The Loud Silence of Francine Green (4 page)

Finally the clerk took my money, gave me a roll of
three-cent stamps, and stamped "First Class" on Artie's hand.

Before heading home, we walked around a bit. Artie stared at his stamped hand while I admired the fall dresses in the shop windows. The new fashions were darkly romantic: wools and cotton plaids, with full skirts, wide collars and capes, and peplums that nipped the waist and flared out over the hips. "Look at that blue and green one, Artie. Isn't it just drooly? Artie?
Artie?
"

He was gone. In only one block—okay, maybe three or four, I wasn't counting—from the post office, he'd gotten himself lost.

I don't know if I was more scared for him, being lost, or for me, being in big trouble. I retraced my steps, looked on every corner, and walked slowly back up the street, checking each store: The Darling Shoppe, Newberry Five and Ten, The Feed Bag, Millie's Millinery, Fogarty's Appliances, where a crowd of small boys was watching puppets argue on a television set in the window.

Normally I would have stayed to watch too, because we didn't seem likely ever to have a television in our house. My father said it was too expensive and just a passing fad. I told him that I'd read in
Life
magazine that one out of seven families in America had a television set. He said I should count six houses down the street from us and go watch
their
set.

I examined the television-watching boys closely. No Artie.

"Seen a little boy dressed for church?" I asked the people I passed. No one had.

Just as I was about to give up and call a policeman, I saw
a commotion across the street. I ran over, hoping the hubbub was about a little lost boy.

Where a building had been going up for months behind a tall fence was now the largest grocery store I had ever seen.
Piggly Wiggly Supermarket,
a banner said. A giant pig with huge golden scissors was cutting a ribbon strung across the front door, signaling the official opening of the store. And there pulling on the pig's curly tail was Artie.

"Artie!" I said, grabbing him. "I was scared to death. Don't ever wander away like that again!"

"He's okay, miss," the pig said. "I was watching him for you." I could see a man's face through the holes in the mask cut for breathing.

"Thank you," I said to the pig. I had never imagined having an occasion to say thank you to a pig. But there it was: "
Thank you," I said to the pig.
"Let's go, Artie," I said, reaching for his hand.

"No. I want to go in there."

"Artie, that's enough. We have to go home."

"No!" Artie ran into the market.

I collared him by the soap flakes and grabbed his hand.

"What is this place?" he asked, looking around.

I looked too. Soft music came from somewhere above. Ceiling lights reflected off the shiny metal of the shopping carts, and the red linoleum floors gleamed. "It's like a grocery store in Heaven," I said. Artie and I walked up and down the brightly lit aisles of peanut butter and rye bread, Twinkies and Oreos and Stopette deodorant, chops and steaks and bacon in tight plastic packages.

Pyramids of lettuce and oranges and beets in bright colors looked like paintings by some great fruit artist. "Buy me an apple, Francine. This apple," Artie said, taking an apple from the very base of the pyramid.

"No, Artie," I said, too late, as the pyramid collapsed and all the apples fell to the floor. "Come on, " I said. "Let's scram before they figure out it was us."

We were headed for the door when Artie stopped in front of a phone booth. "I want to check for nickels," he said, climbing onto the seat.

"Come
on,
" I said, pulling his hand.

"Noooo!" cried Artie, grabbing onto the dial of the telephone and holding on tight. And then he wailed, "Fran-
seeeeen,
get me outa here!" His finger was stuck in the dial. I tried pulling it free, but it just got stuck tighter and tighter and Artie wailed louder and louder. People stopped to watch us, a red-faced girl and a little boy hanging by his finger from the telephone dial.

"Let me try," said a man in a blue jacket that had
Leroy, Manager
embroidered on the pocket. He opened a jar of Vaseline and smeared some on the dial and Artie's finger. A few tugs and the finger came free.

Leroy Manager, was shaking with the laughter he was too polite to let out. "Thank you, Mister Leroy," 1 said, and hurried Artie away. My arm hurt from yanking on Artie and my face burned with humiliation. And Sophie thought I wouldn't like being an only child. Ha! Not today.

