A House without a Gold Star

1943.

The house where Augie Marx lived on 107th Street in Flushing, New York — a city name that sent his cousins into fantastic laughter but that had always seemed sort of normal to him — lay almost exactly in the middle of his block, five houses down from St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church and five houses up from Public School 107, where Augie was in fourth grade. It was, to Augie, the best place to live on all the earth — and being smack in the middle of it made it perfect.

In the house beside St. Paul’s lived Franzie Schneider, who was Augie’s co-explorer, best bike racer, and radio partner. Next to Franzie lived the Wagners, where Tommy and Timmy lived, identical twins who used to be able to pass as each other with no trouble at all until third grade when Tommy got beaned by a hardball that pushed his nose more than a little toward his right ear. Next to Tommy and Timmy lived Mrs. Müller, who lived in a small and smart house with black shutters and whitewashed brick walls. And from her house all the way down to P.S. 107 were houses with at least two kids per driveway — eight kids at the Lehmanns’ — including Augie’s house, where Augie’s older brother John was the fourth oldest kid on the block, having just turned eighteen. Mrs. Müller’s son, Friedrich, who was older than John and who never let him forget it, was the third oldest. Their birthdays were almost exactly six months apart: June 13 for Friedrich, December 13 for John. 

To all the kids on 107th Avenue, John and Friedrich were gods. 

They had been the fastest two kids in P.S. 107, and then the fastest in Washington B. Irving High School.  They had the sharpest, quickest hands on Irving’s varsity basketball team, the strongest freestyle stroke in all the district’s swimming teams, and while Friedrich had the sweetest shortstop-to-first-base throw anyone had ever seen, John had the sweetest swing since Lou Gehrig had died two years earlier. In high school they had good jobs at the A & P, so they always had money in their pockets. If one of them was nearby when the ice cream man pedaled down 107th Street, no kid in sight ever left without an orange creamsicle. That’s the kind of guys they were.

Augie loved his brother like he loved the sun. Friedrich, too.

It was a block where as a kid, you had a ton of rules to think about — most to keep, some to break. On the one corner was P.S. 107, where Augie had to stand in line, keep his mouth shut, eat lunch quickly and quietly, learn to swim without trunks (no kidding), use the Palmer method for handwriting, and know the multiplication tables up to twelve. (Franzie Schneider could do them up to fifteen.) His fourth-grade teacher Miss Hatchet — that really was her name — had Augie in the corner whenever he forgot about the “Keeping-Your-Mouth-Shut” rule. She had Franzie in the Staff Bathroom with soap in his mouth whenever he forgot about the “A-Clean-Mouth-is-a-Clean-Heart” rule. There were rules about wasting cafeteria food, only taking one sheet of paper at a time, keeping your desk tidy, and filling the ink well only halfway so it didn’t spill. “There’s a war on,” Miss Hatchet would say. “We don’t waste our resources when our boys are fighting overseas.”

So Augie kept these rules.

On the other end of the street was St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church, and lots of the church rules were about being quiet too. You didn’t swing your legs and bang into the pews. You knelt without making a big fuss about pulling out the benches. You didn’t fidget during Father Fischer’s sermon, and when you stood on one of the lines to take holy Communion — Friedrich and his mother always stood in the line on the left side of the church, but Augie’s family stood on the right (John and Friedrich kept score about which of them had gotten to their chalice first) — you didn’t talk or smile or look around you. You stood with hands clasped and God on your mind. Father Fischer was very high church, Augie’s mother explained.

Augie thought he lived with a lot of rules.

There were rules on the street, too. In stickball, you never argue over a foul: that is always the catcher’s call. Ties go to the runner. The pitcher calls everyone back into play after a car drives through. The youngest kid on either team has to get any ball hit into the Neals’ yard because you were going to get yelled at and you had to take your turn. John and Friedrich had to play on opposing teams, and Neil Schneider — Franzie’s brother and the oldest kid on the block — had to keep score because he was the fairest kid on the planet and knew math like anything and was already practically engaged to Annalise Fischer so he could be trusted.

