The War That Saved My Life

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, and hauled me up.

  I tried to shake her off, but my foot ached so terribly that in the end I let her help me back to the house. Jamie was already inside, sitting at the table eating canned beans and toast. I slid into a chair in the kitchen. Miss Smith thumped more beans onto a plate. “Your bandage is filthy already,” she said.

  I took a deep breath. Before I could speak, Jamie said, “I told her she wasn’t ’sposed to go outside.”

  “Rubbish.” Miss Smith’s tone was sharp. “Of course she may go outside. We just need a better system. Those shoes you were wearing yesterday—”

  “Those were Mam’s,” I said.

  “I could see they weren’t yours,” Miss Smith said. “Though I don’t suppose you can wear a regular shoe.” I shrugged. “Well, we’ll see what the doctor says. I’ve hired a taxi to take us there and then we’ll come up with something. Don’t get used to it. I can’t afford cabs very often.”

  I nodded, because that seemed best.

  It turned out that taxi and cab were both words that meant automobile. Two rides in two days. Astonishing.

  I knew what a doctor was, though I’d never seen one before. This one had funny things like panes of round window glass stuck in front of his eyes. He wore a long white coat like the butcher back home. “Hop on up here,” he said to us, patting a big wooden table. Jamie hopped, but I couldn’t. “Ah,” said the doctor, noticing my foot. He lifted me onto the table.

  Mam never touched me unless it was to hit me. Jamie hugged me, but of course he never picked me up. People were all the time touching me here. I didn’t like it. Not at all.

  The doctor poked and measured and inspected Jamie and me. He made us take off our shirts, and he held a cold metal thing to our chests with tubes that ran up to his ears. He ran his hands through our hair and studied the scratchy places on our skin. “Impetigo,” he said. This made no sense to me, but Miss Smith pulled a little notebook out of her purse and wrote something down.

  “They’re pretty severely malnourished,” he said. “Looks like rickets starting in the girl. Lots of sunlight for her. Good food. Milk.”

  “But what do I do with them?” Miss Smith said. “I’ve never been around children.”

  “Feed them, bathe them, make sure they get plenty of sleep,” the doctor said. “They’re no more difficult than puppies, really.” He grinned. “Easier than horses.”

  “The horses belonged to Becky,” Miss Smith snapped, “and I never had a dog.”

  “Who’s Becky?” Jamie asked. I shushed him.

  “And what about Ada’s foot?” Miss Smith said. “What am I supposed to do about that?”

  I tucked my foot beneath me. Miss Smith tapped my knee. “Show him,” she said.

  I didn’t want to. I didn’t want them touching me more. My foot was out of sight, bandaged, and I was managing to walk some, and I thought that ought to be enough.

  Miss Smith yanked my foot out. “Behave,” she said.

  The doctor unwrapped the bandage. “My, my,” he said, cradling my foot in his hand. “An untreated clubfoot. I’ve never seen one before.”

  “I thought clubfeet were rather common,” said Miss Smith.

  “Oh, yes. Certainly. But nearly always successfully resolved in infancy.”

  Miss Smith sucked in her breath in a way I didn’t understand. “But why wouldn’t—” She looked at me and made her voice stop.

  Successfully resolved, I thought. My foot was not successfully resolved. It sounded like I’d done something wrong. Mam always said my foot was my fault. I’d always wondered whether that was true.

  And clubfoot. That was my foot. A clubfoot.

  The doctor poked at my clubfoot and twisted it and stared until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I thought of Butter, how he smelled so warm and good, how his breath felt against my hand. Instead of going to an empty place in my head, now I could go to where Butter was, and that was easy.

  “Ada,” Miss Smith said loudly, “Ada. Come back. Dr. Graham asked you a question.” She was tapping my face. The doctor had wrapped my foot in a fresh bandage. It was over.

  “Are you in very much pain?” he repeated.

  How much was very much? What did he want me to say? I shrugged.

  “Did you understand what he said about seeing a specialist?” Miss Smith said.

  I looked at her. She looked back.

  “Yes or no?” she said.

  I shook my head.

