Keep Smiling Through (6 page)

"Wherever we go it is always the same," she said. "My man gets into trouble."

I felt sorry for Marie. But I just sat there at the table, staring at my Wheatena and wondering how I would eat it without my sugar. Wheatena was good for you; it was hard to take without sugar.

"Maybe your brothers and sisters will help
out until we get next month's supply," my father said as he went into the hall to get his coat and hat.

They did. They each gave me two precious spoonfuls. They filled half my new little jar.

Amazing Grace didn't offer any of hers.

When my father came back into the kitchen with his fedora hat and coat on, he looked pleased. But he didn't stay that way long. He never did. Soon enough, he looked serious.

"I have an announcement," he said.

We all got quiet.

"Your mother needs help with the house. And no one seems to be working out. So we're going to have Nana and Grandpa come until the baby arrives. And for a while after."

Everybody started talking at once then. Elizabeth said Nana was too old. Mary said, "Now Kay will have to move into our room." She didn't seem pleased about it.

Martin said Grandpa would teach him to play poker. Tom said, "Well, I guess I'll have to keep milking Daisy. Grandpa won't do that."

My father looked like the Germans were in our apple orchard. He couldn't wait to catch the 7:35 and be out of there.

I ran into the little back hallway as he left. "Daddy."

He turned. "I'm late now. What is it?"

"Do I have to wear a dress made of feed bags?"

"If your mother makes it, you'll wear it, Kay. She's doing her best. We all are." And he went out the door.

Nana and Grandpa are Amazing Grace's parents. They live in a little rowhouse in Brooklyn. It has a sunporch where a bird in a standing cage lives, a parlor with a piano, a small dining room and kitchen, and an even smaller backyard.

To get there, we have to take the train to New York first, then the subway that goes miles underground. The cars shake and screech and bang. The lights go off and on. Then suddenly we come out into the bright sunlight of Brooklyn, where we have to take a bus, then walk about four blocks.

I like going there. Brooklyn has neat little houses. Nana sends us out to the corner deli for cold cuts for lunch and makes pot roast for supper. We can make faces at the kids next door and they can make faces at us.

Of course, we don't dream of playing
together. Grown-ups think kids just play when they don't even know each other. But they don't. There are certain rules that apply before you can play together, certain things you have to do. One of those things is making faces. We kids all know that. And if grown-ups don't, well, that's their problem. We don't have to tell them everything, do we?

"Well, John," Nana always says at supper, halfway between the pot roast and dessert, "and how is business?"

You can count on her saying it. And when she does, I know dessert is coming soon.

If we go on Saturday, my father always takes Mary, Elizabeth, Tom, and Martin to Coney Island while Amazing Grace visits with her mother. I cry because I want to go to Coney Island, too. But my father says I'm too little.

These times, Nana takes me on her lap and tells me a story of her life in Austria when she was a young girl. It seems all she did was eat custard pudding and dance waltzes.

"I danced so, when I was first in love," she'd say.

Somehow I sense she didn't do those
waltzes with Grandpa but. with someone else, a man she left there. Grandpa can't dance. And she gets misty eyed when she talks about it.

Nana's bedroom is blue and white. She's a regal lady with white hair who wears blue dresses and speaks with an Austrian accent. Grandpa speaks with a German accent and works as a cook in one of New York's fancy restaurants.

Sometimes he mumbles to himself in German.

Nana treats us special. She's the only grandmother I have. And the only thing I can't figure out is how she can be so nice and have such a miserable daughter.

Before Nana and Grandpa arrived, however, Uncle Hermie came to visit us.

He's my father's older brother and the black sheep of the family. He isn't married, and he lives with a woman in an apartment in New York. This is not spoken of in polite company except in whispers, the way grown-ups speak when they think children's ears can't pick up the sound.

"He's a man-about-town, like Lamont Cranston," Martin explained to me and Tom. Lamont Cranston is The Shadow.

"But he's also a man of mystery," Martin added, "like Captain Midnight. Because the United States government doesn't know his identity."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he wasn't born here, but in Italy. He has no papers, nothing's in his name, and he doesn't pay taxes."

