Emily took Layla to the piano and showed her the beginner’s book. “We won’t have time for much today,” she said. “But we’ll do what we can. Next week, come half an hour early and we’ll have a real lesson. Climb up on the piano stool now.”
Layla jumped up like a squirrel and waited, bright-eyed. Emily drew up a chair alongside. She thought back down a corridor of years to her first lesson from Miss Cobb and struck a note.
“That’s middle C,” she said. “We always begin with middle C.”
Shortly she saw the two American boys turning in at the gate in their heavy overcoats, knitted caps and shiny new rubbers. They looked big and rosy. They were in no hurry to come inside but scuffled in the snow and threw snowballs. They climbed the steps with a suggestion of reluctance.
“They’re the ones I’ll have to work hard with,” Emily thought.
Introductions were stiff. Kalil and Yusef started to shake hands as they did with grown people. The two Bobbys looked sheepish, and Bobby Cobb said roughly, “We know these kids!”
“And this is Layla!” said Emily.
“Pleased to meet you,” they muttered in unison, staring with mixed curiosity and admiration. The earrings, the bracelets, the red-tied braids looked odd, but she was certainly pretty.
“Draw up and get warm,” urged Grandpa Webster hospitably, and they all took chairs near the glowing heater. Bobby Sibley kicked Bobby Cobb who kicked him back, and Bobby Sibley grinned. The Syrians looked at them with bright vigilant eyes.
Emily passed fudge, and Grandpa Webster asked, “Have you thought of a name for your club?”
“I don’t think we ought to name it until we elect officers,” answered Bobby Cobb.
“You can’t elect officers until you know what you’re electing them to,” objected the other Bobby.
“Oh yes you can! You just go ahead and elect them!” Bobby Cobb looked at the Syrians. “I think an American boy ought to be president,” he said.
No one replied and Emily passed the fudge again. “Do any of you have any ideas about a name?” she asked.
“It might be just the Boys’ Club,” said Bobby Sibley lamely.
“But it isn’t a Boys’ Club! We’ve got a girl in it; haven’t we?” Bobby Cobb looked belligerently at Layla who gazed demurely at the tips of her worn shoes.
“Not exactly,” said Emily. “But she’ll be coming to take a music lesson on your club day, and she’d like to be an honorary member, if you don’t mind.”
“Naw, I don’t mind!” said Bobby Cobb.
“She could be here for refreshments,” said Bobby Sibley, and grinned at her.
Neither Kalil nor Yusef spoke. They had not spoken since the Americans came in.
“Better get going then,” Grandpa Webster said briskly. “Pass the fudge again, Layla. We’ll call it the Boys’ Club till you think of something better. And now you’ll want to elect officers, I suppose. They’ll need some paper and pencils, Emmy.”
“Here they are.”
“President first,” said Bobby Cobb. “And I think—” But Emily interrupted.
“Before you vote,” she said, “I’d better repeat all your names. This is Kalil, and this is Yusef—” To her distress, the two Bobbys giggled.
Bobby Sibley tried to sober his face. “Those are funny names,” he remarked in half apology.
Kalil spoke eagerly. “Mine means Charles,” he said. He pronounced the “ch” oddly. “And Yusef’s name means Joseph.”
The Bobbys snickered again. One whispered to another, “Sharles!” and the other said, “Oh, my gosh!”
Emily went on quickly. “And then there are two Bobbys. If anybody wants to vote for a Bobby he must be sure to put on the last name.”
“You can call me Bob,” Bobby Cobb said loudly.
“No siree! I’ll be Bob! I’m the oldest.”
“I’m the biggest! And I can throw you when we wrestle.”
“Like heck you can!”
“Aw, I’m the champion and you know it!”
Kalil spoke unexpectedly in a clear voice. “We can wrestle.”
They turned and looked at him.
“In a pig’s eye!” said Bobby Cobb, his voice heavy with scorn.
“Syrians can’t wrestle!”
“We can,” Kalil repeated.
“Come on outdoors and prove it then.”
Emily was appalled. Bobby Cobb was so much bigger, and both Americans so much brawnier than the Syrians that she was afraid it would be a most unequal contest.
“Oughtn’t we to get the officers elected first—” she began, but to her surprise, her grandfather waved her to silence.
