Gustave took a piece of onionskin paper out of the box of airmail stationery and sat down at the table.
“Who are you writing to?” asked Papa.
“Nicole Morin in Saint-Georges. She said she’d keep trying to find information about Marcel Landau and his mother.”
Papa sighed. “I think you’re being too optimistic. Even the people at HIAS thought there was nothing that could be done. I doubt we’ll find out anything more about the Landaus until the end of the war.”
“But Nicole’s father is in the Resistance,” Gustave insisted. “They helped us, so why couldn’t they help Marcel? Anyway, I want her to have our address.”
“Airmail is expensive, but I suppose you can send one letter. Hurry, though—I want you to help me wash the windows.”
Gustave picked up a pen and started to write.
18 January, 1942
Chère Nicole,
We’re in America! I know you wanted to hear about movie stars, but I haven’t seen any yet, sorry. I’ve seen some ladies on the streets wearing fur coats, though.
New York is enormous and crowded. They have dog statues in the park and lion statues at the library. At night, there are neon signs in all different colors in Times Square. There’s so much food here, but Jean-Paul always keeps a piece of bread in his pocket. He and I went up the Empire State Building with Papa’s cousin when we first got here. We could see the whole city. It was amazing!
We found an apartment last week. Our address is 165 West 91st Street, New York, USA. I wrote it on the envelope too.
What’s happening in Saint-Georges? Please write as soon as there is any news about M. I haven’t started school here yet. Jean-Paul is living far away, so we won’t be going to the same one. He’s living with his father’s aunt. I wish I could spend some time learning English better before starting school, but my parents say they don’t want me to get behind the other kids my age, so I’m going soon.
Gustave hesitated at the signature. Should he write, “Je t’embrasse,” Kisses, “Gustave”? That was the usual ending in France if you knew someone well, but…maybe she’d take it the wrong way. Finally, he wrote:
Bien à toi,
Gustave
Best wishes. That sounded better. He folded up the delicate paper and slid it into the thin blue envelope.
—
After Gustave finished washing the windows, Papa handed him two quarters. “That should be plenty to pay for one stamp, I hope,” he said. “Be careful with the change.”
Gustave walked around outside for a while instead of going straight to the post office. Maman or Papa would surely give him another job to do the moment he came back, so there wasn’t any point in rushing home. In front of a building on 92nd Street, a group of girls wearing fingerless gloves sat on crates in a patch of pale, wintry sunshine, knitting and laughing together. At the corner of 91st and Amsterdam, inside a window marked QUONG’S HAND LAUNDRY, a cat was curled up on a red-and-gold blanket. Gustave tapped on the window. “Salut, le chat!” he said. The cat picked up her head and meowed at him.
By the time he got to the post office, Gustave had worked out what to say in English.
“Goes to the France?” he asked nervously, pushing the envelope forward.
The clerk nodded. “Forty-five cents.”
That was an awful lot of money, enough to buy five loaves of bread. Gustave handed over the quarters, hoping Papa wouldn’t mind.
It was cold outside, but at least it wasn’t windy, and Gustave still didn’t feel like going straight home. The apartment lease listed the school he would be going to as P.S. 118 on 93rd Street. He headed over to find it. There it was, a new-looking building, eight stories high. A name was carved into the stone front: JOAN OF ARC JUNIOR HIGH.
How odd to travel so far from France and end up at a school in America named after a French heroine! It was a school day, but it was after four o’clock, so the building was quiet. The afternoon light reflected blankly off the windows. After a while, Gustave wandered idly down 93rd Street, west toward the Hudson River. He came to a small flight of steps leading up to a park. At the top he stopped in surprise, looking at the back of a statue of a figure on a horse. Was that who it looked like? He ran around to the front. Yes! It was Joan of Arc.
Gustave felt a rush of excitement. What was Joan of Arc, a French heroine, doing here in Manhattan, with New York apartment buildings all around her? People in France loved Joan of Arc, especially now. She had fought to free France from the English, so now the French Resistance fighters were using Joan of Arc’s double-barred Cross of Lorraine as a symbol of the French fight against the Nazi occupation. Gustave searched carefully on all sides of the statue, but to his disappointment, the double-barred cross wasn’t on it. It was nearly dusk now, and there was nobody else around. A half-frozen puddle stood near the base of the statue. Gustave dipped his finger in it and drew a Cross of Lorraine on the granite base. It shimmered on the stone, drying quickly but leaving a faint mark behind, like a secret.
8
Gustave turned over and over on the sofa, trying to get comfortable. It was Sunday night, and tomorrow he was going to school. He could hear the sounds of traffic far below in the street and his father snoring across the room. When Gustave finally fell asleep, he kept startling awake, imagining kids laughing at him, or not being able to find the bathroom in time, or having to take a test and not understanding a single word on the page.
“Good luck today, Gustave,” Papa said in the morning before leaving for the employment office. He looked a little bit nervous too, Gustave noticed.
So did Maman, who came to the school with Gustave to show his papers and register him. Gustave’s heart beat so rapidly he could feel it pulsing in his throat. All of his senses felt on hyper-alert, as if by watching and listening as intently as possible, he would somehow be able to make sense of the ocean of alien language swirling around him.
