Summer of My German Soldier (2 page)

A slow smile spread across her face and I found myself smiling too. See, I congratulated myself, I don’t always do everything wrong.

“Go bring Sharon in from the sandpile,” said Ruth. “I’ll fix us up some good ole wienies and beans for lunch.”

“Oh, I don’t think I want any.”

“Don’t you go telling me what you don’t be wanting, Miss Skin-and-Bones.”

“Am not! As a matter of fact, if you haven’t noticed, I’m really quite formidable.” I exposed teeth, squinted eyes, and fashioned claws out of my hands. “Terribly and ferociously formidable!”

“That today’s word?” asked Ruth.

“Yes. Isn’t it grand? It means ‘exciting fear or dread.’ Like it?”

“I likes it right well,” said Ruth thoughtfully. “But I thinks one of my best favorites is one of them from last month. ’Cause one night after I got home and fixed up some supper for Claude and me and cleaned up my kitchen, I got to noticing my shelf paper was getting a mite yellow so I says I better take care of it right now. Claude says leave it for another time ’cause it’s pretty near to seven o’clock and I bees needing my rest. And I says Claude, you is right, but trouble is you done married a fastidious wife. A real
fastidious
wife.”

My sister was sitting straight up in the sandpile, shoveling sand over her legs. Sharon’s not yet six—exactly five years and ten months. But whatever she does seems to have, at least to her, a kind of purpose.

“Hey, Sharon,” I called, “where are your legs?”

She giggled like she knew something I didn’t. “Under the sand, silly.”

“Are you absolutely sure? ’Cause once I had a friend named John Paul Jones, and John Paul put both legs under a lot of sand and when he went to pull them out—no legs. All those hungry little sand bugs had eaten them right off.”

Sharon lifted her legs straight into the air. She seemed enormously pleased. “Well, I’ve still got mine. See?”

In the center of the square, breakfast-room table a bunch of back-yard roses lounged in a flowered glass that had once held pimento cheese. Ruth carried in steaming plates of wienies and beans and some cut-up tomatoes, lettuce, and radishes from our Victory Garden. I found my appetite.

Ruth gave Sharon a nod. “Your time to be asking the Lord’s Blessing.”

Immediately, without thinking, I said my own silent prayer: Please, dear God, don’t let my father come in now. Amen.

Sharon clasped her hands tight. “We sure do thank you, dear Lord, for all the food we’re going to eat up. Amen.”

“Amen, Lord,” echoed Ruth.

I heard myself sigh. I think maybe I worry too much. After all, it’s just plumb silly to think of him walking in on us right in the middle of our prayers. But what could happen is that Sharon might just mention it. “Christian prayers in my house!” The nerve at his temple would pulsate. Shouts of “God damn you,” directed at me and maybe at Ruth.

It’s not that he’s against praying or anything. Before the gasoline rationing I used to go to Jewish Sunday school at the Beth Zion Synagogue in Memphis, so I know that Jews pray too. My father asked those people down at the Ration Board
for some extra stamps, but Mr. Raymond Hubbard said that he thought eighty miles round trip was a long ways to go praying and he couldn’t in good conscience consider it a priority item.

“I made up some Jell-O for you,” said Ruth, eyeing my empty plate.

“Uhhh, no thanks. I’m all filled up.”

“I made it jest the way you like it.” Her voice had softened. “It’s got bananas and nuts and cut-up bits of marshmellers.”

“I’ll have a little. Did you, really and truly, make it especially for me?”

“Only this morning I asks myself what would Patty specially like for dessert. Then I tells myself the answer. And now you have your answer too.” Ruth leaned back her head to let out a chuckle that was a full octave and a half down from middle
C.

My sister took up the laugh. And her top-of-the-octave laugh struck me funny, and then everything was. That’s the way it is with Ruth, Sharon, and me. It isn’t that our jokes are all that great; it’s like Ruth says, “We keep our jubilee in easy reach.” Why can’t it be that way with my mother and father? “Show them your natural sweetness,” Ruth reminds me, “’cause ants ain’t the only thing sweetness attracts.”

I looked out the window at the summer green and wished for winter white. An Alaskan blizzard with wild winds hurling ice darts onto head-high drifts. For four days and four nights the two of them have been isolated in the store. The power is down, the oil pipes have burst, and there is no food and no water.

