Keep Smiling Through (3 page)

I don't belong. Neither does Jennifer, who also takes a bus to school, but from another direction.

To not-belong is bad. We're smart enough to know that.

But we're smarter not to try.

Jennifer's mother works as a nurse on the new-baby floor in the hospital. That's another fault. Nobody's mother works. Oh, I know lots of women work in war plants. Mary told me. But none of these girls' mothers work. So Jennifer has to peel potatoes and get the supper started when she goes home. My stepmother doesn't work, but I know about peeling potatoes. I guess Jennifer and I just found each other and clung to each other to stay alive.

As I stepped from the bus, I saw, right away, that there was a commotion in the schoolyard. Jennifer was surrounded by the Golden Band, and she was crying. I ran to her.

The Golden Band consisted of six girls: Cathy Doyle, Amy Crynan, Betsy Palmer, Eileen Keifer, Rosemary Winter, and Mary Ellen Bradley.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"You mean you don't know, Kay?" Amy Crynan said it with contempt. As if I
should
know. They did. But everybody in the Golden Band always knew things I didn't know. Which was why I always felt so stupid around them.

Well, I was used to it. "No," I said.

"Her brother's ship was torpedoed by the Germans. He was lost at sea," Mary Ellen Bradley said.

Jennifer stood there and wailed louder and louder. Tears were streaming down her face. Deep sobs came up from her chest.

"Jen," I said. I tried to push my way through to her.

Her brother, Arthur, gone! I could not believe it.

"His ship was torpedoed by Hitler's Wolf Pack," Amy Crynan told everyone.

Here was something I knew. I knew about the Wolf Pack. They were Hitler's submarines. They called them U-boats. I'd seen them in movie newsreels that showed dead bodies floating in the ocean after one of our ships was torpedoed by them. Then, at the beach last summer, we'd seen tar and oil slicks on the sand from all the sunken ships.

"Jen!" I touched her.

But she didn't hear me. She was someplace else, in some terrible place where she was feeling a lot of pain. I could tell from the sound of her crying. It frightened me.

And then the Golden Band pushed me aside. They led Jennifer away. They walked with her into the school. Sister Mary Louise
was ringing the cowbell that meant classes were starting.

They would announce over the loudspeaker that Jennifer Bellows's brother had been lost in the war. And we'd pray for him.

I stood alone in the cold schoolyard, wondering whose loose lips had sunk the ship Jennifer's brother had been on. And how I was going to survive in school without Jennifer for a friend.

Because I knew she was gone from me. Before this day the girls in the Golden Band would never have bothered with her. She wasn't a townie. She ate cream-cheese sandwiches, she wore brown oxfords, her mother worked.

But today she had something nobody else had. A brother killed in the war.

The nuns would coddle and pet her. She'd be the center of attention in school. She was important now. And worthy, finally, of the Golden Band.

She was as gone from me as Queenie was. I'd lost another friend.

Who will I have now?
I asked myself.
Lucy Spinella?
She's Spanish and dark-skinned and poor. She stays to herself. The girls laugh at her. Once one of them touched her kerchief
by mistake and ran, screaming, to wash her hands.

Paula Karchup?
She's even worse off. She doesn't even
have
lunch. She sits at the far end of the cafeteria with her hands folded in front of her, saying, "I'm not hungry." Every day she says that. Nobody bothers to ask why she doesn't have lunch or why she isn't hungry.

I have nobody now,
I thought.
I'll walk alone, like it says in that song my sister Mary sings. Or like Bulldog Drummond, the detective who comes on the radio Tuesday evenings, I'll make lonely footsteps in the night, coming out of the fog. Then what will I do?

I don't know,
I decided.
I'm not allowed to stay up to hear the whole show. So I don't know what happens to Bulldog Drummond when he walks alone in the fog. I'll just have to make up the rest as I go along.

Oh, Queenie, how will I keep smiling through?

I couldn't get Jennifer out of my mind all day.

Sister Brigitta smacked me on the hand with the ruler four times because I couldn't remember how much nine times three was. She stood over me with that ruler while I recited the times tables. I was so scared that my mind went blank after nine times two. Then I started to cry, and she hit my hands and made me sit in the corner with a dunce cap on.

