Later that afternoon, Veronica hurried across the schoolyard to where Mama stood right outside the gate. Mama was wearing her old wine-colored coat, but she had on her good black hat with the blue feathers, and she looked kind of pretty and excited. Mama didn’t see her at first. She was looking at a boy in a brown jacket.
“My goodness,” she said when she saw Veronica, “that’s Mrs. Henderson’s boy, Freddie. I haven’t seen him in a long time. He’s so big and nice-looking. I never would have recognized him.” She looked at Veronica and sighed. “Time passes so quickly. No time at all I guess Stanley’ll be like Freddie.”
Veronica nodded, although she doubted that Stanley would ever look like Freddie Henderson, the best-looking boy in the whole school.
“Isn’t that Rosalie Fry?” Mama asked. “She’s in your class, isn’t she?”
“Uh huh.”
“Nice, polite, little girl,” Mama said. “She opened the door in the grocery for me the other day.”
Mama tried to catch Rosalie’s eye, but Rosalie had hurried off with her eyes toward the ground as soon as she saw Veronica.
Mama looked after her thoughtfully. “Who else is in your class?” she asked. “I don’t know any of your friends.”
Friends! Veronica looked around helplessly. Paula Evans was coming slowly through the gate, but when she saw Veronica she began walking quickly. “Uh, that’s Paula Evans. Hello, Paula.” But Paula kept on walking.
“I guess she didn’t hear you,” Mama said.
Jeffrey Lobel approached them. “Hello, Jeffrey,” Veronica said in a powerful voice. Jeffrey jumped, but he said, “Oh—hi, Veronica,” and managed a weak smile as he hurried away.
“Handsome boy,” Mama said, smiling, and looking after him.
“Hi, Rose Ellen,” Veronica shouted. “Hi, Jimmy. Hi, Gladys ...”
“Oh—hi, Veronica.”
“Hello, Veronica.”
“Hiya.”
“What nice children,” Mama said, nodding after their backs. “Looks like you know a lot of people this term.”
“Hello, Jack ... Vernon.... Hi, Cathy,” Veronica bellowed, and Mama beamed and nodded as the children went by. She put an arm on Veronica’s shoulder, and said, “I guess everything’s going fine in school this term. Isn’t it, Veronica?”
“Sure, Mama, sure,” Veronica said quickly.
Mama sighed. “I knew you’d settle down sooner or later. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and whatever happens I want you and Mary Rose to finish school.”
“That’s right, Mama,” Veronica said, looking away. There was a letter, addressed to Mama, inside her schoolbag. It was from the principal, Mr. Ferguson, and although Veronica hadn’t seen what he had written, she was pretty sure it ended with an invitation for Mama to come and see him. Mama had been coming up to see Mr. Ferguson since second grade, and she’d gotten to know him pretty well. Veronica knew Mama would really give it to her when she saw the note. A note from Mr. Ferguson always meant two explosions. One when Mama read the note, and the other when she came home after talking to Mr. Ferguson.
And the awful thing was that it had all been for nothing anyway. If it had been Peter, instead of Ralph, standing there in the aisle, his mouth opening and closing like a fish’s, it would have been worth a dozen notes from the principal and two dozen scenes with Mama. How could she have been so clumsy! She had been holding the can so carefully, and Peter’s head was right in front of her, so close that she could see the little point that his hair made on the nape of his neck. Veronica clenched her fists. He’d been lucky, all right, but tomorrow-he wouldn’t be so lucky tomorrow.
“And what did you do in school today?” said Mama.
“Look!” replied Veronica, grateful for the sudden vision of her sister, bounding across the yard, “there’s Mary Rose. Let’s go!”
Chapter 5
Monday passed — Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. There were clean curtains hanging in the girls’ bedroom and in the living room. Mama had made Ralph carry up the rug from the basement, and helped him lay it on the living-room floor. The rug hadn’t been down for several years and there were moth holes all over it, and many spots where it had faded. Mama bit her lip when she saw it, and she made Ralph roll it up again and take it back to the basement. The torn window shade in the kitchen had been replaced with a new one that looked much whiter than the white of the old kitchen curtains. So Mama took the curtains down and dyed them green. They looked fine except for the band across the edge that had been pink, and was now a strange color impossible to classify.