Neil Schneider was the first kid on the block to get drafted into the United States Navy after high school. He was killed in the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 7, 1942. Everyone on 107th Street stood in the Schneiders’ front yard the day his father and mother hung the gold star in their front window. Augie’s mom held his hand so tightly, it hurt. No one spoke. No one moved. The old men wore their World War One uniforms and saluted when the star was hung. Annalise Fischer bawled. Franzie did not come out of his house for two weeks, and when he did, he didn’t talk to anyone. Not even Augie.

Standing in the Schneider yard on that gray and drizzly afternoon, looking at the gold star, Augie figured this was all about another rule — maybe one you never, ever broke. When you watch someone put a gold star in their window, you stand still and shut up. There are no words that anyone needs to speak.

Annalise Fischer had no words to speak either that day. Or on any of the Sundays afterwards when Augie saw her in the family pew at St. Paul’s. Most Sundays, she bawled until her mother took her out. 

She couldn’t help it.

Augie had only heard his brother John bawl once. He hadn’t figured he ever would. In his freshman year of high school, three years ago, John had broken a leg, sliding into home while trying to stretch a triple into an in-the-park home run. He’d made it before, but not this time. He had rounded third, and even though Friedrich had told him to hold, he was still running like a banshee. Then, out of the corner of his eye, John saw the ball coming in, and he ran even faster, and the catcher for Jackson Heights caught the ball and held it out in his mitt, and John angled his leg to slide under the tag, and their shins caught but the catcher was the one wearing the shin guard, and the umpire called “Out,” but that wasn’t what Augie heard. He heard what everyone in the park that day heard: the break.

Both teams gathered around John. One guy threw up when he saw John’s leg. Augie’s mother held his face against her while his dad went to John. He picked him up — John almost bawled then, but he didn’t — and carried him to a neighbor’s car, and John wore a cast the rest of the summer and a little bit into the fall.

But that wasn’t the day John bawled. 

That day came after high school, in late 1942, when Mrs. Müller and Friedrich received the letters announcing the Heim ins Reich, calling German immigrants and the sons of German immigrants back from America and home to Germany. The letters came to just about every guy on Augie’s block, not long after Neil Schneider was killed. Augie didn’t really understand what they meant. Why would anyone go back to Germany? But John knew, and he took the letter he’d been sent and walked out to the curb in front of their house and burned it on 107th Street. When his neighbors saw him doing it, they came out and burned their letters too.

But no one came out of the Müller house.   

The next day, John found out why.

That was the day he bawled.

Friedrich came over before supper, when John and Augie were listening to the radio news. He stood in the living room and told them. He was going back to Germany, he said. 

“You can’t do that,” said John.

He was German first, Friedrich said.

“You’re American first,” said John.

His family back home needed him.

“Your family is here,” said John.

His country needed him. He had to go back to the fatherland. 

“Bull,” said John.

There was a long silence — except for the radio.

Then John said, really quiet, “Suppose, when I get drafted… suppose we… we might be… ”

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” said Friedrich. “Do you think I haven’t?”

John didn’t say anything.

“I gotta go pack,” said Friedrich.

Nothing from John.

“Look in on my mother every so often.”

Nothing from John.

“See you, kid. Keep your nose clean,” Friedrich said to Augie.

“See you,” said Augie.

That was all.

That night, Augie heard John bawling in his bedroom.

The next morning, Friedrich left with a suitcase. No one from 107th Street came out to say goodbye.

The next Sunday, at St. Paul’s Lutheran, Mrs. Müller sat in the very back pew. She came in late. She left before holy Communion.

Augie didn’t see anyone talk with her at all.

Not even Father Fischer.

All that winter and early spring, the war was a confusion of newspaper maps with bold arrows showing which side was doing what. Augie couldn’t really follow it much, even when his father tried to explain it all — until his mother told them to stop. It was a wet spring, so not much stickball, especially since John didn’t want to play anymore, and the mood on the block had changed. Somehow, stickball didn’t seem to matter much. In P.S. 107, Miss Hatchet did the best she could for her fourth graders, but memorizing state capitals didn’t seem all that important, really. And Augie had never been all that excited about memorizing poetry, even when he had to recite it in front of his class. The war blocked out everything.  It’s all anyone talked about in all the homes on 107th Street. 

