by Jean Little
“But, Rudi, we’re no good at making things.”
Anna felt a sudden chill. She worked on the next buckle. It was stiff. What would Rudi say?
“Can you earn money?” Rudi wanted to know.
“Well … maybe,” Fritz ventured for them both.
“Buy them something then,” Rudi lightly brushed aside their anxiety. He was not going to have anyone or anything stand in the way of his plan. “That’s what I’m going to do myself.”
“How?”
“You’ll see. I promise you one thing though. It’s going to be the best present of them all,” boasted Rudi.
Anna kicked her overshoes off. The other four turned at the sound and discovered her. She watched, while dismay broke over each face in turn.
“What in the world can Anna give them?” Gretchen was the one who put it into words.
“Oh, she doesn’t count. She’s only nine,” Rudi said too quickly. Staring up at the ceiling, suddenly he started to whistle.
He was wrong about her not counting. With Ben she counted. With Isobel. With Papa. With Miss Williams. Anna knew that. But the words still flicked at her in a way that hurt.
Still, could she make a Christmas present for her parents? Rudi could earn money easily. He said so himself. And Gretchen knitted almost as well as Mama. The twins, Anna was sure, would find a way.
They are full of imagination, she thought.
She alone could do nothing.
Gretchen, still staring at her, suddenly cried out, “Don’t you worry, Anna. I’ll knit something to be from you. If I start right away, I’ll have time, I’m sure.”
Before Anna had time to answer, Rudi said roughly, “Oh, Gretel, don’t be so silly. They won’t expect anything from her once they know we’re making the presents ourselves. I think we should try to make them really great things.”
The Anna Solden who had lived in Frankfurt would have seen that Rudi was right and given up before she started. But this was another Anna. She was braver now, a little older, and much better at making things. Sometimes, now, she could even see the hole in the needle. She came a step into the room and then another. She still had not spoken but she was thinking harder than she had ever thought before.
Drawings maybe? Miss Williams liked her drawings. She could put some into a sort of book.
But Rudi could draw galloping horses that practically moved across the page and Frieda often sat and sketched Mama while she ironed, or Papa reading a book, and anyone could tell right away who they were supposed to be and what they were doing.
Not pictures, Anna decided.
“You really are mean, Rudi,” Gretchen flared. “Of course Anna will want to give something. And I will so knit her something. If it’s from Anna, it needn’t be anything big or special.”
The last sentence jabbed into Anna like the thrust of a knife. Suddenly, she stopped thinking. Her chin shot up. Her eyes, behind her big glasses, sparked with anger and humiliation. They would see. She would show them.
“I will give my own present, thank you very much, Lady Gretchen.” She threw the words like darts. “You can keep your stupid old knitting. People only say they like it to make you feel good. Everyone knows it’s full of mistakes.”
Then, before any of them could come back with a retort to remind her who she was — the youngest, the Dummkopf, Awkward Anna — she wheeled around and left the room.
She headed for the stairs, not caring what they would say, but she heard Rudi whether she wanted to or not.
“I told you, Gretchen,” he jeered. “Helping Anna is like trying to pat a biting dog.”
Gretchen did not answer though. Anna paused. Still Gretchen did not speak.
All at once, Anna wished she had not said that last bit about the mistakes in Gretchen’s knitting; but she did not go back. Her sister deserved it.
“If it’s from Anna, it needn’t be anything big or special.”
Who did Gretchen think she was?
At the top of the stairs, Anna veered and went to look at herself in the bathroom mirror. She was not interested in the sight of her own face. To her, it was dull and plain. She had never seen it when her dimples flashed. But she could talk to herself better sometimes when she could see herself at the same time.
“Can I make a present?” she asked the girl in the mirror. “How can I earn money? A lot of money!” she added recklessly.
She might as well make her wishes big.
But the girl in the mirror looked as discouraged as Anna felt. She hunched up her shoulders, made a face at herself, and turned away.
Papa might help, Anna thought suddenly.
But no.
This present had to be a surprise, a secret. It would not be fair to go to Papa.
Anna wandered into her alcove and lay on her cot. She did not search for an inspiration any longer. She just hoped. Maybe, somehow, something wonderful would happen yet.
Three months before, she would not have hoped at all.
The front door opened and closed. Mama and Papa were home. The youngest of the Soldens got to her feet and started down the stairs. Gretchen had put the meat pie into the oven. It smelled like heaven.
Mama smelled it too. Before she had her coat off, she gave Gretchen a grateful hug.
“So it is you who are the dearest child tonight, my Gretel,” she said. “It is so cold out. The hot pie is just what we are needing.”
Anna was hungry and the pie was delicious, even if there was not really much meat in it. But she could not finish hers.
“Are you feeling well, Liebling?” Mama slipped into German in her anxiety.
Anna did not look up.
“I’m fine,” she growled.
“You don’t look well, does she, Ernst?” Mama would not let the subject go.
Gretchen, too, looked anxiously at Anna. Was it because of the presents?
“Leave her alone, Klara,” Papa said lightly. “She just wants more room for dessert, don’t you, Anna?”