  Miss Smith and the doctor exchanged glances. I felt like I’d said the wrong thing.

  “Dr. Graham thinks a specialist might be able to operate on your foot.”

  I didn’t know what a specialist was. I didn’t know what they meant by the word operate. But I knew better than to ask questions. “Okay,” I said.

  Miss Smith smiled. “It sounds scary, I know, but it would be a wonderful thing. I’ll write to your mother right away, to ask her permission. I can’t imagine she’ll object. Meanwhile Dr. Graham’s fetching a pair of crutches for you.”

  Crutches were long pieces of wood you stuck under your armpits, so you could walk using the crutches and one good foot. Your bad foot, if you had one, didn’t have to touch the ground at all.

  Crutches didn’t hurt.

  The doctor said, “See? I knew she could smile,” and Miss Smith shook her head and said, “I don’t believe it.”

  The doctor’s place was right in town, near the train station. On crutches I didn’t need a taxi, so we walked right down the main street. I walked down the street, bad foot and all, and nobody stopped me. We went into the shops and bought meat and veg and groceries. I went into the shops and nobody turned me out. At one point Miss Smith said, “Ada, would you hand me three of those apples?” I’d been careful not to touch anything up until then, but when she asked I figured it must be okay, and I did it and it was. The shopkeeper didn’t even look at me.

  The shops had so much stuff in them they gave me a jittery feeling. There was too much stuff to see. And I’d never known anyone to buy as much food as Miss Smith did, all at once. She paid for it too, straight up, with cash. Not a thing on tick. I nudged Jamie, and he nodded. Miss Smith was rich.

  On the sidewalk, Miss Smith counted her remaining coins and sighed. She led us into a stern-looking brick shop. The inside was just people standing behind counters. You couldn’t tell what they were selling at all.

  “What’s this place?” Jamie asked.

  “It’s a bank,” Miss Smith said. “You’ve been to banks before.”

  I didn’t know why she’d think so. I’d never even heard of a place called a bank. Miss Smith scribbled on a scrap of paper and gave it to one of the men behind the counter, and he counted out money and gave it to her.

  “A money store,” Jamie whispered, eyes wide.

  I nodded. We sure didn’t have one of those on our lane.

  We were back wearing our clothes from the day before—we couldn’t have gone into town wearing only Miss Smith’s shirts—but Miss Smith had washed them so we looked and smelled nice. She marched us into a store that sold clothing anyhow, and bought us each a new set of clothes, top and bottom, and something called underwear, which she said we had to wear from now on—three sets of that—and stockings and then shoes for both of us, Jamie and me.

  “I got shoes already,” Jamie said, eyeing the stout boots Miss Smith chose. “And Ada, she don’t need ’em.”

  Miss Smith ignored him. The shopkeeper, an unpleasant man with hairy eyebrows, said, “These evacuees is nothing but trouble, isn’t they, miss? My missus is that fed up already, she’s wanting to send them home. Filthy little rats wet the bed.”

  Miss Smith gave him a look that made him shut his mouth, except he begged her pardon first. And when we walked out the door I had a brown leather shoe on my good left foot.

  A r
eal shoe. For me.

  Miss Smith had had to buy a whole pair. The man wouldn’t sell her just one. She carried the other shoe in a bag. “We’ll save it,” she said. “Perhaps someday...”

  I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t ask. I was getting tired, even with the crutches, and I only wanted to think about the walk home. But Jamie danced in front of me, smiling. “If they can fix your foot,” he said. “If they can fix it!”

  I smiled back at him. Jamie was such a hopeless fool.

  Another thing Miss Smith did was exchange her old radio batteries for charged ones. Some folks in our lane had had radios, so I knew about them, but, as usual, not close up. Miss Smith’s sat in the main room on a glossy wood cabinet. As soon as we got home, Saturday night, she put the new batteries in and started it up. Voices came out, talking.

  Miss Smith sighed. “I wanted music,” she said. She reached up and switched it off. “I suppose we’ll have to hear all about the war, eventually.” She yawned and sat without moving.