“No one’s going to look that closely,” Ralph said gently.
There were doilies all over the place. On the couch, the two chairs, the coffee table, the end tables, the radio cabinet. Mama even put a few extra ones on the back of the couch where the grease stains showed after all the jackets and papers had been removed.
“If anyone,” Mama said over and over again, “throws anything on that couch or anywhere else in the living room, and if anyone forgets to hang up his or her clothes, or doesn’t put her or his dirty underwear in the hamper, he or she will be very sorry.”
On Monday there had even been a cleaning woman who came to wash the windows and wax the floors and scrub the woodwork. Stanley refused to go to school when she arrived in the morning, and Veronica and Mary Rose hurried home from school that afternoon to watch.
Mary Rose put on quite a performance for the cleaning woman, calling Mama “Mother,” and generally trying to create the impression that she was a person who was used to having somebody clean her house. But the cleaning woman didn’t even seem to see or hear them. She just kept on working, never even looked at them, and didn’t bother to answer all the questions Stanley kept asking.
By Tuesday the house looked like somebody else’s house. It even smelled like somebody else’s house. Their new dresses hung in the closet—ready. They all had haircuts. Even Stanley and Ralph had haircuts, and Mama put polish on her fingernails.
They were certain there would be a letter on Tuesday. But there wasn’t. Neither was there a letter on Wednesday nor on Thursday nor Friday. They hung around the whole day on Saturday, waiting, even though nothing came in the mail that day either. Sunday morning, Mary Rose started to cry, so Mama yelled at her, but then she gave them money and told them to go to the movies, and take Stanley. Ralph could always come and get them if they were wanted.
By Monday morning the house began looking and smelling as it always had. Mary Rose was taking it the hardest. She kept pulling out her new dress and trying it on. And Monday morning she put it on and said she was wearing it to school.
“No you are NOT!” Mama said, and Mary Rose grumbled and whined, but she had to go and change into her blue skirt and sweater just the same.
“I’ll bet she wrote and told him not to come,” Mary Rose said on the way to school. “She doesn’t care for us. She just wants to ruin our lives.”
“Oh cut it out,” Veronica snapped. “He’s not coming. That’s all. He just changed his mind. He’s the one who doesn’t care for us, not her.”
Mary Rose sniffed miserably.
“Anyway, who cares!” Veronica continued. “I’ve got other things to do besides sitting around waiting for him.”
Her ears and various other parts of her body still smarted from what Mama had said and done to her after talking to Mr. Ferguson. If there was any more trouble, Mr. Ferguson had said, she would be suspended from school and would not graduate in February.
“I’ve got my own problems to worry about,” said Veronica. The main problem being how to get Peter Wedemeyer, and how to get him away from school. Because angry as she was at Mama and at Mr. Ferguson, and at Peter, especially at Peter, she had no intention of letting that little rat keep her from graduating. The thought of spending another term in P.S. 63 was so unbearable that, difficult as it might be, Veronica had made up her mind to behave herself for the next three months—from November to February. More specif
ically, this meant that she would have to be careful in school. But only in school! Outside of school, she could do what she liked. Outside of school was no man’s land, and even Mr. Ferguson could not pursue her beyond the boundaries of the schoolyard.
Peter Wedemeyer was turning into the biggest headache she’d ever had. True, she had been too busy last week to devote her full attention to him, but nevertheless she was beginning to feel that his powers of fading into thin air were almost magical. Last Wednesday morning, she had arrived on his block at eight-fifteen and hidden herself in the hallway of the house across the street, with a clear view of Peter’s house. But somehow or other, Peter had never materialized. Probably he had seen her, although she certainly had not seen him, and had gotten to school by zigzagging through the backyards that stretched behind his house and all the other houses on the street. On Thursday, she tried a different tack, and posted herself outside the schoolyard at eight-fifteen. But somehow or other Peter again managed to get inside without her seeing him. Thursday and Friday afternoons, after dismissal, she had waited around in vain outside the school. But on both afternoons she had really been in a hurry to get home to see if there was anything in the mail.