Anna slumped so that her face was in shadow. “That’s right,” she managed to answer.
After that, she had to eat all her dessert. It was an apple, a Tallman Sweet, her favourite kind. Anna chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. The apple had no taste at all.
As soon as she could get away, she went up and got herself ready for bed.
“Anna, are you asleep so soon?” Mama poked her head in around the curtain Anna had carefully drawn all the way shut.
Anna lay still and kept her eyes closed. She took long, steady breaths. Finally, her mother tiptoed away.
Then Anna opened her eyes. Once more, she would try to think. Surely there was something she could do to make good the words she had flung so proudly and defiantly at the others.
She thought and thought. There must be a way. There had to be.
But when she entered the schoolroom the next morning and banged down in her desk, Anna Solden still had not had a single idea.
And she had given up hoping.
15
Miss Williams Asks
ANNA SAW THE SURPRISE on Miss Williams’ face. For a long time now, she, Anna, had come into the room with a smile for her teacher. But she did not feel like smiling. And she did not care what Miss Williams thought about it either.
She opened the lid of her desk, grabbed her pencil box, slammed down the desk lid and put down the pencil box with another crash.
“Good morning, Anna,” Miss Williams said evenly.
Anna considered not answering. She glowered at the pencil box and let one second tick past, and then another. But in spite of herself, she looked up and met the teacher’s steady gaze.
“Good morning,” Anna muttered.
Bernard strolled over and stood beside her.
“What’s got into you, kid?” he asked, his voice low, teasing, very kind.
Anna remembered just two days before. Isobel and Ben and she had been talking about the schoolyard bullies who waited for them and called names and thre
w snowballs. Bernard had overheard and the four of them had planned a counterattack. The two boys had been stunned when, suddenly, four of the victims had come charging after them, armed with snowballs of their own.
“Our aim won’t be very good,” Bernard had said, “so we’ll have to have lots and make a big noise. They’re cowards anyway. You’ll see.”
The bullies had given in almost at once. But the four fighters had chased them a couple of blocks before they had collapsed in the snow and let them go. How they had laughed! How strong Bernard had seemed! A mighty champion like Saint George slaying the dragon!
But even Saint George could not help her now.
“Nothing’s got into me,” she said sullenly, hating herself because she was lying to Bernard, but not knowing what else to do.
How could she explain about Rudi and what Gretchen had said and how she had boasted? It would all sound stupid. It was stupid.
Bernard stayed by her a moment longer, in case she changed her mind. Anna sat still.
Go away, she thought. Just go away.
“All right, Bernard,” Miss Williams said. “It’s time we got started.”
Anna’s class was small. They were like a family. Closer than some families. They knew Anna better, cared about her more, in many ways, than Rudi and Gretchen, Frieda and Fritz. As the morning went on and her unhappiness remained, they all felt it.
“Isobel, you have half your arithmetic wrong!” Miss Williams exclaimed.
Isobel was a mathematical genius.
“I’m sorry,” Isobel said, flushing. She looked over at Anna, who was staring blindly at her speller. “I just couldn’t keep my mind on it,” she confessed.
Miss Williams looked at Anna too.
“Miss Williams, may I go and get a drink?” Ben asked suddenly.
“This is your third drink in an hour,” the teacher said.
Ben squirmed. “I’m hot,” he mumbled.
He did not look at Anna but he might as well have. Miss Williams said quietly, “All right, Benjamin, but come right back.”
“My stomach aches,” Jane Summers said when it was nearly noon.
Anna was startled out of her own misery. She looked over at Jane, only to find Jane staring back at her, her face screwed up with worry. Anna blinked. Then she decided she was crazy.
“Put your head down on your desk and rest for a while, Jane,” Miss Williams said. “Maybe it’ll be better in a minute or two.”
A moment later she said, “Bernard, haven’t you anything to do?”
Anna glanced up again, in greater surprise. Bernard always worked hard. He was going to be famous when he grew up. He was going to write an encyclopedia. But he was sitting with a pile of spitballs on his desk, right out in the open.
He too gave Anna a sudden look. Then he swept the spitballs out of sight and opened a book. He did not even try to make an excuse.
“I’m reading,” he said instead.
Anna watched him out of the corner of her eye. She did not want Bernard to get into trouble. She waited for him to turn a page. He just sat. Minutes passed. The page never turned.
They all went home for lunch. They all came back. Anna’s unhappiness returned with her.
Nobody knew how to help. Nobody could guess what was wrong. Everybody waited and watched, waited and grew more and more on edge.
Anna was back at her speller. She had not learned anything before lunch. Now the list of words in front of her still made no sense. Suddenly, hopelessly, she jammed the speller out of sight into her desk. As she did, her fingers brushed against the book Miss Williams had given her. Her own book. Her challenge.
Robert Louis Stevenson would know how I feel, Anna thought. Probably, when he was small, he often wanted to do things and didn’t know how.
She took the book out and opened it to the first poem of all. It was a poem she had not seen before because it was really the dedication and it came ahead of the title page. Also, it was written in a script that was harder to read than the other poems. Maybe she had seen it and decided it was too hard and skipped it. The letters were difficult to make out.
