Skating with the Statue of Liberty (13 page)

“It must be hard, doing homework in English.”

“I just do the part I can.”

“They don't make you do it all? Lucky!” She grinned.

All at once a yapping ball of fur came rushing to the door, and Chiquita jumped up on Gustave, her light front paws scrabbling at his legs. “Hello, girl!” he said, rubbing her head. “So that was you, barking! Find any sweet potatoes lately?”

Down the hall, the door to another apartment opened, and an elderly woman peeked her head out. She had short, tightly curled gray hair and skin a bit darker than September Rose's. She looked at Gustave suspiciously. “Seppie?” she demanded. “Everything all right? What's that boy doing here? Where your granma at?”

September Rose came out into the hallway. “Everything's hunky-dory, Miss Noelle,” she said, holding up the brown paper package. “Granma went down to get the evening paper. This is Gustave. He delivers for Quong's Hand Laundry. He's in my class at school.”

“Chiquita looks mighty friendly with him.”

“Of course. She's a mighty friendly dog.”

Miss Noelle looked hard at Gustave. “Well, you finished delivering the laundry. You be going, hear?”

September Rose grinned at Gustave, rolling her eyes slightly. “See you at school, Gustave,” she said. “Or maybe in the park?”

Maybe she had been looking for him there too.

“Sure,” he said. “See you.”

18

G
ustave chained the bike in the alley by the laundry. Mr. Quong was just locking up.

“Any problems with the deliveries?” Mr. Quong asked, pulling down metal shutters over the shop windows.

Gustave hesitated. “Some boys threw rocks at me on Eighty-Third Street.”

Mr. Quong looked at him intently. “Hmm. That was a new customer. I'll tell him he has to pick the laundry up himself if he comes back. I don't want you to have to deal with that again. Did you have any trouble finding the addresses?”

“No, sir. I found them all.”

“It'll get easier and faster,” Mr. Quong promised.

It was dark, and much later than the time Gustave usually got home. When he arrived at the apartment, Papa was there too.

“Where have you been?” Maman cried. “We've been worried!”

“Working,” Gustave said. He couldn't keep himself from smiling. “I found a job! I'm a delivery boy for Mr. Quong's laundry.”

“You found work!” She sounded astonished. “In America!”

“I'll give you half the money,” Gustave said hesitantly, quickly recalculating how long it would take to earn the pants.

Maman and Papa smiled at each other. “You keep the money. Just be sure that the job doesn't interfere with your schoolwork,” Maman said.

“It should actually be good for his English,” Papa said, settling into his chair with a sigh and rubbing his bad leg. “Yes, you keep the money,
mon vieux
. A boy needs some candy now and then. And eventually you can pay for little things—like stamps for your letters to France.”

“Sit down,” said Maman. “Dinner's ready.”

“So, what's this Mr. Quong like?” Papa asked.

“He's nice. He's an immigrant too, he told me.”

“From China, it sounds like.”

“Yeah. He has a cat—hey, we have meat today!” Gustave watched as Maman served him a thin sliver of pot roast and a mound of carrots, turnips, and potatoes, ladling sauce on top.

“Yes. There was a bargain on cheap cuts at the butcher's,” Maman said. “Was the work hard? Gustave! Wait until everyone is served!” Maman tapped his hand, and he put his fork down.

He certainly wasn't going to tell her about the
stone-throwing boys. “It was hard finding some of the addresses, but—wow, this smells so good. It's like before the war!”

Gustave delivered for Mr. Quong again on Wednesday. There was another address in the west eighties, but everything went smoothly. On his third delivery day, Friday, dark clouds loomed, and shortly after he started off, freezing rain began to patter down on the streets around him. Mr. Quong had given him a tarp to wrap the laundry packages in to keep them dry, but between the rain and the cars splashing him from head to foot, before long Gustave was soaked through to the skin with icy water. The deliveries took a long time, but, to his relief, again nothing bad happened. It was nearly pitch-black outside by the time Gustave got back to Mr. Quong's shop and chained the delivery bike in the alley.

Mr. Quong smiled at him sympathetically as he came in. “Ah, you look cold. No problems with your deliveries today, right?”

Gustave shook his head.

“Would you like some tea?”

Gustave shivered. “No, thank you—I have to go home.”

“All right. Good work this week.” Mr. Quong made a mark in his notebook, then handed Gustave three quarters.

The coins were warm and solid in his hand as he ran back to the apartment, thinking excitedly about everything
he could buy. He couldn't save it all, because he was going on a hike with Jean-Paul and his French Boy Scout troop over the weekend, and he would need two nickels for each way of the long ride on two different subway lines, the IND and the IRT. But counting the nickel tip from Mrs. Markham, the lady with all the diapers, he would have sixty cents left over. The first money he had earned in America!

