Skating with the Statue of Liberty

by Susan Lynn Meyer

  “Oh no!” September Rose shrieked, giggling madly and taking off over the snowy field. Gustave tore after her. “See what I told you?” she called over her shoulder. “Escape artist! Chiquita!” she shouted. “Come back!”

  Gustave whistled as loudly as he could while running. “Chiquita!”

  But there was no sign of her. She had vanished behind a clump of trees. September Rose ran around one way while he ran around the other. They almost collided on the other side.

  “No luck?” she asked, panting. She seemed more exasperated than worried.

  Just then Gustave saw a stubby tail sticking up from a snowbank about twenty feet away. “There!” he called.

  September Rose streaked past him. As she reached the snowbank, she grabbed her dog’s collar. Chiquita was gobbling down something bright orange. September Rose snapped the leash back on. “Don’t do that, Chiquita!” she scolded, breathing heavily and laughing. “Naughty girl!”

  “What’s she eating?” Gustave asked, reaching for it. “Is it all right for her?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry. Someone must have bought a roasted sweet potato and thrown some of it away. Those are her favorite thing, those and apple cores. She’s amazing. She can smell them from hundreds of feet away and right through snow. At least we caught her this time.” She sighed and rubbed Chiquita’s ears, starting to walk again.

  “I love her. But she’s trouble with a capital T! She scares me when she runs off. Last summer, we were visiting my cousins down in Maryland on the Fourth of July, and there was this big picnic, with fried chicken and corn on the cob and peach pie and everything. I brought Chiquita, of course. That’s when I found out that she can’t stand loud noises. There were fireworks—”

  “Fireworks?”

  “Yeah, you know.” September Rose acted out a firework going off, squatting down and jumping up exuberantly, throwing a spray of snow into the air and waving her arms. “Boom! Boom! Hiss! Lots of bright colors? Red, blue, gold, green? Pfshhh!”

  “Yes. Fireworks.” He tried the word.

  September Rose talked more slowly and clearly. “Yeah. I was holding Chiquita on my lap.” She held her arms close to her chest to show him. “But when the noise started—BAM!—she began quivering….” September Rose acted it out, and he nodded. “And then suddenly, zoom! She tore out of there and disappeared. We looked for her for hours. I cried. I thought she was gone for good. But then when we got back to my cousins’ house, there was this gigantic hole in the screen door. She had run home and jumped right through the screen! We found her hiding in the closet, shaking. Little Cheeky! She was so scared, poor girl! But I was too, until we found her.”

  Gustave nodded. He had understood most of the story. “I never had a dog.”

  “Alan gave her to me when she was a puppy. That’s my big brother. He’s bossy, but he’s pretty great. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. I have a cousin, though. Jean-Paul. And he has a baby sister.”

  “Are they still in France?”

  “No. They came with us. But he lives not close—in the Bronx.”

  “Yeah, that takes a while to get to.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to get home soon. But you wanna see something funny first?” She leaned down and made a snowball, and the small dog yipped in excitement. September Rose dropped the leash. “Ready, Cheeky?” She held the snowball back as Chiquita panted. “Fetch!” She threw it into a snow-covered field, and Chiquita hurtled after it, yipping, then burrowed down into the snow where it had landed. After a while, she popped her head up and looked back at September Rose, mystified.

  September Rose squealed with laughter. “She doesn’t understand why it disappears! It’s so funny—she never learns.”

  Gustave whistled, and the little dog came tearing joyfully back as he made another snowball. “Catch!” he shouted, and he tossed it high in the air. Chiquita leaped up, and as she snapped her jaws around it, the snowball burst into a shower of powder. September Rose burst into giggles again, and Gustave laughed until his stomach hurt at the little dog’s baffled, enthusiastic face as snow sprayed over all three of them.

  —

  That evening after dinner, Gustave got out a piece of airmail stationery and started a letter to Nicole.

