Keep Smiling Through (11 page)

I have the magic pedometer. It will see me through.
I touched it on my wrist.

"It wasn't for nothing," I said.

"What?" Amazing Grace leaned forward in her chair. And she forgot to use the purring tone she'd been using up to now. "Kay, what are you saying?"

"It's true that Grandpa was knocked down for nothing. He didn't deserve to be knocked down by those men. They were picking on him because he has a German accent."

Amazing Grace smiled, settled back in her chair, and preened for the reporter and photographer.

"But he and Ernie were talking about Hitler. And Germany."

"
What?
" Amazing Grace stood up. "Don't listen to her, gentlemen. She has a very vivid imagination. You know how little girls are."

The reporter was listening. And writing. Fast. And the photographer was snapping my picture while I sat alone on the couch, without Amazing Grace next to me.

"Go on, little girl," the reporter said.

So I went on. "They were talking about the new Germany that Hitler is making. And how the German people are suffering. And about a friend of Ernie's named Hauptmann,
who works for the Third Reich. Then Ernie said he had pamphlets sent to him from his friend, and he asked Grandpa to distribute them."

"Enough!" Amazing Grace stood in front of the photographer and tried to push away his camera. "I'm afraid I will have to put a stop to this now. The child is lying."

"Did you see the pamphlets?" the reporter asked.

"I have one. In my pocket."

"Gentlemen," Amazing Grace said, "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave. Can't you see the child is lying? Surely, you're not going to
print
that."

"Ma'am, with all due respect," the reporter said, looking at her fully now, "why don't you let her show us this pamphlet? Then we'll know if she's lying. Can we see it, Kay?"

I stood up and fished it out of my pocket. "I have to say something first," I told him.

"Go ahead," the reporter said.

"Grandpa didn't know what the pamphlet was when Ernie pushed it through the little window at him. And he didn't even have time to read it before he was knocked down."

The reporter nodded. "Fair enough," he
said. And he held out his hand for the pamphlet. I gave it to him.

He read it very fast. Just like Britt Reid would do. Then he looked at Amazing Grace.

"I'd say that the child is doing anything but lying, ma'am," he told her. "Now if you don't mind, in the public interest, I'd like to ask her a couple more questions."

I told them everything. I told them all I knew. And they listened. I told them the whole truth. The way Betty Fairfield would have done. But I didn't forget about justice, either.

"I'm sure Grandpa is a good American," I told him. "He only loves his old country. Lots of German people who live here feel the same way. Mrs. Leudloff, the German lady I go to for eggs, told me that."

"You told Mrs. Leudloff about this?" Amazing Grace was livid.

"Yes." I don't know where I got brave enough to face her, but I did it. "And Mrs. Leudloff said that lots of German-American people are picked on like Grandpa these days."

"You're right, sweetie," the reporter said. And he was still writing, taking down
everything I said. "I'm sure the old man was being picked on. And you're a smart little girl to understand that."

Amazing Grace was wringing her hands, and they saw she was upset. So they finished up, thanked her, and took their leave. "The story will be in Sunday's paper," they said.

Then Britt Reid patted me on the shoulder and looked right into my eyes. "You're a brave little girl," he said. "Thank you."

Nobody had ever told me that before. Tears came to my eyes when he said it. And the way he gripped my shoulder made me think that he knew I was in trouble for telling the truth.

"You've got a fine little girl there, ma'am," he said to Amazing Grace. "You and your husband should be proud of her."

I knew he was doing that for me. He winked at me as he walked into the center hall.

"Gentlemen"—Amazing Grace was following them through the hall—"what will happen to my father if you print the story? How will it look for him? And for us?"

The reporter paused at the front door. "It will look like he was doing what the little girl said, asking about his country and how the people there are faring," he said.

"But my father is no Hitler lover," Amazing Grace insisted.

"Nobody said he was, ma'am. This is still America. People have the right to say what they think, read what they wish, and believe in what they want. My guess is, the men who attacked your father will be looked on badly. And Ernie, too."