“Shucks! Let’s have a wrestling match! And the winner can be president. What say?”
“Ya! Sure! The winner can be president,” the Bobbys yelled jubilantly.
“I’ll referee,” said Grandpa Webster. “I used to wrestle in the army.”
“Did you, my grandpa?” Kalil asked with interest, and again the Bobbys snickered.
“Oh dear!” Emily thought painfully. “Can we ever make a success of this club?”
Her grandfather continued to talk placidly, as he brought out his overcoat, cap and rubbers. “Yep! I was fuller of tricks than a dog is of fleas.”
“What was your weight?” Bobby Cobb wanted to know.
“I was light. But I spread dust on the backs of plenty of bigger men. ‘The bigger they come, the harder they fall,’ I used to say.”
“Hey, that’s good!” cried Bobby Sibley, taking a poke at the strapping Bobby Cobb who said, “Oh, yeh?” and batted him.
With the Bobbys tusseling, Kalil and Yusef silent, Layla dancing excitedly and Grandpa Webster marching in the rear, they went out to the snowy back yard. Emily followed apprehensively.
Grandpa Webster propped himself against a tree, a look of pleased importance on his face. He spat.
“Let’s get it all clear,” he said. “The rules’ll be catch as catch can. No gougin’! No bitin’! No—” he chuckled—“no spittin’ in the other fellow’s eye! But any holt is fair.” His eyes, under their bushy brows, moved appraisingly over his quartette of small warriors. “Who’s taking on who first?”
Four pairs of eyes looked around uncertainly.
“We’ll start off with Kalil and Bobby Sibley,” Grandpa Webster decided.
The two faced each other for a moment, Kalil watchful, Bobby grinning self-consciously. Then Kalil reached out and grasped Bobby by the wrist, throwing himself against him at about mid-waist. Bobby dropped violently, and in a second Kalil had his shoulders pinned. He looked toward Grandpa Webster.
“Well,” Grandpa Webster said, “that’s that!”
Kalil got up. Bobby Sibley got up too, looking puzzled.
Bobby Cobb said slowly, looking at Kalil, “You lucky stiff!” But Bobby Sibley gazed at Kalil with new respect.
Grandpa Webster motioned to Bobby Cobb and Yusef. “Next!”
This match was even briefer. Bobby Cobb, plainly panting to re-establish native prestige, catapulted into Yusef like a barrel going down hill. Yusef landed on the ground with a thud, Bobby on top of him.
“And that’s that!” Grandpa Webster said again. “All right then! The winners take each other on. Kalil! Bobby Cobb!”
They stepped forward and squared off.
For a couple of moments they stalked around like roosters. Bobby Cobb pranced like a heavy Plymouth Rock making up his mind to attack a rival. Kalil pranced also, but gracefully, like a leghorn or—Emily thought—better still, like a spirited bantam.
What struck her even more was that he seemed to prance with a surprising purpose. Bobby Cobb blundered around hoping for nothing, it seemed, except the opportunity to fling his superior weight against his enemy. Emily knew nothing of wrestling and so could not know what Kalil had in mind. But it certainly seemed to be no clumsy accidental crash of bodies.
Three times Bobby Cobb rushed his light-footed opponent. The first time Kalil simply stepped
aside with a little look of puzzlement. When Bobby Cobb rushed a second time, Kalil stepped aside again, put out a quick experimental hand which hooked in one of Bobby’s armpits and almost threw him headlong.
“I dare you to try that again!” Bobby yelled and made his third rush, plainly prepared to capture Kalil’s hand if Kalil tried the trick again.
Kalil didn’t. He simply stepped aside and as Bobby plunged with his awkward Plymouth Rock stagger he caught Bobby’s wrist in both his own hands. What followed then was beyond Emily. She knew only that Kalil twisted, Bobby toppled over Kalil’s shoulder, fell headlong, grunted, and was rolling when Kalil landed on him.
There was a great thrashing of arms and legs. There was a great noise as Bobby Cobb loosed a small-boy bellow of rage and Kalil—giving tongue for the first time—sounded a shrill excited cry of triumph.
There was more thrashing of arms and legs, more cries, increasingly confident from Kalil, more bellows, now full of despair from Bobby and then, to Emily’s amazement, it was over.
