Falling Angels (8 page)

For the rest of the morning Norma was allowed to lie on the bunk with their mother, who read the
TV Guide,
smoked cigarettes and sipped whisky from her coffee mug. When their father wasn’t looking, she let Norma have a sip to ease her cramps.

Lou and Sandy had to stick to The Regime. This was a chart that their father had written out on a piece of yellow Bristol board and nailed to the wall. Down one side was the time of day, and down the other was what they were supposed to do at that time. “Eight o’clock—rise; eight o’clock to eight-fifteen—use toilet in the following order: Dad, Sandy, Norma, Lou, Mom.” Et cetera. In front of some of the events were the initials “l.o.,” standing for “lights out” to save on candles and fuel. For instance, the singsong and afternoon exercises had an l.o. in front of them.

Ten-thirty to eleven-thirty in the morning was exercises with the lights on. For the first part their father led Lou and Sandy in a march round and round the shelter, hollering,“Hup two three four! Left! Left!” Next was touching toes twenty-five times, and after that was twenty-five push-ups. The floor was cold on their hands, and Lou and Sandy could only do a couple of pushups before their arms gave out.

“Five! Six! Seven!” their father went on counting. Between each of his push-ups he clapped, holding himself in the air for a second. He glared out of the corner of his eye for them to keep on going, and they managed to do a few more, but it was just too hard.

He did fifty. Then he bounced up like a jack-in-the-box and shouted,“Stride jumps!”

They jumped facing him, stepping on each other’s toes and hitting each other’s hands because there wasn’t enough room. His mouth was open in a circle that gusted coffee-smelling breath at them. Sweat streamed down his face. If they’d seen a man on the street looking like he was, they’d have run away.

“Okay, play hopscotch,” he said after the stride jumps.

“We need stones,” Lou said.

“Play without ‘em.” He cranked the blower for air, then poured himself a glass of water. Lou asked if she could have one.

“Wait ‘til lunch,” he said. “We have to ration.”

“Psst.” It was their mother. She crooked her finger, and when Lou went over, she sneaked her a sip from her mug. Lou gasped at the fire in her throat.

“You get used to it,” Norma whispered.

“We’ll never make it to curtain call otherwise,” their mother whispered.

Their father lay down on a bottom bunk and had a smoke. Every few seconds he checked his watch until it was time for the next event—“l.o. Singsong.”

“Alrighty,” he said after he’d put out the lights. “What do you want to sing?”

“Um,” Lou said. “Um,” she said again to hear her thin voice, like a pin of light in the pitch black. All she could think of was the Jiminy Cricket encyclopedia song, which their father wouldn’t know.

“It’s a long way to Tipperary,” their father started singing. “Come on! Everybody! Sandy! Norma!”

“It’s a long way to go,” their mother sang from the bunk in her high, shaky voice.

Sandy squeezed a hand … their mother’s—she could tell by the smallness. She was half sitting, half lying across their mother’s and Norma’s legs. The dark didn’t scare her anymore up in the house, but in this dark she felt as if she were falling—
the whole bed with the three of them on it swirling down. Also there was suddenly a rotting smell that she thought must be Rapunzel, who was buried under the clothesline tree. Was that where the air vent was? Down here, Sandy couldn’t tell directions. The smell was so strong, though, that she figured the air vent must be right next to where Rapunzel was.

They sang “The British Grenadiers,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Marching to Pretoria” and “You’re a Sap, Mister Jap.” Then they switched to songs from Judy Garland movies, singing these quietly. Dulcet tones was what their father demanded for Judy Garland songs, even for “Ballin’ the Jack” and “The Trolley Bus Song.” They ended with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Their father had a really good voice (it sounded even better in the dark, not seeing him singing), and at the last line of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the line that goes “Why, oh, why can’t I?” where the girls and their mother knew to slow right down, his voice rose clear and smooth as a boy’s before their higher voices, making a sound in the blackness so beautiful that they were quiet for a moment afterward.

“We’re like stars,” Norma said. She meant the stars in the sky.

“Look out, Broadway,” their father said. He struck a match, lit a candle and checked his watch. “Twelve on the dot,” he said. “Lunch time.”

