Skating with the Statue of Liberty

by Susan Lynn Meyer

  Now that she had mentioned what had happened with the police, Gustave thought it was all right to talk about it. “Do the cops still have your brother?” he asked hesitantly.

  “No. Alan’s home now. He’s sleeping.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “The doctor said he had a lot of bruising and two cracked ribs. It hurts when he takes a deep breath.” Her voice turned angry. “And the police charged him with assault and disrupting the peace. Him and the others in his Negro Youth Group.”

  Gustave stared at her, confused. “Wait—who is charged with assault? Alan and his friends? Not those men who attacked them?”

  “Yes. It’s so unfair!” September Rose was almost crying. “Only Alan and his group are being charged. And they didn’t do anything wrong. But the men who attacked them—not a single thing is happening to them. That man who kicked Alan and broke his ribs—the cops just let him go! It’s so unfair, Gustave. Alan’s court date is next month. We’re going to have to hire a lawyer, and lawyers are really expensive. Granma is so upset. She’s off talking to some ladies from the church now.”

  Gustave stared at her. “I’m really sorry,” he said finally.

  “I know. Can you believe this is happening?” Her voice was loud and shaky. “Remember that song I sang at the audition? ‘Crown thy good with brotherhood!’ ” she quoted bitterly. “I mean, I knew about bad things a few stupid white people did, of course. Calling Negroes dumb names. Not letting us in some restaurants and theaters and stuff. Looking at us suspiciously in stores. But in school, at Joan of Arc and back in elementary school, the teachers always said, ‘The police are your friends.’ ‘If you get in trouble, go to the police.’ I was so dumb, I believed it!” She pounded the sofa cushion, almost crying. “They beat up Alan, and now he has to go to court!”

  “Seppie! Settle down!” Alan was standing in the doorway of the living room. He nodded at Gustave, to Gustave’s surprise. Moving carefully, he eased himself down onto the sofa next to his sister, patting her on the back. “It’s not so bad, String Bean.”

  “How can you say that?” She wiped her eyes roughly with the back of her hand.

  “What happened was lousy, of course, you’re right. But it’s actually good, in a way, because now people are going to hear about our protest.”

  “What do you mean? How?”

  “Roberta’s cousin was there. He got some photographs of us all being attacked by the police. He’s taking them to the Amsterdam News and then some other Negro newspapers.”

  “You think they’ll write about what happened?” Seppie’s face brightened slightly.

  “The store not hiring Negroes, the protest, and the attack by the cops—all of it. It’s big news. Didn’t you hear the phone ring earlier today? That was Willie, telling me that one of the ministers at our church wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times about ‘respectable Negro teens being attacked during a peaceful protest.’ He just heard that it’s going to be printed tomorrow!”

  “Really? The Times? That’s good….” Her voice trailed off.

  Alan cuffed her in a friendly way. “It’s better than good, you moron! That’s what we’re doing it all for! People paying attention is what’s going to make things change.”

  “And I expect sales aren’t so good at Baumhauer’s right now,” Gustave added.

  Alan looked at him as if he had forgotten he was there, then grinned. “You’re right, Frenchie! No Negroes are shopping there now, and their profits are way down.”

  “His name is Gustave!” September Rose protested, swatting her brother.

  “Goose-tav.” Alan made a face. “If you insist, Seppie, but that name’s a real tongue twister. Anyway, listen, Goose-tav. Sorry about when we met. I guess I was wrong about you. You’re all right. You two just be careful when you’re together, hear? But thanks for getting my sister home that night. And thanks for finding her dog. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself without that mangy mutt, would you, Sep?”

  “Who you calling a mangy mutt? You’re a mangy mutt!” September Rose jumped up and tossed Chiquita’s ball at her brother. The ball bounced off his shoulder and hit the tin-can birds dangling in front of the window, making them jingle against each other.

  “Ooh, you’re in for it now!” Alan snatched up the rubber ball and hurled it back at her as she held a pillow in front of her face as a shield, giggling madly.