"Then why print the story?" Amazing Grace asked.

The reporter looked at her with surprise and sadness. "Don't you know, ma'am?"

"No. Quite frankly, I don't," Amazing Grace said.

"Then maybe you ought to ask the little girl. She knows." And he winked at me again as he went out the door.

As soon as they drove out of sight, Amazing Grace turned on me. "So, you're a brave and smart little girl, are you? Well, we'll see how brave you are."

And she looked at Nana and the boys, who were standing in the kitchen doorway, gaping.

"Get the strap behind the kitchen door," she told them.

She kept one of my father's old belts there. And used it on us when she got very angry.

Nobody moved but me.

"No," I said. And I began to run. But she grabbed me by my braids and dragged me through the hall.

"I said get the strap!" she yelled.

"Grace, don't excite yourself," Nana said.

"Don't excite myself? I'm already excited. Thanks to this little demon." And she dragged me by my braids through the kitchen to the back door.

"No!" Martin ran to her. "Don't hit her. She did what was right."

She hit Martin in the face. Then she grabbed the strap and started hitting me with it with one hand while she held me by my braids with the other.

"There, and there, and there," she said, swinging the strap. "Now we'll see how brave and smart you are."

"No, no!" Martin was yelling. And he tried to grab the strap from her. A few times he got hit for his trouble.

Tom was crying, "Stop it, stop it!" She'd hit him enough times with the strap for him to know how it felt.

It felt bad. It felt like someone was burning me with hot irons, on my back and shoulders and legs. I screamed. I thrashed. "No, no, stop!" I cried.

But she didn't stop.

It was Nana who finally stopped her. "Grace. Stop it! Now!"

Nana stepped into the fray. She even got caught once with the strap herself. "Grace, stop it. This is not how I raised you. What's the matter with you? Grace, you'll hurt yourself. You'll hurt the baby."

That stopped her. She let me go." And I ran. I ran out the back door, across the driveway and lawns, through the fields, and down to the brook. I ran, crying and hurting and sore.

I ran, and I was not brave.

I'd known she would be mad. And I'd promised myself to be brave. Like Hop Harrigan is behind enemy lines. Like Betty Fairfield when she went with Jack Armstrong and her father, chopping their way through the Philippine jungles. Like Superman, standing up for truth, justice, and the American way, and like Britt Reid, who fights all people who try to destroy America.

But when my time came to be brave, I was just a screaming little girl, begging Amazing Grace to stop, and running scared through the fields.

She'd ruined it all, all the good I tried to do to keep America safe. The good feeling
I'd had about doing right was gone. She'd killed it. The reporter had been wrong. I wasn't smart and brave. I was dirty and hurting and ashamed.

And worst of all, the magic pedometer hadn't saved me.

I stayed down by the brook all afternoon. I took off my blouse and washed myself by dipping it into the clear water. My legs and shoulders and back hurt so. The whole world hurt.

It was full of treachery, evil, and betrayal. I'd tried to do right and fight for truth and justice, and it didn't work.

On all our radio programs, doing what's right works for the heroes and heroines. They always win their battles against evil.

I'd lost. It was probably my fault somehow, I was sure of it. I'd done something wrong. I'd missed some clue that I probably would go on missing forever. I was useless.

I hung my blouse on a tree limb to dry. Then, because it hadn't been any good to me
anyway, I took off the magic pedometer and set it down on a rock, and sat down to think.

I would never go back to the house. I decided that while I was still crying. I would live down here by the brook. I'd get Martin and Tom to bring me sandwiches and water and a blanket. If I went back, Amazing Grace would make life more miserable for me than it already was.

By the time I stopped crying, I decided that wasn't a good plan. It was a better idea to run away.

Amazing Grace had run away once. She'd had a fight with my father, and I'd stood in her bedroom watching her put on her Coty powder and her Tangee lipstick, and patting her hair and looking at herself in the large oval mirror of her dressing table.

"I'm running away," she'd said.

"Can I go with you?"

