The Enemy

by Sara Holbrook

  “What?” I can’t believe she’s saying this. “Shh!”

  “Mr. Toad took all the books and stacked them up like the Empire State Building.”

  My head feels like it will explode. I grab it with both hands. “Oh, grow up, Carol Anne.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “Owen Markey, you will be partners with Marjorie. Inga, I want you to partner with Mr. Tomaszeski. Mary Virginia, you’re with Sammy Bernstein.” Mrs. Kirk checks us off in her book as she pairs us up boy/girl for a project in building relief maps of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We don’t have to build all seven, just put them on the map in the right place.

  “I can work with Billy,” Bernadette says, wagging her hand in the air.

  “What? Oh, okay. I guess that’s all right. Bernadette and Billy.” Mrs. Kirk continues until everyone has a partner. She picks up a square tile off of a stack of them on her desk and holds it up for everyone to see. “If you happen to see Owen’s father in the hallway or anywhere around town, I want you to thank him for generously donating these beautiful floor tiles for our project.”

  Owen stands and says, “My pop put his phone number on the back of each tile just in case anybody wants a new, modern kitchen floor.”

  “Thank you, Owen.” Mrs. Kirk begins with the first row, passing out the tiles.

  “Call Lincoln-6-3475, Markey Floors for a reliable and reasonable estimate, no charge.”

  “Thank you, Owen.”

  “Floors for any room in your house, not just the kitchen. My pop’s been busy as a one-armed paper hanger flooring basement rec rooms.”

  “Sit, Owen.”

  “These are the biggest, most modern floor tiles ever made,” Owen continues talking to me. He can’t sit. He’s too excited. “Eighteen inches square. See how smooth it is? Vinyl and asbestos, strong to last long.”

  “What should we do with it?” I ask him. We spread newspaper over my desk, place the tile in the middle, and just stare at it.

  “I know, let’s make a volcano,” Owen says. “I saw it on Mr. Wizard. I know just how it works.”

  I look down at the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Pyramid, Hanging Gardens, Statue of Zeus … no mention of a volcano. “I’m not sure that’s what she wants,” I say quietly.

  “Sure it is. A volcano is what buried Pompeii. Kaboom!” Owen’s arms fly up to the ceiling. “I can build the mountain out of asbestos tape. It doesn’t burn. Neither will this tile. It won’t even scratch.”

  “Burn?” I have never seen anyone set anything on fire at school before. In fact, I’m pretty sure lighting anything in class is against the rules.

  “That’s what real volcanoes do. They spit fire and rocks.” Owen throws his palms up and looks at me like I’m an idiot.

  “I know that, it’s just we need to put the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt, and Greece in here, and—”

  “Okay, you do that part. I’ll build the mountain at home tonight and we can put it together tomorrow. This will be too cool. Just like on Mr. Wizard. Here!” Owen says as he shoves the tile in my hands.

  “But what about the Wonders?” I ask, only Owen doesn’t hear me because he sits down to draw a jagged triangle with fire spitting out of the top. “Owen? The Wonders?” I tap his shoulder lightly.

  “You can put those on there if you want. Make little flags or something.”

  “Do you two have a plan?” Mrs. Kirk asks as she drifts by, looking over her glasses at how different teams are busy sketching out where the hills will go on their relief maps that up to a couple of minutes ago were just floor tiles.

  “We have the greatest plan ever, Mrs. Kirk. It’s going to be a big surprise,” Owen says.

  “I just bet it will be,” says Mrs. Kirk. She stops. Suddenly the air is electrified.

  The wail begins low and races to a deafening high pitch, straining our ears and setting the entire class in motion. WAAAAAAIIIIILLLLL!

  “Red alert!” screams Owen.

  “Red alert!” The words pass between us as the siren sounds. Piercing. Continuous. We all grab for our spelling books and line up against the wall. We file out into the hallway as all the other classrooms empty out. We take our practiced places, backs against the wall, heads between our knees, and spelling books over our heads.

  “Cover your head, Mary. Jimmy, head between your knees. Owen, this is not a joke.” Mrs. Kirk stands with a magazine open on top of her head, grade book in hand, making sure that all her ducks are in a row.

