by Laura Ruby
Three Letters
IN THE KITCHEN, IN THE hallway, in the yard by the angel, in a classroom used by the music students for practice—every time and every place they could get away, Frankie met Sam. They would find a place to sit, they would talk a little about what they had done that day and what they wanted to do the next one, and the next. They would kiss, and time fell away as if it had no meaning at all. Sometimes, if there was no one around, he’d play her a song, low and sweet, on his trumpet. Frankie liked the trumpet, it was sad, but strong too. Like she thought she was.
But who is ever as strong as they believe?
“No,” Frankie said. “No, no, no!”
“Frankie, we knew the letter was gonna come someday,” Sam said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
The word tore through her like shrapnel. “Tomorrow! You can’t be going tomorrow!” She gripped the front of his shirt as if she could make him stay if she held on tight enough.
“I would have told you sooner,” he said, “but I didn’t know either. They just told me to report downtown.”
“It’s not fair,” she said, and it wasn’t, but that didn’t change anything. Because this was war, and because Sam himself had changed. He had steeled himself. He didn’t dream of tulips anymore. He had told himself that the war might leave scars, but scars weren’t the worst things to mark a man. He had told himself that even if the war took a bigger bite, an arm, a leg, he had other arms and legs—Frankie’s. Frankie would hold him up. He had told himself that if he were destined to die, God would see to it that his death was quick. And if God wouldn’t, the bombs would.
If he had to, he would pray to the bombs.
“Come on, Frankie,” he said. “You’ll write me, won’t you?”
She tried to get ahold of herself, swiping at her eyes. “Yeah, sure I will. You know I will.”
“And I’ll write you. Every week, how’s that?”
“You promise? Every week?”
He kissed the top of her head. “You bet.” He looked up at the clock. “We don’t have long. I told Sister Cornelius that I forgot my coat. She’s going to start wondering where I am soon.”
“Play me a song first,” she said.
“I don’t—”
“Please,” she said. “Just play me a song before you go.”
“What do you want me to play?”
“I don’t know. Anything. A goodbye song.”
He thought for a minute, then put the trumpet to his mouth, closed his eyes, and started to play. Frankie didn’t know the song, but it was a happy song, filled with notes that skipped and danced like butterflies. Somehow hearing that happy song at such a sad time made her that much sadder, as if happy songs were nothing but wishes, fleeting as the first blooms of spring.
When he was done playing, he gave her the trumpet. For safekeeping, he said. They found his coat in the closet, they used it for a bed. In the dark of that tiny room, they broke against each other—detonated, shattered.
Frankie tried to play that trumpet, but she didn’t know how. She settled for holding the mouthpiece against her lips, where Sam’s had been.
Frankie was supposed to be doing her chores, she was supposed to be practicing her shorthand. She was supposed to be doing her part for her family and friends and country, keeping her chin up and a smile on her face. Before, she had been riding the gig through the hallways, she was at the top of the class in her secretarial course, she was stealing kisses in the greenhouse, but now that Sam had been called, now that Sam had gone away, she couldn’t think, she didn’t know who she was. If she kept her chin up, something else would punch her in the jaw. Lights out.
So Frankie put her head down and tried to write Sam a letter. Not about the war. She hated the war. No, she wanted to write about where she and Sam would be in a year, after she got out of the orphanage. By then, the war would be over, of course it would be over, and everyone would get jobs. She could work for an important businessman, Sam could open his own flower shop. Maybe he could play the trumpet in a band in a club where people danced all night. They’d get an apartment, and then a house, and then—
“Earth to Francesca!”
Frankie looked up from the letter she’d been writing for days. Sister Bert dropped two letters in front of her, both, Frankie figured, from Vito. She tore into the first envelope.
Dear Frankie,
We’re here in and the weather’s finally been good to us. You’d think it would be cold in January, but it’s not, not here, anyway.
But better than the not-so-cold weather is the quiet. I love the quiet! We haven’t seen any action in a few days, so finally we have some time to write letters to all our friends and families that we all miss so much.
Last night, some of the boys in my unit went on a mission to and brought back a few carrots, onions, potatoes, and a chicken! (They must have traded all their cigarettes for the chicken!) We made a big pot of chicken soup. I couldn’t believe how good it tasted. It had been so long since I had homemade chicken soup, it seemed like the best soup I’ve ever had, even though it was fixed up by a bunch of guys who could rebuild an engine and fire a gun but probably couldn’t make a slice of toast without burning it.
Anyway, how are you? All the guys liked the drawings of the museum that you went to, especially the one with all the trains in it. And they just loved that story about the crazy boy who got himself up in that airplane. And like you said, it is kind of funny that that same boy ended up shipping out just a month later. I wonder if he went into the air force. (Probably not.)
Speaking of funny boys, who’s this Sam who you mentioned twice in your last letter? I hope you’re keeping your head. Wait a minute, I’m not hoping, I’m telling you to keep your head, you get me? I’ve already got one out-of-control sister. I don’t want to worry about the sensible sister too.
