At our post office in the city you just mail your letters and leave. At this post office people stood around talking to one another and to the lady behind the counter. She knew everyone. She even knew me. Before I could say a word she handed me some letters for my grandparents. I was so surprised that I blurted out, “How did you know I was me?”
“It’s a small town,” she said. Then she added, “And you’re all gussied up.”
“Gussied” was a word to keep. When I looked at the little town I thought of what my father used to say: “All dressed up and no place to go.”
Mother had given me twenty-five cents for summer spending money. I had brought a nickel of that along. I walked up the main street to Crosby’s Drug Store, where some boys and girls were talking and laughing together. They were wearing shorts and faded shirts, and they were barefoot. The postmistress was right. I was all gussied up. I had on a dress with a sash tied into a big bow and white socks with patent leather slippers.
I knew I looked funny to them because they stared at me while I walked up the steps and into the drugstore. When I came out with my candy bar, a boy with red hair and watery blue eyes called out, “Look, it’s Shirley Temple!” I could hear their giggles all the way down the street. I was so mad I decided I would rather die than be friends with anyone who lived in the town of Greenbush.
As soon as I got home I dug some shorts out of my suitcase. I took off my shoes and socks. I wasn’t allowed to go barefoot in the city, but when I came downstairs my grandparents didn’t seem to notice. “The woman in the post office knew who I was,” I told them.
“Yah, she knows most things, and what she doesn’t know the banker knows, and what he doesn’t know Crosby in the drugstore knows,” Grandpapa said.
“And what Crosby doesn’t know Hatton, the undertaker, finds out,” Grandmama added.
“There were some children standing in front of the drugstore, and they laughed at me because of what I was wearing.”
“You can find unkindness everywhere,” Grandmama said. “Carl, tell Elsa what happened to us when her mother was a little girl.”
I could see that Grandpapa didn’t want to tell the story, but he took a deep breath and said, “It was during the war in 1917. America was on one side of the war and Germany was on the other. There was a shortage of gasoline in America, so they made a law that you couldn’t drive your car on Sundays. One day I took very sick. I knew that I must go at once to a hospital.”
“I ran to get our friend, Mr. Ladamacher, to drive us,” Grandmama said. “It was a Sunday, when you weren’t supposed to drive, but Mr. Ladamacher said, ‘Never mind. It is an emergency.’ As we drove through town on the way to the hospital people called out, ‘The Germans are disobeying the law. They want America to lose the war.’”
Grandpapa said, “But we were Americans, and our son Tom was in the American army.”
“They didn’t care,” Grandmama said. “They threw stones at our car. One of the stones broke a window.”
“Gussie, that was a long time ago. We should forget it. Now we have many friends in the town. Why should we frighten Elsa?”
It’s hard for Grandmama to forget things that make her unhappy, but Grandpapa is like his paintings, which are all bright colors.
The Screen Porch
A room,
not outside,
not in,
but holding me
in airy
captivity,
while all about
birds
and bees
fly free,
and caged,
I look out.
One day I got a letter from Lucille Macken.
Saturday afternoon we got to go to the movies. They had tap dancing lessons first and then an hour of cartoons and two serials and a double feature. We were at the movies for five and a half hours!!! I stopped at the dime store afterwards and bought a Tangee lipstick!!!
I hate it when someone uses a lot of exclamation points. I hate it when someone tells you what a good time they had someplace when you weren’t there.
There was nothing to do but read. I spent a lot of time on the screen porch, curled up on the swing with a book. I felt safer on the porch than I did outdoors. Outdoors there were ants, spiders, beetles, mosquitoes, fish flies, ladybugs, bumblebees, hornets, caterpillars, worms, snakes, toads, mice, and chipmunks. Something was always buzzing around my head or crawling up my leg. I didn’t understand why there had to be so many extra things.
From the porch I could keep an eye on the lake. One day it is quiet, smooth, shiny, and bright blue like my mother’s good silk dress. Another day it is dark green and noisy, with foaming waves that eat up the shore. You can’t depend on the lake.
If my parents were here they would ask, “Why don’t you go down and splash around in the lake?” My grandparents let me do as I like. Sometimes when they come upon me suddenly they seem surprised to find me here.
What they have noticed is that I’ve been eating a lot. “Soon you will be less spärlich,” my grandmama said. That means thin. And the hammer in my head has stopped. No more headaches. That doesn’t mean I like it here though. One day at lunch I complained, “There’s nothing to do.”
My grandparents looked up from their angel food cake as if they couldn’t believe what they heard. “You must get outside more. You can’t just stay like a captive in that screen porch,” Grandpapa said. “You can help us in the garden.”
“Elsa must have her own garden,” Grandmama told him.
That afternoon Grandpapa dug up a part of the field at the end of the orchard. All the grass and weeds disappeared, leaving a large square of bare earth. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “There you are, Elsa. Now you’ll have something to do.” He grinned at me, his eyes very blue in his tanned skin, his gray hair tousled from the breeze that blows off the lake.