The following Sunday, Gustave and Jean-Paul raced across a field at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The French Boy Scouts, visible from a distance because of their kerchiefs, were gathering near the entrance to a trail. The sun was shining, and what had been ice on the field was turning to mud. A young priest in a dark shirt with a white neckband held out his hand to Gustave and smiled. “
Bonjour. Bienvenue
, Gustave! I am Father René. Welcome to the Franco-American Boy Scouts. Let me introduce you to these five rascals, Bernard, André, Guy, Maurice, and Xavier.”

“This is my cousin,” Jean-Paul said to the five boys. They shook Gustave's hand enthusiastically, all of them except Maurice, who was tall, with an aloof, narrow face and dark, intense eyes. He just nodded coolly.

“Maurice is kind of the unofficial leader,” Jean-Paul whispered eagerly. “He won't talk to you, except to order you around, until you earn your totem name.”

Gustave's hands prickled with excitement. “How do I do that?”

“You'll see!”

“Hi!” said Xavier, grinning. He was chubby and looked a little younger than the others.

“I'm glad you're here,” said Bernard, who had dark, wavy hair. “We need more scouts.”

“You and Jean-Paul just came to the US, right?” said Guy. Guy was tall and lanky, with an inquisitive face.

“In January,” Gustave said. “What about you?”

“I've been here since I was eight. Before that, we lived in Corsica.”

“Hey, wait!” said André. “You go to Joan of Arc Junior High! I've noticed your French pants in the halls.”

“Yes! What grade are you in?”

“I'm in ninth.”

“Oh. I'm in seventh.”

“Allons-y, les gars,”
said Father René. “
Let's go!
We have a long hike today. Who's up for some tree identification?”

“In winter?” asked Gustave.

“Sure! A good scout can identify trees from the bark!” Father René said, starting off down the trail. “All right, Xavier, what's that one?”

“Oak?”

“Beech!” Father René laughed. “You boys need to brush up! André, what's this?”

Father René hiked energetically up the wooded path, talking about trees. Gustave breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of the woods and the French voices all around him. The sun sparkled on the needles of the pine trees and lit up their craggy bark. Bernard was up ahead, wearing a pair of French
pantalon de golf
, just as Gustave was,
with warm socks and sturdy shoes. After a while Father René stopped quizzing them about nature and started singing. It was a familiar French song about the emperor and his family coming to visit every day for a week, starting with
lundi matin
, Monday morning:

“Lundi matin, l'empereur, sa femme, et le petit prince…,”
he belted out.
On Monday morning, the emperor and his wife and son…

“Came to my house, to shake my hand for fu-un!”
the boys roared back, even Gustave, because here, singing this silly song from back home, it didn't matter if his voice sounded like a dying frog.

“But since I was away, the little son did say/‘Since that's the way it is, we will come back TUESDAY!' ”
the song went on, and then repeated through all the days of the week. The scouts belted the words out goofily at the top of their lungs, the French sounds soaring into the sweet-smelling woodsy air.

When the song ended, they hiked in contented silence for a while, listening to the birds and the wind and the distant roar of cars from somewhere far away in the city.

“Are you thinking about going to the Lycée Français?” Xavier asked Gustave, pausing to let him catch up so that they could hike side by side.

“There's a French school in New York?”

“Yeah, I go, and so do Xavier and Bernard,” said Guy, joining in. “It's a private school.”

“I'm pretty sure we can't afford that.”

“Not now anyway, Gustave.” Jean-Paul joined the conversation. “Maybe when your father gets a better job.
My mother said that later maybe I would go. Madame Raymond said she might be able to help with my tuition.”

“My father says you can't do anything in France without
le bac
,” added Bernard. “So he wants me to get the French high school diploma in case we go back after the war.”

“I never thought about that.” Anxiety twisted in Gustave's stomach, interrupting his happy mood. “But he means if the Allies win the war, right?”

“Of course!”

“If we don't win, France will be a slave country to Germany,” Guy said. “And Belgium, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and all the others too—it would be horrible. The Allies have to win.”

“It would be even worse for us Jews,” Bernard said quietly, looking at Gustave.

The thought of Germany winning the war was too unbearable to contemplate. His mind held the thought for only an instant before shifting away—to how it would be now that he knew another French boy at Joan of Arc Junior High, to being hungry, to the blister forming on his right heel.

“I hear there's so much homework in high school,” Xavier said. “Chemistry and physics and all those exams—yuck! Anyway, it's far away. Who wants to think about that now?”

“It's next year for me, and Maurice is already in high school,” André said, joining the conversation. “You can always try to get into Stuyvesant High School if you
want to, Gustave. Joan of Arc is all right for junior high, though. Especially now that there are two of us there.”

“Sure.”

“Boys!” Father René called a halt to the hike as they came to a low summit. The path split here, one branch diverging to the left and the other winding ahead through the trees. “I know you have some
private
scout business to attend to.” He grinned. “I'll just hike this side trail by myself for the next hour or so. I'll meet you all back here at one p.m. sharp. Maurice, you have a watch? I'm counting on you to get the troop back here, yes?”