And soon there were more gold stars in the windows. 

People would stop outside those homes and hold their hands up to their faces. 

Before the war, Augie had never imagined that anyone he knew could, you know, die. Now he knew they could. The world wasn’t the same.

After church on Sundays, the neighbors of 107th Street gathered together in groups to walk slowly home. They stopped at the gold star houses up and down the street and talked for a long time, the dads holding their hats in their hands, the moms holding each other’s hands, talking quietly. Sometimes they just stood there together, because there were no words to say, but it was important to be together. Even Augie, who was usually pretty hungry after church, waited on the outside of the groups, quiet and still. Always some of the women gathered around Annalise, and held her hand too.

No one held Mrs. Müller’s hand. She was always gone before the service ended. If you saw her on the block, you looked away. If you saw her in the A & P, you moved over to the next aisle.

Everyone that Augie knew thought she deserved it. Her son Friedrich was a traitor. He wasn’t fighting for his country; he was fighting for the enemy! He had deserted his country — and probably she wanted to desert as well. Unless she was a spy!

Franzie thought for sure Mrs. Müller was a spy. Why else would she stay behind? Tommy and Timmy figured he was right. Probably she was sending coded messages to the Third Reich. Probably she was getting them information on the exact location of P.S. 107. Probably she was part of a network of spies! Maybe the ringleader! That’s why she kept her door shut all the time: to hide away from anyone who might suspect her. It’s why she came late to services at St. Paul’s. And maybe that’s why she sat in the back all the time, almost in the darkest part of the church. She was probably taking notes and radioing them back to Berlin. Franzie was sure that once, maybe twice, he had chanced upon her signal, and he’d heard her whispering American secrets to radio operators in Berlin. He was sure of it.

So everyone thought Mrs. Müller deserved to be ignored, suspected, hated — except for John. “Look in on my mother,” Friedrich had asked, and so John did. It was John who bagged her groceries for her when she shopped at the A & P. It was John who ran to catch up with her when she left St. Paul’s so he could say hi. It was John who replaced the broken gate someone had kicked in. It was John who whitewashed the brick wall to cover the red swastika someone had painted there. It was John who fixed the smashed window on the second floor. 

It was John who said 107th Street wasn’t 107th Street anymore. The war had ended all that.

And it was John who told Augie one night when he came home with a shiner from a sixth grade kid who told him his brother was a traitor for being good to Mrs. Müller that you weren’t a traitor for keeping a promise, and you certainly weren’t a very good American if you broke one.

“But you didn’t promise Friedrich that you’d look in on her,” said Augie. “I was there.  You didn’t promise.”      

“He knew I would do it,” said John. “He asked, and that’s enough. And Augie, if I was gone and I told Friedrich to look in on Ma, do you think he’d do it?”

“You’re not gone,” Augie said.

“That’s right. But suppose I was?”

“Then I’d still be here.”

“That’s right too. But suppose the two of us were gone, would Friedrich do it?”

Augie thought for a while. “Yeah,” he finally said. “He’d do it.”

“That’s why I’m doing it,” said John.

Augie understood that, but deep down, he suddenly understood something else as well. What would happen if John was gone?

By the end of that wet spring, on a beautiful day that smelled like green grass and new maple leaves and lilies and lilacs, Augie knew he’d find out.

Two things happened on that day.

First, John got the letter from the War Department, telling him to report to the naval station in Brooklyn in two weeks.

Second, Mrs. Müller got the letter telling her that her son Friedrich had been found by Allied forces lying in a wheat field near the French border. He had been badly wounded. He had been brought to a field hospital and had given the doctor this address. The doctor regretted to say Friedrich had not survived his injuries. 

Mrs. Müller had handed John the letter when he came to say goodbye. It was written in French, but they both understood enough to know that Friedrich was gone.

Two weeks later, John left for the United States Naval Station in Brooklyn. A week after that, he shipped off to Europe. In his last letter before he left, he told his folks and Augie that he couldn’t let on where he was heading, since loose lips sink ships, but he wanted them to know he loved them, that he’d stay safe, that he’d see them again once he settled the Third Reich’s hash, and that they shouldn’t worry.

