Meanwhile in the World where Kennedy Survived

by Lacey Ann Carrigan

  Chapter Twelve

  Dorina’s dream started with a bouncing red ball. Gradually, details began to reveal themselves to her. She was aware of a stiff, starchy dress with ruffles scratching her neck and her knees. Her long hair had been pulled tight and when she reached up she realized that it had been braided into pig tails on both sides. She was bouncing the ball back and forth to a little girl who seemed to be about seven or eight years old. Yet Dorina was on her same level; she was a little girl again.

  The other girl laughed in pealing ripples of joy and Dorina realized that they were on a black topped playground and the sounds of other children’s laughter filled the air. Dorina studied her, all the while trying to keep the rhythm of their bouncing ball game. Her playmate’s hair had been pulled away from her face and secured with bows on both sides of her head. Sausage curls cascaded down, dark, but reflecting coppery highlights in the bright sun as she jumped up and down in giddy glee. Her skin was luminescent and fair of tone and glowed, possibly from the ethereal hue with which the dreaming mind recasts the world.

  The dark haired little girl had exquisite eyes, dark brown or hazel but joyous and expressive, with a slight upward slant at the corners. Dorina was trying to remember where she had seen the expressions or the face when a rambunctious red-haired boy with a dusting of freckles ran past. He wore a button down shirt with tweed trousers too large for him and Buster Browns. “Hey, Kraut!” he shouted to Dorina’s playmate. Pantomiming the gestures of a soldier holding a machine gun he pumped his arms and looked across at her out of an imaginary gun sight, making rat-a-tat noises with his mouth and tongue. “I’ve got you Kraut! Bang! Bang! You’re dead! No more Heil Hitler!”

  Dorina had just caught the red ball but held it and waited for what would happen next. The girl with the sausage curls put her hands on her hips and angrily confronted the boy. She was slightly taller than him and puffed herself up slightly while talking back to him. “Jimmy Wellesley,” she said, “how many times do I have to tell you, we are not Krauts!”

  “Rayner is a Kraut name,” red-haired Jimmy fired back. “My daddy told me.”

  “We are German, not Krauts,” her playmate said defiantly, raising her chin high. “And we have nothing to do with Hitler. Hitler is a very bad man. My mommy told me.”

  Before Jimmy could respond, the school bell rang. Dorina’s playmate, with the last name of Rayner, tugged her lightly on the arm and said “Let’s go.” The girl picked up the red ball and they ran toward a large green door at the back of a rectangular school building.

  Other children ran along with them and noisily they all entered the building. Dorina and the other girl ran for a bright classroom with a blackboard at the front, a huge globe in the corner and neat rows of metal desks with wooden shelf tops. The girl with the sausage curls skipped across the room to a desk near the wall and Dorina instinctively found the desk in the row immediately beside her, sliding into the chair to sit down.

  She quickly realized that the wood top lifted to reveal a metal bin underneath that held all her school books and quill pens. When she closed the desk she saw a receptacle at the flat surface on the far corner, just before the hinges holding the slanted board. It held a cylinder filled with a dark fluid. Ink.

  The teacher appeared at the front of the room. She was about thirty-five, tall and angular-faced, her hair cut short, just past her ears. When the children had finished clamoring around and took their seats, she started to speak. Dorina heard the woman start to talk about the geography lesson. Unfortunately, Jacy started to speak, also. She said “How about coming over to my house after school?”

  The teacher looked fearsome to Dorina, since she was small again. She said “Sh!” to her friend.

  Jacy continued. “We’ll have so much fun. I want to show you something.”

  Dorina said “Jacy!”

  “What?”

  Suddenly a voice boomed from the front of the room. “Miss Rayner!”

  Scared, Jacy’s eyes opened wide and her mouth dropped open.

  “Miss Rayner, would you like to stand and name the mountains along the eastern side of the United States?”

