The Loud Silence of Francine Green Read online

  Sophie had to stay after school for the crime of laughing out loud in the bathroom (the Perfect and Admirable Mary Agnes Malone was bathroom monitor, of course, assisted by her sidekick, the weasely Weslia Babchuk). I took the bus home alone.

  Before Sophie came, I was alone a lot. Oh, I wasn't a hermit or an outcast or anything. I always had someone to eat lunch with and play hangman with on rainy days. But I didn't have a best friend.

  Sometimes I went home with Florence or had Mary Virginia Mulcahy come to my house, and in the fourth grade my paper dolls and I suffered with Mary Agnes Malone, but I just didn't fit in with the other groups—not the wild girls or the pious ones or the Future Homemakers of America. I wasn't like them, and being different felt wrong, so I kept quiet about it.

  In the third grade Margaret Mary Russell and I spent some Saturdays together at the children's matinee. My parents gave me a nickel for the movie and another one for popcorn and then dropped us off for the double feature. Margaret Mary's mother picked us up. Her father died in the war and I was not supposed ever to mention the war or dying or fathers to Margaret Mary. My mother said she was fragile.

  When we were lining up for the May Day procession that year, Margaret Mary whispered to me, "The whole school smells like flowers. Sort of like how I imagine Heaven."

  Sister Basil, passing by, grabbed Margaret Mary's arm and shook her. "You, girl, no talking in line!" Margaret Mary was so frightened that she peed, right there in line in the hallway. The pee ran down her legs and puddled on the floor.

  Margaret Mary didn't come back to All Saints, and I went to the movies on Saturdays with Dolores, who complained that she was much too old for children's matinees, except once when the film for My Pal Trigger broke and we got to see Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound instead. I stayed out of Sister Basil's way after that, and I never, ever, talked in line.

  But now I had Sophie. We agreed about so many things, like uniforms, chocolate ice cream, and Dolores. We laughed at the same dumb stuff and hated the same people.

  And the fact that we had one big difference didn't get in the way. I was a coward, and Sophie was brave. She didn't worry about getting in trouble and wasn't afraid of Sister Basil at all. I must admit I sort of enjoyed her standing up for herself and making trouble for Sister, as long as it didn't make any trouble for me.

  When I was six or seven, during the war, I used to see posters pasted up warning people against leaking government secrets. One poster showed a sinking ship with the words Loose Lips Sink Ships. Another had a drowning soldier over the caption Someone Talked. I had nightmares for weeks afterward, worried that something I said had caused some poor soldier to drown. I didn't know just what a first grader could say to cause such a tragedy, but I took no chances. I just kept quiet. I guess it became kind of a habit.

  During dinner that night I got a phone call from Sophie. "Big trouble, Francine," she said. "I'm under house arrest. Can't leave the house except for school and can't talk on the phone for two weeks. Two weeks!"

  "You're on the phone now."

  "That's because my jailer just went into the bathroom and took his newspaper. We have a few minutes."

  "What happened?"

  "My red underwear turned our laundry pink. Everything—sheets, towels, his undershirts and handkerchiefs—pink. You should see them hanging on the line. Pink."

  I started to laugh, but she said, "Not funny, Francine! I'm locked in the house with a very angry man in a pink undershirt who will make me read improving books and have serious conversations with him for two whole weeks. I will just die."

  "Can I send you a care package, like people do for starving children?"

  "Yes, yes. A Baby Ruth, some notepaper, and a bottle of root beer. Please."

  "Okay, I'll—"

  "Got to go. I just heard the toilet flush. Leave it in the bushes outside my window."

  When I told my father what had happened at the Bowmans', he laughed. "This sure doesn't seem like a good time for a person to run around in a pink wardrobe," he said. "Pinkos aren't very popular right now."

  Pinko. I knew that meant communist, like Red. I knew communists came from Russia and were people to be afraid of. I knew Sister thought they were evil and godless and would destroy our immortal souls as well as our country. Would people think Mr. Bowman was a communist because his undershirt was pink? Would he be arrested and sent to Russia? How long did pink dye stay in a person's clothes? And where would I get the money for a root beer and a Baby Ruth?

