Read Online Skating with the Statue of Liberty by Susan Lynn Meyer - Free Book Online

just before his family had fled to the countryside. Marcel had hammed up the anthem. With his hand on his chest, he had warbled out the high parts like an opera singer, making Jean-Paul snort with laughter in the middle of the song.
    “Let’s go!” Mrs. Heine snapped Gustave back to the present. “Sing.”
    She played, and although his throat felt swollen shut, Gustave lifted up his head, tried to ignore the watching students, and, his voice choking, he sang for wounded, shamed France.
    “Allons, enfants de la patrie
,
    Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
    Contre nous de la tyrannie
,
    L’étendard sanglant est levé!”
    Gustave had never felt the meaning of the words more keenly, even though some of them felt painfully ironic now.
Arise, children of the fatherland/The day of glory has arrived
. Not glory for us, thought Gustave as pain twisted in him.
Against us the bloody flag of tyranny is raised
. That felt like a stab in his chest. The French flag no longer flew over France. The Nazi flag, red with a black swastika on a white circle, whipped arrogantly in the French wind. It was a bloody flag, too, soaked red with French blood.
    The flag line was repeated again, higher.
“L’étend-ah-ard sanglant est levé.”
Gustave’s voice cracked. He couldn’t sing any longer. He stood with his head down, desperately squeezing back the tears in his eyes.
    Mrs. Heine played a few more bars, then stopped. “The French!” she said to the room at large. “Can’t even sing their own national anthem!”
    Somehow Gustave understood
that
comment perfectly well.
    “Sit there.” She gestured to the center section, to the row in the very back of the classroom. “You’re an alto. More or less,” she added in an undertone. Gustave glanced up just long enough to see, blurrily, where she was pointing.
    He made his way to the back and slid into a seat at the end of the row while Mrs. Heine spoke to the class, her voice rapid and sharp and unintelligible. By now he wasn’t even trying to listen.
    “Gustave!” a voice whispered from his right. “Don’t let her get to you.” September Rose, a few seats away, was leaning over to get his attention. He didn’t understand the words, but he could tell that she was saying something friendly.
    Mrs. Heine put a record on the record player. When the music ended, Mrs. Heine talked for a few minutes and then class was over. Gustave waited while September Rose gathered up her things.
    “What means ‘get to you’?” He quoted her words back to her in a whisper.
    September Rose glanced around. The two of themwere screened from view by the chaos of many people talking and gathering books. She spoke slowly and clearly, and he understood most of it. “I meant, don’t let Mrs. Heine make you feel bad. It’s not just you. She used to be mean to this other Jewish boy too. You’re Jewish, right? That’s why you came to America?”
    Before Gustave could answer, September Rose hurried off down the hall, but he caught up with her in homeroom. She was in the back, getting her red coat from her cubby. As Gustave pulled on his coat, she looked over at him, checking to be sure the two of them were alone before walking over to whisper, “The kids all call the music teacher Mrs. Hiney.”
    “Hiney?”
    “Shhh! Yes, Hiney!” She giggled and tapped the back of her gray skirt. “Hiney! Behind! You know?”
    Gustave laughed.
    “So you’re really from Paris? Have you seen the Eiffel Tower?” September Rose made the shape of the tower with her hands.
    “Yes. Of course.”
    “Did you ever go up it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Lucky!” She turned to go.
    “Wait,” Gustave said. “What means ‘French kiss’?”
    “Oh, from yesterday in the cafeteria?” September Rose grinned. “It’s a way some people kiss. Touching tongues.” She stuck hers out, wiggling it, and touched it with her fingertip, and then Gustave understood. “Martha’s such a flirt,” she added. “Especially with the new