Excerpt from KILLING GRETL, a novel by Jen du Bay

Excerpt from Chapter 1

EIN

1942

They arrive in the morning, so early she hasn’t finished nibbling the skin off her Mettwurst. She’s taken just one small bite from the corner of her toast (she can feel a clump of jam hiding behind her left front tooth, which she quickly swishes away). Vati is still sipping his coffee.

In a rush, Gretl Amsel tucks a photograph of Hilde Ditamere in the heel of her shoe, hoping they won’t find it. She doesn’t know much about the Schutzhaft, why the Gestapo are grabbing her by the head and where she’s going; the only thing she knows is that she must have the photograph of Hilde tucked safely against her skin. Hilde’s curious disappearance was months ago, and as time goes on Gretl is discovering that she needs to be reminded, more and more, of the shape of her friend’s chin, of the softly false lips. She’s certain of Hilde’s part in all this, even if the actual actions are like a stark tree, fog lined and autumnal. But surely Vati, who is watching the Gestapo with crossed arms, releasing them only when his mouth requires a break from the pipe clenched against his soldierly teeth—well, surely none of this is his doing. Is it? But nein, Gretl can’t imagine such betrayal from her father, even though it’s staring her in the face with eyes so gray and cutting they feel like blades, shoulder blades struggling to stay upright and floating in a stormy, desolate sea.

* * *

1958

The gray of Edward’s eyes was like a bee’s nest; not quite closed, dripping, allowing a hint of light to press through. Gretl told herself they were a comfort, familiar and lukewarm. She struggled with pretend, a false sense of lightness, a determination that the color of her husband’s eyes held no similarity to the shade she remembered from before, with Vati. She made herself feel distinct and removed—sixteen years later, rescued by Eddie’s dragon-like tank, safe in the confines of American Spam and Coca-Cola. She tried to allow herself to sink into comfort, a pretend sense of belonging and settlement, of soft pink resolution.

Ach, but pink was a faded color, a mockery of red, a sham. Only half present, not its true self. Pink could never stop pretending.

Each morning when Lisbeth Bailee woke things were fresh, like the smell of rain on blacktop or the Howdy-Doody Show on Maureen’s new television. The good things, things that didn’t need to be worried about.

But too soon she remembered, and it started all over again.

She was bad. Evil. Like a left-wing Communist (although she wasn’t sure why Communists had wings and not hands). She was a friend of the Devil. That’s what her school principal had told her, which was confusing because she didn’t know how could she be friends with someone she’d never met. Mutti had, during the war when she’d lived in Germany. She’d said as much, talking quietly with Papa and hiding her red eyes, she didn’t think Lisbeth noticed but of course she did, every time.

Mutti had met the Devil, but she wasn’t friends with him. Lisbeth didn’t want to be friends with him, either, but she couldn’t help it.

She was left-handed. She couldn’t help it.

The Devil wasn’t the only thing reaching out with scary arms, ready to grab and squeeze. Atomic bombs were just as bad, they were made by the left-handed Communists and everyone needed to be ready for the inevitable drop. Sometimes an alarm went off at school. Time, it’s time! Duck and Cover drill, have to be prepared! Learn swift movements. “Instant!” teachers said, and clapped hands. They were all the same. “Fall instantly to the floor, no time to spare because A-bombs are quick—quick, quick, quick!” Fall to the floor, face down beside the desk, or under if the space is large enough. Face down, elbows out, eyes shut. As if a thin seal of eyelids could prevent blindness, or severe burns to the face if the bomb dropped too close. As if crouching on the floor could stop death or blood seeping out, any more than standing straight and proud and waiting for the inevitable. Both the same outcome.

Air raid drills. Fall, hide, shut eyes. Again and again. Lisbeth didn’t believe she’d be protected, like everyone said. She wanted to feel safe but couldn’t, not completely.

At school, she learned a new word: invulnerable. She was taught what the word meant, but not its spelling. She learned that she would be invulnerable if she curled herself up in a ball and prepared to die.

She heard other words, mean ones like coldwar and nuclear, and she knew they meant the same as death. Death, and blood.

