The Girl Is Murder (2 page)

“Your mama must be scared.”

“She’s dead,” I said.

“Ouch, baby,” said Suze. “How?”

I answered without thinking. “She killed herself.” I’d never said the words out loud before. You didn’t talk about suicide. Not in a normal voice, anyway. You whispered euphemisms for it, trying to pretty-up an awful thing by calling it something else.
She took her own life. She died by her own hand. She couldn’t bear to carry on.
Even the newspaper obituary had taken the stark awfulness out of what she’d done by reducing the act to a single adverb:
suddenly.

Ingrid Anderson,
suddenly
, December 31, 1941.

And now here I was talking about it like it was no big deal. All my fear about P.S. 110 suddenly disappeared. A new school was nothing compared to what I’d already been through.

Suze stared at me for a long, silent moment. It wasn’t the kind of story that she thought a girl like me was going to tell. “They shouldn’t take a man with kids when there’s no woman at home,” she said.

That was funny. She thought I was an orphan, or just about one. “He’ll be back soon,” I said.

“And so will my Bill. He’s young. He’s strong.” Suze tipped her head back and exhaled a stream of smoke that seemed to draw her name in cursive letters. As quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

Now that I was standing close to her, I could make out the sweetheart wings pinned to her sweater.

“Roosevelt says it will be over soon,” I said.

In just three months the war would celebrate its first anniversary. None of us wanted to believe it would linger long enough to mark a second.

She leaned her head against the window, her cheek against the pane. Her breath fogged up the glass. “That’s good,” she said. “I don’t think I can take much more. I’m beat to the socks.” She tossed her butt into the sink, fluffed her hair in the mirror, and made sure the victory rolls in her hair were pinned firmly in place. Once she was sure her appearance was up to snuff, she turned back to me. “You better make tracks, baby girl. You don’t want to be tardy on your first day.”

“Thanks.”

“Want a tip?” she said.

“Sure,” I said, trying to be casual.

She pointed at the lower half of my body. “Burn the skirt.”

I assured her I would.

FIVE MINUTES LATER it was me I wanted to destroy, not the skirt.

A bell rang its warning that we had two minutes to get into our seats. I stashed my pocketbook in my locker and tried to read the room numbers on the schedule card I’d been given in the front office. Unfortunately, the ink had smeared after I washed my hands—pretty ironic, given that my first class of the day was something called Personal Hygiene. I searched the halls for someone to help me, but in an instant the bustling crowd had vanished.

Or so I thought. At the end of the hall stood a cluster of five boys and girls, chatting like all they had was time. Like Suze, the girls were tall and broad-shouldered, their busts jutting out in a way that showed they enhanced their bosoms with handkerchiefs. They wore heavy makeup and such elaborate hairstyles that I had to imagine they’d been up since the crack of dawn rolling and pinning them in place. As teacher after teacher closed their doors and implored their classes to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, they said their farewells and started toward their destinations. At least most of them did. One of the boys remained behind.

“You lost?” he said. I looked over my shoulder for whoever it was he was talking to. There was no one in the hallway but us.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m supposed to be in a class called Personal Hygiene, but I don’t know where the room is.”

“Who’s the teacher?”

I looked at the card but found my eyes unwilling to focus on the print that hadn’t been smeared. I’d talked to boys before—friends’ brothers and fathers—but to be around them in school was just … weird. Especially a boy like this one. His hair was greased back with pomade, and he had a smell about him that seemed to be a combination of his morning shower, a cigarette he’d smoked before entering the building, and something else I couldn’t identify. His eyes were sleepy and at half-mast, as though there was nothing on this earth that could ruffle him. Not girls. Not teachers barking for everyone to sit down and be quiet. Not even the war. How on earth were we supposed to be able to learn with people like him around?

“Hello?” he said. Plenty of time had passed for me to read the name off my schedule card, but I still stood there, silent.

“It’s smeared,” I finally said. “But I think it says Mr. Pinsky.”

“Right. Pinsky’s down that way.” He pointed toward one of the hallways that branched off to the left of us. “Last door on the left. Don’t sit up front if you can avoid it. He’s a spitter.”

