The Enemy

by Sara Holbrook

  By recess I’m alone and Inga’s alone and I can barely stand not talking to her anymore. When the bell rings to go back to class, I walk up to her and say, “Hi.” Her eyebrows seem a little surprised, but she doesn’t say anything. We walk back into class kind of beside each other.

  After lunch I eat the lemon bar while Inga watches my face like it’s a scoreboard. When I smile, she claps like a home run just went up on my forehead. I keep smiling and she smiles. I show her how to use my ruler to make perfect lines for diagramming sentences. And then I tell her what the words are and why some of them go on straight lines and some on slanted lines. Kirk comes by and asks how we are doing. “Just fine, Mrs. Kirk,” I say.

  “Excellent,” she says, satisfied.

  Inga whispers, “Thanks you.”

  “It’s he thanks, I thank,” I whisper back. Inga looks confused. She points at Mike. “He thanks?”

  “No, I thank.”

  “You welcome.” She smiles.

  “Oh, never mind. Just put your name on the top of your paper.” It’s too hard to not be friends with Inga with us sharing the same desk. Bernadette will just have to understand. Inga and I can be friends at school, but Bernadette will still be my best friend at home. I don’t know what to do about recess, but I figure I can deal with that on Monday.

  After school when Inga asks me to come over on Saturday, I only hesitate for a second before I say okay. What’s the big deal, anyway? Bernadette’s mom isn’t going to let me come over to her house and she’s not going to be allowed outside. I promise to bring some books with me and that I will come over as long as my mom agrees. I’m laying promises out all over the place as Inga writes her address on a scrap of paper. She only lives a couple of blocks from my house. I ask her to write down her phone number so my mom can call and talk to her mom, which is the only way I’m going to be allowed to visit.

  But it turns out that Inga’s family doesn’t have a phone at all, not even a party line. My mom’s not going to like that; she likes a phone number in case of emergencies. Inga looks worried, but I make another promise and tell her that I can make my mom understand.

  Mom understands as long as she can drop me off and meet Inga’s mom and make plans to pick me up in four hours.

  On Saturday, when we ring the bell, Inga translates so my mom can talk to her mom. Mostly they smile and nod, and then the door closes and I gulp down a whiff of Inga’s house. It does not smell like sausage.

  CHAPTER 15

  Inga’s house is hollow. Even though I leave my snow boots by the front door, my stocking feet echo when I walk across the bare wooden floor in the living room. In the kitchen there’s a table and three mismatched chairs. Stockings, shirts, and two nightgowns hang on a clothes tree by the kitchen sink. Mrs. Scholtz has one side of the sink full of soapy water and the other side with rinse water. There’s not a dish in sight.

  Mrs. Scholtz is washing clothes in the kitchen sink. Not just her silky things like slips and nylon stockings, but men’s work pants and shirts. I’ve never seen this before, and try not to look at the sink. But my eyes become stuck there.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” I mumble.

  “What?” Inga asks, leaning toward me.

  I end up staring and trying to make sense out of Mrs. Scholtz washing work pants in the kitchen sink instead of in a washing machine. I figure it must be a German thing that they haven’t gotten over yet.

  Even though the kitchen isn’t quite as empty as the living room, the walls have no pictures and the floor has no rug. Mrs. Scholtz speaks softly to Inga, who shakes her head and reaches into the cabinet and pulls out an unopened package of graham crackers and a jar of peanut butter. When she unscrews the top, I can see it’s a brand new jar, the peanut butter lying in a perfect swirl.

  We spread our crackers in silence. Mrs. Scholtz watches with her hands in the pockets of her apron. She has that same worried look on her face she wore the last time I met her. She pulls a hankie out of her pocket and quickly wipes both eyes. I wonder what’s in her head that she can’t say because she doesn’t know English. I wonder what makes her cry.

  Inga’s room is not completely empty. There’s a single bed with sheets and a blue blanket pulled up neatly to the edge of a smoothed out pillow. No bedspread. But that’s not all. No bedside table and no lamp. No clock or shelves with books, games, and puzzles falling out on the floor. No pile of stuffed animals in the corner. No dresser, no mirror.

