by Laura Ruby
The soldier blinked at her, staring at the wimple she wore, the big cross around her neck. He held out the box to her, like he would drop to his knees and propose to her too, if only he could remember how to get the box open again. “She doesn’t know me,” he said to Sister Cornelius. “She doesn’t even know my name.”
Names do have power. When Benno said my name, it sounded as if he had an actual pearl tucked beside his cheek, stowed beneath his tongue.
He rode his bicycle for miles across the city each day, delivering messages and packages. By the time he reached our door, his last stop, the hollow of his throat glistened, the white shirt nearly transparent across the small of his back. If no one but Cook was home, if there was no brother or mother or father there to judge, to spy, to cluck in horror and forbid, I brought him to the pump on the side of our house. I would pump the water myself and watch him splash his face, the water droplets jeweling his hair. Sometimes he sat and drank a glass of lemonade I’d fetched from the kitchen, and he would wince at the sweetness, though he would finish it all, down to the slurry of seeds at the bottom. Sometimes I brought him a slice of pie or some coffee cake. He did love the cake, the touch of salt and spice in a crumb so heavy that sometimes bits of it would pepper his lips. I had to sit on my hands so that I wouldn’t reach for them.
I told him about 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. I read to him from my smuggled copies of Detective Story, acting out the most dramatic parts just to get him to smile. I told him about the woods where I could lose myself, and the lake where I could forget myself.
After he had been delivering messages for weeks and weeks, after I had given him many glasses of Cook’s too-sweet lemonade, he came to the house with a cut across his forehead, a new bruise under one cheek. I asked him what happened, and he shook his head. Nothing that hadn’t happened before, he said. Nothing new. But he let me sit him down on the stone bench in the yard, he let me dab the blood from his skin with the hem of my dress. At the sight of my knees and thighs, his eyes got wide and dark and deep. I dabbed longer than I had to.
The next time he came to deliver a message, while he was splashing at the pump, I ran straight for the woods, leaves churning up around my legs. He caught me by an old oak tree, the softest patch of the greenest moss underneath, a pillow for my head. Yes? he asked me. Yes, I said. Yes and yes and yes and yes. Hungry hands and mouths, a hunger like I’d never felt—pitiless, animal, claws and teeth. I was no lady, nothing more than a character in one of William’s filthy postcards, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I couldn’t make myself. Even when the fury of it had passed like a thunderstorm, and we lay panting in the pine needles, I didn’t feel any shame, I wouldn’t damn myself for it. Who wanted to be a girl in a box—a jewel, a stone? Who wouldn’t want to feel that alive?
It didn’t seem so much to ask. It didn’t seem too much.
Mad Maureen said: It never does.
Back in the cottage, in the dining room, the girls were supposed to be studying, but of course they were all whispering about Stella’s marriage proposal. Stella herself sat alone at a table, sorting the letters from her soldiers. The radio played in the background.
“Do you think that all them other guys is going to come and propose to her?” Joanie McNally hissed.
“I hope they do,” said Loretta. “Serves her right for lying to them all. How many boys does she write to, anyway? Fifty? A hundred? I can’t even imagine what she’s been telling them.”
“I hope they don’t come,” Joanie said. “That was awful. Did you see his face? That scar and all?”
“He was in a war, chooch,” Frankie said. “You think that nothing happens to people in a war?” She didn’t want to be reminded about what happened to boys in the war.
“All right, all right. Keep your shirt on. I was just saying . . .”
“Yeah, well. Shut up,” Frankie said.
“Richard!” Stella said, holding up a photograph of the wounded soldier, waving it like a flag. “It’s Richard W.!”
Loretta’s face was a mask of rage. She turned the page in her book so fast it ripped down the middle. “You’re a little goddamned late.”
Bombardment
LORETTA GOT A BEATING FOR swearing at Stella after Stella’s marriage proposal, but she didn’t regret it. Just like she hadn’t regretted the beatings she got for asking why the orphanage didn’t take in little black children. Or Mexican children. Or Jewish children—wasn’t Christ a Jew? Anyway, Loretta did what she always did after a punishment: she simply read her books standing up, humming cheerfully as she did.