  —

  September Rose was back in school the next day, on crutches. Gustave hardly got a chance to speak to her, because she was suddenly so popular. At lunch and recess, lots of kids asked for a turn on her crutches, swinging around the cafeteria and the blacktop, yelling and laughing and lining up for extra turns. But the next week September Rose was walking again, so things were back to normal, except that, now that it was the week before the Victory Rally, the chorus members got out of all their afternoon classes to rehearse.

  “No geography for me today!” September Rose exulted to Gustave one day after lunch. “Don’t you wish you were in the chorus now?”

  Gustave shuddered. “Absolutely not!”

  —

  When the day of the rally came, excitement in the school was so high that most of the teachers gave up on getting the students to do any real work. School ended early, right before lunch, and Gustave hurried home. He had to change into his scout uniform and his new American pants and get his bag of flattened cans. Jean-Paul was coming over, and then the two of them were going to take the subway down to Battery Park together for the rally.

  Gustave checked his family’s mailbox in the lobby, as he did every day. His fingers felt only the cool metal. Nothing. He felt his usual stab of disappointment, but he shoved it away, slamming the door of the mailbox shut and running up the stairs. Today was a day for celebration.

  The apartment was empty. Papa was at work, of course, and Maman was off delivering her completed piecework to the factory. But on the white tablecloth was a pale blue airmail envelope. N.M., La Chaise, Saint-Georges, he read.

  This is it, a voice inside him said. This letter has the information about Marcel. A shiver ran through him. He picked up the envelope. So thin, so light. But what was in it might be the most important thing in the world.

  As always the envelope had been cut open at each end by the censors and resealed. Gustave took a deep breath, ran a shaky finger under the flap, and tore it open. A flimsy sheet of pale blue paper fell out.

  28 March, 1942

  Cher Gustave,

  Finally your letters came—two of them on the same day. Weird. They must have gotten held up somewhere. So how’s it going? Do you like life in America more now that you are getting used to it? Not much is new here in sleepy Saint-Georges, and that’s the way we like it.

  You wanted to hear more of my rutabaga recipes, but we’ve run out of rutabagas. Lately we’ve been eating Jerusalem artichokes for every meal. And believe me, I am thoroughly sick of them! At this point I would jump up and down if I saw a rutabaga. Jerusalem artichokes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—mashed, boiled, and in soup. And then yesterday I tried to make a quiche. But with only two eggs and gritty flour, it was mostly a paste of mashed Jerusalem artichoke. Papa ate it, but he looked a little green!

  By the way, I’m glad you enjoyed my colorful letter. I had to look really closely because your handwriting was faint at times in your last letter. Thanks for sending greetings from our friend Lorraine—what a surprise!

  I am writing this at recess. Sylvaine is racing Yvonne around the school yard. I can see that Sylvaine will win. Jean and Henri are kicking a ball. It just rolled over a game of marbles. Philippe won Armand’s best green glass shooter and then the ball rolled over the game and destroyed it. I think Jean and Henri kicked the ball over the game on purpose!

  Gustave laughed. Philippe was awful. He was the one who had put that note saying “Hitler was right” on Gustave’s desk last year.

  I think we’ll be called in for history class soon. Simon
e is standing next to me. She wants to talk about her mother’s new baby all the time. Alice is listening to her, but I’m so bored hearing her going on and on about how cute the baby is! I’m watching the little kids playing tag instead. Some of the others are using sticks to play swords. I go into so much detail because I know you miss us and want to know everything that is going on here. Our friend, you know who I mean, he is playing hide-and-seek. He is very good at hiding. Robert is drawing something on the pavement. Eloise and Monique are whacking at a tree with sticks. I have no idea why.

  So are you ever going to meet any movie stars? Write and tell me more about life in the US when you can.

  Je t’embrasse,

  Nicole

  Gustave’s mouth felt dry with disappointment. There was nothing about Marcel. Nothing at all. Not even a sentence saying there was no news. It was as if she had forgotten what Gustave was most worried about. And she had put in all that meaningless stuff about the other kids at school. Who cares what they’re all doing on the playground so far away? Gustave thought angrily. What a waste. Why had she even bothered spending the money to send it?

