by Anne Nesbet
And the girl in the doorway clapped her hand back over her mouth again.
“So sorry,” she said, through the muffling of her hand, though Gusta thought she heard a laugh hiding behind that hand, too.
“Mrs. Hoopes?” said Gusta to whoever it was who had just darted up to that door, correcting that right away to, “Grandmother?” But even as she said that, the quick-footed stranger said, “Oh, no, no, no!” in a voice that was too young to belong to any grandmother.
“You think Miss Marion is your grandmother?” said the girl in the doorway in disbelief. “Well, if that doesn’t take the cake.”
“Josie!” said the woman at the door, and she put a small hand (thin, but all muscle) on Gusta’s arm. “You’re Gladys’s Augusta?”
Gusta nodded. Her brain was scrambling for the names of all the aunts. There had been three of them, before the one aunt died, plus the two uncles: Bill and Jay.
“But where’s your father? We thought — they didn’t send you all this way alone, did they?”
“No foreign bandits anywhere, that I can see,” said Josie, from the side of the doorway.
“Josie,” said the woman again. “Hark a moment, can’t you? Come in, Augusta. Letting in all this cold air. Anyway, I’m your Aunt Marion. Is that thing yours?”
She was eyeing the French horn case as if it might sit up on its rear legs and growl at her.
And then through the hall’s murkiness (which seemed to have faces in it; Gusta heard the shifting and rustling of small people) came a different sort of voice, quick and in charge.
“What’s this bedlam?” it said, and by now the voice was becoming an actual person, the sort of person who knows what needs doing and can’t understand why everyone isn’t already doing it. “You, Josie, have you just left the biscuits to themselves in the kitchen? Here, now, let me investigate this child here.”
Josie scooted off, through some passage down to the right. Aunt Marion was already shrinking back against the passage wall, making way for the person who must be Mrs. Hoopes, herself — Gramma Hoopes — to conduct her investigation.
Gusta felt the press of eyes on her, inspecting every inch of her dusty self. She had never liked being looked at. Other people’s staring eyes felt like weapons trained on her. They made her want to squirm, but she remembered her papa just in time and did not actually twitch. Her papa wanted people to stand up straight and be counted. Gusta tried to stand up straight right now, and keep the squirming tucked away secretly inside.
“Where’s your father?” said Mrs. Hoopes — Gramma — suspiciously. “Augusta! Speak up! Why’s he hanging back outside?”
“It’s just me,” said Gusta. “Papa had to — he had to —”
She had a moment of not knowing what in the world she could say. She had to keep her father’s secret, no matter what. Those horrible agents with their dark glasses, looking for August Neubronner: she couldn’t let anyone know about that.
“Canadian Air Force,” she said in a rush, because it was possibly true. Maybe it was true. Maybe he had managed to get away from those terrible men with their dark glasses. “He had to go north, for the war.”
“What did he want to go and do that for?” said — Gramma. She did not sound like she approved at all of any of it, not of Canada, not of air forces, not of wars. “What are you telling us, child? They just dumped you onto some autobus all the way from New York City on your own?”
“Portland,” said Gusta. “Papa came with me up as far as Portland. Then he —”
Then he had indeed put her on some bus all on her own. Gusta didn’t know how to say that without making this frowning woman in front of her frown harder, so she stopped herself short again. She could feel her lips stretched tense across her teeth, which she tried so hard to never let show.
“He had to go on north,” Gusta said feebly. “To Canada. He’ll come back when he can.”
“Well!” said the formidable Mrs. Hoopes.
“Think how nice it’ll be for Josie to have another big girl around,” said Aunt Marion in her smaller and much less formidable voice. “It’ll be a help to her, I’m sure. How old are you now, Augusta? About ten or so, looks like?”
“Eleven,” said Gusta. Even as she said it, she remembered that letter from her mother, and fished it out of her pocket for Mrs.— Gramma — Hoopes. Of course, she felt a surge of guilt as she did so, but she tried to suppress it. Her father liked to say, In war and struggle, we do what we must! Now her “must” seemed already to have grown to include tearing bits off other people’s letters.