“Thanks.” So that was two people who’d been kind to me, and first period had barely begun. Maybe public school wouldn’t be so awful after all. “I’m Iris Anderson. I’m new.”

“So I guessed. Pleasure to meet you, Iris Anderson.” He had a slow smile, the kind that took so long to appear that you knew that when he offered it to you, he meant it. “I’m Tom Barney.”

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” I said.

“Shouldn’t you?”

I blushed. I couldn’t help myself. There was something about the way he talked that made me think I was doing something forbidden. Or maybe he just made me wish I was.

One of the girls who’d been with him earlier reappeared at the top of the hall. She frowned when she saw me, and then cleared her throat to get Tom’s attention. “Look who got a hall pass,” she said when he turned and acknowledged her.

“Lucky you,” he replied.

“Want a smoke?”

“Absolutely. I’ll meet you out back in five,” he said. “I’m helping Iris here find her class.”

“I’m sure she can find it herself,” said the girl.

“Cool it, Rhona. I said I’ll see you in five ticks.”

“I’m giving you four.” She turned tail and disappeared.

“I can find it on my own,” I said. “Really. It’s just down that hall, right?”

“Right,” he said.

“Thanks again for your help.”

“Any time, Iris Anderson.”

WHEN I ARRIVED in Mr. Pinsky’s class, one of his students was reading the morning announcements off of a mimeographed page. Rather than letting me take my seat, Mr. Pinsky gestured for me to remain near the door until the recitation ended, putting me on display for the entire room. I spent an eternity staring at my shoes while the pug-nosed girl ended her morning spiel by reminding the students that the principal wished them to “remain vigilant about their personal possessions until such time as the person or persons responsible for the locker thefts has been apprehended.”

So public school not only welcomed fights in the hallway and smoking in the girls’ room, it attracted thieves, too. I made a note to retrieve my purse from my locker as soon as possible.

By the time the announcements concluded, every eye in the class was watching me. Somebody faked a cough and muttered “Fresh meat” under their breath. I took a seat as the class buzzed with two topics: the new girl and who was behind the locker robberies.

I tuned out the comments about my clothes and focused on the more interesting topic.

“I heard they actually cut the padlocks open,” said one girl.

“It’s one of the guys in the Rainbows,” said a girl with a pinched face and a husky voice.

“Sure, but which one?” asked her red-faced friend.

“Probably one of the Eye-talians.”

My eavesdropping wasn’t as subtle as I hoped. The girl with the pinched face turned my way and offered me a sneer. “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing,” I said. I could feel color bleed into my face. I looked away, hoping they wouldn’t see my embarrassment. It was too late.

“Hold your tongue, Myrtle,” the pinch-faced girl said to her friend. “You don’t want to make the square from Delaware clutch her pearls.”

Sadly, that was the kindest welcome I got for the rest of the morning.

Every class I went to I was stared at. I was asked to introduce myself before the students assembled in Home Economics by announcing my favorite meal to cook. When I told them toast, I was laughed at. I didn’t know how to cook. There’d never been a need for me to do it before.

My walk was mimicked, my voice was aped, and I was reminded at every turn that I didn’t belong. What had Pop been thinking, sending me into the jaws of public school without any kind of warning? He hadn’t been thinking: that was the point. How could he know who I was when he hadn’t known who I’d been?

Finally, lunchtime arrived. I went to my locker to retrieve my lunch money, anxious the whole time that the combination I thought I remembered was incorrect. I needn’t have worried; the lock was gone and the locker was empty. My purse and everything in it was missing.

That did it. For the first time that day, I let myself cry. I was beyond caring who saw me.

I didn’t have the heart to report the crime—aside from my house key and the money Mrs. Mrozenski had given me, there wasn’t much of value in my purse. And I certainly didn’t have the strength to go to the cafeteria with nothing to eat and no one to sit with. Instead, I retreated to a girls’ bathroom stall and waited out the hour.

THE AFTERNOON was more of the same, just one embarrassment after another. I longed for a friendly face to make it all go away, but Suze never reappeared. Tom did, though. Just as I left my last class of the day, I saw him in handcuffs, being led out of school by two police officers.

