“Herr Schneider, that’s what people call him. They say he sells horse meat in his butcher shop.” Rosie stepped closer. “Maybe even dog meat. He saves the good stuff for his German friends.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Ask my pop, he’ll tell you. Everybody but you must know the truth about your old man.”
I glanced at Jane. She looked as surprised as I was. I’d never heard anything about the butcher shop except Schneider’s high prices. Mother and Father often complained about that, especially when Mother cooked a roast full of fat and gristle so tough it made my jaws ache to chew it.
“You better leave me alone,” Elsie whined.
Rosie laughed. “Who’s going to make me?”
“I’ll tell Annie’s mother!”
Rosie stood face to face with Elsie, the gate between them. Without warning, Rosie shoved the gate and pushed Elsie back so hard she fell on the sidewalk. As she struggled to get up, she toppled forward and landed on her knees. While we laughed at her clumsiness, Elise examined her torn stockings. “Now I’m really telling!”
“You better not tell my mother!” I gave her a push, but not hard enough to knock her down.
Elsie scrambled to her feet. “I hate you, Annie!” She was crying, and her nose was running, and I wished I hadn’t shoved her.
But then she spat in my face, and I forgot to feel bad.
“Crybaby,” Rosie shouted. “Run home to Mama!”
We watched Elsie go, getting smaller and smaller until she was no more than a distant dot. She had an odd way of running, clumsy, awkward, heavy on her feet, flapping her arms like a bird.
Rosie spit on her palms and rubbed them together. “She won’t come back again.”
And Rosie was right, at least for the time being.
A few days later, Rosie, Jane, and I were walking home from school. We’d stopped at the corner grocery store to buy dill pickles bigger than hot dogs. Mr. Walker kept them in a barrel and sold them to us wrapped in waxed paper. They were salty and sour and dripping with juice, but Rosie loved them, and so did Jane and I—though not quite as much as Rosie.
Sometimes Jane and I would have preferred to spend our pennies on peppermint sticks or Turkish toffee or licorice, but if Rosie wanted pickles, that’s what we got because whatever she liked we liked.
On this particular day, we were talking about Elsie.
“Did you hear what she did to Polly today?” Rosie asked.
“She stole the sandwich right out of her lunch bag,” I said. “And ate it at recess. I saw her stuffing it in her mouth like a starving child in Europe. When Miss Harrison asked who did it, everyone looked at Elsie, but she said it wasn’t her.”
“She’s such a liar,” Rosie said.
“Maybe she was hungry,” Jane said softly. “Sometimes she comes to school without a lunch bag. Haven’t you ever noticed?”
Rosie and I looked at each other. I hadn’t noticed, and neither had she.
“Yes, but Polly’s the smallest girl in our class,” Rosie said, “and Elsie’s the biggest. She should pick on kids her own size.”
“There aren’t any kids her size,” I said. When Rosie laughed, I felt proud of myself.
“She’s a typical Hun.” Rosie licked pickle juice from her fingers and threw the wax paper into the gutter. “You know what Pop says about this flu people are getting? It’s because of the Germans. They spread the germs. That’s why we never buy meat from Herr Schneider. He coughs and sneezes and spits on everything.”
“He was born in Germany, did you know that?” Jane asked. “It’s why he’s got that accent.”
“Dat’s vy Herr Schneider talks so funny,” Rosie said, “him and his buddy der Kaiser.”
We all laughed and started talking with German accents.
“Hey,” Rosie said, “if you promise to keep it a secret, I’ll tell you what my brother Mike and his friends did last night.”
After Jane and I crossed our hearts and hoped to die, Rosie beckoned us closer. “They threw a rock through the butcher shop window,” she whispered, “and then they wrote Kaiser Lover and Dirty Hun on the sidewalk.”
Jane looked worried. “If anybody finds out what they did, they’ll be in so much trouble.”
Rosie shrugged. “They ought to get a medal,” she said. “Everybody knows Herr Schneider wants the Kaiser to win the war.”
