Introducing Shirley Braverman

by Hilma Wolitzer

  The other girl and I spelled “chivalrous,” “hibernation,” “deferment,” “illuminate,” and “luncheon.”

  Then it was my turn again and the word was “embarrassment.”

  I tried to picture the word inside my head, to think of the way it would look on paper. I couldn’t remember if there were two r’s or only one. It didn’t seem right no matter how I spelled it. Everyone was waiting for me to say something. The other girl had her hands clasped tightly at her waist.

  I took a deep breath. “E,” I said, “m-b-a-r”—everyone was looking at me, waiting for me to continue—“a-s-s-m-e-n-t.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Braverman,” the borough president said. “That is not correct. Please wait and we will see if Miss Halloran can spell it correctly.”

  Miss Halloran could. A great cheer went up from the audience after she put in both r’s and s’s. The photographers were there again taking pictures. I shook hands with the girl who’d won and I forced myself to smile when people rushed up to congratulate her.

  Then Miss Cohen and Dr. Vanderbilt were there too. “You did extremely well for P.S. 247,” he said, and he didn’t seem disappointed at all. Neither did Miss Cohen. “You were wonderful, Shirley.” She hugged me and the corsage of roses was crushed between us.

  “Well, I lost,” I said.

  “Not at all. You came in second,” Miss Cohen said, as if there was a difference. “You’re the runner-up. It’s a great honor.”

  I didn’t think it was such a great honor. Somebody else was going to be the best speller in New York City. Somebody else was going to wear the mayor’s medal. I wished I could just lie down on the floor and cry.

  Miss Cohen opened her pocketbook and took out a small package, beautifully wrapped in silver paper and blue ribbon. “This is a little present from me,” she said. “For trying so hard and for caring so much about words. Go ahead, Shirley, open it.”

  I sighed and then I pulled the bow on the blue ribbon and carefully opened the silver paper. There was a small red leather book inside. All the pages were blank, but on the cover MY THOUGHTS was printed in gold. My eyes filled with tears, making the words run together.

  “Please listen to me, Shirley,” Miss Cohen said. “I bought this for you, not knowing whether you would win today or not. I bought it because I want you to know that there’s something more important about words than just spelling them correctly. We use words to tell other people how we feel, the way that authors do in the books we love. I hope you’ll write your thoughts and feelings down. Who knows—maybe someday you’ll write a real book too, one that everyone will want to read.”

  “Thank you, Miss Cohen,” I managed to say, but I didn’t feel better at all. It was true that I loved to read, but I had never thought about being a writer myself. All I could think of was that I had lost the spelling bee, no matter what Miss Cohen said, no matter what anyone said. Embarrassment. It was the worst word in the English language.

  Theodore and Velma and I went home on the bus together and I could tell that they hardly knew what to say to me. Velma kept talking about her shoes and how they pinched her toes and about the fact that it looked like rain. Theodore didn’t say anything at all.

  When we got home, I put the little red leather book in the hall closet with all the other things I hardly ever used.

  Embarrassment, I thought. I knew I would always blush when I heard that word.

  Eighteen

  Another Telegram

  MITZI WASN’T HOME WHEN the second telegram from the War Department came, either. She and I had gone to the park for the morning because her mother had insisted. “All the roses are gone from your cheeks,” Mrs. Bloom said sadly. “You hardly look like my Mitzi any more. I want you to get out in the fresh air and sunshine.”

  “But what if...” Mitzi began.

  “No more whats and no more ifs,” her mother said firmly. “Go to the park with Shirley and don’t come home again a minute before twelve o’clock. Then you can both have lunch here together. Go ahead now. I’ll be all right for a few hours without you.”

  The two of us left for the park then, but Mitzi kept looking back over her shoulder at her mother waving from the window.

