“Ruth, is it?” she said, leading the way up the stairs to the second floor. “That’s a fine Biblical name. And we will be doing our best here to help you make the rest of your life worthy of it.”
Worthy. The word stung—smarted as badly as her father’s hand had across her backside. The physical sting had always disappeared by the end of the day, but even years hadn’t taken away the emotional sting. It stayed with her, multiplied each time she disappointed her father, no matter how hard she tried to please him. And now, this time, she knew there would be no making up for this disappointment.
“You’ll find the daily and weekly schedule there on top of the bureau,” Mrs. Stranton explained as she ushered Ruth into the little room. “And the house rules are there, as well. You get settled in and one of the girls will be by in a bit to show you around.” With a polite smile she closed the door behind her and left Ruth alone.
The only window looked out over the back of the property. A groundskeeper was mowing the area designated as a yard, a large rectangle carved into the surrounding overgrowth. No visible buildings, no neighbors, little chance of voyeurs into society’s embarrassment.
Ruth stepped back from the window and placed her hand over the soon-to-be noticeable belly bump. An embarrassment. That’s what she had become.
A knock on her door stopped her thoughts short of introspection, delayed the self-judgment for later. Her hostess’s name was Susan, tall and pretty in an untouched, natural way. No lipstick or mascara, but a smile that offered instant warmth and gave Ruth the first sign that someone saw her and not merely her situation. And before she said a word, Susan relieved one big concern—the girls in the home were not all teenagers. Susan was a peer, someone she could relate to, someone who might be able to lessen the isolation, and temper the loneliness.
“Come on and I’ll show you around,” she said, as if she were about to show Ruth a grand hotel.
Ruth followed her hostess down the hallway of closed bedroom doors, down through the dining commons and the reading room and past open doors where classes were being held. The duty schedule was pointed out and a brief explanation of what she would be expected to do in the kitchen and laundry. Nothing, she found, beyond the duties she was used to taking care of at home, right down to ironing the sheets on the mangle ironer.
“I must tell you,” Susan said, “there are consequences to not taking your turn on the duties schedule. Social privileges like playing games in the main room with the other girls would be denied.” She turned to make eye contact. “And then you will have to go to remedial class.”
“It’s no more than I would be doing at home. Why wouldn’t I take my turn?”
“I have the same responsibilities at home, too, but some of the girls either haven’t learned what is expected or they refused their duties. If you ask me, all the classes here are remedial, but the staff are bound to make us all good girls before we leave here.”
She flashed another big smile and all Ruth could think of was how easily Susan smiled, and how there didn’t seem to be one reason warranting a smile at all. Wasn’t she being hidden away to avoid the embarrassment—her own, her family’s—letting them fabricate whatever lie might explain such a long absence? Wasn’t she away at some out-of-state school, or taking care of an elderly relative?
Maybe Susan was simply happy that it was nearly over for her. Maybe she would be able to go back home, reputation intact, and start fresh. Maybe that was really possible.
Chapter 3
Nona was good to her promise, never late, always there early. And she was indeed fast, handling the rivet gun as well as anyone Audrey had seen. But she had a ways to go to make a believer out of old Mac, the Star Man. He was a gruff old shop rat with years of working in the Ford plant behind him. Supervising women was nowhere near the top of his “okay in his life” list. And having Negro women in the plant, well, it wasn’t even on the list.
But his lack of eye contact, constant scrutiny, and grunts for replies didn’t deter Nona. She said very little, smiled still, and riveted so accurately that Janice bucked as fast she ever had and backed out only two rivets in three weeks. Unless she decided to leave on her own, it looked as though Nona was here to stay.
It wasn’t as easy to gauge how the rest of the crew felt about Nona. The interplay, or lack of it, captured all of Audrey’s curiosity and filled those few free minutes hiding in even the most tightly scheduled day. It was amazing how much information could be gathered during a ten-minute break or a twenty-minute lunch.
Bennie never gave much more than smiles and nods, and he offered the same to Nona. And when he did manage more, Nona graciously listened for as long as it took for him to stutter through each sentence. Not one interruption, not one sentence finished for him. Tolerant and understanding, and a refreshing contrast to June the Oblivious.
“Did you sss-sss-ssee the ne-ne-new film?” Bennie asked. “That’s ooouurr b-b-b-bomber they’re flyin’.”
Nona shook her head. “Where’s it being shown?”
“All the theaters,” June inserted, “right before the feature show. Bennie imagines he’d be flyin’ one of our bombers if they’d let him in, not buildin’ ’em.”
Audrey shot her a hard look. “June,” she said.
“Well, it’s no disgrace to be 4F,” June continued. “It’s not like he’s a dodger.”
“June,” Audrey said again.
“He is one fine riveter,” June continued, as though he wasn’t sitting three feet away. “I dare say he could beat any challenger.”
Jack pushed back his chair and picked up his thermos. “Come on, Bennie,” he said. “I got those pictures back I promised you.”
Audrey caught Nona’s eye as the men left the table. It didn’t seem that she needed to say anything.
Undaunted, June chattered on. “You’re coming out with us tonight,” she directed at Audrey, “aren’t you?”