  Slowly, sheepishly, Jacy stood up, her lower lip trembling. “The...Himalayas?”

  Some of her bolder classmates giggled but most of the others may also have been afraid of the teacher. Jimmy Wellesley, sitting two rows over, hissed “The Appalachians, you dummy. Of course you probably know all about the mountains in Germany!”

  “Master Wellesley, that will be enough!” the teacher shouted. Turning toward Jacy and Dorina she said “Young lady, the lord gave us two ears and one mouth. Do you know why?”

  Jacy shook her head.

  The teacher said “Because we should spend most of our time listening instead of talking. That’s how we learn. Do you understand?”

  Jacy nodded.

  “Good. Now let’s learn about the largest city in our country, New York City.”

  As it so often does in dreams the images faded, dissolving and the next thing Dorina knew, she was walking along a sidewalk. The weather was gray and drizzly. She found herself batting her eyelashes to fend off the sting of the rain droplets. In front of her was the large Tudor house where Jacy must have lived. She skipped along the front walkway to the door and rang the doorbell.

  Jacy opened the door a second later, smiling. “What took you so long?” she said. “Come on in!”

  When Dorina had stepped all the way inside the foyer, Jacy used both hands to shut the door behind them. She turned and called out “Mom! Kathryn’s here! We’re going to play.” A very pretty woman with auburn hair that had been pulled back in a bun appeared in the hallway. She was wearing an apron and used a dishtowel to wipe off a wooden spoon while she spoke with them.

  “That’s fine,” Jacy’s mother said. “Just let me know if you go outside. It won’t be long until dinner.”

  “Okay,” she said. She turned to Dorina and said “Let’s go into the living room. I want to show you something.” Dorina followed her as they both skipped around the corner and reached a table along the wall. A box that looked like a miniature cathedral sat atop the table, with its wooden front carved up with a fancy array of diamond shaped openings, like a stained glass window.

  “My daddy doesn’t want me to touch the radio at our house,” Dorina said. “He’s afraid I’ll break it.”

  “My mommy said I could play with it as long as I am careful,” Jacy said. “and my daddy comes home later. He makes bridges.” She jumped onto the overstuffed chair beside the table and reached across to touch the knobs, since neither of them were tall enough to touch them from the floor. “Before I started going to school,” she said “I used to think there was a little man inside the box, talking and playing records.”

  “That’s silly,” Dorina said. “There’s no little man inside the radio. There’s funny looking glass things in there. They look like glass bottles with little bugs trapped inside of them.” Jacy twisted one of the small knobs and the dial at the bottom of the machine lit up. Suddenly they heard a burst of loud static, and Jacy twisted the knob to turn the sound down. She then twisted the larger knob in the center. At first they heard more static, then occasional violins or trumpets, and then the deep, foreboding voices of serious men.

  She turned the smaller knob again, this time in the opposite direction. The sound faded and weakened till it died out with a click.

  “What did you do that for?” Dorina asked.

  “Those are the men that make my daddy mad,” she said.

  “One time something those men said made my mommy cry,” Dorina said. “They said that we were going to war.”

  “That’s why my daddy gets mad,” Jacy said. “He said the war is bad and he wishes it was over.”

  “I remember when I was littler and my daddy would get mad because the men on the radio were always saying that there were no jobs and people were starving. I wanted the man to get out of the radio so he wouldn’t keep saying things
that would make my daddy mad. One day when my daddy was working in the cellar and my mommy was cooking, I sat by the radio. I was waiting for the little man to come out. When he came out, I squashed him with the fly swatter.”

  “Ew, that’s naughty!”

  Jacy laughed at her. “But the war will be over some day.”

  “When?”

  “When we’re grown up.” Jacy paused to think. Her features then metamorphosed into a spontaneous expression of glee. “Hey, I know! We can get our butterfly nets and chase after butterflies!”

  They walked out of the living room and when they passed the hall, Jacy called out “We’re going outside to chase butterflies!”

