Dolls of War

Home > Other > Dolls of War > Page 4
Dolls of War Page 4

by Shirley Parenteau

His smile looked almost the way it had before Mama got sick. “Go ahead.”

  What could be in the package? It was far too small to be a puppy or even a kitten. It could hold a goldfish, but a fish would need to be in water.

  She had teased herself long enough. Feeling about ready to explode, she gently shook the package. “It’s something hard. And small.” She looked at Nick. “I can’t guess.”

  “Don’t guess,” he said, grinning. “Open it.”

  She pulled the end of the ribbon so the bow untied, then slipped it off, taking her time to make the surprise last longer. Then she couldn’t wait and ripped open the tissue. A familiar gold chain slipped partly into her hand. Her breath caught. With trembling fingers, she pulled the final bit of paper away. “My doll! You fixed her!”

  Happy tears nearly kept her from seeing Mama’s little kokeshi doll with her head fastened on again. Black paint covered the top where a new bun had been glued on to hold the chain.

  Macy leaped from her chair to fling her arms around Nick in a fierce hug. “I thought she was ruined forever!”

  “Luke helped repair her for you. Our handyman can do more than mow lawns and hang pictures, you know. He found a little dowel the right size. We got the old one out and glued the new one in the doll’s head, then glued the other end inside her body, and there you are.”

  “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Macy leaned back to look at him. “I wish you weren’t going away.”

  He took the kokeshi doll from her and fastened the chain around her neck. “There. Just like new. Now give me that big smile I’ve been waiting to see.”

  She gave him her best Cheshire Cat grin, but her smile became natural as she slipped into her chair. “You’re the best brother in the whole entire world!”

  Papa said, “Remember to thank Luke, too, when you see him.”

  “I will.” She smiled down at the kokeshi, turning it so the doll faced her brother.

  Hap’s rapid code knock sounded at the back door, the way it had for as long as they’d known him. She turned toward the kitchen door as he sauntered in. “Morning, everyone!”

  As the others welcomed him, Macy held out the doll. “Hap, look! Nick fixed my kokeshi!”

  “Hey.” He lifted the doll for a closer look. “I’ll bet your Mama’s smiling down right now, thinking she can’t tell it from new.”

  “She is,” Macy agreed. “I mean, I’m sure she is. I haven’t had time to show Miss Tokyo, but I will right after breakfast.”

  Miss Rasmussen hurried in with a platter piled high with steaming pancakes. “Good morning, Hap.”

  “Morning, beautiful. Think you can find an extra plate for a hungry marine?”

  “I sure can.” She set down the platter and headed back into the kitchen.

  Hap tousled Macy’s hair before taking a seat next to Nick. “I couldn’t go away,” he said, teasing, “without sharing a last breakfast with my favorite girl.”

  For Macy, it was the best breakfast since before Mama got sick. She kept looking from Nick to Hap, almost forgetting to eat as she tried to memorize their flashing smiles and the joyful impatience in their eyes.

  Hap caught her glance and grinned. “The next time you see us, Macy, we’ll be wearing spiffy new uniforms. Is your imagination wild enough to picture that?”

  “Yes.” She smiled around a bite of pancake she had just raised to her mouth. “You’ll be even more good-looking. Both of you,” she added quickly, before Nick could tease.

  He teased anyway. “Come on, Sis. You won’t care how we look. You’ll be too busy asking what we’ll bring you from Japan.”

  The pancake dropped from her fork to her plate. “Are you going to Japan?”

  “Not right away,” Hap assured her. “Not until our boys chase them all the way back to Tokyo.”

  Nick added, “I just hope the war lasts long enough for us to take part.”

  Hap must have seen the worry in Macy’s face. “Your brother wants it to last long enough for all the girls to see him decked out in his new uniform.”

  “That, too,” Nick agreed.

  Macy leaned back in her chair. She was so proud of them both, she could hardly stand it. She was scared for them, too. They have to spend a long time in basic training, she reminded herself. The war will probably be over before they have to fight.

  They looked eager and happy. She didn’t care. The girls will just have to miss seeing Nick in his uniform. And Hap in his.

  “You’re coming back,” she said, breaking into a pause. “Both of you. Promise.”

  “We’ll be back,” Hap said. “Just as soon as we single-handedly win the war.”

  Everyone laughed and began talking again. Joke or not, Macy held Hap’s promise close. She wished it were time for them to come home instead of almost time for them to leave.

  A lot of people came to the train station later that morning. Macy and Papa stood with Hap’s parents, while Nick and Hap’s friends crowded around them, cracking jokes and remembering funny times in the past. Hap’s laughter rang out, sounding as contagious as ever and making it hard to feel sad.

  Near Macy, a woman said to a friend, “I believe Hap can just aim that smile of his and the war will end without another shot being fired.”

  Macy’s worry wasn’t lost on Hap. He took a moment from joking with his friends to come over to reassure her. “Don’t worry, little sis. We’ll whip the bad guys into shape and be home before you’ve had time to miss us.”