Today it was going to be different. Her father was obviously not coming. There was going to be nothing in the mail again, as there had been nothing all of last week. She wasn’t going to waste any more time sitting around waiting. Today was Peter Wedemeyer’s day, and today she was going to settle his hash if it took all night.
And boy, had he been asking for it! Tacks on her seat just about every day now, a dead fish in her coat pocket on Thursday, and, always, those maddening jingles.
“Veronica Ganz
Has ants in her pants.”
“Veronica Ganz
She raves and rants.”
“Go to France
Veronica Ganz.”
Every day there was a different one, and if it wasn’t for the fact that some other kids were chiming in, she’d almost be curious to see how long he could keep making up different jingles. But the situation was growing out of hand, and unless she straightened him out soon, she’d have a mass revolt on her hands. He was having a very bad effect on the other children and there was a growing wave of giggles, whispers, and defiant looks. After today, though, with Peter properly initiated, the restlessness would cease.
“I’m not going home today after school,” Veronica said to Mary Rose as they approached the schoolyard. “Today I’m going to get Peter Wedemeyer.”
“But you can’t,” Mary Rose cried. “There’s sure to be a letter today.”
“There’s not going to be a letter,” Veronica said, “and you know there’s not. You meet me after school. Today I’m going to wait by the Franklin Avenue exit, and you can stand on the corner and see if you see him coming the other way.”
“I’m going home,” said Mary Rose.
“No, you’re not!”
“Yes I am, and you can’t stop me!”
They were just outside the schoolyard, and Veronica tried to grab Mary Rose’s arm to give her an “Indian burn” until she agreed to come. But Mary Rose broke away and fled to safety inside the yard.
Mary Rose did not meet her after school, and Peter Wedemeyer did not emerge from the Franklin Avenue exit as she had hoped. After all the other kids had passed through the doors, and it was quite clear that he had eluded her once more, Veronica wended her way up the street where Peter lived and paused thoughtfully outside his house. A little boy was sitting on the outside steps playing with marbles.
“Hey you,” she said. “Do you know Peter Wedemeyer?”
“Uh huh.”
“Do you know if he’s home?” Veronica continued. “I’m looking for him.”
“No, he just went away.” The little boy looked at her thoughtfully. “Are you Stanley Petronski’s sister?”
“Yes, but where did Peter go?”
The boy grabbed his marbles and went scurrying off down the street.
“Come back,” Veronica shouted to him. “I just want to ask you something. Hey! You forgot one of your marbles.”
She stooped down and picked it up. It was a cat’s-eye, too. “Hey!” she shouted. “Come back.”
But the little boy ran faster, and it was all she could do to stop herself from chasing after him and finding out what he’d been doing to Stanley. Her fist clenched over the marble. It felt cool and smooth. She picked it up between her fingers and held it up to the light. What a beaut! Grimly, she put it in her pocket. She’d give it to Stanley when she got home. He’d probably earned it.
Now she turned her attention to Peter again. So he wasn’t home. Well, where was he? Would she have to spend her whole life chasing after him and never finding him? A powerful surge of helplessness grew inside her, and she sat down on the step and struggled against it. She just had to find him, and beat him up, and stop him from making fun of her. If she didn’t, nobody else would, and for a moment a terrible feeling of loneliness and despair beat against the back of her eyes, and made her blink hard to stop from crying. But only for a moment. Because, all of a sudden, it came to her how easy it all was going to be—particularly since he wasn’t home.
Up the stairs she strode, through the door, and knocked gently at the door marked 3A. The door
opened. A woman who looked like a mother stood there. “Yes?” she said.
“Is Peter home?” said Veronica in a small, pleasant voice.
“No, he’s not,” said the mother.
“Oh,” Veronica said, trying to look disappointed. “I needed to see him. Do you know where he is?”
