Isabel’s War (9 page)

“Didn't know you cared that much about foreign languages,” I comment.

“Shows how much you know,” he hisses back at me. “French, in case you forgot, is the language of diplomats. You could be lookin' at the next ambassador to France.”

“Fat chance,” I snicker under my breath.

Billy is leaning far over toward my desk. “What'd you just say?”

“Nothing, nothing.” I'm saved from further explanation by the entrance of our French teacher, Miss Damore.

Forget about weird hollow-eyed Mr. Jeffers in homeroom, forget about horsey Miss Scully in physical training, petite Mrs. Marinello in music, bossy-faced Mrs. Brody in English. Miss Damore is, as they say, a vision of loveliness. Pretty, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with an adorable nose and full lips, she comes into the room practically beaming, as though she's really glad to see us.

She writes her name on the blackboard and asks if anybody can decipher its origin. I instantly raise my hand. “It means ‘of love,'” I say with modest pride, “except not in French but maybe in Italian.”

“
Très bon
,” says Miss Damore. She explains that her family did come from Italy more than a generation ago but that she has been teaching French for many years and hardly speaks Italian, at which point I feel my ankle being kicked under my desk.

But when I glare accusingly at Billy Crosby, he's staring straight ahead and I can't imagine how his foot could have reached that far.

Miss Damore gently informs us that, as this is an intermediate French class, we'll be starting out with a review so that she can be sure the seventh- and eighth-graders will be able to keep up. “Who knows,” she adds teasingly, “if we're good enough we may even get to the subjunctive later this year.”

I cast my eyes down and smile. No way will Billy Crosby be able to “keep up.” Not in a million years, if we're going for the subjunctive in French.

After forty-five minutes of Miss Damore, the world is a lovelier place. Horseface in P.T. doesn't see me sneak in a whole series of forward and backward rolls while she's putting out the rest of the mats. At lunch, Sue Ellen Porter and I sit with some eighth-grade girls that Sue Ellen knows from the pool where she swam last summer. And, in English class this afternoon, Mrs. Brody assigns a composition (only she calls it an essay) on the war and how it's changed our lives.

I can certainly do that. In just the last few months, the war has come closer than ever. In my very own home, Arnold has been replaced with Helga.

Even though it's been a pretty good day, it's a relief to return to home-room, rearrange our lockers, and get ready for dismissal. Mr. Jeffers is pacing up and back at the front of the room with his long-legged stride, waiting for everyone to settle down because he usually has end-of-the-day messages for us.

Sibby acknowledges me with a hunch of her shoulder and a blank expression. I don't know whether we're still on friendly terms or what. Also, I see now that Billy Crosby is seated behind me and to my left. I turn around. There's that silly grin again and, I could swear, a wink. Or
maybe it was just the light glinting off the right lens of his eyeglasses.

A horrible thought seizes me. Suppose, just suppose, he likes me. I was sure I saw his eyes lingering on my chest when we were walking alongside each other looking for Room 322. Ugh, what a disaster. Suppose a boy does decide he likes you, and you don't like him...
at all
. How do you get him to un-like you?

“Uh-hmm, class.” It's Mr. Jeffers getting ready to say something. He always starts by clearing his throat loudly. Then he walks across the front of the room and opens the door to admit someone who appears to have been waiting out in the hall. It's our assistant principal, Mr. Lockhart, a short, dapper man with clipped gray hair, who is leading by the hand none other than Helga.

A wave of absolute silence sweeps across the room. Mr. Lockhart steps forward and says, “Class, I'd like to present to you a new student who has just entered our school. She is from Europe, actually from Germany, where she was born and grew up. So English, especially spelling and writing, may still be a problem for her. Therefore, we will start her off here at Singleton in a seventh-grade home-room.

“Please give her a warm welcome. I introduce to you, Helga Frankfurter.”

