Keep Smiling Through (13 page)

I looked terrible. I looked worse than Margaret O'Brien in
Journey for Margaret,
when she played a war orphan.

Perfect, I decided. And I slipped quietly downstairs.

Amazing Grace was still in the rocker in the dining room. I walked up to her and stood on the small braided rug in front of her.

"I'm wearing the dress you made," I said.

She didn't seem to hear me at first. Then her eyes went over the dress, which was sort of a tan color with small flowers on it. She nodded slowly. "It looks good."

"Yes," I said. "I'd wear it to school, except that I have to wear my uniform."

"The last week of school they let you wear regular clothes. You can wear it then."

Oh God,
I prayed,
how can I do that?
"Yes," I agreed. "Wait until the other girls see it. They'll all be jealous."

She started to rock back and forth. "My baby girl is dead," she said.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"So small. She was so small. And so perfect. She was a perfect little girl. And she had blond hair and blue eyes."

I took a deep breath. My hair is dark, my eyes brown. She always said I was too dark. I knew she liked blond-haired, blue-eyed little girls.
She would love the girls in the Golden Band,
I thought.

"I wish I could have seen her," I said.

"Her name was Louise."

I felt a stab of envy. Louise. Such a fine name. Not a plain, old-fashioned name like Kay. You could do wonderful things with a name like Louise.

Amazing Grace started to cry then. And for a moment I got scared.
I'd made her cry.

She cried in great, heaving sobs. "All I ever wanted was a little girl," she blubbered. "My own little girl. That's all I ever wanted."

I didn't know what to do. I got scared. I wanted to reach out and hug her, but I didn't dare. My throat went dry and I felt a great bursting sadness inside me, like I was going to drown.

"Why can't I be your little girl?" I asked softly.

She stopped crying and looked at me for a moment. I stood straight, in my feed-bag dress, with my brown eyes and brown hair. And I knew what she was thinking. That her little girl would look like Shirley Temple, all round pinkness and dimples with blond shining curls. Not like Margaret O'Brien. Or like me, with dark, straight hair, skinny, with a sad face.

And I knew something else then, too.
Her little girl would never wear a feed-bag dress.
And she would wear Mary Janes, all the time.

Then she started crying again. It sounded awful. "All I ever wanted was a little girl," she wailed.

Nana came rushing into the room. I heard my father come running down the stairs.

"What is it?" Nana asked. "What have you done to her, Kay?"

I stepped back, frightened.

My father looked sternly at me. "What did you do?"

"I wanted to make her smile," I said tearfully.

"Good, Grace, good," Nana was saying. "Cry, child, cry."

Amazing Grace kept right at it.

"It's good, John," Nana said, turning to him. "The doctor said she must cry. And she hasn't until now. Whatever Kay said to her, it helped. She'll be all right now, John. She's crying."

My father pushed me out of the way and went to put his arms around Amazing Grace. He held her.

I didn't understand. I'd tried to make Amazing Grace happy again. I thought you had to keep smiling through, not cry.

I ran from the room. If what I did was good, why didn't they thank me?

My father hadn't looked at me at all.

I was very frightened. I don't remember ever being so scared because of the war. We were having another air raid in school, only this time, instead of our diving under the desks, the nuns had ushered us into the great arching center hall.

It's lined on both sides with metal lockers. On either end of the hall, huge staircases with fat, cherry banisters reach to the upper level.

Everyone was talking in a buzzing whisper, wondering what was going on. Sister Mary Louise shushed us, severely. She stood in the middle of the hall.

"Be quiet! We will now pray until the sirens stop."

So we prayed. And the lonely, soul-searing sirens howled over us and echoed
through the silent building. I thought they would never stop.

I waited for the bombs to fall. I always thought bombs were going to fall during air raids, that the Nazis or Japs had broken through our coastal defenses and were going to drop bombs on us like the Nazis did on London.

Then I saw Jen a few paces ahead of me in line.

She was looking at me.

