The Window

by Jeanette Ingold

  But if the others find them funny, they don't say.

  Aunt Emma tells Hannah she believes she knows her mother and asks what all Hannah does. It seems to be almost everything from student government to baby-sitting.

  I'd wondered why Hannah was messing with me, but hearing the list I can guess: I'm probably some sort of service club project.

  Then we're driving home and I know Emma, Gabriel, and Abe all want me to tell them how things went. But I don't know myself and I'm too tired to sort it all out.

  I sag back into the car seat.

  At home I go to my room and flop on my bed. I am so tired.

  For a long time the afternoon happens again and again in my mind, names and voices and snatches of talk and how the bumps of one, two, and three felt under my fingers.

  "Some people think braille is on its way out," Ms. Zeisloff told me, "but I don't believe that."

  Teaching me braille will be the job of one of the itinerant teachers, a woman who'll work with me for a couple of hours three afternoons a week beginning Wednesday or Thursday.

  Meanwhile, Ms. Z. says she knows just enough to get me started.

  Braille dots under my fingertips...

  I think of Gwen, whoever she is. Gwen, whose fingertips dragged in summer dirt when she hung upside down from a tree limb.

  Had I made her up?

  I go to my window, open it. Run my hand down a lace curtain.

  It's just a curtain, I'm thinking, when the breeze quickens, pulls it from my hand, pulls on me.

  This time I lean into the dark wind, give myself over to it. In another moment I'm back all those years again, back to seeing, watching another girl in another time....

  Gwen snatched up her shoes and ran around to the back of the house, before her mother could come to the door and see her. She slipped into the kitchen, turned the radio on softly, and then went back outside.

  Sitting against the house in the cool shade, her bare legs on the cold, rough concrete of the side walkway, she waited for her program to come on. The salesman was here with a lot of things for her mother to look at. Maybe Gwen would have a whole half hour, long enough to hear an entire program, which didn't happen often.

  But news came on instead, more about Korea.

  Gwen had heard it first the evening before, from Abe, who'd heard it on the radio and run to tell. "We're at war," he had shouted. "The radio says we're at war and we got eight of their planes, but they didn't shoot down any of ours."

  "Nonsense," their mother had said. "Don't make things up."

  But of course the story had been in this morning's paper, and then all their mother could say was, "Well, here we go again."

  Gwen thought about the salesman. Would he have to go to war? How old was he, eighteen maybe? Old enough to be drafted?

  A screen door slapped shut in the front. He was leaving.

  Gwen ran along the side of the house.

  "Bye," she called, stopping him as he got in his car. "I just..." She searched for something to say. Stepped closer. "My mother buy any brushes?"

  "You got a name, sugar?" he asked.

  She looked carefully, decided his smile was not a smirk.

  "Gwen," she said. "What's yours?"

  "Paul."

  Paul started his car, getting the motor to catch on the third try. Wiggled the stick shift into reverse. "Be seeing you, Gwendolyn," he said. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

  "Gwen, not Gwendolyn. And I don't see how you'll be seeing me."

  "Thursday," he said. "Thursday I sell soap. I'll be back."

  "Mandy," Aunt Emma says, giving my shoulder a light shake. "You've got to get up now if you're not going to be late."

  I wish I didn't have to go.

  It's Thursday morning, my fourth day of school, but so far I've only gone for afternoons, only dealt with the resource room. Kids are in there on varying, overlapping schedules, but I'm starting to get them figured out.

  I've gotten to know Ted, who really is more funny than mean, as long as you understand his sense of humor. I've also met Marissa, who's the only other one in the resource room with what she calls a "vision impairment." Marissa can see a lot, only very fuzzy, and she doesn't want to have anything to do with me.

  I'm not sure why Stace and the other boy are there. Ms. Z. doesn't give a lot of time for talking.

  But anyway, today ... Today I start my regular schedule.

  First period I've got math, the same class as Hannah. We go in together, early, and she introduces me to Mr. Casie, the teacher.