While Lou mixed up the powdered milk and spread margarine on slices of bread, he heated up two cans of spaghetti on the camping stove. They ate sitting on the edge of the bottom bunks. After one mouthful Norma found she wasn’t hungry. She gave her plate back to their father and asked if she could go to the toilet.

Her rag was soaking. She couldn’t understand how so much blood could be coming out of her and she was still alive. Her stomach didn’t hurt any longer, but she was dizzy. What if she really was bleeding to death?

She unpinned the old rag, wrapped it in toilet paper and pinned on another from the pile. On the way back to their mother’s bunk she opened the lid of the garbage pail and dropped the balled-up rag in. The pail was lined with polyethylene, and there was a container of disinfectant on the floor for sprinkling inside. She wondered if she bled to death whether he would keep her down here for two weeks.

The Regime said lunch and cleanup were to take one hour, but the dishes were dried and back on the shelves by twelve-forty-two.

“What’ll we do until one?” Lou asked, sneaking a sip of their mother’s whisky. One o’clock to three o’clock was cards and board games.

Their father tapped his watch. “I guess we can start the games early,” he said grimly. “But tomorrow we stretch lunch out. Eat slower. Talk. I want you all to think up topics of conversation.”

He spread a blanket on the floor over the hopscotch, and they sat in a circle. Although their mother never played games in the house, she came over, too, saying that she just couldn’t get used to no t?. It was like losing one of your senses, she said, like not being able to see or hear.

Their father reached across the floor for the whisky and topped up her mug.

First they played cards. Rummy. Usually the girls hated playing cards with him. He told them to hurry up and discard, and then said “Are you kidding?” when they did. He yelled at them to hold their cards up—they were showing everyone their hand. When they won, he said it was luck, but when he won, he said it was eighty percent skill, twenty percent luck. “It’s only a game,” he told them if they got upset or excited, but he shouted,“Yes Momma!” and “Jesus H. Christ!” How the
games usually ended was with him either sending them to bed or storming out of the room.

Today, though, because their mother was playing or maybe because he couldn’t storm out, he was nicer. He used his nice voice. It made the girls giggle. Everything he said and did, just picking up a card and frowning at it, struck them as really funny.

Over the perfect fan of her cards their mother smiled. She kept winning, a surprise to the girls but not to her, and they realized that rummy must be something else, like sewing and tap-dancing, that she was secretly good at.

“Mommy!” they cried, hugging her when she laid down her cards in neat rows, catching them all with mitts full.

“Well, well,” their father said, his smile stopping at the edges of his mouth. The girls laughed. “Settle down,” he said nicely.

They were having a great time. It was fun down here; it was like being in a fort. They played hearts next, and their mother went on winning, going for all the cards twice and getting them.

Between deals their father started pacing. “There’s something going on,” he said, wagging his cigarette at them. “This is a trick on your old dad.”

He wanted to play Scrabble, a game of every man for himself. Except that only four could play, so Sandy and their mother were a team.

He went first and made the word
bounce.
That broke the three of them up. Their mother and Sandy made
tinkle,
which was even funnier. Norma used the
b
to make
bust.
They shrieked with laughter. Lou did
fuse,
and they couldn’t stand it, it seemed so funny.

“Settle down,” their father said again. The vein that was like a fork of lightning down his forehead emerged—a danger sign—but they couldn’t stop laughing.

It was his turn. Using the
k,
he made
kidny.

“Alrighty,” he said enthusiastically, starting to add up his score. “Double word—”

“What is it?” Lou asked.

“Kidney,” he said. “An organ. Also a bean.”

“But kidney’s got an
e!”
she cried.

He scowled at the board. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, it does,” their mother said. “K-i-d-n-e-y.”

He laughed. “That’s the British spelling. I’m using the American.”

Their mother shook her head. “I think there’s only the one way to spell it, Jim.”

“Daddy, you can’t spell,” Sandy said tenderly. She couldn’t spell either.

“Hey!” Lou cried, rearranging his letters. “You can make
dinky!”

“Dinky!” Norma cried. They all three burst out laughing.

He hit Lou with a backhand across the face. She fell sideways. Norma and Sandy jumped up and ran to the wall, Sandy crying. Their mother leaned over to grab the whisky bottle. He stood wearily, as if it was all over, but then he kicked the Scrabble board. It went shooting straight up, scattering letters, bent at the crease down the middle as if it would fly, and fell back to the floor, flat.