Well, it’s just about time for me to hit the hay, so I’m going to have one last cigarette and say good night.
Write again soon!
Love,
Vito
Sensible. Responsible. In control. What if she wanted to get a little out of control? What if she already had? What if she was tired of being so responsible all the time? Didn’t she deserve more?
She stuffed the first letter back into the envelope and ripped open the second one. Right away she was scared—did something happen to Vito?—because she didn’t recognize the handwriting, and nothing was blacked out by the censors. But then she saw who it was from.
Dear Francesca,
Your father wanted me to write and tell you that we decided to move back to Chicago soon after the New Year. Your father’s health is much better, he misses Chicago, and we think that it’s a good time to open up another shoe shop. People won’t want new shoes, but we should do enough business in repairs to keep us going. We plan on getting a place with a little apartment upstairs or in the back.
The space will be small. Even with your brother and stepbrothers gone to war, there isn’t going to be enough room for you or for Toni, so I don’t want you begging your father, he feels bad enough already. Besides, you’re almost old enough to be out on your own, aren’t you? I’m sure you understand.
As soon as we get settled, your father will visit you.
Regards,
Ada
When I got to the library, Marguerite was already there, reading a newspaper over another woman’s shoulder.
I said, The Germans captured Erich Maria Remarque’s sister, Elfriede.
What? Who?
Remarque. He wrote All Quiet on the Western Front. He escaped Germany, but his youngest sister, Elfriede, stayed behind with her husband and children. She was arrested and found guilty of undermining morale. The Germans couldn’t catch her brother, but they caught her. They had her beheaded.
Marguerite stared, silent. Then she said, How do you know this?
I shrugged. There are things I just know, I said. And there were. But not this. The angel h
ad told me, the way she told me many things. I didn’t want to share the angel with Marguerite just yet.
In 1932, we thought Hitler was a ridiculous little man, Marguerite said. No one took him seriously. We were too busy with our own worries.
I guess the devil wears a clown nose, I said.
Or a funny mustache and a silly haircut, said Marguerite. Speaking of haircuts, how’s Wolf?
Wolf is fine, as you can see. Where’s the man with The Hobbit? Is he here today?
I told you, I don’t care about The Hobbit.
I wanted to read a bit more. There are wolves in it, called Wargs. They are friends to the goblins.
Lovely, said Marguerite.
They’re not lovely at all. Goblins are horrible. Wargs are horrible.
Then why did you name your fox after them?
His name isn’t Warg.
Thank goodness for that, she said.
There is a character in the book called Beorn the Skin-changer. He is called Skin-changer because he can change himself into a bear.
A handy talent, I’m sure, said Marguerite. Why do you like this story so much?
Perhaps I wish I could turn myself into a bear. Or a Warg. Or anything else.
Have you ever tried? Marguerite asked.
To turn myself into a Warg?
To assume another shape.
No, I said, astonished at the question. Well, maybe. Have you?
She bit her lip. She didn’t want to share either.
It’s all right, I said. You don’t have to tell me.
She hesitated, then said, I would tell you another story. A true story, but I can’t imagine you’ll believe it.
I’ll believe it! I said.
Hmmm, she said.
It’s your story, though, I told her. I won’t pester you. As much as I’d like to hear it.
A slight smile played across her mouth. She said, This is you not pestering me?
This is the least amount of pestering I’ve ever done in my life. Or death.
She thought for a moment. Then she said, I will tell Wolf the story, but I won’t mind if you listen as well. If you promise to be quiet as I tell it.
I promise I’ll be as silent as—
—a ghost? she said.
See how well you know me?
Shhh. You promised. So, listen:
Long ago, fifty years before the Civil War, a group of men and women were stolen from their homes in West Africa. Slavers packed the people into a boat for the long journey to America, a nightmare journey full of starvation and abuse and all sorts of horrors too terrible to name. At a slave market in Savannah, the people were auctioned off, sold to a plantation. They were once again forced into a boat, this one a smaller vessel, and confined belowdecks for the trip down the coast to a place called St. Simons Island, off the Georgia coast. But something happened during the journey. The people rose up against their captors and threw them overboard. Then they landed that boat on the shores of St. Simons Island.
According to white men who witnessed it, as soon as the boat landed, the men and women walked into Dunbar Creek and drowned. But that’s not the whole story. Because back in Africa, some of the people were conjure men and women—they knew magic. They could make a buzzard row a boat, they could boil a pot without a fire. And some were skin-changers. They could change into lions, they could change into crocodiles. And when that boat ran up on that shore, some of them remembered who they were. They whispered the magic words one to the other, rose up into the sky, and flew right back home to Africa.
The ones who did not know the magic words, the ones who could not fly, cast their eyes to the sky, their eyes saying Don’t leave us, help us, take us. But though the magic ones were heartbroken for those they were leaving, they didn’t have the time to teach the magic words, didn’t have the time to teach the others to fly. The others would have to find a chance to fight, to run.
And one day they would.
By the time Marguerite reached the end of her story, we had left the library and made it all the way downtown to 209 South LaSalle Street, Chicago’s first skyscraper, called the Rookery. We sat in the light court, the muted sunshine through the glass ceiling burnishing everything in gold.