Not a wrestler, she could not have told the obviously skilled tactics by which Kalil had so surprisingly got his bulkier rival pinned. But there was no question about his being pinned. He lay there as flat as a pancake with Kalil flat on his chest.
White-faced, bright-eyed, exultant, Kalil scowled down into Bobby Cobb’s face and growled through gleaming teeth, “You got enough?”
Red-faced, amazed but suddenly grinning, Bobby Cobb yelled, “Mister, I certainly have! How’d you do it?”
Answer came not from Kalil but from Grandpa Webster’s voice exploding on the side lines.
“How’d he do it?” cried Grandpa Webster. “He put the nicest double wrist-lock on you that I ever saw. By Jingo, I couldn’t have done better myself when I was twenty!”
Kalil released his hold and leaped to his feet. All triumph vanished from his face. He helped Bobby up and began to brush him off with apologetic phrases.
Bobby Cobb broke in. “Hey, Charley! Don’t apologize for licking me! Teach me how to do it.”
Kalil smiled widely. “Of course!”
“If you show me that, boy, I’ll betcha I can throw even guys in the Sixth Grade.”
“Show me, too, Charley!” Bobby Sibley cried. “Say, who taught you to wrestle anyway?”
“Mr. Jed.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s gone away.”
“Did he teach you, too, Joe?”
Yusef did not answer and Grandpa Webster nudged him. “How about it, Joe? Did Mr. Jed teach you too?”
“Oh, yes, Grandpa!”
“He taught both of us,” Kalil said. “And we would like very much to teach you.”
“Next meeting then,” said Grandpa Webster. “My stomach is flapping against my backbone.”
Emily fled to the kitchen almost bursting with joy. Pouring cider, slicing cake, with Layla working deftly beside her, she heard a fraternal clamor in the dining room. “Sure, Charley!” “Lookee here, Joe!”
Her grandfather remarked that the two Bobbys ought to call him Grandpa as Charley and Joe did. She went in with a plate of sandwiches.
“And Charley and Joe are to call me Emily, as the Bobbys do. No more ‘ma’ams.’”
“All right, ma’am,” said Kalil and bounced with laughter. He was himself again—merry, lively, dramatic, gesticulating with both hands.
“Bless Mr. Jed, whoever he is!” Emily thought.
While they ate they completed the elections, by the broom-straw method. Bobby Sibley became treasurer and immediately demanded dues.
“Dues?” repeated Kalil, puzzled.
“Money. Cash. Spondulix. If I’m going to be treasurer, I want something in the treasury, boy. Shell out now, everyone!”
“Does it cost money to belong to a club?” Kalil sounded anxious.
“Darn right it does! A penny at every meeting.”
Grandpa Webster nodded. “That’s right, boys. And I’ve got a proposition. I want to belong to this club, but it’s turned into a wrestling club, and I’m too old to wrestle. So how will it be if I pay the dues? I mean everybody’s dues.”
“Gee, Grandpa! That would be all right!” Treasurer Sibley said, wide-eyed.
“Here you are then!” Grandpa Webster took out his purse and laid down seven pennies.
Refreshments were lavish. Frightened by Bobby Sibley’s keen interest in the subject, Emily had outdone herself. But none of her efforts equaled the baklawa cake. Made of uncounted paper-thin layers, filled with honey and chopped nuts, it was as mysterious as it was delectable.
“Say,” asked Bobby Sibley, chasing the last crumb with his tongue, “does your mother make this often?”
“Always on holidays,” Kalil said politely. “Won’t you please come and have some?”
“See you on the Fourth of July!”
“We’ll see ’em a week from today! And Charley won’t be the champ much longer after he shows us that trick.”
“We’ll all be champs.”
Suddenly Bobby Cobb shot up, his red face shining beneath his red-gold hair.
“Hey, kids! That’s the name for our club. We’re the Wrestling Champs!”
“We’re the Wrestling Champs!” “Hooray for the Wrestling Champs!” A cheer echoed against the ceiling of the little dining room.
It still seemed to echo after the boys had gone racing down the snowy path together, calling out plans, in noisy concord.
“Grandpa,” said Emily thoughtfully. “Did you know that Kalil and Yusef could wrestle?”