She hadn't looked at me all spring in school. And it was now the first week in June. School would let out on the fifteenth; today was the sixth.

At home, things had pretty much quieted down. We weren't exactly smiling through, but we were getting on. Amazing Grace was getting better. Nana was still with us and would stay until the summer, if necessary. Then she had to go home. Grandpa ate his meals in the restaurant where he worked, so he was okay for a while. But we all knew that sooner or later Nana had to go.

My father was looking for a new housekeeper.

Who would she be? Who could we stand? Who could stand us?

For a moment I met Jen's eyes. And I saw
something in them. What? Was she sorry? Did she remember all the good times we'd had? What?

I couldn't think with those sirens blaring. And then they stopped. The hall was strangely silent. We all sighed in relief. But Sister Mary Louise held up her hand and spoke.

"Boys and girls, today is a very special day. And this is why I have assembled you in this hall instead of having the usual air-raid drill."

Everyone waited.

"Today something very important is happening with our soldiers. They are fighting a terrible battle. And we must pray for them."

So we prayed again. And we sang the song we usually sang to the Blessed Virgin, asking her to help our valiant soldiers.

Then it was lunchtime.

I walked with my head down as my classmates rushed forward toward the lunchroom. I ate alone now. Oh, it was in the same lunchroom, sometimes at the same table, but I sat a little away from them and listened to what went on.

All spring Jen had sat in the middle of the
Golden Band. And laughed and told jokes and repeated gossip.

Well,
I thought,
at least she's smiling through.

Sometimes I didn't go to the cafeteria. Now that the weather was nice, I'd take my lunch outside to the shady part of the schoolyard and sit under a tree. It was better than having to sit and see my best friend with the Golden Band.

"Kay?"

I turned. Jen was standing there. I waited.

"I wanted to talk to you."

I felt a lot of things at once. A rush of joy, surprise, and anger. "Why?"

"I have to tell you something."

"What's wrong? Did the Golden Band get sick of you? You're not popular anymore?"

I was mad. And I saw no reason why I had to be nice after the way she'd hurt me so. I always knew they'd get tired of her sooner or later. After all, she still ate cream-cheese sandwiches and wore brown oxfords.

"Please, Kay, there's something I have to tell you."

"I don't want to hear it." We were at the corner in the hall where you turned left to go to the cafeteria or right to go outside.

I turned right.

She followed me. "I'll come with you," she said.

I walked out into the warm sunshine and shrugged. "It's a free country." I felt very grown-up, saying it. Martin said it all the time.

I walked across the paved schoolyard to the little patch of green. She was still following me. I sat under a tree and opened my lunch box and took out my tomato sandwich.

"Kay, will you listen to me?"

"Why should I?"

"Because it's something important that you should know."

"What could you tell me that I should know?"

"How your baby sister really died."

The sun was very hot, suddenly. I felt it spiraling down out of the sky, right at me. There was a droning in my ears, too. Must
be a mosquito.

"What are you saying?"

"My mother knows. She said I should tell you."

Of course! Her mother worked on the new-baby floor of the hospital! I could
hardly breathe. Was it possible her mother knew something?

It was. I saw the look in Jen's eyes.

"Tell me," I said.

"First, you have to know that my mother wants me to tell you because she read the story in the paper where you told about the pamphlet and your grandfather. My mother said you must have gotten into big trouble over that."

I shrugged.

"She said, That little girl is carrying a heavy burden. And her stepmother had the baby right after. I saw her in the hospital. She was yelling something about her father not loving Germany or Hitler when they brought her in.'"

I nodded. My mouth went dry.

"Then she said you must be blaming yourself because the baby came early. She heard the doctor say that Grace is a person full of anger and that he'd told her she had to calm down about a lot of things. Or the baby would be premature."

"What have you got to tell me, Jen?"

"Mom said that if you tell anybody, she could lose her job. So you've got to promise not to tell."

I nodded yes.