  The war in Europe was almost over. Everyone said so, and it was on the radio and in the newspapers. The Allies were winning, but there was still no word from Buddy. Missing in action. Lost. I remembered when Theodore was lost at the beach once and how we all walked up and down the shore calling his name. My mother wrung her hands and looked out at the ocean with one hand shading her eyes. Theodore was only a baby then and the waves were big. Then we heard the lifeguard’s whistle and we looked up to see him holding Theodore high in the air.

  I tried again to cheer Mitzi up. Her mother was right, she was pale and her hair and eyes seemed to have lost their shine. “Come on!” I said. “I’ll race you.” Mitzi, with her long, thin legs, who always beat me in every kind of race, was lagging far behind when I arrived, panting, at the entrance to the playground.

  It was a place where we’d played since we were little kids, a place where we had been pushed on the baby swings by our fathers and been caught in our mothers’ arms at the end of the long slide.

  That day we went on the seesaw together, up and down in the sunlight. I bumped down hard every time my end of it touched the ground, making Mitzi bounce in the air a little, her hair flying up. It was something she had always liked, but this time she just sat there, as if riding on a seesaw weren’t any different from sitting in an armchair at home.

  On the swings I pumped myself high, until I felt as if my feet would touch the rooftops outside the park and even the clouds above them. It was such a beautiful spring day that it was hard to believe it wasn’t as sweet and peaceful everywhere in the world. Mitzi just let her swing dangle while the toes of her shoes scraped against the ground.

  “Do you want a push?” I asked. She shook her head sadly.

  I knew she really wanted to go home, that there wasn’t anything in the park that could interest her when she was feeling so bad. But we had promised her mother we would stay until lunchtime.

  We left the playground area and walked to the grassy section of the park, where there was a grove of trees blooming with new leaves. Mitzi and I lay down in their shadow. There was a patch of clover near me and I searched carefully, hoping I’d find one with four leaves. Mitzi was pretty superstitious and she thought that four-leaf clovers could bring you good luck. If I found one I was going to give it to her. But there seemed to be a million of them with three leaves or five and not one with just four. I thought of tearing one leaf off a five-leaf clover and pretending I had really found a four-leaf clover, but somehow I couldn’t do it.

  Neither of us had a watch but we knew that when the sun was directly overhead it would be noon and we could start back again.

  “Do you want to play Ghost?” I asked.

  Mitzi shook her head.

  “Geography?”

  Another head shake.

  “Actors and Actresses?”

  I didn’t want to play any of those games myself but I felt we had to keep busy until it was time to go back to Mitzi’s house. I didn’t know any new Knock Knocks or riddles or jokes. Mitzi was the one who always told them to me and she hadn’t told me any for weeks.

  “Shut your eyes,” I said, “and try to count to a million. Maybe then it will be time to go home.”

  We were both quiet for a long time.

  “What are you up to?” I asked.

  “Four hundred and sixty-two,” Mitzi said, and she sighed. “Let’s go ask that man what time it is.”

  There was an old man sitting on a bench reading a newspaper. He looked at his watch and he told Mitzi that it was eleven o’clock.

  “See?” I told Mitzi. “Only one more hour.”

  “A whole hour,” Mitzi said, sighing again. We sat there for a while, not saying anything, just poking at the clover.

  Then Mitzi got up again and as
ked the old man to tell her the time. He stared at her and rattled his newspaper. “Five after eleven,” he said.

  Mitzi came back and sat down. “I think his watch stopped,” she whispered. “Let’s walk up to the jewelry store on the parkway and see what time it really is.”

  We tried to take our time, but when we got to the jewelry store and looked at the big clock in the window, it was only ten after eleven. “I don’t believe it,” Mitzi said. “What are we going to do?”

  We finally decided to walk up and down the parkway looking in the store windows until it was twelve o’clock. We would keep going back to the jewelry store to check the time.

  Window-shopping was something that Mitzi and I always liked. Sometimes we would pretend to be grownups thinking of buying new furniture for our homes, or a Frigidaire. We would look in the beauty parlor and pretend that we were going to get our hair dyed red or our nails manicured. And of course we didn’t have to pretend at all when we looked in the window of the Marlboro Toy and Game Shop.