Jennifer wasn't in class. Where was she? She finally arrived in time for the afternoon classes. Cathy Doyle whispered that she'd been in the nurse's office.

Before we started, Sister Brigitta asked Jennifer who she wanted to go to the office
with her, to lead the prayer for her brother over the loudspeaker.

I was back in my seat by then. It was such an honor to go to the office and lead the prayers! I'd never been picked. I never thought I could do it if Sister sent me. But I'd do it for Jennifer. But Jennifer looked right past me.

"Amy Crynan," Jennifer said.

My heart sank.

Amy was the leader of the Golden Band. Her hair was blond and she was perfect in every way. I always felt like an insect next to Amy.

I wanted to die. It hurt worse than Sister Brigitta's ruler as I watched Jennifer and Amy walk out of the class, hand in hand.

"Boys and girls." Sister Mary Louise's voice was soft and serious over the loudspeaker. "Amy Crynan will now lead the grammar school in prayer for Arthur Bellows, whose ship was torpedoed by the Germans and whose soul is now with God. As you know, his sister, Jennifer, is in Sister Brigitta's fifth grade."

His soul with God.
It gave me the shivers. But it must be true. And Arthur Bellows must have some influence with God, too, I
decided. Because Amy never got to say those prayers.

Just then we heard the sirens for an air-raid drill. For the
whole
school, not just the grammar. St. Bridget's Junior High and High School were scattered through our building and the building next door.

Immediately we dived under the desks, while the sirens kept on and on. We had to cross our legs and put our hands together over our heads and keep very quiet and still.

The sirens made a lonely, frightening sound. I looked across the aisle at Jennifer's empty desk.
Your brother is punishing you, Jen,
I thought,
because you didn't pick me to lead the prayers. And he's with God. So you better watch out.

The minute I opened the gate at Mrs. Leudloff's house her German shepherd went crazy. He snarled and barked and his fangs dripped, just like some creature on the scariest radio program we listened to, Inner
Sanctum Mysteries.

Mrs. Leudloff kept him in a fenced-in place in the middle of the yard. Which meant I had to get by him in order to get to
another gate, where I would have to ring a small bell to tell her I wanted eggs.

I'd seen Nazi dogs in newsreels at the movies. And Rex acted as fierce as any of them. I kept as far from him as I could as I raced to the second gate. Then I rang the bell.

The back door of the neat white clapboard house opened and Mrs. Leudloff came out. She had light brown, fluffy, short hair and a belted jacket, and she wore gray slacks. There was a bounce in her step and she was very slim and cheerful.

"Yes?" she asked.

"I need some eggs, Mrs. Leudloff."

"Come, come. Glad to see you."

She couldn't fool me with that nice smile. Or pull the wool over my eyes with her stylish hair or slim waist.
I don't trust happy and cheerful anyway
, I thought.
Life is serious and hard.
In school, when the nuns want to be nice, they read to us about the Christians who got eaten by the lions in Rome.

As for my egg buying, I was used to Mrs. Schoenfeld, short and dumpy. Her house was cavernous and messy and dark. She was Jewish. She sang opera while she boxed the eggs for me. Everybody in operas either dies
in the end or gets stabbed. My sister Mary says Mrs. Schoenfeld knows about sorrow, being Jewish. And that she has culture.

"One dozen?" Mrs. Leudloff asked.

"Yes, please."

She began to fill an egg carton. "How are your parents?"

"Fine, thank you."

"And school? Do you study hard?"

"Yes."

"Good. The new baby comes soon?"

"In late spring, I think." Oh, I knew Mary warned me not to tell her anything that goes on in our house. But what could I do? This lady was so cheerful.

"You want a brother or a sister?"

What I wanted had nothing to do with anything. I wanted bacon for breakfast, chocolate syrup in my milk, Mary Janes. I wanted Queenie back and Jennifer for a friend again. I would get none of these things, so what was the sense in wanting?

Besides, at home we never spoke of the baby, except for how we must take care of Amazing Grace. Its coming was a private matter. But Mrs. Leudloff was waiting for my answer.

"I'd like a little sister," I said.

She smiled. "Of course you would. I hear Queenie left."

