Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself Read online

  Sally reached up and unpinned her coronet. Then she took the rubber bands off the ends of her braids and unwound them.

  The nurse started picking through Sally’s hair, messing it up. Sally hoped Mom had a hairbrush in her purse. “Oh oh …” the nurse said, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You’ve got them.”

  “Got what?”

  “Nits.”

  “In my hair?”

  “Where else?”

  “What are they?”

  “Lice eggs . . I can’t admit you to school with them … you’ll spread them everywhere …”

  “But how could I have them? My hair’s very clean … my mother washed it last night and gave me a vinegar rinse besides …”

  “No matter … shampooing can’t get them out … you need something much stronger … they’re nasty little critters. Put your shoes back on while I tell your mother what to do.” She walked out of the room.

  Sally jumped into her loafers and listened at the doorway.

  “I’ve never heard anything so outrageous!” Mom said. “I’ve always kept my children immaculate. Anyone with eyes can see that. Why, just last night I shampooed her hair …”

  “Look, Mrs. Freedman … don’t take this personally … you’ve been traveling … you’re in another part of the country … she could have picked them up anywhere … it’s very common … that’s why we check the new children so carefully … she’s not alone …”

  Mom shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “Take her home and use the treatment,” the nurse said, “and in a few days I’ll be happy to check her again.”

  When Sally heard the word treatment her throat tightened and tears came to her eyes.

  “I hate it here!” Sally and Mom were walking home from school. “I hate the nurse and the school and Miami Beach!” She bit her lip to keep from crying.

  Mom said, “Listen, honey … that nurse is crazy … she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You don’t have nits. And we’ll never tell anyone about it, okay?”

  “Then I don’t need her treatment after all?” Sally asked, brightening.

  “Oh, I suppose it can’t hurt to go along with her … otherwise she might not let you into school … but between you and me, there’s nothing wrong … absolutely nothing …”

  When they got home Sally went into the bathroom and carefully examined her hair in the mirror. She didn’t see anything unusual. She came out and found her mother, Douglas and Ma Fanny talking quietly in the kitchen. They stopped when they saw her.

  “Well …” Mom said, “I think I’ll go down to the drugstore … I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

  As soon as she’d left Douglas said, “I hear you’ve got the cooties.”

  “I do not have cooties. Mom said there’s nothing wrong … that nurse is crazy … besides, she didn’t say cooties, she said nits.”

  “What do you think cooties are?”

  “Cooties are make-believe … there’s really no such thing.”

  Douglas started laughing. “Baloney … they’re lice … little bugs that fly around in your hair …” He rubbed his thumb and second finger together.

  “You’re lying,” Sally said.

  “Cootie … cootie … cootie …”

  “Ma Fanny,” Sally cried, “did you hear what he said?”

  “Dougie … be a good boy,” Ma Fanny said. “Don’t tease Sally.”

  “Oh, it was just a joke,” Douglas said. “Can’t she even take a joke?”

  “Some joke!” Sally ran across the room and shook her hair at Douglas. “Have a cootie …” she said. “Have two or three or four …”

  Douglas ran to the bathroom and locked himself in.

  Ma Fanny called, “Cooties … schmooties … stop it right now …”

  Dear Doey-bird,

  I miss you very much. Miami Beach is not as great as the ads say. I have a lot to tell you. The nurse wouldn’t let me into school because she says I have nits. Do you know what they are? Douglas says they’re cooties but I don’t believe him. I have this special ointment on my hair now. It’s blue and pretty disgusting. I hope it doesn’t make my hair fall out. I’m trying to think of this as an adventure, like you said, but so far, it doesn’t seem like one because everything is going wrong. Don’t feel too bad that I hate it here and want to come home. After all, it’s not your fault.

  Your loving daughter,

  Sally F.

  Two days later Sally went back to school. This time the nurse didn’t find anything wrong with her hair and she was admitted to Miss Swetnick’s fifth grade class.

