The Enemy

by Sara Holbrook

  Text copyright © 2017 by Sara Holbrook

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact permissions@highlights.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Calkins Creek

  An Imprint of Highlights

  815 Church Street

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-498-3 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-796-0 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951178

  First e-book edition, 2017

  H1.1

  Design by Barbara Grzeslo

  Production by Sue Cole

  To my parents: Suzi and Scott

  and to my sister Faun.

  Most of all, I remember the laughter.

  CHAPTER 1

  Nazis!

  Bernadette and I scream and duck. Crouching behind the wall of our fort, we both grab a snowball in each hand and wait for the attack.

  Silence.

  Bernadette peeks over the top of the fort and drops back down. It’s taken us two hours of rolling and stacking snow boulders and smashing handfuls of snow between the cracks to set the stage for our war. Scarves snake around our heads and mouths, but we still manage to exchange glances.

  “Where’s Artie?” I ask, pulling my scratchy scarf down over my raw cheeks so I can talk like a normal person and not someone who’s being gagged. The red scarf is wrapped around my head three times. My face is probably red, too. Even my lips are chapped. I put the scarf back over my mouth gently.

  “I don’t want to be a Nazi,” Artie screams from behind the garage.

  “You have to be a Nazi,” Bernadette screams back. “You’re the enemy.” Bernadette has no trouble talking through her scarf. Her voice would stab through steel.

  “I want to be Al Capone,” Artie screams.

  “You need to be badder than Al Capone,” Bernadette yells. “You need to be a Nazi.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to.”

  Artie is Bernadette’s little brother. He’s only in fourth grade, and we’re in sixth, so she thinks she can boss him into anything she wants. Well, the truth is, Bernadette can practically boss anybody into anything. Bossy goes in Bernadette the way gas goes in a car. It’s what makes her run and what makes others run out of her way.

  Except it looks like Artie doesn’t want to be bossed into being a Nazi.

  Artie and Bernadette are different in every way. Bernadette’s tall for her age and slim with a perfect blond ponytail that never falls. Artie has brown hair that constantly drips into his eyes. Dad says he looks like a fireplug on wheels. About the only thing they have in common is that neither one of them likes to be bossed around.

  I am not as tall or as blond as Bernadette, or as stocky as Artie. Basically, I am medium. I rock back on my rubber boots and realize my toes are like stones inside the layers of my socks. No feeling at all.

  Artie and Bernadette hurl arguments back and forth at one another. Yes. No. YES! NO!

  As the fighting continues, I notice a man standing with his hands in his pockets, watching us. It’s not Mr. Anderson or Mr. Papadopoulos. On my knees, I crawl to the side of the fort and sneak a look around the side. I squint through my breath clouds. It is not Mr. Ferguson or Mr. Henry. The man is wearing a jacket zipped up to the neck and a black cap with a button on top. It’s pulled down so I can’t see his eyes. He stands with one hand on his hip, and then he drops it and clasps both hands behind his back.

  He’s not Mr. Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz has a belly like a beach ball. I would know him a thousand miles away. This man isn’t shaped like anyone I’ve ever seen before. He’s thinish and not too tall. The wind blows against his pants, and I can almost see the outline of his legs. A man in a black cap. Just standing and staring.

  I know everyone in our neighborhood, and I have never seen this man before. “Hey, Bernadette,” I reach to tap her leg, trying to get her attention. “Who’s that?”

  But Bernadette can’t hear me because she’s too busy hollering at her brother. I’ve known Artie and Bernadette my entire life, so I know they can fight like this for hours, even though she usually wins.

  “Bernadette!” I whisper-scream.

  “Look,” I say, and she finally does, but the man’s gone. Vanished. Without pausing to even look at me, she hollers, “Artie, you better listen to me, or else.”

  “No!” Artie screams.

  My fingers are cold. I drop my snowballs and clap my hands together.

  Bernadette climbs up on one of the fort walls. “Al Capone never had a fort, dumbhead. This is war. We’re the good guys. You’re the bad guy. That makes you a Nazi.” She puts her hands on her hips.