  But this time it was different. Nothing really interested us, not even the beautiful smells of fresh bread and cake from the open bakery door. And it was not even eleven-thirty when we got back to the jewelry store again.

  “Let’s go home right now, Shirley,” Mitzi said.

  I hesitated. “It’s not time yet.”

  “We’ll walk very slow-ly,” Mitzi said, lifting one foot carefully in the air and setting it down again in slow motion.

  “But your mother...and the fresh air...”

  “I’ve had enough fresh air!” Mitzi shouted. “I’m choking on all this fresh air!”

  So we went home, and not so slowly after all. When we got to Mitzi’s house, we found Mrs. Bloom waiting at the door to their apartment. “Where were you?” she said. “I thought you were going to the park! Your father looked everywhere for you!”

  Mitzi opened her mouth, but before she could speak, her father appeared in the doorway. “You’re home! Well, what do you think of the news, eh? Isn’t it wonderful?” He picked Mitzi up in his arms as if she were a baby and he swung her around and around.

  “What news?” she shouted to him from somewhere near the ceiling.

  Her father put her down again slowly. “Your brother,” he said.

  Mitzi looked at her mother, who just smiled and nodded her head, her eyes shining with tears.

  “Your brother,” her father said again. “He’s safe!”

  Mitzi and I looked at each other without speaking. I felt weak with happiness and surprise.

  Then the Blooms showed us the second telegram from the War Department. Buddy had been taken prisoner by the enemy and the Allies had just liberated the camp where he had been held. He would probably be home in a few weeks!

  The Blooms wanted me to stay and have lunch with Mitzi but both of us were too excited to eat, and I wanted to rush home and tell my family the wonderful news.

  At the door Mitzi rapped lightly on my forehead with her fist. “Knock knock,” she said.

  “Who’s there,” I asked.

  “Mitzi.”

  “Mitzi who?”

  “Mitzi Bloom,” she said. “That’s me, the happiest girl in America!”

  Nineteen

  Cure No. 3: Theodore in the Basement

  GRANDPA SMALL DIED IN his sleep one night and the funeral was going to be held the next day. Mother and Daddy decided that Theodore was too young to attend and that I would have to stay home with him. Velma was going to go to the services with them.

  On the morning of the funeral everyone dressed quietly. Velma looked very strange wearing an ugly green hat she had borrowed from Aunt Lena. Mother wore a black dress and Daddy put on his darkest suit. There were tears in Mother’s eyes and every once in a while she sat down in a chair and just stared ahead of her as if she was trying to remember something. Daddy spoke to her in a soft voice and she began to cry. Theodore looked worried and he sucked on his finger while he watched Mother.

  At last it was time for them to leave. Mother wore a hat too and she was very pale. Daddy and Velma each held one of her arms as they went down the hall.

  Theodore and I ran to the window and saw them drive away in a long black limousine.

  Then we were all alone in the apartment and it had never seemed so quiet. Theodore kept following me around from room to room. Finally he said, “Why is Mommy doing that?”

  “She’s very sad,” I told him. “She’ll never see her father again.”

  “Then where are they g-going?”

  “To the funeral,” I said, trying to imagine what a funeral was actually like. “That’s where they say prayers, like he should rest in peace and he should go to heaven.”

  Theodore was thoughtful for a moment, probably thinking about heaven. He even went back to the window and looked up at the sky. Then he came back and sat down next to me. “H-how does it feel to be d-dead?” he wanted to know.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I told him. “They just can’t move any more. You know, they can’t eat or talk or anything. So they dig a big hole and put them in a box. Then they put the box in the hole.”

  “Why c-can’t they k-keep him?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Because he would smell bad,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  We were both quiet for a few minutes. In a way I wished they had allowed Theodore to go to the funeral. For one wild moment I had even imagined they would let us see our dead grandfather, and although the idea really scared me, I thought this might be Theodore’s cure. To look in the face of a dead man. Maybe even to touch him. But here we were, alone in the apartment, while everyone else was at the funeral.

