The War That Saved My Life

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  “You can have a turn,” I said to Jamie.

  He shook his head. “I don’t want one. I don’t think he likes it.”

  I considered this. Butter might not like it right this moment, when he was used to eating all day long. But he’d like it later—later, when we were running, out in the open, soaring over stone walls. He’d like it then.

  I liked it right away. Falling off didn’t scare me. Learning to ride was like learning to walk. It hurt, but I kept on. If Miss Smith wondered why my new blouse was covered in grass stains, or how my new skirt got a rip near the hem, she never said a thing. She just sighed, as usual, and threw the shirt into the wash boiler and mended the rip with a shiny metal thing like a toothpick and a piece of thread.

  “Why does she make that noise?” Jamie asked at night. He imitated Miss Smith’s sigh. It wasn’t a noise Mam ever made.

  I shrugged. “She doesn’t like us. She didn’t want us, remember?” I tried not to make much work for her, so she wouldn’t force the iron woman to take us back. I washed the dishes, and made Jamie dry. I went along with the baths and the hair-brushing, and I got Jamie to cooperate too. I even made him eat the strange food, though the only way to do that was by threatening him.

  “How long do we have to stay here?” he asked.

  “Dunno,” I told him. “’Til the end of the war, maybe, or ’til Mam comes to take us back.”

  “How long ’til the war ends?”

  “Couple weeks, I guess. Maybe longer.”

  “I want to go home,” Jamie said.

  He said that all the time, and I was tired of hearing it. I turned on him. “Why?” I said, nearly spitting the word. I kept my voice low, but rage I didn’t know I felt gushed out of me. “So you can do anything you want, and I can do nothing at all? So I can’t boss you? So I can be shut up in a room?”

  His round eyes filled with tears. “No,” he said, in a whisper. “I don’t care if you boss me. And she probably won’t shut you up, now you’ve got crutches and all.”

  “Everybody thinks I’m nasty, back home. They think I’m some kind of monster.”

  “They don’t,” Jamie said, but he turned his face away. “They won’t.” He started crying in earnest, muffling his sobs in his pillow. “You’ve got crutches!” he said.

  “Crutches don’t change my foot!” I said. “It’s still the same. It still hurts. I’m still the same!”

  Jamie said, through sobs, “At home I know the words for things.”

  I knew what he meant. I knew how overwhelmed I felt sometimes, going into a shop full of things I’d never seen before. “There’s nothing good at home,” I said. “You were hungry. Remember?”

  “No,” said Jamie. “I wasn’t ever hungry. I never was.”

  If he wasn’t, it was only because I gave him most of the food. “I was,” I said. “I was hungry, and I was alone, and I was trapped, and right now, no matter what, you have to do what I say. You have to stay here with me. I’m the person who keeps you safe.”

  Jamie’s sobs slowed. He looked up at me, his brown eyes still brimming with tears. He rolled over onto his back and I pulled the sheet up to his chin. I patted his skinny shoulder. “Is this safe?” he asked.

  It didn’t feel safe. I never felt safe. “Yes,” I said.

  “You’re lying. I know you are.” Jamie flopped onto his side, turning his back to me. I lay flat on my back, breathing in the honeysuckle-scented air coming through the open windows. The curtains fluttered against the pale blue walls. I wasn’t hungry. I fell asleep.

  The next time we went into town, we saw an enormous poster pasted to the brick wall near the train station. Jamie stopped to stare. “What’s it say?” he asked.

  Miss Smith read it aloud, tapping the words with her fingers as she went, “‘Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory.’”

  “That’s stupid,” I said. “It sounds like we’re doing all the work.”

  Miss Smith looked at me and laughed. “You’re right,” she said.

  “It should be, ‘our courage,’” I said. “Our courage, our cheerfulness, our resolution, will bring us victory.”

  “Absolutely,” Miss Smith said. “I’ll write the War Office and suggest a revision.”

  I couldn’t tell if she meant it or not. I hated when I didn’t understand her.

