Listen for the Singing

by Jean Little

  “Oh, Rudi, don’t,” Gretchen protested. “It’s all right, Anna. You don’t have to tell.”

  “If we’re going to help her, she does so,” Rudi said. “Don’t be so soft, Gret.”

  Anna found herself straightening up, responding to Rudi’s blunt good sense.

  “She said I couldn’t help my looks but nobody would want to dance with me and I’d hate the whole thing, so since I can’t dance, why tell me I should go?”

  “We can fix that last part,” Gretchen said. “I heard Frieda teasing Fritz because he hasn’t learned to dance and he’s always on the outside. We could run a dancing class, Rudi. Tomorrow night maybe.”

  “No, now,” Rudi said, making the decision for all of them. He might be kind but he was still eldest and the boss. “We’ll push back the sliding doors and make the living and dining rooms into one big room. We can shove everything that’ll move up to the far end of the dining room and that’ll give us lots of space. You get the twins. Come on, Anna.”

  Anna sat where she was. He grinned down at her.

  “Listen, kid, I’m a terrific dancer,” he bragged. “I don’t think I missed going to a dance in all my high school years. Also, I have you down on my schedule. Teach Anna. So if you can’t learn algebra, we’ll try dancing instead. Move.”

  Anna grew more and more uneasy as she helped him clear everything but the chesterfield out of the living room. Then they rolled back the carpet. Frieda came running with her records. Gretchen came with a loudly protesting Fritz.

  “Whose idea was this?” he bellowed.

  Mama, who had come to investigate the noise, set a chair for herself in a corner. She looked happier than Anna had seen her in days. Papa, his newspaper only half-read, stood leaning in the doorway, watching.

  “Rudi, I can’t learn,” Anna cried, as anxious as Fritz not to be made a fool of. “I’m Awkward Anna, remember? In dancing. In P.T.”

  “They don’t know a thing about it in P.T.,” Gretchen said, “especially Miss Willoughby. She’s too fat and too slow.”

  Then Frieda put the first record on and music filled the room. Gretchen grabbed Fritz. Rudi came over to where Anna sat, clutching the seat of her chair with both hands.

  “Hey, you’re the one with faith,” he said. “You were going to listen for the singing before eggs hatched. Well, right now you’re about to hatch. Come on.”

  But she was awkward at first. It was harder than algebra. Rudi teased her till she relaxed and soon he had her moving more and more in time to the music. There was a pattern to it. And his hands showed her which way to move.

  Gretchen groaned over Fritz. “Listen to the beat, you big lump,” she scolded.

  “Anna, you’re perfect,” Rudi said.

  She tripped over his foot, but he caught her deftly and had her dancing again before she had time to blush.

  “Nearly perfect, I should have said,” he amended.

  Then it was time to break for a rest.

  “Papa, Mama,” Frieda said. “It’s your turn.” And she put on a polka.

  “No, no,” Papa protested, trying to back out of the room.

  “Come on, Ernst,” Mama said, catching him by the hand.

  It would have been better if they’d had more room, but they managed. Anna felt a sudden huge love for this roomful of people, her family. Rudi was so smart. She turned to tell him but he had stepped onto the floor and taken Mama away from Papa.

  “Sorry, Papa, but she needs a real partner,” he said.

  And the two of them danced around the living room and out into the hall.

  When the furniture was back in place and it was Anna’s bedtime, Rudi said to her, “How long before this dance of yours?”

  “Three days,” Anna answered, feeling sick at her stomach again.

  “You’ll be able to dance any step any kid can throw at you by then, I promise,” Rudi said.

  “If anyone asks her,” Fritz put in.

  He stumbled off up the stairs. Anna, hearing his words like a judge’s sentence, knew nobody would ask her. But Rudi had tried.

  “Knowing that I could dance, if I were asked, will make it much easier, Rudi,” she said. “I’ll tell Maggie I’ll go. She was going to make me anyway, just to show Suzy.”

  “I’m glad,” Rudi said; yet his face was troubled as he looked down at her.

  Half an hour later, he came up to her alcove.

  “Meet me after school tomorrow night,” he said, sticking his head around one end of the curtain, “on the corner by that big spruce.”