  Artie shows himself from his hiding place behind the garage. He pitches a snowball straight at nothing.

  “You promised to be the bad guy and you’re going to be a Nazi. I said so,” Bernadette yells.

  “I’m cold,” I say. This argument is going nowhere, and I’m molding into an ice cube. I can feel myself getting crispy around the edges. I peer over the fort’s wall, my head like a periscope with a pink pom pom on top. But the man’s still gone, disappeared as if aliens snatched him up.

  “You can’t be cold.” Bernadette looks down at me. “We haven’t even started yet.” Frost forms a circle on her scarf in front of her mouth. It jumps up and down when she talks, like a bouncing ball in a sing-along cartoon. She’s also wearing earmuffs, and a pointed hat tied in a tight bow beneath her chin. The only part of Bernadette I can actually see are her eyeballs. I know I look exactly the same. Artie, too. In fact, if you lined us up against the wall, you couldn’t tell us apart unless you knew our hats.

  “Look.” I point. Artie is stamping snow off his boots on the Fergusons’ back porch and pulling the door open. “Artie’s going in.” Without saying so, I am glad he’s quit because I want to go in, too. I don’t tell Bernadette this. It’s easier to just let her be mad at Artie.

  “Fine,” says Bernadette, with a hard clomp of one foot on the soft white snow. “Commie!” she yells at her brother.

  “Commies aren’t Nazis,” I say as I stand up and try to slap away the teeny snowballs grabbing onto my woolen pants as if they’ve grown roots.

  Most commies are Russians. Nazis are German. Commies are communists. Reds. Pinkos. They’re all the same thing. Except when the communists are Chinese. Then they’re the red devils. But wherever they come from, commies are definitely not Nazis.

  “What do you know?” Bernadette asks. “Big zero, that’s what. Why am I friends with you?”

  “Uh-oh,” I say, looking past Bernadette.

  “Don’t pull tricks on me, Marjorie. Your tricks are as dumb as you are.”

  There’s no use talking to Bernadette when she gets like this, so I just start walking. When I notice that Mrs. Fisher isn’t even wearing a sweater, I start to run.

  The winter sun, which was bright white all afternoon, is starting to dim. It’s been one of the coldest winters since weathermen started measuring snowflake piles and temperatures. Even though it’s almost March, it’s still cold enough to freeze your eyelashes off. There had been just enough warmth in the sun to make good packing for our snow fort, but clouds are beginning to pull a shade down in the sky. A whiff of night air sneaks inside my coat and down my spine as I hurry.

  “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to walk away when someone is talking to you?” Bernadette calls after me. Then she sees w
hy I’m running, and she starts running, too. We both catch up to Mrs. Fisher at the same time. Her short gray hair is whipping around in the wind and she’s wearing a pink, flowered housedress that hangs almost to her ankles. In the clear, cold air, she smells sour, like yesterday’s unwashed lunchbox.

  “Cheese and crackers, Mrs. Fisher! What are you doing out here in your slippers? Where’s your coat?” Bernadette tries to take Mrs. Fisher’s arm, but she jerks it away.

  “Don’t touch my baby,” Mrs. Fisher cries, hugging her bundle so close to her chest that it almost disappears.

  “Nobody wants to take your baby, Mrs. Fisher. We just want to take you home,” I say. I pull my scarf away from my face, “See, it’s me, Marjorie.”

  Mrs. Fisher used to call me her little blond angel when I was young. That was before my hair turned the color of playground dirt and she started wandering around cuddling a baby doll. Still, I’m sure she remembers me.

  “Have you seen my Tommy?” Mrs. Fisher asks.

  “Tommy’s not here,” Bernadette says. “You have to go in.”

  “Mom!” We hear Sandy Fisher calling her mother from their front porch.

  “Viola! Viola!” Mr. Fisher calls, as he runs up to us from behind. He’s carrying an afghan in his hands, and he throws it around his wife’s shoulders as soon as he reaches us.

  “Where’s Tommy?” Mrs. Fisher asks in a soft, crying voice.

