“What do you mean by that?”
“I only meant that I don’t want to upset you ... not on your big night.”
“Tell me what’s WRONG!”
I heard myself sigh exactly like she sighs. As long as I could remember it was one of mother’s short-cut ways of telling me that I was wasting far too much of her valuable time. “Well, it was just that I was wondering why you didn’t ask Eileen to put a rinse in your hair. All of those gray roots are beginning to show.”
“That’s NOT true. You’re imagining things!” Her voice was pitched up an octave. “You know that I would never let my roots show!”
As people began leaving the graduation. My grandmother whispered in my ear. “Patty darling, now that school’s out maybe you’ll come to Memphis. Visit with Grandpapa and me.”
“Well ...” I said, waiting to see whether or not she was going to include Sharon in the invitation. It’s not that I dislike my fourteen-year-old sister, although God help me, sometimes I do. It’s just that I’m tired of being compared to Sharon the pretty or Sharon the sweet. But more than that I hate Sharon for depriving me of my alibis.
One of my really comforting alibis states that people would like me if only I were a Baptist. Well, Sharon is no more Baptist than me and everybody likes her. And then there’s the most comforting alibi of them all: My parents don’t know how to love anybody, so why be disappointed that they don’t love me? The only problem with that is that they do like my kid sister pretty well.
But it’s okay, Sharon, I can understand that. Most of the time (if we can forget those few ugly times when my jealousy flared) I like you too. A whole lot.
The really strange thing about my grandparents is that in spite of Sharon’s obviously superior virtues, they—I must be mistaken—but they do seem to love me more.
Grandpa mentioned that I could have “almost full use” of the Buick while Grandma talked on about the Ridgeway Country Club. “The pool is open and I think it’s past time you started mingling with some of your own.”
She turned to her daughter. “Pearl, if you don’t want Patty to marry some goy, then you have to see to it that she mixes and mingles with her own kind. Being the only Jew in town is no good!”
It was then that Edna Louise Jackson’s mother poked her head into our cluster. “Forgive me for intruding, Pearl, but what did you and Harry think of Edna Louise’s speech? Just forget that I’m her mother and tell me what it is you truly ... believe.”
“Why, Cora,” said my mother, “now nobody in this world has to tell you that Edna Louise always does a fine job at whatever it is she does.”
Mrs. J. G. Jackson trilled a laugh. “Oh, now, I wouldn’t say ‘always.’ ”
“Well, I would,” insisted my mother. “And not only that, she’s the most outstanding person for a girl that I’ve ever met.”
My father added, “Not only did she give a fine speech, but she sure did look pretty as a picture.”
What I wanted to do was scream at my parents. Scream out that Edna Louise wasn’t their daughter. I was, and I needed something too! But instead of screaming, I dug my nails so deep into my palms that I felt stinging, and then I squeezed out a smile so that neither of them would ever suspect that I so much as cared.
Edna Louise Jackson’s mother lit up like a five-hundred-dollar juke box. “Oh, I thought she looked right nice too. And her words were inspiring, weren’t they, Harry? Truly inspiring.”
Then my mother suddenly remembered to introduce Mrs. Jackson to “my parents, the Frieds, from Memphis.” After a round of pleasantries, Mrs. Jackson found her way back to the subject of Edna Louise. It was as though she hadn’t been completely nourished by my mother’s and father’s banquet of compliments and was now attempting to extract another feast from my grandparents. But they both refused to feed her. I guess I knew somehow that they’d give to me before they’d give to a stranger.
Mrs. Turner cruised past our cluster. “Patricia, go line up with the others. Representative Stebbins wants to personally congratulate all the graduates.”
I got in line behind Edna Louise (sometimes it seems as though all of Jenkinsville gets in line behind Edna Louise) to await my turn to shake hands with the great man. Superintendent Begley introduced her. “This is one little lady we’re all mighty proud of, Miss Edna Louise Jackson. She was not only Class President, but was also voted Most Likely to Succeed.”
