Here Today

“Well, how bad could it be, anyway? It doesn’t hurt so much when someone bumps into you. Here, I’ll bump into you right now.” Holly leaned over and pushed Ellie to the side.

  “Quit it,” muttered Ellie.

  “Sor-ry.”

  “Look, just don’t say anything as we walk into school, okay?”

  Ellie followed two fourth graders through the front doors of Washington Irving Elementary. She looked up and down the hall and saw no one from her class. “All right,” she said to Holly. “Let’s go.”

  The first kid who slammed into Ellie hit her so hard that she fell backward against a wall of lockers. She slid to the floor and waited to see what would happen next, but Maggie Paxton, laughing, only went on her way. She didn’t even look over her shoulder at Ellie.

  Holly, eyes bright, held out a trembling hand to Ellie. But before Ellie was on her feet again, WHAM. George Lott slammed Holly, who lost her balance and tumbled to the floor with Ellie.

  This time Ellie held out her hand to help Holly to her feet. She looked around for a teacher, but saw only students.

  WHAM. Anita Bryman slammed Ellie, raking her shoe down the back of Ellie’s ankle.

  By the end of the day, Ellie and Holly were bruised, Holly’s knees were bleeding, and a bump was rising on Ellie’s left shin. They huddled together on the bus.

  “What should we do?” Holly whispered as the bus began to empty.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Ellie whispered back. “Not anyone at all.”

  They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

  “I wonder how long you slam someone for,” Holly said quietly to Ellie as they waited for the bus the next morning.

  Ellie simply shook her head, mired in worry. She didn’t think the slamming would go unnoticed for long. Sooner or later Albert would happen to be in the hallway when she or Holly was slammed. Or Marie would notice Ellie’s scrapes and bruises. Or a teacher would see something. And any of these things, Ellie was certain, would only lead to much, much worse. Because the last thing a person wanted to do was get the sparrows in trouble.

  At lunchtime, as Ellie and Holly hid behind a shelf of books in the library, their stomachs rumbling because they had avoided the cafeteria altogether, Holly said timidly, “Look, Ellie, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but … I think we have to do something. My mother is going to want to know what happened to my dress.” The seam of Holly’s immaculate navy blue dress had ripped when Tammy had slammed Holly and she had caught her sleeve on the handle of a locker.

  “Tell her you fell,” said Ellie.

  “Okay, but I’m going to be in trouble for that. This is a brand-new dress. And what about all these bruises? And my knees? Mom is—”

  “Holly, forget it. We can’t do anything about this. If our parents get involved, they’ll call Mr. Pierce and he’ll talk to Tammy and the rest of them, maybe even send them to the principal’s office, and if that happens, believe me, everything is just going to get worse. Period.”

  “But—”

  “Just wait awhile. We’ll talk over the weekend, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “For now, let’s go back to our classroom early. We’ll skip the playground. I don’t think anyone will notice. Then no one can slam us until the end of the day.”

  One more slamming opportunity—just one—and then the weekend. That’s what Ellie was thinking when Mr. Pierce called her to his desk. Terrified that he wanted to talk about the slamming, Ellie was relieved when he simply handed her an envelope and asked her to deliver it to the principal’s office.

  Ellie slipped gratefully into the hallway, and in those few seconds before she noticed the first teacher crying, she experienced a moment of calm that she would remember for a long time—a small sense of peace that washed over her as she walked, unnoticed, through the halls of Washington Irving.

  And then Mrs. Geary stepped out of her second-grade classroom, followed by Miss Riddel, the other second-grade teacher. Ellie saw tears running down Mrs. Geary’s cheeks. As she wiped them away, Miss Riddel put her arms around Mrs. Geary, and Ellie saw that Miss Riddel was crying, too.

  Startled, Ellie hurried by them. She passed a third-grade room, the door standing open, and saw three teachers in a huddle by the door. They were all crying, even Mr. Barnes.

