For the Duration: The War Years

by Tomie dePaola

  “Well, aren’t you a polite young man,” she said. “You certainly can help.”

  “I wish we could have library in second grade, because I love books,” I told her.

  “Well, you don’t have much longer to wait,” Mrs. Cowing said.

  I hoped that I could take out more than one book a week from the school “library.” At the Curtis Memorial Public Library across from the City Hall, the children’s librarian only lets us take out one book a week no matter how many times we go. Mom takes us every week, but I’m usually finished with my book before I get home.

  And besides that, the children’s librarian has all the shelves marked with grade numbers, so if you’re in second grade you can’t take out any upper-grade books even if you’re a very good reader like I am. Of course, I’m really lucky because we have lots of books at home, including tons of comic books that we used to get with Uncle Charles. Maybe Dad or Tom will keep doing that with Buddy and me. I hope so.

  Jeannie comes to our house to read my comic books. Her parents are teachers and they don’t think comic books are good things, so they won’t buy her any. Every once in a while Jeannie just comes into our house and I’ll hear her giggling in the living room. Especially when she’s reading my Little Lulu comics.

  Because I’ve been thinking about next school year a lot, I’ve begun to think about which third-grade teacher I hope I get. Of course, they never tell us whose room we will be in until we come back to school in September, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking—and hoping. I hope I get Miss Bailey. She’s very pretty, with blond hair and blue eyes, and she looks young like Miss Kiniry. And I noticed that she wears the color blue a lot, maybe to match her eyes. I’m sure she’ll be a nice teacher. I smile at her every time I see her in the hallway.

  Chapter Nine

  The dress rehearsal for the dance recital was even better than I thought it would be. We got to see all the dance numbers and all the costumes for the whole recital. The show started with the “baby class.” They went first every year because they were really little and Miss Leah didn’t want to make them wait and wait for their turn. Everyone loved the baby class because they were so cute and so funny. They didn’t do all their steps together, and last year during the recital one of the little girls turned around and saw her shadow from the spotlight on the backdrop. She never turned back around. She just looked at her shadow and bobbed up and down and swayed back and forth and waved at it. The audience laughed and laughed and clapped and clapped.

  This year the baby class was going to be little fishes, and they sang the song about the “little fishies” in the brook who “swam and swam all over the dam.” Their dance had a lot of wiggling in it. The audience would really love that.

  “Under the Sea” was next. The music began and the curtain opened. I was sitting on my throne, wearing the crown and holding the trident. The other kids were sitting around the throne.

  I wasn’t wearing my costume, though, because Mom still had to finish it. But it would be ready for tonight. I stood up and came forward. Then, I began, “I am King Neptune, the king of the sea . . .”

  One by one, I announced each act with a short poem that Miss Leah had written, until I got to the last one, which was “The Pearl in the Oyster Shell.” That was the acrobatic number and the girl was very good. She did backflips and headstands—all sorts of tricks. Then it was time for me to sing “What Kind of a Noise Annoys an Oyster.” The moms and the kids sitting out front laughed and laughed. And this was only the dress rehearsal! The first act was over.

  During the intermission Mom helped me change into a plaid shirt and blue dungarees for the “Uncle Sam Gets Around” number. Almost everyone was in it. It opened the second act.

  Then Billy and I got into our “A Couple of Couples” costumes. We boys had on short white jackets with sparkly lapels, black pants, a silver sash called a cummerbund, and black bow ties.

  Carol and Patty had on sparkly long dresses made out of this material that swirled when they turned around. Miss Leah, who was standing in front of the stage during the rehearsal, smiled and blew us a kiss when we finished.

  The dress rehearsal went smoothly. It was going to be a wonderful show.

  When we got home, Mom made me take a nap so I’d be “rested.” After all, there was going to be a lot of excitement. Of course, I just lay there, wide-awake on my bed. Mom had pulled the window shades down, but I was too excited already.