"You know Queenie?"

"She came here for eggs once or twice. We became friends. I didn't think she'd stay at your house very long."

"My father is going to get someone else."

Her light blue eyes looked into mine. "Not Tony and Marie."

"Why?"

"They worked here once. I had to let them go. Now all I have is Mr. Jesco. But he's a good worker." She shook her head. "I don't usually say things against people. We must all learn to be kind to each other these days. Just tell your father, if he hires them, not to leave his children unsupervised."

I took the eggs and handed her the money.

"My, look at those chapped hands. Where are your mittens?"

"I lost them."

"Wait. I have an old pair around."

"No, ma'am, I couldn't."

"You wait!" She said it sternly.

I stood there in the cold yard. Rex was sitting in his fenced-in place, growling at me. I wanted to go. It was cold. I had another mile to walk yet. And I wanted to get home
to listen to our radio programs. But Mrs. Leudloff had said to wait, and I was taught to obey.

The back door slammed again, and she came bouncing, out. "Here." She thrust a pair of blue mittens at me.

I looked at them in the same way I'd looked at the bacon at breakfast. "I couldn't take them," I said.

"Why? Nobody's using them."

I was confused.
Why is she being so nice?
I wondered.
She isn't
supposed
to be nice. She's German, isn't she?
I shook my head. "They wouldn't like it at home."

"So? Do you have to tell them?"

Not tell them? It was unthinkable. I didn't even know how to consider such a thing. "Thank you just the same," I said.

She put the mittens in her coat pocket. "Then have some candy." From her other pocket she took some wrapped taffy and hard candy. "Go ahead. All my customers get candy."

I accepted some, thanked her, and crept past Rex, who once again started to lunge at the white picket-fence enclosure.

"Don't be afraid, he wouldn't hurt you," she said.

I was not afraid. I was terrified. Somehow
I got out the front gate and onto the road. She waved. I started to walk down the hill.

The candy was delicious. I felt so guilty eating it. I seldom got candy. But this I could keep from them at home. Because it would be gone before I got there. And I deserved something for putting up with Rex, didn't I?

I turned once, to look up at the house. I'd forgotten to listen for the shortwave radio!

"Maybe you'll take the mittens next time," she called out.

There would be no next time, candy or no candy,
I told myself. Mrs. Schoenfeld couldn't stay away from the egg farm more than one day, even if her husband had hurt his eye. Only Mrs. Leudloff didn't know that.

Hop Harrigan was just asking, on the radio, for clearance to land, when I came in the door.

His voice was calling the central tower on his plane's radio. The Ace of the Airwaves was starting another adventure. He and his pal, Tank Tinker, were always on dangerous missions behind enemy lines.

It's my job to make tea for Grace, my brothers, and myself when I get home from school. I hurried to the kitchen.

That's one good thing about Amazing Grace; she loves her afternoon tea. It's because she's English. At least that's what she tells us. Since her father is German and her mother Austrian, I don't know how she got to be English. But with the war, you never know.

People change with the war. Look at Kato, Britt Reid's houseboy on
The Green Hornet.
He was Japanese before the war. Now he's Filipino.

Amazing Grace was sitting in the dining room at her Singer sewing machine, putting the finishing touches on the jumper she was making for me. Martin and Tom were on the floor in front of the radio.

Amazing Grace had the water boiling and the toast in the toaster. I got out the butter and jam, put it all on a tray, managed to pour the water in the pot without burning my hands, and carried the tray to the dining-room table.

Amazing Grace watched as I set the tray down. She'd be on me in a minute if I spilled anything, slapping with her sharp hand. I was used to it. She was a stepmother, and stepmothers did that sort of thing. I was luckier than Snow White, after all. Her stepmother had ordered the huntsman to cut out her heart.

"Did you get the eggs?"

"Yes. I put them in the ice box."

"Well, Mr. Schoenfeld came home from the hospital this afternoon. He may be blind in one eye."

I didn't know what to say to that. She
acted as if it was my fault. So I said nothing.

"So your father will want you to buy eggs from him. He'll need our business. Now have your tea, then go and change. I want you to peel potatoes for supper. I can't do everything around here, and your sisters don't get home until late."