  Ellie quickened her pace. It must have been her imagination, but it seemed to her that the school had grown smaller and that the air was tight, as if the oxygen had been sucked out of it. She was nearing the principal’s office when Mrs. Pazden, the school nurse, rounded a corner and ran into the teachers’ room. Through the open door to the room, Ellie could hear a radio playing and saw a crowd of adults standing around it, staring at it as if it were a television. Two of them were facing Ellie. One gazed at the radio with a frozen expression, the other held a tissue to her eyes.

  The principal’s office, when Ellie finally reached it, was nearly empty. Only Mrs. Hale, one of the secretaries, was at her desk. The other desks, including Mr. Taylor’s in the room with the PRINCIPAL sign on the door, were empty. Ellie could hear another radio playing somewhere.

  She wanted to ask Mrs. Hale what was wrong, since clearly something was very, very wrong, but when she handed Mr. Pierce’s envelope to her, Mrs. Hale thumped it onto her desk and said briskly, “Hurry back to your classroom now, dear.”

  Ellie did as she was told, and walked through the hallways as fast as she could without actually running. She passed Miss Sachs, the gym teacher, whispering with Albert’s teacher. She passed a fifth-grade classroom, the teacher perched on the edge of his desk, talking to his students. Ellie could see the students in the first row staring wide-eyed, like startled cats.

  When she reached Mr. Pierce’s room she turned the knob with a shaking hand, then jumped backward as Miss Pettig thrust the door open from the other side and exited with a whoosh of perfume. Miss Pettig had been Ellie’s teacher in fifth grade and had written on Ellie’s final report card that she was quiet, serious, and dependable, and Miss Pettig thought she could go far. “Reach for the stars, Ellie!” Now, as Ellie offered Miss Pettig a tremulous smile, Miss Pettig hurried away as if she hadn’t even seen her, and knocked on the door of the next classroom.

  “Ah, Ellie. Good, you’re back,” said Mr. Pierce, as Ellie stepped into the room. She thought she detected the slightest of wavers in his voice. “Please take your seat. I need to talk to the class.”

  Ellie, now thoroughly frightened, hurried to the back of the room. She was accustomed to giving a wide berth to Tammy, who sat at one end of the front row, but Tammy barely glanced at her. All eyes were turned toward Mr. Pierce.

  “Boys and girls,” said Mr. Pierce quietly as soon as Ellie was settled behind her desk, “I have something to tell you. Some bad news.” He stopped speaking for a moment and let his gaze wander around the room, then out the window. “Our president—President John F. Kennedy—is dead.”

  Ellie felt something drain out of her then, although she couldn’t have said what it was. Her hands and feet felt disconnected from her body, and she let out a small gasp, then covered her mouth, not wanting to attract the attention of the sparrows. But she needn’t have worried. All around her were other gasps. And cries and exclamations. Tammy burst into tears. So did several other students, including Holly, who quickly put her hand to her mouth as though she could close off her tears that way.

  Mr. Pierce began speaking again, still gazing out the window. “He was in Dallas,” he said. “The president and his wife were in Dallas this morning. They were riding in an open car, and someone shot at him.”

  “You mean he was murdered?” cried Anita.

  Mr. Pierce swallowed. “He died just a little while ago. The doctors tried to save him, but they couldn’t.”

  Ellie expected a barrage of questions from her classmates. Is Jackie okay, or was she hurt, too? Did they catch the person who fired the gun? What happens now, now that our president is dead?

  But the room had become abso
lutely silent.

  Mr. Pierce glanced at the clock over the door. Ten minutes until the bell would ring signaling the end of the day. “Class dismissed,” he whispered anyway.

  Ellie looked around the room. At first her classmates didn’t move. Then slowly they began to stir, replacing books in desks, removing sweaters from the backs of chairs, standing up. They filed wordlessly out of the room.

  Ellie and Holly hung back for a moment, then followed the other students into the hall. The rest of the school must have been dismissed, too, Ellie realized, as the halls filled with silent children. Ellie had never been in the halls of Washington Irving Elementary when they were so crowded, and so quiet and orderly.

  “I don’t think we have to worry about being slammed,” Holly whispered.

  Ellie shook her head. “No,” she whispered back.

