by Laura Ruby
She waited by the fence for a long time, so long she thought he wouldn’t come. For some crazy reason she started thinking about Vito again. She wondered if there was ever a girl who had caught his eye, and if he ever stood by the fence, risking a beating for that girl. Maybe he did what Frankie was doing right now lots of times. But Frankie had never asked.
A rock skidded over the top of her shoe. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t look. She crouched and fooled with the buckle of her shoe with one hand. With the other, she dropped the note on the yellow line. She saw a hand snatch it up, heard footsteps walking away.
“What are you doing?”
She tipped over onto the pavement as if someone had pushed her. Sister George blocked the sun like one of those eclipses.
“I’m fixing my shoe. I think the buckle’s broken.”
Sister George grabbed her by the collar and hauled her up. “There’s nothing wrong with your shoe.”
“There was,” Frankie said.
Sister gave Frankie a good pinch on the meaty part of her arm. “Don’t get smart with me.”
Frankie hated when Sister said that. She hated when any of the nuns said that. What did they want the girls to be, dumb?
“I’m not trying to be . . .” Frankie trailed off, because she wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to be.
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
Frankie’s brain started to chatter. Had she seen her drop the note? Had she just gotten Sam in trouble? Was Sister going to cut off all Frankie’s hair again? “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Those boys have enough to worry about without you girls running around acting like trash.”
That made Frankie mad. She wasn’t acting like anything, especially not trash. “What boys?” she said.
Sister leaned in. Frankie could smell the onions on her breath. Frankie knew she’d had onions, because she’d helped Choppy make the nuns’ supper. Liver and onions and a side of potato, plus real coffee with a little sugar.
Sister George said, “Do you want to go to hell?”
The warm feeling in Frankie’s guts was replaced by the kind of cold she got when she stood in the icebox, a scoopful of Jell-O that hadn’t had enough time to set sliding through her fingers. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Sister said, and shoved her back toward the girls’ side of the play yard. “Then stay away from the yellow line. I catch you over here again, you’ll wish for the devil to take you.”
Sister stomped away, but not before tearing a jump rope right out of another girl’s hands for no good reason. The girl looked at her empty hands, then shrugged. Who knows how many things had been ripped from her.
Fairy Tales
ONCE UPON A TIME, I was a small girl in a big house on a big lake in the middle of a big country. I was fourteen when a German submarine sank the Lusitania, killing over a hundred twenty Americans; sixteen when the United States entered World War I; seventeen when the first cases of the flu were reported in Chicago. Death was everywhere, but it seemed to have so little to do with me; nothing but a bunch of scary stories that my parents spoke about in hushed tones when they thought their children were asleep. Besides, I had my own battles, caught as I was between my stuffy older brother, William, he of the thick glasses and the thicker head, and my younger brother, Frederick, of the quick smile and quicker fists.
Frederick said to my mother, “I don’t know why I go to the trouble to get into a fistfight with the Jensen twins when all you do is fret over Pearl. She didn’t get into a fistfight.”
“I haven’t forgotten your fight,” my mother said. “But others will forget it soon enough. People will never forget a young woman behaving like a wild animal. I don’t understand what’s gotten into you, Pearl. That you keep—” She scissored off the end of her own sentence, tugged her lips tight.
I was sipping hot tea in front of the window, admiring the view of our large front lawns. So I liked to take walks in the woods behind the house. I liked to run through the woods. I liked to wade in the lake after running through the woods. I’d come home disheveled and damp, but no more disheveled and damp than I always had.
But I was seventeen now, not seven. Mother said it was unseemly. Mother said it was scandalous.
“Nobody saw me,” I said.
“Everyone saw you,” my mother said.
“You’re worried about my prospects.”
“You should be worried about your prospects.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Frederick said. “The war and the flu will kill all the young men, and she’ll end up a spinster anyway.”
“Nonsense,” said Father. “The flu will pass and the war will end and Pearl will be married like any other girl.”
“What a pearl, our Pearl,” Frederick sang. He held his wineglass to the light, turned it, appraising. “She is a treasure, something you lock up in a box and only take out on holidays.”
William peered over his thick glasses. “That’s what all women are. Treasures.”
Frederick laughed, said, “I pity the woman you marry, William.” He knocked back the wine in far too practiced a manner for someone only sixteen. My mother frowned.
I wondered what Mother would have done if she’d been the one to find the box stowed in the back of William’s closet. All those French postcards, all those slyly grinning young women bent this way and that, the sight of them setting my bones to thrumming. No one worried if they went running in the forest, leaves churning up around their plump, bare thighs.
William snapped the paper he wasn’t really reading. “Charles Kent won’t allow Pearl to gallop through the woods.”
“Charles Kent,” I spat.
William continued as if I’d never spoken. “So she better get used to staying indoors and behaving like a lady.”
My turn to laugh. “And you’d know all about ladies, William.”