  “I shouldn’t underestimate you, should I?” Miss Smith went on.

  How should I know? I scowled.

  “Oh, come on, you cranky child,” she said, touching my shoulder lightly. “You can help me pick out the veg.”

  Jamie was tugging on my arm. He pointed across the street, to Stephen White holding on to the arm of a very old man. Actually, I saw, it was the old man holding on to Stephen.

  “A friend of yours?” Miss Smith asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s Billy’s brother.”

  Miss Smith nodded. “You can go and say hello.”

  I felt funny doing it, but I did want to know why Stephen hadn’t gone home with the rest of his family. I made my way across the street.

  Stephen saw me. He stopped, and when he did the old man stopped too, turning odd milky eyes toward me.

  Stephen gestured toward the crutches. “Good,” he said. “You should have had those before.”

  I thought of him carrying me to the station, and my face went hot.

  “Who’s this?” barked the old man. “Who’re you talking to? Somebody new?” He was looking straight at me, the old coot.

  Stephen cleared his throat. “It’s Ada,” he said, “from our lane. Ada—”

  The man said, crossly, “That’s not the way you do a proper introduction. Haven’t I taught you?”

  “Yes, sir.” Stephen took a deep breath. “Sir, may I present Miss Ada Smith, from London. Ada, this is Colonel Robert McPherson, British Army, retired. I live with him here.”

  The old man stuck one of his hands into the air. “And now you shake my hand, Miss Smith,” he said. “If you’re from the same place the boy’s from, nobody’s taught you proper manners either. You shake my hand, and you say, ‘Nice to meet you, Colonel McPherson.’”

  I touched his gnarled dry hand. He snatched my fingers and shook them up and down. “Say, ‘Nice to meet you, Colonel McPherson,’” he ordered.

  “Nice to meet you, Colonel McPherson,” I said.

  “And it’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Ada Smith. If you’re a friend of Stephen’s, you must come around for tea.” He let go of my hand. I wiped it against my skirt, not because his hand had been dirty—it hadn’t—but because touching a stranger seemed like such an odd thing to do.

  Stephen was grinning, as though he found the whole exchange funny.

  “How come you didn’t go home?” I asked him.

  “Oh,” he said, cutting his eyes toward Colonel McPherson, “Mam thought it better if I stayed here for a while.”

  “No she didn’t,” I said. “She said—”

  Stephen smacked me on the arm, hard. I glared at him. He nodded his head toward the old man, frowning. “What?” I asked.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Stephen said. “Later, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, still puzzled.

  Back on the other side of the street, Miss Smith and Jamie stood in front of a second poster. “This one’s better,” Jamie said.

  “‘Freedom is in peril,’” Miss Smith read. “‘Defend it with all your might.’”

  It was better. “What’s ‘might’?” I asked.

  “I might have some tea,” said Jamie.

  “No—well, yes,” Miss Smith said. “But in this case, it means strength. Force. Defend it with everything you’ve got.”

  “Freedom is in peril,” Jamie shouted, running ahead. He waved his arms wildly. “Freedom is in peril, defend it with everything
you’ve got!”

  “What’s ‘freedom’?” I asked as Miss Smith and I followed.

  “It’s—hmmm. I’d say it’s the right to make decisions about yourself,” Miss Smith said. “About your life.”

  “Like, this morning we decided to come into town?”

  “More like deciding that you want to be a—I don’t know—a solicitor. When you grow up. Or, perhaps, a teacher. Or deciding that you’d like to live in Wales. Big decisions. If Germany invades, we’ll probably still be able to go shopping, but we might not get to decide much else.”

  As usual, I mostly didn’t understand her, but I was tired of trying. “Stephen White has to live with a grumpy old man,” I said.

  “I noticed,” Miss Smith said. “I’m sorry to see the colonel looking so frail. He was one of Becky’s foxhunting friends—one of the huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’ sort. I didn’t realize he was so old.”

  “He made me touch his hand.” I shuddered.

  “That’s just manners,” Miss Smith said.

  “So he said.”

