The Loud Silence of Francine Green Read Online Free PDF Page B

they?"
    "Someone who'd do that wouldn't care what's true and what's not," he said. "They just want to stir up trouble. You

stay out of it too, Francine. Get groceries at Willard's Market for a while."

    "But I like—"
    "That's enough, Francine," my mother said. "Listen to your father."
    I went to my room and lay on the bed. In a way, things had been simpler during the war. We all knew who the enemy was and worked together to defeat him. My father wasn't in the army—his eyes were bad and his feet were flat—but my mother had a victory garden, where she grew our vegetables so that more food could be sent to the soldiers. I liked to read lying on the warm ground under the tomato vines, smelling the pungent scent of the leaves and watching the pole-bean shadows dance on my legs. We ate lots of macaroni and fish, and I helped Dolores collect gum wrappers so the government could use the silver foil in the war effort.
    And when it was all over, people hugged each other and danced with strangers, knowing the bad guys were gone and the good guys had made us safe. People's fathers and brothers and uncles came home, and we had plenty of meat again, and butter and gasoline and shoes. Was that all over now? Would Russia having the bomb mean another war and more dead soldiers?
    I knew what atomic bombs could do. I had seen Fox Movietone newsreels of Japanese cities turned to rubble, of exploding buildings, children on fire, piles and piles of charred bodies. And the world was getting
more
dangerous. I pulled the blankets over my head.

6
Discovering Irony
    " In order to make our writing livelier, " Sister Basil said as we opened our grammar workbooks, "we can employ a number of tools. You know about adjectives and adverbs, phrases and clauses. Today we will learn about some figures of speech: similes, metaphors, oxymorons, and irony."

    I already knew about similes, saying things were like other things, and metaphors, saying things
were
other things. Oxymorons, which used two words of opposite meaning together, and irony, where the ordinary meaning of the words is the opposite of what is really in your mind, were new to me.
    We had to make up examples in our workbooks to show we understood. I wrote:
    Simile:
Dolores blew her nose, which was as red as a rose.
    Metaphor:
When his cap pistol broke, the little boy cried a river of tears.
    Oxymoron:
I gave a silent cry of desperation.
    Irony:
I just love to go to the doctor for a shot.

    Irony was especially appealing to me. I thought of lots more examples, but I didn't write them down:
I was so pleased to see Mary Agnes Malone there. Yes, Mother, I think Dad looks exactly like Montgomery Clift. Sure, let's draw flowers all over our uniform skirts. I know Sister would be crazy about it. Oh, no, the idea of the world blowing up doesn't bother me one bit.
    I was pretty excited. With irony I could mean the very opposite of what I said, but no one would know that. I could say exactly what I thought without getting into trouble.
    "Francine," Sister said, "will you please go up to the board and write down your example of a metaphor?"
    "I can't think of anything I'd rather do," I said ironically.
    After school I went to the classroom that served as the school library.
    "Sister Peter Claver," I said to the nun reading behind the desk, "I'm Francine Green. Sister Basil the Great sent me to help you."
Sister Basil the Great
—was that irony or oxymoron? I wondered.
    Sister Peter Claver, the librarian, was new this year. She looked up at me so quickly that her cheeks wobbled. "Hello, Francine. Call me Sister Pete. Most of the girls do."
    I nodded.
    "Thank you for coming," she said. "I could certainly use your help. But tell me, is this something you chose to do, or did Sister Basil request that you do so?"
    Request? Sister Basil never requested. She had said, "You, Francine, go help Sister Peter Claver in the library after school." And what could I say but "Yes, Sister"?
    "Some of both,