Stella, though . . . Stella had regrets. She regretted that Richard W. had been sent home so soon when his wounds weren’t that bad, she regretted that she hadn’t been prepared for his crazy proposal and his sad little ring, she regretted that everyone had witnessed it, she regretted that the nuns had taken away her cigar box full of names and photos and intercepted the new letters that came, she regretted that she was half starved and half loved when she was as radiant as any star, as worthy. Weren’t all those letters proof?
What she most regretted, however, was the fact that she’d been caught, she’d been shamed for wickedness, when she was only writing letters. She was harmless. She regretted that she’d have to bear her shame alone.
So she did the only thing she could think of. She told Sister George that she could repent for her own sins, but she couldn’t repent for the sins of others.
“What sins?” asked Sister George, just as Stella had known she would. “Which others?”
Sister George found Frankie in class, conjugating German verbs. She hauled Frankie out by the hair, dragged her to her office, slammed the door behind them, the sound like a gunshot. She threw Frankie down across the desk. Though Frankie twisted and struggled, Sister yanked up Frankie’s skirt. The strap whistled through the air, sang its own brutal song of cut and sting. Frankie steeled herself against the song, against the whip, telling herself that it would soon be over, telling herself that she could take the pain and the humiliation, that Sam—if this was about Sam—was worth any beating, and that what Sam was facing was so much worse. Again and again, Sister brought the strap down, ranting incomprehensibly the whole while, so hard and so much that Frankie’s resolve collapsed and her prayers for this to be over turned to prayers for a shelling, because Sister was not going to stop until she’d torn Frankie to shreds and nothing short of a bomb would end it.
I jumped between them, threw myself over Frankie’s body, but the strap whisked through me, singing all the way, no matter how loud I screamed for her to stop, just stop. STOP.
Frankie’s screams went hoarse and raw, the blood trickled down her legs, until she couldn’t hear the strange and furious babbling of the nun over the thud of her own heart pounding in her ears, feel anything beyond the burning on her thighs, until the door burst open and Sister Bert flew in. She grabbed Sister George’s arm, the strap held high.
“Nein, Georgina,” Sister Bert said. “This isn’t the way.”
“Sie muss für ihre Sünden bestraft sein. Sie müssen alle bestraft sein.”
“Can’t you see she’s bleeding? That’s enough!”
“Sie muss lernen!”
“It’s not her fault, Georgina,” said Sister Bert.
“Sie lernen nie!” shrieked Sister George. “Warum lernen sie nie?”
“Blame Hitler!” said Sister Bert. “Blame the Nazis! Blame your brother for joining them!”
Storm eyed, habit askew, Sister George brought the strap down on Sister Bert instead. Frankie rolled off the desk to the floor. My vision went hazy and white. Wolf howled.
The glass in the window exploded as if a chair had been thrown through it.
I ran to the smashed window. On the cobbles below sprawled the girl with the broken face, blood snaking out from her hair. No, she said, through her ruined jaw. Please. Wai
t.
Frankie woke up in the infirmary. She lay on her stomach, salved and bandaged by Nurse Frieda. Her aide, Beatriz, had left overnight, it seemed, some months before, Frankie didn’t know why. Loretta did, but Loretta wouldn’t tell, not yet. Loretta sat by Frankie’s bed, held Frankie’s hand, stroking the skin. She gave Frankie small sips of water and dried the tears that spilled over Frankie’s cheeks.
Toni came too. She sat on the other side of the bed, not jiggling, not squirming, not teasing. She stared at the bandages, she stared at her own sister in wonder, in horror. Without saying a word, she left. She returned a half hour later, dragging Stella behind her like a reluctant puppy. She shoved Stella toward the bed.
“Toni, don’t bother,” said Loretta. “It’s not worth it.”
“Look!” said Toni, ignoring Loretta, pointing at the bandages that wrapped her sister’s legs. “Look at what you did!”
“That wasn’t me, that was Sister George,” Stella said, trying to back away. “You can’t blame me because Sister went crazy. It’s not my fault.”