  I thought of the food we’d bought. Apples. Meat. I stood up. “Want me to make some tea, miss?” I asked, by way of suggestion. “Cut some bread and dripping?”

  She frowned. “Of course not.”

  I sat back down, disappointed. I was hungry again. But then, we’d already eaten twice that day, if you counted the bread we swiped in the morning.

  “It’s nearly time for supper,” Miss Smith said. She gave me a sort of a smile, although, like Mam’s smiles, it didn’t make her look happy. “I’ll make supper. It’s my job to take care of you.”

  Right.

  But then she got up, and she did make supper. A huge supper. Ham. Boiled potatoes. Little round green things called peas, that came out of a can. Tomatoes, like the one Jamie swiped, only cut in thick slices. Bread, with butter. So many different colors and shapes and smells. The peas rolled around my mouth until I bit them and they squished.

  Supper was like a miracle, it was, all that food all at once, and yet Jamie, worn out and cross, refused to touch anything except ham. I wanted to smack him. Hot food and meat. Miss Smith might not want us, but she was feeding us fine. Not to mention, I had a shoe. That meant she didn’t mind if I went outside.

  “Leave him,” Miss Smith said tiredly, when I started to tell Jamie off. To Jamie she said, “You can’t have second helpings of anything until you’ve taken one bite of everything on your plate.”

  There had been pieces of cloth on the table, folded under the forks. Before she started eating Miss Smith had put hers on her lap, so we had too. Now Jamie took his cloth and used it to cover his head. “I want ham,” he said, through the cloth.

  “You may have more ham after you’ve tried a bite of everything,” Miss Smith said. “You’re allowed to dislike food, but not before you’ve tasted it. And get that napkin off your head.”

  Jamie hurled his plate against the wall. It shattered. Miss Smith screamed.

  I tackled Jamie. I grabbed a piece of tomato off the floor and mashed it between his lips. He spat it at me. “Eat it!” I roared. I grabbed peas and shoved those down his gullet. He choked and gagged. Miss Smith yanked me loose.

  “Ada!” she said. “Ada, stop it! You’ll hurt him!”

  Hurt him, when it was him disobeying.

  “Bedtime, Jamie!” Miss Smith grabbed his flailing arm. “Bath, then bed!” She pulled him off the floor and carried him kicking and screaming up the stairs.

  I’ll kill him, I thought. I’ll murder him for acting this way.

  I found my crutches and got to my feet. I picked up the broken pieces of plate, and the food scattered across the floor. I wiped up the water I’d spilled when I knocked over my glass. I could hear Jamie screaming upstairs. Miss Smith was either bathing him or slaughtering him; either was fine by me.

  When I finished cleaning the kitchen I climbed the stairs. Dead easy with the crutches. The screaming had stopped. “I put clean water in the bath for you,” Miss Smith said. “Did you finish your supper?”

  I nodded. I was still hungry, but my stomach was turning circles and I couldn’t eat.

  There was hot water, soap, a towel. I already felt clean, but the water was soothing. Afterward I put on new clothes called pajamas, that were supposed to be just to sleep in. Tops and bottoms, both blue. The fabric was so soft that for a moment I held it against my face. It was all soft, this place. Soft and good and frightening. At home I knew who I was.

  When I went into the bedroom Jamie was curled into a little ball, snoring, and Miss Smith was dozing in the chair beside the bed. She’s not a nice person, I reminded myself, and went to sleep.

  In the middle of the night I jumped awake, the way I did when Mam brought home guests. I sat up and clutched the blankets to me. My breath came in ragged gasps.

  Miss Smith said, “It’s all right, Ada. You’re all right.”

  I turned. She was still sitting in the chair beside Jamie. Moonlight came through the window. Miss Smith’s face was in shadow.

  My heart hammered. My head whirled.

  “You’re all right,” Miss Smith repeated. “Did you have a nightmare?”

  Did I? I didn’t know. Jamie lay beside me, his mouth slightly open, his breathing soft and regular.

  “Were there bombs?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I didn’t hear anything, but I woke up too.” She held her wrist up to a patch of moonlight. “It’s gone three o’clock. I didn’t mean to fall asleep here. I’ve slept in this chair most of the night.”