I love your stories, I said.
They’re not just mine. My mother told me the stories like her mother told her, and her mother before.
Still.
If this is the Rookery, Marguerite asked, where are the birds?
After the Great Fire, I said, there was a temporary city hall on this site. Some said it was so shoddily built, crows built their nests everywhere. My father told me that since city hall was full of crooks, any citizen who entered was bound to be rooked. The architects never cared for the name, but it stuck.
Was your father rooked?
I shrugged. He was the rook.
Marguerite nodded, and we turned our attention to the people passing by. Smart-suited men, gloved and hatted women, some with lines drawn on the backs of bare calves so it looked as if they were wearing nylons, though their legs must have been freezing. One of the men caught my eye, one of the finest-looking men I had ever seen, alive or dead. Sandy hair rippling like a wheat field, pale skin rich, blue eyes deep, not too tall or too short. It was as if he’d been carved from—
Marguerite gasped, clutched at her chest, her throat. Wolf, who had been lounging on the floor, snapped to his feet, paced.
What is it? I said. Do you know that man?
Marguerite paced along with the fox. I shouldn’t have come here, she said, why did you bring me? She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, mashing her lips against her knuckles.
You were talking about birds, so it reminded me of—
I wasn’t talking about birds, I was talking about magic.
Yes, but—
I need to go, she said. She stepped into a shaft of light, rendering her in a shimmering wash of gold that blazed so bright it almost hurt to look. The man suddenly stopped walking as if he’d hit a wall of glass. He turned around, slowly, so slowly, and his creamy skin went as gray as lake water. He gaped at the place where Marguerite was standing, though he couldn’t have seen her. Couldn’t have, because she was—
“Rita?” he whispered. His eyes rolled up, knees buckling. The smart-suited men and the hatted women swarmed, catching him before he hit the floor.
1944
Jezebels
The Boys of War
MARGUERITE VANISHED. I POKED AND prodded the children of the Guardians, but none of them would listen. The yellows and reds and browns of late fall turned into the icy blues and whites of another war-torn winter. As the days marched forward, Frankie made bargains with God: please spare Sam and Vito. I’ll pray every day, I’ll confess every sin, I’ll repent, I’ll be nice to Toni, I’ll be nice to Stella. Please, please, please.
But it was from Stella that Frankie heard about the dead boys. Stella had been writing to an orphanage fellow named Clay every week for a year, and all of a sudden the letters stopped coming. She could feel it in her bones, she told the other girls, the day she got the mail and there wasn’t a letter from dear ol’ Clay. Loretta had scowled and said, “How could she miss one with fifty others in the stack?” But Stella insisted that Clay must have been killed in action, and for once in her life, Stella was right.
Soon after Stella had pulled Clay’s address from her card file, Sister Bert announced that a special service would be held for Clay and for three other Guardians boys who’d died overseas. On a clear, cold Sunday in early March, Frankie and the rest of the orphans found themselves in church for the third time, listening to Father Paul eulogize each of the four boys. When he got to Clay, Stella threw herself on the floor. “Poor, poor Clay,” she wailed, sobbing into her crumpled hankie as Toni patted her back. A couple of people turned around in their pews just to watch, she was making such a spectacle of herself.
Frankie felt sorry for the boys, and their brothers and sisters still at the Guardians, bu
t she wouldn’t feel sorry for Stella, considering that she had whole battalions of boys convinced that they were her only love, and that she was milking it for all she was worth. Considering that Frankie’s one and only love had been shipped out and Frankie was doing her best to stay strong.
What if something happened to Sam? What if—
No. No.
Tired of watching Stella hamming it up, Frankie unfolded her program and read:
A Patriotic Tribute to Our Servicemen
“Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:13
KILLED IN ACTION
Roderick Butz
Clayton Jackson
Robert Keys
Henry Zimmer
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. May they rest in peace.
Listening to Father Paul, you’d think that Clay was brave and generous and helpful and loving, willing to give his life for his country, and so were all the rest of the boys who died. But Clay didn’t sound like that in the letters he wrote Stella, the ones she read out loud. In those letters, he sounded sweet and nervous and a little silly. He talked about his feet a lot, how they hurt all the time because of the blisters, and how the thing he missed most about America was sleep. He talked about wishing Stella was with him so that he could kiss her “peachy little nose,” whatever that meant. And he talked about the nightmares he had when he did sleep, filled with monsters and witches and flying monkeys just like in The Wizard of Oz. How, thought Frankie, could a boy who believed Stella had a peachy anything, a boy who was terrified of flying monkeys, be the same courageous soul Father Paul was going on about? How could this boy be Captain America with his knockout punch?
Frankie had to wonder if anyone really knew anyone. Poor Clay didn’t know Stella, Father Paul didn’t know Clay. Frankie’s own father was a mystery, gone for years and then he was back and wanting to visit after the memorial service, like some kind of twisted magic trick. It was too confusing to think about, so Frankie tried not to.