  20 February, 1942

  Chère Nicole,

  I wish I could send you some food from America. There’s so much here. In the park and on the street corners, they sell sweet potatoes and roast chestnuts. They smell just like the roast chestnuts at home. A couple of weeks ago, Maman asked me to take the trash to the garbage bin behind the apartment building. When I lifted up the lid, I saw someone had thrown a huge roast turkey into the garbage! The whole thing! It was still warm and steaming. Only a little bit of the white meat had been cut off. I almost took it out of the garbage, because even though we had just had dinner, it had mostly been potatoes, so I was still hungry. In fact, don’t tell my parents, but I did tear off and eat just a tiny bit. I mean, it was still clean. The part I ate wasn’t touching anything dirty or anything. And it was so good. Then I ran back upstairs and told Maman and Papa what I’d found, and they couldn’t believe me, so they both came down to see it. Maman wouldn’t let us eat any of it, though. In New York, there’s lots of meat in the markets, not like in France, but we don’t usually have enough money to buy it.

  Papa has a job now. He cleans in a department store, and Maman makes hats at home. There are always feathers and spangles all over the apartment.

  Also, about food. I was just walking in the park with this girl from school that I ran into. Her dog found a nearly whole sweet potato someone had thrown away. Just tossed it into a snowbank!

  So what new recipes are you trying? Are there still concerts in Paris, do you know? School is all right. I’m getting better at English, but it’s hard. Some of the guys are friendly. Some aren’t.

  Gustave wanted to tell her about Mrs. Heine, the German music teacher, but he didn’t want to say anything that might make the German censor angry or suspicious of Nicole. He thought about it and then wrote:

  I have a music teacher named Mrs. Heine. As you can imagine, I am her favorite student, because I have such a beautiful singing voice.

  He could just see the way Nicole would laugh when she read that. She would certainly know he meant the opposite of what he was writing.

  Either that or it is something else about me that makes her so tremendously fond of me. On my second day of school, she made me sing in front of the whole class. You can imagine how much I enjoyed that. This one kid told me that her name is the same as the American word for rear end. How unfortunate for her.

  I know you’ll keep me up to date on what is going on at school in Saint-Georges, on your new recipes, and on everything else important, right?

  Gustave

  He signed his name and looked up. Papa and Maman were sitting on the sofa together, drinking tea and listening to music on the radio.

  “Can I take one of the airmail stamps you bought?” Gustave asked.

  Papa lifted his head from the back of the sofa where he was resting it. He had dark circles under his eyes. “Go ahead. But bear in mind that these letters to France are expensive.”

  “I won’t write too often, Papa. And Nicole knows where we live now. So she can send news.”

  Gustave’s parents exchanged a glance.

  “Yes,” Papa said gently. “That’s true.”

  16

  Gustave had understood, since his first day, that September Rose didn’t want him to sit with her at lunch, and by now he was pretty sure it was because boys and girls weren’t friends at this school, not if they didn’t want to be teased. Martha and Leo were different. They were always hanging around together. People certainly teased them about being boyfriend and girlfriend, but they both seemed to like the attention. They weren’t trying to hide anything—lately they went around holding hands, and once Leo had put his arm around Martha’s waist right in front of everybody.
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br />   Still, Gustave wished he could talk to September Rose at school. Every afternoon the week after his encounter with her in Central Park, Gustave walked over to the big rock where they’d run into one another, hoping she and Chiquita would be there, but they never were. Central Park was so big that he might easily never run into her there again. After school on Friday, Gustave meandered around the park for hours, sticking to the places where people seemed to walk their dogs, but he still didn’t see her. When he finally got home, his fingers and toes were numb from the cold.

  On Sunday night Gustave and his parents went to Aunt Geraldine’s for dinner. It was a long, slow trip on the subway up to the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The apartment building was on a beautiful, wide street and it was large and elegant. Gustave ran up the curving stairs to the second floor and pushed the doorbell. Jean-Paul answered at the first ring, smiling broadly. Aunt Geraldine was right behind him. Jean-Paul was wearing new pants that went all the way down to his ankles, Gustave noticed with a twinge of envy. He also had a new brown sweater and he would almost have looked like an American if Gustave hadn’t known that he was French.