“Well,” said her grandmother again when she was done. (She made no mention of the letter’s slightly ragged lower edge.) “Hard times all around.”
Then she stood up.
“Your mother says you’re a good student and willing to work, Augusta,” she said. “I see you don’t come with much, but believe me, we’ve had plenty of children show up here with less. And you’re family. Family is family. Josie girl!”
Josie was there again in about a quarter of a second.
“Yes, Mrs. Hoopes?” she said. “Bread’s set to rise.”
“Good,” said Gusta’s grandmother. “You take Augusta up and settle her in with you. And then it’s almost dinnertime.”
“Gusta,” whispered Gusta.
“What’s that, girl?” said her grandmother.
“Nobody calls me Augusta, usually,” she said. “Just plain Gusta.”
“Gusty, Gusty!” echoed high-pitched voices from the shadows, and there was giggling and a crescendo of whispering rustle somewhere beyond the doorways.
It was like entering a forest, coming into that house, and sensing creatures lurking behind every tree. These creatures were whispering and giggling sorts, though. Probably not with very sharp teeth.
“That’s right, Josie. You’d better introduce her to the current crop of shipwrecked sailors on your way upstairs,” said Gusta’s grandmother. “Who have no manners yet, though they’re getting older every day. Come now, you lot!”
She said that not to Gusta, but over her shoulder to the rustling shadows.
And then it was like a human ocean spilled in through the door in a great boyish blur.
They ranged in size from very small to just about Gusta’s height. Josie took over as Gusta’s grandmother marched out of the room, taking Aunt Marion with her as if they were on their way to a secret discussion of Gusta’s arrival, which they probably were.
“The kids aren’t really sailors,” said Josie. “That’s just Mrs. Hoopes’s way of speaking. We all ran into hard times, or our families did, and here we are. I was the first. Sometimes they even call me First Girl, just to remind me. Left behind here as a tiny baby. Anyway. And then others came and went, came and went. This one is Donald. He’s already big, twelve — does work for your uncle Bill on the farm when he’s not in school. He came here with this slew of his brothers, all in a crowd, more than a year ago now already. State kids. Stand up straight, Clarence! This is Augusta, named like the city, but who wants to be called Gusta. Here is Clarence, who can’t be trusted with eggs —”
The moving blur that must be Clarence squawked out a laugh.
“They slip right out of his fingers. But he’s strong and fast, so that’s good, if he would just think sometimes. Then that’s Laurence in the middle. Larry. How old are you, Larry, eight? There’s one who can be trusted with eggs. This fellow’s Thomas. He’s six. He’s small, but he likes bossing around the cows, so that’s his specialty. Say hey to the new girl, boys!”
“Hey there!” said the other blurry faces all around her. How was she ever going to figure out who was who in that crowd?
She tried to smile, though, or at least made a weak effort. She was always so careful not to open her mouth when she smiled, so that her crooked teeth didn’t show; her mother said Gusta’s smiles always looked anxious, even when she wasn’t anxious.
“And there’s Ron,” said Josie, pointing to a paler-headed kid in the back. “Also
helps out with the farm chores. Here to rescue him from his weak lungs. Don’t seem so weak now. And Delphine’s over there hiding. She’s too young to be much help, being only three and a half. Her cot’s in with Miss Marion. All right, and that’s the current crew of boarders. Rascals, all.”
The blur of (mostly) boys grinned back at that. They seemed to like Josie pretty well.
“Where are you from?” they said, and also, “What’s in that thing?”— pointing, of course, at the horn case.
“Now, I’m warning all of you,” said Josie. “Give her no trouble, and you’ll get no grief from me. She’s not like all the rest of us. She’s family — her mother’s Miss Marion’s own sister. So you all treat her right.”
Discomfort prickled all through Gusta during this part of Josie’s speech. All the faces around her seemed to soak it up, and back away a step. Family. Not like the likes of them.