  The siren’s made right where Dad works, at Chrysler. He’s told me all about it. It’s a Chrysler Air Raid Siren. It weighs more than a car and is powered by a V8 engine. When it’s fired up, it’s so loud it can turn fog into rain and make birds fall right out of the sky on their heads. So loud you can hear it for twenty miles. Only we are just a few blocks from city hall, so it really blasts out our eardrums when it goes off. The wailing feels like ice picks in my head and lasts for three whole minutes. My ears are numb when it finally begins to drop to a low moan. I can barely hear the teacher.

  “Where’s Inga?” says Mrs. Kirk, looking back and forth, up and down the aisle. One of her ducks in a row is missing. “Inga?”

  Principal Hawkins strides down the hall with a stopwatch in his hand. “Good work, children, excellent time. Everybody out in the hall, away from the windows in less than a minute and a half. Good job. Good job,” he says, tapping students’ heads as he walks along. He stops beside Mrs. Kirk, who’s still wearing her Life magazine as a hat. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m missing one.”

  “Oh, no! I’ll have to include this in my report, Gertrude. What happened?”

  “I don’t know, that new girl, Inga.” Mrs. Kirk rushes to the closed classroom door.

  “Children. Everybody stand. Back inside.” Mr. Hawkins opens his arms wide as if he’s trying to lasso the entire class. “Come. Come.”

  The door swings open and we all crowd in and stand in a cloud by the door. “Inga?” calls Mrs. Kirk. “Shh,” she orders the rest of us. “Silence. Inga?”

  “Over there,” Mike says. He points to the far corner of the room where a cabinet door is open a crack. The cloud of kids starts to move, but Mr. Hawkins tells us to stay back. He and Mrs. Kirk bend down to look in the cabinet. He opens the door wide. Straining, I can see Inga, all balled up. Mrs. Kirk kneels down. “Oh, Inga. Inga. It’s just a test. Come on, honey.” Inga lifts her head for a second and sees us all staring and buries her head back in her knees, her shoulders sobbing. “Come along, child,” Mr. Hawkins says. He reaches for her, but doesn’t touch her. It’s Mrs. Kirk who gently tugs on Inga, coaching her out. She sits down flat on the floor and pulls Inga into her arms. We’re all quiet. Even Owen Markey for once has nothing to say. Mrs. Kirk rocks balled-up Inga, holding her in a hug as the whole class watches for an uncomfortable couple of minutes.

  “Okay, you all know where you are supposed to be,” says Mr. Hawkins. “I suggest you go there.”

  No one says a word, but no one moves either. My eyes catch Bernadette’s, and I can see a smile starting to gather around her mouth. She’s trading elbow jabs with Mary Virginia, and both of them are bending over trying to catch what’s happening with Inga.

  “Did she fall or something?” I hear Owen ask Mike.

  “No, man. She just dove into that cabinet headfirst. She was like a streak of lightning. Soon as the siren hit,” answers Mike. “She okay?” he asks Mrs. Kirk.

  “Maybe she just tripped over her stockings,” Mary Virginia says in a whisper designed to be loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Guess there’s no such thing as air raid drills in Can-a-da,” Bernadette says in a singsong voice.

  “Hush up, you girls. Go on back to your seats. I don’t want to have to tell you another time,” Mr. Hawkins says in his principal voice.

  Mrs. Kirk whispers in Inga’s ear, “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re just fine. It’s just a test. Shh, shh.” Inga sobs into Mrs. Kirk
’s shoulder and the biggest part of me wants to put my arms around her, but the smaller part of me that lives in my shoes doesn’t move.

  Mrs. Kirk doesn’t seem to be bothered about showing us her bare knees. She ties her stockings under her knees rather than holding them up with garters like the rest of the world, a fact we all discovered thanks to swirling winds on the playground in September. Everybody talked about it for a week. Knees are a part of a teacher kids are not supposed to see, so I can’t help staring at her sprawled on the floor, arms and legs out like an octopus with white knees.

  “Move it!” Hawkins orders. I bolt to my desk.

  I finally see Inga nod, and they both stand up, Mrs. Kirk smoothing her dress back down where it belongs. Her arm is still wrapped around Inga’s shoulders.

  “Inga would like to come down to the office and have a little glass of water with you, Mr. Hawkins,” she says, looking into Inga’s face. Inga nods.