"Why?" I asked again.

Martin shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe his job for the war effort is just too important."

The best part about Uncle Hermie is that he always smells of olives. This is because he manages a New York deli to cover up what he really does as a man of mystery. He drives a big black Buick, he always smiles, and he thinks my father is crazy for living in the country.

"What do you do here, watch the grass grow?" he always asks.

We children love him. He picks us up, cracks jokes, and gives us candies from the pockets of his pinstriped suits. And he has a secret password.

It's
Chicago.
Whenever we go out with him into a store or a restaurant, or if he's looking at something to buy and he doesn't like the looks of things, he says, "Chicago."

That means, "Let's get out of here." And everybody with him moves to leave.

You can't tell us children anything bad about Uncle Hermie. We won't believe it. My father always speaks of how, after their
father died, Uncle Hermie quit school. Only, instead of going to work to help their mother support the younger ones, he hung around in pool halls.

We don't care about that. To us, he's wonderful because he has a password. There's a kind of magic and excitement about him when he pulls into our drive with his shiny black car and gets out in his pinstriped suit, wide tie, and fedora hat.

He's the only man-about-town that we know.

He brings the city with him. And we're fascinated with anything to do with the city. My father says there's evil in the city. People do terrible things there, and he moved us to the country so we could grow up clean.

On Palm Sunday, Uncle Hermie came to visit with his girlfriend Fanny. She's blond and looks like Marlene Dietrich in the movies.

My father loves all his brothers and sisters. But they don't come much. Amazing Grace doesn't like them. The reason for this is because they all remember my mother. There's a lot of tension when they come because we all know things could blow up any minute.

This Palm Sunday Uncle Hermie had candy for us. Because of the sugar shortage, we never get candy.

Except when I go to Mrs. Leudloff's. She'd given me candy again on my last visit. And again, I hadn't told anybody.

Fanny went into the kitchen to try to help Amazing Grace. I was getting a cup of coffee for Uncle Hermie when Fanny showed Amazing Grace a ring he had given her.

"That's beautiful." Amazing Grace turned to her, and she looked mad. "But I have a husband," she said.

Fanny sure is glamorous. She really did look like Marlene Dietrich that day. But she didn't know what to say to the remarks by Amazing Grace. I saw her face fall. And I felt bad for her.

After dinner, Uncle Hermie asked us children and my father to come outside with him. Out of the trunk of his car he took a large box.

"Stamp books," he said.

Sure enough, they were. Ration stamps, like you need to get food and shoes. All the things we need and never have enough of. They have pictures on them of guns and tanks and ships.

We kids call them coupons.

To me, they mean sugar. My small supply was gone now. I'd taken to eating Wheaties, the Breakfast of Champions, because they were better without sugar than Wheatena.

Now here was Uncle Hermie with a whole box of coupons! Where did he get them?

Martin, Tom, and I looked at each other. "Maybe he got them as a reward from the government," I heard Tom whisper.

Martin shook his head no.

"Go ahead, John," Uncle Hermie said to my father. "Take them. There are plenty more where these came from. You need them to feed your family."

My father looked confused for a moment.

"John," Uncle Hermie said in that soothing voice of his, "go ahead, take them."

"Don't, Daddy." Mary had come out of the house and was standing there wiping her hands on her apron. "They're black market."

Black market?
It sounded like a new radio program, better than
Inner Sanctum.
I looked at Martin. He nodded at me. Martin knew. He'd tell me later.

"Mary," Uncle Hermie said, "you look like you need a new pair of shoes."

"I don't want shoes if it means not doing my best for the war effort," Mary said.

Yesterday she and Beverly had been to the theater in town to see
Mrs. Miniver.
It was all she talked about. Mrs. Miniver never cried, Mary told me this morning. She kept a stiff upper lip through the Nazi bombing of England.

Ever since she'd seen
Gone with the Wind,
Mary had wanted to be Scarlett O'Hara. Until yesterday. Now she wanted to be Greer Garson, who played Mrs. Miniver.