  “Tommy’s gone, Viola,” Mr. Fisher says, patting her shoulder.

  “Tommy’s gone?”

  “Thank you, girls,” Mr. Fisher says to us. “I’ll take her home now.”

  The snow and dimming light quiet the world so completely that even after we turn toward our houses, we can hear Mr. Fisher talking quietly with his wife.

  “Tommy’s in heaven, Viola, you know that.”

  “Can’t we go get him back?” Mrs. Fisher asks. She is finally letting herself be led home. “Soldiers with guns, can’t they go and bring him back?”

  Their voices soften into the deepening shadows.

  “She’s never going to get any better carrying that stupid rubber doll around with her all the time,” Bernadette says, and she’s not talking under her breath.

  “Shh,” I say. Even though we are headed away from the Fishers, I’m afraid they can hear us.

  “My mother says she’s as crazy as a squirrel on gasoline, and it doesn’t help that her family just lets her believe that worn-out doll is her Tommy and that he didn’t get killed in the war.”

  “It’s not good that Mrs. Fisher just walked outside like that in this weather,” I say. Luckily, everyone in the neighborhood keeps an eye out for her. “Last summer when Mom found her sitting on our porch, they had coffee. Mom said Mrs. Fisher might be coming around to be more like her old self.”

  “Wasn’t that the time she went outside in just her slip?”

  I shrug. I want to think that Mrs. Fisher is coming around, so I don’t answer Bernadette because I don’t want to argue. I just want to picture Mrs. Fisher smiling and waving from the porch instead of wandering the neighborhood in a slip, cradling a naked baby doll.

  “I’m still mad at you, Marjorie,” Bernadette says when we arrive back at the fort.

  “Why?”

  “You took Artie’s side, that’s why.”

  I don’t understand why Bernadette’s so mad at Artie or me. Russian, German, Chinese. They’re all enemies. Italians can be enemies, too, but only if they’re Mafia guys like Al Capone. Otherwise, Italians are nice, like Mrs. Lotenero, the secretary at school who keeps butterscotch candy in her top drawer.

  Bernadette’s mom is Irish Catholic and she has big opinions about people, especially Italians and Lutherans. According to her, Italians are nothing but nasty, ripe olives who smell like garlic. I’m not sure what she has against Lutherans, but she likes to put her foot down about them coming over to her house. We are holidays-only Presbyterians, so she’s never put her foot down on me.

  As far as I’m concerned, Nazis, commies, or Mafia Italians are all bad enough to have a snowball fight with. Maybe not Lutherans, but the rest are, for sure.

  “It’s just a snowball fight,” I say.

  Bernadette’s looking at me with skinny eyes.

  “This is our best fort ever,” I say, not to just change the subject, but because it’s true. The snow is packed so solid it’s going to be standing until the tulips come up and it shrinks to a white U with green grass all around it. But Bernadette is in no mood for standing around admiring our fort.

  “You think you’re so smart,” she says. Bernadette gives the fort a whopper of a kick, but it doesn’t move or even crack a little. It’s like ice. I can tell Bernadette is even madder now that she’s slammed her toe into a frozen wall.

  “Ouch,” I say. “You okay?”

  She is not okay, but she won’t admit it. She growls, hands in fists, and limps toward her house and then turns back and points her snow-covered mitten at me.

  “You better watch it with your red scarf, Marjorie. People are going to think you’re a commie, too.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I put my boots on the rug inside the back door and my coat on the hook. I’m turning toward the hall when Mom yells, “Marjorie, are you trying to flood us out? Put a towel under those wet clothes right now. And put your mittens and scarf on the radiator so they dry by morning.”

  I put down the towel under my dripping snow pants. The clinging balls of snow have already turned to water and the wool pants are hanging heavy on their hook. My face and feet are tingling as if the air is filled with needles. The house feels hot compared to outside. I shake off one last shoulder shiver—the darkness that had crept into the sunny Sunday afternoon, the stranger in the black cap.

