Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself Read online

  Lila begins to cry again. My mother is dead. We dug the hole together. For five months, every night, we dug the hole … until finally it was ready … and just when we were going to escape they caught Mama and sent her to the showers. That night I crawled through the hole myself and came out in the forest and I ran and ran and I’ve been running ever since … but not any more … I’m too tired … too tired to run …

  It’s all over now, Sally tells Lila. You’re safe. I’m taking you home with me. You can share my room. My father will make you new teeth. He’s a very good dentist.

  How can I ever thank you? Lila asks.

  Don’t even try … I’m just doing my job.

  The next day, after Lila has a bath and shampoo, a good night’s sleep and a big breakfast in bed, she and Sally board the ship for New Jersey. On the way Lila develops a sore throat and a fever of 103°. Sally puts her to bed, gives her ginger ale to sip and keeps a cold cloth on her forehead. She sits at Lila’s bedside and tells her stories until Lila is well again.

  When they get home Sally is a hero. There is a big parade in her honor on Broad Street and everyone cheers. The people watching from the windows in the office buildings throw confetti, the way Sally did when Admiral Halsey came home at the end of the war.

  That night, Sally was soaking in the tub trying to keep cool. When she and Douglas were small they played in the tub together on hot summer days. But Douglas didn’t let her see him undressed anymore. She lay back in the tub and squeezed her sponge. The water trickled on her legs and belly.

  There were four bedrooms in Sally’s house but just that one bathroom, unless you counted the one that was off the kitchen, and Sally didn’t. That one had only a sink and toilet, while this one had a tub, a separate shower, a hamper, a mirrored cabinet, plus a sink and toilet. The tile was lavender, with black trim. The wallpaper matched and all the woodwork was painted black, including the door. Sally loved it.

  Her father didn’t. He said it looked like a bordello. “What’s that?” Sally had asked at the time. “Never mind,” Daddy and Mom had answered together. Then Mom went on to say, “There’s not much you can do with lavender tile, Arnold … besides, lavender and black are the newest colors but if you feel that strongly about it we can always rip out the tile and fixtures and start all over …” Then Daddy said, “Hell, no … I’ll get used to it in time … I guess.”

  The only thing wrong with the bathroom was you couldn’t powder in it because the powder flew all over and made the black woodwork dusty and Mom didn’t like that.

  The phone rang as Sally was drying herself. If you didn’t dry carefully between your toes you could get something called Athlete’s Foot and your skin would peel off.

  “Sally …” Ma Fanny called, “hurry … it’s your mother on the line.”

  Sally jumped into her robe and dashed to the telephone.

  “Hi, honey … how’re you doing?” Mom asked.

  “Okay … how’s Florida … and when are you coming home?”

  “Day after tomorrow and its beautiful!”

  “Did you find a place?”

  “Yes, just this afternoon.”

  “Then we’re really going?”

  “Most likely … but the lease isn’t signed yet so don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t … I won’t … what’s it like?”

  “Oh, it’s very interesting. How’s Douglas?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Good … put him on and then you can say hello to Daddy.”

  The next day Sally told Christine, “They found a place. My mother says it’s really interesting.”

  “When are you going?”

  “I don’t know … when it gets cold, I guess … nothing’s definite yet.”

  Sally ate lunch at Christine’s house. Mrs. Mackler made them bologna sandwiches with mayonnaise and lettuce and thick chocolate malteds to drink. Sally wondered if she’d dropped an egg in while they weren’t looking the way Ma Fanny did.

  Mrs. Mackler said, “I heard you’re going to Florida.”

  “You did?” Sally gave Christine a look.

  “Or am I wrong?” Mrs. Mackler asked.

  “Wrong?”

  “Yes, wrong.”

  “Well, I don’t know … I don’t know anything about any of that.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  After lunch, when they went outside, Sally told Christine, “Next time don’t seal your lips … sew them!”

  And Christine said, “Oh, Sally … I only told my mother … I can keep a secret as good as you … honest!”

