Listen for the Singing

by Jean Little

  “Suzy Hughes, it’s none of your business,” Maggie said, sensing Anna’s resentment at the prying words. “My father works in a store too, Anna. A shoe store.”

  “And mine writes for the Toronto Star,” Paula put in.

  “I already know what they do,” Suzy said, nettled.

  “We’re not telling you; we’re telling Anna,” Paula squelched her. “If her mother’s anything like mine, the first thing she’ll want to know about us is what our fathers do.”

  Anna looked down but not quickly enough.

  “She’s asked you already, hasn’t she?” Paula cried.

  Anna nodded and Paula laughed.

  “Mine already knows about yours,” she said. My dad loves shopping in your store. They talk German together. Tell her my mother’s name is Jessie and my father’s Gunther. Suzy’s father’s a lawyer.”

  “I don’t know why it matters to Mama,” Anna said. “I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “She wants your friends to have respectable relations,” Maggie said. “Tell her we’re so respectable we’re boring.”

  Later Suzy, her arms laden with bright new textbooks, came to find the others. Anna had just located the algebra text and was regarding it with deep misgiving. It was thick, with glossy pages and very small print.

  “Don’t you like math?” Suzy said, noting her look of dismay.

  “I’m not much good at it,” Anna murmured.

  “Me neither,” said Maggie. “Paula can do it herself but can’t explain anything to anybody else.”

  “I’m really good at it,” Suzy said, “but it does take a logical mind. I have to go now to meet my mother. We just got home from the cottage on Sunday and I haven’t any new school clothes yet. See you tomorrow.”

  “Think of being an only child with money,” Maggie sighed, looking after her.

  “And a logical mind,” Anna added.

  “She’s a whiz at math but if she has a logical mind, I’m a six-toed giraffe,” Paula said.

  Fifteen minutes later, the three of them staggered out of the school building, their arms full of books.

  “I’ll never make it home,” Maggie gasped.

  “I know where we can rest,” Paula said. “There’s a bench by the bus stop in front of the pet store.”

  Anna said nothing but she could not have been more delighted. If she had been by herself, she would have stopped there as a matter of course.

  The bench was empty. Maggie and Paula unloaded their books without ceremony, letting them tumble down. Anna took time to place hers in a neat pile. She was not tidy about other things, but Papa had drilled into her from babyhood that a book was a friend and should be treated with respect.

  When she joined the other two at the pet shop window, they were watching three calico kittens having a mock battle in one of the cages while a small grey one slept, curled into a ball, in the corner. Anna looked instead into a cage on the right.

  “Hi, Mop,” she said softly, reaching up to tap the glass to try to get the puppy’s attention.

  Maggie and Paula glanced up and followed her gaze.

  “Oh, he’s darling!” Paula said, crooning the words.

  “How do you know his name?” Maggie asked Anna.

  “I named him myself,” Anna said, looking hard at the puppy as she spoke rather than facing the girls.

  “Why?” Maggie said.

  Anna was not at all sure they would understand.

  “I want a dog,” she said slowly, still looking into the cage, “but there’s nobody at home during the day to look after one. And they cost a lot to feed and all. But last spring I thought, Supposing things change? So I started saving my money just in case. I come by nearly every day and pick out the one I’d like and then I think up a name and come to see him or her … I guess it’s pretty dumb really.”

  “Suppose he gets sold though,” Maggie said, smiling as Mop stood on his hind feet and tried to get at Anna’s hand through the glass.

  “This is the sixth one I’ve chosen,” Anna said. “I have almost enough to buy one now.”

  “Does your family know?” Paula inquired.

  Anna shook her head.

  “They’d feel sorry but they couldn’t do anything. But I like choosing one, all the same, knowing that he might be mine if …”

  Her voice trailed off. She wished she had not explained. It sounded silly, even to her, when she said it out loud. But it hadn’t felt that way. Once she had been there when one of her puppies had been sold and she had watched the people taking him away. It had been wonderful because the small boy, who carried him out of the store in his arms, was so clearly holding a dream come true.

  “I don’t think it’s so dumb,” Maggie said. “It makes me feel lonesome though. Bye, Mop.”

  They gathered up their books and went on.

  “Here’s my street,” Anna said.

  “Leb’ wohl,” Paula said.

  Anna was startled.

  “Um … auf Wiedersehen,” she answered.

  “Hey, cut that out,” Maggie said. “Or I’ll go find a friend who speaks Dutch — not that I know much Dutch.”

  “I only said, ‘Farewell,’” Paula translated, “and she said ‘Till we meet again.’ I guess. Don’t worry. I hardly know any German. My father only speaks it when my grandmother is staying with us.”

  “When we first came, Papa made us practise speaking English every night at supper,” Anna said. “I hated it at first. But a year or so ago, he realized that the twins and I were forgetting our German so now we have to speak German every night instead. He says knowing two languages is like having more than one door into the world.”

  “Don’t let him tell my father that!” Paula said. “Although I don’t think my mother would go for it.”

  “Rule One: No foreign languages to be spoken in this gang,” Maggie declared.