“He’s a respectable young man,” said Mother.
“William?” I said.
“Charles Kent!” barked Mother.
“You mean he’s richer than Midas,” said Frederick, already slurring a little.
“Charles Kent,” I repeated, conjuring up his slicked-back dishwater hair, the down-turned mouth, overly pink lips in a pallid face, the petulance that emanated from him like musk. “He stares too much.”
My mother jerked a red thread through the hide of her needlework. “It’s a compliment to you, Pearl.”
But that’s not what it was.
That’s not what it was.
The thought of Charles, the revulsion, caught in my throat, and I coughed. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I coughed until a smear of red marked my knuckles, as if I had been in a fistfight after all.
“Pearl?” my father said. “Are you all right? Pearl?”
“Pearl?”
“Pearl?”
“Pearl?”
Frankie pushed the gig down the hallway toward the boys’ slop house, her heart pounding up a storm. But the room was empty. Dinner was over, the porridge bowls and spoons thrown every which way. Swallowing the disappointment, she started stacking the bowls onto the gig.
“We’re slobs, aren’t we?”
She whipped around. There he was, standing in the doorway, hat crushed in his hands as usual.
“You can say that again,” Frankie said.
“Doesn’t seem fair that we should make the mess and you should clean it up.”
“Nuns always say life ain’t fair.”
“Need some help?” he said, his voice hoarse, as if he didn’t use it much. She had never seen a body who looked so nervous. But then, her heart was about to pop out of her mouth.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m just putting all the dishes onto the gig.”
“Gig?”
“This cart here. So I can bring them back to the kitchen.”
He shoved the hat in his back pocket and walked toward Frankie. He helped
her stack some of the dishes. “I bet these get heavy.”
She nodded. That was what she’d written on the note. Those dishes sure get heavy. Frankie figured that if anyone else picked up the note, even a nun, that one sentence wouldn’t give her away.
It was hard to look at him. She had to tilt her head back, she was so short. She tried to find something to say, something to talk about, but she was distracted by the scant whiskers that darkened his chin, one small cut on his jaw.
He said, “Sister George didn’t seem so happy with you out in the yard. Are you all right?”
“She just gave me a pinch and a shove. I’ve had worse.”
He gave Frankie another few bowls, and she set them on the gig. “She the one who cut your hair?”
Her hands flew up before she could stop them. “Yeah.”
He turned red, the flush traveling from his neck into his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to say that it looked bad! It didn’t look bad at all. And it looks real nice now that it’s grown in some.”
She forced her hands back to the table. She picked up some more bowls and spoons. “Thanks.”
“Sister George ain’t the worst nun I ever saw.”
She almost dropped the bowls. “She’s not? Who is, then?”
“One time, this kid sicked up his food? An old nun, I forget her name, scraped the sick back into a bowl and made him eat it.”
Now her hands flew up to her mouth. “No.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Made us all sick to watch. But I guess that was a long time ago, when I was just little. I haven’t seen anything like that in a while.”
“Well, that’s something,” Frankie said. “Vito never told me about that.”
“Vito. I remember him. He’s your brother, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But he’s not around anymore. He go into the service?”
“No,” Frankie said. “He’s in Colorado.”
Sam handed her another couple of bowls. “What’s he doing in Colorado?”
“My father moved there.”
“Your father moved to Colorado and took your brother?”
“Yeah.”
“But not you.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
“That doesn’t sound right,” he said.
She shrugged like the girl in the yard who’d gotten her jump rope ripped from her hands. “What can you do?”
He tilted his head and looked down at her. She could see a tiny reflection of herself in his big brown eyes.
“I’m Sam,” he said.
“I know. I mean, I’m Frankie.”
“I know,” he said, smiling a little. “If it makes any difference, Frankie, I’m glad your father didn’t take you away.”
He held out a fistful of spoons like a bouquet. The blush was back, pinking up his cheeks, but he held her gaze.
“Me too,” she said. She held out her hand to take the spoons. When her fingertips brushed his knuckles, he dropped the spoons, which clattered on the table and floor. They snatched back their hands as if they’d both been burned.
There’s always a fire, I said.
What Frankie Didn’t Confess
THAT SHE’D TAKEN THE LORD’S name in vain before Choppy could whack her with a towel or hit her with a tomato. That she’d stolen spoonfuls of soupy cake batter before she popped the cake into the oven. That she’d left Sam that note in the yard. That he’d come to the boys’ slop house after dinner. That her hand had brushed his. That she wanted more brushing everywhere. That he’d been coming to see her every day after. That she thought about him all the time. That thinking about him pushed everything else out of her head, like the rest of the world didn’t matter anymore. That Hitler could have bombed Chicago and she wouldn’t have noticed.