  I ask where my desk is, but Mr. Casie's got a table all set up for me instead. There's a computer on it, which he says he's ordered earphones and some software for.

  "There's also an electrical outlet for whatever else you need, Mandy," he says. "I suppose you'll be bringing a tape recorder?"

  I have a sudden vision of Mandy the camel, hunching along the hall under a load of equipment.

  "I don't know," I say. "Maybe."

  I wish he'd let me slip into a normal desk like everyone else, but before I can ask there's a bell ringing and the room is filled with the racket of talking kids.

  Hannah squeezes my arm. "You'll do OK," she says.

  I find the chair and sit, wonder where to look. Wish maybe I had a tape recorder after all because it would be something I could be busy with. I wonder if everyone's staring at me?

  I hold my hands tight together; I will not put them up to check my hair, check if my collar is flat.

  It seems forever before the bell rings again and the room gets quiet.

  Then Mr. Casie is telling the class who I am, and I say "Hi," hoping I'm talking in the right direction.

  "Man," says some boy, "math's hard enough when you can see the stuff."

  But Mr. Casie's telling everyone what page to turn to and at the same time telling me to try to follow along.

  Then I realize the class is doing statistics, new material for them but stuff I've had before.

  I think, Mandy, you know this.

  One thing I learned years ago—the more scared I am, the better it is to jump in fast. I wait for a question that I'm sure about the answer to and put up my hand.

  "Mandy?" Mr. Casie calls on me.

  "You don't try to control variables in a random sampling," I say. "That's the whole point of random samples—the randomness evens out the variables."

  The boy who said "Man" before says "Man" again, this time like he's impressed.

  My heart's pounding and I hold my hands in my lap, hope nobody can see how they're shaking.

  "Very good, Mandy," says Mr. Casie, as if I haven't done anything special.

  Chapter 5

  HANNAH TUGS ME through the halls the way some mothers tug their children, like attachments that are a normal part of things. I hold her arm, but she does the tugging.

  I've wondered how I'll find a bathroom, but we go to one between classes, without me asking. Hannah warns me, "The seat's wet, don't sit down." Then she says, "Sorry. Tell me when I overdo."

  How am I supposed to figure out how to deal with Hannah when she answers what's on my mind before I say it?

  The rest of the morning goes by in a growing blur of noise and smells and bits of touch too small for me to know what I'm feeling.

  Changing classes is the worst, and the crowds in the halls make it impossible for me to use my cane. We get to both English and geography late; the English teacher passes over it, but I hear the geography teacher give an exaggerated sigh.

  He spends the period drilling the class on a current events map, making them find places mentioned in news stories: Seattle and Cincinnati, Yellowstone Park and the Columbia River Basin. And after class, when Hannah and I are leaving, he says, "Mandy, perhaps this class is not the best placement for you. This class is based on knowing maps."

  "I can do geography without seeing your maps," I tell him. "I've lived in half the places you talked about."

  Jerk, I think. I'll decide for myself what I c
an and cannot do.

  But fourth period I sit out a gym class because the teacher says she's not allowed to have me participate in any activities until the modified program she's worked out gets official approval.

  After that it's lunch. Somehow Hannah guesses how much I need quiet.

  "Instead of the cafeteria," she says, "maybe we could eat in Ms. Zeisloff's room. You can have part of my sandwich, if you didn't bring anything."

  The resource room is locked, but the day is warm enough for us to eat outside. We sit on the grass, our backs against the building. It's blessedly silent.

  Slowly the welter of stuff that is muddling my mind drains away, until for the first time in hours I feel in control. I let my thoughts drift away from school, drift to Gwen and to what I've learned about her.

  The Korean War started at the end of June in 1950. Ted looked it up for me in the encyclopedia. So now I know the time that I go to when I lean past the curtains. I know when Gwen lived, this girl who pulls me through time to the year she was my age.

  And I've done my math. Uncle Abe would have been about five then, which fits since he must be about fifty now, or maybe a little older.