Lou, on her feet now, was making leaps at the roof, trying to grab the stairs, which you pulled down.

“The hatch is locked,” their father said matter-of-factly. He looked at his watch. “Nap time,” he said and began putting out the lights.

Lou threw herself back on the floor. “I’m never going to get up,” she said in a passionate voice that persuaded her sisters. Their father stepped over her.

The others went to the bunks. There were two bunks, Lou’s and Norma’s, on the end wall; one, Sandy’s, along the same wall as the toilet was; and two more, their mother’s and
father’s, on the wall across from the toilet. Their father climbed up to his bunk carrying a candle, which he held between his knees while he set the alarm clock, then blew it out.

Black. And then that stench. This time all three girls smelled it. Lou imagined it was coming from under the shelter, beneath where she was lying. She started to shiver. The floor was cold and hard and bumpy with Scrabble letters. Her ear throbbed; it seemed huge, a Mouseketeer ear. In Disneyland, with her three bucks, she would have bought Mouseketeer ears.

She got up on her knees and crawled over to where her bunk was, knowing the direction from their father’s snores. When she bumped into the bottom bunk, she dropped her head on the edge. She was too tired to climb to the top, or even to climb in with Norma.

“Hey,” Norma whispered, but Lou was sound asleep. Norma laid her hand on her sister’s face. She thought she felt the hot imprint of their father’s hand. If she got up now to change her rag, he’d probably hit her, too, but he’d kill her if she leaked all over the bed. She had meant to put on a new rag after the games. “Please, God,” she prayed, imploring her flow to stop. Would boys smell the blood? Boys stared at her chest. No matter how smart or nice they were otherwise, they looked stupid and shifty when they stared at her chest. Even on hot days she wore two undershirts and a sweater. She slept on her stomach, but her breasts kept on growing anyway. When would they stop? Sometimes she thought of her breasts as intelligent life with insane, disgusting ambitions.

She wondered if the awful rotting smell was her period.

For some reason the alarm went off at ten after four instead of four o’clock, cutting into their exercise hour. He gave them only a minute each to use the toilet, Norma two minutes to change her rag. The blood hadn’t leaked onto her sheets, but it
had gone through to her underpants and made a spot on her blue corduroy pants. She would have to wear them like that all week. There was no laundry detergent down here, let alone extra water or time in The Regime for doing a wash, and they had only been allowed to bring down one change of clothing, which they weren’t supposed to put on until next Saturday.

Sandy begged for a drink of water, and he let her have a sip. When he was peeing, Lou drank a whole glass. She said she had a headache, and Sandy said,“Same here.”

“Have another sip,” their mother whispered, tendering the mug.

Afternoon exercises in the dark were next. By admitting that her stomach still hurt, Norma was exempted. Lou and Sandy weren’t, pressure headaches being natural down here, their father maintained. No big deal—with the lights out, Lou didn’t have any intention of straining herself. She let Sandy hold her hand (“Or I feel like I’m in the Wizard of Oz house,” Sandy whispered), and the two of them only pretended to lift their knees as they marched. During touching toes and push-ups they just lay there making grunting noises, while their father’s sweat rained on them.

The lights came back on for “Pep Talk.” This turned out to be their father telling them about marching for three days on a broken ankle, living for weeks on cans of peaches and dragging a wounded buddy to safety under a barrage of Jerry fire—stories they’d heard a thousand times. Then there was “Inventory,” “Supper and Cleanup,” then two hours of “Free Time,” which was either playing games quietly or reading. The girls played hearts with their mother and sipped from her mug. Lou also sneaked puffs of her cigarette. After a few rounds Norma conked out on the floor. Their father lay on his bunk, smoking and reading his
Life
magazines. Anything about the Russians or about Negroes he read out loud in a sarcastic voice.

At nine o’clock Norma had to wake up, and they all changed
into their pyjamas. When they were in bed, their father said the soldier’s prayer: “Keep our hearts stout and our enemies baffled.” He listed their names for God’s blessing in the same strange order that they were supposed to use the toilet in. Then he blew out the candle and instantly started to snore. Sandy started to whimper.