Grandmama said, “What do you want to grow?” She held out packets of seeds with pictures of vegetables and flowers on them. I would have liked to grow just flowers, but then I remembered how Mother would look longingly at the fresh vegetables in the store. She would study the prices, and then with a shake of her head she would choose carrots or cabbage, which were the cheapest vegetables to buy. I imagined filling bags full of vegetables from my garden and taking them home to her. I guess I had some idea that the vegetables would grow overnight, because I’d decided that I was going to find some way to get back home. And soon.
I picked out beans and tomatoes and lettuce and peas. Then, because I liked their bright colors and their name, I pointed to a package of snapdragons. Grandmama showed me how to stretch a string from one end of my garden to the other to make straight rows. The seeds were so tiny that you could hardly see them. I put them one by one into the ground and patted them down. The earth felt warm under my hand. Grandpapa filled the tin sprinkling can from the rain barrel and carried it to my garden for me. As I sprinkled, the water turned the ground a deep rich color. I could feel the seeds drinking.
After the garden was planted I went back to the screen porch, but every hour or so I hurried out to the garden to see if anything had come up. Finally Grandmama told me that it would take a couple of weeks. I was sure that in a couple of weeks I would find a way to get back to the city. In a couple of weeks I’d be at the movies with Lucille Macken and maybe even wearing lipstick. Someone else would have to take care of my garden.
Night
In the city the rule was:
come home when
the street lights go on.
In the country
I know it is night
when overhead
the white patches
disappear from the wings
of the nighthawks
and the whippoorwill
makes his rounds boasting
he can stay out
as late as he pleases.
After dinner tonight I went out to check my garden. Even though it’s been nearly a week since I pla
nted it, nothing seemed to be happening. But when I dug up one of the beans I had planted, I saw a sprout with two tiny leaves sticking out. I stuck it back in the ground, hoping I hadn’t killed it.
I stood at the edge of the orchard and looked out over the fields that lay between me and the road that led back to the city. As the sun began going down, things got quieter and quieter. The birds disappeared, except for some black-and-white birds that my grandparents said were nighthawks. They flew up so high in the sky that you could hardly see them, and then they dropped down until you thought they would crash into the ground. Instead, just in time, they swooped up again. As it grew dark there were no sounds but the crickets chirping and the call of the whippoorwill. Nighthawks and whippoorwills. The names sounded sad to me.
I missed the sounds of the city: the cars screeching past our apartment, and my friends calling to one another. Lots of children live up and down our street. In the early evenings, before I got sick, we would play “Relievo” and “Giant Steps.” There were six of us. Every night after dinner we would hurry out of our houses to find each other. Sometimes we would just sit and watch the cars hurry by until the streetlights came on. In the city you never have to listen to silence like you do in the country. There is always something to talk back to you, even if it’s just an automobile horn or the squeal of brakes.
The quiet of the country made me nervous, so I hurried back to the cottage before it got dark. Grandmama was sitting in her favorite chair, hemming dishtowels and listening to Caruso records on the Victrola. Caruso is a famous Italian singer who is dead now. Grandpapa was reading the newspaper, shaking his head over what he was reading. “Germany has chosen a dangerous leader. This Hitler is an evil man. We have friends in Germany who will find themselves in trouble. I only hope they can leave before it is too late.”
I asked Grandpapa, “Why did you come to America from Germany?”
“Ach, over there they wanted everyone to go into the army. They would have sent me to Africa to fight just so they could steal a little more land for themselves. That was not for me.”
Grandmama sighed. “But when we came away from Germany we had to leave behind everyone we loved.” I thought about my parents and my aunts and uncles and my friends miles away in the city, and I understood what Grandmama felt. Grandmama told me about the grossen Schiff, the big boat, that had brought her and Grandpapa to America. “We sailed from the city of Bremerhaven,” she said. “My papa and mama and my brothers and sister all came to see us off. As the boat pulled away from the dock my family grew smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see them at all. They separated your grandpapa and me. The women had their own cabins and the men had theirs. I was in a stateroom no larger than a closet with four other women, and I knew none of them.”
“You became good friends,” Grandpapa said. “We could hear you laughing and giggling.”
“For the first days we were all seasick. You can’t have five women in a closet, all throwing up together, without becoming friends.”
Grandpapa laughed. “You should have been in my cabin. Hans Liebig’s mother packed a basket for him to take on the ship. The basket was the size of a bathtub. We ate from it for a week: bread, sausages, pickles, cheeses, cakes. We were so busy eating Hans’s food we had no time to be seasick.”
“Except for the canoes on Belle Isle,” I said, “I’ve never been in a boat.”
“Our friend Mr. Ladamacher has a boat,” Grandpapa said. “This week we will take you out on the lake fishing.”
I wished I hadn’t said anything about a boat. I didn’t think I wanted to be out on that big lake in a little boat.
Fishing
A chase in the bait box
until my five quick fingers hug
the minnow’s slick body,
the flat face, the hook
in and out of the lips,
then overboard and freedom
on a string to tempt
a passing perch. Soon
two prisoners dancing
to a single tune.