If Lisbeth wasn’t left handed, none of this would be a problem. Sometimes she wished her left hand could breathe, so she could drown it in a clump of water, then cut it off. Amputate, like a soldier. She’d seen plenty of them, limping around or sleeve pinned to chest, as if they couldn’t stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the country that had taken their body parts. They were admired. Congratulated! Model citizens. Even her papa had a habit of rubbing his shoulder when the weather was bad. No shame in that.

Death was taught in school; it swirled against the air, puffing in and out like an accordion. Mr. Abner, the principal, gathered the students in an assembly each month.

I’m afraid.

“Fear is infantile!” he bellowed during those dreaded assemblies. He’d explained what infantile meant, long ago, but Lisbeth didn’t know the proper spelling. “Fear is infantile behavior and we need to demolish it. America is a large, strong country. We will defeat all Communistic tendencies!” At each assembly, Mr. Abner seemed to be glaring directly at her.

“Mature acceptance,” he repeated, and then the air raid siren went off and it started all over again, atomic huddling.

Gretl Bailee crept to her daughter’s room but Lisbeth was already awake and dressed, downstairs eating breakfast with her father. Her bed was empty, sheets exposed and cold from the air. Gretl pulled them upward, tight to the headboard; tucked and smoothed and rounded until everything was perfect. Not a lump could be seen, not even in the corners and hidden sides.

Precise. Neat. Orderly. Just as she’d been taught in the Konzentrationslager. If there’d been even a hint of wrinkle, Frau Blochälteste’s rubber truncheon would have blasted against somebody’s shoulders.

But they’ll only get you on the back, never the face. You can’t have bruises during the performances, the SS wives wouldn’t like it, and we have to please the SS wives.

We have to please.

Gretl paused at the top of the stairs, wondering why she’d been so lucky. She hadn’t earned it, no more than the other women in her Konzentrationslager, and she certainly didn’t know why Edward had chosen her. She didn’t know why she’d been blessed with an American home, an American husband, an American child, when Hilde had received nothing but a swinging rope, a death too slow in coming.

And then there was Wilhelm. Ach, best not to think about Wilhelm.

It didn’t matter, not now. Gretl tried to tell herself that, but of course it wasn’t true. Her belly rumbled again, and the nausea left a contented burn deep inside the lowest parts of her stomach. If she could feel the hunger, if she knew her body would never get plump and resolved, everything would be okay. She would not be lazy about it. She’d be okay.

Arbeit macht frei.

Ja, hard work brings freedom. She’d be okay.

As Gretl descended the stairs she could hear rattles and clanks, dishes and pans; the smell of slobbering ham pressed against her lungs, making her stomach jerk and twist like an elbow crushed out of place. She hated it when Edward craved ham, the reek of fried fat was too much for her. She never cooked breakfast, she usually couldn’t drag herself out of bed in time. She tried, every morning, but the exhaustion was too deep, sleep lovely and forgiving. Edward would be nearly ready for work, Lisbeth for school, and she with just a hint of lipstick. But at least she was dressed.

The low hum of Bing Crosby’s baritone drifted from the corner of the living room, a lonesome sleepy voice without the Andrews Sisters. Above the radio crackle, Edward’s voice floated toward a mild rumble. Coffee had washed the morning hoarness from his words until they sounded like a cotton roll, gentle and round.

“Lisbeth, please. Try a little harder. I don’t mean to keep after you, but remember what we talked about last night? I don’t want your mother to catch you using your left hand again, you know how she feels about it. She’ll be awake any minute. Here. Let me switch that spoon. And don’t make such a mess of yourself, or she’ll know. Okay?”

Ach. So she was the bad parent again, the mean one. The Kapo. But really, everything she did was for Lisbeth’s benefit. Why couldn’t Edward see that?

“Right is right,” Mr. Abner had told Gretl, years ago when Lisbeth had first started school. “Left is wrong. Your daughter needs to remember that.”

Gretl had to make Lisbeth right. She knew the repercussions of being different, of not complying, and she couldn’t let that happen to her daughter. The risk was too great, the danger a curved tightrope looming too high for comfort, with nothing except a net of barbed wire to stop the fall.

Rope … tight …but Scheisse. She would not think of Hilde, her beautiful fortune-telling Gypsy. It was unacceptable to be a Gypsy. It was unacceptable to be left-handed. Both the same.