  “Okay. Just stay out in the back yard.” When Jacy pushed the front door open this time, it was bright and sunny out on the front lawn. They both ran on the grass around the house to the back yard. There was a shed at the back, near the trees. The door had been cracked open and Jacy pushed it aside. Rakes and shovels hung on the walls and two butterfly nets lay on a work bench. Jacy picked them up and gave one to Dorina.

  “What do we do now?” Dorina asked.

  “We sit down and wait for the butterflies to come. And then we catch them.”

  They walked over to the picnic bench and sat down. For several minutes they looked around, at the clothesline, the trees, and the back porch of the house. Dorina watched her friend, who suddenly sprang to her feet, jumping up and down, her eyes bright and wide. “There he is!” she said. “There’s Mr. Butterfly!” She pointed to the telephone pole beside the house and Dorina saw a beautiful orange and black butterfly. “Let’s get him!” The two girls chased after the butterfly, brandishing their nets, swishing them through the air. But the butterfly kept floating just out of the reach of them.

  Someone then called out to them from the porch. A deep, male voice. “Girls! Girls!”

  Dorina turned to the porch, along with Jacy, and they saw a large, smiling man in a suit, who had loosened his tie so that it hung loosely around his neck. “Daddy!” Jacy called out to him. She dropped the butterfly net and ran the length of the yard, hopping up onto the porch, hugging him around his legs, causing him to laugh and teeter back and forth as he patted the back of her head.

  “You girls trying to catch butterflies, huh?” Jacy’s father said.

  “Yeah,” they both said, in unison.

  “What would you do with the butterfly if you caught him?” he asked.

  Jacy and Dorina looked at each other. Jacy said “I guess we would catch him so we can see what he looks like up close.”

  “So, you want the butterfly to become your friend?”

  Dorina and Jacy looked at each other. They giggled. Jacy said “Yes. I think.”

  “Well do you think someone would want to be your friend if you dropped a big net over him?” her father continued.

  “Gosh no, daddy.”

  He nodded. “Then if you want the butterfly to become your friend, you have to become his friend. Here, I’ll show you. Let’s go to the picnic table.” They walked to the picnic table and Jacy’s father sat in the middle of the bench, with Dorina and Jacy on either side of him.

  “Now,” he said, when they were all still, “Think friendly thoughts. Think of how you want to be the butterfly’s friend.”

  Moments later, the monarch returned, fluttering around the clothesline. Jacy looked as though she wanted to shout out but her father held her back, motioning for her to shush. The butterfly flew higher, then across the sun and it hurt Dorina’s eyes to look up at him. He then descended and flew around in a circle in front of them. It became so quiet Dorina thought she could hear the flapping of the butterfly’s wings.

  “Now tell the butterfly you want to be his friend,” he said. “Tell him without saying it.”

  The butterfly flew close to the ground and landed, clinging onto a weed. Jacy’s father held out his arm, lifting his hand, palm down. He whispered “See how I’m holding my hand, honey? Hold your hand just like that and and gently crawl to where the butterfly is.

  Then hold your hand like that so he can jump off the weed and onto your hand.”

  Jacy did as she was told, holding her hand very still. She crept down and crawled toward the butterfly. Dorina followed her. Ten feet away. Five feet away. Then they were on their knees, beside the butterfly. Jacy held out her small hand, beside the weed.

  The butterfly alighted onto it.

  They looked at each other, silently rejoicing eyes wide open, smiling wide. Suddenly a loud, thundering noise like a buzz saw boomed in their ears. The butterfly flew away. Dorina covered her ears with her hands because the noise was so loud it hurt them.

  And she woke up. The alarm clock across the room read “6:00 A.M.” She had placed it there to force herself to get up out of bed to turn it off. That morning she felt an unusual chill as she staggered across to turn off the alarm. She thought, holy shit, what have I gotten myself involved with here?