Toni pulled her back, shoved her. “That was you! You caused this.”
“She shouldn’t have been messing with that boy!” said Stella.
“Look. At. Her.”
“I was helping her. She can repent now.”
“You did this. You.” Toni repeated the word you, you, you, you, you—an invocation, an incantation—until Stella cracked. And when Stella truly cried for the first time since her parents had died and left her a lovely, lonely orphan, there was no one to stroke her hand, no one to dry her tears.
After Frankie’s wounds had healed enough that she could rest on her side, Sister Bert came to visit, sitting stiffly in the chair that Loretta had vacated for her. “I’m so sorry, Francesca,” she said, eyes roving over Frankie’s drawn face. “This should never have happened.”
Frankie thought that was too obvious a statement to comment on. She tried to turn away, but she was still too sore to move much.
“You wouldn’t have known this, but Sister Georgina had an older brother. He lived in Berlin with her aunt and uncle. He was killed in action a few weeks ago. A bayonet. It’s . . . a painful way to die.”
Frankie pinned Sister with a hot glare, the hot glare that was becoming her signature. “I should feel sorry for him? I should feel sorry for her?” She’d meant for the words to cut, but her tone was dull as a butter knife.
“No,” said Sister. “I don’t expect any such thing. Not right now. Though you might be relieved to hear that she’s been dismissed from her position and sent to live at a convent downstate.”
“Nice job if you can get it,” Frankie said.
Sister folded her hands on her lap. “I do hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive her one day. Not for her sake, but for yours.”
That made no kind of sense to Frankie, so she didn’t bother responding to it. Instead, she said, “What made the window shatter like that?”
Sister said, “I’m not certain. Sister George must have hit the glass with the strap before I could stop her.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I . . . I think someone heard me.”
“I heard you, Frankie. God heard you.”
Not God, Frankie thought. God was too busy sending quiet, gentle boys to fight in stupid wars. “An angel must have heard me.”
“I suppose that could be true. The angels are all around us,” said Sister.
Speaking of angels. “Where’s Beatriz?” Frankie was sweaty and itchy inside her bandages.
“Beatriz took another position.”
“You mean you sent her away too?” said Frankie.
As if this explained everything, Sister said, “She turned eighteen,” and steepled her fingers under her chin. “She’ll be doing very important work for the war effort.”
“Oh. Where?”
“Overseas. Nurses are needed. She’ll complete her nurse’s training there.”
“Overseas? Where overseas?”
“England,” Sister said.
“England! But . . .” Frankie imagined Beatriz running through the streets of London as the Luftwaffe strafed the city, bombs everywhere. She pictured Beatriz ripping a gun from the belt of a felled soldier, taking aim at a passing plane, pulling the trigger till the bullets ran out. Then she imagined herself doing the same things—running, aiming, shooting. Why not a woman? she thought. Why not?
“Frankie? There’s something else we need to talk about.”
Frankie shook her visions away. “What?”
“Your friend.”
“Which friend?”
“The young man. Samuel. Sam.”
Frankie didn’t want to talk to Sister about Sam. Sam was hers, not Sister’s. “When can I go back to my cottage?”
Sister Bert tapped her lips with her steepled hands. “That’s what I came to discuss with you, Frankie. Even though your punishment was severe, far too severe—”
“You mean wrong?”
“Severe. And even though Sister George won’t be coming back, it’s been decided—”
“It’s been decided by who?”
“—that under the circumstances . . .”
Circumstances. Frankie waved a hand. Sister didn’t want to talk about Sam, she wanted to talk about sin. A sin of the flesh.
“We were saying goodbye,” Frankie said, too tired and sore to ask how Sister had found out, too tired and too sore and too sad to be embarrassed about it. Frankie had nothing she wanted to confess. Not to Father Paul, who she was sure had never said goodbye to anyone. Neither had Sister Bert, not outside of a book. If she had, she would understand.
Sister Bert leaned forward and took Frankie’s hand the way Loretta had. “I’m glad you had the chance to say goodbye.”
Frankie’s hand was limp in Sister Bert’s. Sister had never touched her like this before. “Don’t you mean I’m going to hell?”