Representative Stebbins pretended to chuckle. “Well, well, well, looks like I’m going to have some fierce competition from you in the political arena some day.”
“You probably know of Edna Louise’s daddy,” added Mr. Begley.
Mr. Stebbins’s face was caught in a moment of surprise. “Jackson? Now don’t you go telling that your daddy is Mister J. G. Jackson?”
“Why, yes, sir,” Edna Louise smiled coyly. “He most surely is.”
When it came my turn, our superintendent introduced me as “the daughter of one of Jenkinsville’s leading merchants. Patty Bergen.”
“Patty Bergen,” repeated Mr. Stebbins as though he was trying to make a connection. “Where have I heard that name before? Weren’t you one of our fine Stebbins-for-Representative workers last year?”
“Uh, no, sir,” I answered, trying to get distance between us before the connection was made. But by the time I had reached the gym’s outer limits, I had already begun my medicinal self-ridicule: The only search for a connection that was going on was in my own imagination. An important man—a lawmaker like Representative Billy Bruce Stebbins—would have more pressing things on his mind than attempting to conjure up some long-forgotten newspaper stories of six years ago.
As a great sense of relief and foolishness swept over me, I turned suddenly to glance back at our commencement speaker, who was caught—caught staring at me as Mr. Begley, cupping his hand around his mouth, spoke directly into the legislator’s ear.
I felt fury freeze my face. I’ll never speak your name again. You, Mr. Begley, are the worst. Always pretending to like me, pretending that I’m as good as anybody else. Well, I’m not as good as anybody else! Even before Anton, not you or anybody else hereabouts would ever believe that a Jewish girl could be as good as anybody else.
Then my internal thermostat whose job it is to keep everything temperature-controlled at 98.6 must have experienced a sudden collapse. Fever, like a windwhipped fire, began raging through my body and up toward my brain. I was afraid that I was going to burn to death.
As I reached the oversized gym door, I tried to push. Wanted to get to the air and away from the people. Wanted to push, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything, but hold onto the wooden door brace. Had to hold on just to keep from going down.
Someone—it was a woman—asked me if I was fainting and as I watched the gym spin and blacken, I answered, “No.” Then Mrs. Turner materialized to ask me a variation of the same question. This time I closed my eyes against all questions while making sickness my only concern.
“She’s burning up!”
“Her folks are over there.”
“Get them!”
The thought of either my mother or father rushing to my aid, placing their hands on my forehead, supporting my weakness with their bodies, helped me gather what strength I had left. Using it all against the cumbersome door, I opened it and half tumbled out into the dank day.
The outside wall of the gym steadied me as I groped my way around the whitewashed building. Directly in back, I stopped in front of a clump of unkempt grass. My head was revolving clockwise while my stomach was heading counterclockwise.
“ULP!” I watched with uncommon interest as the green clump took on a sour-smelling, lumpy, cream-colored covering and I knew that I was already recovering, for my mind briefly strayed to things other than my state of health. I began to suspect, for example, that I’d never again eat chicken à la king and, for the first time, it occurred to me to be grateful that I had been a bottle baby. For if my sour-spirited mother had nursed me, he
r breast milk would have only contained curdled
At the outside bubbler, I swished water around my mouth, vigorously patted my face with wet hands, combed my hair, put on fresh lipstick, and came to the conclusion that chances were excellent I’d recover. There was only a little weakness left and anybody can tell you that that just isn’t in the same league with burning queasiness of the stomach.
Anyway, I think I’m okay now and maybe I should be grateful to the behind-my-back whisperings of Coach Begley for teaching me something that I had never really wanted to learn: Once a penalty is called against a player it is in effect for the duration of the game. Only in my case, my penalty would last for the duration of my life.
Just because it’s been a good long while since anybody has called me “Natz” or “Nazi lover” doesn’t mean that people have suddenly stopped remembering. Because every once in a while, I catch a certain look—a certain strange uncomprehending look—on somebody’s face and I know, know as sure as anything, that they’re thinking about me and what I did for a German prisoner-of-war so long ago.