"Especially not at home. Not anybody."

"Okay, okay, I promise."

"Okay. The baby died because they took her out of the incubator."

I just stared at her. "I don't understand."

"She needed the incubator to stay alive. But there aren't enough incubators to go around."

"Why?"

"Because of the war. They took her out to give it to another baby. The doctors decided to do that. They had to decide to do that. They had to decide which baby to give it to. Another baby needed it more."

I swallowed. There was a great roaring sound in my ears.

"She didn't die because she was born too soon, Kay." Jen gave great emphasis to every word as she said them. "Oh, sure, she would have lived if she hadn't been born so soon. But two things you have to keep in mind here."

And she enumerated them on her fingers.

"First, the doctor warned your stepmother to stay calm. Anything could have made her have that baby early. From what you've told me, she's always upset about something."

I nodded. "Yes, but this time I did it."

"Maybe next time it would have been something else. Or somebody else. And second, even though the baby was born early, it would
have lived
if they didn't take it out of the incubator. My mother wanted you to know this. Only, you can't tell anybody."

I just sat there taking it all in. From somewhere way behind me I heard the school bell ring. Lunch hour was over.

"The war killed the baby, Kay," Jen said softly. "Just like the war killed my brother. My mother said that when the war is over, there will be enough incubators for all babies. And even if they're born too early, they'll live."

I felt a shuddering inside me. At the same time I felt light, as if somebody had lifted an old, soggy, wet coat off my shoulders.

"It's okay if you want to cry, Kay," she said. "My mother says people have to cry. She says people have to do something to get over their grief ... I know I've treated you rotten."

"It's okay," I said.

"No, it isn't. But when my brother was killed, I didn't know what to do. Then, all of a sudden, the Golden Band was there,
showing me. We fooled around a lot and laughed and joked. I acted crazy, like I didn't care about anything."

"You smiled through," I told her.

"What?"

"Like in the Vera Lynn song, you kept smiling through."

"Yeah." She shook her head. "Whatever you want to call it, that's what I did, I guess."

"Did it help?" I asked.

"It made me feel better while I was doing it. Mom says everybody acts different trying to get over grief. Mom worked longer hours when my brother died. That helped her."

"Amazing Grace just sat in a rocker and wouldn't talk to anybody," I told her.

She nodded. We sat in silence for a moment. "Do you feel better about the baby now?" she asked. "I have to tell my mom. She's worried about you."

"I feel better, yeah," I said. "Tell your mom thanks. But I guess I'll always feel, a little bit, that it was my fault."

"My mom wasn't on duty yet when it happened," she explained "When she came on, another nurse told her. Mom wouldn't have let it happen if she'd been there, Kay."

I sniffed. "I know."

"We've both lost somebody to the war now," she said.

I looked at her. "There's something different about you," I said.

"I got rid of my bangs."

"No, it's more than that."

"What?"

"I don't know. You're not a kid anymore."

She shrugged. "I guess I had to grow up, some."

"You're different. Not like my old friend Jen anymore."

She looked down at the grass. She ran her finger through it. "I could be your new friend Jen," she said. "If you wanted."

For one long moment, I couldn't speak, for the lump in my throat. Then I reached out to her. At the same time she reached for me.

"I want it," I said.

We walked back to the school together. "My mom says this is D-Day," she told me.

"What's that?"

"I don't know. But Mom was real happy when I left for school. She said if our soldiers do good today, the war could soon be over."

"Wow!" I said. "No more air raids, no more rationing, no more scrap drives."

"No more boys killed," she said. And I decided I'd been right. She was not a kid anymore. And I had some catching up to do to keep up with her.

D-Day didn't end the war, though it was a great victory in Europe. All we had to do now was beat the Japs.

A few days after Jen and I made up, it came to me what I had to do to catch up with her.

After all, I
needed
to catch up with her. We were going into sixth grade together in the fall.

Sixth graders aren't kids anymore. In public school they're considered old enough to be in junior high.