“I understand,” he said, trying not to sound impatient. She didn’t need to baby-talk at him anymore! “The cans will be used to make airplanes.”
“YES, GUS!” She sounded astonished. “GOOD BOY!”
“Gus gets everything now, Mrs. McAdams!” Frank said without raising his hand. “You don’t have to shout.”
“VERY WELL!” She sounded amazed.
Yes, Gustave understood perfectly well. However, his mother almost never used commercially canned food unless she absolutely had to. She said canned food wasn’t French. Gustave could ask his aunt, but somehow he was pretty sure that elderly Madame Raymond, who was so fussy about fruit, also didn’t tolerate canned food. He didn’t want to be the only one at the rally empty-handed. He thought about the problem on and off all morning.
At lunch, when Gustave was waiting in line to buy milk, someone tapped him on the shoulder. September Rose was standing behind him. “Are you going to have a lot of cans to bring?” she asked abruptly.
Gustave shook his head.
“I’m not going to have any!” she burst out indignantly. “My granma uses all of ours to make her birds! I can’t ask her to let me have them. Those birds are so important to her—it would be mean! But what am I gonna do? There’s Miss Noelle next door, but she saves all her cans for Granma. I mean, I could go door to door and ask, but Granma would never be okay with me talking to strangers like that.”
Door to door? Suddenly Gustave had an idea. “I know Mr. Quong’s customers. They aren’t strangers. When I deliver for Mr. Quong, I could ask them for cans. Hey…” He glanced at her awkwardly. “You could come. I mean, if you want to. We could share the cans.”
“Sure!” She beamed at him as she picked up a bottle of chocolate milk. “That’d be swell!”
—
After school, when Gustave and September Rose got to Mr. Quong’s, Gustave realized he hadn’t thought about how Seppie was going to keep up with him when he was biking. “Do you mind riding in the basket?” he asked. “You can hold the packages.”
“Whee! This is the life! My own chauffeur!” September Rose shrieked, kicking her feet in the air as he started off.
With Seppie in the basket, he couldn’t bike nearly as fast as usual. But it was fun to have company, and September Rose helped explain about collecting cans.
“It’s for the war effort,” Gustave said to Mr. Davis, the first customer.
“Lots of junior highs are gathering for a Victory Rally,” September Rose jumped in. “We’re all collecting cans so factories have metal to build tanks for the army and binoculars and things, and ships for the navy, and planes for the air force. I mean, isn’t it amazing to think that your empty can of peas could be bobbing in the ocean in a few months, on its way to defeat the Japanese?”
Mr. Davis laughed. “It is amazing! I have some empty cans in the garbage. I’ll get them.”
A few of Gustave’s customers shook their heads, but most of them found one or two empty cans.
One building had a doorman who wouldn’t let September Rose in. “I’m sorry,” Gustave said, feeling his face get hot as the doorman stood there with his arms crossed over his massive chest. “I have to deliver this.”
“Go ahead,” September Rose said stiffly. “I’ll wait outside.”
Gustave had started with the uptown customers today, and as he got down to the last packages, he noticed a thick bundle for Mrs. Markham, the woman with all the small children who had given him his very first nickel tip. He and September Rose climbed up the six flights of stairs with the bulky package.
“I bet she’ll help,” said September Rose, as Gustave was about to knock.
“How do you know? You never even met her!”
September Rose pointed at the blue-star banner on Mrs. Markham’s door. “She has a banner just like ours. Haven’t you noticed? It means her husband’s in the war.”
“Oh! I thought it was just to be patriotic.” Gustave knocked and stood back, studying the banner.
“Hello, madame!” he said when she opened the door, holding her baby on her hip. “More diapers?”
“What else?” She smiled at him, looking tired, and pushed a wisp of sandy-colored hair behind her ear. Then she noticed September Rose behind him. “Who’s that? Is that colored girl with you?” she murmured nervously.
“This is my friend September Rose. We’re collecting cans for the war effort,” he said. “Do you have any?”
“For the Victory Rally,” September Rose added. “Our school is participating.”