What on earth was going on?

A boy with a camera dangling around his neck stopped to watch the action. As Tom was guided into a squad car, the boy took a photo. That task complete, he produced a notepad and pencil and jotted something down.

“What’s happening?” I asked him.

“They arrested Tom Barney for the locker thefts.”

“Why?”

He half snorted, half laughed. “Because he confessed. I knew it had to be one of the Rainbows, I just didn’t know which one.”

My heart broke: not only had I been robbed, but one of the only two people who’d been nice to me that day was the thief.

CHAPTER

2

WHEN I RETURNED HOME to the Orchard Street house, Pop had a client. There was an unspoken rule that I was to remain scarce when he was in the middle of business. In fact, I think he preferred it if I was scarce even if he wasn’t. But I wanted to plop down near the radio and listen to
Kitty Foyle
to take my mind off the day. So I took a risk and stayed in the parlor, keeping the Philco’s volume down low so I wouldn’t clue Pop to my presence. Mama’s picture had been returned to its usual place, but the glass was broken out of it and a scratch had pierced the photograph, stabbing the still image somewhere near her heart.

I closed my eyes and let the tales of scrappy Kitty trying to move up in the world soothe me. For fifteen minutes I was somewhere else, caught between Kitty’s world and my own the year prior. When I came home from a bad day back then—and let’s face it, they had been few and far between—Mama would sit beside me and run her fingers through my hair, telling me that everything was going to be all right, peppering her English with German.
“Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei,”
she would say, trying to make me smile. “Everything has an end, except sausages, which have two.” Sometimes it annoyed me, but more often than not I was lulled by her calm reassurance. It would be all right. Everything did have an end, even my minor calamities. I would be fine, just like she was. Anything I was going through she had already endured.

In fact, she’d survived much more than me. Mama was a German immigrant. She’d already made it through one war.

Maybe that was why she had killed herself—perhaps she couldn’t stand the thought of going through a second one.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture her there beside me. What would she say if she was here?
It will get better, Iris. You mustn’t be afraid to stand on your own.
She wasn’t. There was nothing Mama wasn’t willing to do by herself. I’m sure part of that came from Pop being absent for months at a time, but some of it must’ve been because she was German. When everyone is looking at you with suspicion because of where you came from, you couldn’t depend on them to help you.

It was working. I was calming down … until snippets of conversation taking place in Pop’s office forced their way into the room.

“I would like my money back,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.

“All I need is another week. You have to understand, you can’t force things. The opportunity has to be right,” said Pop.

“You’ve had plenty of time. She’s going somewhere every night. For all your dillydallying, I could’ve taken my own pictures by now and been done with it.”

“You’re right,” said Pop. “Of course you’re right.” I left my spot by the radio and approached the door. It was closed, but there was a vent near the bottom to help the radiator heat circulate from one room to another during the winter. I kneeled near the opening and watched the agitated client as he paced in front of the desk. Usually, Pop just dealt with missing persons—it was his specialty, or so he claimed in the advertisement he took out in the phone directory. But this didn’t sound like a missing person case to me.

I heard Pop open his desk drawer and riffle through it. “Here’s the entire retainer.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Arthur. You said you could help and I believed you.”

“I still can. I just need more time.”

“I should’ve gone to your brother’s agency, but I wanted to give you a chance.”

Even with the door between us, I could imagine Pop’s expression at the mention of Uncle Adam. Detecting is in my family’s blood. My uncle’s in the business, too, only he has his own agency, uptown, under the family’s original name, Ackerman. At the beginning of summer, after those first rough weeks in our new home, a home they’d begged us not to take, Uncle Adam and Aunt Miriam had stopped by with a pot roast, a plant, and a plan. Pop could work with Uncle Adam at
his
agency, strictly desk work, mind you, but Adam would give him a fifty-fifty split. Pop had refused the plant and the plan. He wasn’t crazy enough to turn down one of Aunt Miriam’s pot roasts, though. Especially with rumors of a meat ration already on the horizon.