Skating with the Statue of Liberty (8 page)

“Sorry, sir,” called the boy, adjusting the last of the shovels.

“Hoodlums,” Mr. DeRosa muttered. He looked over at Gustave. “Aren't those beauts?” he asked. “You like bananas?”

Gustave quickly put it back on the display, shrugging.

Mr. DeRosa waddled over and broke off two of the curved fruits, beaming, and dropped them onto the counter. “For you and your mother,” he said. “No charge!” Gustave caught the word “yellow” as Mr. DeRosa pantomimed ripping off the skin. It was obvious what he meant: wait until it is yellow, then peel it before eating it.

Humming once more, the grocer rang up Maman's purchases at the cash register.

“See?” she said triumphantly to Gustave as they went out. “I told you I know what I'm doing! Shopping is the same all around the world.”

11

G
ustave woke up the next morning confused about where he was. He blinked at the cracked, unfamiliar ceiling above him. When he turned his head and saw the two green bananas on the windowsill where he had put them to ripen, he remembered, with a sickening feeling of dread. He was in New York, and today was his second day of school.

In homeroom, Mrs. McAdams stopped taking roll when she came to Gustave's name. “Too foreign,” she said. “YOU NEED AN AMERICAN NAME! WE'LL CALL YOU GUS!” she boomed at him.

Gustave shook his head. But around him, the kids in the class were nodding.

“Sure, Gus!” said Pete, who sat to his right. “That's a good name! And easy to say!”

“Yeah, hi, Gus!” said Elsie, a delicate-looking girl with short blond hair.

Everyone seemed to have decided that would be his new name. But it was so unfair. His name was two syllables long. He had to learn their whole language!

Gustave was exhausted again by the end of the day, so he was glad to see that on Tuesdays the last period on his schedule card was music. At least that probably wouldn't involve very much talking. He glanced at the placard by the door to be sure he was in the right place. It read:
MUSIC
.
HEINE
. He felt sick to his stomach. Heine was a German name.

But he had to go in. He opened the door slowly.

“Move it, Frenchie!” Three boys pushed past. The classroom was huge, with a piano and chairs arranged in three groups, all facing the center of the room. As he had done in all his other classes, Gustave stood waiting until the other kids were sitting down. Then, as the bell rang, he slipped into the nearest empty seat. But this time a slender young woman in a close-fitting blue dress marched toward him, her heels clicking emphatically along the floor. She spoke to him, shaking her head. This must be Mrs. Heine, and obviously he wasn't supposed to sit there. Gustave gathered up his things awkwardly and stood.

The teacher folded her arms and watched. Her short pale hair curved elegantly along her cheek, ending just below her ear. “What's your name?” she demanded.

“Gustave Becker.”

Mrs. Heine frowned slightly.

“What kind of name is
that
?”

“I come from France.” He didn't like her, but that was two questions in a row that he had answered in perfectly correct English, he was pretty sure. For a moment, he felt proud of himself.

“Come here,” Mrs. Heine commanded, gesturing toward the center of the room, and Gustave's confidence left him. He stumbled forward, feeling the eyes of all the students on him, hotly aware of his shabby sweater and short pants.

Mrs. Heine fired out a series of words that Gustave couldn't follow. Then she barked, “Sing!” and slid onto the piano bench.

Gustave stared. Did she want him to sing all by himself, in front of all these kids? But he hated singing in front of people. She struck a few notes on the piano.

“What songs do you know?” she demanded. “O say, can you see?” She sang the first words to the American national anthem, her fingers moving over the keyboard. Gustave shook his head, looking at the floor. No. He remembered the American national anthem a little, from hearing it on the ship, but he didn't know it yet.

“What about ‘Lili Marlene'?”

Gustave shook his head again, miserably.

Mrs. Heine sighed. “Then sing ‘La Marseillaise,' ” she said, her tone mocking as she uttered the name of the French national anthem. “You
must
know that.” She turned to the keyboard and played the opening of the song.