  Miss Smith grinned. I didn’t know why. “Skeptical child,” she said, making me frown even harder. She grabbed the end of my plait and swung it. “Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution”—she was saying it wrong. I scowled—“will bring you victory, my dear.”

  We’d reached the greengrocer’s. Jamie waited for us, holding open the shop door. I flicked my plait away from Miss Smith. I wasn’t going to ask what any more words meant, I was so tired of words, but Miss Smith looked at me and answered my question anyway. “Victory,” she said, “means peace.”

  A few days later the teacher who’d been with us on the train came by the house to say that school was starting. The village didn’t have an empty building big enough to hold the evacuated children, so the evacuees had to share the village school. The regular village students would attend with their regular teachers from eight until noon, and then the evacuees and the evacuated teachers would go from one in the afternoon until five.

  The teacher gave Miss Smith directions to the school. “We’ll see you Monday afternoon,” she said to Jamie as she got up to leave.

  We’d all four been sitting in the main room of Miss Smith’s house, on the squishy purple chairs and sofa. Miss Smith had made tea. Now she smiled quizzically at the teacher and said, “Ada too, of course.”

  I don’t know how I looked, but Jamie’s and the teacher’s mouths fell open. The teacher’s mouth closed first. “Ada’s not on our list,” she said. “I told you that when I gave you their mother’s address. We’ve only got Jamie down.”

  Jamie said, “Ada’s not allowed to go outside.”

  I said fiercely, “That’s rubbish, it was only ever in London and you know it.”

  “But not school,” said Jamie.

  I’d never been. Never thought about going. But why not? I could get there on my crutches, it wasn’t that far.

  Miss Smith argued that lists didn’t matter. Surely the lists weren’t accurate, and besides, many of the children had already gone back to London. There had to be room for me.

  “Room, yes,” the teacher said slowly, “but is it appropriate?” She stood and took a book off one of Miss Smith’s shelves. “Here,” she said, holding it open and out to me, “read a bit of that.”

  I looked at the page. The rows of marks blurred and swam before my eyes. I looked up. The teacher nodded. Miss Smith came over and put her arm around me. I tried to pull away, but Miss Smith held on.

  “You see,” the teacher said softly, “she isn’t educable.”

  I didn’t know what educable meant. I didn’t know if I was educable or not.

  “She simply hasn’t been taught,” Miss Smith said. “She’s far from stupid. She deserves a chance.”

  The teacher shook her head. “It wouldn’t be fair to the others.”

  The door clicked softly as she left. Miss Smith grabbed my shoulders with both hands. “Don’t cry,” she said. “Don’t cry, she isn’t right, I know you can learn. Don’t cry.”

  Why would I cry? I never cried. But when I shook myself free of Miss Smith’s grasp, tears shook loose from my eyes and slid down my cheeks. Why would I cry? I wanted to hit something, or throw something, or scream. I wanted to gallop on Butter and never stop. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t run, not with my twisted, ugly, horrible foot. I buried my head in one of the fancy pillows on the sofa, and then I couldn’t help it, I did cry.

  I was so tired of being alone.

  Miss Smith sat down on the sofa beside me. She put her hand on my back. I squirmed away. “Don’t worry,” she said, almost like she cared about me. “They’re wrong. We’ll find another way.

  “I know you aren’t stupid,” she continued. “Stupid people couldn’t take care of their brother the way you do. Stupid people aren’t half as brave as you. They’re not half as strong.”

  Stupid. Simple. Educable. Thoughtful. All just words. I was so tired of meaningless words.

  That night, after our baths, Miss Smith came to the doorway of our bedroom before we fell asleep. She hesitated. “I’ve brought something,” she said. “This was my favorite book when I was a little girl. My father used to read it to me at bedtime. I thought I’d start reading it to you.”

  I turned my head away. More words. Jamie asked, “Why, miss?”

  “I wish you’d quit calling me miss,” she said, pulling the chair close to Jamie’s side of the bed. “My name is Susan. You should call me that. I’m reading to you because I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  Jamie said, “Why would we enjoy it?”

