Introducing Shirley Braverman Read online

  Mitzi was happy today. There had been a letter from Buddy the day before and he said that he was fine and they were not to worry about him. But worrying was all the Blooms seemed to know how to do. When Mitzi and I went to a war movie at the Loew’s theater, she clutched my hand every time a gun was fired or a bomb exploded, and I knew she was thinking about Buddy.

  I never told Mitzi, but I thought about Buddy a lot, too. In fact, I’d had a secret crush on him ever since I was in the fourth grade and he nicknamed me Peewee. No one else ever called me that, and when Buddy did, I pretended I didn’t like it at all.

  Now I wrote my real name in the top left-hand corner of a folded sheet of yellow paper. We were going to have a spelling test and I wrote Miss Cohen’s name in the right-hand corner and the date right under it. November 15, 1944.

  The spelling words were lovely, long and full of tricky sounds. I loved to spell and I never got less than 100 on a spelling test. Someday I was going to enter the National Spelling Bee. Last year we read in the newspaper about a boy in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, who had beaten a girl from Grand Ledge, Michigan, on the word “iridescent.”

  Miss Cohen read the words aloud to us, saying them very clearly and carefully. I knew she felt the same way about words that I did. She was always saying that reading was an adventure and that books were a magic carpet that could take you anywhere you wanted to go, and other things like that. I looked up from my paper after the third word and saw that she was staring dreamily through the window at the gray winter sky, I suppose she was thinking about her boyfriend, who was a sailor on a Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

  After the spelling test, we went to the auditorium for an assembly. Another sixth-grade class was going to present a play called The Pilgrim’s Dream, which was written by Mrs. Whitman, their teacher, and some of my friends were going to be in it.

  Half of the kids were Pilgrims and they wore big white paper collars. The lucky ones got to be Indians, though, with gorgeous feathers and lots of makeup. The play started with the Pilgrims all worried about how they were going to survive the terrible winter in America. One of the Pilgrim fathers kept waving to his friends in the audience and smiling while he said his lines about the harsh weather and all the hardships his people had suffered. There was a lot of other stuff about the Indians and how they managed to live with nature and get along.

  Then one Pilgrim had a dream. In his dream a long table was set with wonderful food and drink. Everyone was happy, singing and smiling. The Indians kept coming to the door bringing presents, including a large cardboard turkey that was supposed to be alive and struggling to get free.

  When the Pilgrim woke up, yawning and stretching, he had to rub his eyes because his dream had come true. That same cardboard turkey was supposed to be cooked and stuffed and it was sitting in the middle of the table. “Oh, we thank thee,” the Pilgrim said, looking up.

  Then all the other Pilgrims came onstage, and a couple of the Indians did too. They all joined hands, facing the audience, and began to sing “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing.”

  I wondered how the Indians were supposed to know the words to that song, but as they sang and Mrs. Whitman played the piano, crossing her arms and crashing her fingers down on the keys, a wonderful feeling came over me. Suddenly I felt thankful too. I was glad to be me, in P.S. 247 in Brooklyn, New York, sitting next to my best friend. I believed that the Allies were going to win the war, that Buddy would surely come home again and we would have a big wonderful party for him. I thought of my mother and father and Theodore and even my sister, Velma, and how much I loved them. Tears came to my eyes, but I felt happier than I ever had before in my life. The play was over. The Pilgrims and the Indians kept bowing and everyone applauded, even though two of the Pilgrims were caught on the wrong side when the curtain came down.

  Four

  Grandpa Small

  ON SUNDAY I DIDN’T feel very happy at all. It was my turn to go with my father and mother to visit Grandpa Small in the old-age home. He had been there a long time, ever since Grandma Small died, when I was little. I couldn’t even remember her. Grandpa Small was old and very sick. One of his big problems was his memory. He couldn’t remember things that had happened five minutes before, but sometimes he remembered things that had happened thirty or forty years ago.