Gustave listened to the beautiful, forbidden notes in this strange, foreign schoolroom, and pain flooded over
him. He hadn't heard the song since the German victory. Now that France was occupied by the Nazis, the national anthem was illegal. Anyone caught singing it was shot. The last time Gustave had sung it must have been at a Boy Scout meeting in Paris, just before his family had fled to the countryside. Marcel had hammed up the anthem. With his hand on his chest, he had warbled out the high parts like an opera singer, making Jean-Paul snort with laughter in the middle of the song.

“Let's go!” Mrs. Heine snapped Gustave back to the present. “Sing.”

She played, and although his throat felt swollen shut, Gustave lifted up his head, tried to ignore the watching students, and, his voice choking, he sang for wounded, shamed France.

Gustave had never felt the meaning of the words more keenly, even though some of them felt painfully ironic now.
Arise, children of the fatherland/The day of glory has arrived
. Not glory for us, thought Gustave as pain twisted in him.
Against us the bloody flag of tyranny is raised
. That felt like a stab in his chest. The French flag no longer flew over France. The Nazi flag, red with a black swastika on a white circle, whipped arrogantly in the French wind. It was a bloody flag, too, soaked red with French blood.

The flag line was repeated again, higher.
“L'étend-ah-ard sanglant est levé.”
Gustave's voice cracked. He couldn't sing any longer. He stood with his head down, desperately squeezing back the tears in his eyes.

Mrs. Heine played a few more bars, then stopped. “The French!” she said to the room at large. “Can't even sing their own national anthem!”

Somehow Gustave understood
that
comment perfectly well.

“Sit there.” She gestured to the center section, to the row in the very back of the classroom. “You're an alto. More or less,” she added in an undertone. Gustave glanced up just long enough to see, blurrily, where she was pointing.

He made his way to the back and slid into a seat at the end of the row while Mrs. Heine spoke to the class, her voice rapid and sharp and unintelligible. By now he wasn't even trying to listen.

“Gustave!” a voice whispered from his right. “Don't let her get to you.” September Rose, a few seats away, was leaning over to get his attention. He didn't understand the words, but he could tell that she was saying something friendly.

Mrs. Heine put a record on the record player. When the music ended, Mrs. Heine talked for a few minutes and then class was over. Gustave waited while September Rose gathered up her things.

“What means ‘get to you'?” He quoted her words back to her in a whisper.

September Rose glanced around. The two of them
were screened from view by the chaos of many people talking and gathering books. She spoke slowly and clearly, and he understood most of it. “I meant, don't let Mrs. Heine make you feel bad. It's not just you. She used to be mean to this other Jewish boy too. You're Jewish, right? That's why you came to America?”

Before Gustave could answer, September Rose hurried off down the hall, but he caught up with her in homeroom. She was in the back, getting her red coat from her cubby. As Gustave pulled on his coat, she looked over at him, checking to be sure the two of them were alone before walking over to whisper, “The kids all call the music teacher Mrs. Hiney.”

“Hiney?”

“Shhh! Yes, Hiney!” She giggled and tapped the back of her gray skirt. “Hiney! Behind! You know?”

Gustave laughed.

“So you're really from Paris? Have you seen the Eiffel Tower?” September Rose made the shape of the tower with her hands.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Did you ever go up it?”

“Yes.”

“Lucky!” She turned to go.

“Wait,” Gustave said. “What means ‘French kiss'?”

“Oh, from yesterday in the cafeteria?” September Rose grinned. “It's a way some people kiss. Touching tongues.” She stuck hers out, wiggling it, and touched it with her fingertip, and then Gustave understood. “Martha's such a flirt,” she added. “Especially with the new boys.”

“Flirt?”

“Like this,” September Rose said. She batted her eyes, flipped her braid over her shoulder, and made a kissy mouth like Martha. She laughed as he nodded. “You get it, huh? Bye!”

She threw on her coat and darted across the room to the door, slipping through a patch of sunshine from a high window. The back of her neck was a smooth, rich brown. It reminded Gustave of something. For a moment he couldn't think what, and then he remembered. The chestnuts that fell from the trees on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. He used to collect them with his friends, rub them with a handkerchief until they were smooth and gleaming, and carry them in his pockets, throw them at things, drop them into the Seine from the bridges. Maybe it was because of the questions she had asked him, but that was what the warm brown of her neck reminded him of. Paris and chestnuts.