“Are you Roslyn Gellert?” said Mrs. Wedemeyer, beginning to smile.
Veronica just smiled back. Imagine anybody taking her for Roslyn Gellert! But who knew where this might lead. And, besides, she didn’t say she was.
“Peter told me there was a nice little girl in his class,” Mrs. Wedemeyer said, blinking up at Veronica, “whom he’d been helping with her arithmetic problems. Are you having a little less trouble with them now, Roslyn?”
“Oh yes,” Veronica said. “I’m really doing fine. I’m just sorry Peter isn’t home because I ... I had something to show him.”
“Maybe I can help,” Mrs. Wedemeyer said, opening the door wider.
“Oh no, ma’am, it has to be Peter.”
Mrs. Wedemeyer said proudly, “He really does have a way of explaining things. It’s not because he’s my son. Everybody says so. Why, the other day, Mrs. Johnson in the rear apartment there” — Mrs. Wedemeyer stepped out into the hall to point the apartment out to Veronica —”wasn’t able to turn off the hot water faucet in her kitchen sink. Well, my Peter went in, and he figured it all out, and he ...”
Veronica stood on one leg, impatiently listening to the whole long story Mrs. Wedemeyer had to tell about how Peter understood immediately what was wrong with the faucet, and how he had shown Mrs. Johnson how to fix it, and what Mrs. Johnson had to say about Peter. Then Mrs. Wedemeyer went on to tell how she had this recipe for sponge cake, but she didn’t want to make the whole one, and half would not have been enough, and how Peter had worked out a two third’s recipe that turned out just perfect.
“Mrs. Wedemeyer,” Veronica cried desperately, “I just want to know where ...”
But Mrs. Wedemeyer kept right on talking. She told Veronica how Peter had been on the honor roll for every single term in the old school where he used to go before he moved here, how his teachers were astonished by his scholarship, how neatly he folded up his clothes every night without anybody telling him, and how he always carried all the heavy bundles of laundry for her.
Mrs. Wedemeyer paused for a second to take a breath, and in that second Veronica said quickly, “Where is he?”
“At the library,” Mrs. Wedemeyer answered, inhaling deeply, and continued telling Veronica how Peter read all the time—such books—way over the
heads of most children his age—books even her husband would have trouble wit
h.
“Well, yes, thank you very much, Mrs. Wedemeyer, “Veronica said, easing her way toward the outer door. “I’ll see if I can catch—I mean find— him at the library.”
“It’s been very nice talking to you, Roslyn,” Mrs. Wedemeyer said, “and if you see Peter, tell him to cross by the lights.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell him,” Veronica leered. “G’bye.”
She hurried down the steps, and practically flew up 169th Street to the library. She certainly would tell Peter to cross by the lights, she thought light-heartedly as she climbed the long flight of stairs to the children’s room. While she was blackening both of his eyes, she’d tell him to be sure to cross by the lights.
Inside the room, Veronica passed the big desk, and paused to look around her warily. It had been a long, long time since she’d been to the library. Back in fifth grade, was it, the teacher had made them all get library cards, and she had taken out a book about horses or something, had lost the book, lost the card, and gotten all kinds of letters from the library saying how much money she owed, and how she couldn’t take any more books out until she paid up.
Partially hidden by the crowd around the desk, Veronica tried to locate Peter in the big room. Once she saw him, she’d just sneak away downstairs before he saw her, and wait until he came out. Then she’d deliver his mother’s message, and deliver some other things as well. But there were so many children in the room, and several corners that she couldn’t see into at all. So slowly, and quietly, she moved away from the desk and began to circle the room. Twice, she moved around it. Peter was not there.
Either he had come and gone while she’d been trailing him or, and she hoped this was the case, he had not yet arrived. Veronica sat herself down at a table and kept her eyes glued to the entrance.
“Now what was the name of that book?” she heard someone say. A librarian was leading a boy over to the catalog that stood near the table where Veronica sat.
“I think it’s the Little Captive Lad,” said the boy, and he watched as the librarian flipped through the cards in the catalog.
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