  12

  Changes

  I took a deep breath before stepping into Riley's Drugs. My mother had sent me for bobby pins and aspirin. I was going to take the opportunity to flirt with Gordon Riley. My hair had grown out enough, so it looked like something someone might have done on purpose, but I checked my reflection in the glass door to make sure. I remembered all the things Dolores had told me and practiced asking questions about hot rods and butterfat as I walked to the back of the store.

  The soda counter was nearly empty, except for Gordon, a trio of older ladies with their silver hair in hair nets, and a couple of boys shooting the papers from soda straws at the ladies. I took a seat at the end of the counter, my heart skipping and my stomach doing back flips. Gordon Riley and Montgomery Clift did that to me.

  "Root beer float with chocolate ice cream, right?" Gordon said when he saw me. Sophie and I had been in lots of times for root beer floats with chocolate ice cream. Sophie always ordered for both of us. I had yet to exchange a word with Gordon myself.

  My face grew hot. 1 nodded, and the root beer float appeared in front of me.

  "I know your name is Francine," he said to me. "Mine's Gordon."

  My bones were melting. I nodded and took a slurp of my root beer.

  "You go to school around here?"

  I shook my head and took another slurp.

  "I'm at University High, a sophomore," he said. "You know anyone there?"

  I shook my head again. Ye gods. I was such a droop. A dishrag, a sad sack, a dope. Gordon Riley was right there talking to me and I couldn't say a word. Just sat there with my face red, slurping up root beer. Ye gods.

  A teenaged couple, holding hands, sat down, and Gordon went over to serve them. I kept slurping until the grating noise of the last drops echoed along the counter.

  Someone grabbed me from behind and shouted, "Gotcha!" I jumped a mile into the air.

  Gert Miller and Margie McGonigle slid onto the stools on either side of me. "Wow! You should have seen your face!" Margie shrieked. "What were you thinking about so hard?"

  "Never mind," I said, pushing my empty glass away. "I'm leaving."

  "No, stay," said Gert. "Sorry we scared you. C'mon, stay. I'll buy you another root beer float." She called out to Gordon, "Three root beer floats, my good man, and don't skimp on the ice cream."

  "We're drowning our sorrows," Margie said. "I was planning to have a slumber party over Christmas vacation, but my dad got a look at my report card." She cocked her head toward Gert. "And her mother drinks, you know, so we can't have it at her house." Gert nodded.

  Our floats arrived, and we slurped in unison for a minute. "Hey," Margie said, "what if we have the party at your house?"

  My house? I'd had birthday parties when I was little, but the girls had never come over for a slumber party before. I suppose that's because I'd never asked them. I never thought they'd want to come. "Really? Sure," I said. "I'll ask."

  "Neat," said Margie.

  "Swell," said Gert.

  "Super," they said together.

  I ran to Sophie's. She was finally off house arrest, thank goodness. I had to tell her about the party right away. It would be so great. We would dance and tell jokes and eat too much. The other girls would get to know Sophie, how much fun she could be when she wasn't trying to bother Sister or save the world from fascism. This would be super.

  "Soph," I shouted, banging on the door until it opened. "Soph!"

  "What is
it?" she asked. "Is Montgomery Clift in town again?"

  "Listen to this," I said, following her inside. "We're going to have a slumber party over Christmas vacation. I have to ask my parents, but I'm sure it'll be okay."

  "What?"

  "A slumber party. You know, where friends sleep over and make fudge and paint each other's toenails and dance."

  "I hate fudge, I don't know how to dance, and my only friend is you. I won't come." She marched into her room with me on her heels.

  "Come on. It'll be fun. Gert and Margie will be there, of course, and we'll invite Mary Virginia, Florence, and Susan."

  "No, thanks."

  I flopped onto her bed. "Why not?"

  "Because they're your friends, not mine."

  "They'd be your friends if you got to know them and let them get to know you."

  Sophie grimaced at herself in the mirror. "They know me all right, and I know them, and we'll never be friends. Go have your silly party without me."