  “I had to pay under the table,” Sally’s father said, “but I think it’s worth it … besides, I had no choice … there’s so little available.”

  They were having Sunday supper at Aunt Bette and Uncle Jack’s place, which was over a beauty parlor on the other side of town. Sally tried to picture her father under the table in Miami Beach. Probably the apartment landlord, Mr. Koner, was with him. Daddy would take out his money and hand it to Mr. Koner. He’d count it, nod, and then they’d both crawl out from under the table together. It didn’t make much sense to Sally but she supposed that was the way they did business in Florida.

  “Finish the tongue, Sally,” her mother said.

  “I’m eating the potato salad first.”

  “Finish the tongue, then eat the potato salad.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “You know the poor children are starving in Europe … besides, Aunt Bette will be insulted if you don’t finish the tongue. She made it herself.”

  Aunt Bette was learning to cook now that Ma Fanny, who lived with her and Uncle Jack, was going to Florida. Ma Fanny had always done the cooking. Aunt Bette was gathering recipes on her own these days and trying them out on the family. The tongue was covered with a sweet sauce that had raisins floating in it. Sally couldn’t stand the idea of eating some cow’s tongue. She looked at Aunt Bette and tried to smile. “I like the potato salad a lot.”

  “Ma Fanny made that,” Aunt Bette said, softly.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll finish your tongue,” Douglas said. “I think it’s great.”

  Aunt Bette beamed.

  Sally handed him her plate and was grateful when her aunt changed the subject. “I still think you should consider getting them there in time to start school,” she told Daddy and Mom. “It’s difficult enough to adjust to a new school situation without coming in mid-term …”

  “On the other hand,” Daddy said, “I really don’t want them there during the hurricane season … it’s too risky.”

  “So when do you think we should leave?” Mom asked.

  “Mid-October … that way the danger of the storms will be over and we can still get our money’s worth.”

  “But we’ll come home as soon as winter’s over, right?” Sally asked.

  “No … I think we’ll stay and finish the school year,” Mom said. “Anyway, you’ll probably like it so much you’ll never want to come home. Just wait till you see those palm trees!”

  “But I’ll miss Daddy and Aunt Bette and Uncle Jack and Christine and my bed and the bathroom and my other friends and my playhouse and school and …”

  They all started to laugh. Even Douglas laughed, with his mouth full of food. Sally hated it when the family thought she’d said something funny when she was being serious.

  “And I’ll miss you, too,” Daddy told her, “and Douglas and Mom and Ma Fanny … but I’ll fly down whenever I can.”

  “On a plane?” Sally asked.

  “He hasn’t got wings,” Douglas said and they all laughed again.

  “But planes crash,” Sally told her father.

  “So do cars … but we ride in them every day.”

  “But it’s more dangerous up in the sky,” Sally argued.

  “Not true,” Douglas said. “You’re a lot better off up there.”

  “Douglas is right,” Uncle Jack said. “Planes are more safe than cars.”

 
“Just as long as I don’t have to try it,” Mom said. “I’ll leave the flying to the more adventurous members of the family.”

  “Louise …” Daddy said, “I wish you wouldn’t talk that way in front of Sally. How will she ever learn to be adventurous?’

  “Little girls don’t need to be adventurous,” Mom said.

  “But I want to be adventurous,” Sally told her.

  “Fat chance!” Douglas said. “You’re scared of your own shadow.”

  “I am not!”

  “So how come you won’t go down to the basement by yourself?”

  “That’s different,” Sally said. “That has nothing to do with my shadow.”

  “That’s enough, children!” Mom said.

  Aunt Bette and Uncle Jack looked at each other.

  Sally turned to her father. “Will you come for my birthday?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You have to promise!”

  “I’ll try my very, very best … how’s that?”

  “Okay … I guess.”

  Mom took Sally and Douglas to their father’s office to have their teeth checked and cleaned before they left for Florida. Ma Fanny didn’t have to worry about her teeth because they weren’t real. At night she took them out and soaked them in a glass. They clicked when she talked.