  Somehow I could hear her smiling. “I haven’t slept well for a long time. Since Becky died, I don’t sleep well.”

  I asked, “When did she die?”

  Miss Smith cleared her throat. “Three years ago. Three years ago next Tuesday.”

  She hadn’t slept well for three years?

  “It’s part of why I didn’t want to take you,” she continued. “It’s nothing to do with you. I’m always so much worse in the fall. And then the days get so short and—well, I’m never very good in the winter either. Never was, not even when I was your age. I hate the darkness and the cold.”

  I nodded. I hated them too. In winter chilblains covered my hands and feet, and they itched and burned like crazy. I asked, “Was Becky your kid?”

  “My kid?” Miss Smith gave a bark of harsh laughter. “No. She was my friend. My best friend. We were at university together. This was her house, she left it to me.”

  “And Butter,” I said, remembering.

  “She gave me Butter long before she died. She wanted me to like horses, the way she did. It didn’t take.”

  “What killed her?” I asked.

  “Pneumonia. That’s a sickness in the lungs.”

  I nodded. Talking to Miss Smith had helped my panic subside. I unclenched my hands from the blankets and lay back down. “You could sleep here,” I said to Miss Smith. Jamie was in the middle of the bed, so there was room on her side.

  She shook her head. “No, I’ll—well, maybe. Just this once.” She slid in beside Jamie and pulled the blankets over herself. I pulled my end over myself, feeling again the unexpected softness, the warmth.

  The next thing I knew the room was full of light, the sound of church bells was coming through the open windows, and Miss Smith was saying, “Oh, Jamie, you wet the bed.”

  He never did, at home. I remembered the surly salesman who’d complained about his evacuees’ bedwetting, and I gave Jamie such a glare that he burst into tears.

  “No matter,” Miss Smith said, though she looked annoyed. “It’ll all wash. Monday we’ll buy a rubber sheet in case it happens again.”

  She was all the time having to buy stuff. I said, mostly to ease my worry, “Of course, you’re rich.” Of course she was, with the posh house and all the food, not to mention a bank to hand her money.

  “Far from it,” she repl
ied. “I’ve been living off the sale of Becky’s hunters.” She stood up, stretching. “What’s with those blasted bells? Have we slept that long? I suppose I should be taking you to church, that’s what a decent guardian would do.” She shrugged. “Too late now.”

  Downstairs she made tea. She told Jamie to put the radio on. A deep, sonorous voice came out of it, very solemn and slow. Something about it made Jamie and me sit to listen. Miss Smith came in from the kitchen and perched on the edge of the chair.

  The Voice said, “As the prime minister announced just a short time ago, England and Germany are now at war.”

  The church bells had gone silent. Jamie said, “Will they bomb us now?” and Miss Smith nodded and said, “Yes.”

  Up until then, that morning, I’d forgotten about the bombs. They were supposed to be in London, not here at Miss Smith’s house, but even so I’d forgotten them. You wouldn’t think you could forget a thing like bombs.

  The squelchy feeling swirled in my stomach again. “What do they mean, we are now at war?” I asked. “Weren’t we already? We’re here.”

  “The government evacuated cities ahead of time,” Miss Smith explained. “They knew the war was coming, just not exactly when.”

  “If they knew it was coming, they could have stopped it,” I said.

  Miss Smith shook her head. “You can’t stop Hitler without a fight. Don’t worry, Ada. You’ll be safe, and your mother will be safe, and I’m sure you’ll be able to go home soon.”

  The way she said it, with a fake smile, told me she was lying. I didn’t know why she would lie.

  “I hope not,” I said, before I thought. I bit back my next words, which were, I’d rather be here.

  Miss Smith looked startled. She seemed about to say something, but, before she could, Jamie began to cry. “I want to go home,” he said. “I don’t want a war. I don’t want bombs. I’m scared. I want to go home.”

  When I thought of going home, I couldn’t breathe. Home was more frightening than bombs. What was Jamie thinking?