“Wash up for dinner, now,” said Josie, swatting the nearest boy to stand in for swatting them all. “We’re having bean soup and biscuits. And someone please get that paint or paste or whatever it is off Delphine’s face.”
While the children dispersed, Josie led Gusta up the stairs.
“Mostly we all sleep up here,” she said. “There’s the big room for the boys. Miss Marion and Delphine have the front room, that way. And I’m in here, and so will you be. In summertime we can sleep out on the porch when the heat gets awful.”
The heat was certainly not awful in there at the moment. There was hardly any heat in there to speak of.
The room was not just cold; it was cold and small and fiercely neat, with a bed on one side and a lower cot on the other side. Through the window at the far end, there was a streak of what must be pasture across Hoopes Road and the blur of the woods beyond that.
The beds were made so tightly you could not spot even the ghost of a wrinkle on the coverlets. Under Josie’s bed were two small boxes for clothes.
“I’ll have to look out for another box for you,” said Josie as an apology. “Though I see you’ve got a suitcase, and that’s just about as good as a box, I guess. Does it fit under the cot over there? Cot’s not that high above the ground.”
It did fit, thank goodness, but Gusta didn’t know where her underwear and socks (now choking the poor French horn) were supposed to go. Maybe another box would turn up at some point, and she could move them in there, but for the moment she just left the French horn standing, unopened and keeping all its secrets, at the end of the cot.
“Funny-looking thing,” said Josie about the case. “Now we better scoot down to dinner, though, huh? You can show me whatever’s inside there later.”
“Just a French horn,” said Gusta. Her lips were dry. She felt half-dazed, to tell the truth.
“All right,” said Josie with good cheer. “Sure! Whatever that is.”
They sat around a big table downstairs: so many people. The bean soup was plain but warming, like something Gusta’s mother might make. There were bits of real meat in it, which was not always true about the soup at home. And there were mashed potatoes on the table in a large bowl. And biscuits, warm biscuits, on a plate. So much food! But the sense of all those eyes on her took the flavor out of it somehow.
“You really came from New York City all by yourself?” said the wriggly one, Clarence. (What did it mean to say a kid “can’t be trusted with eggs”? Then he twitched a little and the brother next to him yelped, so that was a clue.)
“Not by myself,” said Gusta, “until Portland.” He was right across from her, so she didn’t have to say it very loud, but Gramma Hoopes sniffed.
“Hard to fathom,” she said. “What man in his right mind would put a girl on a bus and wander off like that? When he was supposed to come here himself, drop the poor child off properly. Well, there’s no accounting for the things people do, is there? Especially foreigners. Seems downright cowardly.”
“Mmm,” said Aunt Marion.
Gusta felt a tingle of frustration run right down her tired arms. They were talking about her father. But there was so much they didn’t know. They didn’t know about the men with the glasses like pools of darkness hiding their eyes. They didn’t — they couldn’t — they mustn’t know what those awful men had said they were doing: looking for a fugitive.
Of course, Gusta had to not say anything. That was her job.
But nevertheless, she put down her spoon.
Just because she couldn’t say anything about what had really happened, that didn’t mean she couldn’t say something about something. Sometimes courage means speaking up. Even her father would agree that was true.
“My father — the thing is — he is actually a very brave person,” she said, even though her voice betrayed her by wobbling. “He wanted to go fight the Nazis. I’d say that’s brave.”
And he had been so brave before that, too. Every time Gusta’s papa went to get workers to vote for the union — that was brave, wasn’t it? When he saw something unfair, he spoke up, even if it meant trouble. His eyes focused on a different distance than most people’s eyes: on the glorious but faraway future, when justice would reign. That meant he didn’t always see the things right around him the way most people did. And probably he hadn’t meant to leave Gusta all alone on that bus —
She had to pull herself back from that brink. She was so alone in the world for a second, and the world was so blurry and quiet.
In fact, there was nearly utter silence around that table (with the noises of the youngest boys slurping up spoonfuls of soup, like they just couldn’t help themselves).