Gretl had to make it right. Had to make her daughter right, before it was too late. At any moment America could become another Germany, it was just that easy. One day the President could be wünderbar, resolving thousands from their unemployment and bringing bread to the tables of deserving little girls and salty old men, and the next day he could send unsuspecting people off to strange camps and harsh prisons, for no apparent reason other than whim and mood, and an incomprehensible ideal of the unacceptable.

She was determined, and she knew what she had to do; Gretl would make sure her daughter was standard, normal, accepted. No one would ever find a reason to send Lisbeth away. She would do anything if it meant Lisbeth would grow up basic, and happy. Anything, if she could protect her daughter in ways she’d failed to protect Hilde.

Ach, Hilde. Gottverdammt. She had to stop thinking so much.

Lisbeth’s head jerked toward the doorway as Gretl entered the kitchen. Crimson slithered across the girl’s cheeks, eyes wide as if she’d been caught stealing her bunkmate’s weekly chunk of potato.

“I—sorry,” Lisbeth mumbled. “I’ll try better.”

The spoon was still clutched in her left hand.

Gretl sighed. She hated being the Kapo, but somebody had to discipline the girl—Edward certainly wasn’t very good at it. She sighed again, shook her head. Already she was tired, and she’d barely sat down to the breakfast table.

“Harder,” she said, her voice a croak. She wet her lips, tried again. “You’ll try harder, not better.”

“Yes. I will.”

But how much harder could Lisbeth try? She was already doing her best, more than should be expected of a twelve-year-old child. Discipline, discipline … that was the key. Hard work. It would pay off. Hard work would make her free of all this.

Arbeit macht frei.

Nein! Not that. An ache pounded behind Gretl’s eyes. “Tea?” she said into the scoop of her hands. She knew should get it herself, but she was too exhausted.

She glanced at Lisbeth, just to be sure the girl wasn’t too upset. Lisbeth sat alone on her side of the kitchen table, a large rosewood concoction Edward had made when they’d settled in Maine after the war. Deep brown and richly veined, the table was beautiful, but too big for Lisbeth—definitely not suited to a child’s body. Her feet didn’t quite touch the floor, and the table rose midway to her chest. Poor girl.

Yet Gretl refused to dwell on how small and vulnerable her daughter looked as she sat with her breakfast; she couldn’t let herself think like that. If she got soft, she might lose something. Someone. It had happened before. Softness was dangerous.

Edward placed a cup of Earl Grey in front of Gretl, then reached over to rub Lisbeth’s back, squeezing her shoulder before he sat next to her at the table. “Are you going to eat this morning, Gretl?” He cut the edge off his ham, snapped the crust of his toast. It glistened with honey, dripping at the edges. “I’ll make a plate for you, anything you like.”

Gretl shook her head. “Not yet, I’m not hungry.” Nausea rattled the bones of her pelvis, pressing upward toward her throat as she glanced at Edward’s mug of coffee, steaming from the top.

Every morning, as part of their ritual, she and Vati had shared a pot of coffee. It’d been a treat, before the business of the day began, to chat over the newspaper as they passed the cream back and forth; but then one morning Vati had watched, silent and smoking, as they took her away. All she could remember about those men were their armbands, spidery swastika glaring at her, and their smell of soil and musk. In the Konzentrationslager, coffee was nothing more than a lukewarm mug of barely-colored water. She’d tried to get her taste back after the war, tried to enjoy the stuff again, but it hadn’t worked. Her father’s silent face seemed to be a part of every cup.

Schweinhunde!

Gretl brushed the hair back from her face, trying to banish the thought of her Vater. He was probably dead, anyway, so there was no sense worrying about it now. It would only make her miserable, and she couldn’t afford that sort of weakness.

“You okay this morning?” Edward asked, peering down and across at her.

She shrugged. “Yes, of course.” But she wouldn’t look at his face.

“I really wish you’d eat something, you’re so thin. Don’t do this to yourself, it’s over. Please. Eat.”

“I eat plenty.” Plenty, more than enough, too much actually, far more than she had before she’d come to America. “I can’t stand anything when I first wake up, that’s all. Once my day gets going, in an hour or so, I’ll have a big breakfast. You’re at work, you don’t see how much I eat, but I’m fine.”