  “Yes. Well. Of course.” Mr. Hawkins nods briskly and again reaches toward Inga. They walk out of the door with his arm almost around her shoulders, but not quite touching. She’s still holding one hand over her mouth and she’s breathing in little gasps and sniffling.

  It’s true that this new air raid siren blasts so loud it makes the fillings in my teeth hurt. It was installed right after Christmas. We are all used to these tests. I suppose it scared Inga since she’s new, but I have no idea why she didn’t follow the rest of us into the hallway and away from the windows and the fallout in case it really had been an H-bomb.

  As scary as that air raid siren might be if you have never heard one before, I can’t imagine why it would have made Inga jump into that cabinet and curl up in a ball. And everyone was looking at her. All I can think is that she must be so embarrassed. I’m embarrassed for her.

  “You are allowed to take your project home overnight, but you have to bring it back tomorrow,” Mrs. Kirk reminds everyone at the end of the day. “You may use papier–mâché or real rocks for your mountains, but no real water in the Mediterranean, okay? That’s the rule. Too messy. What did I say?”

  “No real water in the Mediterranean,” we respond in unison. Kirk makes us repeat stuff back when she wants us to remember something really important. I want to ask her if real fire is okay, but she passes by too quickly and I don’t want to shout it out. Everyone would look at me.

  I pick up Carol Anne after school and go by the office to see if Inga’s still there, but she’s gone. I want to ask the secretary if Inga’s mom came to pick her up early, but the office is jammed with people and there’s a line to use the phone. I grab the hood of Carol Anne’s coat and steer her toward the door. If Inga had a phone at her house, I think maybe I could stand in line to call her.

  Bernadette’s heading to Mary Virginia’s house after school, and I watch them walk down the school steps, shrieking with laughter. I don’t exactly know what they think is so funny, but I can guess. Inga.

  Since it’s just me and Carol Anne walking home, I consider stopping by Inga’s house to see if she’s okay. I make Carol Anne stand with me on Inga’s corner for a few minutes while I think it over.

  “Fly below the radar, Margie girl, but never try and fly below ground level.” My father loves to give me canned advice. Like when he tells me, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” That’s one of his favorites.

  I’ve never been quite sure what he meant by “fly below the radar but not below ground level,” but standing here, I think if anyone, anyone, were to see me walking to Inga’s house, that would definitely not be flying under the radar. It might even be trying to fly below ground level. My reputation would crash and burn. I’d be cracked up. Done for.

  Guilt over Inga. Air raid sirens. Owen and his idiotic volcano. Carol Anne yanking on my arm. I’m feel as if I’m stretched in fifteen different directions.

  “Stop pulling on me!” The words burst out of me like a thunderclap.

  “I’m cold, Marjorie. Let’s gooooo,” Carol Anne whines.

  “Gimme a minute, I’m trying to think.”

  “Think at home.” She pulls at my arm, leaning with all of her weight. I pull back until I feel my feet start following after her. I tell myself there’s no time to go to Inga’s house because I have too much homework now that I’m stuck having to draw the map of the ancient world all by myself. But I know that’s only part of it.

  If I start talking to Inga again, it would be too hard to explain to Bernadette.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Did they rebuild Pompeii in the same place after the volcano?” I ask Mom. I am sitting at the kitchen table, copying the coastline from one of my maps onto the tile. It’s after dinner and Mom’s doing dishes. She comes to look over my shoulder, her pink rubber gloves dripping on the floor.

  “I have no idea, pumpkin,” she says. “Go ask your father. He’s been to Greece.” She picks up a pot off of the stove and plunges it into the dishwater.

  “Pompeii’s in Italy, Mom.”

  “Your dad’s been there, too.”

  I pick up my map and trudge down the hall to the living room, where Dad is dozing in his chair. No one else is in the room since Dad’s the only one who likes to watch See It Now with Edward R. Murrow. Dad would watch the news all day and night if he didn’t have to work, except maybe if the Red Wings were playing. I stand in the doorway and look at the black-and-white image on the screen. It looks like the same report as every other night. A senator named McCarthy is speaking into a microphone. Everyone knows who Senator McCarthy is. He’s on TV and on the front page of the newspaper every day. Mostly he’s famous for asking people if they are now or ever were a member of the Communist Party. Whatever he’s talking about this time, he has the whole place laughing like it’s I Love Lucy, which makes no sense to me.

