“Yes! I’ll be watching the children for you. That is, if it’s alright with you. That is, you see, Mr. Chambers will be teaching some classes and needs someone to look after the children when you’re at the hospital so he—oh, dear, I’m nattering on, aren’t I!” Jeanne seemed clearly flustered.
“Not at all, Miss—, um—”
“Travay! Jeanne Travay! I’m so glad to meet you. Your husband told me all about you. I mean, that is—”
Dorothy assessed the slender girl with the lovely brown eyes. What was he thinking, barely a week in camp and Fred was already leaving their children with a stranger. She’d have to put an end to this.
“Yes. Well. Miss Travay, I believe that will be all for today. I shall—”
“Oh, golly, that’s great, Doctor Chambers! There’s entertainment tonight and I really want to get there before it starts.”
Ah. So that explained the crowd on the boulevard.
“Entertainment?”
“Yes! The Little Theatre Under the Stars. They play something special on the Victrola on Thursday nights. Sometimes camp people perform. Tonight’s a movie, though. It’ll be a lot of Jap propaganda, but it’s a movie! I can just make it if I leave now.” She reached a hand to chuck each of the children under the chin. “Shalom, my littles!”
And she was gone.
Dorothy felt herself succumb to any number of peculiar emotions. Fred had left the children in the care of someone he couldn’t possibly know much about. She was pretty. She was young. And she was Jewish. Her youthful loveliness seemed undimmed by the circumstances.
And Dorothy’s children were clearly in love with her already.
But was she responsible?
Dorothy’s thoughts were drowned out by the children’s litany of the wonderfulness the magical Miss Jeanne had brought into their day. She had shown them the whole camp, taught them how to hold both their tin plate and tin cup without spilling while they found a place to sit in the dining shed, and let them take their afternoon nap in her friend’s shanty in Foggy Bottom. She’d even taught them which of the Japanese guards they should be sure to bow to and how to pick the weevily-weevils out of their mush.
They couldn’t wait until they’d see Miss Jeanne again tomorrow.
And Dorothy couldn’t wait until she could bend Fred’s ear about that very thing.
But Fred wasn’t here, and wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning. He was already safely ensconced with the other men in the gymnasium. Or had he gone on to the movie?
She doubted he knew how lucky he was to be there and not here, watching her try ever so hard not to boil over.
It took longer than usual to settle the children for bedtime, but their happy chatter calmed her in a way she hadn’t expected. For the first time in months they’d done things about which she’d known nothing, had spent their day away from her watchful eye, and their passion for telling her every tiny detail was remarkably refreshing in its unfamiliarity.
“They’re going to let me try out for the fly-swatting club, Mommy.”
“Me too!” echoed Bobby. That sent him into a paroxysm of karate moves around their tiny area.
An annoyed voice from across the room shushed him quicker than the threat of an early bedtime. “Hold it down over there!”
“Sorry!” Dorothy said quietly. A finger in front of her lips silenced her two and they spent the next half hour pantomiming and giggling as they slowly unwound and got themselves ready to be tucked in.
At precisely nine o’clock, almost like the flick of a switch, the noise level in the building shifted to hushed whispers. The snicker of mosquito nets dropping into place seemed to signal ‘lights out’, though no lights burned in the building.
Dorothy tidied their space and double-checked the children’s netting before sliding into her own space. The netting closed around her as if drawing a line between the events of one day and the next. She was tired to the bone. Weary in a good way, but weary nonetheless.
She stretched to ease her bones into a more comfortable position and heard her own stomach growl. For the first time today she realized she’d been so immersed in her work that she’d completely forgotten to eat. She’d forgotten her own rule: keep yourself healthy so you can be the help others need.
Tomorrow she would do better. But she should have asked that girl Jeanne where she might find a hat.
Her eyes fluttered heavily shut.
And whatever did the children mean by weevily-weevils in their mush?
Surely not.
Oh, surely not.
