to write a poem.
“Look, children!” she said. “See how mighty the pen is!”
She had me come to the front of the room, and I saw that my letter occupied the place of honor at the top of all the letters to the editor, beneath a giant headline: “FDR, Listen! Boyle Heights Sixth-Grader Offers Relief Policy.” Mrs. Villiers asked me to read my letter out loud. I had to push my glasses, new that fall, up my suddenly sweaty nose, and my legs got so tense from excitement I could barely feel them under me. Yet my voice rang out, thanks to Papa’s elocution lessons and an unexpected stage presence, perhaps inherited from the fusgeyers on Mama’s side. When I finished reading, Mrs. Villiers clapped, and everyone applauded with her. Then she cut out my letter and pinned it up on the wall. Mr. Roosevelt might invite me to Washington to give him advice when he took office as president, she said.
When school let out for lunch, I galloped out to the playground, certain that everyone knew about my fame—as if “Boyle Heights Sixth-Grader” were emblazoned on a banner that streamed out above my head. But my schoolmates hurried home the way they always did, the bold kids scuffling and shouting and the timid, gawky ones yearning toward a brief return to their real lives in which they were their mamas’ treasures instead of the dull, easily bullied children they impersonated at school.
I told Barbara my news on our way home.
“You wrote a letter saying Chafkin’s should give free food to … people we know?” She glanced at Audrey, whose six-year-old legs trotted to keep up with us.
“I didn’t say any names. And it’s not free food, it’s money the government would give to the grocery stores, and then they …” My plan, so elegant in writing, sounded ridiculously complicated when I tried to explain it. “You’ll see. Mama will have the paper at home.”
“Did you print or do handwriting?” Audrey asked, focused on the mechanics she was just learning in first grade.
I groaned.
“Why didn’t you write to the relief agency?” Barbara said. “Or the mayor?” She wasn’t being obtuse to deflate me. The idea of writing to a newspaper was as foreign to her as stealing from Chafkin’s—which I’d gotten her to promise never to do again—was to me.
Barbara may have failed to be impressed, but Papa appreciated the momentousness of this event. He’d gotten Mr. Fine to give him time off during the busy lunch hour, and he was waiting on the porch. As soon as I came into sight, he ran out and swept me into his arms. “Did you see the East Side Journal? And you didn’t make one spelling error!” In the house, one East Side Journal lay open to my letter on the kitchen table, and another dozen copies sat pristine and untouched on the sideboard.
Mama, too, was all smiles and said she’d make anything I wanted for dinner that night.
“Meatballs!” I said.
Once Barbara saw my name printed in the newspaper, she joined in the fuss, showing the genuine pleasure in each other’s triumphs that coexisted with our perpetual rivalry. On our way back to school after lunch, she carried an East Side Journal to show her class.
Everyone must have heard about my letter in their classes that afternoon, because I was the center of attention when school let out. The only person who acted oblivious to my exalted status was the one on whose behalf I’d attained it—Danny, who was waiting with Barbara in our usual spot at the edge of the playground. The one concession he made to my fame was to notice all the people looking my way.
“I have something to show you, but not with people staring at us,” he said.
He had an air of suppressed excitement, and Barbara didn’t balk at missing her after-school dramatics class. She and I went with Danny to the playground across the Red Car trolley tracks. He waited until we’d sat down on a bench, then made a show of reaching into his satchel. Was he going to pull out an East Side Journal?
“For you!” With a flourish, he handed Barbara two Milky Way bars. “And you.” Another flourish, and he produced two Snickers for me. Last came a Hershey’s bar for himself.
Candy bars, costing a nickel each, were rare treats during the Depression—far too great a luxury for a boy whose father couldn’t afford a bag of potatoes. Barbara was always the one who