Good Graces by Lesley Kagen Page A

Great Potato Famine starving all those people or Eric the Red pillaging all those towns.
    “How did your schooling go this year, Liebchen ?” she asks.
    Mrs. Goldman was a teacher at a college before she came to this country. So she’s smart. She knows that bad things can happen when you least expect them. Her daughter got taken away by these people called the Nazis and they never brought her back again. Her name was Gretchen. She died taking a shower, which broke my heart, but didn’t shock me. (If you watch Mr. Wizard as much as I do, you learn that many accidents take place in the bathroom.)
    “Sixth grade wasn’t too bad,” I tell her. “I got all As except for a D in arithmetic. I don’t really have a head for those problems. I’m not good at them.”
    “You are good enough,” she says, patting me on the head. “And vhat about your sister? How is she doing in her studies?”
    “She’s . . .” I don’t want to tell Mrs. Goldman that Troo might be getting kicked out of Mother of Good Hope School for her impure behavior. “She’s doin’ great in gym class.”
    Mrs. Goldman is gazing down at the curb at my sister’s back. “Are you keeping the vatchful eye on her?”
    “Tryin’ to.” Troo cannot stay still for long. She is throwing at car tires when they pass by, timing it so the ball bounces back to her.
    “That is good,” Mrs. Goldman says. “And how is your mutter feeling these days?”
    I picture her this morning in the shade of the garden with her TV tray in front of her and our collie licking her toes. “I wouldn’t say that she’s a hundred percent in the pink yet, but she’s better. She does jigsaw puzzles to pass the time until her legs get built back up.”
    Mrs. Goldman says, “It makes me glad to hear that Helen is on the mend. I like those puzzles, too.”
    “Really?” I get a bright idea. I’m gonna bring some of Mother’s old ones over to Mrs. Goldman to make up for being such a bad friend to her. There’s a bunch of those kitties playing with yarn puzzles gathering dust on the shelf in our front closet. “Do you like cats? ’Cause if you do, I might have a big surprise in store for you.”
    Mrs. Goldman says in a more serious voice, “I like the katze but am not much for surprises . . . but for this . . . the one you have given me today, I am so very glad. So happy that you have come to see me. I have missed your curious mind.” She picks up my hands in hers. She has numbers tattooed on her arm. “Your coming to see me today . . . it is kismet.”
    I never heard that word before. “Kismet?”
    “ Schicksal ,” she says. “Fate. You understand the meaning of this?”
    “Ohhh, yeah, sure,” I say, glad. I don’t like it when I don’t get what somebody is talking about. They could be saying something important that I should be paying attention to and it’s flying right over my head. “They teach us all about fate in Catechism class. It means that God’s got everything already planned out for us. That our life is in His hands.”
    I think if that really is true, then God must have the worst case of butterfingers. There is no other explanation why He would let Bobby Brophy lick the inside of my ear. And make Daddy crash on the way home from a baseball game. And take Mrs. Goldman’s little daughter away from her. I know He’s supposed to work in mysterious ways, but I don’t think that’s mysterious. He’s being a bully and I know all about them.
    The grunting man who was lugging the trunk down to the taxicab comes halfway back up the steps, mops his forehead with the bottom of his T-shirt and says to Mrs. Goldman, “That all of it?” and you can tell he sure as heck hopes it is. He’s the color of boiled rhubarb.
    Mrs. Goldman says, “Thank you. That is it. Vee vill be right there.”
    I got so caught up in becoming friends with her again that I put what she’s doing out of my mind. “You’re leavin’,” I say, feeling the bottom drop out of my