Excerpt from Manila Goodbye by Robin Prising
© 1975 by Robin Prising. pp 151
THE HUNGER LINE
. . .meal tickets were taken by the kitchen staff and I waited, outwardly patient, while they were inspected for forgery, the correct date found and each ticket punched—Father’s, Mother’s and mine. Then a scoop, made from a can half the size of a Campbell’s soup tin and wired to a stick, dipped—so very slowly—into a big iron pot. The scoop was then scraped carefully level and our ration of swill was poured into the pails. The swill was rotten, soupy rice or rice cooked with cornmeal, sometimes with bits of meat or greens, but if these slightly savored the saltless slop, they could not be seen. The boiled white worms and tiny stones, however, were easy to see.
If a drop of gruel or a grain of soggy rice dribbled to the rough-hewn wooden table, I stretched out a finger to wipe it up, but if I reached for anything that spilt to the ground, the person behind me would stay my hand, warning me against dysentery. At last, a generous dipper of tea, coffee or ginger water, with flies and bugs afloat in it, filled up my largest pail.
On rare occasions, Sundays or the Mikado’s birthday, a small thumb of banana or perhaps a quarter-cup of coconut milk or the liquid waste from soybean cattle feed might be included with our fare. These were so delicious that the mere taste of them hurt.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
TREAD CAREFULLY
“You’re awfully quiet, Dor. Are you feeling alright?”
Dorothy felt Fred watching her as she encouraged the children to eat their morning mush, even though it was barely palatable. If she had any place for a campstove she could have fried it into mushcakes in a bit of coconut oil. But in their tiny quarters there was no chance of that.
It wasn’t until Bobby fished a weevil out of his bowl and hucked it over his shoulder with his spoon that she remembered last night’s cautionary tale.
“Bobby, don’t throw—”
She’d barely uttered her reprimand when a dour-looking matron loomed at her shoulder.
“I’ll be the one to break my neck in this slippery muck if your child continues to disregard the rules,” she spat.
“The rules?” Fred inquired.
“No weevils on the pavement. Gets slippery. Too many falls. Either eat them or put them on the table, then back into your bowl when you’re done. Scrape them in the buckets by the water spout when you rinse your bowl. See that he does it.”
She gave a curt nod in Bobby’s direction and sailed away.
Dorothy cringed while Fred instructed Bobby in the collection and disposal of weevils. She’d been biding her time, waiting to question Fred about the nanny arrangements when the weevil-wafting episode interrupted her pent-up irritation.
It hadn’t been easy holding her tongue while Fred dominated the conversation. He’d opened their morning dialogue with fifteen straight minutes of exuberant monologue. Apparently he had been welcomed with open arms into the camp’s academic community yesterday. In the space of an hour they’d outlined a plan for him, allotted him a teaching space on the top floor of the Main Building and given him a list of college-bound students’ names.
Once he was finished with his weevil warning he turned to her again.
“I’m serious, Dorothy. Are you not feeling well?” His hand on her arm tried to leech the anger out of her, and she felt guilty clinging to it as she of
fered a meager smile.
“No, I’m fine,” she answered without looking at him. “Collect the buckets like I showed you, Carol, so they’re ready to wash.” Carol jumped from her bench and gathered the four wire-handled tin buckets that served as dinner plate and breakfast bowl all in one. “And do the...the weevily wash like the lady said. Scrape first, rinse, then wash, okay sweetie?”
Carol nodded and skipped off to do a chore Dorothy had no doubt she would be hating by the end of the week.
“I like your hat,” Fred said, buttressing his smile with a wink. “Quite the high fashion chapeau, I would say.”
Dorothy huffed. She’d stopped at the camp’s unofficial recycled clothing vendor—not much more than a ragman right out of a Dickens novel—on the way to breakfast with Fred and the children. Several hats hung on a rack that rose above the fellow’s cart. But the brim of the hat he’d foisted upon her was particularly wide and the “bowl” was an open weave that would keep her from getting too hot, so she had gratefully adopted the sad thing. It had cost her one outrageous half peso.
