Gone to Soldiers (57 page)

Sandy was motioning frantically for her to join the group of Jewish children. Now they'll come to take us away, she thought. They'll separate us out the way they took Maman and Rivka. They were no longer in the last place she had dreamed about. The new place gave her worse dreams.

“Don't talk to them!” Sandy hissed at her. “They all have knives.”

“Who?” Naomi looked around quickly. She did not see any police or men with knives.

“The shvartzers. They all have knives.”

Naomi looked over her shoulder at the ten colored children huddled against the wall, Clotilde in her white pinafore holding herself across the chest. Their teacher Miss Cahootie was still gossiping with the other teachers. From down the hall she could hear the sounds of other classrooms, more subdued than the glad roar which usually rose when teachers stepped out. “Knives? No more than you do.”

“The Negroes are beating up on the whites. It started last night at Belle Isle—”

“When the Negro mother was thrown in the river with her baby?”

“What are you talking about? It was a white woman who had it done to her, you know?” Sandy whispered, “Like what we looked up the library that time, you know, before you took down Errol's picture.”

“Some nigger sailor raped a white woman,” Four Eyes Rosovsky said loudly. “That's what started it.”

“Started what?” Naomi felt completely lost. If it wasn't the war, what was it? Everybody was scared, for she could smell that familiar ammoniac tang that she had first registered just before the Germans entered Paris.

“The Negroes and the whites are fighting each other downtown and everyplace,” Sandy said breathlessly. “They're beating up on each other and shooting and knifing each other. Mayor Jeffries called for everybody to stay home and be quiet if they don't have to go to work, but gangs are roaming all over the city beating up on each other and looking for trouble.”

Miss Cahootie came charging into the room, red-faced and wringing her hands. “Now, what is this, class? What are you doing all up out of your seats? Don't think because you're supposed to graduate this Friday that I can't control you. Anybody who gets too big for his britches will miss his graduation, do you hear me? If you think I'm fooling, just try me. You'll be the sorry one.”

“She wouldn't dare,” Sandy said out of the corner of her mouth.

“I don't care. Then I don't have to wear my lousy yellow dress.”

“Do you have something to say to the class, Naomi? Because you can just stand up and say it to everyone.”

“No, ma'am.”

“Then you can keep your mouth shut. We'll start with attendance. Ralph, you can take the attendance for me today.” Shoving the attendance book at a boy in the first row, Miss Cahootie suddenly bolted into the hall again. As Ralph was calling each name, making faces, she reappeared. “All right,” she said, grabbing the attendance book from Ralph, “if that's the way you want it. We'll start with our reading lesson.”

In homeroom, they always had math and then spelling before reading. It was just another sign that the adults had lost their nerve. Miss Cahootie didn't even tell them where to begin. When she called on Four Eyes and he started back two pages, so that they all knew what it said anyhow, she didn't even notice.

Sandy passed her a note. “Alvin says the shvartzers broke into his uncle's store and stole all the furniture they could carry.”

Why were these people acting as if they were in a city without government? Suppose the Germans or the Japanese really were coming? If it was the Japanese, maybe they wouldn't pick her out to take away. She only followed the war in the Pacific because Ruthie did. Murray was always on some small island that was only a dot in the expanse of blue. She worried more about Europe, which reached much closer to Detroit and where Maman, Papa, Rivka and Jacqueline were lost. Leib was in Tunisia, in the infantry. Trudi thought that maybe he would be coming home, now that they had captured North Africa. That was the rumor, and in his last letter, Leib seemed to believe it too.

The glass in the street made her think of Kristallnacht, one of the only German words she knew because Papa had explained what that meant, a word that sounded like fairyland but meant only people beating up on Jews and breaking their windows. Would that start here? Or were colored people the local Jews, the ones they picked out to beat up when they got excited and started running around in the streets?

She was impatient to ask Ruthie, who would explain everything, but she would not see Ruthie until very early tomorrow morning, unless she snuck out of bed when Ruthie came in at eleven-thirty. Sandy just repeated rumors. Four Eyes was taking advantage of the fear to say dirty things. She wished she could talk some more to Clotilde who, being a foreigner like herself, looked at things with different eyes.