  When they were outside, the chilly air filling their lungs, Ellie saw that the school buses were still arriving, lining up in front of the school. “Let’s wait here by the door,” she said. “We’ll watch for Allan and the other kids.”

  While they waited, they listened, catching snatches of conversation.

  “He was shot in the head.”

  “The doctors couldn’t save him; it was too late.”

  “When a president is murdered, it’s called assassination.”

  “Think of Caroline and John-John. What are they going to do without their father?”

  “My sister is the exact same age as Caroline.”

  Ellie and Holly watched the students streaming through the doors and grabbed Allan and the other Witch Tree Lane kids one by one. They sat together on the bus that afternoon, jammed three to a seat.

  From the time the driver pulled away from the school until the first bus stop, not a word was spoken. The driver kept glancing in the rearview mirror at his silent riders. After the first stop (where, Ellie noticed, several mothers were waiting for their children), a few kids began to speak in hushed voices.

  Allan, who was sitting in Ellie’s lap, reached up, cupped his hand around her ear, and whispered, “What happens when you’re dead?”

  Ellie shifted uncomfortably in her seat and was still forming an answer when Allan cupped his hand around her ear again and whispered, his warm breath soft on her cheek, “Does it mean you don’t get to have any more birthdays?”

  “Well, yes,” said Ellie, “but—”

  “Why would someone want to kill President Kennedy?” asked David, turning around in his seat to face Ellie and Holly.

  “A person killed him?” said Allan. “On purpose?”

  “Maybe we should talk about this later,” said Holly. And the Witch Tree Lane kids lapsed into silence again.

  When they were the only ones left on the bus, when ordinarily they would have shouted and hooted and tried out mean nicknames, Allan said, “We’re just going to be quiet today, aren’t we?”

  Ellie nodded, and the bus rumbled along Route 27.

  When it stopped at the end of Witch Tree Lane, Ellie looked out her window and saw every single one of their parents—her father, Doris, the Levins, the Lauchaires, and Selena—standing by the stop sign. One by one, the children stepped off the bus, joined their parents, and walked to their homes.

  Ellie did not remember any weekend that seemed as long as the one that followed November 22, 1963—not even the weekend when she was so sick with the flu that she couldn’t read or even watch TV, could only lie in her bed with the shades drawn so the light wouldn’t hurt her burning eyes or add to her pounding head ache.

  Doris flicked the television set on the moment the Dingmans walked through their front door. For a while Ellie and her family sat in the living room and stared at the black-and-white images before them. But Ellie grew tired of watching tearful newscasters, and eventually began to feel afraid.

  She was just about to ask, “What happens to our country now?” when Doris stood up suddenly and, putting her hands to her cheeks, said in a loud whisper, “Poor, poor Jackie. A widow. A widow. Imagine. At her age. And with two small children to raise. Oh, the calamity.”

  Mr. Dingman turned away from the television, glanced at Doris, then turned back to the TV.

  Ellie, still frightened not only by what was on the TV, but by the very fact that all of the Witch Tree Lane parents had come home early in order to be with their children, wanted to go across the street to Holly’s house, but felt numb, and drawn into her family as if they were her universe now. The five Dingmans sat in their living room, the TV playing in the background. Mr. Dingman read the newspaper, Doris painted her nails, Albert and Marie played Monopoly, and Ellie tried to read a book. They ate supper in front of the TV, the same news stories airing over and over, all the regular TV shows cancelled.

  At eight o’clock the phone rang and Ellie leaped to answer it, expecting Holly. “Hi,” said a male voice. “Is Doris Dingman there?”

  “Doris, it’s for you,” Ellie said, and handed her the kitchen phone.

  A few moments later Doris returned to the living room and turned down the volume on the TV. She stood before the rest of the Dingmans and said solemnly, “Well, it’s happened.”

  “What?” Albert said in alarm, trying to see the television behind Doris.

  “The Harvest Parade,” said Doris, “has been … cancelled.” She cast her eyes to the floor.

  “Oh,” said Ellie, feeling relief flood through her. “I thought someone else had been killed.”

  “And the parade won’t be rescheduled,” Doris went on. “This is it.”