“I met Jeanne,” she said.
“Excellent! Wonderful girl! She’ll be in my class.”
“So...the children will be with her? In your class?” She heard the disapproval in her voice and didn’t like the sound of it.
“Oh no. Her brother will watch Bobby while Jeanne’s in class, and Carol will be in her own class.”
“You have it all worked out then.”
She felt bitter words rising to her tongue, and it was so foreign to her that it nearly made her ill. From what she could see he was practically giving their children the run of the camp.
She’d never spoken a harsh word to him in their entire acquaintance, yet this morning she could barely hold back a seething tirade. This was their children he was talking about, and he seemed so cavalier as to their care. She’d taken on the work at the hospital safe in the knowledge—or rather, erroneous assumption—that the children would be safe in Fred’s company throughout the day.
“Actually, I do have it all worked out,” Fred smiled. “Jeanne is a lovely girl. Her brother bunks in the Gym balcony not far from my spot. She plays violin and was a college student when all this began. Her parents have a shanty in Glamorville, one of the shantytowns on higher ground here. She’s articulate and highly regarded by several of the faculty. She doesn’t require remuneration...sees this as one of the ways she can be of help in the camp. I will pick up the children and breakfast with you every morning. Then I will take Carol to the Kindergarten class where she will be for two hours, and Bobby will come to class with me. Miss Travay will arrive a bit early along with her brother, Saul. The brother will entertain Bobby while we have class. After class, Miss Travay will collect Bobby, then get Carol, get their noon meal at the children’s kitchen and settle them for the siesta. After siesta I will collect them, since I will be done with my teaching and camp duties by then.”
Dorothy blinked.
“What?” Fred seemed finally to have noticed her annoyance.
“Well, I...that is, I thought they might...”
“Might what?” Fred reached across the table and took her hand.
Dorothy stilled. All night she’d worried that it would fall to her to work out proper supervision for the children. She had mentally railed at Fred for leaving them yesterday with the first person who came along. But now she saw it was nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. He had come up with a very satisfactory solution, one with which the children clearly were thrilled. Just because Bobby and Carol’s mother didn’t know all the details didn’t mean their father didn’t.
“Oh, darling girl, you miss them, don’t you? Going back to work in a hospital after being constantly with your children these fourteen months has been hard on you. I should have thought of it, sweetheart. I could have brought them over to see you, or waved through the window or something. Would you like me to do that this afternoon?”
Now she really was going to cry. He’d completely misinterpreted the reason she was out of sorts. And she was grateful for it.
Dorothy managed a weak smile. He was so generous with her when she had just been practically wicked with him. This damnable war was making her doubt everyone around her. She looked into his eyes and put her hand atop his that was still caressing the back of her other hand. She would never doubt him again. Not ever.
“No, darling, that won’t be necessary. You’ve worked out your schedule and you don’t need to complicate it by gathering everyone up to pay me a visit. I’m fine with it all, truly I am.”
He beamed. “Then I must be on my way.” He blew a discreet kiss from across the table, the only kind of kiss either of them would be comfortable with in a public setting. “I’ll go fill their little minds and you go save their little boo-boos.” He saluted as he moved away from the bench and turned toward the Main Building.
Dorothy stared. Surely she’d heard him wrong. Little booboos? Is that really how he thought of her work? He of all people knew better than that. It was an utterly careless thing to say. Booboos indeed. He couldn’t have forgotten already how she’d saved his own foot from the tropical ulcers that very nearly required its amputation. She dared him to call that a wee booboo.
Dorothy watched him go as her emotions jostled about and at last began to untangle themselves. The prospect of teaching again had restored a small bit of Fred’s radiance, and despite his cavalier dismissal of her healing art, she thanked God for that. She’d very nearly tarnished his bright mood with her unbridled fit of pique.
Well, it wouldn’t happen again. She’d see to that. It was work that kept them sane, after all. She would tread more carefully in the future. And perhaps drop a hint that Fred might do the same.