What she did confess: that Toni’s cottage had gotten too crowded, so the nuns moved her up to a girls’ senior cottage. That the cottage they moved her to was Frankie’s. That Toni was doing her best to drive Frankie and everyone else batty. That it was working. That Toni should be sent to Germany to spy for America because ten minutes in a room with her would be enough to crack Adolf like an egg.
“Who was that fella I saw you talking to?”
Frankie and Toni were at the back of the line, following Sister Bert as she walked across the street. On Saturday afternoons, Sister Bert liked to march the girls around town for about an hour or so, letting them look in the shop windows and letting whoever had a penny get some candy in the candy store. Usually Frankie talked to Loretta on these outings. Instead, Toni was killing Frankie with questions.
“Huh?” Frankie said. “Who?”
“That tall fella you were talking to. Who was he?”
“I wasn’t talking to any fella,” Frankie said.
“Yes, you were. I saw you. In the yard, by the yellow line.”
“Are you crazy? I wouldn’t cross the yellow line,” Frankie said.
“I didn’t say you crossed it, I said you was standing by it.”
“That’s a crime, now?”
“Who was the fella?”
“What fella?”
“The one who was across the yellow line,” Toni said, getting louder.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, all the boys are across the yellow line. That’s where they keep them at the Guardians.”
“Course I noticed that,” Toni said. “I was just wondering when you noticed. It’s not like you ever noticed before.”
“What would you know about what I notice?” said Frankie.
“You’re my sister,” Toni said.
“So?”
“That means I know you better than you know yourself.”
“You don’t know nothing.”
“I know you were talking to a tall fella with brown hair and a gray cap. So what’s his name?”
“St. Anthony. I was asking him where you lost your mind.”
Sister Bert stopped abruptly, and all the girls slammed into one another. She turned and glared down the line. “Francesca! Antonina! All your bickering is enough to bring down the Allies!”
“What?” said Toni. “I don’t—”
“Sorry, Sister,” Frankie said.
“But—” Toni began, but Frankie elbowed her so hard that she fell against the butcher’s window. Sausage links swung behind her.
Toni got the message. “Sorry, Sister,” she said.
“And?” said Sister.
“We’ll try to keep it zipped,” Frankie said.
“Do more than try,” said Sister Bert. “This heat is giving me headache enough.” She whipped around and waved us on toward the candy shop.
“She don’t have to be so cranky about it,” Toni muttered, rubbing her ribs. “We were just talking.”
Loretta, who’d been quiet up till now, said, “That wasn’t cranky. If she was cranky, she would have threatened to call President Roosebelt.”
“It’s President Roosevelt,” said Toni, in her snottiest voice.
“No,” said Loretta. “It’s President Roosebelt. What she’d smack you with if she was really mad.”
Toni’s mouth dropped open. “But all the other girls said Sister Bert wasn’t the type to beat on people.”
“Maybe you’ll be the first,” Frankie said.
Toni scowled and marched ahead, falling in next to Stella, her new best friend. Now there was a match made in heaven. Which got Frankie thinking about matches made in heaven, which got her thinking about Sam, which made her knees feel like rubber, bending every which way.
“Hey, Loretta?”
“What?”
“Do you confess everything?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you go to confession, do you confess everything?”
Loretta bit her lip. “We’re supposed to.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Most times I do,” she said. “But sometimes I don’t.” She turned a little bit pink. “Some things are too embarrassing. But
then I confess them in private to God at night. And I say my Hail Marys and my Our Fathers right then. Right to God. That should count, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” Frankie wanted to ask her what was too embarrassing to talk about, but she figured that if Loretta wasn’t going to tell Father, she wouldn’t tell Frankie either. “How do you know how many Hail Marys to say?”
“Father never gives me more than ten, so I always say fifty, just in case.”
“Fifty!” Now Frankie really wanted to know what Loretta was thinking. If there was someone she had her eye on, someone who made her all shivery just to look. Which there was. It was nothing Loretta could confess, either.
“Girls!” yelled Sister Bert, who was waiting with everyone else up at the corner. “Stop lollygagging and keep up, please!”
They ran to catch the rest of the group but had to wait for a streetcar to pass before they could start walking again. Because everyone else was around, Frankie didn’t want to ask Loretta more questions about confessing, but she didn’t have anything else to talk about, so she just stayed quiet. That was the nice thing about walking with Loretta, because she didn’t have a problem with quiet. Some girls just had to chatter their heads off, whether because they couldn’t stand the silence or maybe they didn’t like to keep themselves company. Frankie liked talking, but she also liked silence, especially with it being a little warmer now, the air so heavy with rain, and Loretta was the same way. As she looked into the shop windows, admiring shoes and dresses as they walked, Frankie read the posters pasted on some of the door and walls.
“Buy war bonds!” Which was fine, except Frankie didn’t have any money to buy anything. And she wasn’t sure what bonds were.
“Books are weapons in the war of ideas!” She knew they were in a war, but she didn’t think it was about ideas. Unless it was about the idea that bombing people was a really bad one.