When it was Naomi's turn to read, she could hardly focus on the words. She became aware she had been thinking in French again, and she could not remember how to pronounce the squiggles on the page. As she was struggling to read, suddenly she became aware of a murmur around her and that Miss Cahootie had stopped frowning at her.

She peeked cautiously from behind the book. In the doorway a woman stood whom she identified without hesitation as Clotilde's mother, because she did not look like any of the other colored women Naomi had seen. Like Clotilde she was tall and straight and wore a little gold cross, with her hair up in a bright kerchief. She was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt, like Ruthie had worn at the department store, and she was standing diffidently just inside the classroom door, motioning to Clotilde. “I've come to take my daughter home.”

Miss Cahootie did not ask her if there were a family emergency or how she could take her daughter out of school. She simply stood aside as Clotilde's mama took her arm and then motioned to Lizzie White to come along too. “I told your mama I'd bring you along home till she can get off work, my child.”

The other colored children forlornly watched Lizzie and Clotilde prepare to leave. Then little Janie McDougall, who was the tiniest girl in the whole eighth grade class, ran after Clotilde's mother. “Mrs. Dumoullet, can I go with you too? Please? My mama's in the foundry working. She gets off at four, and I wouldn't need no lunch.”

Clotilde's mother motioned her along. “You come along too. We don't want to worry your mother.”

“Naomi, you were reading. Why did you stop?” Miss Cahootie glared. Not five minutes passed when Four Eyes Rosovsky's father loomed at the door, still with his butcher's apron on. “I need my son today.”

By ten o'clock half the class was gone. When Sandy's mother appeared, Sandy whispered to Naomi, “Don't be afraid. I'll take you too.”

She felt unreal leaving school at fifteen after ten with Mrs. Rosenthal, carrying the lunch not eaten and the homework not handed in. As they walked, a car full of white youths passed them and screamed at them to get off the streets, because the niggers were coming. Then a car with a colored couple passed, and some older kids on the corner began throwing rocks. One of them broke the side window into streamers of glass. They could hear sirens, sirens, and the air smelled of smoke.

Morris did not get home at three-twenty, the way he always did. Aunt Rose was pacing, praying aloud in Yiddish. She had tried to keep Ruthie from going to work, but Ruthie had insisted she had to go. She said nothing was wrong down at Wayne, the white and colored students in class today as always, and no incidents. Now they were both out there, in the sea of smoke and violence.

Uncle Morris finally walked in at five-thirty. He cut short Rose's passionate upbraiding. “We had a meeting to discuss what the union can do. Then the police put up a roadblock we had to drive around.”

“I was worried sick!”

“We have to respond. There was that Packard hate strike not ten days ago. All those worker preachers are stirring up the men. There's been fighting in Inkster.”

“And at the Edgewood,” Naomi chimed in. Alvin had told her about goyim and black gangs fighting over control of the amusement park.

“We voted not to close the plant. We can't let it happen. Most of our Negroes stayed out today. They're scared, and I understand. White hoodlums are beating up Negroes all over the city.”

“Why not close it down?” Rose wrung her hands. “Stay home with us till it's all over.”

“We don't want to make it worse than it is. Better those rednecks should go to work and do something useful, than run around the city looking for people they can abuse. Down in the crowds on Woodward, Gerald L. K. Smith's
Cross and Sword
is being sold with their Jewish conspiracy headlines and some of the local Klan offshoots are handing out down-with-the-Jews leaflets.”

Naomi felt as if she were pretending to help with supper, pretending to iron the yellow dress, pretending to help take down the wash from the backyard lines. She was huddled far into her body with her hands drawn up to hide her face so that she would not see. She said to herself, it does not concern me. It is the special madness of the goyim and the colored of this place, who tear at each other. All people want to be blaming someone, for the weather, for the war, for the lack of money, for the Black Death, as Papa had told her, killing Jews because of germs that rats spread. Somewhere people must be safe. Which people?

She envied Clotilde her mother who rushed to carry her home to safety. Everyone in the school could see who was really loved. If it were not for Mrs. Rosenthal, she would have stayed in school all day. At the end of the day she was sure a handful of kids were still there whom no one had cared enough to fetch. She would have been among them.