  The desks were lined up in rows and attached to the floor. Each one had an ink well in the corner. At home they’d had light-colored wooden desks that moved around and chairs that came in different sizes. And sometimes they’d push their desks together to make tables or else sit two-by-two. Sally knew now that she’d been right about Central Beach Elementary School in the first place. It was about five hundred years old.

  But Miss Swetnick wasn’t. She was young and pretty with red framed eyeglasses shaped like hearts. She had long black hair tied back with a ribbon and a lot of the girls in the class wore theirs the same way. A few had long braids like Margaret O’Brien, the movie star, but nobody else had a coronet. Another thing Sally noticed right off was their shoes. They all wore sandals—white or gold—and no socks. Sally looked down at her red loafers and thick white socks, which were so popular in New Jersey, and felt foolish.

  “Could I please be excused?” Sally asked Miss Swetnick.

  Miss Swetnick smiled. Her front tooth was chipped at an angle. Sally liked the way it looked and wondered if her father could fix her front tooth the same way. “Already?” Miss Swetnick said. “You just got here.”

  “I know … but it’s important …” Sally shifted her weight from one foot to the other so Miss Swetnick would think it was a real emergency.

  “Well … I suppose it’s all right. But from now on you’ll have to go with the rest of the class.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Sally said.

  “The Girls’ Room is down the corridor and on your right. Would you like someone from the class to show you the way?”

  “No … I can find it myself.”

  “Hurry back now …”

  “I will.”

  Sally unpinned her coronet on the way to the Girls’ Room and put the bobby pins in her dress pocket. Her hair hung below her shoulders in braids. She felt better already. She found the Girls’ Room but couldn’t believe that there were no doors, not on the outside and not on the inside either. The toilets were separated into stalls but not one of them had a door for privacy. Sally made up her mind never to use the bathroom at school, no matter what. She took off her shoes and socks, then stepped back into her loafers, barefoot. She rolled her socks into a ball and tried to stuff them into her pocket but they wouldn’t go. She had to get rid of them somehow, and fast, so she tossed them into the trash basket, hoping that her mother would never find out. It was a terrible sin to throw away clothing when everyone knew the poor children in Europe were going half-naked. God could punish a person for throwing perfectly good socks away. She hoped he’d understand just this one time.

  If Miss Swetnick noticed that Sally had changed her hair or removed her socks, she didn’t say. “We’re doing a project on ancient Egypt … we’re working in committees … do you like to draw?” she asked Sally.

  “Yes … a lot.”

  “Good.” Miss Swetnick led her to a group working on the floor, painting a mural. “Boys and girls … this is Sally Freedman. She’s from New Jersey and she’s going to be in our class. So let’s make her feel welcome.”

  They looked up at Sally and began to sing.

  “We welcome you to Central Beach

  We’re mighty glad you’re here

  We’ll send the air reverberating

  With a mighty cheer

  We’ll sing you in

>   We’ll sing you out

  To you we’ll give a mighty shout

  Hail, hail, the gang’s all here

  And you’re welcome to Central Bee … eeach!”

  A boy held a paint brush out to Sally. “You can put in the woman carrying the jug of water … right here …” He tapped the paper. “And make it good …”

  As she began to sketch, a chubby girl leaned over and put her face so close that Sally could smell her breath. “I don’t like you,” she whispered. “Get it?”

  “I don’t like you either,” Sally whispered back because what else could she say to a person who started out that way?

  They had Bathroom before lunch and Sally had to go but she wasn’t about to use those toilets without doors, although the others did, as if it didn’t matter that everyone could see and hear what they were doing. She found out that the girl who didn’t like her was Harriet Goodman. Barbara Ash, another girl in the class, told her. She also said that Harriet Goodman could play Peg O’ My Heart on the piano. “She thinks she’s really great because she lives here all year ’round,” Barbara said. “She doesn’t like winter people.”

  “Oh … where do you come from?” Sally asked.

