Isabel’s War (8 page)

“4-F? He's pretty pasty-faced.”

“Young ladies,” Mr. Jeffers calls out with surprising authority. Sybil and I button up and we stay that way.

Sure enough, it turns out we don't have the same lunch hour. Who knows why schools do those things? Sibby's is early. Mine is late. Maybe it's because of my French class. The first person I see when I enter the cafeteria is Sue Ellen Porter, so I sit down with her and a few other familiars from elementary school. Where are all those new faces from other schools, and those thirteen-and fourteen-year-old eighth and ninth graders I've been hoping for?

Sue Ellen, although she has a pretty face with perfect baby-doll features, has gotten even more blubbery over the summer. So I don't think it's a good idea to open the conversation by asking her what she thinks of the new short “victory” skirts and the prospect of two-piece bathing suits.

I slip my tray down next to hers and blurt out rather abruptly, “My brother just went into the Air Force.”

“Oh,” says Sue Ellen, her china-blue eyes misting
over, “mine is in the Marines. How long do you think this awful war will last?”

It's been a confusing day—so many teachers that I can hardly keep them apart except for Mr. Jeffers with his library-paste complexion and black panda eyes. And I haven't even had my intermediate French class yet because it only meets twice a week.

“Isabel, I'm on the phone,” my mother calls out in a warning voice as she hears the door into the foyer click shut.

Automatically, I tiptoe past the hall table where my mother is seated and head for my room, dump my new school books on the bed, curl over onto my side, and vigorously bicycle my knees into the air in an attempt to push away the past six hours.

“Terrible, oh terrible,” I hear my mother muttering into the phone. “When did the pain begin? You must have been beside yourself. Do you really trust this doctor to do the surgery? Six to eight weeks of recovery time. You poor thing. You know, of course, that I'll do anything I can to help...”

I've begun to pay attention to my mother's conversation. This can't be about Arnold. Her tone would be entirely different if anything had happened to my brother. It sounds more like one of her women friends. They're always having operations, it seems, for one
disastrous-sounding thing or another—dropped wombs, weak bladders, bleeding fibroids—mysterious ailments known as “women's troubles.”

I begin to hover around the telephone because I want to complain about my weird home-room teacher, the horse-faced gym teacher who won't let us do tumbling, French class only two times a week, and not having lunch hour with Sybil.

But my mother keeps shaking her head and waving me away. “You know I would do that for you,” she says into the phone, nodding decisively. “No, it's not too much trouble and it can go on as long as it needs to. Of course, it will be fine with Harold. Look, there's a war on. We all have to do what we can for each other. Don't give it another thought. Tonight, tomorrow, whatever is good for you. I'll talk to you later and we'll make final arrangements. Take care of yourself and don't worry. Yes, I'll tell her. She'll be delighted.”

The phone goes firmly back on its cradle and my mother looks up at me with a stern expression.

“What's happening?” I demand. Since those last two brief sentences I feel as though something is crawling on me. “
Who
are you going to tell?
Wh
o will be delighted? Who was that on the phone?”

“Harriette Frankfurter,” my mother declares, getting to her feet. “She's seriously ill. Must go to the hospital for a long stay. Helga needs a home for the time she's away.
Her uncle travels on business, you know.”

“Oh,” I say, dragging myself across the hall into the kitchen. “Helga. I might have known it. She didn't even answer my postcard. That's how much she cares about us. Now she wants to come and live here, forever I suppose.”

“She doesn't
want
to do anything of the sort, Isabel. What would you like the Frankfurters to do? Send her back to England or, even better, Germany?” My mother bangs her fist on the white porcelain table and it makes a sickly clanging noise that brings me to my senses.

“Where would she go to school if she lived with us?” I muse. “Would she go to ‘Simpleton' Junior High? If they took her in, she'd be a ninth-grader...”

“Well, of course, they'll take her in,” my mother replies, ignoring my switch on Singleton. “She's a refugee. She has to be taken care of and offered an education. Isn't that the American way?”

Eight

Then next afternoon, Harriette Frankfurter is lying in bed in her private room in a Westchester hospital with Helga at her side when my mother and I arrive to pick up Helga and take her home with us. It's been a long trip on a subway train and a bus to where the Frankfurters live, north of New York City in a pretty tree-shaded suburb.

Mrs. F. is both tearful and delighted to see us. Her red hair is freshly dyed and her eyeliner is as crisply drawn as ever. If she is pale and sick, it's hard to tell under her expertly applied makeup. She's wearing a pink satin bed jacket embroidered with baby-blue forget-me-nots and, when I lean over to embrace her, I'm enveloped in the heavenly scent of her cologne.

“No crying, no crying,” Mrs. F. says to the sad faces around her bed—Helga, my mother, and me. “I have the best doctors and a private nurse. After this operation, I'll be perfectly fine and we'll have the biggest party you can possibly imagine. I'm already making plans for it.”

Nobody seems especially cheered up by this announcement. My mother tells Mrs. F. to simply rest
and relax in preparation for the surgery, which is to take place the following day. Helga and I just stare at each other dumbly.

“I guess you got my postcard,” I mumble. “We had to leave in a hurry because my brother enlisted in the Air Force. How's your leg?”

Helga glances down at her calf. “
Ja
, it's better. Just a small scar.”

I simply
have
to ask her about Roy. “Uh, did you ever see that sailor again? I mean after he brought you back to Shady Pines the morning you were bitten by the dog?”

Helga blinks and looks confused. Does she know that I know she left our room and spent time with him that evening?

“You could write to him and thank him, you know. If you had his address.”

“Yes, yes,” Helga nods. “He is on a ship now in the Pacific...very far away, in the war with the Japanese. He was my rescuer and now I worry for him.”