Lisbeth was staring at her, but the girl said nothing. When Gretl glanced her way, she quickly switched her spoon to her right hand. Her steaming bowl of Cream of Wheat looked delicious, and Gretl’s mouth watered. Chopped bananas chunked each bite—Edward called it Baby Bear Porridge, Lisbeth had to have it every morning—and honey swirled the top.

Gretl pushed away her hunger, a fierce shove like one of Frau Blochälteste’s slaps. She’d eat later, when everyone was gone and she could be by herself. She tolerated food better when she was alone. No eyes watching, no words judging. No distractions.

Edward scratched the side of his nose where it met his cheek. Lisbeth pulsed her legs back and forth, swish swish to and fro, slow then rapid then slow again. Her heels clanked against the lower spindle of the chair. The thumping made Gretl nervous, but she wouldn’t criticize. Not this morning, when Lisbeth had enough to think about; her first day of the seventh grade, new teachers, new classrooms, and trying to remember to use her right hand. Ja, that was enough for now.

Lisbeth stared into her bowl of Baby Bear Porridge, but she’d stopped eating. She stared, as if tea leaves floated like a hint of the future. Good or bad? The future was too whimsical, impossible to predict, things like tea leaves and Tarot cards were stupid. Even Hilde had said so, toward the end.

“Lisbeth, finish your breakfast. Don’t let it get cold,” Gretl said after she’d swallowed a thimbleful of unsweetened tea. The bitterness made her lips paste together, sticky and white.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re never hungry. If we added up all the food you waste, there’d be a mound the size of this house. Just ten years ago, people were literally starving for the things you have. Waiting in breadlines and such, I mean,” she added quickly. “Mein Gott, Lisbeth, just eat.”

Lisbeth squinted at her, and she imagined the girl was analyzing her cup of tea, her invisible breakfast. Instantly she regretted her words. Stupid stupid stupid. Dummkopf. And ach, she was exhausted already; but she stood anyway, grabbed a piece of Wonder Bread from the loaf on the counter. “I’m having toast this morning, and I’ll have some ham later. Now eat, Lisbeth.”

The girl looked scared. Terrified, actually. Terrified of the Kapo. Lisbeth grabbed her spoon again, with her right hand. She ate slowly, the utensil awkward and clumsy as she went through the motions.

Why were things always so difficult around here?

Every night, every day, Lisbeth felt the same.

Breakfast was the worst. And lunch. And dinner. Her mother always watched, too close and sharp, barely blinking even between mouthfuls. Lisbeth wished she could avoid eating, it would make things a lot easier.

Her spoon kept slipping out, clattering onto the tabletop or floor. Papa had shown her the proper way to hold utensils, but for some reason she couldn’t seem to manage it with her right hand.

Dread swirled inside her chest until she felt like Noah’s Ark; too full, staying afloat only by the grace of God.

She hated the first days of school, another year about to begin. She hoped her teachers would be nice. She hoped the kids would be nice. She hoped she could be a good student, so Mutti and Papa would be proud of her.

The Cream of Wheat rested heavy and solid in her belly, but it didn’t want to stay there. Thick, like a coil unwinding. Lisbeth stood, and her chair clattered to the side as she ran for the bathroom. The door slammed shut behind her, loud against the back.

She bent over the toilet but even though she felt horrible, nothing would come up. Finally she straightened, washed her face, and stared at herself in the mirror. She was ugly, a twelve-year-old dunce.

“Go change your clothes, you can’t go to school looking like that. Especially not on the first day,” Mutti said when Lisbeth emerged from the bathroom. “You’ve dribbled all over your shirt again, and there’s a lump of food on your collar. Edward, tell your daughter to change her clothes.”

Edward shifted in his seat, not speaking until Lisbeth’s footsteps clattered up the stairs. “We go through this same thing every morning.” He cleared his throat, worked his mouth as if struggling to catch words mid-air, a goldfish swallowing bubbles. “Why don’t you just let Lisbeth get dressed after breakfast? Or allow her to eat with her left hand, that can’t do any harm.”