  “Till Miss Raymond teaches us all French,” Anna said.

  “That’ll be the day!” Paula scoffed. “We’ll meet you here, Anna, in the morning about twenty-five to nine, okay?”

  Anna tried not to beam but it was hard.

  “I’ll be here,” she promised.

  Chapter 8

  Dropping off her books at home, Anna went on to the store to call Isobel.

  “Hi, Papa … Mama,” she said, heading for the telephone.

  “Anna …” Mama spoke a word of warning.

  “Good afternoon, Mama,” Anna corrected herself, smiling at her mother.

  “‘Hello’ is all right,” Mama pronounced judgment. “‘Hi’ is slang. I don’t like to hear you children using so much slang. And showing so little respect for your elders.”

  “Okay,” Anna promised, and then saw by the look on Mama’s face that she had done it again.

  “I’m sorry, Mama. I really am,” she said, taking down the receiver and holding it to her ear. She moved closer to the wall so that she could speak into the mouthpiece without being overheard.

  “Five minutes, Anna,” Papa warned. “This is just the time when people phone in for things they’ve forgotten and Fritz can still make a few deliveries.”

  “Number, please,” the operator trilled, saving Anna from having to make any promises.

  “Walnut 2-0061,” Anna said.

  “Thank you,” replied the disembodied voice and Anna heard the phone beginning to ring at the Browns’.

  Before her friend answered, Anna had just time enough to remember that Isobel still had her first day in a strange school ahead of her. So instead of spilling out how exciting and happy her own morning had been, the way she had intended to, she began with, “It’s over and I survived!”

  “Did my good advice help?” Isobel asked.

  “It really did,” Anna said, thinking back, “though it wasn’t hard, once I met some nice girls. But guess what? My homeroom teacher is Mr. Lloyd!!”

  “Oh, NO.” Isobel groaned. “I escaped him last year but I heard enough about him to fill a book!”
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br />   Anna ran through her whole list of teachers before Papa told her to hang up. He was especially lenient. They had talked for fully fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.

  In spite of Isobel’s interest in everything, it seemed to Anna that she was worried about her own new school. Anna wished she could help somehow. But just as Isobel had not been able to go to school in her place, she would not be able to face Isobel’s first day for her. Some things you had to do by yourself.

  She found herself humming a song Mrs. Schumacher had taught them. She had liked it, although it was sad but, until now, she had not really felt it meant anything. She sat down on the chair Papa had placed behind the counter for Mama. Mama never took time to sit on it but Papa insisted on leaving it there, in case. As Anna waited for her parents to close the store so she could walk home with them, she sang the song softly, barely loud enough for herself to hear.

  I’ve got to walk that lonesome valley.

  I’ve got to walk it by myself.

  There’s nobody else can walk it for me.

  I’ve got to walk it by myself.

  Yet it hadn’t been lonesome because of Maggie. The others too, but Maggie especially.

  She thought about the four of them, trying to figure out what each one was like.

  Paula’s the leader, she thought. She’s brave and she decides things. Suzy’s the … the popular one.

  She stopped, searching for a better word to describe Suzy, because the others had said Suzy wasn’t well liked by most of the girls.

  “Although the boys think she’s the icing on the cake,” Paula had declared.

  So maybe “popular” was all right. She certainly was the prettiest of the four of them.

  And I’m the homeliest, Anna thought ruefully. Maybe if Paula’s the leader, I’m the follower. I’m the person who’s under their wing.

  She was pretty sure that they weren’t letting her go around with them simply because they felt sorry for her, although she did know that was part of it. But she didn’t know yet what she had to give to them, how she would find her place and fit in. Maybe I have some hidden talent, she told herself. I hope, I hope.

  That left Maggie.

  That’s easy, Anna thought. She’s the kind one. Already she felt Maggie and she were real friends. She touched the wooden counter to be safe.

  On the way home, she told Mama what the other three girls’ fathers did for a living.

  “They sound like fine people,” Mama said after a thoughtful pause. “It is good that you befriend their daughters.”

  Anna gasped. Didn’t Mama realize that she, Anna, was the one who was being befriended? Papa put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently.

  When supper was ready, she went to call the boys. Fritz was in the backyard practising throwing baskets through an improvised hoop he and Rudi had put up on a tree. Rudi was up in his room with the door closed.

  “Time to eat,” Anna called in to him.

  He didn’t answer. Thinking he might be asleep she banged loudly on his door.

  Her brother jerked the door open and scowled at her.

  “I heard you the first time,” he said. “I’m not Superman, you know — faster than a speeding locomotive, more powerful than …”

  “It’s ‘faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive,’” Anna corrected him.

  “He can leap tall buildings at a single bound!” shouted Rudi, and jumped all the way down to the landing.

  Still laughing, Anna followed him in to the table.

  Before Papa could ask the blessing though, Rudi, who had been acting so silly with her only seconds before, spoke in a voice tight with strain.

  “I do not wish to speak German tonight, Papa.”

  There was a startled silence.

  Then Ernst Solden turned to his son.