  "Come on, Sophie, I wouldn't do that. We're best friends, but you could at least try to be friends with them, too. And you don't hate fudge."

  "I would if Gert made it." Sophie brightened. "Hey, maybe we could have our own slumber party, just us. We could drink root beer and read movie magazines and gossip about the other girls."

  "That's what we do all the time. I wanted this to be special, to do slumber party things." I could feel the excitement draining out of me like air out of a leaky old balloon. Why did Sophie have to be so stubborn?

  Could I have the party without her? Would that really be all right? I looked over at her and she looked right back at me, pushing her hair back behind her ears. I couldn't desert her for Gert Miller. "I suppose we could have a party by ourselves," I said. "Gee, I can't wait to tell Margie and Gert that I'm having the slumber party but they can't come. That will be a fun conversation." I sat up on my heels. "If I agree to do it your way, you have to agree to do some special slumber party things. Like dance."

  "I told you, I don't know how to dance," Sophie said, sitting on her desk.

  "Of course you do. Everyone dances. You just move your feet, swing your hips, snap your fingers. Wait, I'll show you." I had never danced with an actual boy, but I cut a mean rug in front of the mirror in the bathroom.

  I jumped up and switched on Sophie's radio. "Oh, goodie, it's 'Tiger Rag.'" The Mills Brothers crooned and tooted and thumped, "Hold that tiger! Hold that tiger! Hold that tiger! Hold that tiger!"

  "Feel it, Sophie," I shouted over the music. "Here." I touched my ears. "And then here," I said, pointing to my stomach. "And then here, in your feet. And you're dancing."

  "Francine, do you know how silly you look?"

  "I do not. I'm jitterbugging. I'm supposed to look like this." I grabbed Sophie's hand. "Come on, let's boogie-woogie."

  Sophie resisted as I tried to pull her up. "Let go. I don't want to do this. I don't want to feel things in my stomach and my feet. Let go!" She jerked away and sat back on her desk.

  "Sophie Bowman, sometimes I don't get you at all. Won't you even try?"

  "Dancing is so ordinary. Everybody does it. All girls dance. I'm not ordinary, I'm not all girls, and I don't want to be."

  "You could dance in an unordinary, spectacularly individual way. Come on and try."

  I pulled her up and she moved around a little, her feet turning this way and that, her arms flailing as if she were chasing bees away. "Well, it's not pretty, but I think it's dancing," I told her.

  She stopped. "That's enough," she said as she flopped onto her bed.

  "I'm sorry I said that, Soph. You weren't doing so badly."

  "I am not about to wiggle around and have people laugh at me. If I can't do it right, I just won't do it."

  "What? The brave and fearless Sophie? Come on, take a chance." Holy cow, here I was telling Sophie to try to risk a little, instead of the other way around. What a surprise.

  "Listen, Soph, you won," I said. "We're not having the slumber party. But we are going to get you dancing. Now get off that bed and do what I do."

  We stumbled around for a while to the music, and I think maybe Sophie enjoyed it a tiny bit although she said it was just plain hard work. "I have to stop now," I finally said. "My mother is waiting for her aspirin, and besides, my stomach hurts."

  I started home at a run, but my insides kept cramping up. Food poisoning, I thought. Or more likely too many root beer floats.

  But it wasn't. Changing for bed that night, I discovered why my belly hurt and my blouses were too tight. I had gotten what my mother called "your monthly visitor" and Dolores called "the curse." It must have been all the bouncing around at Sophie's.

  My mother gave me a box of sanitary napkins, an elastic belt, and a booklet called "So You're a Woman Now" from the people who made Kotex. She brought me a cup of milky tea and stroked my hair. "You're getting so grown up," she said. "My little girl."

  I sipped my tea and thought. I had always thought that growing up, like dying, was something that happened to other people. Not me. Yet here I was.

  Getting my period seemed so final. It wasn't like hopscotch, where if you messed up, you could start again. Yesterday I was a kid, and today God poked me in the stomach and said, "You're grown up now, Francine. What are you going to do about it?" There was no going back.

  After everyone was in bed, I called Sophie. "Soph," I whispered, "guess what! I'm bleeding. I got my period."