  I look in the closet where three dresses hang. One, two, three. And number three’s all white and obviously too small for sixth-grade Inga. It was probably the first communion dress worn by second-grade Inga. No corduroys. No jeans. No spring raincoat hanging around waiting for the weather to warm. Maybe the most amazing thing about the closet is that the floor inside of it glistens like a mirror.

  “Wow,” I say. In my whole life, I have never seen a totally empty, polished closet floor. This is stranger to me than the work pants in the kitchen sink.

  Inga looks at me. She’s wearing her mother’s worried face. The face she made when the boys at school called her a DP.

  “Your closet’s so … clean.” Inga peeks around the closet door to look where I am looking. I want to ask, “Where’s all your stuff?” But I stop myself.

  My closet’s overflowing with stuff. Belts and hats. Stray mittens. Doll clothes and dress-ups. A piled-high box of Grandma Mona’s old jewelry. Pull toys Carol Anne outgrew six inches ago. I don’t remember not having stuff, though I don’t suppose I was born with stuff. Stuff just gets collected as you go along. Stuff is stuff. Up until today, I have always just taken stuff for granted. It never occurred to me that some people don’t have stuff.

  Any thoughts I have about helping Inga look a little less like a DP and more like an American so that she can fit in better at school disappear when I take a look at her closet. We spend the rest of our time together looking at the books I brought and reading them aloud.

  I read first and then Inga reads to me. Once in a while I have to explain a word, but mostly Inga knows the meaning of words when she hears them out loud. She follows along with her finger as I read, and then her finger retraces the words as she reads. I’ve borrowed books from Carol Anne’s shelf, books with lots of pictures and just a few words. I also put a Nancy Drew in the stack. For a girl who already knows two languages, it won’t be long before she is ready for books without pictures.

  From inside one of the books I pull out a folded map of Canada. It’s from my National Geographic collection. We open it and Inga points out Montreal and says that’s where she used to live.

  I believe her. I believe Inga moved to Detroit from Canada. I don’t ask her how long she lived there, though. Was it a year? A month? A day and a half?

  Instead of talking about her clothes, I help brush her braids into a ponytail. We go and look in the mirror in the bathroom. Her hair’s too heavy to pull her ponytail up high where it belongs, but even so, she looks more American without the braids. Not much, but it’s a start.

  We wander back out to the living room. Two chairs. No sofa. No television.

  “Who’s that?” I ask, pointing to two framed pictures on the mantel.

  “Oh,” Inga says as she taps at her heart with her hand. “This one my grandpapa and grandmama. This one my family: mama, papa, brother, me.” Inga is only about three years old in the picture, and her brother looks to be a couple years taller.

  “You have a brother?” I ask.

  She shakes her head and looks away.

  “You don’t have a brother?”

  Inga touches the boy’s face in the picture. “My brother, he goes to heaven with grandmama and grandpapa,” she explains. One hand lingers on the face in the picture, the other hand she holds tight on her chest as if her heart might run away.

  “Your brother died?” I ask. As soon as I say it, I want to slap my hand over my mouth. What a brainless thing to say. Except what can I say? All I have ever known are girls
who complain about having brothers. Big brothers, little brothers, doesn’t matter. In my experience, brothers are the most annoying people ever invented. I’ve never known anyone who had a brother who was happy about it. But I never met anyone who had a brother who died, either. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She nods, eyes trying to hold in tears. She’s still holding her chest with her hand.

  Just then, there’s a soft knock at the front door. It’s Mom, who normally just honks when she comes to pick me up at a friend’s, her signal that I should shake a leg and run to her car. This time, though, Mom stands inside the front door trying to tuck the loose hair behind her ear while Inga goes to find her mom.

  “No English,” I whisper at Mom as I pass her the books and spin into my coat.

  Bam. That’s when I see it. Hanging on a hook on the wall.

  A black cap with a button on top. It’s more than a little worn, with loose threads on the brim. My mouth falls open as I stare.