“Oh, you’re doing a scrap drive?” Mrs. Markham seemed to have recovered from her surprise. “Yes, I read somewhere that we should start collecting them. I have a few in the garbage, I think.” She opened the door wider and they stepped into the entryway. “Here, can you hold baby Robbie for a minute?” Mrs. Markham passed the baby to September Rose. Then she rolled up her sleeves and started going through her kitchen trash can. “Yes, there’s one!” she said triumphantly, holding it up. “And another from yesterday.” She rinsed the cans and dried them on a towel. Then she opened the cupboard and pulled out a can of wax beans and removed the top with a can opener. “I’ll make these for dinner tonight, so you can have this one too,” she said, dumping them into a saucepan and washing out the can. “Do you need a bag?” She pulled a shopping bag out of a drawer and put the cans in it. “Here, this will make them easier to carry. Just bring it back next time you come.”
“Great, thanks!” said September Rose, handing her back the baby. “Bye, Robbie! He’s sweet!”
Mrs. Markham cradled her son, rubbing her chin on the baby’s fuzzy head. “Anything to bring the men home. I see your parents got you some new pants,” she said to Gustave.
“No. I bought them. From tips and delivery money.”
“Good for you!”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t notice before,” September Rose said. “They look nice.”
Gustave’s legs were exhausted by the time he’d pedaled the two of them back to Mr. Quong’s laundry, but the bag Mrs. Markham had given them was stuffed with cans, and several others were rolling loose around Seppie in the basket of the bicycle. When they got back to the laundry, Mr. Quong saw what they were doing. He asked Gustave to watch the desk for a minute and went upstairs to get them another bag and a few more empty cans to add to their collection. Gustave and September Rose had to stamp on a few to be able to cram the last ones in.
“Do you want to come to my apartment?” Gustave asked. “We could wash and flatten the rest there, so they’ll be easier to carry.”
“Are you sure?” September Rose asked.
“Why not? It’s closer than yours.”
With their overloaded schoolbags and the extra bags of cans, it was tough going. Halfway to Gustave’s apartment, several cans fell out of Mr. Quong’s bag and rolled down the sidewalk. Gustave stuffed them back in and ran a few steps to catch up with September Rose, his schoolbag clanking on his back. As he did, he heard a shout behind him.
“Hey! Boy! Come back!” It was a burly policeman, waving something in the air.
Gustave saw the uniform and the dark bulge of a gun, and his heart leaped in his chest. “Run!” he shouted to September Rose, and he sprinted down the block. He darted around the corner and paused to wait for her, panting. But he didn’t hear any running feet. He held his breath and peered around the corner. The policeman had turned his back and was walking away, and September Rose was jogging down the block toward him.
“Lose anything?” she called as she got closer, waving her hand in the air. She was holding something in a familiar shade of blue. Gustave reached for his head. His beret wasn’t there. September Rose whacked the hat against her leg to get the dirt off it and handed it to Gustave. “What did you run away for?” she asked.
Gustave yanked his beret down over his forehead. “The police…,” he said uncertainly. “He had a gun….” His voice trailed off. It was too hard to explain. In his head he had seen the
Nazi soldiers with their guns, the border guards hunting for Jews. The French police smashing his family’s furniture. His heart was still thudding against his ribs.
“This is America!” Seppie said impatiently. “The police are here to help.”
“They used to help in France too.”
When they got to Gustave’s apartment, neither of his parents was home. He soaked some of the cans in the sink and tried to rub the labels off while September Rose walked around looking at things.
“It’s you and your mother and father all in this one room? Where do you sleep? How can you stand not having any privacy?” September Rose burst out. Gustave looked at the dingy room, seeing it the way it must appear to her.
“On the sofa,” he said. “It’s comfortable enough.”
“I like sleeping on our sofa too,” September Rose said, sounding embarrassed. “Especially when I’m sick. My Granma lets me play the radio and snuggle under a blanket there. Sometimes Chiquita jumps up onto my lap, although she’s not supposed to. It’s cozy on the sofa with her.” She picked up Gustave’s French Boy Scout manual and flipped through it for a moment before putting it back on the shelf. “Hey, I like your tablecloth! Is that French? Did someone make it?”