"Now don't go telling Mother any of this," I said once we were outside. "Do you hear me?" I looked at Artie's face. He
would be telling Mother before the front door slammed behind us.

After all that, I was happy to spend my nickels to go home on the bus. Artie slept, his head bobbing against my shoulder, glasses sagging. He had a smile on his face and Rice Krispies stuck to his fingers. I pushed his glasses back up onto his nose.

What a day. What a lot of stuff for Artie to tell Mother. He snored softly, and I rested my head on his, breathing in the familiar warm, salty, little-boy smell.

We got off the bus at the stop near the Petrovs' store. Tiny, red-haired Mrs. Petrov was washing the front windows. I could see smeared red paint saying
Russkies go home
and a big six-pointed star on the glass. When she saw us, she shook her head. "That's why Petrov and I left Russia, to get away from such thugs," she said. "And now look, they follow us here. Russia explodes an atom bomb and it's our fault?"

Russia? Atom bomb? Where? Were people dead? Were we at war? I took Artie's hand and ran home, my face turned to the sky, watching for Russian planes loaded with bombs for Palm View Drive.

"Mama," Artie cried as we ran in the door, "Francine losted me and a telephone tried to eat me and—"

His shouts were drowned out by my own. "Mother. Mother!" I called, letting the screen door slam behind me.

"In here, Francine," she said from the kitchen, "and don't be so noisy."

The kitchen smelled of dish soap and coffee, familiar
and comforting. My mother and father were sitting at the table. She was clipping penny-off coupons from a magazine. Artie climbed into her lap and snuggled down.

I sat down too. "I just saw Mrs. Petrov. She said something about Russia dropping an atom bomb. Is that true?"

My father rustled his newspaper. "I was just reading it here. It was a test. Soviet scientists have successfully tested an atomic bomb." He shook his head. "Communist Russia with the bomb. That Mao fellow and his communist army in China. Commies fighting the French in Indochina. The world is getting a whole lot more dangerous."

All I knew about communists was that they believed everyone owned everything in common, wore fur hats, and hated God and America. Now they had an atom bomb. My stomach fell between my knees, or at least that's what it felt like. "Will they drop the bomb on us?"

My father leaned over and ruffled Artie's hair with one big hand and mine with the other. "Now, don't you little guys start worrying. You got the U.S. government, your mother, and me. We won't let anything bad happen to you."

I got up to leave the kitchen but stopped and turned back. "Oh, I just remembered. Somebody painted nasty stuff on the Petrovs' window."

"Oh, poor Luba," my mother said. "I have to call her."

"Stay out of it, Lorraine," said my father.

"Why would someone do that?" I asked him. "The Petrovs aren't communists, are they?"

"Someone who'd do that wouldn't care what's true and what's not," he said. "They just want to stir up trouble. You
stay out of it too, Francine. Get groceries at Willard's Market for a while."

"But I like—"

"That's enough, Francine," my mother said. "Listen to your father."

I went to my room and lay on the bed. In a way, things had been simpler during the war. We all knew who the enemy was and worked together to defeat him. My father wasn't in the army—his eyes were bad and his feet were flat—but my mother had a victory garden, where she grew our vegetables so that more food could be sent to the soldiers. I liked to read lying on the warm ground under the tomato vines, smelling the pungent scent of the leaves and watching the pole-bean shadows dance on my legs. We ate lots of macaroni and fish, and I helped Dolores collect gum wrappers so the government could use the silver foil in the war effort.

And when it was all over, people hugged each other and danced with strangers, knowing the bad guys were gone and the good guys had made us safe. People's fathers and brothers and uncles came home, and we had plenty of meat again, and butter and gasoline and shoes. Was that all over now? Would Russia having the bomb mean another war and more dead soldiers?

I knew what atomic bombs could do. I had seen Fox Movietone newsreels of Japanese cities turned to rubble, of exploding buildings, children on fire, piles and piles of charred bodies. And the world was getting
more
dangerous. I pulled the blankets over my head.

"
In order to make our writing livelier,
" Sister Basil said as we opened our grammar workbooks, "we can employ a number of tools. You know about adjectives and adverbs, phrases and clauses. Today we will learn about some figures of speech: similes, metaphors, oxymorons, and irony."

