Skating with the Statue of Liberty (2 page)

“Mine too.” Their family had several black market American bills, sewn into Maman's corset. Those and the two uncut diamonds buried deep in the sawdust of her pincushion were enough to keep them alive for about six months.

“
Dépêche-toi! Hurry!
They only serve breakfast for another half hour.”

Gustave hesitated. “You'll watch for U-boats while I'm gone?”

“Of course! Go! And don't forget my pastry!”

Gustave's parents were just getting up from breakfast. He gobbled down some bread with plum compote, grabbed a sweet roll, and ran back up to the top deck. He handed the pastry to Jean-Paul, who stuck it into his coat pocket. Several sailors were now on deck, keeping watch. The ocean was calm, and light sparkled on the water. Finally, there was something that looked like land, a thick, dark strip bobbing above the horizon, disappearing, then bobbing up again, growing more and more solid.

“
That's
America!” Gustave shouted.

“Where?” Jean-Paul searched the horizon frantically. “Yes! That must be it!”

Soon the other passengers were gathering on both decks, squinting in the cold sunshine, dressed in their
best clothes for the arrival. Gustave's parents and Aunt Geraldine made their way through the crowd and joined him and Jean-Paul at their spot by the railing. Elderly Monsieur Benoit, the friendly jeweler from Lyon, who had been to the United States before, was with them. As a wave surged against the ship, Papa clutched Gustave's shoulder for support. His left leg was shorter than his right and slightly twisted, the lingering result of childhood polio. His bad leg had made it hard for him to balance during the sea voyage, but it had also kept him out of the French army. So he was here now, not in a German prisoner-of-war camp like Jean-Paul's father. Gustave flushed, glad that Papa was here, but also ashamed of being glad that Papa was free when Uncle David wasn't. He squeezed to the side to let Papa grip the railing. As he did, Giselle, Jean-Paul's little sister, slipped in next to Papa.

“Not so near the edge!” Aunt Geraldine gasped, clutching Giselle's dress and pulling her back. The shapes of buildings were starting to form on the horizon. No Statue of Liberty holding up her torch to welcome them, but it was definitely a city, definitely the United States.

“There it is,” Maman said in a choked voice. “America.”

“The land of freedom!” exclaimed Monsieur Benoit. “Where ‘all men are created equal.' ”

“No more laws making trouble for Jews,” murmured Aunt Geraldine. “No Nazis.”

“Finally!” Papa said, his deep voice cracking. “We're safe.”

It was hard to believe, after they had barely escaped from Europe with their lives. Gustave watched as if America might disappear, might turn out to be a mirage, might sprout wings and fly away like the cormorant. But it was real.

Where all men are created equal, Gustave thought. His heart swelled in his chest. At least Jean-Paul was here now, even though he was different from the way he used to be. At least he was here and safe. If only Marcel were on the ship and could see this too, Gustave thought, sharp grief piercing him and mingling with his excitement.

A man standing by the railing was crying, quietly but openly, dabbing at his face with a white handkerchief. Crackly music boomed over the ship's loudspeaker. “O say, can you see…”

The few Americans on the ship began to sing their national anthem, and then several foreign voices picked up the tune, the different accents blending. Other passengers murmured prayers. After nineteen months of Nazi persecution, after travelling from France through Spain and Portugal, after the long, cramped, seasick weeks aboard the ship from Lisbon, they had made it safely across the Atlantic, untouched by U-boats. They really were leaving Europe and the Nazis behind. They really were coming to a land of freedom, of equality. Blinking the blurriness out of his eyes, Gustave stared at the skyline of the city coming more and more sharply into view, as their ship, the
Carvalho Araujo
, steamed forward into Baltimore harbor, forward to America.

2

A
discarded customs form drifted across the sunny upper deck. “There's one!” Jean-Paul shouted, but Gustave darted behind two women sitting on suitcases and grabbed it first.

He folded it into a paper airplane and tossed it into the air. “It's a British Spitfire! Coming your way!”

Jean-Paul jumped up, trying to catch it, but the sea breeze suddenly shifted, and the plane zoomed sharply down in front of a man's nose.

“Hey!” the man shouted.

“It's too crowded here for that, boys,” Papa said wearily.

Their arrival in America was turning into something of an anticlimax. They had been waiting on board for two days now. All foreigners had to be interrogated and their papers inspected, one at a time, by FBI officials.

“Mine!” Giselle whined, running to her brother. Jean-Paul ignored her and retrieved the crumpled Spitfire,
which had lodged between a large trunk and a violin case. Unfolding it, he sat down cross-legged on the deck next to Gustave and added it to the pile of scrap paper they had weighed down with the corner of Maman's handbag.

“Remember in Paris when we learned how to make folded paper animals from that book?” Gustave asked Jean-Paul, folding rapidly. “Look—a bird!”

“Does it fly?” Jean-Paul tossed it up, and a gust of wind carried it sideways, overboard.

“Hey! No!”

“Sorry. Tic-tac-toe?” Jean-Paul scooped up a pen and another discarded form.

“Bird!” Giselle whined. She reached out for the pile, but Jean-Paul tucked it under his foot. “That's
our
paper, Giselle,” he said. “We found it.”