"War effort? A little kid like you?" Uncle Hermie laughed. "Aren't you doing enough? You're not seventeen yet and you're working in the arsenal. You never even finished high school."

"Neither did you," Mary snapped back.

He shrugged and smiled. "I left because I didn't want to stay. You left because your father made you."

"For the war effort," Mary said.

"For money," Uncle Hermie told her. "Because he wants the money you bring home. You lost the best part of your life, Mary. You don't need to give up any more."

"That's enough, Hermie," my father said angrily. "I'm doing my best to raise a family here. Do you know what that means?"

It was turning into a fight. This could easily happen when my father's family visited. Anything they said could trigger a fight. Because they remembered my mother. And they had loved her.

"Mary, take the coupons and buy yourself a pair of shoes," Uncle Hermie said again.

"We're fighting Hitler," Mary yelled at him. "We're fighting for freedom! Don't you know what that means?"

Uncle Hermie looked sad. "Mary," he said, "you've got no freedom in this house. I come here, and you kids are allowed to mention Hitler's name but not your dead mother's. Didn't you ever ask yourself why?"

Mary turned and ran into the house. "I don't ever want to see you again!" she yelled. She was crying. I knew she was Scarlett O'Hara then and not Mrs. Miniver. Because Mrs. Miniver never cried. And because Uncle Hermie laughed, just like Rhett Butler did when Scarlett threw the vase right after she declared her love for Ashley.

"Hermie, I think it's time for you to go," my father said.

"Ah, John."

"No, you'd better go now," my father said.

Uncle Hermie turned to us, me and Tom and Martin. "Want some coupons, kids? You look like you need shoes, too. You look like you need lots of things. How 'bout you, little Kay? You're the one who's always thinking. Never say anything, do you, kid? You know better."

And he knelt down in front of me. "You just keep your eyes and ears open, don't you? But you're always learning."

I was afraid to say anything. He liked me. All my father's family did. They all acted as if I was special to them. The feeling made me uncomfortable. And I try my best to be invisible when they come to visit. Because Amazing Grace will take it out on me later if they fuss over me too much.

"Here," and Uncle Hermie thrust some coupons into my hand. And into the hands of Martin, Tom, and Elizabeth. "Use them, kids. Don't believe that crap about winning the war effort by going without sugar, shoes, or meat. Kids have a right to such things. Kids have a right to their childhood."

All four of us took them, thanked him,
and hugged him. Then Fanny, who'd been standing in the background watching all this, came up to him and put her arm on his shoulder.

"Chicago, Hermie," she said.

He nodded.

"Good-bye, kids." Fanny winked at us and got into the shiny black Buick.

"Good-bye, John," he said to my father.

But my father didn't answer.

Uncle Hermie got into the car. "I'll be back, kids. I'm taking the boys to the Dodgers game Easter week. Be ready."

We stood watching them drive away. My father said nothing. Uncle Hermie, the man-about-town whose identity was so secret even the United States government didn't know he existed, would be back. And he would take my brothers to the Brooklyn Dodgers game. He did once every year.

"Can we keep the coupons, Daddy?" Tom asked.

"Sure." My father shrugged.

Later I asked Martin where he thought the coupons had come from.

"Black market," he said.

"You mean he isn't working for the war effort?"

"He's working for himself," Martin said.

I didn't care Nobody spoke about the matter again. Mary acted like Mrs. Miniver for a week, but Tom and Martin chipped in from their allowance and bought me some sugar.

All thai spring, ever)' time I ate breakfast or had a cup of tea, I thanked Uncle Hermie for the coupons. I couldn't have gotten my new supply of sugar without them.

Later Martin told me what the black market was. People get the things they want, even though the war is on Because dishonest men and crooked politicians make them pay higher prices for things they want. Or print counterfeit coupons and sell them to the people.

How Uncle Hermie came into all this, I didn't know. I didn't want to know. I loved him. He smelled of olives, was nice to us, and said kids should have a childhood.

And inside me I decided that he must be working for the war effort. He was probably with the FBI. And his job was so important that not even his superiors knew his identity.