  McCarthy says, “A few days ago, I read that President Eisenhower expressed the hope that by election time in 1954 the subject of communism would be a dead and forgotten issue. The raw, harsh, unpleasant fact is that communism is an issue and will be an issue in 1954.”

  I look over at Dad. Usually the word communism makes him sit up straight in his chair and lean toward the TV set, but he’s sound asleep. I stand in the doorway as the news broadcast switches back and forth from McCarthy to Edward R. Murrow. Each time McCarthy is questioning a different person.

  “Nothing is more serious than a traitor to this country in the communist conspiracy,” says McCarthy, and the whole place explodes in applause.

  I gulp.

  Does keeping a box of books under my bed make me a traitor? I wonder. If 1984 and The Grapes of Wrath and all the other books are pro-communist, does hiding them make me part of the communist conspiracy? Could Mom and I and Mrs. Papadopoulos be called before the whole Senate? Who would take care of her new baby? If Mom went to jail, Carol Anne would explode like a feather pillow. I start to chew on my thumbnail.

  McCarthy is talking to an Army guy now. “And wait till you hear the bleeding hearts scream and cry about our methods of trying to drag the truth from those who know, or should know, who covered up a Fifth Amendment Communist, Major. But they say, ‘Oh, it’s all right to uncover them, but don’t get rough doing it, McCarthy.’”

  Methods? What methods? How will they try to drag the truth out of me? Is making fun of a person on TV what he means by the words get rough, or would there be a windowless room with a table and a bare light bulb like in the movies? He wants to drag Fifth Amendment Communists out of dark recesses and expose them to the public. If he dragged me out of the dark, I’d have no defense. Kids are never allowed to plead the Fifth Amendment about anything. If I said I didn’t want to incriminate myself, I’d be grounded until I spilled my guts.

  “And upon what meat doth Senator McCarthy feed?” Murrow asks.

  I picture the Senator chewing on my leg like a chicken bone.

  Some other guy who wrote a book in 1932 says, “I think Communists are, in effect, a plainclothes auxiliary of the Red Army, the Soviet Red Ar
my. And I don’t want to see them in any of our schools, teaching.” It sounds like the right thing to say, but anybody can see he’s still in trouble.

  I had never thought about communists teaching in the United States. Were there communist teachers at Homer Elementary? Mrs. Kirk wouldn’t fit into a Red Army uniform, I don’t think. I imagine her sausage-squeezed into a jacket with the buttons popping off instead of in one of her flowered dresses, but shake the image out of my head. Communist teachers don’t seem real to me. But communist books I have heard about. I have a box of them under my bed.

  Slam. The basement door. Before I can even picture Frank entering the kitchen, Dad jerks in his chair, and flies up, on his feet.

  He’s across the room. His arms swing out as he twirls like a windmill.

  Crash. The floor lamp smashes on the floor and goes out.

  In the darkness, Dad screams, “DOWN! DOWN! GET DOWN!”

  Dad’s screaming sets an air raid siren off in my head. I crumple to my knees and cover my head with my arms. Down. Down. The room is blackness. I can feel the vibrations from Dad’s feet through the floor. Too scared to move, I clutch at my ears and roll into a tight ball.

  “Get … get … what? Oh, good lord.” Dad’s voice sounds cloudy and confused. “Damnation,” he shouts and pounds his fist into the wall. “Damn. Damn. Damn.” Pound. Pound. Pound. A picture crashes to the floor.

  More shattering glass. I shrink smaller, tighter.

  “Jack?” Mom’s voice. Her feet rush past me. I peek through my hair.

  Dad leans, one hand against the wall, and one still clutching his forehead. “Good God,” he’s panting like he just ran up the stairs six times. “Ugh.” Mom’s at his side, arm around his waist. I hear her whispering.

  “Everything okay?” It’s Frank.

  Mom’s told me that sometimes bombs go off in Dad’s head. It’s like the war starts booming around him and he has to yell and kick to make it go away. The dreams come in the middle of the night or in the living room in his chair if he’s surprised and wakes up too fast.