Mrs. Hale, the principal, was a tall woman about Maman’s age, with a serious but kind face. “Hello,” she said, smiling.
“From ze France,” Maman got out, in a thick accent. “Lili Becker, Gustave Becker.” She gestured toward herself and then toward him.
The principal nodded and began to talk. Gustave caught some of the words here and there, but he could tell that Maman didn’t understand anything at all. She sat wordlessly next to him, her mouth twitching in an awkward smile, making embarrassing little humming noises and playing nervously with the fringes of her scarf.
After Mrs. Hale had asked Maman several questions and watched her shrug helplessly, her patience seemed to be wearing a bit thin. She turned to Gustave and spoke slowly and loudly.
“Do…you…understand…English?”
“A little bit,” Gustave said. “I study in the school.”
“How…old…are…you?”
“I have twelve years.” Gustave’s head hurt with the effort of listening and answering.
“We’ll put you in Seven A.” She stood up and led them into the outer office, saying more words that he did not catch.
Maman looked immensely relieved that the conversation was over. “Have a good day, mon petit chouchou,” she said to Gustave, too loudly, in French. Sweetie pie! Gustave winced. Maman leaned forward to kiss him. Just as she did, a girl his age pushed open the office door, and Gustave jerked back, bumping into a bookcase behind him. Maman nodded to the principal and the secretaries and hurried away.
The girl looked at Gustave curiously as the secretary handed him a schedule card. She was tall, maybe two inches taller than he was, and dark skinned, with alert, intelligent eyes. The American word floated into Gustave’s head. Negro, he thought, practicing the word silently. The secretary said something to the girl, wrote a few words on a piece of paper, folded it up, and handed it to her.
The girl took it, nodded, and turned to Gustave, her face neutral, neither friendly nor unfriendly. “Come with me,” she said, gesturing for him to follow.
She walked
quickly up two flights of stairs, glancing over her shoulder to be sure he was still there. On the third floor, she left the stairwell and headed down the corridor, staying several steps ahead. The hallway was quiet except for the murmur of voices coming from some of the classrooms. The girl stopped suddenly and turned around, her hands on her hips. Her face still unsmiling, she said something so abruptly it seemed as if she had been trying not to talk to him but couldn’t stay quiet a moment longer.
Gustave had no idea what she had asked him, only that it had been a question because her voice had gone up at the end. Guessing at what she had probably asked, he held out his hand.
“My name is Gustave Becker,” he articulated carefully in English.
The girl’s blank expression shifted into a crooked smile. He realized he must have guessed wrong. After a moment, she took his hand in her fingertips, gave it a quick shake up and down, and then dropped it. “Hello, Gustave. My…name…is…September Rose,” she said slowly and clearly.
“Septembarrrrose.” Gustave tried to pronounce the difficult name.
The girl giggled. “No! Sep…tem…ber Rose,” she said again, sounding out each syllable separately. She repeated the last part and bent over, pretending to smell something. Her name meant “flower” then? Oh—rose! It was almost the same as in French, but the “r” sounded different.
Gustave repeated her name, better this time.
“Where…are…you…from?” she asked loudly.
In his head Gustave shaped another sentence he’d learned in school. “I am from France.”
“Really?” Excitement flickered over her face, and she started talking rapidly. All he could understand were the words “France? Really?” and “Wow!” He nodded again.
“Where in France? Paris?” she asked.
He didn’t know enough English to explain that he had lived in Paris most of his life but that his family had moved to Saint-Georges in the countryside to hide from the Nazis, so he just nodded. “Yes. Paris.”
“Paris!” She exploded into incomprehensibly rapid, excited speech again.
A door opened, and a teacher’s head poked out.
“Shhh!” The teacher frowned at the two of them, putting a finger to his lips.
September Rose gestured to Gustave to come and hurried around the corner to another classroom.
She said a few words, pointed at the door, then went in.
This was it. A whole room full of kids who only spoke this strange, fast, difficult language. Gustave took a deep breath and went through the door.
9
September Rose handed the teacher a note and then went to her desk. The teacher, a frizzy-haired middle-aged woman, looked at Gustave. She seemed flustered.
“I…AM…MRS….MC…A…DAMS!” she boomed at the top of her lungs, pointing at herself. She hurried out of the room, and Gustave stood there awkwardly, aware of all the staring eyes and the whispers and grins. A few minutes later, Mrs. McAdams came back, followed by a janitor lugging an extra desk.
Gustave sat down. The girl sitting in front of him, who had a green ribbon in her golden-brown curls, turned around and stared, then winked, smiling.
Mrs. McAdams began talking to the class. Gustave felt the cascade of rapid sentences crashing into him like rough surf. Only a word or two glimmered, intelligible, and his brain grabbed at them, but by the time he had made sense of one sentence, another wave of words from Mrs. McAdams was crashing into him, followed by another and then another.
Then there was silence. A tall, thin boy got up, opened a cupboard, and walked around the classroom handing out a stack of green books.