  When I went downstairs to have something to eat, Mom told me that Buddy wasn’t coming to the recital because he was going to “Saturday Night Movies” with his friends at the YMCA. But Tom was coming! That was even better.

  Then I tried my King Neptune costume on. It was wonderful, especially the green China-silk cape.

  Suddenly the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I yelled.

  I ran to the door. I wanted to show off my great costume.

  “Wait,” Mom cried. “Tomie, wait.”

  As I was running by the coffee table, making my cape flutter behind me, I felt a tug at my shoulder and heard the sound of ripping. My cape had caught the edge of the coffee table and ripped along the silver border. I had ruined my costume! I started to cry.

  Mom got the door. It was a neighbor wanting to know if we had any extra tickets for the recital.

  Mom sent me into the kitchen while she talked to the neighbor. Then she came in to inspect the damage. “Well, it could have been worse,” she said. “It only ripped along the edge. I’ll sew it together by hand.”

  I stood there while Mom put the cape up on the ironing board to sew it.

  When she finished, she said, “No one will see it from a distance.” She helped me out of the costume. I put on some shorts and a shirt. Mom had my other costumes and my best clothes for after the recital on hangers. And off we went.

  Chapter Ten

  On the way to the recital, Mom gave me a pep talk in the car. “Don’t think about anything but your lines and your song for King Neptune,” she said. “The costume looks fine.”

  While the baby class was performing and the audience was laughing, we all got into our places for “Under the Sea.” When the baby class left the stage, the curtain opened. The spotlight hit me and I stood up and walked straight down to the front of the stage. “I am King Neptune, the king of the sea. Tonight is my night for a bit of revelry!” I finished my poem, turned, and twirled my cape. I walked back to the throne and sat. Then, one by one, I introduced each number until we got to “The Pearl in the Oyster Shell.”

  Now, my big moment. “What kind of a noise annoys an oyster,” I sang, “when an oyster’s in a stew?”

  I don’t want to brag, but the audience really loved King Neptune. There was so much applause. I was flabbergasted! I could see Dad and Tom standing up clapping.

  The same was true of “Uncle Sam Gets Around.” It was very patriotic. Billy Burns stood on one side of the stage and I was on the other. Most of the Dancing School students were in the middle. Billy and I took turns reciting our parts. Then everyone sang, “Uncle Sam gets around, but he don’t just drift. He’s a-workin’ and a-givin’ everybody a lift.” The audience cheered. “Don’t forget, we are at war,” the song seemed to say. “It’s hard, but we WILL win!”

  Everyone was doing a really good job with their dance numbers. Finally, Carol and Patty and Billy and I stepped out on stage doing our fox-trot box step. We sang, “We’re the couple in the castle, way up high in the air . . .” “ Then we did our tap number. We were the stars of the recital!

  When we came out into the auditorium after the recital, all the chairs had been moved aside so there could be dancing. Miss Leah always did that!

  I could tell that Dad and especially Tom were very, very proud of me and Carol, Patty, and Billy.

  “I think Cousin Morton had better watch out,” Tom said. (Morton Downey was our cousin and a famous Irish tenor who had a radio program.) “You might show him a thing or two.”

  Then Tom slipped a
SILVER DOLLAR into my hand. “This is for a great job, Timothy, me bucko.” Tom slipped a silver dollar into Carol‘s, Patty’s, and Billy’s hands, too. “Boy, Buddy doesn’t know what he missed!” Tom said.

  The small orchestra started to play and Carol and I did the fox-trot. Lots of people were dancing and having a good time. When the song was over, I went up to Miss Leah, who was wearing a long, beautiful gown.

  “Miss Leah,” I asked, “may I have the next dance?”

  “Why, of course you can,” Miss Leah said with a smile. So we danced all around the floor.