  Inga catches me with my eyes glued to the black hat and says, “Next time you meet my papa. Yes?” She smiles, hands clasped behind her back.

  In her posture I see the dark shape of a man wearing a jacket zipped up to the neck. I picture how he stood, the wind whipping his pant legs. How he pulled his hands behind him.

  Inga’s father is the man in the black cap?

  I am frozen in place. I close my mouth and swallow. When Inga reaches out, smiling, to pass me my hat and mittens, I respond like a robot. I have questions. But it’s no time to be starting a conversation. It’s time for good-byes.

  Behind me, my mom is welcoming Mrs. Scholtz to the neighborhood and telling her if there’s anything she can do, please just let her know. Mom says, “I’d be happy to show you around, if you’d like. You know, on Eleven Mile Road there’s a butcher shop where you can buy homemade kielbasa sausages.” Mom’s talking a mile a minute, “Oh, I know kielbasa doesn’t come from Germany, it comes from Poland, but they are practically right next door. Poland and Germany, I mean. In the same ballpark, as we say. But you don’t know about ballparks yet. Do you? Well, you’ll know soon enough.” Mom smiles like she’s actually having a conversation with Inga’s mom.

  “Mom.” I stop her. She’s just going overboard, trying to be friendly, but not a word of what she’s saying does Mrs. Scholtz understand. I widen my eyes at Inga who whispers, “I tell her. Is okay.” Inga and I may not have grown up speaking the same language, but when it comes to talking about moms, we don’t need words.

  But what about dads? Does her dad joke around and make up stories? Does he cheer for the Red Wings? He looked so scary when I saw him watching Bernadette, Artie, and me, back when I thought he was a spy.

  I try to remember why I thought the man in the black hat was so scary in the first place. Maybe I thought he had to be a villain because he was wearing a black hat. The bad cowboys on The Gene Autry Show always wear black hats, so it makes sense that spies would wear black hats. Or does it? Maybe it was the way he just stood and stared at us. Maybe I was just scared of him because he was a stranger.

  I can feel the questions bubbling up inside of me. Does Inga’s dad wipe his mouth with the back of his hand instead of his napkin when he eats? Does that drive Mrs. Scholtz crazy like it does Mom? Does he laugh at his own jokes? I couldn’t see his face that day. Does he have a laughing face like Mr. Papadopoulos?

  My head spins and I am practically dizzy enough to fall on my face as I bend to pull my boots on, teetering on one foot, then the other. I have to grab the wall so I don’t fall flat. I see that Mrs. Scholtz is nodding at Mom—and smiling. Not a broad smile, just the imitation of a smile. Still, it’s the first time she hasn’t looked worried.

  “Here,” Mom says. She hands the stack of books to Inga. Big colorful picture books topped off with The Secret of the Old Clock. A mystery book for a mystery girl.

  “Just keep them as long as you like. There’re more where those came from,” Mom offers. Inga nods and hugs the books. A few more awkward words and handshakes and we are finally out the door.

  In the car, Mom looks at me as she starts the engine. When I still haven’t said anything by the time she reaches the corner, she asks, “So?” I don’t answer at first, because I’m not sure what to say.

  “Earth calling, Marjorie. You there?”

  “Umm, I think. No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I mean, I need to figure something out,” I stumble in my head as I gaze out the window for answers to the questions that I didn’t ask.

  “Can I help?” Mom has one eye on the traffic light and the other on me.

  Help me unravel the stories I’d made up in my head about the man in the black cap? Help me understand that he wasn’t a commie or a spy, that he wasn’t casing the house to rob us blind or steal defense secrets from my dad? Help me figure out if the man in the black cap is just Mr. Scholtz, Inga’s papa? Or the neighborhood Nazi.

  “I’m thinking I need to loan Inga some knee socks. You know. To help her fit in at school,” I say, because I know I have to say something to my mom or she will stop the car and plunge my brain like a stopped-up toilet.

  “Lend, not loan,” Mom corrects. “I would say that Scholtz family needs some furniture before they start worrying about what’s fashionable.”