  “Come in, come in!” Aunt Geraldine cried, kissing Maman and then Papa and Gustave and bustling around hanging up coats. “We have the best news. A Red Cross postcard came from David yesterday, forwarded from France.”

  “How is he?” Maman asked worriedly.

  “It seems he’s all right! Jean-Paul, show them Papa’s postcard. He couldn’t say much, of course. The cards are surely read by the Nazis as they leave the camp. It’s mostly just check boxes; there isn’t a lot of room to write. But he checked, ‘I am in good health,’ and he sent his love to me and the children, and he also wrote—what was it, Jean-Paul?”

  “He said, ‘Tell Christophe’s family he is here with me and well.’ ” Jean-Paul recited the words from memory, bringing the postcard down from the mantelpiece and handing it to Maman.

  “So it’s such good news, you see!” Aunt Geraldine cried. “We’d been so worried.”

  “Why? I don’t remember Christophe and his family,” Maman said.

  “We couldn’t figure it out at first either,” Jean-Paul explained excitedly. “But then we remembered he’d mentioned a friend named Christophe when he first went into the army. We don’t know him or his family. But you see, the name—it’s a Christian name! So if Papa is with Christophe, it means he’s still in a camp for French prisoners of war.”

  “Ah,” Papa said slowly. “That is good news.”

  “I don’t get it,” Gustave said quietly to Papa.

  “They haven’t figured out he’s Jewish, so he’s in a camp with the other captured French soldiers,” Papa said. “The camps for soldiers are—” Papa hesitated. “Well, it seems those are better places to be than the camps for Jews.”

  “Tonight we have so much to celebrate! A letter from David! And Berthold has a job now! Congratulations!” Aunt Geraldine smiled at Papa. “And you’re working too, Lili! The boys are starting off well in school. We’re all so lucky. Jean-Paul, why don’t you show Gustave your room?”

  “Yeah—come look at my American comic books. The kids at school all trade them.”

  “Oh, those foolish comic books!” Aunt Geraldine said to Maman and Papa. “I wish he would spend half the time reading for school that he spends poring over them!”

  “But they’re so good for my English, Maman!” Jean-Paul said. “They’re easier to understand because of the pictures.”

  “Sure! Zip! Pow! Blam! Even I understand that much English! Go on!” Aunt Geraldine put her arm around her son affectionately, and Gustave noticed that Jean-Paul was now nearly a head taller than his mother. He had put on some weight in America too. After a month and a half here, he wasn’t so scrawny as he’d been on the ship.

  Jean-Paul had comics out all over his bed, and he had his own room. The apartment was enormous compared to Gustave’s. Madame Raymond, the relative they were living with, had two extra bedrooms, Jean-Paul explained, giving him the tour. His mother shared a big bedroom with Giselle, and Jean-Paul had a narrow maid’s room off the kitchen. It had only a tiny slit of a window, but it did have a model airplane hanging over the bed. “It used to be her son’s room,” Jean-Paul explained. “When we got here, there were some old books and games and also another airplane that he never finished that she said I could work on. I had to buy new paints, though. His were all dried up.”

  “Did those pants used to belong to her son too?” Gustave asked.

  “These?” Jean-Paul looked down at his pants and then at Gustave’s French ones. “No. Madame Raymond collected used clothes from her friends for me and Giselle. Your parents didn’t get you any American pants yet?”

  “No.”

  Jean-Paul looked embarrassed. “Sorry. That’s tough. I only have two pairs—one regular pair and one fancy. If I had more, I’d give you one. But since I only have two, I know my mom would kill me.”

  The rich, meaty smell of cassoulet was coming from the kitchen. “Dinner!” Aunt Geraldine called.

  As Aunt Geraldine served, she chattered nonstop to Maman about life in the Bronx, about her favorite bakery and the broken cookies they always saved for little Giselle; about Madame Raymond, who was very particular about food and how the kitchen was kept but kind about everything else; about the cold New York weather; and about the park nearby where she took Giselle to play. Aunt Geraldine was especially excited because she had met a French rabbi while doing Madame Raymond’s fruit shopping, which had to be done at a specific market that was several miles away by bus.