Gretl’s head felt heavy. Her back ached. This was too much, too early. The same thing, every morning, and Edward didn’t even pretend to understand what she was trying to accomplish. Why didn’t he get it? People were punished for being different. She needed to protect Lisbeth, make her right before it was too late.

She sighed, swirling her tea before taking a feeble sip. The toaster clicked, but she didn’t rise to grab her breakfast.

“Edward, please. Try to understand. If I allow her to use her left hand, it’s like I’m giving in. She’d see no reason to give some effort—she’d settle for being a lefty. We need to work with her, not against her. How many times do I have to tell you that?” I’m just trying to be a mother, she wanted to say, but her voice wouldn’t wrap around the words. Even in her thoughts she couldn’t imagine adding the word good—Gute Mutter—because that was far to presumptuous. A gewöhnliche Mutter—an Ordinary Mother—would do.

Edward cleared his throat again. He rubbed his shoulder, which was strange because the sun was already bright and warm, too warm for September. The old injury usually bothered him only in the damp. The war had left aches all over Gretl’s body as well, but she ignored them.

He gave his shoulder one final squeeze before picking up his fork.

“Have you ever seen any of M.C. Escher’s work? You must have studied him in art school. His stuff is incredible, and they say he’s a lefty, too.”

“Mein Gott, Edward. I don’t remember what I studied in school, it was too long ago and besides, what difference does it make? Escher is Dutch, he doesn’t know any better. We’re Americans now, remember?”

Gretl hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, and now she regretted her words. She felt ashamed, like an old, bowel-loose dog. Awash, a starfish thrown to the beach, tide no longer reaching its arms to her, sun ready to bake her bumpy skin like a piece of flat bread or an asterisk-shaped sugar cookie.

Edward remained silent, chewing on a lump of ham.

When Lisbeth entered the kitchen she looked from one parent to the other, but didn’t approach the table. Instead, she shuffled her feet. A strand of hair had come loose from her ponytail and it flopped forward, against her cheek.

“Go ahead,” Gretl coaxed. “Finish your breakfast.”

Lisbeth swallowed, fidgeted, cleared her throat. “I’m still not real hungry.”

“Then gather your things and go to school.”

“But it’s too early. And I have a stomach ache, I really do.” She lightly touched her belly.

“Lisbeth. Come on. It’s just first-day nerves, you’ll feel better as soon as you’re settled in your new classroom. Your lunch is on the counter. Try to eat something, would you?” Gretl’s tone was firm, though not unkind. She didn’t want to sound like a Kapo, even if she had to act like one.

And she was terrified—afraid her daughter wouldn’t eat, afraid she wouldn’t get enough nourishment. Afraid she’d end up looking like …

Scheisse!

She kissed Lisbeth good-bye; it was all she could do. Edward looked as though he’d suddenly grown an ulcer.

“I will do better, I will be normal,” Lisbeth mumbled as she walked down her driveway, onto the sidewalk and toward school.

She felt drained, like a cold glass of soda pop. No one of any worth is left-handed. No one.

Her classmates called her an idiot. Last year, her teacher had tied her left hand behind her back, whacked her with a ruler. Would this year be the same? Inside a bush, Lisbeth finally let go of her cereal. A bubble inside her stomach gurgled, internal belch.

The pavement felt wobbly beneath her feet.

She knew she needed to change. It was important, necessary. She needed something to help her, to encourage her to do what she was supposed to do, something stronger than her left hand. But what?

Mutti often told her it was wrong to break an oath; no one of any worth abandoned a promise. Lisbeth had asked her papa about it once, but he’d just shrugged, and walked away. Sometimes she wondered if he even liked her. If he didn’t, she certainly knew why.

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, squeezed her eyes shut like a stubborn flower bud. I won’t use my left hand for anything, all day. I swear it. There. Done. Now she couldn’t go back on her word, no way. And if she could do it just this one day, then she could do it another. And another.

Her feet felt caged and rattled as she trudged her way to school, walking past trees and fences and Mrs. Johnson’s obnoxious dog, tethered in her front yard. The coming year was fresh and undented, the school’s entire calendar hovering before her. She dreaded those line of days, the months flipping like a Slinky. The months tangling, like a Slinky.