It seemed important, though, to read it now, hard or not. The title was a long name which Anna could not pronounce. She did not bother trying. Only half taking in what she read, she started at the top of the first verse. He was writing it to someone who had lain awake, watching over him. She reached the third line.
For your most comfortable hand
Which led me through the uneven land …
That she knew all about. It was the land where Awkward Anna lived and where she did not know what to do. If only there were a comfortable hand she could take! She understood exactly what a comfortable hand must be. “Get comfortable,” Miss Williams would say and they would all relax, ready for a record or a story. “Are you comfortable, my little one?” Papa would ask, coming up to tuck in her covers.
Oh, Papa, Papa! Anna thought, needing his help so badly, and yet knowing she could not ask for it.
Then the first tear slid down her nose. The first … and the second … and the third. She could not stop them. Anna Elisabeth Solden, who never cried unless she was by herself and sure of being left alone, was crying now in front of a whole roomful of people — and there was not a single thing she could do about it.
Giving up pretending nothing was the matter, Miss Williams fetched a chair and sat down beside the weeping child.
“Tell me about it,” she said quietly. “Maybe there’s some way I can help.”
“There is nothing …” choked Anna.
“Yes, Anna, there is something.” Miss Williams stayed where she was.
Ben came and stood on Anna’s other side. Isobel put down her pencil with a sigh of relief and added her voice to the teacher’s.
“Go on and tell her, Anna. Miss Williams will know what you can do. Just tell.”
Not daring to hope, Anna started to explain.
From the beginning, everyone listened. When she finished, even the oldest two were nodding in agreement. They, too, wanted a Christmas gift they could give their parents. They, too, with their poor vision, had always been awkward and unskilled.
“If I could only read music …” Mavis Jones said wistfully. “The piano teacher gets so mad!”
“My Aunt Mary keeps saying and saying I could learn to knit if I’d just hold my needles the way she does,” Josephine Peterson put in. “She tells me to watch — but I can’t see what she means, and she can’t understand why.”
The boys could not use tools the way their fathers did, the way even their brothers did, so easily, so quickly.
Anna was not, after all, the only odd man out. That was what Miss Williams called it — being the odd man out.
Jimmy Short had tried having a paper route. “But I couldn’t see the numbers on the houses,” he said. “I can’t make change fast, either. Nickels and quarters look too much the same.”
“None of us can earn money, really,” Bernard summed it up, “or make anything good. I want to make one really good thing, just once — and watch their eyes pop!”
“You are a show-off, Bernard,” Miss Williams told him. Bernard laughed, not minding. In spite of her teasing, he knew the teacher understood.
All the rest of the day the children could feel her thinking. They were extra good, especially quiet. Nobody raised an unnecessary question. Ben stopped going for drinks from the fountain. Nobody asked to leave the room for any reason.
“Let’s make sure I have this clear,” Miss Williams said finally. “Perhaps I can help but it will take some planning. We’d need money for supplies.… You don’t want to ask for money at home, am I right?”
Nobody wanted to ask for money.
“It has to be a surprise,” Anna said. “The others — Rudi and Gretchen and the twins — will all have surprises.”
“Yes, Anna, I know,” the teacher said.
“Wait and see,” Isobel whispered to Anna. “She’ll find a way. Miss Williams can do
anything.”
But maybe there is no way, thought Anna.
She looked at Isobel’s face, bright with faith. She studied Miss Williams’ face, deep in thought. Suddenly, it seemed to Anna terribly important to believe. Maybe if she believed hard enough, it would help.
I do believe. There will be a way, Anna whispered under her breath.
Then, all at once, Miss Williams smiled. Her head lifted.
“What is it, Miss Williams?” Ben asked excitedly.
“I think … you’ll have to wait and see, Ben,” the teacher answered.
But everyone knew that it had happened. A way had been found.
16
Anna Works a Miracle
THEY WERE GOING TO MAKE wastepaper baskets.
Anna stared uncertainly at the queer collection of things Miss Williams said they were going to need. There were circles and ovals of wood with holes drilled in a neatly spaced row around each edge. There were bundles of straight sticks, cream-coloured and clean. There were lengths of reed, rolled up and tied in bunches so they would not spring free and trail all over the room. Some of the reeds were flat and as wide as her finger. Some were round and thin like brittle brown twine.
It looked complicated. It looked much too hard for her to do by herself. Yet she had to do it on her own. The others were not having help.
Miss Williams did not look worried.
“I wish I had a finished basket to show you,” she told the troubled faces grouped around her. “But it will be all right. I promise you.”
Anna was comforted. She had never known the teacher to break a promise.
“Miss Williams, where did you get this stuff? Who paid?” asked Bernard, who did understand about the Depression; his father had been without work for three months.
Miss Williams smiled at him and then at Anna.
“A friend of Anna’s bought most of the materials,” she told the class.
“A friend of Anna’s!”
“Boy, Anna, who’s your rich friend?”
“I have no such friend,” Anna protested. She could not believe Miss Williams would have betrayed her but she had to know. “You didn’t tell? It isn’t Papa?”