  “Rudi, I think I know what you are feeling,” he said in his usual quiet voice, “but German is our first language, the language of Goethe and —”

  “And Hitler! Papa, have you read today’s paper?” Rudi cried. “Have you listened to the news? Do you know what is happening in Poland? Papa, don’t you care?”

  “My son,” Papa started, his voice still quiet but heavy now.

  Then Mama broke in. “I have read. I have listened,” Klara Solden said. “My mother’s mother was Polish. We went to Warsaw in the summers to visit. We children stayed up late playing in the garden …”

  Nobody knew what to say. Even Rudi looked down, away from the pain in his mother’s usually soft, cheerful face.

  “Ernst, we will speak English,” she said to her husband.

  Without further protest, Papa bowed his head and asked the blessing in English. When he had finished, nobody spoke or began to eat for a long moment. Then Fritz reached for a roll.

  “I forgot the butter,” Mama said and fled to the kitchen.

  “The butter’s here!” Gretchen called after her. They could all hear Mama crying.

  “You prayed for the hurt people, Papa, but you forgot to say thank you for the food,” Frieda said, her mind focusing on the one thing which seemed safe to mention.

  “I couldn’t speak of the food on our table when so many have no homes,” Papa said. “But this is not the time to dwell on that. Pass your plate, Anna, for some goulash or whatever this is that Gretchen has concocted. We must do our best to go on living fully, joyously even. We mustn’t forget to laugh.”

  Mama, empty-handed and self-conscious, returned to the table. Rudi, his eyes shocked, stared at his father.

  “Laugh!” he said. “How can we laugh?”

  “I don’t know how but we must,” Ernst Solden said, passing Anna’s plate back and accepting Gretchen’s. “Because the world is going insane, should we go mad? That is no solution. Laughter, good, honest laughter, is one of the sure signs of sanity.”

  “I’ve seen lots of pictures of Hitler smiling,” Gretchen said slowly, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of him laughing.”

  “No,” her father said. “He smiles and smiles and is a villain.” Mama surprised them by laughing at that.

  “Ernst, if you were on your deathbed,” she said, a little hysterically, “I believe you would find something to quote. I remember those lines. Is it Othello or Hamlet?”

  Papa beamed at her as though she were one of his more backward pupils who had just stunned everyone by coming up with the right answer. “Hamlet. Act One. Scene —”

  “Stop!” Fritz said. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s Shakespeare. We had to do As You Like It last year and, boy, was it dull! Hardly any of it made sense and it was so old-fashioned. He didn’t say anything that meant anything.”

  “That a son of mine should speak that way of Shakespeare,” Papa said, looking sorrowfully at Fritz.

  Fritz grinned at him good-naturedly.

  “That a father of mine can’t fix a leaking tap!” he said.

  Anna was on Papa’s side. She could not understand Fritz’s dislike of all that had to do with reading. Papa had been choosing things for her to memorize ever since she could remember. It was one of her best gifts from him, a headful of poems. He made her remember the author’s name always so she already knew several bits of Shakespeare’s writing even though she had yet to study one of his plays in school. Papa had chosen a new piece for her to learn just last week and, suddenly, she saw why.

  “If you only knew, Fritz,” she said. “Shakespeare said something that isn’t one bit old-fashioned. Not much anyway. It talks about right now. About soldiers in wartime.”

  “I’ll bet,” Fritz scoffed.

  “Papa, you tell him,” Anna begged.

  “Have you forgotten it so soon?” her father teased, knowing she hardly ever forgot, that she could still recite things he had taught her when she was four and five. “You start and I’ll help if you get stuck.”

  Everyone was watching her. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath to steady herself. She wanted to do the words justice.
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  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

  Or close the wall up with our English dead.

  In peace, there’s nothing so becomes a man

  As modest stillness, real humility,

  But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

  Then imitate the action of the tiger.

  Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood …

  “Then there’s a part I didn’t learn and then … how does it start, Papa?”

  “‘For there is none of you …’” her father prompted.

  “‘… none of you so base and mean,’” Anna picked it up,

  That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

  I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

  Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot.

  Follow your spirits, and upon this charge,

  Cry, ‘God for Harry, England and Saint George!’

  “You’re pretty smart, Anna,” Fritz said with genuine admiration. “I don’t see how you can learn stuff like that. It sounds warlike, all right. Who’s Harry?”

  “Henry the Fifth,” Papa answered for her. “The English were badly outnumbered and all the odds were against them but they followed his lead and won.”

  As he went on explaining, turning supper into a history lesson, Mama said, slipping into German, “Gretchen, pass the salt, please.”

  Anna noticed the switch to the other language but nobody else seemed to. Nobody else seemed to notice Rudi either but perhaps she did only because she was sitting right next to him. He was staring down at his right hand, clenched into a hard fist, on the table edge.

  “‘Follow your spirits …’” he said in a whisper.

  Anna, recognizing the words as part of the speech she had just recited, opened her mouth to finish out the line for him.

  “But how can I?” he asked, still talking to himself. Just in time, Anna knew that he had not meant anyone to hear and she remained silent. Another phrase from the famous lines jumped into her mind.