When Aunt Rose sent her to the bakery to get a loaf of rye bread, she met Alvin and he told her that they had had an easy day. At one the principal had decided to close the school. Those who wanted to stay till their parents came to fetch them could wait in the girls' gym. The gym teacher offered to stay till the last kid was safely picked up.

Alvin was embarrassed because nobody had come for him, but she felt as if she was just as abandoned, because if Sandy had not spoken to her mother, she would have sat there herself. Alvin explained his mother had been working and then she had been too scared to come out, but they both knew his mother was pretty useless, acting like a kid herself chasing after soldiers and partying with them.

They were standing on the corner talking when they saw a bunch of guys chasing a colored man down the sidewalk. “That's Mr. Bates,” Naomi said, grabbing Alvin's arm. “From school.”

“No sir.” Then Alvin craned for a better view. “Shit, you're right.”

They did not know the young men, high school age or older, who were chasing Mr. Bates. Then they caught him. One tripped him. He caught hold of the lamppost to keep from falling. Then he turned to face the pack, holding up his hands in a show of harmlessness, but they closed around him. One hit him in the belly and another started bashing his head against the lamppost. Mrs. Fenniman in the bakery began to scream that she was calling the police, but the boys did not run off until Mr. Bates lay on the sidewalk with blood all over his head. Even then one turned back to give him a final kick in the ribs.

Naomi made herself walk forward. Alvin followed her. “Is he dead? Did they kill him?”

Mr. Bates was always carrying out the trash at school to the incinerator and cutting the weeds in the schoolyard. He would whistle hymns while he was working. He called all the girls Missy and all the boys Bo. Now he lay on the sidewalk looking broken, fearfully hurt and bleeding. Naomi was terrified but she knelt to examine him. “He's breathing.”

People had made a detour around the gang and now around the body. Mrs. Fenniman from the bakery came out. “The police don't pay any attention or help. The poor man. I'll call an ambulance. Help me pick him up.”

Alvin said, “If somebody's knocked out, I don't think you're supposed to move him.”

“Bubkes,” the woman snorted. “We should leave him in the street to be stepped on?” She spat, glaring at the passersby. “If I dropped dead in the street, I know who would step on me. Come on, you're a starker, you can help me get him up.”

Mr. Bates was groaning now. Blood ran all over his face and his hair was matted with blood and dirt. Between them, they carried him into the bakery, where the bakery woman brought him a chair to sit in. His lids fluttered. When he opened his eyes, he winced back when he saw white faces. “Mr. Bates,” Naomi said hesitantly, “you know me from school. Mrs. Fenniman is calling an ambulance.”

“They won't take us at the hospital. How bad am I hurt, Missy?” He pawed at his face, stirred but could not rise.

Mr. Fenniman came to the door of the salesroom from the back. Naomi got him to show her where the sink was and a clean dishtowel. She wiped the blood off Mr. Bates's face. He was badly beaten, but the worst wound was in his scalp. Alvin, who was hanging back warily, peered at the cut. “You're going to need stitches.”

Mrs. Fenniman said, “I haven't been able to get an ambulance. They're all out, but they took the address. Can we call anyone for you?”

Then Naomi remembered. “Please, a loaf dark rye, my aunt Mrs. Rose Siegal sent me to get.” She counted the coins out of her pocket.

When she left the bakery, Alvin was waiting for her in the next doorway. He took the loaf to carry it. “Everybody's crazy. Wow! We better not even tell anybody we helped a shvartzer, even Mr. Bates.”

“I don't care,” she said. “He's a nice man and he works hard.”

“Have you ever seen anything like that? Them just beating on him?”

“Yes.” Naomi walked more slowly. “But it wasn't colored people they were beating.”

That night she could not sleep for a long time. The air was hot and filthy and damp. She imagined lying underwater. She imagined being a fish. But fish were always being eaten. She imagined being a tree, a tall strong tree, but trees were chopped down. She imagined being a polar bear. That was good. She was alone in a wilderness of ice. She did not mind being hungry, because she was huge, strong and alone.