I can see that Helga is way ahead of me. I try hard to think of something else to talk to her about. “Did you and Ruthie spend much time together after I left?”

“Ah, yes.” Helga actually smiles faintly this time. “We became good friends. She teached me the Lindy. I think also it is called the Jitterbug.”

“Really?” I can't think of another thing to say to this piece of news. So Ruthie and Helga had become close
after my father ordered our immediate departure from Moskin's.

“Now, of course,” Helga adds, “the hotel is closed for the winter. Ruth lives in the town, where she goes to school. How beautiful it must be there and in the nearby mountains when the snow comes.”

“It snows plenty in the Bronx, too,” I tell Helga. “You'll see.”

But she doesn't seem to have heard me. My mother and Mrs. F. have started to say their goodbyes, and the tears really do start flowing. I give Mrs. F.—who I've come to like a whole lot—a parting hug, just managing to remain dry-eyed, and we go out into the corridor so she can have some final words with Helga. Then Helga comes out of the room carrying her suitcase and we pad our way to the elevator, walking as silently as the floor nurses in their white spongy-soled shoes.

“Well, where is she?” Sibby wants to know.

It's the next morning and she has been waiting for me in the lobby of our building so we can walk to school together.

“You look awfully dragged down,” Sibby adds before I can answer her question. “Is something wrong? Helga didn't come back with you last night?”

I roll my eyes heavenward. “She's up there. But she can't go to school until her uncle, Mr. F., gets here to
enroll her. He's her guardian. It seems he has to show all kinds of papers to prove that she's here legally.”

We start strolling down the street and Sibby shakes her head knowingly. “Oh, of course. I've heard about that stuff. They don't let foreigners, not even refugees, into the U.S. just like that, especially in wartime. A lot of Jews from Germany and other places can't get into the country at all. A few years ago a whole shipload of people tried to land over here and they were turned away. They went back to Europe and probably all dead by now.”

“Really?” This seems pretty shocking to me. But what do I know?

“You should try to learn more about what's been going on in the world,” Sibby says sharply. “My mother keeps up with all the news from over there.”

“I don't know what you're yelling at me for,” I complain. “I'm already in enough trouble because of Helga. She's very hard to be friendly with, even though I've tried to do everything I was supposed to. Guess what happened last night. We got home to the apartment and I thought, for sure, she'd sleep in the dining alcove where Arnold's bed was.

“But, no, the first thing that happens is my parents move Helga into my room.
She'll have more privacy
, my mother says. Well, what about
my
privacy? So now I have to share my bedroom with her. And not just for a short time like at Moskin's, but probably forever and ever. Or,
at least until Mrs. F. gets well and Helga can move back to Westchester.”

“Oh,” Sibby says with mock sympathy, “poor baby. You know what your trouble is, Izzie? You're spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. Actually, I'm very anxious to meet Helga and I just bet I'm going to like her a lot. And my mother wants to meet her, too.”

Suddenly the light across the Concourse turns green and I make a dash for the other side. This isn't the shortest route to Singleton Junior High, but I think if I don't get away from my so-called best friend we're going to have an awful fight.

“I just remembered something I have to buy for algebra class,” I call out over my shoulder. “See you in home-room.”

Sybil just stands there, her hands on her hips. Then she tosses her head and continues walking. I feel that everyone has ganged up on me because of Helga. She and Ruthie have become friends, and Ruthie hasn't even bothered to write to me. Now, without even meeting Helga, Sybil is going over to her side, too.

My parents have been making a fuss over Helga ever since they first met her and they've already started treating her like a princess since she's moved in with us. My mother served flapjacks with real maple syrup for breakfast today. On an ordinary Wednesday morning. Unheard of! There's really nothing left to pray for except a successful operation and a speedy recovery for Mrs. F.
Scully, Deutsch, Marinello, Brody, Boylan, Damore...physical training, algebra, music, English, history, and French, not to mention buxom Mrs. Miller for cooking and skinny Miss Scanlon for sewing.

As I'm following at some distance behind Sybil on my roundabout route to school, I'm trying to memorize the names of my teachers and their subjects in this new “departmental” system. Whoever dreamed up such a mess is probably the same person who gave Simpleton Junior High its nickname. All I know is that if I ever lose my program card, I'll spend the rest of the term wandering around the three echoing floors of the vast stone building like a soul in limbo.

It's midmorning now and I'm climbing the stairs to the first session of my intermediate French class, really excited at last about something in junior high, when I become aware of somebody hustling along at my side and muttering, “Isabel Brandt, what a snob.”

I turn and it's Billy Crosby from sixth grade who I haven't thought about in months. After all, why would I? He's just another wise guy twelve-year-old, with glasses and an irritating grin. He seems a mite taller than he did back in June at the end of the school year. But he's always been such a know-it-all.

“Oh, it's you,” I say, sounding, I guess, disappointed.

“You coulda said hello Monday or yesterday,” Billy remarks. “We're in the same homeroom.”

“Sorry,” I tell him as I hustle along the third-floor hallway looking for Room 322. “This place is so confusing.”

“No it ain't,” Billy contradicts. “What room you lookin' for, anyway?”

I've finally spotted 322 and I turn in the doorway, Billy still hovering at my side.

“It's okay,” I tell him. “I found it.”

There are only a few kids already seated at their desks. I don't know any of them. I slide into an empty desk and Billy takes the one next to me. “What, you're taking intermediate French?” I remember now that Billy was in the special French class that Miss Le Vigne gave in sixth grade. And he wasn't very good at it.

“Yeah. Any law against that?” Those glittering eyeglasses and that everlasting grin are driving me crazy. I can't help thinking that Billy's lips must be curved into a perpetual smile even when he's sleeping.