At the end of the letter, he added a “P.S. August, keep my promise for me, will you?”

Augie wasn’t sure he could do that. Watching his brother walk down 107th Street on the morning he left, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, his white uniform gleaming, passing the gold stars on the houses, Augie just wasn’t sure he could do that.

He hated Friedrich, who was, if nothing else, one of the reasons John was leaving.

Weeks went by. They heard from John about once a week or so, in letters blacked out by the censors. They figured he’d been in London, since he mentioned Big Ben. But everything else was pretty general.  He hoped everyone on 107th Street was doing okay. How was Mrs. Müller? he asked.

Augie didn’t know. Since the day she’d received the letter from the French doctor, Mrs. Müller had not been to St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church. Not once. Augie didn’t think about her much, though. He had a whole new reason for figuring out the maps in the newspaper and following the news from the front. When he paid his two bits on Saturdays to go to the movies, it wasn’t the feature he cared about. It was the newsreels showing scenes from the battlefields. Augie sat as far forward as he could, hoping that somehow he’d get lucky and see a picture of John. He never did — but he did see the war, up close, the horrible explosions, the tanks, the fields overrun, the cities bombed, the American soldiers being carried in stretchers, still with their helmets on, but not moving. Not even a Buster Crabbe serial episode could stop him from shaking — and hating the Germans who might be throwing grenades at his brother, for all he knew.

Augie dreaded the next gold star that might come to a window of a house on 107th Street. When he looked at the front windows of his own house, he could almost imagine it there, and he’d turn away — otherwise he might bawl.

So when Mrs. Müller’s gate got knocked down again, Augie didn’t go over. It lay on the ground for weeks.  The next broken window on the second floor got a sheet of plywood. The next swastika got washed off, sort of — but you could still see the crooked red lines against the whitewash.

But when June came around and fourth grade was almost done, Augie remembered how the thirteenth of the month was Friedrich’s birthday, and how he used to make such a big deal about being six months older than John. He remembered how they used to give each other gag gifts: a box full of chameleons, a fake baseball card with made-up stats for each other’s favorite players (Joe Gordon for Friedrich, Charlie Keller for John), training wheels for their bikes as if they were babies, stuff like that. He remembered how they laughed when they opened them.

So maybe Augie wasn’t surprised that on June 13th, Friedrich’s birthday, his mother came back to St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church. She came back to where she and Friedrich had always sat: left side, a little more than halfway forward. Augie watched. No one talked to her. No one sat near her. She didn’t seem to care. She sat there, almost as if Friedrich were beside her. Almost as if she could touch him. She sat for the greetings and announcements. She stood for the hymns. She knelt for the prayers. And the whole time, Augie watched. He could not figure out why exactly he wanted to bawl.

And when the time came for holy Communion, Augie got up with his mother and father and stood on the line for the right side. And Mrs. Müller got up and stood on the line for the left side. 

But no one got in line behind her.

Everyone on the left side of St. Paul’s moved to the line on the right side.

No one looked at Mrs. Müller — except Augie. 

He watched. He watched. She kept her head straight. She did not turn. She walked slowly at the end of her slow line, heading for Father Fischer and the wine he held in the chalice of St. Paul. The chalice that no one wanted to put their lips to after she would have touched it.

The newsreels played in Augie’s head. The bombs, the explosions. The shattered buildings. The wounded men on stretchers. The wounded men who all looked alike. The wounded men who could have been his brother John.

And then he looked at Mrs. Müller, who had come to St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church on the birthday of her son, who had once been carried off a field in France in a stretcher, and didn’t make it.

Augie’s heart clenched — and then released. He didn’t know how to describe it any other way. His heart sort of released.

He got out of line from behind his mother and father and began to cross over to the other side of the church, through the close pews, across the center aisle, toward the left side. His mother saw. His father too. They did not stop him. Perhaps they couldn’t have stopped him. Augie came to the left line. He moved up to the end and stood behind Mrs. Müller, who turned and looked at him. Augie held his hand out, and she took it. 

They held each other’s hands all the way to the front of St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church, where they took holy Communion.

Together.