A smile spread slowly over Grandpa Webster’s face, round and innocent beneath the skull cap.
“Well now, maybe I did!” he said. “And I certainly take my hat off to that Mr. Jed.”
17
Supper with Miss Fowler
BY THE TIME THE COLLEGE crowd left at the end of Christmas vacation, Emily was too busy to miss them. She had scarcely seen them in the handful of days that intervened; Don, she had not seen at all. The momentum inspired by the highly successful Wrestling Champs had pushed her into another project.
She was teaching English one day a week to Mrs. Mohanna and Mrs. Tabbit.
It had come about because she went to return the baklawa cake pan and found Mrs. Mohanna alone. Her husband and children, her interpreters, were gone, and yet she was bursting to express her feelings. With her bright eyes pleading to be understood, her small hands gesturing, she rushed to pick up Layla’s doll, the perfume, the picture books and puzzles. (The skates and mittens were significantly absent.) She ran her fingers up and down an imaginary piano and kept saying “God Bless” and “Thanks” and “God Bless” again.
When she rushed to the kitchen Emily, using sign language herself, took the long-handled coffee pot out of her hands. Mrs. Mohanna understood and laughed. She seized Emily girlishly by the hand and they ran outside, up the snowy street to Mrs. Tabbit’s house.
Emily had never been in Yusef’s home before. It was a little more pretentious than Kalil’s. The lamp hanging from the ceiling was made of brass with a dangling chain. There were easy chairs and pictures on the walls.
Mr. Tabbit was not at home, and neither was Yusef. But there was an assortment of younger children to whom Mrs. Tabbit—a short fat woman with a merry face—spoke volubly in Arabic. They said haltingly but politely that their mother was full of thanks and that their brother had liked the skates. Mrs. Tabbit herself ventured a few English phrases, but they were obviously her entire vocabulary.
Mrs. Tabbit, too, ran to the kitchen, and Emily didn’t know her well enough to protest, which amused Mrs. Mohanna who twinkled at her. The children went out to play, and while the three women drank sweet, dark, foamy coffee out of tiny cups they tried to talk.
It was interesting, Emily observed, to see how much they could communicate in spite of the barrier of language. Mrs. Tabbit showed Emily her embroidery work, and Mrs. Mohanna ran home to get hers. They admired Emily’s watch bracelet but she didn’t know how to te
ll them it came from her grandfather. They admired the locket and she said, “Mother,” pointing to each of them and rocking a baby and nodding and then at herself, shaking her head. After a puzzled moment they cried together, “Imma!” “Imma!” and Emily repeated “Mother! Mother!” and they said “Mother,” jubilantly.
Then and there Emily decided to teach them English. Here was another thing she could do, right in her own home without neglecting her grandfather. She would get a small blackboard and some chalk—
When she told him her idea, Grandpa Webster began to laugh. “By Jingo, you’re your grandmother all over again! She taught school in a parlor, too.”
“I remember,” Emily said. It had been the first school in Deep Valley, ’way back in the fifties.
“And your mother would be all het up about this!” he added, looking wise.
The Syrians were slower to accept the idea. Emily was rebuffed at first, with excessive politeness, but nevertheless rebuffed, when she took it to Little Syria. Mr. Mohanna of the poetic speech and huge mustache, and prosperous Mr. Tabbit who wore a gold watch chain, were alike dubious of the proposition, and the women were suddenly shy.
But Emily pointed out how much help the women could be to their children with school work and to their husbands in business if they learned a little English. She told of the pleasant time they had had drinking coffee together.
“I want them to come to my house now.”
She spoke eloquently, and she was plainly a popular figure. She won. They settled upon Wednesday as a good day for the classes, and the following Wednesday the women arrived, smiling, gay scarves over their heads, and Emily, like her grandmother, taught school in a parlor.
Or, rather, in a dining room, for Grandpa Webster wouldn’t have been left out for the world. She set the blackboard up near his easy chair. He helped with the lessons, and afterwards, when they had coffee, he taught the women to say “coffee,” “sugar,” “cream,” and “doughnuts” with much laughter.
They were fascinated by the little house. Mrs. Mohanna touched the piano and said, “Layla? Layla?” Mrs. Tabbit admired the antimacassars which Emily’s grandmother had crocheted for her chairs.