Gustave smiled to himself at the way Seppie always jumped from one topic to another. “My mother did.” He tugged at the label on a can of vegetable soup, and it slipped off easily. “So, how’s your brother?” he asked. “Is his eye better?”
“Yeah, it’s lots better.” September Rose’s face clouded over. “But now he and Granma are fighting all the time.”
As Gustave was peeling the labels off the next-to-last batch of cans and September Rose was cutting off the ends and flattening them, a key turned in the lock, and Maman came in.
“Oh!” she said, startled.
Gustave turned around, wiping his soapy hands on his pants. “Hello, Maman. This is September Rose from my school,” he explained in slow, clear English. “We’re collecting cans for the Victory Rally.”
September Rose held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Becker.”
Maman looked confused. “Please to meet you,” she repeated in English. She put the bag of groceries she was carrying down on the rickety table. “You and Gustave would like the biscuit?” she asked. “I make some tomorrow.”
“You mean ‘yesterday,’ Maman,” Gustave said. “You made them yesterday.”
“Yesterday. You like try? We eat them all up tomorrow. Not good for Pesach.”
September Rose looked confused. “She made cookies with the last of our flour,” Gustave explained. “She wants to know if you’d like to have some. What we don’t finish by tomorrow night, we’ll throw out anyway, because on Wednesday it is Pesach—Passover. We can’t eat flour then.”
“Oh, is that like a Jewish Easter or something? It’s Easter this Sunday. No, thank you, Mrs. Becker.” September Rose fidgeted, twirling a braid between her fingers. “I need to go home now. I’ll just take these cans. Gustave, see you tomorrow after the auditions. Meet you at the statue, right? Hey, and decide who you want to do your report on by then!”
September Rose stuffed the cans they had flattened into her schoolbag and left. Maman immediately switched into French.
“That’s a new American friend?” she asked, twisting the shopping bag between her fingers. “She’s a ‘Negro’?” Maman used the American word.
“Évidemment.” Obviously.
“Ah.” Maman’s brow furrowed. “She’s a nice girl?”
“Of course.”
“And well behaved?”
“Yes.”
“Respectable? You’re sure?”
“Oui, Maman! She’s the one who gave me that American candy bar you liked so much.”
“Oh, that’s the girl who gave you the chocolate?” Maman smiled. “It was delicious!”
Gustave took the cans he had been soaking to the table. While Maman started dinner, he worked on the cans and thought about his oral report. He cut the ends off with a can opener and peeled off the labels, trying, just for fun, to get them to come off in one long strip. Underneath, the cans were surprisingly shiny. He held one up and let the light from the bare bulb over the table glitter on its surface. It was one small can, but together with lots and lots of others, it could help end the war. Gustave turned the can in the lightbulb’s blunt glare, and for a moment it seemed to gleam with hidden, secret power. Power to defeat the Nazis. Power to win the war. All at once, Gustave knew who he wanted to do his oral report on.
Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French.
30
“Who is Charles de Gaulle?” Frank asked after history on Tuesday as he and Miles and Gustave left the classroom. Gustave had been a bit worried that Mr. Coolidge wouldn’t consider Charles de Gaulle a historical figure, since he was alive, but Mr. Coolidge had nodded and taken down the name. “You’re going to need to look at newspapers, Gustave,” he had said. “It’ll be hard to find information in books.”
“He’s a general in the French army,” Gustave said as the three of them walked past the milk line in the cafeteria. “He’s in London now, though. It isn’t safe for him in France with the Nazis there. But from London he’s organizing the French to fight back against the Nazis.”
“Oh. I never heard of him. Hey, look! What are Martha and her friends doing at our lunch table?”
Martha was standing in front of the table where they usually sat, talking to Leo and some other boys, who were already eating lunch.