“Frankie,” Sister Bert said. She cleared her throat. “Francesca.”
The sound of her full name sent a dart of fear through Frankie’s stomach. “What?”
“We got a telegram.”
Frankie’s thoughts skittered, darted into the darkest holes in her mind. Oh no not Vito please don’t say Vito don’t say it.
“Sam’s plane was shot down over France.”
“What?” said Frankie, almost laughing with the impossibility of it. “No. He just left. That can’t be.”
“He didn’t make it.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re wrong!”
“I wish I was. At least it was quick. You can be comforted by—”
Comforted? Comforted? “No!”
“Frankie,” Sister began, but Frankie pulled her hand away and covered her ears.
“Stop talking!”
“I am so sorry,” Sister said. “You don’t know how sorry I am.”
Frankie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to wall out the world again, but the world could not be denied. She felt Sam’s hands on her skin, could summon his woodsy-earthy smell as if he were the one sitting by her bed, telling her he was sorry. Her body heaved, her stomach lurched, and she threw up all the water she’d managed to take in. Watching her struggle to catch her breath stole all of mine; though I didn’t need to breathe, I clutched at my chest. Wolf whined and pawed at the floor.
All she’d asked for was a little bit of time. Not too much to ask, and far too much, as I could have told her, if only she could hear me.
In her shock, she only lost more time. We both did, I think. I woke up on the floor of the infirmary. In Sister Bert’s place, Toni sat, gnawing at a fingernail. In a chair on the other side of the bed, Loretta slumped with a book on her lap. The girl with the bloody hair and gaping mouth hovered by the window, but nobody saw her but Wolf and me.
“Frankie!” Toni said when Frankie’s eyes fluttered open. “We thought you’d never wake u
p!”
Frankie’s voice sounded like mine when she croaked, “I didn’t want to.”
Toni took one of Frankie’s hands and Loretta took the other. Unlike with Sister Bert, this didn’t feel strange to her.
“I wish I’d talked to your fella,” Toni said. “I wish I’d known him.”
“Yeah,” Frankie said. “Me too.”
Loretta said, “You only had to look at him to see how much he loved you.”
Love, Sam, Love, Sam, Love, Sam.
“We were going to have a house and a garden,” Frankie told them. “We were going to have flowers. We were going to grow our own vegetables. We were going to be happy.”
“Of course you were,” Loretta said. “Of course.”
After the nuns shooed Loretta and Toni away, Frankie took out a letter she had never finished, one she had started right after the service for the orphanage boys but couldn’t get right. She took her black pastel to the pages.
Dear Sam:
Today is a sad day because we had to go to a service for some orphanage boys. I’m not sure if you know them. One of them was named Clay. Stella had been writing to him for a while. She cried up a storm at the service, but when we asked her about Clay later, she had to go through his letters to remember what he was like! That’s what she’s like. And then the guy playing the bugle messed up the music. It sounded all wrong, like a circus elephant had gotten into the church. I thought about you, about how mad you would be about that. You would never mess up some poor soul’s funeral. But I have to admit it was funny. And we all laughed a little. But not in a bad way. At least I don’t think so.
I think that after all the sermons and crying, those boys heard us laughing all the way up in heaven and they laughed, too, because they understood that there is joy in everything, even in sadness, like Sister Bert always says. Remember Sister? She looks like a beautiful tea cozy. Have you seen any nuns over there? I bet you don’t miss them, even the ones who look like beautiful tea cozies.
Do you miss me? I miss you. I dream about the greenhouse. I dream about our garden, the one we’ll have together. We’ll plant those tulips that you said were worth more than gold. The bees will visit us, or maybe we’ll have a hive. The bees will never sting, and if they do it will feel more like a kiss. I’ll make you any kind of cake you want with the honey. Or with sugar, when we can get it. Or that dish your mother made, the funny one with the apples and the cabbage. Gumbo? Gumbo! Ham and beans so green they’ll make your eyes hurt. Fluffy mashed potatoes. Real butter over everything. You can play for me while I cook, you can play for me always. A song as happy as we are, as we will be.