  “What for?” Anna asked.

  “Never mind. Just be there.”

  When she was waiting to fall asleep, she heard him talking to Gretchen, on the stairs. His voice was lowered at first. Then she heard him grow insistent.

  “Listen, I’m serious,” he said. “I need advice.”

  “Hush. They’ll hear,” Gretchen said. She must mean Mama and Papa. “I don’t want to be to blame, that’s all. I see what you mean, but Mama would kill me. If you do it, it’ll be different. But I’ll tell you where to go.”

  Their voices dropped again. Anna was far too tired to wonder what they were discussing. She did not even read before she fell asleep.

  She dreamed she was in a huge empty hall and a prince, on a white horse, came riding in.

  “You should leave your horse outside,” she told him.

  She saw, with no surprise, that it was Rudi.

  “Can you dance yet?” he asked.

  Then she was a bird, flying somewhere very far, and the prince was gone.

  I’m lost, she thought. I’m lost.

  But she kept on flying.

  Then Aunt Tania was flying beside her.

  “You see, Anna, it’s easy,” she said. “I told you it would be.”

  And Anna knew a surge of joy because Aunt Tania looked so happy, flying comfortably along.

  “But you haven’t wings?” Anna said suddenly.

  “I use faith,” Aunt Tania said.

  Anna turned over, breaking the dream by half-waking. Drifting into deeper sleep, she smiled in the darkness.

  Chapter 16

  Rudi was there before her, his hands shoved deep into his overcoat pockets, his head bare in spite of the cold December wind. Anna ran up to him, Maggie, Suzy, and Paula close behind her. Except for Maggie, they had never seen Rudi, only listened to Anna boast about him. Suzy had stated openly that she doubted he could be as good looking as Anna said he was. Paula had said nothing but Anna knew she also doubted it, even though Maggie backed Anna up.

  “See!” she said to them triumphantly, as Rudi turned to face them.

  “Wow!” Suzy said.

  Anna glowed. She introduced her friends. Rudi was polite but distant. When he had said, “Hello,” he took Anna by the elbow.

  “So long, girls,” he said. “Anna and I have an appointment.

  “An appointment? Where?” Suzy called after them.

  Rudi, practically shoving Anna down the snowy street, pretended he had not heard.

  “Rudi, slow down. I’m out of breath,” Anna complained a few moments later.

  She too wanted to know where they were going but she didn’t want to sound anything like Suzy. Rudi would surely tell any minute.

  He slowed down but he didn’t explain.

  Then they were at a street filled with stores. Rudi stopped. Anna kept going a step or two before she realized he had.

  “We’re going in here,” Rudi said, his voice strained.

  Anna looked up and gasped. It was a hairdresser’s. She had never in her entire life been inside one. It was called Pierre’s.

  “What for?” Anna said.

  “Because you’re going to get your hair cut. Cut and curled!” he said. “And Papa and I decided that it should be done properly.”

  “But, Rudi!”

  “Don’t you want to look right? Are you too scared to try something new for once? Do you want to be the only girl at the dance with braids like
that?”

  “No,” Anna said. The word exploded out of her. She didn’t know which she felt most, frightened, bullied, or excited.

  “You couldn’t go in by yourself, could you?” Rudi asked, betraying himself.

  “Who’s scared now?” Anna taunted, feeling stronger at once. “This isn’t my idea; it’s yours. Come on!”

  They were brave words but, if he did desert her, she did not see how she could go in alone. He grinned at her then and, grabbing her firmly by the elbow, propelled her ahead of him into the carpeted, different-smelling, completely foreign place.

  “Yes?” said a perfumed, sophisticated, perfectly groomed personage.

  Rudi stood helpless before her.

  “We have an appointment,” said Anna. She was amazed at herself.

  “The name?”

  Rudi had turned over the responsibility totally. His admiring look gave her the courage she needed to see the thing through.

  “Solden,” she said coolly. Then, growing positively reckless, she asked, “Will we have to wait long?”