  “Well, under these circumstances …” said Mr. Dingman.

  “Oh, yes, yes. I know,” Doris said quickly.

  The Dingmans lapsed into silence.

  That evening Doris was particularly quiet. She sat stiffly in her chair, only moving when she jumped up to change the channel on the television. Every time an image of Jackie Kennedy appeared on the screen Doris would sit down again and gaze at the First Lady, shaking her head and clucking her tongue. “A shame,” Doris said more than once. “Such a shame.” And, “All her dreams.”

  By Saturday morning, Ellie didn’t think she could manage one more moment in front of the TV. Her father and Doris had taken their seats in the living room almost as soon as breakfast was over, Albert and Marie nearby, huddled over the Monopoly board.

  But Ellie couldn’t sit still. “Can I go to Holly’s?” she asked.

  “Oh, Eleanor, I don’t know,” said Doris, eyes on the screen.

  “Please?”

  “I think maybe you should stay at home. We’ll have a quiet day.”

  “It isn’t dangerous to leave the house, is it?” Ellie asked uneasily.

  “No, of course not,” said her father.

  “Then can I please go? I don’t want to watch TV all day.”

  “All right,” said Doris. “Just don’t make too much noise over there.”

  Ellie blinked. “Why not?”

  “Because the president is dead.”

  Ellie didn’t bother to phone Holly first. She grabbed her jacket and hustled out the door. As she was jumping off her front stoop she caught sight of David hurrying out of the Levins’ house.

  “David!” she called.

  “Hi, Ellie! What are you doing?”

  “Going over to Holly’s.”

  “Can I come?”

  “To Holly’s?”

  “I have to get away from the TV.”

  “Me, too. But I’ll bet Mick has the TV on,” Ellie said, eyeing Mick’s car in the Majors’ driveway.

  “Well, let’s do something.”

  Ellie and David convinced Holly to join them outside.

  “It’s so terrible,” said Holly a few minutes later. She and Ellie and David had ambled to the end of the street and were now sitting on the frost-swollen ground, leaning against the Witch Tree, facing in three separate directions. “Mom says there’s never been a president like Kennedy. I wonder what’s going to happen now.”

  “The vice pre
sident takes over, dummy,” said David.

  “I know that. It’s just …”

  “Doris keeps talking about Jackie,” spoke up Ellie. “She says she’s a beautiful widow.”

  “That’s weird,” said David. “I mean she is beautiful, I guess, but …”

  “I wonder what will happen to Caroline and John-John now,” Ellie went on. She leaned her head against the trunk of the Witch Tree and looked up, looked at its bare branches spread across the gray sky, at the remains of an old nest resting sloppily on a branch.

  “Well, they still have their mother,” said Holly.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ellie. “Right.”

  It was mid afternoon before Doris and Mr. Dingman finally got tired of the television. Mr. Dingman took Albert and Marie into town, and Ellie followed Doris around and around the house until finally Doris said, “Eleanor, don’t you have something to do?”

  Ellie had plenty to do. She had books to read, and homework, and the Extra List in her speller to study. But she was restless and felt the need to keep Doris in sight.

  “I don’t know,” said Ellie. “What are you doing?”

  Doris was standing in front of her closet, gazing into it the way Ellie sometimes gazed into the open refrigerator when she wasn’t sure what she wanted to eat, or sometimes when she was just bored.

  “I don’t know, either,” said Doris.

  Ellie grinned, but Doris wasn’t smiling.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Ellie.

  Doris sank into the armchair. “I feel kind of bad about something.”

  Ellie’s stomach turned over. “Bad? About what?”

  “The parade. I wish it was still on. I wish I could still be the Harvest Queen. Is that very wrong of me?”

  Ellie didn’t think it was wrong, exactly, but she did think it was selfish. “Well …”

  Doris waved her hand in front of her face. “I know, I know. Never mind.”

  Ellie lazily lifted one leg of her pants to scratch at a scab on her knee.

  “Eleanor!” exclaimed Doris. “What did you do?”

  Ellie glanced down at her bruised shin and hastily replaced her pants. “Nothing. I fell in gym.”