The silence that has held throughout Mr. Lockhart's brief speech is broken by applause, whistles, and
somewhere from the back of the room a deep-voiced utterance of the chilling salute that loyal Nazis offer to Hitler himself: “
Sieg Heil!
”

Nine

We're out in the schoolyard with a cluster of other kids from our home-room, and Sibby is angrily pummeling the chest of a big kid named Danny Brill with her small freckled fists. Danny just stands there and grins. He doesn't even bother to back away. Sibby's fists might just as well be a pair of fleas.

“Why did you say
Sieg Heil
and give the Nazi salute? Why did you
do
that?
How
could you do that?”

Danny Brill has already received a reprimand from Mr. Lockhart while we were all still in the classroom.

“Now, now, young man, we'll have none of that.”

But somehow Mr. Lockhart hasn't ordered Danny to the principal's office, or said what would happen to him if he ever tried any Nazi shenanigans again.

“Do you even
know
what
Sieg Heil
means?” Sybil demands. “It means ‘victory for Hitler,' who wants to kill the Jews and all his enemies so he can take over the world.”

“Gee,” Danny says helplessly. “I only saw it in a movie. It was some kind of a German thing. I don't know
what you're gettin' so upset about.”

“Aahh,” Sibby groans, turning away disgustedly. “You're nothing but an ignorant slob.”

Danny likewise turns his back and goes galumphing off with some of his friends. They laugh and hunch their shoulders, and one of them calls back at Sibby, “Hey, Red, don't look now but your pants are on fire!”

Because of the scuffle between Sibby and Danny Brill, I haven't had a chance yet to introduce Helga, who by the way has retreated toward the playground fence, as though she wasn't even the reason for the fray. Which has kept me tracking Helga like a nervous puppy dog, while keeping one eye trained on Sibby.

Suppose Danny took it into his head to punch Sibby back. I couldn't let her fight Helga's battle alone because, even though she started the fight, Helga is my responsibility. So it isn't until Danny and his gang have disappeared through the playground gate that I am able to bring them together and say, “Sybil this is Helga, Helga this is Sybil.”

Sybil enthusiastically grabs both of Helga's hands, which have been hanging limply at her side. “I'm so glad to meet you after hearing so much about you from Izzie. Well, um, a lot anyway. Gosh, what you must think of us here in America. First that stupid Mr. Lockhart puts you in seventh grade and then that ape, Danny, yells out those disgusting words in German.”

“
Ach
, it's no matter. I am happy to meet you, too.”

“What do you mean it's no matter?” Sibby asks in a peppery tone. “It certainly does matter. Both things matter...a lot. You've got to learn that here in the U.S. we fight for our rights. And there's no Gestapo, no secret police, no marching Storm Troopers to shut us up.”

Helga has withdrawn one of her hands to brush a long lock of hair from her cheek. “I think it is better that we do not speak of these things.”

Sibby instantly frees Helga's other hand, and we all head toward home in an embarrassed silence. Sibby and I only talk to point out various landmarks so that Helga can find her way without us if she has to. I can't imagine that they will keep her in seventh grade at Singleton for more than a few weeks. Helga is fourteen and she should be in ninth grade.

At the apartment, my mother is waiting impatiently for Helga so that they can set off for the hospital to visit Mrs. F. who is still pretty weak following her operation, which is said to have lasted six hours.

As soon as they're gone, I'm down at Sibby's, where Mrs. Simon has just come off the early shift of her new job at the shipyard. She is wearing overalls, a bandana that covers her hair, and heavy men's work shoes. Mrs. Simon looks tired and her voice is hoarse from yelling, she says, over the noise from the machinery. But she still
sets out milk and gingersnaps for Sibby and me, and sits down at the table with us, her head in her arms.

“So,” I say to Sibby. “do you see what I mean about Helga? She's very hard to talk to. If you say one wrong thing she shuts up like a clam. And you never know what that's going to be until you say it. Then it's too late.”