I pictured Mr. Schneider—Herr Schneider—standing behind the meat case, wearing a bloodstained apron. He had the same squinty eyes as Elsie, but his nose looked like a big red potato stuck in the middle of his face. He could easily be a spy, a tattletale just like Elsie, only on a much bigger scale, tattling war secrets to the Kaiser. Ooooh, it gave me shivers.
“Follow me!” Rosie darted down Third Avenue, and Jane and I ran after her.
“Where are you going?” I shouted.
“To the butcher shop.” Rosie laughed and ran on, sure we’d follow her.
Jane shot me a worried look, but I ran so fast I caught up with Rosie and then dashed past her. Behind us I heard Jane shout, “Wait for me!”
At the butcher shop, we saw a crowd of boys yelling insults. The Hun stood in the doorway, wearing his bloody butcher’s apron and shaking his fist. “You boys,” he yelled. “I know who you are. I tell your parents. They pay for busted window!”
A board covered the broken glass. On it, someone had painted HUN in huge, badly written letters.
Rosie ran into the crowd and began singing our favorite patriotic song, and Jane and I joined in.
Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there—
That the Yanks are coming,
The Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over
Over there.
We sang that song every morning in school right after we pledged allegiance to the flag. Filled with patriotic spirit, we emphasized Yanks so Herr Schneider couldn’t fail to get the meaning. It was such a good performance that the boys stopped jeering and sang with us.
But we didn’t linger. Linking arms, we marched past Schneider’s Butcher Shop and turned the corner. None of us, not even Rosie, wanted our parents to hear about our behavior.
We hadn’t gone a block before we saw Elsie coming toward us eating a chocolate ice cream cone. She didn’t see us until Rosie ran past her and knocked the ice cream out of her hand.
Jane and I ran after Rosie, and I bumped Elsie so hard she almost fell down. “Hun!” we shouted. “Kaiser lover!”
We formed a circle around her. “Something stinks.” Rosie wrinkled her nose. “Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a dirty Hun.”
Around and around we went, trapping Elsie in a circle and chanting, “Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a dirty Hun!”
“I’m telling Miss Harrison!” she screamed.
“You better not, you big fat crybaby,” Rosie yelled. “We’ll get you if you do!”
With that, the three of us broke apart and ran down the street and around the first corner. When Elsie was out of sight, we sat down on a curb. We were hot and tired and thirsty. I’d have paid ten dollars for an ice-cold glass of Coca-Cola.
“Do you think she’ll tell?” Jane asked.
“So what if she does?” Rosie asked. “We’ll just say she’s lying. Everybody knows she lies about everything.”
“But what if Miss Harrison believes Elsie?” Jane asked, her forehead scrunched into wrinkles of worry.
We sat there for a while, thinking about the trouble we’d be in if Elsie convinced Miss Harrison we’d bullied her. She’d probably call our parents, and our parents—well, none of us dared to picture the punishments they might dish out for misbehaving in public.
Suddenly, Rosie jumped up. “Oh, my golly, I have
to go home,” she said. “Ma told me to mind Bridget after school, and I totally forgot.”
Jane and I watched Rosie dash down the street, her red hair flashing in the afternoon sunlight. She lived six blocks away on the other side of town, but Jane lived near me, so we walked home together.
“Sometimes I feel sorry for Elsie,” Jane said. “It must be awful not to have any friends.”
“She brings it on herself, you know.” Even as I spoke, I remembered the way Elsie had looked at me, holding hands with Rosie—me, her former best friend, her only friend. I reminded myself of what she’d done to Antoinette, but I couldn’t erase the memory of Elsie’s face, her mouth smeared with chocolate ice cream, the sugar cone lying on the sidewalk, a dribble of melting ice cream puddled around it.
“It’s not her fault her father’s a German,” Jane said.
“Nobody liked her before the war,” I said. “At least that’s what Rosie says.”
