Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) by Barbara Stuber Read Free Book Online Page B

shivering. After a moment of silent reflection, the ROTC honor guard raises the flag. It is regal and reassuring lifting in the wind, snapping strong against the Red Scare. Neil salutes. The flag helps everybody focus.
    Anita glances over. She actually looks scared of me. I stare at my feet, feeling responsible for Neil’s missing brother. The principal pledges that the school will keep a vigil for Tom Bradford and his family. I feel terrible for athousand reasons, especially for the possibility of Elliot and these other guys joining the army someday and trudging across Korea dodging bombs and bullets.
    We say the Pledge of Allegiance and dismiss, but the Bamboo Curtain blocks my way. Kids literally sidestep around me. I see ching-chong head tilts. I hear “commie” coughs. A thousand students and staff head back into school, but not me.
    My heart pumps glue. I hate my impossible self and the impossible warring world. I sink onto a low brick wall by the bike racks. Go back into school or go away? I could take a quick walk across the street and become missing in action too. What’s the right thing to do in this wrong world?
    Mr. and Mrs. Chow must rise above slights and slurs every day, just go on about their business. What did Gone Mom do? I guess she gave a big part of her problem to the Sisters of Mercy and went on about her business. I pledge to the flag: “I will never do that to anybody!”
    Mr. Howard comes down the school steps. He walks past the flagpole into the crosswalk in front of the building to retrieve the portable STOP FOR PEDESTRIANS sign. The base of the pole is stuck in a tire filled with cement. He spots me on the wall, pauses. Cars gather on both sides of the crosswalk but Mr. Howard is in no hurry. He glances at the flag and then back at me. He seems to read my mind. He tips his hand toward the stop sign— are you going to be a pedestrian ornot? For a frozen moment our eyes lock. The second-hour bell sounds. I stay put. In the wind the metal hooks on the flag rope clank against the pole. Mr. Howard straightens his back, salutes me, and walks toward the building, rolling the sign along.
    A gust of wind whips the flag around the pole until all but a little red corner disappears. I get up and disappear too, back inside the building.
    *  *  *
    Social studies is torture. I feel like everyone expects me to confess which of my chink relatives captured Tom Bradford.
    Lights off. Thank God. Venetian blinds closed. Miss Arth starts a newsreel about the war. She sits at her desk and slides a nail file from her drawer. I have concluded that showing movies is a way to avoid teaching us something. The first film features a man who is finding homes in America for “war waifs”—unbaptized babies with mixed Asian and American blood that nobody wants. A beaming crowd of dignitaries applauds as the orphans are unloaded from military planes. The man and his wife wave, surrounded by six waifs they have adopted themselves. The kids look too petrified to blink, despite the flashbulbs.
    I think back to the second grade at Our Lady of Sorrows. Patty and Anita and I played a game called “pagan babies” in which we acted out the dynamics of our real Pagan Babies classroom project. I was always the paganbaby who got saved, which I now understand was because I was foreign and lesser. In our real classroom Pagan Babies activity we were all encouraged and coerced to bring pennies, nickels, and dimes for the coffee can on the teacher’s desk. When we had five dollars we sent it to a Catholic mission in a heathen country to baptize one baby and save its soul. We got to vote on the name. Once somebody put my name in the ballot box. Sister read it out loud before realizing the joke . Everybody laughed at me. I laughed too, but I never played pagan babies again and I never stopped worrying that I might become one someday.
    Maybe I have.
    Another newsreel shows blasted bridges