  I look out the window at the lumpy snow piles flashing by. What Mom doesn’t understand is Bernadette and how she’s going to pitch a royal fit over those saggy wool stockings if Inga keeps wearing them every day. Mom only knows the smiling, “How’s your husband?” side of Bernadette. If Mom had the whole picture, she might realize that some things are more important than chairs and lamps.

  I sigh big and loud so she knows that I don’t agree with her.

  “Don’t give me your Sarah Bernhardt routine, Marjorie. I’m already on edge today and I don’t need it.”

  Sarah Bernhardt is an actress who went out of style about a hundred years ago, which just goes to show how out of touch my mother really is.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mom pulls into the driveway, but instead of immediately popping out of the car, she turns off the engine and just sits with her hands on the steering wheel. We sit for a long minute.

  “I need you to do something for me, Marjorie.” She turns and claps her gloved fingertips softly. “It’s going to be fun. Just like Nancy Drew.”

  “Nancy Drew?”

  “Yes,” she whispers, her voice all bubbly with fake excitement. “And you are going to be Nancy.”

  “Yeah, right, Mom. What is it?” I cut her a side-glance and stare straight forward. She’s treating me like I’m four years old and about to be vaccinated—she doesn’t want me to scream, so she promises me that she’ll take me to Stewart’s for a milkshake when it’s all over. The thing is, I know her tricks, and when she talks like this, it just makes the four-year-old in me want to scream even louder.

  “Really, Marjorie. This is very important and …” she looks at the closed garage door, “a deep, dark secret.”

  “Cut it out, Mom. I know you’re trying to bribe me into doing something. I’m not Carol Anne. You want me to open the garage?” I start to open the car door.

  “No!” she screeches and leans across me to lock the door. “No,” she repeats, a little more calmly. “No,” she says a third time, with a sigh. “I guess you are too old for me to fool you.”

  “I guess so, Mom,” I stare up at the roof of the car. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  She lets a lot of air out and kind of hums, or moans, it’s hard to tell. She shakes her head and tucks her hair back. She’s stalling. I cross my arms.

  “I need you to go inside very quietly and then come back and tell me exactly where your dad is, if he’s working in the garage or asleep in his chair. Can you do that for me?”

  I smile. “Oh, I get it. You went shopping. What’d you buy? New shoes?”

  We’ve pulled this sneak act before. The last time involved red high heels. She sneaks new clothes into the house, a
nd then when Dad asks her, “Are those new?” she says, “Oh, my word. I’ve had these for years.”

  “Kind of,” she says. “I have a box in the trunk. All I need to know is if I have a straight shot from the front door to the stairs.”

  “What kind of box?”

  “A box. That’s all. I don’t want to leave it in the trunk of your dad’s car, and you don’t need to know everything.”

  I don’t answer, and I don’t move.

  “It’s just a box. Mrs. Papadopoulos asked me to store something for her, and I told her I would. That’s all.”

  Only I know that’s not all. If it were just a box she’d be taking it in through the garage door like she does the groceries. She’d ask Dad or Frank to carry it in the house for her. She certainly wouldn’t need me to go in the front door to scout out where Dad is.

  “Sounds fishy.” I cross my arms.

  “Marjorie Elizabeth, I don’t need you to give me any grief. I’m in enough trouble already. Just take yourself in that house and do what I asked you to do. Now get while the getting’s good, or we’ll both be in hot water.”

  If I’m going to be boiled in hot water with Mom, I’d like to know what for. I reach over my shoulder to unlock the door and jerk on the door handle harder than I need to. She reaches over and touches my arm. “Better check to make sure Frank’s in the basement, too,” she says, and then she holds her finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  I open the front door quietly and quickly check out the living room. Carol Anne is playing alone with a mess of doll stuff all over the floor. No Dad and no Frank. No sign of them in the kitchen or dining room either. I go to the front door to signal the all clear to Mom. She jumps from the car, clicking the door closed silently, and darts around to the trunk. I see the trunk lid open and close, and then she bumps around the side of the car, teetering under the weight of a heavy cardboard box. She plunks her feet down hard, and her head’s tilted back, her neck straining. It’s a very heavy box.