  I didn’t know why I had to go at all. He hardly ever remembered who I was. He’d call me Etta sometimes, which is my mother’s name, or Rifka, who was his wife, my Grandmother Small. Aunt Lena and Aunt Millie shouted at him, because he was deaf, “Papa, this is Shirley. You know—Etta’s girl!” He only smiled, looking absent-minded, like someone who couldn’t find his eyeglasses. Then two minutes later he called me Lena or Millie or Rifka again.

  We had to take a subway train and then a trolley car to get to the old-age home, which was on the other side of Brooklyn. All the way there I’d keep thinking about how lucky Theodore was because everybody said he was too young to visit Grandpa Small. Twice a month I stayed home with him and Velma went. Twice a month she was Theodore’s baby-sitter and I went with my parents. It was my turn again this cold and windy November day. I looked back up at our kitchen window and I could see Theodore’s face pressed against the glass. Lucky stiff, I thought. He didn’t have to go to that awful place where everyone was so old and sick.

  As soon as you walked into the old-age home there was a funny smell, sour and stale. It was much too hot and you could hear the steam bubbling in all the radiators. There were always lots of other visitors there on Sunday. Whole families came, some on the trolley car with us, others by automobile. They brought packages, big shopping bags filled with food and plants and warm socks. Some of the old people waited in wheelchairs in a big room called the solarium. Grandpa Small used to be in the solarium when we came, but this time he was lying in bed propped up on three pillows. Aunt Lena and Aunt Millie were already there when we arrived. “Look who’s here, Papa!” Aunt Lena cried. “It’s Etta and Morris and Shirley!”

  The smell in Grandpa Small’s room was even worse than the one in the hallway. There were two beds in the room, the kind with a handle in the front that you could turn to crank the mattress up or down. There was a man in the other bed and he seemed to be fast asleep. His face was terribly yellow and his skin looked as if it were made of crumpled tissue paper. A woman sat on the visitor’s chair next to his bed reading a book. I wondered if the old man even knew she was there.

  My mother pushed me gently ahead of her. “Say hello,” she whispered, just as if I were a little baby who didn’t know what to do.

  “Hello, Grandpa,” I said, and for some reason I remembered the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Grandpa, what big ears you have, I thought, but of course I didn’t say it. Instead, I leaned close, shutting my eyes and holding my breath at the same time, and put a very fast kiss on my grandfather’s cheek. He reached out then and patted my hand. Everybody acted as if something wonderful had happened, but I felt a little sad.

  “You see?” Aunt Lena said. “Do you see how happy he is to see you?”

  “Shirley brought you some prunes, Papa,” my mother said, reaching into her shopping bag. Of course that wasn’t true. My mother had brought the prunes herself. She had even cooked them that morning before we left the house. I didn’t say anything about it, though. I just stayed in a corner, trying to make myself very small so that they would all forget about me until it was time to go home.

  The door was open and I could see people wheeling some of the old women and men past in their wheelchairs. Everybody talked very loud and in cheerful voices. I could hear people saying, “Isn’t that nice, Mama?” “Isn’t that beautiful, Uncle Willie?” “Aren’t you glad, Papa?” I wondered why everyone was so phony, making believe that all those poor sick people were happy. I made up my mind then and there that when I was old I would never be like Grandpa Small, who couldn’t even remember his own children’s names. I didn’t know exactly how I would do it,
but I was going to be a strong old lady who could do anything, even jump rope or ride a bicycle if I wanted to, and who could remember everyone I ever met in my whole life.

  I was glad when the nurses and attendants started coming into the rooms saying, “Visiting’s over now. Time to go home, folks.” A big fat woman with a very red nose looked into Grandpa Small’s room. “How’s my boyfriend?” she asked, winking at me. “Time to go, folks.”

  This time it was my father who pushed me forward to say goodbye.

  “Goodbye, Grandpa,” I said, kissing his other cheek.

  “Rifka?” he asked.

  My mother and father looked at each other across the bed and my mother lowered her eyes. Then she squeezed Grandpa’s hand. “It’s me, Papa. It’s Etta. I’m going home now. Take care, Papa.”