She said yes and so we walked all the way up our road, the River Road, to Route 6. Then we started walking north. I was very excited about the idea of running away. I didn't worry about where we would live or how. It was the idea of running away that was the important thing.

More important, Amazing Grace had taken me with her!

But then, before we'd walked too far, my father came by in the car and asked her to come home. Amazing Grace got into the car and made me get in, too.

I was so disappointed in her. She hadn't really wanted to run away. All she wanted was for my father to come after her. But then something else disappointed me more. "I don't mind that you ran away," my father said to her, "but did you have to take Kay?"

"Yes," she answered. "To make you worry more."

It was then that I realized that Amazing Grace hadn't taken me with her because she wanted me. But because she wanted to hurt my father.

I was thinking I'd do the same thing, just walk up River Road and head north on Route 6, when I saw Martin walking through the fields toward me. I got up and put on my blouse. Because Sister Brigitta said a girl should always be modest.

"Nana said you should come home," Martin said. He'd brought water and bread with peanut butter on it.

"I'm not ever coming home again. I'm going to run away."

"Where?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. I'm sure nobody would care or come after me."

"Me and Tom would care. You can't do that."

"Why?"

He thought for a moment. "Because you wouldn't be able to listen to
Hop Harrigan
again. He and Tank Tinker are still in that Japanese prison camp. And the Nazis are going to try to kill Superman with kryptonite tonight."

"I don't care about all that anymore," I told him.

His eyes went wide. "You don't care about our radio programs?"

"No. They're all phony."

Martin was unbelieving. "How can you say that?"

"I can. All those people like Superman and Hop Harrigan and Jack Armstrong are only stories. They tell us to be brave and tell the truth and fight evil and keep on punching. Well, it didn't work this afternoon for me. I tried to do the right thing and look what happened."

Martin did the only thing he knew how to do when things got too much for him. He took out a cigarette, lighted it, and began to
smoke. I ate my peanut-butter bread and drank my water.

"Nana says you did the right thing," he said finally.

My ears perked up. "Nana? I thought she'd be mad at me."

"No. She says she told Grandpa to stay away from that place. And to stop talking about the old Germany. She says there is no more Germany and,
la,
Grandpa is a fool sometimes. And maybe now he'll learn his lesson."

Tears came to my eyes. Nana. She'd stand by me. I had a brief feeling of hope. Nana was a good person to have around. Like Tonto on
The Lone Ranger.

No, I must stop thinking about my radio programs.
All they'd done was get me into trouble.

"What's my pedometer doing on that rock?" Martin asked.

I picked it up and handed it to him. "You can have it back. It doesn't work. If it did, it would have protected me from Amazing Grace. I don't believe in it anymore. Take it."

Martin regarded it solemnly. "You have to believe in it for it to work," he said.

"Well, I don't anymore, so take it." Then
I had another thought. "Daddy will kill me when he comes home. I upset Amazing Grace," I said.

"No, he doesn't want trouble. You know how he hates trouble. And Nana says she'll talk to him."

"But he lets Amazing Grace get away with everything. Why does he do that?"

"He has to," Martin said.

"Why?"

"He has to keep peace."

"Well, I'm still not coming home. Daddy won't care. The only one he cares about is Amazing Grace."

Martin looked at me with his brown, steady gaze. "I'm going to tell you something now, to prove you're wrong," he said. "If you believe me, you must promise to come home. But even if you don't believe me, you have to promise never to let anybody know I told you. Okay?"

I promised.

"You know how he takes us to Coney Island whenever we go to Nana's on a Saturday? And how you always cry because he won't take you?"

"Yes."

"Well, we don't go to Coney Island."

I felt something coming. Something big and powerful, like a locomotive, rushing right at me. "Where do you go?"

"On a secret mission," Martin said.

I believed him. He wasn't lying. The look on his face told me he wasn't. He was about to tell me something that would explain everything and make things all right again. "What kind of secret mission?"

"We go and visit Mother's grave."

The world got softer all of a sudden. The hard edges softened, the sense of evil lifted, and I felt hope instead of betrayal.