  “I believe Antoine can take you at once,” the receptionist said, as though Anna was an old customer, and ushered her into a curtained-off booth, where she was seated, confronting endless images of herself caught in the triple mirror. Rudi, looming behind her, looked out-of-place in the small cubicle. Once the intimidating woman had left them to wait for Antoine though, he became more himself.

  “You’d think you’d been doing this all your life,” he murmured, looking at her reflection. “I thought you were scared.”

  “I am,” Anna said, her poise vanishing. “Oh, Rudi, why did you bring me?”

  Antoine’s arrival saved Rudi from having to begin his pep talk all over again. The two of them studied Anna’s appearance as it was revealed in the mirror.

  “Hmmm,” Antoine said, not giving anything away. Rudi and Anna watched him as he undid the thin braids, brushed the wispy brown hair till it stuck out like a dandelion gone to seed, shook his head over it, and muttered in a deep voice, “It is a problem, yes.”

  Rudi took charge again, to Anna’s relief.

  “Can you cut it and curl it so she looks like other girls?” he said, coming straight to the point.

  Anna felt her cheeks flushing. Maybe it was because of all the lights around the mirrors. She waited, breath held, for the verdict.

  “She will look like a princess,” Antoine said, sounding almost convincing. “A little beauty. Can you come back for her at about seven o’clock?”

  “I’ll be here,” Rudi promised. He started to back out. Then he paused.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  Knowing he was leaving, Anna could not answer. He ducked out of sight. She swallowed. Then she lifted her chin a little, held very still, and waited for Antoine to begin.

  The hairdresser set to work, humming under his breath. Anna watched, fascinated, as bits of her hair were snipped off, fell to her shoulders, slid to the floor. Suddenly, she had bangs. She wished so much that she could see better. She thought maybe they looked wonderful. But they kept flying up to the comb in an alarming way.

  Right then, Antoine said, “Let us take off these glasses. They are in the way. Ah, that is better, yes.”

  Anna had no idea. From that moment until it was over, the whole long process remained a mystery to her. She went where they led her. They washed her hair with a lovely smelling shampoo. Mama made her use plain soap. They seemed to be coating it with something thick and cold. She sat ramrod-stiff while they did it up on what felt like small metal rods. They dabbed at all the rolls of hair with something that smelled terrible. Then they attached her to a machine and she could feel it cooking her hair. Before Antoine came back, she was sure it was overdone.

  There was a distinct smell of burning. But he seemed to notice nothing.

  He led her back to the mirror, put something else wet on, pinned her hair up, and left her to dry under another machine. Then he brushed and combed and arranged things just so, still humming but in a rather worried tone.

  Finally she heard Rudi’s voice asking if she were ready.

  “Almost the princess is here,” Antoine said in a jolly voice. He put the glasses back on her nose and Anna, half-horrified, half-delighted, beheld her new self.

  She was not a princess. But neither was she the old Anna. Her hair looked stiff. It curled all over. She even had curly bangs. It was perhaps a bit too curly. Bushy almost? She looked up at Rudi.

  “Will it die down a bit in time?” Rudi asked Antoine.

  “Certainly, certainly. It is always just a wee bit artificial at first.”

  It isn’t braids, she reminded herself, getting up out of the chair. It isn’t European and old-fashioned, she thought, doing her best to rejoice.

  Rudi paid without saying anything more.

  They went out together. Anna felt like a new person and she was afraid of herself. What would Mama say? Suzy? Fritz? Papa?

  “Don’t worry,” Rudi said gently. “It’ll be all right. We’re just not used to it. You really do look more like the others now.”

  Mama cried. “What have they done to your beautiful hair!” she wailed.

  Anna laughed for the first time since she had walked into the hairdresser’s.

  “Beautiful hair! Mama, you always said I had impossible hair.”

  “Well, it sure looks different now,” Fritz said, eyeing her warily.

  “Don’t worry, Anna,” Gretchen soothed, looking worried herself. “I can fix it. And it will soon grow out.”

  Anna turned to Papa. If Papa looked at her as though she were a stranger, the way the others did, she was not going to be able to bear it.

  He held out his arms.