  Miss Smith didn’t answer. She said, “This book is called The Swiss Family Robinson. Listen.” She cleared her throat and began. “‘For many days we had been tempest-tossed. Six times darkness closed over a wild and terrific scene...’”

  I buried my head deeper into my pillow. The drone of her voice sounded like a fly buzzing against a window. I fell asleep.

  In the morning, though, those first words stuck in my head until I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Miss?” I said at breakfast. “What’s ‘tempest-tossed’?”

  Miss Smith looked at me over her mug of tea. “Caught in a storm,” she said. “Wind and rain and lightning, and if you’re in a boat, at sea, you get tossed from side to side. You’re all thrown about, because of the storm.”

  I looked at Jamie. “That’s us,” I said. “All thrown about. We’re tempest-tossed.” He nodded.

  I turned back to Miss Smith. “What’s ‘educable’?”

  She cleared her throat. “Able to be educated,” she said. “Able to learn. You are plenty able to learn, Ada. You are educable. I know you are. That teacher is wrong.”

  A plane zoomed overhead. Jamie jumped up. We heard and saw planes all the time now, because of the airfield, but Jamie never tired of watching them. I got up to go out too.

  “Ada,” Miss Smith said, “if you like, this morning I’ll start to teach you to read.”

  I edged away. “No, thank you,” I said, using the manners she taught me. “I want to go look at the planes.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not true.”

  “I want to talk to Butter.”

  Miss Smith leaned forward. “You’re perfectly capable of learning. You mustn’t listen to people who don’t know you. Listen to what you know, yourself.”

  What I knew, I’d learned looking out a single window. I knew nothing. Words she used—capable, tempest-tossed. Even little words, sea. What was a sea? Boats came down the River Thames. Was a sea the same as a river? I knew nothing, nothing at all.

  “I need to see the pony,” I said.

  She sighed. “Suit yourself,” she said, and turned away.

  I’d found a brush in the storage room and I used it all over Butter’s yellow coat. Dust and loose hair flew up. I could tell he liked it
. “Good, isn’t it?” I asked him. “Gets the itches out.”

  My skin didn’t itch the way it used to. The stinky lotion cleared up the rough patches on my skin, and my head felt better now that Miss Smith brushed my hair for me every morning. She braided it for me into a single plait down my back, so it stayed neater, out of my way in the wind, and wasn’t as tangled at night. She brushed me the way I brushed Butter, which was odd no matter how I thought about it.

  “Look,” Jamie cried, pointing to the sky. “It’s a different one!” He ran across the pasture, trying to get a better view of the plane.

  I rode Butter twice around the field before he got me off.

  At lunch Miss Smith said she would walk Jamie to school for the first day. “You’ll be all right by yourself, Ada?” she asked. “Or you could come.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going near the school. And that turned out to be lucky. The minute Miss Smith left with Jamie I climbed back onto Butter, and so I was there when the strange horse jumped into our field.

  It happened like this. I was walking Butter in circles, practicing making him turn. I heard a sound like hoof beats coming from the road, and I stopped to look, but couldn’t yet see anything through the trees. A plane took off from the airfield and screamed straight over our heads just as a horse and rider came into view. Butter didn’t mind the plane—he saw dozens of planes take off every day now—but the other horse, a big brown one, wheeled in fright. His rider pulled the reins sharply to keep him from bolting, but he wheeled again, and then jumped forward, off the road and onto the verge, nearly chesting the stone wall into our field. The rider bounced loose in the saddle, and the horse, frantic, made a sudden leap up and over the wall. The rider tumbled sideways and disappeared.

  The strange horse galloped straight for Butter, reins flying, loose stirrups walloping his sides. Butter spooked and spun, tossing me, and together both horses ran to the far side of the field. They galloped about for a bit, the idiots, but I wasn’t paying attention to them. I ran for the fallen rider as fast as my bad foot would let me. I’d recognized her: the little iron-faced girl. The one who’d called me out.