12

F
ridays quickly became Gustave's favorite day of the week. School got out an hour early, so there was never any music class on Fridays. Fridays also always began with algebra, which was now Gustave's favorite subject. As soon as he realized that Americans wrote their numbers a bit differently, it was very easy to follow. He didn't even have to listen to the words. He simply looked at the equations the teacher was writing on the board and figured out what to do by himself. One day, Mrs. Rider was explaining how to solve two equations containing two unknowns,
x
and
y
. Gustave suddenly saw how to do it, and she called him up to the blackboard. He solved the problem without talking, smiling to himself, while the others were still calling out bewildered questions.

Geography was the next period after algebra. That day, they were starting a new unit on Africa, and Mr. Coolidge had those maps pulled down. As Mr. Coolidge
rapped his pointer on the maps and began to speak, Gustave glanced at the book of the boy next to him to see what page he was supposed to be on, then flipped open his textbook. He stopped at a photograph of French soldiers riding on
méharis
, camels. Once, in Paris, he had read a book about those French soldiers who rode camels in Africa. It had seemed like a glamorous and exciting life, a life dedicated to the glory of France. For a while he had wanted to be one of them, a
méhariste
, galloping through the desert under an enormous black sky full of stars.

Gustave absentmindedly twisted the eraser end of his pencil against the page, tearing it. He glanced up and covered the rip with his hand, worried that he would get into trouble. It was a long time ago that he had wanted to be one of those soldiers. He had been younger and stupider in those days. Back then he hadn't known anything about what war was really like.

Mr. Coolidge tapped his pointer on Morocco. “So,” he said loudly to the class, and Gustave focused on him again, “what is a ‘casbah'?”

Martha waved her hand wildly in the air.

“Yes, Martha?”

Martha ran her fingers through her silky hair, taking her time, making sure the whole class was watching her. “A casbah is a walled-in city like that one in Algiers,” she said slowly and clearly, circling her arms like walls around a city. Then she started talking more quickly. Gustave heard the movie star names “Charles Boyer” and “Hedy Lamarr.” Suddenly Martha looked directly at Gustave
and winked. She drawled in a fake French accent, “Come vid me to ze casbah!”

Gustave's face went hot as the class exploded into laughter. “In the casbah they Frrrrench keeees!” Martha added, giggling. Someone nudged Gustave from behind.

“Oh, I see, you know about the casbah from the movies!” Mr. Coolidge chuckled. Gustave stared at the floor and waited for the class to be over.

At lunch, Gustave sat with Frank again. Leo was there too, and Miles, a curly-haired boy with a cheerful, ruddy face.

“You know Martha likes you, Gus!” Miles laughed.

Gustave shook his head, but the other boys at the table all started talking about Martha and girls and kissing. Leo looked annoyed. After a moment he thwacked Gustave's leg and said, “Hey, Gus, I've been meaning to ask you. Why do you wear those dumb pants?”

His voice was mocking, and after he spoke, the boys all looked at Gustave's legs. He pulled his feet under him. “French,” he said curtly.

“Sharp!” Leo sneered. “Or should I say
chic
?”

“I am surprise you know a French word,” Gustave said.

Miles jabbed Leo with his elbow and laughed good-naturedly. Leo ignored him and stood up, pulling his own pants up as far as they would go. He waddled around the table like Charlie Chaplin. “Look at me!” he said. “I'm wearing those dopey French pants. Aren't I the cat's meow?”

“Ooh la-la! The cat's meow!” another boy jeered, looking at Gustave. A lot of the other boys made cat noises. Gustave reddened angrily and looked away.

Miles put down his sandwich. “Want to play Battleship?” he asked Frank with his mouth full, getting out graph paper. “Gus, it's a two-person game. Watch, and next time you can play.” Gustave turned his back on Leo, observing the game. He had played something very similar in France.

Miles and Frank each had two pieces of graph paper. On each page, they numbered one axis and put letters on the other. Then each boy drew the outlines of ships on one piece of graph paper, keeping that piece hidden behind a propped-up book so that the other boy couldn't see.

“B six,” Frank called out.

Miles ran his finger up to B and across to 6. It intersected with a ship he had drawn on the graph paper. “Hit!” he said sadly.

