Enchanted Islands Read Free Page B

washing. Papa stocked the shelves in a grocery store. I never heard a kind word between them. But they did encourage me to read, and made my brother take me often to the newly built public library, which is where I met Rosalie Mendler. She had beautiful tight curly hair, light brown with golden highlights. She was a small girl, and she had a funny sort of cross-eyed look that glasses later straightened out.
    My brother Joe was eager to get back—he had arranged to play a game of stickball. “Let’s go, Fanny,” he said. “Don’t dance around looking for the perfect book. Just pick one you like the cover of.”
    I ignored him, smiling shyly at the little girl, whose mother was sitting primly at a table nearby, a stack of books in front of her like a club sandwich she was going to eat. Rosalie pretended not to notice me, but I saw she picked the same book out twice.
    “I read that last year,” I said. “It’s for second graders.”
    “I’m in third,” she said, putting it back on the shelf.
    “Me too,” I said. That exhausted the conversation. I browsed the shelves some more. “Here,” I handed her
Robinson Crusoe
. “This is a good one for third grade.”
    “I read it,” she said. “Have you read
Gulliver’s Travels
?”
    “Uh-huh,” I lied. I had checked it out of the library but found it impenetrable.
    “I couldn’t get through it,” Rosalie told me. “It was soooo boring.”
    I wanted to admit my lie, but now I couldn’t see a way to do so. I had wanted to befriend this bookish girl, but I had gone about it the wrong way. I searched for something to say.
    “I liked
Little Women
,” I said. “I like books about girls.”
    “It was so sad, in the end,” Rosalie said. “I just about bawled my eyes out.”
    “My little sister told me I was being a baby,” I said. It felt so good to meet a kindred soul.
    “One should never apologize for sentiment,” Rosalie said, obviously quoting her mother, who looked up from her book and put her finger to her mouth to shush us. We giggled.
    Joe said, “Fanny, we’re leaving. Now.”
    I took the first book that was in reach as Joe pulled me toward the checkout desk. I turned to wave, but Rosalie already had her head in a book. When I got home, I realized I’d selected a mystery book for boys.
    I made sure to run into her again, and soon Rosalie became my constant companion. I was over at her house every day after school. We’d play pretend, or read, or sit with her mother while she brushed our hair. Rosalie’s family was from Germany, and her house was filled with books. I often stayed to supper and her mother served meat, real meat, not just chicken. Rosalie and her little brother and I got to eat all we wanted, but Mr. and Mrs. Mendler didn’t put any on their plates. When cleaning up, though, I noticed Rosalie’s mother ate any leftovers while she stood in front of the sink.
    Rosalie’s house was a sharp contrast to mine. At the Mendlers’ the radio could be heard, while at my house someone was always yelling or crying. Rosalie got her own room, with a sign saying KEEP OUT OR ELSE , whereas all the children were piled into the one bedroom in our apartment, my parents on the sofa in the living room with the newest baby. Our house was always damp with hanging laundry, though it was nice and warm in the winter—Mama had to keep the iron going.
    Rosalie’s and my parents met just once, a disaster. My parents spoke only the most rudimentary English. Plus they were dowdy and round like dumplings, and I was embarrassed of them. My father walked with a limp whose origins he refused to relate. Rosalie’s family was thin and tall, and it was only later that I understood the irony that my family’s discontent hid an undercurrent of, if not happiness, then satisfaction. Rosalie’s, meanwhile, was comprised of a thin veneer of contentment covering up a lake of disappointment and deception. Her mother’s face was lined, as if she had permanently just