  Sometimes, when Sally came to her father’s office, Miss Kay, Daddy’s nurse-secretary, would let her sit at the typewriter, but today she was busy so Sally had to wait with everyone else.

  She was glad her father was a dentist. It was fun to have him clean her teeth even though the little brush tickled her gums and made her wiggle around. She’d never had a cavity and Christine said she was really lucky because she had had twenty of them and it didn’t tickle to have them filled.

  While he cleaned her teeth, Daddy sang to her. He always sang while he worked. He made up the songs as he went along. He could also whistle just like a bird. So Sally gave him the name, Doey-bird. Douglas said it was dumb to name a grown man Doey-bird but Sally’s father didn’t mind. She liked giving special people special names. She was the one who’d started calling her grandmother Ma Fanny and now everybody called her that. Douglas was just jealous because she hadn’t given him a special name too.

  If Sally could sing like her father, or even whistle, she wouldn’t be in the listener group in music class. It wasn’t much fun to mouth the words while practically everyone else got to sing them. Sometimes Sally would forget to just listen and she would sing too. Then Miss Vickers would ask, “Sally Freedman … are you singing out loud?” and Sally would go back to mouthing the words.

  After her father finished with her, it was Douglas’s turn. Sally hung around until Miss Kay asked, “Would you like to type for a while?” She gave Sally some yellow paper and adjusted the stool so she could reach the keys. As she typed she heard her father start another song.

  Now that he’d had a series of whirlpool treatments, Douglas could use his hands to build things again. He still had to spend a lot of time resting, but instead of lying on his bed reading his favorite magazines, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Model Airplane News, he was making cartoon characters out of eggshells. He had a whole row of them standing on a shelf in his bookcase—Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny. Sally liked to watch Douglas blow the insides out of eggshells. And she liked the cakes that Mom and Ma Fanny baked to use up the eggs, too.

  As soon as Mom let him go down to his basement workshop again, Douglas abandoned his eggshells in favor of his oscilloscope. He was determined to finish it before they left. It was some kind of machine that let you see electrical waves on a green screen. Sally didn’t understand how it worked but everyone else was impressed that Douglas had built it himself.

  Mom had a special lamp installed over the workbench. It was supposed to give Douglas extra vitamin D, like sunshine, until he got to Miami Beach, where they had the real thing. Douglas got a very nice tan on the back of his neck.

  During the last week in September Sally invited six school friends home for a farewell lunch. Her mother fixed egg salad sandwiches in different shapes, but Alice Ingram said she was allergic to eggs so Sally’s mother made a grilled cheese bun for her. Christine gave Sally a small silver pin with two Scottie dogs on it and said, “This one’s you and this one’s me and we’re together … see … best friends for always.” They promised to write at least twice a week.

  On October 8, Sally said goodbye to her classmates and teachers and got her transfer card from the school office. She and Douglas spent the next week at home, in isolation, because Mom didn’t want to take any chances that they might come down with something before their trip.

  Aunt Bette and Uncle Jack gave up their apartment and arranged to move into Sally’s house so her father wouldn’t be lonely while the family was away. Sally was glad about that. She didn’t like the idea of Daddy living all alone.

  It was hardest to say goodbye to him. She sat on his lap with her head on his chest and played with the curly dark hairs on his arm.

  “I’m going to finish the basement while you’re away,” Daddy told her.

  “You are?”

  “Yes … that’s going to be my special project … and when you come back we’ll have a recreation room.”

  “Like Alice Ingram’s?”

  “I’ve never seen hers.”

  “It’s nice,” Sally said. “Can I have a party in ours?”

  “As many as you want.”

  “I hope the time goes fast,” Sally said. “I hope it flies by …”

  “It will. You’ll see. This is going to be an adventure …”

  “How do you know?” Sally asked.

  “Because every new experience is an adventure. Life’s full of them. Do you think you can remember that?”

  “I’ll try … but I’ll miss you, Doey-bird.”

