Authors: Christine Fletcher
Bed. Like the floor but softer. I scootched to the warm spot where Betty had been. Ma was upset. Ma thought . . . I didn't know what Ma thought. Ma mustn't think anything. I was a telephone operator.
"Ma?" I said. No answer. I called louder. "Mama?"
"What is it?"
I couldn't see her. She'd turned out the light. "I went to a party," I said to the dark. "At work. They had a party . . ." Were there different kinds of parties? It seemed like there ought to be, but I couldn't think of any. " . . . they had a party, and . . ."
"We'll discuss it in the morning." Her tone cold and hard as iron. I hadn't heard her iron voice in a long time. Not since the money I brought home started paying all the bills.
There'd been a party . . . I'd tell her in the morning. Then I'd go see Paulie at the matinee, Paulie who I loved . . .
"RUBY!"
I jerked awake. Light shot like knives into my skull. Daylight. I groaned and pressed my hand to my forehead. Rum. Lily's. Ma had seen me come home . . .
"RUBY!"
I winced. I was going to beat Betty black with the nearest hard thing I could find. As soon as I could find my feet. As soon as the daylight stopped driving spikes into my head.
"Close the curtains," I said. I thought I said. Maybe I didn't say it out loud, because Betty's voice kept hammering, hammering.
"Get up! Right now, come on, get up!" Panicking. Betty was panicking. I sat up. Pressing the heel of one hand into an eye socket.
"Is it Ma?" It must be. I'd upset her, and now she was sick. I pushed myself to my feet and teetered forward and grabbed Betty by the shoulders. More to keep from falling than to make her talk, but from her wild-eyed look, she didn't know that.
"Is something the matter with Ma?"
She shook her head. "The Japs," she said. "It's the Japs. They're bombing someplace called Pearl Harbor."
W
e crowded into Mr. Maczarek's parlor. We had our own radio, but we could hear his through the open door of his flat, and for some reason it felt better for us all to be in one room. When we came in, he was leaning out his front window in his undershirt, the wattles under his chin flapping, not caring about the cold, talking to someone in the street. "The Japanese, that's who! The radio says it's still going on. Yes, as we speak!" He saw us and pushed a chair close to the radio for Ma, then went back to the window. It was sunny outside, and I had to duck my head away from the light; after a second, the stabbing in my head lessened to a throb, and then I could stand it.
I never listened to news programs. Why be bored by men yapping about President Roosevelt and Hitler, when
The Romance of Helen Trent
or
The Guiding Light
were on? Now, though, words jumped out and I grabbed at them.
Attack. Counterattack. Oahu. Nomura. Cast the die.
Excitement rippling through the voices like electricity. After a while, the words became harder to follow:
diplomatic ties, naval blockade, president's authority, meetings of the secretaries.
Ma sat unmoving, as pale as marble, the lace she wore to Mass pinned to her smooth hair. Betty perched on the arm of her chair. Both in their good dresses and shoes. It must be close to time for church . . . no, surely not, Ma would never have let me sleep so late. I looked around Mr. Maczarek's parlor for a clock but didn't see one. I shifted my feet. They ached almost as badly as my head. My mouth tasted rotting sour, like the milk Betty had left out of the icebox last summer. From the sidewalk, Mr. Schenker's voice boomed into the flat; Mr. Maczarek shouted back. Hitler and Japs and Hawaii. I tucked my chin and pressed my hands over my ears.
"Hush! Hush!" Ma said. Mr. Maczarek popped his head inside to listen, then waved out the window:
pipe down.
Silence. I let my hands fall to my sides.
From the radio, a faint male voice. . . .
hello NBC . . . KGU in Honolulu. . .
Mr. Maczarek twisted the volume knob higher. . . .
battle has been going on nearly three hours . . . it is no joke . . . it is a real war.
Then a woman's voice, clear and loud.
This is the telephone company. . . emergency call. . .
More static. The regular announcer:
One moment please.
Mr. Maczarek frowned at me, as if I were the telephone operator who'd cut off the broadcast.
From the street, Mr. Schenker bellowed, "He'll have to declare war now, he's got no choice!"
"Who does?" Betty said. "Who's he talking about?"
"Roosevelt, of course," Mr. Maczarek answered. He went back to the window.
But the war was in England. Poland. Far from here. Wasn't it? I looked at Ma to see what she thought. But she was staring at me like she was seeing me for the first time, and her lips were set in a thin line.
"Get out of that housecoat and wash your face," she said. "Make yourself look decent."
I fled back to our place. How could I possibly explain last night to Ma? I had to come up with something . . . Crossing through the parlor, I glanced at the clock on the table. It couldn't be. I ran into Ma's room, dug her watch out of her dresser. Three fifteen. I forgot about Ma, and last night, and the Japs.
I was supposed to meet Paulie at Peoples Theater at three o'clock.