Then one of the older boys — Clarence, was it?— said, “We’re not fighting the Nazis. That’s the war over there, far away, not our war.”
“He’s going up to Canada to join the air army,” said Gusta. “Canada’s in the war.”
“Oh,” said another boy. “Is your daddy Canadian?”
“Enough! Ron, start those potatoes around,” said Gramma Hoopes briskly, breaking into that silence as if it were a block of ice and her voice a great ice-cleaving ax. “Augusta, I’ll have you know that in this house we leave politics alone at Sunday dinner. Now, take a biscuit. I’m sure you are tired out from all the travel, but you still need to eat. And then you’d better write home to your mother, to let her know you’re safely here.”
Between the mashed potatoes and the biscuits and the letter home to Mama, though, came washing the dishes with Josie. It was more dirty dishes than Gusta had ever seen at one time, but Josie seemed to think nothing of it. She wiped dishes so fast that Gusta had to hurry to keep up with the dish towel.
“We all work to help out,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “The older boys help out on your uncle Bill’s farm. Younger ones help out in the garden or with the chickens. Plus the state pays some money for the state kids. I’m too old for state money, but I’m useful so they keep me on. And you’re family. Probably you don’t even have to be useful, and they’d still keep you!”
Josie’s laugh was quick and brisk, like the rest of her. She was looking at Gusta now with an expression that was all no-nonsense friendliness.
“My heavens, you are a serious sort of kid. You know what you need? You need to learn to ‘whistle while you work. . . . ’ ”
From that barely one second’s worth of singing, Gusta could hear that Josie had a very nice voice.
Gusta, personally, felt a little more like Snow White when she was sitting by her lonely well. Singing to those pigeons. She had seen the film more than a year ago, with her mother. It had been like walking into a fairy tale that had come alive. They had clung to each other during the frightening parts. And for months after that, Gusta had had nightmares of that witch’s knobby fingers gripping something so round and so shiny and so very, very red, and that terrible voice saying, “This is no ordinary apple. It’s a magic wishing apple! One bite, and all your dreams will come true. . . .”
“Hey, there!” said Josie. “You almost dropped that plate right onto the floor
. Better wake up, now, sleepyhead. What are you thinking about, anyway?”
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” said Gusta.
“Good picture, isn’t it?” said Josie. “Miss Marion took me, back ages ago, before all those Hansen brothers came crowding in here.”
And then she started singing poor Snow White’s song, and her voice warbled right about as high as a bird’s, and so sweet that Gusta couldn’t help but stare.
“How do you do that?” she said. “If I try to sing, it’s like frogs croaking. Yours sounds just like it does in the movies.”
“Well,” said Josie. “I don’t know exactly how I do it. I just open up my mouth and sing, mostly. But can I tell you something? That you mustn’t go blabbing around?”
Gusta nodded, though of course who was she going to go blabbing secrets to, anyway, even if she had been the type to blab secrets, which she wasn’t?
“So,” said Josie. “Miss Kendall in the Department of Music at the high school heard me singing and took me right into the senior girls’ chorus. She says it’s criminal to leave a gift fallow. That’s a fifty-cent word, I’d say. Means a field that nobody bothers to plant, or a garden that’s left to the weeds. I had to look it up in Mrs. Hoopes’s dictionary.”
“You don’t sound so weedy to me,” said Gusta.
Josie gave her a very friendly smile then.
“So Miss Kendall has me working on my singing,” she said. “Before this year I didn’t know singing was something you could work on, but I guess there’s work in everything.”
“That’s so,” said Gusta. She knew that well enough: she had worked very hard learning how to make the French horn sing out properly on her behalf; she had practiced and practiced, even though the people upstairs started pounding on the ceiling when she did.
“Wish the folks here thought it was worth working on. Trouble is, Mrs. Hoopes doesn’t approve one whit, not of singing, not of the Kendalls, just because Miss Kendall’s brother runs the mill, so . . .” Josie shrugged. “Guess I just wish it were a real thing, singing. Worth some trouble. You know, like jam.”