“We need help,” she called as Gustave, Frank, and Miles sat down. She waved a roll of striped red, white, and blue ribbon at them. “Who’s got a pocketknife with scissors that I can borrow?”
Frank pulled one out of his pocket and passed it down to her. Martha squeezed into a spot next to Leo and started cutting lengths of ribbon and passing them to the girls. “Tie this around your ponytail,” she said, handing one to Caroline. She looked critically at Elsie. “Your hair is too short for a ponytail. But I guess you could wear it like a headband.” She handed a piece of ribbon to Leo and turned so that her golden brown ponytail was in his face. “Can you tie this around mine?” she asked.
Leo grabbed the scissors, clicking them at her. “I’ll just cut your ponytail off and then you won’t have to worry about it!”
Martha ducked, giggling. “You wouldn’t dare,” she shrieked.
Leo slid the ribbon around her neck, pretending to choke her. “Is this where you wanted it?”
“Do it right, Leo!” she demanded.
After he had tied the ribbon in her hair, she tugged at the bow, smiled with satisfaction, and rolled up the remainder of the ribbon, tucking it into her bag. “Looking patriotic will definitely help us stand out this afternoon,” she said.
It was easy to tell who Martha’s friends were for the rest of the day. In the hallway Gustave overheard several comments from girls who weren’t wearing ribbons. “Sorry, girls!” replied Martha sweetly. “There just wasn’t enough for everybody.”
September Rose’s braids were unadorned, and Gustave saw her looking at the ribbons. She caught his eye in the corridor and shrugged. “Who cares?” she said. “The auditions are about your voice, not how you look.”
As the school day drew to a finish, excitement built. After the final bell rang, many of the students hurried to the auditorium. Gustave went to his cubby first. He wasn’t in any hurry, since he was just going to watch. By the time he got to the auditorium, there was a big crowd of kids outside the door. A teacher was walking along the hall with a clipboard.
“Name?” she asked him.
“Gustave Becker,” he answered automatically, standing on his toes and trying to see over the heads of the people in front of him, looking for September Rose. There she was, down at the front, near Martha and her crowd. Gustave got through the mob around the door and took one of the seats in the back of the auditorium. They were built on a slant, so he could still see the stage.
As
the last of the students sat down, Mrs. Heine walked to the front of the stage. The microphone boomed as she tapped it, and the room quieted. “Welcome to the auditions for the Victory Rally chorus,” she said. “When Mrs. Spencer or Mrs. Davis calls your name, come forward. Announce your song, step up to the microphone, and, at the pianist’s signal, begin. Briskly, please. We don’t want to be here all night.”
Mrs. Heine took the center seat ten rows back. The two teachers who had been asking for names as people came into the auditorium took up positions at the microphones on the sides of the stage. One of them called out the names of the first ten singers and showed them how to line up on the stage steps, and the auditions began.
Each student walked across to the microphone, announced his or her name and the name of a song, and began. Some were pretty good, but some were terrible, Gustave thought—almost as bad as he was. A lot of the students sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Some sang “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”
Mrs. Heine stopped most of the singers after just a bar or two. “Thank you!” she called out imperiously, interrupting the song. “That’s enough!”
The second group of ten students included Martha and most of her friends. Gustave watched as Martha gave a last tug on her hair ribbon and walked confidently onto the stage, her ponytail swinging. Suddenly everyone in the auditorium was paying close attention. “I’m going to sing ‘Over There’ ” Martha announced. The piano music started, and she sang out, her voice loud and resonant, almost brassy, like a trumpet, Gustave thought.
Mrs. Heine let her sing to the end of the song. “Thank you, Martha,” she said. Martha smiled and walked offstage.
Elsie came out next. “Song?” asked the teacher at the piano.
“ ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag,’ ” she answered, twirling a finger nervously in her short blond hair. The pianist struck the opening notes. When Elsie began to sing, she let her hands drop to her sides and stood straight and confident. Her voice was sweet, birdlike, Gustave thought, and the best he had heard so far. Mrs. Heine let her sing all the way through as well.
Skating with the Statue of Liberty Page 17