She sighed, welcoming the release from her former angst. Now it was time to don her white coat. And go save some little boo-boos.
. . . .
She’d been afraid. That’s what it boiled down to. Afraid she wouldn’t be able to manage her little family in this teeming compound. She’d never really felt that kind of worry before, and had dealt with it in the least satisfactory way. But in the space of a conversation with Fred and a whispered prayer as she stood washing her coffee mug, she felt renewed.
Dorothy threw herself into the clinic routine, anxious to shake off the morning’s emotional unrest. It was only minutes before an emergency presented itself in the form of a ten-year-old boy. With a knife sticking out of his foot.
He was bravely hobbling toward her, helped on either side by two other boys of similar age. Had it been a parent helping him, Dorothy doubted he could have held back his tears. But caught up between two friends, he was doing a remarkable job of pretending that having a blade sticking out of his foot didn’t scare him to death.
She would ordinarily expect them to have pulled the knife out as soon as it happened. But the blade looked to be fairly well embedded in the bone. It was going to take a bit of doing to dislodge it without breaking it off. And it was going to hurt like the dickens. Without eggs and milk in his diet, his bones would knit slowly. And she’d have to bind him well because a boy his age wouldn’t be likely to stay off his foot through the long healing process. He’d have to come in regularly for disinfectant, or tropical ulcers at the wound site would be his next battle.
The boy pushed himself up onto the examining table and used both hands to lift his foot up. He seemed to know the routine as if he’d been here before.
Dorothy put a solemn hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Let me guess,” she said gravely. “Mumblety-peg?”
The boy grimaced. She was right. He’d tried just a bit too hard to win the game of flinging a knife into the dirt to see who could come closest to his own foot. The upside of it was, if the knife went into your foot, you automatically won.
. . . .
Several hours and three dozen patients later, Dorothy found a moment to sit down. Camp rules had each internee
working four hours a day. In the state of malnourishment in which they existed, four hours was the maximum expected. Dorothy had been on her feet now for six hours.
She had barely taken a deep breath when a hand reached in front of her and dropped a biscuit with a dollop of jam onto the desk.
“Bomber bread,” the voice said.
Dorothy looked up into the gaunt but kind face of a woman she’d seen working around the ward.
“Frances Lloyd,” the woman said. “We’re awfully glad you’re here, Dr. Chambers.”
Dorothy smiled and scooted over to make room for Frances Lloyd to sit. “Happy to know you Miss—”
“Mrs.,” the woman offered. “My husband and I were some of the first ones here.”
“Ah. A dubious honor,” Dorothy smiled. “Thank you for the...what did you call it?”
“Bomber bread. Some call it a ‘battle biscuit’. Rice flour, salt, shortening, soda, vinegar, and water. Easy as pie. Make it ahead and it doesn’t spoil, so there’s always something to eat if there’s an air raid and we can’t get to the chow lines.”
“Do you use banana vinegar?”
“Whatever we can find. There’s always somebody making up some vinegar from bananas, or even prune pits if you can get them. Bomber bread tastes like a whole lot of nothing, but it does make a nice lump in your stomach. Try it.”
Dorothy picked up the flat biscuit and took a taste. The biscuit itself was just as she’d said. A whole lot of nothing. But the jam on top was out of this world. It stimulated taste buds that had long since gone dormant.
“What is this,” Dorothy asked in wonder.
Frances grinned. “Mrs. Oftendahl’s ‘strawberry’ jelly.”
Dorothy was shocked. Strawberry was not possible. Out of the question. Even though it tasted exactly like her mother’s homemade strawberry jam.
“You have to tell me. How could it taste like strawberry?”
“Eggplant, calamanci, and brown sugar. Pretty terrific, hm?”
Dorothy nodded. She took another small bite, then wrapped the rest carefully in a bit of paper, tenting the top so it wouldn’t disturb even a smidgen of the scrumptious ‘strawberry’ jelly.
Courage in a White Coat Page 30