No time to heat water on the stove. I scrubbed off last night's makeup with cold out of the tap, gooseflesh all over, clenching my teeth so they wouldn't chatter. Realizing that Ma and Betty weren't ready for Mass, they'd already been and gone. Why hadn't Ma woken me up? Maybe she'd tried, I thought, remembering Betty's yelling, how she'd practically had to drag me out of bed. My face burned with shame. All that rum last night . . . Lying on the floor, looking up into Ma's face. Babbling something about a party. Stupid,
stupid
. . . I hustled into the one new dress I kept at home, at the same time chewing two of Ma's aspirin, the way she did when she needed them to work fast. Almost gagging at the bitterness.
"I'm going to work!" I called into Mr. Maczarek's parlor from the hallway.
"You wait right there!" Ma yelled back. "I want to talk to . . ."
But I was already at the front door. "The switchboard's probably going crazy. Emergency calls . . . you heard that operator just now!" I shouted, and then I was running down the front stoop. I wasn't the only one hurrying; everybody was hustling home or crowding into the nearest tavern. At Hirsch's candy store, the line of people waiting to use the phone stretched out into the street. "What are they saying now?" they asked each other. "Our boys . . . dirty Japs . . . " On Marshfield Street, I almost ran into Stan Dudek and Charlie Baczewski coming out of a poolroom. "Ruby, have you heard?" Stan said. His knobby face alight in a way I'd never seen.
"I can't stop to talk . . . ," I began, but they ran past me.
"First thing tomorrow, we're going to enlist!" Stan shouted, and Charlie hollered, "We're gonna beat them Japs!"
"Enlist!" I said. "In the army?"
"Better than waiting to get drafted!" Stan yelled. Charlie whooped and clapped him on the shoulder, and they disappeared around the corner.
Drafted.
"Paulie," I said. And then I broke into a run.
It's no joke . . . it's a real war,
the man on the radio had shouted. And Mr. Maczarek, once when he'd been going on about Hitler, and Poland:
old men start wars. Young men fight them.
Young men like Paulie. But they couldn't take him away from me now. Not when everything was finally perfect.
Only a few people under the theater awning. No Paulie. I paid for a ticket and went inside. Sunday afternoon, the place should've been packed. It was less than half full. I wondered if the people watching Veronica Lake up on the screen even knew what had happened, what was still happening. I wandered up and down the aisles, whispering Paulie's name, ignoring the scoldings to shut up. No luck. From the pay phone in the lobby, I called Ed's Garage. No answer.
I wasn't worried anymore about being late. All I could think of was Paulie being sent to war. Killed, maybe. All those newsreels about the battles in Europe . . . soldiers slogging through mud, filling row after row of hospital beds. I'd paid hardly a scrap of attention.
Don't come running after me, he'd said. But we hadn't been at war then. I crisscrossed the streets, looking in every poolroom, every tavern and saloon, all the same ones as before. This time, nobody was playing pool. The tavern owners had turned up their radios and men and women clustered three-deep, four-deep around the bars. This time, when I asked for Paulie, nobody made jokes and patted stools for me to join them. All the stools were taken and nobody paid attention to me.
I couldn't find him. It started to snow. I got to the Starlight with just enough time to get ready.
Turned out I wasn't the only one worried about a fellow. "But what about the boys who've already been drafted?" said a petite, pretty brunette named Joan. Her husband had gotten called up for the peacetime draft, back in April. "He's only supposed to be there a year. The army'll stick to that, won't they? They can't go back on their word, can they?"
"Of course not, honey," Nora said. The rest of us busied ourselves with our gowns and our nylons and our makeup. None of us looked at Joan.
By nine o'clock, when only thirty men had wandered in, Del sent half the girls home. At eleven, the rest of us got the boot. Nobody wanted illusion tonight. Before I left, I called the garage twice more. Still no answer.
Monday morning, on the little table radio in the parlor, Ma and I listened to President Roosevelt. Mr. Maczarek came over and sat on our sofa with a cup of Ma's coffee. The president's voice crackled:
". . . date which will live in infamy . . . last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands"
—Manny's family was there, and Alonso's, all the Pinoys—
"the American people in their righteous might. . . state of war."
That afternoon, I waited for Paulie at Peoples Theater. He didn't show up. I stood under the awning, fretting at a tiny rip in the hem of my handkerchief, and watched the people hurrying past. Yesterday they'd looked stunned. A few angry. Today, their faces were grim. They walked past, heads down, not glancing at the theater or the shops. Stopping only to buy newspapers from the newsboy crying the headlines at the corner. All anybody wanted to know was what was going to happen now. But nobody knew.
Three hours later, my handkerchief was gone. Shredded and blown away, tiny pieces of cotton snow. I let go the last of them, watched them whirl and dance into the street. The daylight faded, the streetlights had come on. I wiped my eyes with my fingers, my nose on my sleeve. Then, my legs aching from standing on the sidewalk, I walked home.