  "Oh, ick. Poor you."

  "I don't mind. It just means that I'm growing up. Dolores seems to handle it without too many problems." I looked down at my chest. "And it does mean cleavage, you know."

  "Well, I'm never going to get my period."

  "Sophie Bowman, for such a smart person, you're dumb sometimes."

  "Who cares?" she said.

  "Good night, Sophie."

  "Good night, Francine."

  13. December 1949

  Meeting Jacob Mandelbaum

  From way down the street Sophie and I could hear his voice, roaring and thundering like the sea. "How can you say Irv Noren is a better hitter than Frank Kelleher? What a lot of hooey. That Kelleher, he's such a slugger, he has muscles in his hair." The voice stopped roaring—to give someone else a chance to talk, I supposed—and then resumed. "Harry, my friend," it said, "you know baseball like you know cooking."

  "That's Jacob Mandelbaum," Sophie said as we walked up the path to her porch, where Mr. Bowman and another man were sitting on lawn chairs.

  "I didn't know your father liked baseball. I thought he was more of a serious opera kind of guy."

  "He doesn't, but he likes Jacob Mandelbaum."

  "Jacob," Mr. Bowman was saying as we climbed the stairs, "others obviously agree with me. Irv Noren was voted MVP of the Pacific Coast League for 1949. Most Valuable Player."

  A man who looked like everybody's grandfather took a big cigar out of his mouth and said, "Feh, by me MVP means Most Visible Punim—a pretty boy who gets his picture in the papers. If you said Ozark Ike Zernial, maybe. That boy tore up the field. But I still think Frankie Kelleher, a California boy like me, is—"

  "Mr. M, you're not from California," Sophie said, kissing him on the cheek. "This is my friend, Francine Green. Francine, meet Jacob Mandelbaum."

  Mr. Mandelbaum stood up and bowed to me. "Sophie, darling, how did you do it, find the one girl in the whole world as beautiful as you?"

  I blushed and sat on the porch railing. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Mandelbaum," I said.

  He winked at me and sat down again. "Of course I'm a California boy, Sophie, my darling," he said. "Look at my driver's license: 445 Maple Avenue, Los Angeles 36, California. The great state of California says I'm a California boy. I am also a proud U.S. citizen, obey the law, pay my taxes, and fly the flag on the Fourth of July. A real Yankee Doodle and a California boy, that's me." He leaned back, and smoke swirled about his head.

  "Mr. Mandelbaum is an actor," Sophie said to me. "In the movies. His movie-star name is Jac
k Mann."

  A movie star? He didn't seem like a movie star, with his thin gray hair, sad brown eyes, and funny foreign talk, but my heart started to pound anyway. Did he, I wondered, know Montgomery Clift?

  "Jack Mann. Feh. Mandelbaum, it means almond tree. What does Mann mean? Bubkes, nothing." He leaned forward. "They say my real name is too foreign. Too Jewish, they think but don't say"

  I cleared my throat. "I myself like Mandelbaum better," I said. "It sounds like part of a poem. But I suppose Mann is a better name for a movie star."

  "Movie star, no. No kind of star. A character actor," he said, blowing smoke into the air. "That means small parts, tiny parts sometimes, but not even them much right now. The FBI doesn't like my causes or my friends, and my studio dances when the FBI plays the fiddle."

  The FBI playing the fiddle? What was he talking about? I thought the FBI arrested bad guys and kept us safe.

  "All the studios are cooperating with the FBI, Jacob," said Mr. Bowman. "And as to your causes and your friends, why, it's a bad time to support the communists. We keep hearing about Stalin's atrocities—"

  "Joe Stalin, sure, he's a monster, with his labor camps and murder squads, but the communists don't have it all wrong. People are important, communism says, not property. People, peace, brotherhood, civil rights: When did these become dirty words? Communist words?" Mr. Mandelbaum stood up and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up like beach grass. "I've had it good in this country, Harry, and I want that for every person—enough to eat, a job, the freedom to speak, to work, to protest, to—" He stopped. "Bah. Actors. You give us a line and we make a speech. I apologize." He bowed slightly and sat down again.