Keep Smiling Through (7 page)

I decided that this business with the coupons and the black market was just to keep
that identity a secret. As for Fanny, well, she was his faithful sidekick. Like Margo Lane was to The Shadow. Like Tonto was to the Lone Ranger. And like Kato was to the Green Hornet.

Our house was worse than
Suspense
that week. My father was upset because his brother had told us why Mary didn't finish high school. Amazing Grace was upset because of all the work that had to be done because her parents were coming.

She gave us all double duty. I had to polish the silver and wipe the dishes. Mary and Elizabeth not only took turns washing dishes at night but had to help do spring cleaning. I didn't mind drying because my sisters always sang when they washed.

Mary sang "I'll Walk Alone" and "I'll Be Seeing You" and "We'll Meet Again," the song Vera Lynn sang when she told us to keep smiling through.

Elizabeth sang "Rum and Coca-Cola" like the Andrews Sisters.

I thought they were both very good.

Tom had to put a new coat of whitewash on the inside of the barn. Martin had to rake all the flower beds. It was mid-April and everything outside needed doing.

In school Jennifer wouldn't come near me. She stayed with the Golden Band and let them lead her around by the nose. You'd have thought I was responsible for her brother's ship being torpedoed.

The only good thing that happened to me all week was that on Tuesday I won the toy from the new box of Kellogg's Pep. There's a toy in every box, and Martin, Tom, and I have figured out a way to decide which of us wins it.

Every morning my father listens to the news. My brothers and I each take a city. Mine is Rome, Tom's is Paris, and Martin's is London. Whoever has the city most mentioned on the news wins. Most mornings there's nothing to win. But that doesn't matter.

When we open a new box of Kellogg's Pep, there is. Rome won that day, and I pulled out a bombsight.

All the toys have to do with war. The bombsight came with a map of places in
Germany. Marbles came with it too, to drop as bombs.

"What cities will you bomb?" Tom asked.

"All the ones where the U-boats are made," I told him. "And I'll bomb the railroads they ship the torpedoes on."

The announcer said something on the radio about the Dionne quintuplets then. And we all listened.

"The five Dionnes, who will soon be ten years old, were in Superior, Wisconsin, yesterday to launch a new battleship," the announcer said in his deep voice. "The girls pulled straws to see who would smash the bottle. Emily won. And that was Niagara River water in the bottle, folks, not champagne."

"I wonder what they wore," Mary said.

"Probably those silly coats and hats and white stockings and Mary Janes," I said. "I hate those little girls."

"We don't hate in this house," my father said.

"They're your age, Kay," Martin reminded me.

I needed no reminding. Up in Canada the Dionnes are Superman, the Green Hornet, and The Shadow all rolled into one. And in
the United States their pictures are wherever you look. On calendars, on magazine covers, in newsreels. Five little girls bora to a poor farmer and his wife. And they
all
have Mary Janes.

"Never mind the Dionnes," Amazing Grace said. "Kay, here's egg money. You're to stop at Mrs. Leudloff's on your way home and get two dozen. We need them for Easter baking."

"Listen for the shortwave radio this time," Martin reminded me as we walked to get the school bus. "There are German spies all over the place. She's probably got a cache of rifles hidden in her cellar. Here, I'll give you my new magic pedometer, if you want it. It just came yesterday."

Did I
want
it? I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

Martin strapped it on my wrist. "Be careful with it. It will protect you, as well as track any hidden rifles."

I said, "Gosh all hemlock," and thanked him twice. And about a dozen times that day I checked to make sure it was still on my wrist. Underneath the cuff of my long-sleeved uniform blouse. Where Sister Brigitta couldn't see it.

***

But the little dial on the pedometer didn't move at all when I got to Mrs. Leudloff's house.

I didn't expect it to move when Rex lunged and growled at me as I sneaked by his enclosure. Although it was magic, and I kind of hoped it would.

But the dial didn't even move when I walked right past Mrs. Leudloff's cellar windows, where I was sure the rifles were stored.

And the only radio I heard was the sound of
Lonely Women
drifting out from her kitchen window.