  Soon it was time to go. We picked up Buddy at the Y and then went to Verdolini’s for a pizza. Carol and her mom and dad were already there. We all squeezed into the biggest booth in the place and Carol and I ordered birch beer on tap, which was delicious. Dad said to the waitress, “We have some hungry performers here. We’d better have three large pies. A regular, a sausage, and one with the works.”

  You’d think that I would have fallen fast asleep when we got home, but I didn’t. I could hear Buddy snoring over in his bed, but I was still too excited. I thought about King Neptune. I thought about oysters. I thought about Billy Burns and me and Uncle Sam, and I thought about our dance, “A Couple of Couples.” Maybe I should be a dancing star instead of an artist, or maybe—just maybe—I could be both. Why not?

  I wish I could write this all down in my diary.

  Chapter Eleven

  Every Sunday morning after the nine o‘clock children’s mass at St. Joseph’s, the Sisters of Mercy had Sunday school for all the kids that didn’t go to St. Joseph’s Catholic School. We were getting ready to make our First Holy Communion. I was in the beginning class. We were studying the beginners’ Baltimore Catechism and had to memorize certain prayers like the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be to the Father, and most important, the Act of Contrition. That was a prayer you had to say when you went to confession.

  None of us had ever been to confession. Right before our First Communion we’d all make our First Confession. This was when you asked the priest to ask God to forgive all your sins. To do this, you have to go into a special place called the confessional.

  It’s like a big box with three sections. The Sister told us that the priest sits in the middle part and the people going to confession go in either side. She said that there is a little window that the priest opens (one side at a time) and then you tell him your sins.

  You have to be very careful not to forget anything. Some of the Sunday school class are afraid that they’ll do their First Confession wrong, because there is so much to memorize. I’m lucky I don’t have to worry about that because I memorize things fast.

  Next weekend is the Memorial Day holiday, so we won’t have Sunday school on Sunday. We are going to have it on Friday after “regular”“ school. That’s so funny—SUNDAY school on FRIDAY! We’ll get to meet the kids from St. Joseph’s School who will be making their First Communion, too.

  Also on Friday we are going to have our Memorial Day assembly in King Street School. I will be in the Special Choir, which will sing the songs about the Army and Navy, Marines and Army Air Corps.

  Before our rehearsal on Friday morning, Miss Mulligan, the fifth-grade teacher who plays the piano, asked me quietly if I would be all right. I told her that I thought I would be fine this time. And I was.

  It was time for the assembly and our Special Choir sang our medley. Some of the other classes recited patriotic poems. One class did a Military Drill with cardboard rifles and a girl as the drum major twirling her baton.

  Then Miss Burke, the principal, got up and spoke about the war. She said, “Boys and girls, I want you to know how important it is for us to tighten our belts for the duration.” She said we had to “support our troops” not only with “food and warm clothing, mittens and scarves, but with post-cards and letters.” She spoke about Victory Stamps and Bonds that we would be able to buy next school year right in school. Then she ended her speech by saying, “We should all support President Franklin D. Roosevelt even if we don’t agree with him.” (I couldn’t imagine ANYONE not agreeing with MY president.) All the teachers clapped.

  We were let out early, so we Catholic kids went to St. Joseph’s Church for Friday Sunday school. There were about twice as many kids there as usual. As the Sisters called our names, we formed two lines. “Look and remember who your partner is,” the Sister said. Oh, boy. My partner was Jean Minor, my first girlfriend from first grade.

  The Mercy Sisters seemed to be fussing over the St. Joseph kids more. “They know them better,” whispered Jean.

  We marched from the downstairs of the church across the street to the school, and into the front hall. We were divided into smaller groups and went into different classrooms.

  The head Sister said, “This is where you will come on the Thursday morning of June fourth at seven A.M. We will then line up and have a procession over to the church for the First Communion mass. We will do a practice twice today and then again on Wednesday afternoon after school, when you will also make your First Confession.” And she clicked a little clicker that she called a CRICKET.