  “St. Louis originally … but I live here all the time now … only I’m not a snob like Harriet. You want to come to lunch with me?”

  “Sure,” Sally said. Barbara had straight blonde hair cut like a Dutch boy’s with long bangs. Her skin was suntanned and she had eyes like a dog’s, sad but friendly.

  Sally had never been in a school cafeteria. In New Jersey she went home for lunch every day. “Is the food any good?” she asked Barbara, looking around. It was hot and noisy.

  Barbara stuck out her tongue and pointed her thumbs down. “But you’re lucky … today’s spaghetti … it could have been meat loaf and that really rots.”

  “I don’t like spaghetti,” Sally said. “Can I get something else?”

  “Are you kidding? You take what they give you … just tell the woman behind the counter you want a small portion … and watch out for Mrs. Walker … she’s our table monitor this month.”

  “A small portion, please,” Sally said, when it was her turn, but the woman behind the counter dumped a load on her plate anyway. Sally picked up a milk carton and followed Barbara to their table.

  As soon as they sat down Mrs. Walker drawled, “What’s your name, dearie?”

  “Sally Freedman.”

  “I have certain rules at my table, Sally … for one thing, we never wash our food down with our milk. We take small sips after every two mouthfuls. That aids our digestion. And we always clean our plates because so many children are starving in Europe. We have to show we care by not wasting our food. And, of course, we never talk with food in our mouths. Do you have any questions?”

  “No,” Sally said.

  “No, what, dearie?”

  “No …” Barbara gave her kick under the table and mouthed the right word to her. “No, Ma’am …” Sally said, feeling stupid.

  “That’s better. Now you may begin …”

  Sally ran all the way home from school. She had to go to the bathroom in the worst way. She raced up the stairs and past Mom and Ma Fanny, who were waiting at the apartment door, but by then it was too late. Her legs were already wet and as she sat down on the toilet she began to cry. She had never been so ashamed! Maybe God was punishing her for throwing her socks in the trash basket.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked, banging on the bathroom door. “Are you sick? Sally, let me in.”

  Sally flushed the toilet and opened the door. “I’m never going back!” she cried. “Never! There are no doors on the toilets … they made me eat a whole plate of spaghetti and I had to sip warm milk after every two bites … a girl named Harriet Goodman hates me … I wore my hair the wrong way … I need sandals … I …”

  Ma Fanny put her arms around Sally and held her until she stopped crying. Then she said, “So that’s the bad news, mumeshana … now tell us the good news …”

  “What good news?” Sally asked.

  “Something good must have happened … you can’t go a whole day without one good thing happening …”

  “Well,” Sally said, sniffling, “I met a girl named Barbara. She seemed pretty nice.”

  There were two other apartments in their section. The Daniels lived next door. They had one daughter who was a junior in high school. Her name was Beulah but everybody called her Bubbles. She had rheumatic fever and had to go for check-ups and blood tests every week, like Douglas. The Daniels were very religious and from sundown on Friday till sundown on Saturday they wouldn’t answer their doorbell, ride in a car, smoke, turn on the radio or even the light switch. Sally worried that their Sabbath candles would burn the house down.

  The Daniels had a mezuzah hanging at the side of their door, like most of the families in the house, but every time they went in or out of their apartment they’d kiss their fingers, then touch their mezuzah. Sally had never known such orthodox Jews.

  On Friday, after supper, Sally was sitting on the floor cutting out ballet paper dolls when Mrs. Daniels came by with a honey cake for them. “I’m just on my way to synagogue,” she said. Mom whispered, “Quick, Sally … put away the scissors …” Sally thought it was silly of Mom to pretend that they observed the Sabbath like the Daniels. Just because Mrs. Daniels wouldn’t use a pair of scissors after sundown didn’t mean that Sally couldn’t. But when she questioned her mother Mom said, “It doesn’t look nice … what would they think?”