Today was our day to go fishing on Mr. Ladamacher’s boat. It took forever to load the car. There were straw hats and umbrellas to protect us from the hot sun. There were raincoats in case it should rain. There were cushions to sit on. There were bottles of Grandpapa’s homemade root beer packed in ice.
There was also the picnic hamper. Grandmama was up at daybreak making our lunch: sweet and sour potato salad with bacon and green onions, deviled eggs, ham and chicken sandwiches, sugar and molasses and oatmeal cookies. Living in the country seemed to put you closer to food. I wished I could pack some of it up and send it to my parents.
When he saw us unload our car, Mr. Ladamacher shook his head. “My little boat will never hold all of that,” he said. But it did. We put on our straw hats and sat on our sweaters and cushions and tucked the food under the seats. Grandpapa and Mr. Ladamacher fished and Grandmama kept handing around food.
At first the boat was close to the shore and I wasn’t too worried, but as the shore got farther and farther away, the boat started to feel as small as a thimble bobbing on the lake. Grandpapa saw how scared I looked. To take my mind off the big lake he asked if I wanted to try fishing. He found a pole for me. “Catch yourself a minnow from the pail and put it on the hook.” I looked into a pail of quick silvery forms flashing back and forth in the water. My hand closed on one of the silvery darts. I felt the minnow squirm in my hand. Grandpapa showed me how to stick the minnow on a hook. The line went into the water. I watched the minnow disappear into the lake.
I was sitting there feeling awful about the minnow when I felt a tug on the line and let out a scream. “Hang on,” Grandpapa said. I reeled in a fish.
Grandmama was pleased. “A nice perch. Big enough for the frying pan.” When I put the next minnow on the hook I hardly felt sorry for it at all.
We had the perch for dinner, and they were the best fish I ever tasted. We all went upstairs to bed early. “There’s no lullaby like a rocking boat,” Grandpapa said.
The quiet followed me all the way up the narrow wooden stairway to my bedroom, where my grandpapa has painted garlands of pink roses around the walls. There is a wooden dresser, a rocking chair, a brass bed, and a little table where I can write my poems. It was so quiet in my room that to stop the silence I opened my window. I could hear the leaves of the big poplar tree rattling and rustling just outside my window. So I knew I wasn’t alone.
I hadn’t thought much about trees before I came to Greenbush. They just seemed to be there like lampposts and buildings. Here in the country, where there aren’t any buildings or lampposts, the trees stand out.
Early in the morning when I wake up, I can look out of the window and see Grandpapa walking in the orchard. He pays each tree a visit. He knows all of the fruit trees as well as he knows Grandmama and me.
There are other trees, too. When my mother was a girl, she planted a little maple tree. Now the tree reaches to the roof of the cottage. In front of the cottage are two weeping mulberry trees. Their branches hang all the way down to the ground. You can push the branches apart like a curtain and hide yourself in the little room the weeping branches make.
My favorite tree is an old apple tree. It teeters on the edge of the bank that leads down to the lake. Grandpapa says the apples are sour and wormy, and the tree isn’t worth caring for. I like the tree because it makes an umbrella of shade where I can sit and read and keep an eye on the lake.
The Library
Alone,
walking slowly,
my city girl’s bare feet
shy of glass and stone,
fields orange with hawkweed —
by whose hands
so many?
One look takes in the town,
awnings cranked down
against the sun
making pools of shade
cool to cross.
The library building
its age in stone 1859.
Floor, tables
, chairs,
all oak
all with shiny skin
of varnish.
Sun stopped by
window shades
the color of dried moss.
Books leap
to my hands
green, tan, brown,
dog-eared.
I choose three,
their small weight
friendly
in my arms.
And home
I walk
three friends
with me now.
Everything is up! My garden has five green rows. Only what I had to do was awful. Grandmama said there were too many seedlings. (“Seedlings” is one of my favorite words now.) They were crowding each other out. So I had to pull some of them up and throw them away. I hated that.
Something else. I can walk barefoot. It took me a week to get used to going without shoes. When you’re barefoot you can feel the softness of the dirt and the graininess of the sand and the sun’s heat on the sidewalks in town. It’s as if you’re attached to the earth.
I walked to the library today because all the books I brought with me to read are used up. Though she had never set eyes on me before, the librarian, Miss Walther, greeted me with the kind of smile that says, “I knew you’d be coming.” She was sitting at her desk with her glasses clamped to her nose and her white hair done up in a big puff with a pencil through it. When I said I would please like a library card, she wrote down my name without asking what it was.
I love the way libraries smell. If you just smell one book, it doesn’t smell like that, but when you get a whole lot of books together in one room it’s a papery, leathery, inky smell. The older the books, the better the smell. In the Greenbush library the books are so old that some of them have rubber bands around them to keep in the pages. In the back of the books, where people have signed them out, the handwriting is spidery and faded. Their names are different than ours. Girls were called Abigail and Sophia and Matilda. Boys were called Theodore and Amos and Joshua. I love the sound of the names and say them over to myself.