As I re-entered the gymnasium, I saw the back of a familiar well-tailored, glen-plaid suit. My father was speaking to Mrs. Turner. “You’re not making sense. If she fainted then where is she?”
I smiled what I hoped would pass for a sincere smile. “Hi, how are you all enjoying the party?”
“Mrs. Turner just told me you fainted,” said my father, who sounded for the first time since coming here as though he was no longer bored.
“Sir?” I asked, while trying to face-register surprise as I wondered just why it is that I’d go through almost any kind of deception, at almost any price, to keep my parents from ever seeing me either weak and needy. Physically or emotionally. It was all the same.
“What I said,” corrected Mrs. Turner, “was that Patty lost every speck of color as she held onto that door for dear life.”
“I did get a little warm,” I admitted cheerfully, “under this old black gown, so I went out to the bubbler for a drink.”
My mother was quickly approaching, but from fifteen or twenty feet away, she called out, “Did you really faint?”
Some five or six people nearby, including Mr. Casper Willis and his spinster daughter, Rachel, who had been unaware of the incident, turned to gape at me. Probably they were very annoyed to have missed out on the greatest drama since that Sunday morning Reverend Benn preached from the pulpit with a freshly blackened eye.
Maybe they’re thinking that if I truly cared about their amusement, I’d stage something really interesting. Perhaps the ancient and honorable Japanese ritual of disembowelment or, at the very least, an epileptic seizure, preferably grand mal.
Within reaching out and touching distance, my mother came to an abrupt halt. “Well, what’s wrong with you?”
“I got so hot wearing this old black gown that I had to go outside to the bubbler for a drink.”
She looked at me suspiciously as though some valuable tidbit was being withheld from her. “Tell the truth, you were sick to your stomach again, now weren’t you?”
“I already told you.”
“This is the third time lately. Somebody must have said boo to you,” she said loudly enough to satisfy Rachel Willis’s ongoing interest in Mother’s observations.
“No, nobody said boo to me, honest.”
“Well, somebody must have,” she insisted. “Because every time someone says boo to you, you vomit.”
3
AT TEN MINUTES AFTER FOUR (exactly one hundred thirty minutes after the start of the graduation ceremonies) all six of us crowded into my father’s sun-baked Chevy. When he zoomed on down Highway 64, neglecting to take the first right turn which would have taken us through the two business and the two residential blocks which comprise Jenkinsville, Arkansas (population 1,170), I knew that he wanted to cool off his car.
On the other side of Bud’s Gulf station, my father tapped on the right-hand side of his windshield. “Look over there, Sam. That red brick house going up.”
When Grandpa acknowledged seeing what someday soon was going to be a “nice little house,” my father continued, “You’re a real estate man, Sam. How many good houses would you guess have been built here in Jenkinsville in the last five years?”
“Oh, not many. Not more than four or five a year since the end of the war. Twenty, twenty-five, say thirty houses in all.”
“I’ll tell you better’n that,” said my father. “That’s only the second house of any kind that’s been built here since the war. This town is stagnating!”
“Lots of up-north industries, Harry, are looking for quiet places with cheap labor. First thing you have to do is band together with the other merchants.”
My father made a hissing sound. “I’d sooner band together with a bunch of rattlesnakes. Once we had us the Jenkinsville Mercantile Association. It was back during the war when everybody was making a buck. There was six of us leading merchants who (thanks to me) were real successful in getting people for miles around to come into town on a weekday. We handed out free tickets every Wednesday, every time anybody made a purchase.
“And at exactly eight o’clock on Wednesday night, there’d be a drawing in front of the picture show and that’s when the grand prize of fifteen dollars was handed out. Well, Jesus H. Christ, you never saw so many people crowding into one small town in your life. From as far away as Cherry Valley they chugged into town in old trucks and battered cars that cranked from the front.”