Tuesday night, when the Starlight closed—at the usual hour, business had picked up a little—I walked out of the dance hall to find Paulie waiting for me, just like Tom had, exactly a week before. I yipped and ran toward him, but he backed away from me, his eyes dark as thunderclouds.
"What'd I tell you about not running all over town after me?" he said.
I stopped, stricken. The other girls drifted around us; I could feel them pretending not to watch, and not missing a word. I blushed hot. "I was late getting to the theater," I said, "and everything had just happened and I thought . . . I was afraid . . . " He shook his head, started to turn away. "Wait, Paulie, don't be mad!" I ran forward and reached for him, but before I could touch him, he'd swung back around, and he was grinning. The relief felt like being drenched in a sudden rain. Exhilarating, a little shaky. "You jerk," I said, but I was laughing, too. He put his arm around me then, and I snuggled close, relieved, too, at his solidness. Every time we were apart more than a day, I couldn't let go the feeling that I'd imagined him.
Peggy sauntered up. "So this is the dreamboat you're always going on about," she said.
They shook hands. Peggy was impressed, I could tell. So were the other girls; they tossed their hair, walked away slow. Peeked at him over their shoulders. I slid my arms around his waist. The look on Yvonne's face—like she'd swallowed a knife, blade first—
that
was the cherry on top.
In the cab, when I told Paulie my fear he'd get drafted, he started laughing.
"That
was why you were after me like a bloodhound?" he asked. I nodded. I'd already figured out that Paulie didn't like sappy girls, and he didn't like clingy girls, and I was one teardrop away from begging him not to go if the army called.
"The army locked me up and then they kicked me out." He looked out his window. "Believe me, after what I did, they ain't about to invite me back."
Paulie was safe. Safe from the draft. Safe from the war. I reached out and touched his knee. He was solid, he was real. He wouldn't be taken away. The fear and fretting of the past two days vanished, and I laughed, and then the relief overwhelmed me and I burst into tears.
"What's the matter?" Paulie said. "Don't tell me you had your heart set on the Japs using me for target practice."
"I'm so glad," I said between sobs. I heard him laughing low, under his breath. Then his arms were around me and it was all right. When I stopped crying, my head lay on his chest. For a minute, I watched the shops rolling by on Ashland Avenue. Then I asked, "What was it that made them lock you up, Paulie?"
"A private moved on my girl. I busted him up." He ran his hand up and down my arm. "Nothing I wouldn't do again."
So the rumors were true. I wondered how bad Paulie'd hurt him. "What happened to the girl?" I asked. Playing with a button on his coat.
"Don't know. Don't care."
I smiled against the rough plaid wool.
The cab let us off a block from home. Paulie pulled me into a gangway between two flats and kissed me.
"What if I did get drafted?" His voice thick and rough, almost a whisper. "What if I had to go fight? You'd be sweet to me then. Wouldn't you?"
"I'm sweet to you now," I whispered back.
"No.
Sweet."
He pressed his hips against mine, kissed my neck.
Those terrible days worrying about Tom, thinking,
Why couldn't it be Paulie? If only it was Paulie
. . . Then, I'd told myself I'd still say no. Then, I hadn't had a shred of hope that he could be mine. Now here he was, his dark gold hair and good earthy smell and strong, warm hands under my coat.
"Would you?" he said again.
I looked him in the eyes, his beautiful rain-colored eyes, with the little flecks of color deep inside. Too dark to see them, but I knew they were there.
"Get drafted," I said, "and we'll see."
Whatever answer he'd expected, it wasn't that. His mouth hardened. He did a quick odd twist and then shoved his hand up under my skirt. I gasped in surprise and dodged away from his grabbing fingers, then slapped him. My palm cracked hard across his cheek. He caught my arm. Squeezed. I felt my bones bend. My stomach flipped with nausea and a sudden stabbing fear.
I
busted him up.
But this was me, I hadn't done anythi—
As suddenly as he'd seized me, he let go. Laughed, and flicked his fingers against my cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "One o'clock at Peoples. Don't stand me up this time." He tilted my chin up and kissed me. Then he walked away, leaving me shaking in the alley.
Stupid to have gotten scared like that, I thought the next day. So he'd grabbed me a little too rough. How many times had I practically done the same to Betty, when we were little?
I made sure to keep my arms covered, so nobody would see the bruises.
. . .
This is what I told Ma about coming home drunk: one of the girls I worked with had gotten engaged, and she'd invited a few of us to her flat to celebrate after work. Her parents were there. Well, to tell the whole truth, they'd been in bed. The girl had served brandy Alexanders. She'd made them awfully strong, but they tasted so good, with the chocolate and the cream . . . And then someone said it was about time I learned how to put on makeup, and they'd started smearing things on my face. Yes, it felt awful to be drunk. I knew better now. I was sorry.