“I guess that’s true. She’s always been—” Jane hesitated, trying to come up with the right word. “Different, I guess, as if she doesn’t know how to fit in. She’s on the outside, like that game we used to play when we were little—go in and out the window. Nobody wanted to be her partner. No matter what game we played, she was always the last to be chosen. It was kind of sad, but . . .”
By now we’d reached Jane’s corner. Before she turned to go home, she said, “I guess Elsie will always be Elsie. Maybe we shouldn’t pick on her so much.”
“Maybe,” I said, and she waved goodbye, leaving me to walk home alone.
Jane was just too nice sometimes. Rosie wasn’t about to stop picking on Elsie. And neither was I, even though I felt a bit guilty about it.
I scuffled home through the piles of fallen leaves, thinking about the coming weekend and what Rosie and Jane and I might do. Sometimes we roller-skated down High Street, which was very steep and scary, but Rosie led the way and we followed. So far I had plenty of scabs on my knees from falls, but nothing worse.
If we didn’t feel like roller-skating, we’d seesaw and swing in the park or play one, two, three O’Leario. Rosie and I either tied or one of us edged the other by one or two points. There were trees to climb and creeks to follow and woods to explore. If it rained, we’d go to the library and look for Tom Swift adventure books. Every once in a while, we found one we hadn’t read. Rosie liked Zane Grey’s western novels, and we acted them out in the park, riding make-believe horses and shooting make-believe guns.
Rosie always had ideas. She was never bored, and neither were we. She was the best friend I’d ever had.
Six
FTER SUPPER ONE NIGHT, Mother, Father, and I gathered in the living room as usual. Mother picked up the sweater she was knitting for me. The yarn was soft, and its color matched my eyes. Despite the lingering heat, I could hardly wait for her to finish it.
I settled down beside her with Anne of Green Gables. I was already halfway through it, and still thinking how much alike Rosie and Anne were. Maybe it was their red hair that made them so mischievous. I twirled a strand of my hair around my finger. Brown. Such a boring color. If only it were red. I couldn’t imagine why Anne hated her hair when I would have traded my heart and soul for it.
Father sat nearby in his armchair reading the Evening Sun. Suddenly he laid the paper down and looked at Mother. “It says here that the influenza epidemic is getting worse. Over five hundred cases were reported today in Philadelphia alone. The numbers are increasing in Baltimore, as well. As for New York and Boston, the hospitals don’t have room for more patients, and undertakers are running out of coffins. In some places, they stack the bodies up in piles until they can bury them properly.”
I stared in horror at Father. Dead bodies in piles? Were they outside where everyone could see them? No, they couldn’t be. They must keep them in hospital basements or somewhere private. Morgues maybe. The very word made me shiver. How would I go to sleep tonight?
Mother didn’t look up from her knitting. “Oh, Horace, you’re frightening Annie. You know as well as I do how reporters exaggerate. The number is probably less than half what the newspapers say. As for bodies stacked in piles, that’s ridiculous.” She reached over and patted my hand.
Father shook his head. “It’s very contagious, Ida, and there’s no cure.”
Mother frowned and laid down her knitting. “The flu comes and goes every year. Very few people die of it. In a month or so, it will be over, and so will the war, and everything will be back to normal.”
“I’m not so sure.” Father sighed and returned his attention to the newspaper. “This isn’t the regular flu. It’s much worse.”
Mother hugged me. “Don’t let your father worry you, Annie. If you catch the flu, you’ll be well again in a week or less.”
I hoped Mother was right, but no matter what she said, over five hundred cases in one day sounded worrisome to me. And if hospitals didn’t have room for them, where would sick people go? And how long would the dead wait to be buried?
At recess the next day, we gathered in groups and talked about the Spanish influenza. All of a sudden, it was even bigger news than the war. And much closer to home. People were dying in Baltimore. Mount Pleasant was just outside the city.
“Our minister says it’s God’s punishment for the war in Europe,” Eunice said.
“If that’s true, only the Germans should catch it,” Rosie said. “They started the war. They’re the ones who ought to be punished.”