Ruth pleads with me not to try to reach them. “You ain’t
gonna save them; you is only going to kill yourself dead!”

“Fill the thermos with hot soup,” I tell her.

Seven times I think I can’t go on. The drifts too high, my feet and face beyond any feeling. But I do go on and on and on, and finally I make it. I feed them soup and tuna-fish sandwiches, and when they regain their strength, they tell me how much they love me—how much they have always loved me.

“What you expecting to see out that window?” asked Ruth. “The Second Coming of the Lord?”

Never would I want her to suspect me of dreaming of a miracle. “I was just thinking I might take a walk down to the store. See what’s cooking.”

She didn’t look exactly thrilled by my idea.

“Isn’t it you who’s always reminding me to be sweet? Now what could be more thoughtful than bringing them up-to-the-minute war news?” They would like that too. Doesn’t my father listen to the five-minute news with his neck jutting out towards the radio? And when H. V. Kaltenborn comes on I swear if his nose isn’t just about touching the cloth-covered speaker.

Ruth dropped her head into the U between her thumb and her first finger. “I expect you spent the morning advising President Roosevelt on where to send his armies. That where you got your up-to-the-second war news?”

“If you don’t think a hundred ferocious Nazi prisoners arriving at the Jenkinsville depot is war news then I don’t know what is.”

On Ruth’s face was the dawning of a smile. “Got some sweetness to go with your up-to-the-second news?”

I stood up. “Maybe you oughta spend a little time telling
my father and mother to serve some sweetness to me.”

“Reckon they’d listen?”

“Guess not.”

Ruth nodded her agreement. “Could you tell this old lady why you is always talking about your father when all the other young girls be talking about their daddies?”

“Well, daddies act one way and fathers act another. And anyway, I don’t happen to be a young girl. I’ve been a teenager already for two years.”

She laughed. “Oh, Honey Babe, how can you be a teenager when you is only twelve?”

“’Cause I’ve been one since I was ten. Not many people know this, Ruth, but teenage actually starts when you get two numbers to your age. See?”

I could tell that I hadn’t convinced her. “Don’t you see, ten is in reality tenteen. Now people don’t generally go around calling it tenteen cause it sounds too much like the chewing gum, but that’s the only reason.”

The smile that Ruth had been holding in suddenly broke through. “Honey, you jest all the time go round making up rules to suit yourself. I got myself two big numbers to my age and I shore ain’t no teenager.”

“Well, I can explain that. When you have two numbers to your age, you’re either teenage or after teenage. And you just happen to be after teenage, understand?”

“I thinks I’m beginning to see the light and I do ’preciate the kind explanation, little Miss Genius.”

“Make fun of me and I’ll stop talking to you.”

“Can’t good friends kid each other a little? Make each other smile?”

“I guess so. I’ve got to go to the store now.”

“Hold up a pretty minute, Patty. I want you to do me a mighty big favor only you can do.”

I tried to hide my pleasure that somebody needed a favor only I could do.

“I want you to take off them faded old shorts and put on one of them nice pretty dresses of yours.”

Sounds of my mother! “For God’s sake; why do I have to get all dressed up to go to the store? I’m coming right back.”

“Pride, Patty Babe, you gotta have pride.”

Pride. Maybe that’s it, what Ruth has. What makes her different. Keeps her from looking down at her shoes when talking with white people. Then it is all a lie what they say about her. Ruth isn’t one bit uppity. Merely prideful.

“Is that why you wear a Sunday dress to walk back and forth to work?”

“That’s right,” she said, looking pleased that I had caught on so quickly. “It’s the pride. It’s me shouting out to the world that one of God’s creatures is walking on by. You think God would like it if we went and used the Good Book for a doorstop?”

I shook my head No.

“Well, now, you think he bees liking it one bit better if one of his creatures be going round in dirty, worn-out clothes? You understands that, Patty?”

“I guess so.”

As I crossed Main Street, the heels of my sandals made slight half-moon impressions in the hot asphalt pavement and I remembered what I’d heard said about heat at noon. “Hot by noon; Hades by afternoon.” It was one reason why almost
nobody was about. But then the farm folks never come in unless it’s Saturday, and the town ladies were home fixing a noonday meal for their families. My father says most weekdays you can shoot a cannon down Main Street and not hit a single living soul.