“Take that, you swine!” Frank shouted, marking an X at B6 on his blank piece of graph paper, which he had labeled
Miles's ships
.

“Hey! I'm not the enemy, you are!” Miles said indignantly.

A few minutes later Frank glanced at his watch and got up, stumbling over his schoolbag. “I forgot. I'm supposed to go pick up an extra assignment from the math teacher. See you, fellas. Want to take over for me?” He pointed at his empty seat.

Gustave concentrated on the game. After he had sunk
three of Miles's ships, Miles jumped up. “You win! I'm getting some of that prune pudding before they close.” He hurried to the cafeteria line. A minute or two later, Leo said something to Gustave loudly, as if he had said it before. Gustave looked up, startled.

“I
said
, do you want to learn some American, Frenchie? Want to learn what to say to an American girl?”

Gustave shrugged.

“They like you to tease them, see? So if the girls come over today, I'll help you. I'll say the name of some film star. Who do you think is hot stuff? Hedy Lamarr?”

That was the film star that Martha had named in geography class. “No!”

“Okay, so she's not your type. How about Rita Hayworth? So I say, ‘Hey, Gus, how about Rita Hayworth?' And you go like this.”

Leo let out a long, slow wolf whistle, his hands curving in and out in the shape of a woman's body.

“You got it? Do it!”

Embarrassed, Gustave imitated what Leo had done.

“Swell!” Leo's eyes gleamed. Then I'll say, ‘So, Gus, how about
Martha
?' And you say,
‘Flat!'
That means she's pretty, like Rita Hayworth. Got it?”

Stifled laughter came from some of the boys.

“She'll love that, Gus!” Leo insisted. “Try saying it. Come on!”

Gustave muttered it quickly, and there was more laughter. Gustave didn't understand everything Leo was saying, and he didn't know the word Leo was telling him to repeat, but something was definitely off.

“Great, Frenchie!” Leo reached over and slapped him on the shoulder. “The American girls are gonna love you!”

The boy next to Leo jabbed him with his elbow and muttered something that sounded like an objection, but Leo just grinned.

The table suddenly quieted. “Hey, here they come!” Leo said, smoothing his hair across his forehead. Gustave looked over his shoulder. Martha and a group of girls crowded behind him, giggling.

“Is there room here for me?” Martha asked loudly, wiggling into the spot next to Gustave and bumping her hip up against him. “So, whatcha eating, Gus?”

She reached over, picked up his apple, and took a bite. Her big hazel eyes locked on Gustave's. Where she had bitten, he saw a smear of red. A girl his age was wearing lipstick? He felt hot, and his skin prickled, but he couldn't seem to look away.

Leo cleared his throat. “Gus has something to tell you, Martha,” he said.

Martha stopped chewing and smiled at Gustave. “What do you want to tell me, Gus?” she crooned, as if the two of them were alone.

“Hey, Gus,” Leo demanded loudly, “how about that Rita Hayworth?”

Gustave whistled feebly, trying to sound suave like Leo, and curved his hands in and out. Martha's cheeks went pink.

“Yeah, Gus!” one of the boys snickered. The others were silent, grinning and waiting.

Leo leaned forward. “And Gus, how about Martha?”

Martha was gazing at Gustave intently now, her eyes sparkling.

“Come on, Frenchie!” Leo coaxed. “Did you forget your English lesson already? How about Martha?”

There was something wrong with what Leo had told him to say. Gustave was quite sure of that. But no other English words were coming into his head. “Martha?” Gustave said slowly, playing for time. And then he knew what to say.

“Chic!”
he said loudly, smiling at her. “Cat's meow!”

Just as he said it, Leo whistled a short, sharp note, dropping his hands through the air in two parallel lines. He looked confused when he realized Martha was smiling.

“Hey, wait—you didn't say what we practiced!”

“He said I was the cat's meow!” Martha said haughtily, tossing her head. “And
chic
! That's French for ‘stylish'! And the French know style!”

Gustave grinned. Miles had appeared a minute ago and was standing at the end of the table holding a bowl of pudding. He slapped Gustave on the shoulder as he went by. “Good one, Gus!”