Lucy shook her head. “My father says it’s like the bubonic plague. It could wipe out almost the entire human race.”
Rosie shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”
“My father knows more about it than you, Miss Smarty,” Lucy said. “He’s a doctor.”
“Nobody has died in Mount Pleasant,” Polly Anderson said.
“Then how come I saw a funeral procession on the way to school this morning?” Eunice asked. “Six black horses were pulling a hearse on Prospect Street, and at least six carriages followed it.”
“I saw a black wreath on somebody’s door on Maple Street,” Lucy added. “That means somebody died in that house.”
“My pop says you can feel perfectly fine in the morning,” Rosie put in. “But then in the afternoon you start feeling bad, and by that night, you’re dead.”
“Can’t we talk about something else?” Jane asked. No one paid any attention to her. It seemed almost every one had something to say about the influenza.
While we were talking, I noticed Elsie sitting a few feet away listening to us. The October sunlight glinted on her blond braids, turning flyaway wisps white.
Suddenly she turned her head and caught me looking at her. Our eyes locked. I couldn’t look away. It was if she’d put a spell on me.
“What are you looking at?” Rosie asked Elsie.
“Nothing.” Elsie stood up and walked away, and the spell broke.
Jane took my hand and peered into my eyes. “Are you all right, Annie?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“I don’t know. You have that look my mother talks about. You know, as if someone walked on your grave.”
“That’s creepy, Jane.”
The bell rang and we hurried to form a line at the school door. While we filed into the classroom, my legs trembled, and I was glad to take my seat.
I didn’t look at Elsie for the rest of the day, but I felt her eyes crawling up and down my back. Let her stare. I’d never be her friend again.
The next day at recess, Rosie taught us a new jump rope chant:
I had a little bird,
And its name was Enza.
I opened up the window,
And in flew Enza.
At first nobody understood the joke, so Rosie had to explain. “It’s about catching the flu. In flew Enza—influenza.”
“Oh,” Eunice said. “The little bird flies in your window, and you get the flu.”
“That’s right,” Rosie said. “Go
to the head of the class.”
Lucy and Jane grabbed the jump rope and started turning, faster and faster. We ran in and skipped rope while the others chanted the Enza rhyme. When we missed, we caught flu and had to lie down on the ground and pretend to be dead.
Shivering with fear that I’d miss, I ran in, jumped without missing, and ran out of the rope’s swing. “Hooray for me,” I cried. “Enza didn’t get me!”
Polly came after me and missed. She fell on the ground and cried, “Alas, I am dead and cannot take the math test tomorrow!”
Rosie laughed when it was her turn. “Enza can’t catch me,” she shouted as she jumped in, skipped rope, and darted out again. “I’m too fast for Enza,” she boasted.
Elsie watched us from the sidelines. Looking directly at Rosie, she shouted, “I hope you catch the flu. You won’t brag then.”
“Dirty Hun,” Rosie shouted back. “You’re the one who should get the flu, not me. You’re too fat to get away from Enza.”
“I hope you die of the flu!” Elsie screamed. “It would serve you right!”
Forgetting jump rope, we all began yelling at Elsie. She retreated to the school’s front steps before yelling back at us. We called her names. She called us names. All the girls joined in, shouting Elsie down. Louder and louder, insults bounced off the wall.
Miss Harrison opened the school door and saw what was happening. “Girls, girls!” she cried. “This is not the way Pearce students behave!”
“Rosie started it,” Elsie shouted. “She said I was fat and she hoped I died of the flu!”
Miss Harrison frowned at Rosie. “Shame on you for saying such a hateful thing.”
“Elsie’s lying,” Eunice shouted. “She’s the one who started it. She said she hoped Rosie would die of the flu.”
"You’re the liar!” Elsie’s round face turned red with anger. “I didn’t say that!”
We all began shouting then. Elsie was a Hun. Her father loved the Kaiser, she loved the Kaiser, she was a stinking, dirty German, and she was spreading flu germs all over school.