  Still, it was news from France. He read it over again carefully. And then he sucked in his breath.

  “Our friend, you know who I mean, il joue à cache-cache.” He is playing hide-and-seek.

  All at once, as if those words had turned red, Gustave knew that they were a secret message, hidden from the Nazi censors, from the prying eyes that would look over the letter before it left Occupied France. “He is very good at hiding.” She was telling him that Marcel was in hiding! Marcel was alive!

  The air in the apartment shimmered, and Gustave let out a deep, shuddering breath. Wherever Marcel was—the letter didn’t say, maybe because Nicole didn’t know—he was alive. Hiding and alive.

  Some time later Gustave realized that he could hear an insistent banging at the door, and that it had been going on for a while. Still in a daze, and still holding the letter, Gustave opened the apartment door. It was Jean-Paul, looking impatient, with a bag full of cans. “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. “What took you so long? What’s going on?”

  “Marcel is alive,” Gustave said.

  —

  “She wrote it in code? You’re sure that’s what it means?” Jean-Paul was asking in disbelief, sitting at the table next to Gustave and bending over the letter. “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Positive. We always write some stuff in code so the censors don’t understand it. She couldn’t mean anyone else by ‘our friend, you know who I mean.’ And right before that she says, ‘I know you want to know everything that is going on here.’ She knows I want to know what happened to Marcel more than anything! And why would I care what everyone else is doing on the playground? She just put that stuff in so she could disguise that she was talking about Marcel when she said he was playing hide-and-seek!”

  “You might be right. But are you really sure? What does this mean, at the end?” Jean-Paul pointed at something written in tiny handwriting along the side of the letter. “PS. On the other side, you will see that our friend sends you a little gift. He says you’ve wanted it for a long time.”

  Gustave flipped the letter over, but there was nothing on the back. Nothing but a slightly greasy mark. “What’s that? Where’s the gift?” Jean-Paul demanded. “It looks like something was stuck there.”

  Gustave stared at the greasy mark, baffled, and then at almost the same moment, he and Jean-Paul both reached for the envelope. Gustave grabbed it first. He opened it, turned it upside down, and shook it. A small yellow feather fell out and fluttered down onto the table.

  38

  “Il joue à cache-cache! Il joue à cache-cache!” He’s playing hide-and-seek! Jean-Paul couldn’t stop saying it as they rode the subway down to Battery Park. “How did you know? All that time, how did you know that he was alive, Gustave?”

  “I didn’t know. I just hoped.”

  “How do you think your friend Nicole got that feather? She couldn’t have seen him, could she?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe her father’s Resistance connections got it to her somehow. It must be through them that she found out that Marcel is in hiding.”

  Gustave still felt as if he were in a dream as they left the subway, found Battery Park, and got into a long line of kids carrying crates and bags full of flattened cans.

  Guy and André, in Boy Scout uniform, were up ahead in the line. Jean-Paul shouted to them. Guy heard and nudged André, and they both turned around and waved. There were a lot more Negro kids around than there were at Joan of Arc Junior High. Ahead in the line, Gustave saw younger boys who looked Chinese, and immediately behind him and Jean-Paul was a group of kids speaking rapidly in Spanish. A warm breeze blew, making a cluster of daffodils by a park bench bob up and down. It was finally April, and after the long, cold New York winter, spring was really here.

  “Gustave!” September Rose appeared to Gustave’s left. “He’s my friend,” she said to the girl behind Gustave. “Can I cut in line?” The girl nodded and stepped back, letting her in.

  “Who’s that?” Jean-Paul whispered, nudging him.

  “That’s September Rose,” Gustave whispered. Then, speaking in English, but slowly, so Jean-Paul would understand, he said to Seppie, “This is my cousin, Jean-Paul.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “September Rose?” Jean-Paul said the name with emphasis as the line moved forward, nudging Gustave and smirking. “Pleased to meet you!”