“I’m exhausted,” she replied.
“I don’t care how tired I am,” June continued. “I’m gonna cook with helium tonight. That’s what Saturday nights are for, dancin’ and forgetting about work and war and all the bad things that could happen. And there’s no better way that I know of to put worry about our men out of our heads.”
“I know,” Audrey replied, aware that the invitation was meant for her and Janice, and not extended to Nona. “Good band music and dancing helps take your mind off everything, but . . .”
“Come on! Janice and them are all going.” A nod from Janice. “Mother’s got my boys overnight, so I got all night to cut a rug and have a few drinks with the girls. We’ve earned it. Right, Janice?”
Thick-boned and as strong as any bucker on the line, Janice never seemed to lack the energy to go out with the girls. “My Bobby don’t mind. I write him a letter every night. He knows I’m workin’ hard to help win the war. Are you worried that your Bradley won’t understand and think you’re goin’ out on him?”
Audrey shook her head. “No, he trusts me. I’m just tired. Count me out tonight. I’m going to write letters, then get horizontal and listen to the radio.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Nona said, pulling off the headscarf and loosening flattened hair with her fingers.
“I can say the same thing about you,” Audrey replied as they began their daily walk to the exit.
“You would have told June you’d go dancing tonight if I hadn’t been sitting right there, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m pretty tired.”
“Is that it?” Nona asked, then waited for Audrey to meet her gaze. “Or is it that June’s insensitivity bothers you?”
Audrey smiled and pulled her eyes away.
“So tell me,” Nona continued, “is she just insensitive, or is she sending a message to Bennie and me that she’s only tolerating us because of the war effort?”
They stopped just outside the door. “I think I have June figured out,” Audrey said. “But the answer to your qu
estion isn’t a simple yes or no.” She hesitated a moment and Nona made no indication of leaving.
Audrey’s hesitation wasn’t about whether to ask, but about how to make what she would ask possible. She still knew so little about her new friend—what life was like for her outside of work, what she enjoyed, what she hoped for.
“I’m starving,” Audrey began. “Well, I’m always starving, but, is there some place where we can get something to eat and talk? I can tell Jack to go ahead and I can get a bus home later.”
She couldn’t identify what it was that she saw in Nona’s eyes, or even what she expected to see. There wasn’t an easy answer, that much she did know. And she knew Nona had to be the one to make the decision.
The space between Nona’s brows pressed into a dark v-shaped crease. “It would be nice if we could. It seems like we should be able to, I know,” she said.
“We can’t, can we?”
“It would be very uncomfortable,” Nona replied. “I can’t go to white places, and it would be about as bad for you to come with me to a Negro place. There are too many people up from the South with a lot of mistrust. I wouldn’t want to put you in that situation.”
Audrey nodded. “I guess we have to decide if being friends is going to be worth trying to work around a lot of obstacles.”
“It is to me.”
“I’ll tell Jack to go ahead. Let’s get cart sandwiches and meet at the picnic table by the air-raid shelter.”
The wooden plank table sat outside the entrance to the shelter, underground firebrick-lined corridors stretching beneath the plant. If the war came to home soil, it stood to reason that it would be here in order to destroy America’s largest war machine, and they would be ready. The Army, stationed on the east side of the airport, was there to protect the plant, the shelter was there to protect the workers.
Audrey placed the sandwiches on the table and settled across from Nona. The sounds of the plant were replaced by the not too distant sound of constant testing patterns and planes taking off and landing.
“Is it true,” Nona began, “that Mr. Lindbergh himself helps test the planes?”
“Uh, huh,” Audrey managed with a mouth full of sandwich.
“We are important here, aren’t we? This plant, I mean.”
Audrey swallowed and motioned toward the railed-off, square hole of the air-raid shelter near the parking lot. “Are you worried that we’ll have to use that?”
Nona looked over her shoulder, then nodded. “I worry that the other Negro workers and I won’t be allowed down there.”
Audrey stopped short of her next bite. “I don’t want to believe that that would ever happen.” She watched Nona drop her eyes and say nothing. “I’m being naive, aren’t I?”
Nona looked up and nodded. “But your heart is in the right place. I can’t say that about everyone.”
“Like Mac and June,” Audrey said with a nod. “Mac doesn’t like me much, either. Nice women don’t wear trousers and work in plants. They don’t make decisions for their family and they don’t go out dancing while their men are fighting a war.”
“So he’s not pleased with June, either.”
“No. She has children and has no business in a plant, or anywhere outside her home. I’m convinced that he holds his tongue only because he knows the war effort needs women in the workforce.”
“So that’s his sacrifice,” Nona replied, “having to work with women—and now a Negro woman.”
“And they damn well better return to their ‘place’ when this war is over.” Audrey motioned palm up with her hand. “Mac hates change, and the world has been turned on its end. He can handle rationing, coming out of retirement to work long hours and putting his money into war bonds, but . . .”
“Is there anything more I should do to avoid problems?”
“You’re fine. I’m fine. Even June, oblivious as she is, is fine. We’ll all be fine.”