  “But it was worth the long bus trip with Giselle after all!” she exclaimed. “The fruit there is delicious, and Rabbi Blum is so nice. His family is from Alsace. He wants us all to join his synagogue, your family too.”

  Aunt Geraldine paused to hand around helpings of dessert, ladyfingers drizzled with kirsch.

  “Oh, my favorite! How nice of you to make it!” Maman spooned up the spongy cookies flavored with cherry brandy. “But about Berthold’s job.”

  “Oh yes, of course. I’m sorry, Berthold. Congratulations! Tell me all about it.”

  “He’s working at a fine department store,” Maman explained. “For now he’s a janitor, but that way, you see, he can be the first to spot an opening when there’s one in sales, as soon as he can speak English better.”

  “Don’t expect to be hired in a good position while you have an accent,” Aunt Geraldine said bluntly. “That’s what I hear. But at least you have a job and some money coming in.” She poured coffee from Madame Raymond’s silver pot into a fragile, flowered teacup and handed it to Maman. “Anyway, now that we’re all getting settled, you must come to Rabbi Blum’s synagogue with me. It’s a lovely old building on the Upper East Side. To be with other French Jews, I think it’s all right to take a bus on the Sabbath, don’t you?”

  “Real coffee!” Maman held the cup below her nose, savoring the aroma. “What luxury! What do you think, Berthold? We’ve seen several synagogues much closer to our apartment.”

  “Oh sure! But this synagogue is French,” Aunt Geraldine insisted. “The children and I have already gone twice. Nearly everyone there speaks French. You’ll see. It feels just like home.”

  “Really? There are enough French Jews in New York for a whole synagogue?”

  “Yes! Most of the people at this synagogue have been here quite a few years, but almost everyone is originally from France. The boys need to prepare for their bar mitzvahs. They are so behind. I feel terrible that we’ve had to put that off.”

  “I know.” Maman nodded.

  “Time for us to get out of here before they make us start chanting prayers!” Jean-Paul jumped up, pushing his chair back with a screech, and the grown-ups laughed. He licked his finger and picked up the last few crumbs from his dessert plate as he took it into the kitchen. “The best part is that there’s a French Boy Scout troop connected with the synagogue, the Franco-American Boy Scouts, and I’m in it!
You’ve got to join too. Want to help me work on the model airplane?”

  “Sure.”

  As Jean-Paul got out the paints, he told Gustave about the Boy Scouts. He had already gone to one planning meeting and a hike. “The rabbi is the troop leader, but there aren’t enough boys our age for a whole troop, so we join together with some French Catholic boys. One of their priests is a leader too.”

  “They don’t mind being with Jews?” Gustave took the airplane piece Jean-Paul handed him and began dabbing it with silver paint.

  “They don’t seem to. We’re all French. It’s great to be somewhere where everybody speaks French, not like school.”

  Gustave watched Jean-Paul carefully attach a propeller. “How is your school?”

  “It’s all right. They started me in second grade, because I couldn’t speak English at all, not like you, so I was with all these stupid little kids. I felt like a giant in there. But two weeks ago, they moved me up into third. I’m still a giant, but they’ll move me up again as soon as I learn more English.”

  “Do you have any friends?”

  “Well, there are some boys I play tag with at recess. They think I’m great because I’m so much faster than them! It’s all right. What about you?”

  “There are some guys I eat lunch with. And sometimes they choose me for their team at recess. There’s a girl from school I talked to in the park one time. But she doesn’t talk to me at school. I know she doesn’t want people to say we’re girlfriend and boyfriend, but still, she could at least talk to me a little.”

  “Women!” Jean-Paul said. He pushed another airplane piece toward Gustave. “You want to paint this silver?”

  “Sure.” Gustave took the tailpiece. “My mother told your mother we heard from Nicole, right? I got a letter with part of it blacked out. It was something about someone being arrested. But she didn’t have any news about Marcel.”