  For I'm sure that is who that boy is, Gwen's little brother. He has Uncle Abe's way of talking, words going just a bit uphill and down. The house that the two of them live in is the house that I'm living in now. And the tree where I first saw Gwen hanging by her knees still stands, only it's much, much bigger now. So big I can't put my arms halfway around it, and the ground under it is gnarled with pushed-up roots.

  What I don't know is who Gwen is. I mean, I realize she must be a great-aunt of mine, a sister of my great-uncles Abe and Gabriel, and of my grandmother, whose name was Margaret. I just don't know where Gwen fits.

  I haven't heard Emma or the uncles mention her. No one has said, "Is Gwen coming for Christmas?" or "Is Gwen's gift in the mail yet?" And you'd think they would. I've always imagined that's what real families do.

  Maybe she's dead like my grandmother?

  Sooner or later, I'll ask.

  But not yet. For now, I like the mystery of her, like the mystery of seeing her in another time. For now, I like having one thing that is all mine, privately mine, that no one else knows about.

  "Mandy." Hannah's voice breaks into my thoughts. "Are you sleeping or daydreaming? You look like you're miles away."

  "Sorry," I say. I keep my voice light. "I guess I did drift pretty far off."

  When I get home Thursday I go to my room, eager to leave my own world and be lost again in Gwen's. I lean out my window into the breeze, lean out and wait to hear the calling.

  The breeze doesn't change, and I stay with just myself, alone.

  Instead of seeing Gwen, I think of my mom and me, years ago. I remember how one morning she sent me off to one of the jillion different grade schools I went to.

  "Knock 'em dead, kid," she said, even though I'd been at that particular school long enough for us both to know I wasn't going to.

  She pinned a plastic Christmas tree pin on my coat. It was just the kind that kids would laugh at, but I waited until I was down the street to put it in my pocket.

  I remember the hurt of that morning.

  A girl named Aimee and I were picked to stay in during recess and make paper chains to decorate the room. Aimee cut red and green strips while I pasted circle through circle, as fast as I could. Soon the smell of wet paste was all around and a chain of colored paper bunched and rustled on the floor.

  We started giggling, and then Aimee draped a piece of chain across the bust of a Roman emperor. I roped more of it around my waist, and Aimee tore off enough to make a necklace for herself. We were having fun, and I was sure she liked me.

  Then a couple of boys looked in the window at us. Aimee must not have wanted them thinking we were friends, because she took the chain from around her neck and went back to cutting paper strips, and she didn't say another word.

  Saturday comes. Hannah telephones even before I'm out of bed. She wants to know if I want to go to a football game. "It's a play-off," she says. "The whole school will be there."

  "So what do I do at a football game?" I ask.

  "Walk around. Talk. See people."

  "Like I could."

  Hannah says, "Knock it off, Mandy. That's sick."

  I'm learning Hannah does not put up with my sounding sorry for myself.

  "I'll think about it."

  "Mandy, the game starts at one."

  "OK, OK. I'll go."

  "I'll pick you up," she says. "I got my license last month."

  "That's when you turned sixteen?" I ask.

  "Yeah."

  I hang up before I realize I probably should have thanked her.

  I go back to my room and make my bed.

  Go to my dressing table and touch my mom's picture. "Do you know what I'm doing, Mom? Going to a football game. Isn't that a laugh?"

  But I don't hear Mom laughing back, and I realize I can't quite remember what her laugh sounded like. Tears in my eyes, I put down her picture, go to close my window.

  Without warning, I find myself being pulled to Gwen, being pulled again into the wind behind the curtains, into Gwen's life that summer of 1950....

  "Pill bug, pill bug, curl up tight."

  "It's 'Ladybug. Fly home.'"

  "But these are pill bugs, Gwen. Want to see my pill bug circus?"

  Abe was stretched out on his stomach, planting toothpicks tipped with tiny bright flags in a circle in the dusty earth. A gray pill bug crawled tanklike to one of them, then felt its way around.