“And I’ll never for the life of me forget,” added my mother, “the preacher’s wife coming into the store fit to be tied, telling us that we were playing Satan’s game by luring folks into town on a weekday. ‘Why,’ she complained in that whiny little voice of hers, ‘I couldn’t even park my own car in front of my own house. All those niggers and rednecks just a-choking up the streets.’ ”
“I didn’t care about that bitch!” said my father. “It wasn’t her. It was the big cotton planter, George C. Henkins, who killed Wednesday. At the dinner meeting of the Rotary Club, he read out a resolution asking the merchants to dispense with Wednesdays. He talked about how it’s only patriotic keeping the sharecroppers working in the fields where they belong. Cotton is needed for the war effort. And we all have to make sacrifices in wartime.
“Well, sir, no sooner did George get his speech out than the other five merchants practically wet their pants agreeing.
“But I stood up to him and I mean to tell you that I was the only one to do it. Looking him right in the eye, I told him: ‘I want you all to know right here and now that I’m as patriotic as the next man. And maybe more so! But I’d like George to answer me, why in God’s name do I have to ruin my business to see that your fields get picked? More money in your pockets!’
“Well, old George lifted his hands for quiet just like he was fixing to sermonize. ‘Now, Harry, I’m surprised to hear you say that, really I am.’ He was talking softly as if to say that he didn’t know cotton prices was going straight through the roof. “ ’Cause I thought you, of all people, appreciated what this war is all about. We Americans, trying to save your people from the Nazis.’ ”
When my father turned off Highway 64 at the First Baptist Church of Jenkinsville corner, I knew that the car, if not the passengers, was considered sufficiently cooled.
We cruised down Main Street past the Rice County Bank, the post office, the picture show where the marquee announced Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger in King Solomon’s Mines.
In front of the largest store in town, the car rolled to a stop. Because I sensed that some sort of recognition was needed by my father, I found myself reading aloud the big, bold, black sign that was touched for emphasis with a dash of red. “Bergen’s Department Store,” I sang out like a radio announcer thrilled by the opportunity to deliver a hard sell. “Quality Goods for the Whole Family. Shoes, clothing, hardware, and variety.”
After my recitation, my father drove back to our six-room white frame hous
e with the screened-in side porch. We all lunched on the lean corned beef, kosher dills, potato salad, and fresh pumpernickel that my grandparents had brought all the way from Rosen’s Delicatessen in Memphis.
And shortly after that Grandma reached into Grandpa’s inside suitcoat pocket to bring out a long white envelope for me with the printed return address:
S. Fried & Sons, Realty Co.
240 N. Main St.
Memphis, Tenn.
As I took the envelope, I noticed that both of them were smiling proud smiles. Why are they doing that? If I was something to be proud of, wouldn’t my own parents know that too? Wouldn’t they be the first to see it? Maybe, no credit to me, grandparents are practically genetically compelled to love their grandchildren. What else could it be?
Still I don’t understand them. They were about the only people who always acted as though I had nothing in this world to be ashamed of. When people from all over this country exploded over the fact that a Jewish girl would actually hide an escaped German prisoner, my grandparents considered it not much more than a mishegoss.
I wish that Yiddish word was in my big Webster’s International Dictionary because I’d like to know precisely what it means. But I’m pretty sure that it means making a fuss over nonsense. Like when my mother cries to Grandma about some slight from Uncle Irv, then Grandma usually says something like: “Pearl, you’re being silly. It’s all a mishegoss.”
At any rate, my grandparents were convinced that my being sent to reform school was more of a disgrace for the people of Arkansas than it was for me. “Nothing but a bunch of rednecked anti-Semites! Since when does a human person have to get credentials before they’re allowed to give food to a hungry man?”
Actually, I wasn’t as innocent as that. Because all the time I was hiding Anton in those abandoned rooms above our garage, I knew I might get into trouble, but I also knew that it wasn’t wrong. Nothing that God would consider wrong! Wish I could just once talk to somebody ... almost anybody! I’d like to explain it to them. I’d want them all to understand that Anton didn’t escape our prisoner-of-war camp to bomb our cities or even to return to Germany to fight again.