by Teresa Funke
your hair net from now on, girl.”
I want to scream at him to stop calling me girl, but I don’t. He’s still my boss, though he’s not much of one, and I don’t want to get myself fired. I let Rita lead me down to the medical center, and the nurse takes a look at my head. She slows the bleeding and gives me some aspirin for the pain, then shows me how to comb my hair over the bald spot. She too reminds me to wear a hair net, and I say I will, but I won’t. None of the women do. I’ll just be more careful from now on.
I wait for an hour in the heat for a bus to take me back to Hayden’s Valley, my head throbbing. When I get home, Grandma Kate settles me on the front porch, where the scent of the neighbor’s freshly cut grass greets me on a breeze. She brings me a glass of lemonade and a Nancy Drew mystery, but I don’t feel like reading. I feel like crying. I had been so excited for this summer, for having my own job and being with Janie, and now between the war and Hal and Mother’s injury and Martha and Betty, nothing about this summer is working out as I’d planned. I go ahead and let a few tears fall, but things are about to get worse.
6 - The Telegram
When the Western Union boy turns up our walkway, telegram in hand, I jump up, my heart racing. I can tell by the grim look on his face that his news isn’t good.
There’s not a family in town who doesn’t dread a visit like this, one that brings news of a soldier’s death or injury. We’ve all heard the story about the father in LaSalle who received a telegram telling him both of his sons had died when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. All I can think of now is John. But why would the Western Union man be bringing the telegram here and not to my aunt’s house?
“Grandma!” I yell, and I must sound pretty scared, because she rushes out on the porch almost immediately.
The telegram boy shuffles his feet. I recognize him now. He’s Mr. Anderson’s oldest son. “Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Uhland,” he says. “I been trying to deliver this telegram to the house behind you. I know someone’s home cuz the front door is open, but no one answers when I ring. The neighbor said I ought to bring it here and give it to you.”
Grandma Kate extends a hand. “I’ll sign for it and see that Mrs. Osthoff gets it.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
The boy hands the telegram to Grandma Kate and ambles back down the walkway, his footsteps lightened by the release of his sad duty. Grandma and I stare at the star on the cover of the telegram, then she turns it over and slips it open. Over her shoulder, I read the words in capital letters: THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET YOUR SON PRIVATE FREDERICK OSTHOFF WAS KILLED IN ACTION. . . I don’t see the rest. Grandma Kate has dropped down onto the porch swing, letting the telegram fall into her lap.
“Merciful heavens,” she says. “Hasn’t that poor woman been through enough?”
She sinks back against the swing, and I sit down beside her. She lays a hand on my knee, and I lower my head to her shoulder. I rock the swing with my foot, the chains creaking beneath our shared weight. Neither of us says a word until Grandma sighs heavily and shakes me off.
“Tell your mother I’ll be back soon,” she says, her voice strong and clear again.
“Can I come with you?”
“No.”
“Please, Grandma. I just want to tell her I’m sorry for her loss.” This isn’t entirely true, I’m ashamed to admit. I also want to see Mrs. Osthoff up close. Maybe catch a glimpse into that closed-up house of hers. And I want to see how Grandma Kate handles this situation, she who can handle anything. But how do you tell someone her son is gone? I have to see that for myself. I’m sure Grandma knows I have other motives—she always knows exactly what I’m thinking—but she surprises me by saying yes. I guess this is something she doesn’t want to do alone. I slip my shoes on quickly before she changes her mind.
Grandma Kate would never dream of cutting through people’s lawns, so we walk all the way around the block to reach Mrs. Osthoff’s house. Grandma pauses for only a moment to draw a deep breath, then plows up the porch steps and knocks on the screen door. The inside door is open.
“Eva,” she calls, and I’m surprised to hear her use Mrs. Osthoff’s first name.
“Eva, come to the door.” When there is still no movement in the house, Grandma Kate opens the screen door and lets herself in. I follow.
There is no entryway in this house. We’ve stepped directly into Mrs. Osthoff’s sitting room. It’s not at all what I expected. With all the rumors about her, I imagined dark, dusty rooms littered with broken and discarded things. But this room is not like that at all. It’s as neat and tidy as our own. The furniture is old but well cared for, and the walls are decorated with framed photographs and embroidered samplers that look recently completed. The house smells of rose blossoms from a vase near the window. The curtains are drawn, but there is light coming in from the front door.