  Daddy hugged her. “And I’ll miss my little gal, Sal.”

  “You’re so silly!”

  “So are you.”

  “I wish Mom was silly.”

  “She loves you … you know that … not everybody can be silly.”

  “I know … but I wish it anyway … at least sometimes.”

  “You take good care of her, okay?”

  “Okay …” Sally said. “Are you ready for your treatment?”

  “You know I am.”

  “Ready … set … go …” Sally gave him a sliding kiss, three quick hugs and finished with a butterfly kiss on his nose.

  “Don’t forget to write to me,” Daddy said.

  “How could I forget?”

  Daddy looked away then. He had tears in his eyes. Sally pretended not to notice. She was having enough trouble holding back her own.

  They left on a Saturday morning, from the railroad station in Newark, on a train called The Champion. Douglas was disappointed. He’d wanted to fly. “Flying is fine for people in a hurry,” Daddy had explained, “but it’s much more expensive and you’ll have a good time this way.”

  Sally was relieved. She didn’t want to fly anywhere but if she told that to her father he might get the wrong idea and think she wasn’t adventurous after all. Why wasn’t Douglas afraid of anything? That didn’t seem fair. Sally felt safe on trains. She was used to them. It bothered her that in this respect she was like her mother.

  Daddy came on board, carrying a wicker lunch basket, and helped them get settled in their seats, with Sally and Douglas facing Mom and Ma Fanny. Then he kissed them goodbye for the hundredth time and went back to the platform where he waited with Aunt Bette and Uncle Jack. When the train started Sally waved and blew kisses. And she kept waving until she couldn’t see them anymore.

  “I’ll trade seats with you,” Sally said to Douglas.

  “Not now … we’ve only been gone five minutes.”

  “You promised you’d share the window seat with me.”

  “I’ll switch in an hour.”

  “Make it half an hour and I won’t nudge you.”
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br />   “Sit back in your seat, Sally,” Mom said, sounding sharp.

  “What for?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “But I like to sit up …”

  “Stop that right now,” Mom said, “or you won’t get the window seat at all.”

  “Stop what?”

  “She can have mine,” Ma Fanny said. “What do I need with a window seat?”

  “No, Ma … she can stay right where she is.”

  “Yeah,” Douglas muttered.

  “Who asked you?” Sally said. She was annoyed at Mom. If Ma Fanny wanted to switch places what did Mom care? Sally turned around and adjusted the white linen napkin clipped to the top of her seat so that her head rested against it. The seats were soft and comfortable, not like the hard ones on the train to New York. These cushions were covered in blue velvet.

  Ma Fanny pulled out her knitting. She was the fastest knitter Sally had ever seen. Her needles clicked together as the wool flew off her fingers. Mom knitted more slowly, but her sweaters turned out just as good. Ma Fanny had taught Sally to knit. She could do knit-one-purl-one, and knit-two-purl-two, but her squares always came out with holes in the middle where she’d dropped stitches by mistake.

  The train picked up speed and Sally and Douglas watched the scenery whiz by. After a while Douglas took out the latest issue of Popular Mechanics and Sally browsed through the two new Nancy Drew books Aunt Bette had given to her as a going-away present. She’d been really surprised to find them inside the pretty package because Aunt Bette didn’t approve of Nancy Drews. She thought Sally should be reading the books about the prairie girl.

  Sally wrote Christine a postcard.

  Dear Christine,

  We are on the train now. We’ve been gone about an hour. That’s about all that’s new. Write soon.

  Love and other indoor sports,

  Your very best friend,

  Sally Jane Freedman (The First)

  Sally didn’t know what Love and other indoor sports meant but she used to have a baby sitter named Carolyn who signed all her letters that way. Sally didn’t like Carolyn because she was always writing letters. She never had time to play games. One time, when Carolyn left the room for a few minutes, Sally looked at one of her letters and saw how it was signed. When Carolyn came back Sally asked, “What does Love and other indoor sports mean?”