Giselle wailed.

“Aren't they
ever
going to call our names?” Aunt Geraldine muttered to Maman.

Gustave and Jean-Paul had nearly used up the pile of paper when finally their names were called and they filed down the gangplank of the ship and into a building where they waited again, in a windowless, low-ceilinged room. Customs inspectors rummaged through each of their bags. Then a stern-looking man examined the forms and asked the adults even more questions, which were translated into strange-sounding French by the bored-looking man next to him. Gustave's attention wandered but snapped back when he heard, “Your family may now enter the country.”

Papa kissed Maman joyfully. Aunt Geraldine lifted
Giselle high into the air. “We made it!” Gustave said, grinning at Jean-Paul. “We're in America!”

Outside, the sky had clouded over, and an early dusk was falling, but the clash of metal and the shouts of dock-workers still rang out. Papa tapped Gustave on the shoulder. “Get ready—you tell the cabdriver where to take us.”

“Me?”

“Sure. Your English is the best.”

When a yellow taxi pulled up, the driver leaned over and rolled down the window.

“Where to?” he shouted.

“We go to…to trrren stah-syohn,” Gustave said shakily in English, climbing in.

The driver scowled at Gustave in the rearview mirror. “Which train station?”

Gustave looked at him blankly.

The cabdriver barked something else that Gustave didn't understand. Then he looked at Papa and repeated the question, sounding irritated. Papa nodded at Gustave.

“Trrren stah-syohn…” Gustave hesitated. “New York?” The driver sighed breathily and pulled into the street, honking at a truck in front of them and muttering to himself. Gustave caught the word “stupid,” but he still felt a rush of pride. He had spoken English in America to a complete stranger—and it had worked!

He watched the streets of Baltimore blur by the windows of the cab. White marble steps gleamed through the dusk.

After a few miles, the driver pulled into a taxi line in front of an imposing white building. An illuminated
clock on the front of the station spilled golden light out onto the street. In front of the building, an American flag waved proudly against the darkening blue of the sky. At the bottom of the flagpole, two men were working the pulley to bring it down for the night.

As soon as the taxi came to a stop, Jean-Paul and Gustave jumped out and started unloading bags, and Papa paid the taxi driver. A freezing drizzle was starting to come down. Behind them, another cab pulled up, and Gustave saw that Monsieur Benoit and some of the other French refugees his family had met on the ship had squeezed in together. Gustave tapped Papa and whispered urgently, “I need to find the toilets.”

“Run on ahead,” Papa said. “We can manage with the bags.”

Shielding his face from the rapidly intensifying rain, Gustave ran toward the station doors. On the side of the building, he saw a sign with some words he didn't know, but also an arrow and the English word
RESTROOMS
. He ran down the cement stairs and through a door marked
MEN
.

He was hit by a smell so strong that it made his eyes sting. The room was cold and lit by a single bare lightbulb. An overflowing trash can stood in the corner next to a chipped sink with an empty soap dish. As Gustave washed his hands with water afterward, he noticed that two men, both of them
africains
, had come in. He had only ever seen Africans in France once—a group with instrument cases in front of a theater in Paris. Gustave
glanced curiously at their dark skin for a moment, until he noticed that they were both looking at him strangely. He rubbed his hands dry on his shirt and hurried out, glad to be breathing the fresh air.

At the top of the cement stairs, two women with elegantly coiffed blond hair were stepping out of a cab, holding umbrellas in their white-gloved hands. Both of them stared at Gustave. The taller one murmured something inaudible to her companion, then shot Gustave an unmistakable look of disgust. Gustave sidled past. Just beyond them a broad-shouldered young man with his collar turned up muttered something that sounded like a curse and spat onto the sidewalk in front of Gustave's feet.

A flash of memory hit Gustave. A French street and a shouting woman with a snarling face. Marcel and Jean-Paul running ahead of him through the rain. Spit dripping down his bare leg.
“Sale juif.” Dirty Jew
.

But he couldn't understand why that would be happening here. Feeling bewildered, he ran toward the front of the building, where his family was standing with the other French refugees, surrounded by suitcases and trunks. Monsieur Benoit watched Gustave approach. Jean-Paul, who was squatting down to talk to a sleepy Giselle, straightened up.

“Where are the toilets?” he asked. “I need them too.”

Gustave turned to point, but Monsieur Benoit interrupted. “Not there. Did you use those? They're the wrong ones.”

“No, it was the men's room, I'm sure.”

“Gustave, you went into the women's room?” Maman asked, amused. “I know English is hard to understand, but it isn't
that
hard, when you see women there!”

“No!” exclaimed Gustave. “I didn't!”

“But didn't you notice that people were looking at you in a funny way?” Monsieur Benoit asked.

“The sign said
MEN
,” Gustave insisted. “There were other men in there.” He looked down the dark side of the building. One of the African men was just coming up the steps.

“See?” said Gustave.

“Look at the sign again,” said Monsieur Benoit.

Gustave peered through the dusk at the sign above the cement stairs. It
did
say
MEN
. But above that was a word that Gustave had ignored because he didn't know it. In crude, block print, the sign read
COLORED
.