  “You’ve got a lot of cans,” Seppie said as they got near the front, glancing in Jean-Paul’s bag and Gustave’s. “But look at mine!” She held up not one shopping bag but two, both of them heavy with flattened metal.

  “Where did you get all of those?” Gustave asked. “I thought you weren’t going to be able to get any besides what we collected.”

  “That’s what I thought too. Some of these are the ones we got that day. But look what my Granma did.” She held up an irregularly shaped, flattened piece of blue metal.

  It took Gustave a minute to figure it out. “Is that one of your grandmother’s birds?”

  September Rose looked at him with a peculiar expression, partly proud and partly mournful. “She took them all down, smashed them, and gave them to me to donate. Every single one. She said that it was the best way to bring Dad home. But the apartment is so empty now, and quiet.”

  He could see it, how it must look to her and Alan and her grandmother, the blankness of the rooms without the delicate, brilliant birds, the silence of the fire escape without the chimes. The April wind would blow through the apartment as the days grew warm, and there would be no sound.

  They had moved forward, and they were almost at the head of the line. “Pour them in here,” a cheerful man was saying, pointing to a bin. “Support our boys overseas!”

  They tipped their shopping bags into the bin, first Jean-Paul, then Gustave, and then September Rose. The colors of the flattened birds flashed and then slid down among hundreds of other pieces of metal, disappearing into the silvery-gray heap as if they had never been.

  September Rose hurried off to find the chorus, and Gustave and Jean-Paul looked for the flagpole where they were meeting up with the Boy Scouts. Battery Park was at the very southern end of Manhattan, overlooking New York Harbor. Beyond the grounds and walkways of the park, the sun moved out from behind the clouds, glittering on the blue-green water. The park was getting crowded with groups of students talking and laughing.

  “There’s the flagpole!” Jean-Paul shouted. “I see them!” They ran to the base of the pole to join their group of scouts.

  “Ah, good. There you are!” Father René said. “Our whole group is here now, François!” he called to Rabbi Blum. “Let’s go, everyone. The ceremony will begin soon.” There wasn’t time to tell Rabbi Blum the good news about Marcel now, Gustave thought. He didn’t want to talk about it in front of a lot of people. But he’d tell the rabbi at his next bar mitzv
ah lesson. Just the thought of having the good news to tell made him feel buoyant with joy again.

  The troop found their places on the temporary stage.

  “Post the Colors. Scouts salute!” It was an Eagle Scout, an older boy from troop 2332. With his fingers at his forehead, Gustave watched the colors of the American flag ripple in the wind. The Pledge of Allegiance began, and he was saying it too, with the others, in English. The final words were the best ones, even if they weren’t always true: “With Liberty and Justice for all.”

  After the flag salute, the Boy Scouts left the stage. Men in suits made speeches about supporting the soldiers and pulling together for the country. And then came the singing. Choruses from school after school filed onto the stage, sang, and filed off. Finally the familiar faces from Joan of Arc Junior High were in front of them. September Rose was in the back and not very visible, but Gustave heard her voice, confident and powerful, mingling with the others yet distinct, soaring out into the open air.

  By the time the concert was over, the sun was setting, and it was getting chilly. Two policemen were tending a bonfire, and a lot of the crowd moved in that direction. The bonfire had a high barrier on one side, and Gustave was relieved that the barrier did seem high enough to keep the light from shining out to sea, keeping the ships along the coast safe from Nazi U-boats.

  “Bonfire or roller-skating?” asked Bernard.

  “Roller-skating,” said Maurice. “I’m meeting Jacqueline there.”

  “Ooh, Jacqueline! Let’s all go see Jacqueline!” said Xavier.

  “Don’t you dare embarrass her,” said Maurice, scowling at him.

  They all went together. The line to rent roller skates was long. The rink, which was a large expanse of plywood a foot or so off the ground with rough wooden railings and entrances at each end, was already full of skaters circling. A small group of musicians stood to the side, playing patriotic music, and vendors were selling food and drink. The smell of hot chocolate and frankfurters wafted through the air.