  “I already miss you,” she said, but her words were lost in the roar of the train thundering into the station. Black smoke flew like a flag of war from its stack, while the iron wheels clanked and shrieked like imagined tank treads.

  Nick came over to hug Macy good-bye. “Chin up, Sis,” he said, shouting over a blast of noise and smoke from the train.

  His touch felt comforting, and yet signaled his eagerness to be on his way. “Macy, everything’s going to work out with school and all. Don’t worry, okay?”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  “Write to me,” he said, turning to shake hands with Papa while friends clapped his shoulders in cheerful good-byes.

  As Macy looked after him, she noticed Christopher Adams with his family farther down the platform. A young man with an expression as eager as Nick’s hugged the women and shook hands with the men. He took time to shake Christopher’s hand, too, pressing the other hand firmly on top.

  Macy guessed the new soldier was one of several cousins Christopher had in town. When his cousin ran to board the train, Christopher buried his face against his father’s shoulder. A rush of sympathy rose through her. She clenched her fingers over the repaired kokeshi doll necklace beneath her collar.

  She didn’t want to feel sympathy for Christopher Adams. Instead, she looked for her brother, who had disappeared aboard the crowded train. The sound of the whistle blowing as it carried Nick and Hap to war stayed with her all the way home.

  That afternoon, Miss Rasmussen helped her sew a flag for the window. It was white with a red border and a blue star in the middle. The blue star meant that someone in the family was serving in the armed forces.

  Lily stood on the sidewalk watching while they hung the flag in the front window facing the street. “It’s not straight,” she called. “Move it a little to the left. Now raise it higher. Too much! Lower it a little.”

  “Pray we never have to cover the blue star with gold,” Miss Rasmussen said, almost to herself.

  “Like Christopher Adams’s mother did,” Lily said, moving to the first step. “When I walked past his house, she was hanging a gold-star flag in their window.”

  The young cousin? No, he had just left on the train. “His uncle,” Macy exclaimed out loud. “The one who was at Pearl Harbor.” For a moment she couldn’t breathe. That’s why he was upset to see his cousin leave. His uncle won’t be coming back. He must feel sick with fear for his cousin. I’m sorry I argued with him that day.

  “His uncle died from
burns he got from the attack,” Lily said. “He was a nice man, always cracking jokes. Kind of like Hap Davis.”

  Macy took a step away from her, as if that could make the words less terrible. What happened to Christopher Adams’s uncle won’t happen to Nick or Hap, she promised herself as she walked onto the porch to see the flag from there. Our star will always be a blue one.

  Lily walked up to the porch. “A lot of families are making these for their windows. My father read in the paper that on the day after Pearl Harbor, thousands of men across the country signed up to fight.”

  “I didn’t know there were that many men the right age.”

  “Neither did the Japs,” Lily said with satisfaction, then added quickly, “I mean the enemy, the Germans and Italians. . . .”

  “You might as well say Miss Tokyo,” Macy exclaimed. “Say Miss Tokyo didn’t know so many would enlist. I didn’t think you would call our doll the enemy, too.”

  “I didn’t,” Lily exclaimed. “You hear criticism in everything anyone says. I’m afraid to talk to you anymore.”

  Holding her head high, Lily walked down the street.

  “I wouldn’t hear criticism if you weren’t such good friends with Rachel all of a sudden,” Macy called after her, but Lily didn’t look back and she didn’t stop walking away.

  They made up at school on Monday. “We’re best friends. We’re not like the . . . the enemy,” Lily said, stammering a little. Macy forgave her for almost saying, “Not like the Japanese.” It was wartime. She couldn’t blame Lily for hating the enemy they were fighting.

  “No,” she agreed. “Best friends always make up.”

  On Wednesday, Macy found herself waiting in line for lunch milk ahead of Christopher Adams. She tried to keep her mind on the little glass bottles in their wire rack on the school porch, where the milkman left them each day. Behind her, Christopher talked and laughed with friends. She didn’t want to interrupt, but she needed to say that she understood, that she was sorry about their fight.

  When she bent to unroll her nickel from the cuff of one sock, she was thinking so hard about what she should say — or not say — that she knocked the nickel loose. It rolled in a half circle and fell over beside Christopher’s foot.

  He picked it up and handed it back.

  “Thanks.” That wasn’t enough. She knew it and said, fast to get it all out at once, “I’m sorry about your uncle.”

  He shrugged and turned back to his friends. She felt her face get hot. He didn’t want sympathy. She’d known that all along. Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? It didn’t matter. She didn’t like him any more than he liked her.

  But later she offered him one of Miss Rasmussen’s sugar cookies from her lunch box. She was glad when he took it.

  To her surprise, he sat beside her to eat the frosted cookie. After a bite, he lowered the cookie to look at her. “I’m sorry I said what I did when we got sent to the principal that day.”