The boy didn’t give Gustave one. As the other students started to read, Gustave examined them. Most of the kids were pale and tall, and there was more blond hair in the classroom than he was used to seeing in France. Not many of the people in this school were Negroes. None of the adults were, and only one other girl in the class was as dark as September Rose. The girls in this class were curvier and the boys had more muscles than the kids his age in France did. Their clothes all looked brand new. Gustave was suddenly aware that his clothes were old and faded. And his pants were wrong. The other boys all had pants that went down to their ankles. His were the French style, un pantalon de golf. They were wide and short, ending just below his knee, showing his thin legs. A flush of shame rushed over him, and he pulled his feet as far as he could under his desk.
Mrs. McAdams dropped a book meant for a small child on Gustave’s desk.
“READ…THIS!” she boomed at him, opening it and running her finger over the words under the pictures. She smelled of sickly-sweet perfume. Gustave leaned away.
I know what a book is for! I’m not a moron—I just don’t speak English! he thought. But he didn’t know how to say that, not that he should anyway, so he just nodded, set his elbows on either side of the book, trying to hide it, and bent his head low over the page, the large-print words blurring in front of him.
A bell rang. Everything instantly became chaotic as the students jumped up, gathered their books, and crowded into the hallway. Gustave was confused. Where were they going? Was it recess already, or lunch? September Rose had gotten up with the others, but she looked back at him and pointed to the schedule card on his desk before going out the door. Gustave looked at it, and then he realized that things must work differently here. In France, when it was time for a new subject, a new teacher came into the room. Here it seemed the students switched rooms. He was the last one left in the room, so he must already be late. He scanned his schedule card nervously. In the block with his next class, geography, he saw the number 611. That must mean it was on the sixth floor. Hurrying through the empty halls, he found the classroom after the bell rang and slid into a vacant seat.
“Hello. Are you Gustave Becker?” the teacher said slowly and clearly.
Gustave’s palms and armpits prickled with sweat. “Yes.”
“I am Mr. Coolidge. I teach geography and history. Come!” Gustave stood up, shoving his pants down as far as they would go, trying to make them look longer. His socks still showed. He shuffled to the front of the room with his hands jammed in his pockets to keep his pants from riding up. Two girls whispered and giggled as he went by. He noticed September Rose scowling in their direction.
Mr. Coolidge pulled down a world map and spoke to the class. In the blur of sound, Gustave heard his name, and the words “welcome,” “new,” and “friend.” Then Mr. Coolidge turned back to Gustave and spoke slowly.
“You are here…war?” Gustave heard. “Refugee…from France?”
It sounded like a question, and what he was saying seemed to be true. Gustave nodded.
Mr. Coolidge smiled. “Welcome to America!” He gestured to the class, and they echoed his last words. Some of the voices were enthusiastic, but underneath the cheerful ones, a few were singsongy and mocking.
“So,” said Mr. Coolidge, and then came another stream of words.
The teacher seemed to be asking him to tell them about what it was like living in France now, with the war going on. Gustave swallowed. All at once, there were no English words in his head. His eyes swept over the other students, all staring at him. He knew he had to say something. September Rose was sitting in the third row with her brown eyes fixed intently on his face. She held his gaze and then moved her chin slightly, indicating the wall behind him. Gustave looked over his shoulder desperately. There was the map. He felt a few English words rising up in his head. He took a step back and pointed at Germany. Then, feeling heartsick, he traced a route through Belgium, slipping over and around the Maginot Line, the line of forts meant to defend the French against the Germans, and down into France.
“Germans come,” he choked out. “Nazis. Very bad. Not food. Not heat. Bad for the France. Bad…” Gustave paused. He wanted to say that it was bad in Europe for the Jews. Did Americans know about that? They should be letting more Jews come here. But was it really safe to let people know that his family was Jewish? G
ustave hesitated, the opportunity passed, and then he felt ashamed of having missed it.
“Well done, Gustave,” said Mr. Coolidge, patting him on the shoulder, and he made his way back to his seat.
—
By lunchtime, Gustave was exhausted, and the roar of noise in the cafeteria didn’t help. He spotted September Rose sitting with a small group of Negro students at the end of a long table, and he started toward her. When he got there, she had her head down and was busily unwrapping her sandwich, smoothing out every crease in the wax paper until it made a perfect flat square.
The girl across from September Rose looked at him warily. He extended his hand. “Hello. I’m Gustave.”
“Lisa,” she said, looking startled.
She didn’t take his hand, so he pulled it back, flushing. “Hello, September Rose.”
September Rose finally looked up, and he could tell from her face that she had known he was there all along.
“Hi,” she said quietly. She glanced at him with a dark, intense gaze, as if she were trying to tell him something, shook her head slightly, and looked down.
“Gus—tuv! Gus—tuv!” At the next table over, two boys from geography class were standing and waving. “Leo,” one athletic-looking boy introduced himself curtly. He kept running his hand through his blond hair as his eyes roved around the lunchroom.
“I’m Frank,” said the tall, dark-haired boy with big ears who had passed out the literature textbooks. “What were you doing over there? Sit here with us.” Frank patted the bench next to him.
Skating with the Statue of Liberty Page 4