In The Presence Of My Enemies

What would happen if I told you you were writing a poem about yourself?Alicia wondered. Trouble was, she had a pretty good notion of the answer.You'd have hysterics, that's what. She'd learned the word not long before, and fallen in love with it. It sounded much grander than pitching a fit.

She took a deep breath, willing herself to forget what she'd found out earlier in the year. If she imagined she still was the way she had been then, helping with assignments like this one came easier. She said, "Maybe you can say the same thing over again in a different way."

"Like how?" Francesca asked, interested but doubtful.

Alicia flogged her muse and came up with a line: "Jews were Germany's bad luck." She eyed her sister. "Now you find something that rhymes."

Francesca screwed up her face as she thought. Her sudden smile was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. "That's why we made them a dead duck!" she exclaimed.

It wasn't very good poetry; it rhymed, but the rhythm was off. Alicia started to say so, but then, for a wonder, held her tongue. For somebody in Francesca's grade, it would do. And criticizing it would only get Alicia more deeply involved in shaping the poem, which was the last thing she wanted. Pretending she wasn't something she was came hard enough around strangers. It was harder still with her sisters.

Francesca, inevitably, wanted more help. "Give me another line," she said.

"No," Alicia said. "Come on. You can do it yourself."

Her sister hauled out the heavy artillery: "I'll tell Mommy."

It didn't work. "Go ahead," Alicia answered. "You're supposed to do your own homework, and you know it."

"You're mean!" Francesca said.

"I've got my work to do, too," Alicia said. Compared to writing rude verses about Jews, even reducing

39/91 to lowest terms didn't look so bad. "You're so mean! You lie and cheat!" When Francesca got angry, she didn't care what she said. She just wanted to wound.

But she didn't, not here. "That's good," Alicia said. Her sister gaped at her. "That's good," she repeated. "That will do for another line, if you change 'you' into 'they.'"

"Oh." Francesca thought about it. The sun came out from behind the clouds once more. "You're right. It will." She thought a little more. "They are so mean. They lie and cheat./And take away the food we eat." She looked toward Alicia, who was suddenly a respected literary analyst again, for her reaction.

And Alicia nodded. She didn't think it was wonderful poetry, but she also didn't think Francesca's teacher was expecting wonderful poetry. The lesson was more about hating Jews than about writing poetry, wonderful or not. Alicia stared suspiciously at 39/91. To encourage Francesca-and to encourage her to go away-she said, "See? Just two lines left."

"Uh-huh." Francesca didn't go away, but she didn't nag Alicia any more, either. Now that she'd come up with more than two lines mostly on her own, she could make others. "We're glad they aren't here any longer./Without them, the Reich grows ever stronger." She beamed. "I'm done!"

"Write them all down before you forget them," Alicia advised.

Francesca hurried off to do just that. A couple of minutes later, she cried out in despair: "I forgot!"

Alicia remembered the deathless verses. She recited them for her sister-slowly, so Francesca could get them down on paper. Francesca even said thank you, which would do for a miracle till a bigger one came along.

Back to arithmetic. 39/91? Now, 3 went into 39 evenly, but did it go into 91? No-she could see that at a glance.They're trying to trick me, she thought.This is going to be one of those stupid fractions that doesn'treduce, that's already in lowest terms. Then, remembering that 3? 13 made 39, she idly tried dividing 13 into 91. To her surprise, she discovered she could. 3/7, she wrote on the answer sheet.

Francesca sounded like a stampeding elephant going downstairs (Roxane, who was smaller, somehow contrived to sound like an earthquake). "Listen, Mommy!" she said from down below.

"Listen to what?" the Gimpel girls' mother asked. "I'm fixing supper."

"Listen to this poem I wrote," Francesca said proudly. She didn't mention anything about help from her big sister. In most circumstances, that would have infuriated Alicia, more because of its inaccuracy than for any other reason. Here, she didn't much mind.

Her mother's voice floated up the stairs: "All right. Go ahead."

And Francesca did. Either she'd already memorized it or she had her paper along with her. "What do you think?" she asked when she was done.

If Francesca had written the poem all by herself and then read it to her, Alicia knew she would have been speechless, at least for a moment. Her mother didn't hesitate, even for a heartbeat. "That's very good, dear," she said, and sounded as if she meant it. "Are you playing a game with Alicia and Roxane, or is it for school?"

"For school," Francesca answered.