  "How come he doesn't curl up at the toothpick, like he does when he touches my finger, Gwen?"

  "Ask Dad."

  Just then the screen door opened and their father stepped onto the porch, walked down the steps to the car. Abe called, "Dad, come see. I'm training pill bugs."

  "Not now. Maybe later."

  Abe arranged pebbles inside the circle of flags. "Seats, Gwen, for the audience. How long do you think Dad will be?"

  "That depends on where he's gone."

  "Do you think he's driving all the way to town?"

  A few minutes later, Abe said, "I'm going to let my pill bugs go. I think they're tired."

  Gwen watched him run off, then straightened two of the toothpick flagpoles. This was the most restless, boring summer. And hot. It felt like something should happen.

  She wished something would happen.

  Except she knew nothing would, it never did. That salesman, Paul, hadn't even come back, when he'd almost promised.

  What would it be like, Gwen wondered, to be Abe? To be little again?

  No, maybe that wasn't the question. Abe always had something to do. Was that because he was little arid there was still stuff left that he thought was exciting? Or because he was a boy, and there really was?

  "Gwen, come in here." Her mother spoke from the window above. "The beans need snapping now or I won't have them ready in time to eat. And wash off your knees. When are you going to start acting your age?"

  "Never."

  "What did you say?"

  "I said I'm coming."

  I should tell her, thought Gwen, that I don't see any point in growing up, just to spend Saturday afternoon cooking so I can serve supper exactly at 6:00 P.M. Saturday evening. I should tell her I'm never, ever going to think it's something to be proud of, just to get a meal ready on time.

  "I'm coming," Gwen yelled again, louder than necessary.

  She and her mother worked without talking, except once her mother said, "Gwen, did your father say where he was going?" and a little later, "I wonder what's keeping your father."

  He still wasn't back at 5:30 or 5:40, nor at 5:50, when her mother called to everyone to wash their hands and come to the table.

  They sat—her mother at her end, Gwen on one side, Abe and the older boy on the other—and waited.

  Six o'clock came, and the chair at the far end, the only chair with arms, was still empty. />
  "Well," said Gwen's mother. "Well." She asked Gwen to say grace.

  ***

  "What happened? What happened to your father?" I call.

  One instant I'm with Gwen and the next I am alone in my room, and it has happened so fast I feel light-headed.

  I have to know, Did Gwen lose her dad, the way I lost Mom? Did he get killed in some accident and never tell Abe why pill bugs curl up?

  I wait until my head clears. Then I stretch as far out into the wind as I can.

  "Gwen," I call. "Gwen? Please answer. Tell me what happened." '

  I think of another question. "And where was my grandmother? Why wasn't there another girl at the table?"

  I'm grabbed from behind and jerked inside.

  "Mandy! Mandy, don't you know how far down the ground is?"

  It's Uncle Gabriel, and his voice is loud and angry and shaky, all at once. "Mandy, this room is three stories up. Don't ever lean out the window like that."

  He's still holding my arm, even though I'm standing up straight now. I shake myself free. Turn deliberately until the back of my waist is pressed flat against the sill and my shoulders arch into emptiness.

  "Don't worry about me," I say. "I won't fall."

  "Mandy, you get away from that window. You're as stubborn as ... Mandy, we're going to take care of you whether you like it or not."

  "As stubborn as who?"

  "Whether you like it or not."

  "Who?"

  But Gabriel pulls me in, shuts the window hard.

  "Emma's made an early lunch for you, Mandy," he says. "Better fix your hair before you go down. She'll think you've been in a wind."

  Chapter 6

  WHEN HANNAH COMES for me I try to just leave, but no way. Aunt Emma is so excited about me going to the football game that Hannah must realize this is the first time I've gone out, except shopping and to school.

  And Uncle Gabriel wants us to sit down while he reads a newspaper story about the two teams. "You should know who the players are," he says.

  "Hannah probably already knows," I tell him.