  I thought of Mother again and the way she always spoke about Grandpa Small, about how handsome he was, and lively. I tried hard to imagine Mother as a little girl skating in the park with Grandpa Small, who had been her father. For a moment I felt that I could almost see them, their red scarves flying out behind them as they skated by. For the first time I really believed her! I knew it was possible that Grandpa Small had been young and handsome once, and now he was dead. My mother would never see her father again. A sad feeling spread in my throat and my chest.

  “A-and he’ll never come b-back?” Theodore asked.

  “Never.”

  “Really n-never?”

  “Never ever never ever.”

  “Not even as a g-ghost?” he persisted.

  “Oh, Theodore!” I was exasperated. How, how would I ever see him through this cowardice? I stared at him. An idea was growing inside my head. “Listen,” I said. “Let’s go outside. It’s too warm in here.” It was true. The weather was getting warmer with the change of seasons and the apartment seemed hot and airless.

  But when we went downstairs the sun was bright and blinding. “What do you want to do?” Theodore asked, squinting in the brightness. A rash of prickly heat sprinkled his neck and his forehead.

  “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s go back upstairs,” Theodore said.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Let’s go where it’s nice and cool.”

  “W-where?”

  “Oh,” I said casually, “let’s go downstairs.”

  “In the b-basement?” He looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “Sure,” I said. “Listen, it’s always cooler in a basement, isn’t it? We’ll just go downstairs to get ourselves good and cool and then we’ll come right back up again. I’ll teach you a good card game later, when we come back up.” I crossed my arms and tucked my hands under my armpits. My fingers were icy.

  Theodore was rubbing his eyes. “I don’t w-wanna go,” he said.

  “Oh, why do you want to be such a baby!” I said. “C’mon, Theodore,” I added in a sweeter voice. “I’ll make you a nice soda later.”

  “N-no!” He started to cry.

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t go. See if I care. But when they come home, I’ll tell Daddy that you were lighting matches.�
��

  “B-but I didn’t!”

  He looked so awful, so surprised and disappointed, that I almost changed my mind. But I remembered that it was all for his own good. “I’ll tell them anyway,” I said in a mean voice.

  I watched Theodore as he thought it over. He started to suck on his finger again. He kicked at the curb with the toe of his shoe. “All right,” he said sadly.

  “See! See!” I shouted. “You’re not such a baby!”

  I took his hand and we walked to the side of the building, where a black iron railing ran alongside the basement ramp. In a moment we were at the heavy door that led to the basement. A yellow sign with an arrow on it said Air Raid Shelter. I pulled the door open and we stepped inside. It snapped closed behind us and there was an awful echo. The walls of the basement were rough and they were painted gray. Very small light bulbs hung close to the low ceiling. We could stare right at them without blinking or seeing floating colors. It was pretty damp in the basement but it really was much cooler. The passageway was narrow and curving and at the first turn we came to the room that we always used during air-raid drills. It was dark in there now, and without anyone in it, the room seemed gloomy and strange. We kept walking until we came to two long rows of stalls, narrow cages with wooden bars across them. Each one was fastened with a lock, and was marked with a letter and a number. These were the bins where the tenants of every apartment were allowed to store their things. In the dim light I could read 1B, 3F, 5C. We saw bicycles with rusty chains and peeling paint. There were the shapes of baby carriages covered with rubber sheets or smelly oilcloth. There were labeled cartons and old steamer trunks. Then we came to a bin marked 2G and I nudged Theodore. “This is ours,” I said proudly, as if I had discovered some wonderful family secret. I reached in between the wooden slats and lifted one corner of a gray rubber sheet and there was Theodore’s old carriage. I rocked it and the springs creaked and whined. “Look, look,” I told him. “It was yours! Do you remember? I used to wheel you in it.” Something rattled inside the carriage and I searched with one hand along the cold leather lining and pulled out a string of faded wooden beads. I placed them over his head and laughed, but Theodore pulled them off and threw them into a dark corner of the basement.