“Maybe you can be sure for yourself,” Nona replied. “But you can’t be sure for me. You see a couple of possible problems, the ones you bump shoulders with every day, but you don’t see the ones around the next turn, waiting on the corner—people that judge the color of my skin and not my heart. You don’t see them because you don’t have to.”
“Naive again. And I don’t want to be, Nona. I sure can’t be much of a friend that way.”
“Please don’t take this wrong. But why do you want to be my friend?”
Audrey finished the last bite of sandwich. Did she even know why herself? When had she ever thought consciously about why friendships started? Didn’t they just happen? Growing up on the same block, sitting next to each other in class, working together. Common place, common interest, convenience. Attraction. It seemed that endings were more memorable than beginnings. And Nona?
“I left everything behind me,” Audrey began, “my family and friends, my life there.”
“I did, too.”
“So,” Audrey added, “do we need to know why?”
“Beyond that we are longing for someone to talk to, or that we’re hoping to find someone who likes us for who we are, I suppose not. It would have been a lot easier, though, to be friends with someone like June. Someone you have a lot more in common with.”
If Nona even knew how little in common they had. Audrey sipped her Coke while Nona finished her sandwich. A shared silence slowed their conversation and allowed a moment of thought. Important when you were tempted to say more than you should. Too much, too soon. Too much at all could be a big mistake.
“You asked me why,” Audrey said, “and it’s making me try to put words to thoughts that hadn’t had them before. Some thoughts and feelings that never got talked about, so I’m not sure this will make a lot of sense.”
“It will make more sense than me trying to read your mind.”
“Sometimes I can’t even read my own mind.” Audrey added a grin. “But, here goes. First, you have to know that I was the kid in school who asked all the annoying questions like, why don’t boys all have one color of eyes and girls all have another color? As far back as I can remember I have wanted to know more and see more than my little part of the world. I’m not a person who is satisfied with what I’m told or what is expected. I want to see for myself. I want to make my own decisions. I don’t want to be trapped in June’s world.”
“There’s no chance that I will be trapped in June’s world, but since I am working with her, tell me about her world.”
“I think right now it’s a pretty scary place,” Audrey said. “She’s got two kids, her husband’s piloting a Liberator for the Eighth Air Force, and she is having to work outside her home for the first time in her life.”
“That’s a lot of women right now.”
Audrey nodded. “But for June, and a lot of women like her, this is only a moment in time. As soon as their husbands come home they will be able to go back to the life they’re used to. And I try to understand that, even though it isn’t what I want for my life.”
“What do you want for your life?” Nona asked. “Don’t you have someone serving, too? What will you do when he comes home?”
Try not to lie, Audrey reminded herself. Avoid, don’t lie. “I always want to work. That way I will have my own money and I can make my own decisions. I love that I have my own space right now. It’s just a little cold, apartment with cardboard-thin walls, but it’s mine.” Enough, she thought, stop right there. “How about you, what do you want your life to be like?”
Eyes distant and serious, Nona replied, “More than sleeping on the floor of a church.” Then her face brightened. “I want to have enough money to afford more than two pair of shoes.” She added a smile. “I have a plan for my life. I know exactly what I want, and that’s to be an educator. I’m saving all the money I can, buying war bonds, and that way I will have enough to go to college when the war is over. I’m not going to do what my sister did and give up everything to get married. The man I marry will have to be educated, too. I d
on’t think a man can respect a woman’s goals unless he has those same goals.”
The commitment in her tone, even tempered by the soft drawl of her accent, was convincing. This woman did indeed know what she wanted. She was believable, even inspiring. Grab your dream with both hands and don’t let go. Find a way to overcome the obstacles—the restrictions, the attitudes. Something in Nona’s eyes said that she would do just that.
“Does that surprise you?” Nona asked, with a slight tilt of her head.
It was Nona’s question that surprised her. “No,” Audrey replied, “it doesn’t at all. You make me feel like a woman can do anything she sets her mind to.”
“We can,” Nona said, her eyes widening in possibility.
“We’re proving that right here in this plant.”
“I don’t think even a few years ago people would believe we could do what we do every day. How can anyone deny now what we’re capable of? Have you thought about what things will be like after the war?”
“Some things will never be the same for a lot of people. Families who lose someone in the war, women who enjoy their newfound independence, people who have moved to other parts of the country for work.” Audrey replied. “I admit, though, that I don’t have a solid plan for my future like you do. But the President is warning us that there is a lot of war yet to fight. We still have a high order and a lot more bombers to roll outta this place. I guess I’ll have time to figure my future out.”
“Having a plan in place can’t hurt, Audrey. Think about it.”
Think about it—the future. Right. She’d done that once. Laid out plans, let the excitement color gray days and freshen stale air.
Audrey pushed her pillow into a wedge between the wall and the head of the narrow bed in the corner of her room. She settled back against the pillow, brought her knees up, and gave in. Just the thought of the love she had lost still quickened her heart and flooded all rational thought. Couldn’t it have been, shouldn’t it have been? The two of them had been so sure, so lost in the possibility. Obstacles to a life together, that life rendered powerless behind promises and laughter and an all-consuming passion.
The Liberators of Willow Run Page 2