Truth of the matter is, you’d probably need two cannons ’cause the business section of Jenkinsville is T-shaped. Main Street running up and down and Front Street running crossways. Most of the really important things like our store, the Rice County National Bank, the post office, the picture show, the Sav-Mor Market, and the Victory Cafe are on Main. I passed by the Victory and read the sign painted in neat red lettering at the bottom of the plate-glass window: PLATE LUNCH 25
¢.
Meat & 3 Vegs.

The smell of fried ham had taken command of the air, so it was impossible to know exactly which three vegetables the Victory was serving.

And there, stuck between the Victory Cafe and the Sav-Mor Market, was our store—best in town. I liked the sign; it’s been freshly painted. Big, bold, black letters with a dash of red for emphasis:

BERGEN’S DEPARTMENT STORE

Quality Goods for the Whole Family

Shoes, Clothing, Hardware, & Variety

Standing at the piece-goods counter with my father was a salesman, probably from Memphis or Little Rock, who was removing samples of men’s dress shoes from a fitted black case. My father took a package of Tums from his freshly pressed suit coat, and as he popped one into his mouth he
nodded at the salesman. “Give me the usual run of sizes in the brogue. Black only.”

I wondered if I had time to give my father the news of the prisoners. I mean, if I talked fast. Better to test the water first. “Hello,” I said, taking a step forward.

He dropped the Tums back into his pocket. “What are you doing here?”

The salesman smiled at my father. “This your daughter, Harry?”

My father’s head moved slightly.

The salesman gave me a full smile. “Well, well, what’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Patricia Ann Bergen, sir.”

“That’s a pretty name for a pretty girl. Here I have something for you.” He pulled out a package of Juicy Fruit gum. The wrapper showed the soil of having lived in his pockets for a while.

“Well, thank you anyway, but you see I have this cavity,” I lied.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said as though he hadn’t heard me. “You don’t have to chew it now. Take it home.”

I took the gum, thanking him as I backed away. I eased my disappointment by telling myself how smart I was to save my story for a more appropriate time.

I looked around for my mother. She was sitting on one of the three cushioned chairs in the shoe department with Gussie Fields, who has been clerking here since even before her husband died.

“Hello,” I said, remembering to smile.

My mother said, “Hello,” and Mrs. Fields said something about how pretty my dress was.

“She’s only wearing that dress because Ruth told her to,” my mother said.

“Ruth did
not
tell me to wear this dress,” I said, hating the idea of being anybody’s robot. Even Ruth’s.

“What’s Ruth doing?” she asked.

“Washing the clothes.” I anticipated the next question so I just supplied the answer. “Sharon is playing in the sandpile.”

“Did Ruth give you both lunch?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Fields smiled her adult-to-child smile. “How are you enjoying your school vacation? As much as my niece, Donna Ann?”

I wondered how I could honestly answer the question. First I’d have to decide how much I was enjoying the summer—not all that much—then find out exactly how much Donna Ann Rhodes was enjoying it before trying to make an accurate comparison. Mrs. Fields’ smile began to fade. Maybe she just wanted me to say something pleasant. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.

“When I was a girl,” said my mother, turning toward Mrs. Fields, “I used to drive my mother crazy with my clothes. If my dress wasn’t new or if it had the slightest little wrinkle in it I’d cry and throw myself across my bed.”

“You were just particular how you looked,” said Mrs. Fields.

“I wish Patricia would be more particular,” Mother said with sudden force. “Would you just look at that hair?”

“I don’t have a comb,” I answered.

Reaching into the side pocket of her dress, she produced a small red one. “Here. Go look in the mirror and do a good
job. You know, Gussie, you’d expect two sisters to be something alike, but Patricia doesn’t care how she looks while Sharon is just like me.”

Didn’t Mother know I was still standing here? Couldn’t she, at the very least, do me the courtesy of talking behind my back? I walked over to the three-way mirror in the dress department, but Mother’s voice followed. “Why, before we take the girls to Memphis Sharon has to try on a dozen dresses. And that one? Puts on the first thing her hand touches. She just doesn’t care.”

I took in my reflection: “Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the homeliest of them all?”