I already knew about similes, saying things were like other things, and metaphors, saying things
were
other things. Oxymorons, which used two words of opposite meaning together, and irony, where the ordinary meaning of the words is the opposite of what is really in your mind, were new to me.

We had to make up examples in our workbooks to show we understood. I wrote:

Simile:
Dolores blew her nose, which was as red as a rose.

Metaphor:
When his cap pistol broke, the little boy cried a river of tears.

Oxymoron:
I gave a silent cry of desperation.

Irony:
I just love to go to the doctor for a shot.

Irony was especially appealing to me. I thought of lots more examples, but I didn't write them down:
I was so pleased to see Mary Agnes Malone there. Yes, Mother, I think Dad looks exactly like Montgomery Clift. Sure, let's draw flowers all over our uniform skirts. I know Sister would be crazy about it. Oh, no, the idea of the world blowing up doesn't bother me one bit.

I was pretty excited. With irony I could mean the very opposite of what I said, but no one would know that. I could say exactly what I thought without getting into trouble.

"Francine," Sister said, "will you please go up to the board and write down your example of a metaphor?"

"I can't think of anything I'd rather do," I said ironically.

After school I went to the classroom that served as the school library.

"Sister Peter Claver," I said to the nun reading behind the desk, "I'm Francine Green. Sister Basil the Great sent me to help you."
Sister Basil the Great
—was that irony or oxymoron? I wondered.

Sister Peter Claver, the librarian, was new this year. She looked up at me so quickly that her cheeks wobbled. "Hello, Francine. Call me Sister Pete. Most of the girls do."

I nodded.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I could certainly use your help. But tell me, is this something you chose to do, or did Sister Basil request that you do so?"

Request? Sister Basil never requested. She had said, "You, Francine, go help Sister Peter Claver in the library after school." And what could I say but "Yes, Sister"?

"Some of both, I guess," I told Sister Pete. "I do like books."

"Well, then, welcome to the library, Francine Green." She stood up slowly, a great wave breaking on the shore of her desk (metaphor). Sister Pete in her black habit was as round as a bowling ball (simile), rolling around the library as she showed me the filing system for library cards, pointed out the shelving cart, and taught me how to check books in and out using the little rubber date stamp.

"Well, that wore me out," she said with a sad smile (oxymoron) as she sat back down at her seat behind the counter. I picked up a book to shelve:
Dotty Dimple at School?
Ye gods. No doubt a book full of deep wisdom (irony).

"Wait a moment, Francine. I'd like to get to know you a little bit. Why don't you tell me about some of those books you like?"

I didn't know how to talk to a nun except to say "Yes, Sister" and "No, Sister." What could I say to her? "Ummm" is what I said, and I looked down at my feet.

"Do you know this one?" She held up
Little Women.

"Yes," I mumbled. "I liked that. And
Heidi. Stuart Little.
And..." My mind went blank and I couldn't think of another title. My face flamed.

Finally Sister Pete took pity on me. "Go ahead and shelve those books now, Francine. We'll talk another time. And thank you for your help."

I shelved books for a while, wondering while I worked where I could get a quarter for the movies on Saturday. Movie prices were sky-high (metaphor) and I was broke.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought, if there were a library that had movies instead of books? You could check one out, take it home, open the covers, and the movie would play. Now, that would be even better than television.

I sighed and went on shelving:
The Runaway Sardine. Jean Craig Grows Up. Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People. Stories of Virgin Martyrs for Girls.
Ye gods.

I picked up a book with a blue cover. Someone was lucky enough to have just read
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
I had seen the movie a couple of years before, and then I had read the book for a book report in the sixth grade. The book was a lot longer, but both were great. Francie Nolan seemed so real. I liked how she survived and grew in a hard world just like the tree outside her window.

I didn't like how her father drank so much. He didn't just have martoonies at dinner. He would not go to work and spent all their money getting falling-down drunk. My father was pretty boring and didn't listen to me much, but at least he wasn't bad news like Mr. Nolan.