COMRADES
Jane Praeger
September 1958. A thin, gray line of smoke threads up out of the tile ashtray I made for my dad in camp this summer. It's his cigarette, but it looks like it's smoking itself, because my dad is sitting at the kitchen table, lost in The New York Times. He's holding a cup of black coffee in one hand and is wearing his flat, brown slippers and yellow terry-cloth bathrobe. My mother hates this bathrobe because it's too short and everyone can see his skinny chicken legs and his you-know-what. But he wears it all the time anyway, even when people come over, which drives my mother crazy and makes me and my older sister, who is really my half sister, giggle.
When I come downstairs, I'm wearing my zebra pj's and the new pink, fluffy slippers I got for my fifth birthday. I'm so quiet, my dad doesn't even hear me come in the room.
"Dad!" I say really loudly when I get right in front of him. "Dad!" When my dad's reading the newspaper I sometimes have to shout his name two or three times to get his attention. But today I'm not in the shouting mood. So when he doesn't look up, I slap my hand right into the middle of his newspaper. "Dad! My ears hurt. I think I have to go to the doctor."
My dad looks up, and for a moment, he looks really scared, like he just saw a ghost or like I told him we just dropped another bomb on Hiroshima. But then he looks far off to the right (that's where he looks when he's thinking), then back at me, and back to his paper. It's like he already forgot what I said and that he's supposed to say something back. "Dad," I say again, getting my eyes really close to his so they can't get away again, "Dad, my ears really, really hurt. Really!"
He stares at me. "E.! Jane's ears hurt," he calls out to my mother, who is in the living room talking to one of her zillions of friends on the phone. Doesn't he know that when she's on the phone she doesn't hear anything?Doesn't he know she hates when I get sick? My mother thinks getting sick is just as bad as telling a lie or stealing money out of someone's pocketbook. Whenever I get sick, which is a lot, she punishes me by making me gargle with water that is so hot and so salty it makes me gag and doesn't even make my ears feel better.
I'm staring at the phone cord stretched tight around the kitchen door when I swallow and realize my throat hurts, too. My dad is back with his newspaper and my mother is still on the phone. If my sister was here, she'd probably just spit a big gob of chewed chewing gum onto that newspaper. That would get his attention. But I don't feel like trying anymore. So I just go back to my room without picking my slippers off the floor even once. "Shuffling" my mother calls it. Then I'm back under my covers.
After what feels like forever, my mother sticks her head in. "Do you want breakfast?"
"No," I say. "My ears hurt and my throat hurts. I just want to go to Dr. F. and get the orange pills with the pink 'e' on them." She closes the door. I lay there wondering what would happen if I had appendicitis, like Houdini. My dad says you can die if your appendix bursts. He says that's how Houdini died and he should know because Houdini was his mother's cousin.
The door opens again and this time it's my dad. He stands there with his hand on the doorknob and says in his lowest, most serious voice, "Your mother is going to take you to Dr. F. in a few minutes so you better get dressed." I feel my whole body flop with relief.
"Are you coming, too?" I say.
"No. I have to go to work."
"Can't you be late?"
"No."
"Why?"
But he's already closed the door. I won, but I don't feel happy, exactly. I'm tired of staring at telephone wires and newspapers and talking to my parents through doors.
For a while, I just lie there pretending I'm Madeline, from my book. Miss Clavel, the school headmistress, is sitting at the foot of my bed, wringing her hands because she is so worried about me. She has brought me a tray with a cup of chamomile tea and lots of little sugar cubes. She stays on my bed until she sees I have drunk every last drop. Then she says, "Dr. Cohn is coming over to see you, and I've told the cook, you're to eat only ice cream for a week." Madeline doesn't have any parents. She's an orphan. But sometimes I still think I'd rather be Madeline than me.
October 1960. All the way to school I keep opening and reading the note my dad has given me. It says, "Jane was out of school yesterday because we took her to the march on Washington to protest the Vietnam War." Usually, my mother writes the absence notes because my father's handwriting is so scribbly. But today he wrote it and I can read every word. I'm so proud I got to stay out of school and go on a march. My dad thinks I was the only seven-year-old there.
"Most people don't agree with me," my dad says on the bus to Washington, "but the war in Vietnam is wrong." When my dad talks about the war, he gets very excited. His voice goes up and down and gets much louder than usual. "People should be allowed to choose whatever government they want," he says, "and America wants to choose for the Vietnamese people. That's why we're going to Washington today. To tell the president that's wrong."
I have a great time on the march. Dad lets me sit on top of his shoulders so I can see Joan Baez and some of the other singers. And he buys me as many bags of potato chips and Cokes as I want. The best is that I get to hold my own sign that says "Vietnam for the Vietnamese. America, Get Out!" I love that sign. Especially the "Get Out!" part.
When I get to my classroom, I get a huge surprise. Everyone is huddled around my teacher's desk, looking at a newspaper. On the cover of the newspaper, right in the middle of the page, there is a picture of the march and me and my dad with our signs. Everyone in my class is so excited. They have a million questions. But before I get to tell anyone anything, Mrs. R., my second-grade teacher, grabs my arm and pulls me out into the hall.
"What'd I do?" I say. Mrs. R. is very old and has a very bumpy face and in the hall light, every bump on her face looks shiny red. I want her to stop squeezing my arm so I stick my note out right in front of her face. She snatches it, reads it, then says in her meanest teacher voice, "You can make up the work you missed yesterday during free time. But please tell your parents that the only excuse for a child being out of school is illness." Then she hands the note back to me, like it was a dirty tissue or something.
I want to yell at her that she's wrong. Kids are always staying out of school to go to Miami and visit their grandparents. But something about her voice and how red her face is makes me too scared to say anything.
Then, at recess, I say to my friend, Karen D., "Let's see how fast we can go on the merry-go-round and then jump off." Karen loves to do this, but today she just looks at me like I have cooties or something.
"My parents say I'm not allowed to play with you anymore because your father is a Communist."
For a second, I wait for her to start laughing, but she doesn't. She's not kidding. Then, Joey D., who is an idiot and a juvenile delinquent, says, "Hey, Comrade Jane, you should go live in Russia with your Commie parents and never come back."
"Oh, shut up," I say. "You should go live in jail." But by lunchtime, everyone else is calling me Comrade Jane, too.
I go home in tears.
"I'm never going on another peace march as long as I live," I sob to my father as soon as he walks in the door.
"At least let him take off his jacket," my mother yells from the kitchen.
But I don't listen to her. I hardly ever do. While he's taking off his jacket, then his tie and his shirt, and before he can even untie his shoes, I tell him everything that's happened. As usual,