  “When I click the Cricket once, stand up.” She did. We did. “Now, when I click the Cricket twice, form your line.” She did. We did. “When I click the Cricket again, go out into the hall and wait. Then I will click the Cricket for you to move in unison.”

  The Sister clicked that Cricket for everything: to march across the street, to march up the church steps, to march down the aisle, to stand, to kneel, to go up to the altar rail or to come back from the altar rail, to file out. It seemed to me that there were an awful lot of clicks.

  We did it twice, like the Sister said we would.

  Then, I walked down Linsley Avenue to catch the bus home.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next day, we were up early to go down to the Bronx to visit my dad’s sister, Aunt Kate, and her husband, Uncle Tony. My dad’s brother Uncle Nick and his wife, Aunt Loretta, were going to meet us there, too. There was going to be a special Memorial Day mass for Blackie.

  It was a long drive down to the Bronx and there were lots of cars on the road. This would be the last holiday before gas was rationed and we would not be able to get as much as we wanted, so a lot of people were traveling.

  The Bronx was so different from Meriden. Above the streets were elevated tracks for the subway, which came out of the ground nearby and clattered on the tracks above your head. It made the streets noisy and kind of dark. There were always lots of people on the streets. There were lots more stores and shops than in Meriden, too. Many of the stores had all the things they sold right out in front, especially the fruit and vegetable stores.

  Aunt Kate and Uncle Tony lived on Powell Avenue in a big five-story building that took up the whole block. In the center of the building was a courtyard with a fountain and a garden. The garden had a sign on it that read, “Home of the future Victory Garden for the residents of this building.”

  I looked up from the courtyard and saw a lot of flags with blue stars on them in the windows. I didn’t see Aunt Kate’s. They lived on the top floor, but I think their apartment looked out on the street instead of the courtyard.

  We started climbing up the stairs—up, up, and up There at the last landing was Uncle Tony waiting for us. My cousin Terry (whose real name was Theresa) was there, too. Aunt Kate was resting, so we had to be quiet.

  Uncle Tony said, “Why don’t you boys come up to the roof with me?” We climbed some more stairs. Uncle Tony opened a door, and there we were on the big roof of the apartment building. There were clotheslines with clothes and sheets flapping in the wind. People were sitting in deck chairs like they have at the beach, getting the sun. Uncle Tony showed us how we could walk all around the big square roof with the space in the middle that looked down on the Victory Garden and the fountain—five floors down!

  (I’m a little afraid of heights, so I hung on real tight to the wall before I looked down into the c
ourtyard.)

  When we got back downstairs, the grown-ups were all in the small living room. Aunt Clothilda and Uncle Mo and Cousin Frankie were there, too. They lived in the Bronx as well, not too far from Powell Avenue.

  Terry took us kids, Buddy, Frankie, and me, into her small bedroom so the grown-ups could talk. (THAT never changes. They don’t let us hear anything.) She turned on her radio and we listened to the singer she called her “HeartTHROB”—Frank Sinatra. Lots of girls liked him.

  After a while Uncle Tony called, “Come out, kids. Dinner’s ready.”

  The living room had a lot of tables put together. Uncle Nick, Aunt Loretta, and Cousin Helen had arrived. There were so many people, but frankly we were used to this on the Italian side of the family.

  We kids sat at the far end, so (of course) I couldn’t hear everything the grown-ups were saying. Aunt Kate kept crying very quietly. But I understood that. I wanted to cry, too. Because Blackie, Anthony, was my favorite cousin.

  Just like at Nana Fall-River’s house, we had food-food-food. Then the dinner was over. Suddenly, lots of sirens began to blow.

  “Well, it’s an air-raid drill,” said Uncle Tony.

  The grown-ups began to turn off all the lights and close the blackout curtains at the window.

  “Hey,” said Uncle Tony. “Why don’t you boys come back up to the roof with me to see the searchlights.”