Sibby sips her milk, crunches on her gingersnaps, and nods. “Something terrible happened to her. You have to find out what it is, Isabel.”

“Me? All I ever do is get into trouble over her. Don't ask me to interfere.”

Mrs. Simon lifts her head from the table. “All right. Tell me what happened.”

We give her a rundown of the events at school this afternoon and the way Helga reacted when Sibby tried to stand up for her. “She refused to even talk about it,” I add. “Did she
want
to be put in seventh grade with a lot of twelve-year-olds when she should be in ninth? Was it okay with her that stupid Danny Brill yelled out
Sieg Heil
at her? It's almost as though she
likes
being insulted. That's crazy.”

“Let me ask you,” says Mrs. Simon, “what do you know about Helga's family in Germany? Are her parents still there? Does she have sisters and brothers?”

“Two sisters, I think. And I know she has letters, written in German...” I stop myself short. I haven't told anybody about that morning at Moskin's when
Helga went on a hike and I snooped around among her belongings and found the chocolate box with the picture of the parents and the three little girls, one smaller and the other two older.

“Well,” Sibby's mother says, “first of all, you should try to get more information about how Helga managed to leave Germany and be sent to England. My guess is that she was put on one of the Children's Transports. In 1939 the Germans were still letting the Jews leave....
if
some other country would take them. Now, of course...” Mrs. Simon takes the forefinger of her right hand and draws it across her throat, as though she's slashing it with a knife.

Even Sibby gasps and I say, “You mean...?”

“What,” says Mrs. Simon, “you never heard the Hitler Youth marching song? It goes all the way back to 1934, the year after Hitler became chancellor of Germany.
And when Jewish blood spurts from the knife, then things will again go well.
Today, nobody gets out alive. If the rest of her family stayed behind in Germany they could be in prison or in a slave labor camp. Or worse.”

All this information about what's been going on in Germany is giving me the heebie-jeebies. Why don't we read more about it in the newspapers? All we keep hearing about are the Japs and the war in the Pacific, and that our government is moving the Japanese people who live on the West Coast into camps fenced with barbed wire because they might be spies.

Could it be that some people suspect that maybe Helga is a spy working for the Germans? Was that why Mr. Lockhart and our home-room teacher, Mr. Jeffers, didn't get really angry at Danny Brill's
Sieg Heil
? It's all a mystery to me, wrapped in a tall, silent riddle that goes by the name of Helga Frankfurter.

It's later that evening and I'm doing my homework at the kitchen table when my mother and Helga return from their hospital visit to Mrs. F. My father is out seeing one of his insurance clients, as often happens on weeknights.

“How is Mrs. F...Frankfurter?” I nearly said Mrs. F. My mother would have killed me.

“Not doing well. Very weak,” my mother replies, as Helga merely nods a polite hello to me and goes to our room. As soon as Helga is out of hearing, my mother adds, “She looks like death warmed over. Now clear your books off the table so I can put some supper together.”

I'm not sure what “death warmed over” means, but I suspect it has something to do with Mrs. F. not having a chance to put on her makeup since the operation.

In the room we now share, Helga is sitting on her bed and reading her program schedule for school tomorrow.

“May I see it?” I ask.

“
Ja
, perhaps you can explain to me what is P.T., what is Alg., what is Eng. comp?”

It turns out that Helga does have ninth-grade classes in physical training and math, while history is eighth grade and English is seventh grade, so her program is a mish-mosh.

I still don't see, though, why they put her in a seventh-grade homeroom. She towers among most of the kids except for a few overgrown brutes like Danny Brill. And, even if she does have a German accent, her English is better than people like Billy Crosby who always says “ain't” and drops all his g's.

“Listen,” I say, as my mother calls us in to supper (a macaroni and cheese casserole that's been heating in the oven), “I'm sure things will get straightened out at school and you'll get to feel comfortable there. And I'm really sorry about your aunt being so sick right now.”