“Eva,” Grandma Kate calls out again, then takes herself down the hall to the kitchen.
Mrs. Osthoff is sitting at her kitchen table, her hand resting on her chin, her eyes gazing out through the lace curtains toward the back of our house. She looks thin in her old brown house dress. Her ankles are crossed above dark, heavy shoes, and there’s a small hole in her hose. Her hair is pulled back in a loose bun. In the light from the window, though, I can see it’s still a pretty shade of auburn with only traces of grey. Grandma lays a hand on Mrs. Osthoff’s shoulder and sets the telegram gently in front of her. Mrs. Osthoff looks down at it. There are deep shadows under her eyes, and her cheeks are pale, but she is not unattractive, and she does not look crazy. She just looks sad.
I hold onto the doorway, afraid to move closer, afraid Mrs. Osthoff will release one of her terrible screams, but she doesn’t. She just hugs herself and starts to shake. Grandma puts her arm around Mrs. Osthoff and does something so unexpected it steals my breath. She starts speaking to Mrs. Osthoff—in German. She does this for several minutes, stroking the younger woman’s hair. Then Mrs. Osthoff does scream, “Frederick!” She throws off Grandma’s arm and brushes past me, slamming her bedroom door. I hear that long, low moan I know so well, and it’s worse than the scream because it’s filled with so much pain. I shudder. Grandma Kate straightens and looks past me for a moment, then lets her shoulders drop. There are tears in her eyes. In all my fourteen years, I’ve never seen my grandmother cry. I start to say something, but she just turns me around and pushes me ahead of her out the front door.
Outside, she starts walking so fast that even my long legs can barely keep up.
“Grandma?” I say, but she shushes me.
She storms through our front door and back to the kitchen without even taking off her shoes. She grabs an apron off the peg and reaches under the sink for her boiling pot, banging it down on the stove. She picks up a potato off the counter and starts to whip the peel off with quick, hard strokes. I know I should help, but I sink down into a chair and watch instead.
“Grandma, you called Mrs. Osthoff by her first name,” I say. “It sounded like you knew her.”
“Well, of course I do. Haven’t I lived across from that woman for years?”
“No, it sounded like more than that. Like you really knew her. And you were speaking German, Grandma. I didn’t know you knew how.”
She drops her knife into the sink and turns on me. “Of course I know how. Weren’t my parents from Germany? Didn’t they move here just before I was born? Half the folks in this valley have German blood, Helen. That doesn’t make us Nazis.”
“Of course not,” I say, but that’s exactly what I’d been thinking, and Grandma knew it. I wonder if the police will come search our home too, like they did that German man’s in LaSalle. Grandma picks up her knife and starts chopping the potato. I shouldn’t say any more, but I can’t help it.
“Is that why you’re friends with Mrs.Osthoff? Cuz she’s German too?”
“I am not friends with Mrs. Osthoff. Her husband, Otto, was a distant relative of mine from Germany. Otto wrote t
o us after the First World War. He had married a young woman whose heart was broken. She’d lost everything. He thought a fresh start in a new country would do her good.” Grandma picks up another potato that’s already peeled and starts chopping that one too. “We helped them get settled when they got here. At first they lived in an apartment above the pool hall, then they moved into the house behind us. Frederick was born there.” She scoops up the potatoes and dumps them into the pot.
“After Frederick’s birth,” she says, “Eva started talking again. She took up photography. She got good at it too. She was happy . . . for a while. After Otto died, she closed herself up in that house with her son, but Frederick was never meant for a life like that. He was a dreamer. He wanted to see the world. He couldn’t stay there with her and her grief. After Frederick left, Eva shut us out. All of us. Even me.”
Grandma Kate pauses. She slumps over the sink. For a moment I think she might be crying again, but when she looks up her eyes are clear and hard.
“Grandma?”
“Enough of your questions, Helen. Go check on your mother. Let me have some peace.”
I take off my shoes and slip into the back bedroom. When the heat is high in the daytime, we all rest in this room. It’s too hot upstairs. Mother is sleeping, so I decide not to wake her. I go back out to the