First Chapter of My Listening Heart

Gretchen isn’t in school.

She doesn’t answer the phone, and when I go by her house, vans are parked out front. News vans with their towers extended out of them like strange bug antennas reaching for the sky: Channel Five, Eyewitness News; News Four, For Your Life; Channel Three, More Real News.

As I make my way up the sidewalk to Gretchen’s house, reporters swarm me like a pack of wolves. They stick microphones in my face and needle me with questions.

“How long have you known the Groeber family?”

“Who are you?”

“Are you Gretchen Groeber?”

“How does it feel to learn that your grandfather is Groeber the Gruesome?” Stuff like that.

“I…she…” My head twists and turns to keep track of who is asking what. And like wolves on attack, they don’t give me a second to breathe. Gretchen’s mom, Mrs. Groeber, peers out the front window, her hand on the edge of the curtain. She is like some ghost, only her forehead and eyes visible beyond the green curtains. They must not see her; they keep biting at me with questions.

“Gretchen’s my friend!” I finally scream, my heart pounding.

They turn away, I think they are satisfied with my answer, but they pick up a fresh scent: Mr. Groeber’s station wagon has just pulled into the driveway. The reporters plaster Mr. Groeber against his fake-wood-paneled car, snarling and barking questions at him.

His head jerks my way then at the house, like he is watching Gretchen and me playing ping-pong in their basement; our nightly ritual after our homework is done. “I have nothing to say,” he shouts.

I stand frozen and confused. Is this really happening? The vans. The reporters. And how did I miss the crowd of people clustered on the sidewalk watching. Have they all just arrived?

The reporters hold Mr. Groeber in a tight circle. What had he done wrong? Or was it something about Gretchen’s grandfather? Wind picks up like a storm is around the corner. My hair flies in my face and when I sweep it aside Mr. Groeber is almost on top of me, the wolves nipping at his heels. I turn and fall over a little bush. Mr. Groeber rushes past followed by the hungry pack.

He pulls open the front door, shouts, “Leave us alone!” and slams inside.

A few yellow leaves flutter around me on the ground.

I jump up and take off between Gretchen’s house and Robbie’s house next door. I wait behind Robbie’s garage; Gretchen and I like to play there sometimes. Make pretend worlds. Maybe she’ll sneak out after her mother tells her she saw me out front.

She doesn’t come.

I ask my mother what is going on.

“Her grandfather is a very bad man.”

I don’t get this. He takes Gretchen and me to Iggy’s for ice cream cones. He taught us both how to hold the ping-pong paddle. Was the only one in the coldest weather who would take us to the sledding hill, and in the warmest to the fountain so we could walk out into it. Once he bought us each a new shirt at Penny’s.

“He’s not a bad man,” I tell my mother.

“Oy, Hannah, this is not something I will discuss with you.”

When my mom says she doesn’t want to discuss something, I dare not try to discuss it, because then she gets mad and eating cold dinner in my room is not fun.

Gretchen misses school the next day and the day after that. I call but there’s no answer. I walk by her house on the opposite side of the street and the news vans are still there, the reporters prowling, ready to ambush. The lawn is trampled to death. The front curtains are pulled tight and the house looks deserted.

I try Gretchen on the phone again. It rings a long time before her mom finally answers.

“Hello, Mrs. Groeber? This is Hannah. May I please speak with Gretchen?”

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

I picture Mrs. Groeber standing at the table next to the stairs, just past the front hall. Her left hip thrust out, one hand resting there, the other holding the phone and she’s staring at the family pictures that line the wall up the stairs.

“Please, Mrs. Groeber.”

She sighs. CLICK. The phone’s plopped on the brown wood table and Mrs. Groeber calls, “Gretchen!” as I wait.

“Hello?” Gretchen’s voice sounds far away. I bet she’s twirling her hair in her fingers, maybe chewing an end.

“Gretchen?”

“Hannah?” She sounds close.

“Are you okay?”

“I guess.” She sniffles.

She is chewing her hair, is worried. Her eyes fill with tears. I sense it. Gretchen cries easily.

“Are you coming back to school?” I pace back and forth in the kitchen, the cord stretching the length of the room then curling on the floor.