* * *

“I’m Miss Parnell,” the English teacher said as she wrote her name on the chalkboard. Large, curvaceous letters rambled white across the charcoal gray backdrop, stretching from end to end in exaggerated loops and turns.

When she smiled, Miss Parnell was almost pretty—a softness was added to the angular sweep of her chin, a bright flush to her brown eyes and ordinary face. She straightened her collar, brushed back an invisible wisp of hair. “So. I have to admit I’m a little nervous, I always get that way as I begin a new year. Don’t you? But I’m sure we’ll all get to know each other quickly, and then things will be easier.” The class stared at her, silent, watching as if she was an actress on a movie screen. She was more like the Judy Garland variety, though; Miss Parnell could never pass for the beauty of Marilyn Monroe or Grace Kelly.

“The first thing I’m going to do is call each of you up to my desk, one by one, to get to know you a little better. Any questions?”

The class was silent, staring.

“So. Okay. Teresa Abrams?”

Lisbeth shifted, easing her body from one side to the other on the uncomfortable wooden seat. Underneath the desk was a cement-like wad of gum, lumpy-hard. She tried not to put her fingers there, tried to avoid other spots that might be lurking beneath, others she hadn’t yet found. All those blemishes, hidden yet obvious.

“Lisbeth Bailee? Is Lisbeth not here today?”

The class snickered. As Lisbeth walked to the front of the room, it seemed as if all eyes were on her—gaping, taunting, laughing. It probably wasn’t true. She was exaggerating again, too sensitive, Mutti had told her she needed to toughen up, life wouldn’t tolerate a softie. Still, her body moved in stiff motions, unable to relax.

“I’ve been looking over your folder with particular attention,” Miss Parnell whispered in her ear. Her breath smelled like old mint, starting to wither. “I see that you aren’t the best student in class, B’s and C’s last year, a C minus in art. It also says here that you’re still in transition.”

Lisbeth stared at the teacher. In transition? What did that mean? Unintentionally she shook her head, and Miss Parnell smiled. “Don’t worry. I was a lefty too, but I got over it. With cooperation, I’m sure you’ll do just fine.” Miss Parnell winked as she softly touched Lisbeth’s shoulder. “I’m looking forward to this year, I have a feeling it’s going to be a good one. Don’t you agree?”

Miss Parnell pulled a huge stack of books from the closet and placed them on her desk, taking two trips because there were so many.

“Lisbeth,” she said, and nodded as though they were old friends, comrades in left, “perhaps you could help me with the textbooks.”

Lisbeth’s belly began to throb, and it seemed as if her desk had been slathered with the Vaseline Cream Hair Tonic her papa used in the morning; greasy and shiny and hard to grasp. Miss Parnell was looking at her, which made the class stare …

She rose from her seat and walked to the teacher’s desk, the tall mound of textbooks waiting. She grasped as many of them as she could, cradling them in her left arm while attempting to distribute them with her right. She dropped the first; it was awkward and large, the hard cover slick in her hands.

The thump of the book hitting the floor was so loud Lisbeth could almost believe it was a hydrogen bomb explosion.

As she bent to retrieve it the entire stack began sliding, outward and away. Miss Parnell put her hand out to stop the landslide, shook her head. Smiled weak and watery, tsk tsk.

When everyone in the class had a book—finally—Lisbeth went back to her desk. Her face was so warm it felt swollen, as if it was yeast bread caught too long on a sunny windowsill. Sweltering, distended, disproportional.

“Some of us don’t know each other yet,” Miss Parnell began, “So I think it’ll be a good idea if each of you in turn stand at your desk and introduce yourself, explaining such things as hobbies, likes, dislikes, whatever you want. We’ll begin at the first desk and continue in order, and I’ll be the last.”

“Hi, I’m Mary McKenna,” the first student said as she stood up. “I’m really looking forward to English this year because I like to read, particularly grown-up books like Moby Dick or Gone with the Wind. I don’t read children’s books any longer.” Mary smiled, and Lisbeth wondered if she was going to swish her arm in a movie star wave. She seemed so comfortable facing everyone, center of attention, talking directly to the entire class.