  What kind of a man has nothing better to do than stand and stare? Cap pulled down almost to his eyes, no way to see his face? Was he watching us? Looking in windows? Studying the area for a sneak attack? The guy was spooky. But it was like seeing a ghost. If no one else saw him, who’s going to believe it really happened?

  I take a minute to listen to the house. It sounds as boring as it did when I went outside. A quiet roar leaks out of the living room, which means the hockey game is on. Dad is probably asleep in his chair, or he’d be yelling his head off. I can’t go in there. The basement door is closed tight. Can’t go down there because of Frank. And there’s no privacy in my bedroom. Carol Anne probably has her doll stuff spread out all over the place. Finally, I wander into the kitchen because I’ve run out of other places to go.

  “What’s worse,” I ask Mom, “a commie or a Nazi?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Marjorie. Hand me a potholder, will you?” Mom has an apron hanging loose around her neck. It’s untied in the back and swings back and forth in front of her like a pendulum. Mom in the kitchen is a little like Daffy Duck with his tail on fire. Feathers flustered, hands reaching out in all directions, racing in circles.

  “Cripes,” she screams as she drops a boiling pot into the sink and jumps back. Her glasses are steamed over, and her hair’s springing out of its ponytail. I pass her a potholder. She uses it to wipe up the floor.

  “I mean, the Nazis and the commies both have dictators and we have a president, I get that part, but what I don’t get is—”

  “Forget it, Marjorie. The Nazis are all gone. Over. Kaput. Your dad and the other GIs took care of that. Toss a cloth on the table, will you?”

  “But—”

  “Enough! No more of your questions. Less talking and more helping. Please?”

  I specialize in questions. Questions are my thing. Bernadette’s brother, Artie? His thing is hives. Things happen, he breaks out in hives. Things happen to me, I break out in questions.

  I put both hands on my hips. A familiar frustration starts to growl inside of me because asking questions doesn’t always get answers. Like, why does Daddy yell sometimes in the middle of the night? Mom says he kicks in his sleep, too. What’s that about? Or why does he wake up o
ut of his chair like a tornado sometimes, his arms whirling in all directions? Or why did I find Mom just standing and staring out the window last week?

  “Why are you just staring like that?” Seemed like an obvious question to me, but did it deserve an answer? Nope. All Mom said was, “Service under fire,” which basically meant none of your beeswax.

  That’s the sad truth about me asking questions. Basically, nobody tells me anything.

  My hands drop to my sides. “What’s for dinner?” I sigh.

  “Creamed chipped beef on toast,” Mom says as she struggles with the can opener, trying to pierce a can of peas. “Mashed potatoes and … oops,” she yelps, peas flying.

  My shoulders slouch. Another dinner of soft foods. Daddy’s gums must be bleeding all over the pillowcases again. The bleeding makes Mom nuts because she has to soak the pillowcases in detergent and bleach in the basement, and sometimes I have to go down and give them a stir with the broom handle. That’s all because Daddy got trench mouth fighting the Nazis, which is also why we have to eat soft foods. I don’t mind stirring the pillowcases, but I do mind eating mushy food every night of the week. But not only does no one ever tell me anything, no one ever asks for my opinion, either.

  “Don’t give me that look, Marjorie. Be a doll. Silverware on the table, and then call your sister. And ask Frank if he’s joining us for dinner.”

  “How about I ask Frank to find someplace else to go for dinner?” I mumble as I jerk open the silverware drawer.

  “Marjorie!” Mom whispers. “Now, you stop that this instant.” She aims a wooden spoon at my face and leans in close, “It’s been almost a year. It’s time you just accept what is, young lady. You know that boy has no place else to go.” She puts the spoon in her mouth like a pirate’s knife and dumps the can of peas into a saucepan on the stove. She strikes a match, turns on the burner, and stands back as she lights the gas. The burner explodes in a burst of flames. “Cripes!” she exclaims again, tossing the used match in the sink.

  “Too bad.” I walk into the dining room with two fists full of silverware as I hear Mom hissing my name again, telling me to keep it down and how she just doesn’t know what’s gotten into me this year.