“I want to.” She sniffles again.

“What’s going on?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Can you meet me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Seriously?”

“Have you seen my house?”

I turn a slow circle. The phone cord wraps around my whole body.

“Maybe behind Robbie’s—for just a minute?” I beg.

She hesitates then answers. “How about the woods, by the school?” She adds quickly, “In half an hour, I’ll try to get away.”

I pump my bike like I can fly, tires slide on wet leaves that cover the sidewalks. The woods behind Roosevelt Elementary are splotches of yellow, red, orange and green. But the paths that lead to Severance Mall look dark, and I realize that if the sidewalks are slippery, the woods will be downright treacherous. I wait on Roosevelt’s back playground. First I ride in slow circles around the perimeter wondering about what might be happening. Then I sit sideways on the bar of my bike looking into the woods. The wind whips through the trees bending them and stirring them up like crepe paper on top of pipe cleaners. The darker it gets the creepier it sounds: whistling, rustling, and crackling. A few drops hit me. Then more. How stupid not to have worn more than a thin windbreaker. I hang my head against the wind and convince myself that Gretchen must not have been able to get away. I start home. But as I turn the corner, our bikes almost collide. Luckily Gretchen’s scared of everything so she was going super slow.

“Gretchen!” I smile.

“Hey,” she smiles, but it’s her fakey-I’m-not-really-happy-smile.

I want to hug her, but our bikes are awkwardly in the way and neither of us moves them. Plops of rain race in small wet circles and trail down my windbreaker. Then the line soaks through. Gretchen’s face is wet from the rain, but her blotchy red eyes confirm what I suspected.

“How’s school?” She twists the handgrips on her bike.

“The usual.” I smile; try to make it normal. Drips of water race through my wet hair and onto my face.

But her eyes are far away from school. I lay my bike down and hug her. What I should have done right away. Her shoulders sink and she lets out a sigh like a deflating balloon. She is thinner than me anyway but now she seems fragile, downright breakable. Her bike slides to the ground between her legs. I am practically all that holds her up.

Between sobs she whispers, “They think he did awful things. My mom says they think he killed people in the war.” She chokes out the words. “My dad won’t even talk.”

“The war? You mean Vietnam?” Even as I say it, I know that can’t be. Not her grandfather. Our country is right now at war in Vietnam even though President Nixon promises we will withdraw soon. But her grandfather wouldn’t be fighting in it. Anyway, why would he be in trouble for killing people during a war? Isn’t war filled with killing?

She pushes back a little and looks right at me. “The German war. World War Two.”

“Oh.” I don’t really know much about that war.

“They won’t leave us alone. Reporters are at our door all the time. The phone is constantly ringing. We rarely answer. Kristi is crying with nightmares. We think Grandfather’s hiding.”

“Hiding?”

“They’re going to take him to jail.”

A crack of thunder, so weird for fall, makes us both jump and for a minute the woods burst red and orange.

“Who’s they?”

“The police, I think.”

I finger the peeling rubber on my handlebars.

“I don’t know what to do.” She looks into my soul. “My parents are fighting now. They never fought before. Everything’s messed up.” She looks down and her voice quiets. “They say it’s all your mom’s fault.”

The whole way home her words echo in my mind. “All your mom’s fault?” Her words sweep over me, again and again: How could this mess be my mom’s fault?

When I ask my mother what Gretchen meant, she says that same thing she said before. “He was a very bad man.”

This time I don’t give up. I make fist and coax myself to ask, “What do you mean?”

“I will not discuss it.”

“Mom!”

“This is not something that concerns you.” She looks out the window, just above the kitchen sink, out into the garden. The rain falls more seriously now, streaking the window.

“It does concern me, Mom. Gretchen’s my best friend.”

“Enough of this mishegoss. You will not spend time with that girl anymore.”

“What?”

“I should have done that a long time ago.”

“What?”

“Genug es genug! Enough.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Hannah!” She slams her wet hand on the counter.

“Dad’ll explain. You never explain things! It’s always big secrets with you. Maybe I’m old enough to understand. I’m not stupid!”

“Don’t raise your voice, young lady.”

“Jeez, Mom.”

I march to my room where it is too quiet and my dinner is cold.