  The woman visiting the other old man put a card in her book to mark her place and tiptoed out of the room.

  I was surprised to see how dark it was when we went outside again. I walked between my mother and father to the trolley station, holding their hands. My father kept swinging our arms forward and back. The air smelled so sweet and fresh and cold. I started to skip and my father laughed, skipping along with me, but Mother pulled back. “Stop it,” she said. “Morris, sometimes you’re like a big baby! Watch out! I’m going to lose my shoe!” But she was smiling and she didn’t sound angry at all.

  Later, sitting in the subway train, she started talking about Grandpa Small when he was a young man. “You can’t imagine,” she said, “how handsome he was. Very tall and he had lots of thick dark hair. I think you inherited yours from him, Shirley.”

  I tried to picture Grandpa Small as a young man with thick hair, but it was impossible. All I could think of was the thin, bald old man propped up like a baby on three pillows.

  “When I was very little,” my mother continued, “he took me ice skating in the park. We went at night when the moon lit up the whole world. We wore long, long red scarves that my mother knitted for us.”

  The subway train raced through a tunnel and my mother smiled to herself, remembering.

  I leaned against my father’s shoulder thinking of all the people I knew. I thought there were about a million of them, but I remembered everyone’s name. I started with the children in my class. Mitzi, I thought. Renee and Jeanette and Sylvia and Martin and Gloria. Morty, I thought, and Sammy and Ruth and Elliot. Paul. Steven. Elaine. Muriel. My head banged gently against my father’s shoulder with the motion of the train.

  Five

  Cure No. 1: The Ghost in the Closet

  MITZI AND I WERE training Theodore to be scare-proof. It was really Mitzi’s idea in the first place. If we could get him used to being scared, she said, it would be harder and harder to scare him. Eventually he would be brave. We made Theodore sit in a chair in the living room with his back to the doorway.

  Velma was in her little room listening to the radio and my mother was in the kitchen making dinner.

  “Now don’t turn around, Theodore,” Mitzi warned. “Just keep sitting there.”

  “What are you going to do?” I whispered.

  Mitzi made a werewolf face at me, holding up her hands like claws.

  “Oh, don’t,” I said. “He’ll drop dead. He’s scared of his own shadow already.”

  Mitzi thought about it. “Okay. We’ll start slowly. We’ll just make scary sounds for a while.” She motioned for me to hide just outside the doorway with her. Then she put her finger to her lips. “Theodooore Braaavermaaan,” she said, in a very spooky voice.

  “Wh-what?” Theodore asked.

  “This is a ghooooost speeeeaking.”

  “I d-don’t like g-ghosts,” Theodore said. He started to get out of the chair.

  “Siiiiit doooown,” Mitzi said, “or I’m going to get yoooooou.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Maybe...”

  Mitzi squeezed my shoulder. “It’s for his own good,” she reminded me. “Just be quiet.” Then she leaned her face toward the living room again. “Theodooooore.”

  “W-what do you w-want?”

  “You must do a very brave deed, Theodooore.”

  “I h-have to go to the bathroom,” Theodore said.

  “Noooo, you dooon’t. You have to do a very brave deed.”

  “What are you going to make him do?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Mitzi said cheerfully. “I’ll think of something.” Then she giggled, and I felt like giggling too, in the dark hallway, even though I was a little worried about Theodore. What if he fainted?

  “I’ve got it,” Mitzi said then. She moved her arms wildly, motioning for me to go into the hall closet.

  “I can’t” I said.

  But Mitzi just kept waving her arms. “Do you want him to be the biggest sissy in America?” she hissed at me.

  “No-o,” I said, moving slowly toward the closet.

  “Get in,” she said. “Hurry up.”

  With a last look at Theodore’s chair in the living room, I ran to the hall closet and went inside. It was jam-packed with winter coats and there was hardly any room for me. I left the door open a tiny crack for light and air.

  Mitzi called in to Theodore again. “Here is the brave deed you have to do,” she said.

