America, to put all the fighting behind them and start over. The Italians hated the Irish, the Irish hated the English, the English hated the French, and everyone hated the Russians. Everybody who pulls up stakes to come to America comes here because they hate someone. Some of those men, or maybe I should say the mothers of some of those young men, needed convincing that we are all on the same team. That’s what the draft board was all about.”
“Grandma Mona hates the Catholics,” I say.
Mom laughs and kisses me on the top of the head, “That’s a whole other layer of hatred, pumpkin. Grandma Mona’s not only a Presbyterian; she’s a stubborn Scottish Presbyterian. I’m afraid there’s no talking her out of that one.”
Bing bong. The doorbell. Mom and I bolt for the door before the bell rings again and wakes up Dad. Standing on the porch are Inga and her mom. I look at Inga just long enough to know it’s her. I don’t look her in the face. Mom invites them in, but Inga shakes her head. She holds out a pair of blue, knitted baby booties stuffed with cotton balls. “For the baby party,” she says.
Mom’s holding the door open like she doesn’t care that she’s trying to heat the whole outdoors, which is what she tells me if I keep the door open one second in this weather.
“Won’t your mother come to the baby shower?” Mom asks Inga. Then she looks at Mrs. Scholtz and says, “Please come.”
Inga answers in what sounds like a rehearsed speech. “My mother is very pleased to be invited, but she is having to work today. You will let the mother know that she wishes the new baby a long and happy life.” When she finishes, Mrs. Scholtz, who’s been watching Inga’s every word, looks at Mom and smiles.
“Well, yes,” Mom says. She’s trying to hold the door open and take the gift while reaching out to shake hands with Mrs. Scholtz. “Another time, then, tell her.” Inga nods.
As soon as the door closes, I dart to the front window and stand behind the curtain where I can’t be seen. I watch them walking away hand in hand. I imagine this will wind up as a question in the slam book: Why does Inga hold hands with her mother like a baby?
“Look at these,” Mom says, leaning against the front door. “She must have stayed up all night knitting these little booties. Aren’t they just the sweetest things you have ever seen?”
Actually, the booties look to be the exact same color as Inga’s too-small sweater that’s been itching my arm every day at school. I can tell because they are the same sky color as her eyes.
“The baby’s going to kick those scratchy things off in two seconds,” I say, peeking between the wall and the curtain.
“Marjorie, what is wrong with you?” Mom looks at me like I just bit the head off a chicken. “These are the most darling little booties I’ve ever seen.”
“They’re scratchy. Trust me,” I mumble as I edge the curtain over to widen my view out the window, trying not to be seen from the street.
“Are you hiding from that girl, Inga? You’re acting ridiculous.” She whips the curtains back. “That’s enough of that.”
I drop to a crouch and stare down at my stocking feet. “Mom!” I screech. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” she asks, looking down at me. “I thought you were friends with her.”
“No! I mean, not really. It’s just, you know … she’s so different.” I peek over the windowsill just in time to see them turn the corner.
“Up off your knees, young lady.” Mom grabs me by the sleeve. “Up!” I stumble to my feet; glad to see that Inga and her mother are out of sight. “You listen to me. Different’s what we all are. Or what we should be.” Mom looks at the ceiling. We can hear Dad moving in their bedroom over our heads. She puts her hands on both of my shoulders, the blue booties scratching my ear. I must be growing taller, because she doesn’t even have to bend over to look me straight in the face.
She talks fast, “You asked me why I went to college and the answer is because Grandpa Henry told me to go. But you didn’t ask me what I learned there. I learned this: Books, like the books upstairs, they stretch your brain, so there’s enough room for lots of ideas: good ideas, bad ideas, ideas different than the ideas you grow up with. From those ideas you can make your own ideas, different ideas. Different is a good way to be. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. When people try too hard to be the same, that’s when the shooting starts.”
“What kind of conspiracy are you two cooking up?” Dad asks as he clomps down the steps.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” says Mom playfully. “Our lips are sealed.” Dad grabs the dish towel out of my hand and snaps it in Mom’s direction.
“I haff vays of making you talk,” he teases with a fake accent. She pretends to run, and he chases her, but she lets herself get caught in his long spider arms.
I love Dad when he’s like this. Fun and playful instead of dark-eyed and strict. I remember what Frank said about his pop, that he was different before the war. Was Dad different when Mom first met him? Did he like to goof around when he worked at the gas station? He probably wasn’t as worried about losing that job as he is about losing his job at Chr
ysler, since he didn’t have me or Carol Anne to worry about back then. Maybe becoming strict is just something that naturally happens to grown-ups, like gray hair or wanting coffee in the morning instead of orange juice.
Back then, he probably didn’t jump out of his chair like he was being shot from a cannon, or holler out loud in the middle of the night. His gums probably didn’t bleed, and his feet probably didn’t peel in cold weather. But was he a different person?
I look hard at him.
I don’t see any part of him that looks like Frank Sinatra.
Like magic, Carol Anne appears and jumps into Dad’s arms and curls up like a boiled macaroni noodle. “How’s my little baby girl?” he asks.
“Look what that Mrs. Scholtz brought over for Lydia’s and George’s new baby. I’m sure she knitted them herself,” says Mom.
“How about that,” Dad says, not even looking at the booties and putting Carol Anne back on the ground gently. “She coming to your little shindig?”
“No, we tried to talk her into it, didn’t we, Marjorie?” Mom squints at me and I kind of smile. “It’s maybe good she said no. Viola Fisher accepted the invitation to come and I don’t know how she would take it, you know.” She looks from me to Dad. “Which is not to say that you shouldn’t be nice to that girl in school, do you hear me? It’s not like she started the war.”
“Yes, but—”
“Listen to your mother,” Dad says. He opens the door to the basement and calls down the stairs to Frank, “Don’t you know people die in bed?”
“Go easy on the boy. He’s so banged up,” Mom says to Dad in a loud whisper.
“Frank, you hearing me? Use your good arm to throw a shovel of coal in the furnace and report topside for duty.”
He closes the door again and faces Mom. “Boy’s keeping us up all night, he’s got to pay the piper. I’m thinking of a whole list of one-armed chores for him today. Gonna build his intestinal fortitude.”
The Enemy Page 14