  She ran into them, hiding her face on his shoulder, afraid she might cry. But she didn’t. He put his hand gently on the tight curls. “It’s hard growing up,” he said, close to her ear. “But you are still my Anna.”

  That night, they danced again. Anna, growing more and more adept at the steps Rudi was teaching her, became used to the new light feeling of her head.

  In the morning, her hair was frizzy. It stood out all over her head in a wild bush. Gretchen did her best with it. Fritz advised her to wear a hat and Frieda flew at him, furious on Anna’s behalf. Then, because it had to be done, Anna went to school.

  They shrieked when they saw her, Suzy especially.

  “Oh, Anna, it’s a scream!” she cried. “I’ve never seen such a bushy perm.”

  “It’s marvelous!” Maggie said, patting Anna’s arm comfortingly.

  “Marvelous isn’t quite the word I would have chosen,” Paula said, laughter in her eyes. “It’s unique! That’s the exact word for it.”

  “I hate it,” Anna said, blushing. “It looks awful. You don’t have to tell me. I saw myself in the mirror.”

  But she didn’t hate it. Not really.

  “It’s loads better than those braids anyway,” Maggie said.

  “I think so too,” Anna said. “It was Rudi’s idea.”

  That fact still astonished and pleased her. If it weren’t for Rudi, none of the family would have become involved in getting her ready for the dance.

  On the night of the dance, Gretchen loaned her her only pair of silk stockings, threatening to throttle her if she snagged them. Anna was a little worried but it was worth it. Usually she wore lisle stockings, thick and warm, hitched to her garter belt. The silk ones had no warmth in them at all, yet they made her feel elegant. Suzy would have silk ones, of course, but she was pretty sure most of the others wouldn’t.

  Frieda carefully applied natural nail polish to her sister’s fingernails. Mama said, “No lipstick!” but Gretchen persuaded her to let her put on a very little bit and a touch of face powder. Anna knew Mama would make her wash it off if Gretchen put on the least bit too much but Gretchen knew Mama too. Anna passed inspection safely. Her hair was much more normal than she thought it would be and she did like the bangs. Looking at herself in the mirro
r, just before she set out with the other girls, Anna felt almost beautiful.

  But in the gym, she came down to earth with a thud. As Fritz had prophesied, nobody asked her to dance. Suzy had lots of partners. Eventually, Maggie and Paula, after dancing with each other for a while, were sought out by two or three of the boys from their class.

  Anna stood well off the dance floor, in a shadowed corner by a row of lockers. At first she felt safely inconspicuous, but as the minutes passed she began to think everyone noticed her skulking there. Her feet grew heavy and hot, as though they were pushing roots out through her shoes and anchoring her to the floor. She checked to see if the seams up the back of Gretchen’s stockings were still straight. They were. She went and got a drink at the water fountain. She returned to her place. Her face burned. She wished it were over.

  “Anna, may I have the pleasure of this dance?”

  Mr. McNair was standing waiting. A teacher!

  “You dance, don’t you, Anna?” he asked, his voice kind and steadying.

  “Yes,” Anna told him. “I do.”

  And she didn’t trip once.

  Chapter 17

  Anna wakened on Saturday, after the dance, and faced a fact that she had been avoiding. On Monday, she was due to begin writing her Christmas exams. Although she was halfway ready, she had not asked anyone about how she was going to be able to read the questions. On regular tests, teachers had trusted Maggie enough to allow her to whisper to Anna the questions on the board. But these examinations were finals. From them came most of your Christmas marks, except in subjects like P.T. She was quite sure that any whispering would be frowned upon.

  She first considered approaching Mr. Appleby, feeling sure she could make him understand. But when she thought of facing the secretaries in the outer office and asking for an appointment, she couldn’t make herself. Maybe Mrs. Schumacher could phone him and tell him about the way she always typed exams out on a primer-type typewriter and, Anna hoped, Mr. Appleby might even allow her to do the same thing now. Nobody would dream of not trusting Eileen Schumacher.

  “All right,” Mrs. Schumacher said when Anna had explained.

  “Isobel’s vision is just that much better than yours that she could manage, but I can see that you have a real problem. I’ll call him at home right now. Why on earth did you leave it so late?”