  “I have to do my homework,” Theodore said.

  “Later,” Mitzi told him.

  I wished she would just tell him what to do and get it over with. It was awfully stuffy in the closet, and all those woolen coats made my nose itch.

  “Go to the hall clooooset,” Mitzi moaned. “Open the door and let my little ghost sister free.”

  “I-I have three n-numbers to write,” Theodore said. “I-I have to do my h-homework.” He sounded as if he was going to cry.

  I could hear my mother singing in the kitchen as she beat something with an egg beater.

  “If you do not let my little sister freeeee,” Mitzi said, “she will come back to haunt yooooou.”

  Theodore was making funny little sniffling sounds. I was beginning to be sorry we started the whole thing. What did Mitzi expect me to do anyway? I opened the door a little wider. “Psst,” I said. “I can’t stay here all day. What am I supposed to do in this stupid closet?”

  “Scare him,” she said. “When he opens the door, you just scream Boo! at him. That should do it. I bet it will cure him. I bet he’ll never be scared again in his whole life.”

  I felt very doubtful. Did you cure pneumonia by putting somebody in ice water? Could you cure a sissy by scaring him half to death?

  “I don’t know...” I said, but Mitzi ran over and slammed the door right in my face. It was pitch black in the closet. I wondered how much oxygen there was in there, anyway. What if I died of suffocation and Theodore opened the door and a corpse fell out? Then Mitzi would be sorry. I couldn’t see anything and it was difficult to hear what was going on outside. I pressed my ear against the door and listened.

  “Just keep your eyes shut, Theodore,” Mitzi was saying, “until I tell you to open them.”

  I couldn’t hear any sound from Theodore at all, but Mitzi’s voice got louder, as if she was coming closer to the closet.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Open your eyes now. Then open the closet door and let my little ghost sister’s spirit free or she will haunt you every night!”

  Poor Theodore. He must have been scared out of his wits. The whole thing was stupid. It just wouldn’t work. We would have to wait until he “grew out of it,” as my mother said.

  I could hear something then. Someone was turning the doorknob to open the closet door. Mitzi was crazy if she thought I was going to say Boo! and scare my own little brother silly. I gripped the other side of the door handle. As soon as Theodore opened the door I was going to tell him to forget the whole thing. If he opened it before my oxygen ran out. I leaned against the door then and it opened suddenly, and I fell right out, practically into Theodore’s arms. “See!” I said. “It’s only me!” I smiled brightly at him, but Theodore had looke
d at me as if I really were a ghost and then he ran shrieking down the hallway. He screamed louder than he ever had before. Mitzi put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes, but I ran after Theodore. “It was only a joke!” I said. “Look, Theodore, it’s only Shirley. It’s only me!”

  But he just went crashing ahead, still screaming, until he collided with the door at the other end of the hall.

  Mother came out of the kitchen with the egg beater still in her hand. “What on earth...?”

  Velma came running out of her room, too. The woman who lived in the apartment underneath us began banging on her ceiling with a broom, which she did every time we made too much noise.

  Theodore had gone into the door with his head, butting it just like an old goat. He had a big bump on his forehead and it was turning blue.

  “What happened?” Mother said, over and over again.

  Theodore had his mouth opened wide but no sound came out at all. He just kept pointing his finger at me.

  “Did you hit him in the head?” Velma asked.

  “I didn’t...” I said. “I didn’t do... I only wanted...”

  It was no use trying to explain. Theodore had his voice back again and he sounded more like the air-raid siren than ever.

  Mitzi grabbed her coat and ran to the door. She looked back at me as if to say she was sorry and then she was gone.

  I went to the refrigerator for a piece of ice to put on Theodore’s forehead, but he wouldn’t talk to me.

  I wrapped the ice in a washcloth and held it gently against his head. “The-o-dore,” I sang, in a very quiet voice. “I won’t do that any-more.”

  He didn’t forgive me until after supper. And he wasn’t cured at all. If anything, he was worse than ever. He wouldn’t go to sleep without a light on.