"Hello, you're back again. How nice." She had on a white blouse with red polka dots and a snappy bow at the neck. She wore slacks and a snood around her blond hair. She reminded me of the ad for Listerine antiseptic in Amazing Grace's
Ladies Home Journal.

"Her secret can be yours," the ad said of the lovely lady who was smiling right through, with a smile as dazzling as her white blouse.

All the women in the ads had secrets about how to keep their teeth white, their
gums from bleeding, their clothes young, and their pancakes light.

"I want two dozen today," I told Mrs. Leudloff. I followed her into the henhouse.

"And so? How did Tony and Marie work out?"

I said that they didn't.

"I told you, didn't I?" And she carefully placed the eggs in one carton. "So what will your mama do now?"

"Her parents are coming from the city."

"Ah, good to have parents. What's that you're wearing on your wrist?"

Mistake! She'd seen the pedometer! How could I have been so stupid! Jack Armstrong would never let anybody see it.

"It's a pedometer," I said weakly.

"Ah, like Jack Armstrong uses. Is that it?"

I stared at her in disbelief.
Does she know everything, this lady?

"I listen to the radio," she explained. "Here all day alone, with my husband off to war, what else is there to do?"

Her
husband off at war? For the Germans?

"I know all the songs, all the programs. I know how we women are supposed to be brave and save sugar, keep fit to do our jobs on the home front, stand behind our men in uniform, and keep smiling through."

Smiling through. How dare she say that? She's a German!

"And I know what you're looking for with that pedometer, too. A cache of rifles." And she laughed and put her hands on her hips. "You think I'm a German spy? You believe what the children in the neighborhood say about me?"

I wanted to die. I felt myself blushing. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. But then I remembered that sometimes spies fool people by being open and honest.

"No, ma'am," I said.

"Do I look like a spy?"

"No. You look like Greta Garbo."

"Good. We can't have any of that nonsense between us. We're friends, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"Now, what kind of candy do you prefer? Caramels or gumdrops?"

"Caramels."

She reached into her slacks pocket and pulled out a handful of caramels and dropped them into my hand.

I thanked her, still embarrassed.

She was smiling down at me. "I like listening to Mrs. Roosevelt on the radio best. And I listen to Lights Out. Do you?"

"Oh, yes!"

"They're going to do a rebroadcast of 'Chicken Heart.' Did you ever listen to that one?"

"Yes. The heart grows and grows and thumps and thumps, until it consumes the whole world."

We laughed together. "But it scares me," I confided.

She patted my shoulder. "You shouldn't be scared. It's just a story. Don't be scared of stories. Or rumors. We worry about all the wrong things in life. And what really can harm us we never worry about. Do you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because we aren't smart enough to worry about what will really harm us. If we were, we'd be fortune-tellers and make lots of money. Go now, and don't worry. You're too serious for such a little girl."

I went, eating my caramels. I felt twice as guilty this visit. Not only had I accepted her candy again, but I liked her. She was a nice lady. She knew how to talk to me.

I could never tell anyone at home that. They'd think I was crazy.

But worse, by being friends with her, I'd
relaxed my efforts to help speed victory. "You must never relax, but keep on punching," Glenn Riggs the announcer told us on the radio.

I'd let him down. I'd let my brothers down. I'd let Jen down. And her brother, who'd been torpedoed. Jen must have known I was a weak-kneed, loose-lipped fool. No wonder she didn't want any more to do with me.

"Kay," Nana said to me, "come thread this needle. My eyes are old."

She was sitting in an Adirondack chair out on the lawn on Easter Saturday. She and Grandpa had met my father in New York on Friday night and come home with him on the train.

How could anybody's eyes be so old they couldn't thread a needle? I put Mary Frances down and threaded it for Nana.

She was making Mary Frances a new dress for Easter. Nobody had ever thought to make Mary Frances a dress. I was delighted, of course. What with the war and everything, Mary Frances's wardrobe had been neglected worse than mine. And the dress wasn't of feed-bag material, either. It was from some scraps of blue dimity.

"After this I will make something for the new baby," Nana said.

"What?"

"A little dress."