  The Rubins lived across the hall. They were winter people, from Brooklyn—a grandmother, a mother and two kids, like Sally’s family. Linda was in second grade and Andrea was in sixth. She and Sally played potsy after school. At home they’d called it hopscotch and had used a rubber heel from the shoemaker. Here it had a different name and they used a stone or a bobby pin, but it was still the same game. Andrea was much taller than Sally—she was even taller than Betsy—with short, dark, curly hair and light blue eyes under heavy brows. She had a dimple in her left cheek and braces on her teeth. When she opened her mouth wide Sally could see the rubber bands way in back.

  The Rubins had an all-white cat, called Omar, who slept under the covers with Andrea. He was the most beautiful cat Sally had ever seen but Mom said, “He may be very pretty but cats can be full of worms so watch out … no use looking for trouble.”

  Ten days after Sally and her family got to Miami Beach Ma Fanny’s sewing machine arrived, along with their bicycles, a trunkful of clothes and several cartons of household items.

  Andrea stood outside with Sally and watched as the movers unloaded their things from the van. “Now we can go bike riding together!” Andrea said.

  “Can I, Mom?” Sally asked.

  “Not now,” Mom said, “it’s already close to four.”

  “Just to Flamingo Park,” Andrea said, “… it’s only a few blocks from here … my mother lets me go …”

  “Oh, please, Mom!”

  “You’re not an experienced bicycle rider, Sally.”

  “I’m experienced enough … I hardly ever fall off anymore.”

  “I’ll watch out for her, Mrs. Freedman,” Andrea said.

  “And you’ll bring her back in an hour?”

  “Anything you say …”

  “Well … I guess it’s all right then …”

  “Great!” Andrea said. “I’ll be right back … my bike is in the storage room.” While she was gone Sally tried out her own bicycle, making circles in the street. Andrea returned, calling, “Hey Douglas … want to come to the park with us?”

  “Uh uh …” Douglas said, “I’m going exploring on my own.” And he jumped on his bicycle and rode off in the opposite direction.

  Sally and Andrea rode to the park on streets lined with palm trees, just like their own.

  “Did you know the Pittsburgh Pirates come to Miami Beach in the winter?” Andrea asked.

  “You mean the baseball team?” S
ally said.

  “No … I mean the bad guys who rob ships!”

  “You do mean the baseball team, don’t you?”

  “Of course I mean the baseball team!” Andrea coasted down a small hill.

  “I didn’t know they come to Miami Beach in the winter.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you … they practice in Flamingo Park.”

  “I’ve never been to a big league baseball game,” Sally said, avoiding a stone in the road.

  “I have … I’ve seen the Pittsburgh Pirates play … at Ebbets Field.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In Brooklyn … right near my house … we go to Dodger games all the time.”

  “The Brooklyn Dodgers?”

  “No …” Andrea said, clenching her teeth, “the Jersey City Dodgers!”

  “You do mean the Brooklyn Dodgers, don’t you?”

  “Sally … will you quit acting dumb!”

  “I’m not acting.”

  Andrea took Sally on a bicycle tour around Flamingo Park. The grass was darker green than in New Jersey, but coarse, and Sally already knew, from the yard beside their apartment house, that if you walked on it barefoot, it would scratch the bottoms of your feet.

  A group of kids were playing kickball in one of the open areas and some teenagers were stretched out on the grass, soaking up the Miami Beach sunshine. And there were many old people. Sally had never seen so many old people in one place. There were women sitting on park benches, knitting and chatting. There were men, reading and playing cards or checkers.

  “Let’s go down the bike path,” Andrea said. “Follow me …” It was a narrow path, surrounded by lush shrubbery. Sally saw a tree with a trunk that looked exactly like the outside of a pineapple. It was strange to see everything so green in October. In New Jersey the leaves would be turning fall colors by now.

  Sally noticed the man first. He was sitting alone on a bench next to a clump of trees. As they approached he stood up and blocked their path. “Hello, little girls,” he said. “Would you like some candy?” He held a small brown bag out to them.