Lisbeth wished she could be that way, but public speaking—or any kind of public entertainment—was bad. Mutti let her watch picture shows, but never live plays. Or concerts. Or anything that involved real people on real stages saying fake stuff. Mutti said it was degrading, humiliating, a form of punishment.

Bad, bad Lisbeth. Bad because she wanted to feel okay in front of everyone. She already knew most of the kids, but that didn’t make it any easier. When it was her turn, would she say? Hi, I’m Lisbeth Bailee and as you’ve already seen, I’m an idiot. I knock things over and there isn’t much I can do. The principal says my left hand is a creation of the Devil.

What else was there?

Instead, when her turn came, she stumbled out of her chair and looked down at her feet. “I’m … Lisbeth Bailee,” she said. “I like reading about how things are made like from art, but I can’t do art myself.”

She sat abruptly and began drawing invisible ampersands on the top of her desk, her index finger flexed and itchy.

When Maureen Freedson stood and began to speak, Lisbeth suddenly remembered she’d forgotten to say “hi” in her introduction. Everyone would think she’d left it out on purpose, that she was rude, and they’d hate her for being a snob. Her stupid words kept repeating themselves in her head. I like reading about how things are made like from art, but I can’t do art myself. It sounded incredibly dumb. I like reading about the lives of famous artists because my mother is an artist. That’s what she’d meant, that’s what she should have said. She’d failed, again. Why did she always do these things?

The knot in her stomach grew until it felt like a full-blown tumor.

“I like how things are made like from art,” Howie Beljeau said after school. Behind Lisbeth’s back, so she had to decide whether or not to around; on the crowded playground, after the bell had rung and everyone was heading home, so anyone could hear.

Lisbeth tried hard not to hate Howie. Hate is a killing thing. At least that’s what her papa said, so she told herself she didn’t hate Howie, she just disliked him in distinct proportions. Distinct proportions. She grinned to herself, feeling slightly better. Miss Parnell had told the class to use their weekly vocabulary words as often as possible, and Lisbeth had managed to make great use of two of them.

There were a lot of things she couldn’t stand about Howie; she didn’t like his sandy spiky hair, his crooked eyebrows, even his voice. It grated and hurt inside her ears, twisting like a ridged screw. Too small and too narrow, his eyes were strange and washed out. Lisbeth wondered what it would it be like to look out from eyes that were too small, to not be able to get away from an irritating voice because it was your own. Maybe she should feel sorry for Howie. Or maybe not.

“Come on, let’s go,” Maureen said as she tugged Lisbeth’s arm. “My mom wants me home right away. If you come with me, we can watch television later.”

Lisbeth could hear a yank of laughter behind her, but she refused to turn.

“Oh sure, go on home to Mommy,” Howie said. “Go on and find out how things are made like from art.”

Lisbeth wished she’d never said that. If only the day could start again, morning-wake-up with the Mickey Mouse alarm, time to eat breakfast and brush teeth and go to school and keep the mouth closed all day long.

“Well, I do like reading about art,” she said as she began to walk away. Howie grabbed the sleeve of her jacket.

“I don’t care about stupid paintings and things like that, but I think you’re kind of interesting. I’m glad we’re in the same class this year, it’s gonna be fun.”

Howie wasn’t any taller than Lisbeth, same height and same build, but for some reason he seemed much bigger, much older.

The next day at school, Miss Parnell patted her shoulder again, as if she was a stupid puppy. “I’ve moved your desk to the front row. It’ll be better that way, I can help when you need me. We’ll be a team.” She winked, and Lisbeth decided she was trying to be friendly, but her face looked more like a stunted frog with digestive problems. Miss Parnell wasn’t pretty after all, not even when she smiled.

Lisbeth settled her books and loose-leaf paper inside her new desk. Howie walked into the classroom, and sat at his desk. Next to hers. He winked, too, but instead of a stunted frog, Howie’s wink looked more like the narrowing of a cougar’s eye.

By the end of the week, Miss Parnell was tired of Lisbeth. She claimed Lisbeth didn’t try hard enough, was deliberately being stubborn. “And I bumped into your mother the other day, at the grocery story,” she said, shaking her ruler at Lisbeth’s head. “That woman has a horrid accent.”