"What if it's a boy? They don't wear dresses."

"They do when they are babies. You must be a help to your mother now, you know, with this baby coming."

I said yes, I would be.

"It will be nice, having a baby in the family. You'll enjoy that," she said.

I hadn't thought much about the baby as a real person. So far it was only an excuse for Amazing Grace to get everybody to wait on her hand and foot.

A baby in the house? That would be exciting. I must get used to the idea. "Where will they put it?" I asked.

"In your mama's room in the beginning."

"Then in mine," I said dismally. "I'll have to give up my room and stay with my sisters."

"Do you mind being with them now?" She put down her needle and looked at me over her glasses.

"No," I said. Their room is very large, with three windows. My bed had been put in one corner. And I liked it because when
they weren't around, I could snoop in their things. Mary had a large chimney closet next to her bed that I could crawl into. It was full of magazines about Shirley Temple. Elizabeth had magazines on Loretta Young.

"But the baby should be a boy," I told Nana. "Boys have it better in the world."

"Now, that's not true, Kay."

"Yes, it is. Look at Tom and Martin. This week Daddy's taking them to New York with him so Uncle Hermie can take them to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play. And they're staying with Uncle Hermie overnight, too."

She shrugged. "Who wants to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play?"

"I do. I want to see Pee Wee Reese and Pete Reiser."

"Well, maybe Grandpa can take you somewhere when they go. Grandpa?" she called to him.

"Ya, Mama, what is it?"

He was repainting the top half of my father's car lights with black paint. All car lights have to be blacked out on top. So we can't be seen by submarines lurking offshore. Or by any German or Jap planes not spotted by our air-raid wardens.

The paint on our car lights was two years old and peeling.

"Grandpa, maybe this week when the boys go to the ball game, you could take Kay somewhere? You could drive John to the station in the morning and keep the car and take her to town."

"I'll take her somewhere, sure," he said. "But I don't need the car."

"Then where would you take her?" Nana was sewing, then she dropped her needle in her lap. "No, Grandpa, you will
not
go to Ernie's!"

"Mama, if I want to go to Ernie's, I'll go," he said.

"No, Grandpa. Do not go. There is trouble."

"What trouble, Mama?" he asked. "You see trouble behind every bush. Ernie is my friend. If I want to go see him, I'll go. I'll get Kay some ice cream. What's the harm in getting a little girl some ice cream?"

On Easter Monday, Tom and Martin got all their chores done so they could go to New York the next day.

One of Martin's chores is collecting the tin cans and newspapers for the scrap drive. I usually help him with the tin cans.

First we peel the paper off the cans. Then I stand at one end of the kitchen and Martin stands at the other. We make a game of it.

He rolls the can to me. And just as it gets to my feet, I jump and stamp on it to flatten it.

We rolled and flattened several cans, and Martin was putting them in a box when he looked at me.

"I'm taking them to the salvage bin in the wagon this afternoon," he said. "I've always had the biggest haul of scrap. But do you know what they need most?"

"No," I said.

"Rubber. They need lots of rubber to fight the war. Do you want to give us your rubber baby doll?"

I stared down at him hard. "Are you crazy?
Give Mary Frances?
I can't do that."

"Why?"

"Why?" For a minute I couldn't think why. Then I did. "Because they'd tear her apart and kill her. She can't die."

"Why?"

Why? Didn't boys understand anything? They all wanted to be Superman and bend steel with their bare hands and change the course of mighty rivers. But they didn't understand why a girl couldn't give her one and only baby doll to the scrap drive.

Because Mary Frances is more than a baby doll, that's why. She's my friend. I hug her at night, when I'm afraid. Or when I've been hit by Amazing Grace or yelled at by my father.

"Because Nana just made her a new dress," I said. "And you can't die when you've just been given a new dress."

To give Martin credit, he didn't argue. "Okay," he said. I thought that was very decent of him.

On Easter Tuesday morning Tom and Martin got up extra early and dressed in their good spring knickers, polished shoes, high socks, dress shirts, ties, jackets, and peaked caps, and with their overnight bags, went with my father to get the train for New York.