  His mother had probably told him to say that. “What about sending those men to the museum to get rid of Miss Tokyo? Are you sorry about that, too?”

  His eyes widened. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. What happened? Is the doll still there?”

  “Yes, she’s still there.” Macy looked away. “And I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you, either. My dad didn’t like having to go to the principal’s office to get me.”

  “Neither did mine.” Macy felt weird sharing something with Christopher. It didn’t make them friends, though. How could it?

  “Someone told me you used to live at the coast,” he said. “My great-uncle lives there, close to the beach. He says he breathes better with the ocean close by.”

  “I wish I were there now,” Macy said, almost to herself.

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “My mother got sick. Papa said it was too wet for her at the coast, so we moved here to the valley, where it doesn’t rain so much.” She glanced at Christopher. “I guess your great-uncle doesn’t mind the rain.”

  “He’s a funny old duck,” Christopher said, discussing their families as if they were friends. “He wears a heavy wool coat summer and winter. His tiny little house has old magazines piled everywhere. He says he likes the spiders living in the stacks.”

  Macy almost — not quite, but almost — giggled.

  Christopher went on with a smile in his voice, as if he’d heard the almost-giggle. “Mom wants to hire a housekeeper for my old uncle, but he won’t have a stranger snooping around. Dad says he’d scare off a housekeeper the moment she set foot inside his door.”

  “I think I’d like him.”

  “You and me both. Mom thinks I’m nuts, but I get along great with the old guy.”

  The bell rang, ending lunch recess. Christopher stood and held out his hand. After a long hesitation, Macy got to her feet, too. She didn’t take his hand, but when he opened the door into the classroom, she walked through with him.

  On her way home from school, Macy stopped outside Mr. Bradford’s grocery store. Until the bombing at Pearl Harbor, she had often stopped to talk with the grocer. He was one of the men who’d come to the museum to take Miss Tokyo that awful day, but maybe he hadn’t really wanted to be with the others.

  He’d always seemed interested in school and how her classes were going. Sometimes he even helped with a math problem that had her stumped. She missed talking with him, and pushed the door open to step inside. “Hello, Mr. Bradford.”

  The grocer came from behind the counter and slapped one hand down on the glass lid to the cookie bin. “Supplies are getting short,” he said. “There won’t be sugar for treats much longer. I can’t afford to be giving away any more cookies.”

  His voice sounded sorry, but his eyes looked hard. His eyes said, No cookies for Jap lovers.

  She had come to the store hoping for friendship, not cookies. The war in Stanby was far from over.

  At church services on Sunday morning, everyone was polite, but Macy felt as if the love she and Papa had for Miss Tokyo set them apart.

  If I can remember the good in everyone else, why can’t they remember that I’m a lot more than a girl who loves a Japanese doll? I haven’t changed, even if they have.

  It was a relief to slide into a pew and sit next to Lily’s family, as she and Papa always did. Their smiles were friendly, and Macy felt herself relax a little.

  When the pastor began a sermon about loving our neighbors, Macy was tempted to glance around to see how her neighbors were taking it. Instead, she sat straight while her mind buzzed with thoughts of people at school.

  “Lily,” she whispered.

  Lily looked over, but so did Lily’s mother, with a shushing look in her eyes. Macy pulled her church bulletin close and wrote in the margin, Why doesn’t Rachel like me?

  Lily glanced at the note, then away for a long minute as if listening to the sermon. At last, she turned her bulletin and wrote along the edge: She’s jealous.

  Macy looked at her in astonishment. She wrote in the margin, Why?

  Lily glanced at her mother, then leaned close to Macy to whisper, “Christopher. She thinks he likes you.”

  “Me!” People glanced her way. Macy stared straight forward and concentrated on the sermon until no one was paying attention to her. Then she whispered to Lily, “He hates me.”

  Lily shook her head. “That’s not what Rachel thinks.”

  Lily’s mother put a shushing finger to her lips. Macy reached for her hymnal for the final hymn, but she couldn’t focus on the words. Rachel was jealous of her? Rachel, with more friends than she had time for and a mother at home? That Rachel was jealous of her?

  Jealous over Christopher? That didn’t make sense at all.

  School had let out for Christmas vacation, so on Monday, Macy and Lily walked to city hall with bags of empty tin cans. Macy explained to a lady at a desk inside, “We’re collecting because the radio said just two tin cans are enough to
make a syringe to give a shot of medicine to a wounded soldier.”

  The lady nodded. “Everyone will be asked to save tin and more if the war goes on. Tin will be needed to ship food to the soldiers overseas, too, since it’s the only metal that doesn’t rust.”

  “We’ll bring more,” Macy promised, but she thought of Mr. Bradford closing the cookie bin and wondered if people would be willing to give her their empty tin cans, even for the war effort.

  She pulled her coat closer around her when they left city hall.

  Lily glanced at the cloudy sky. “It’s cold, but let’s look at store windows before we go home.”

  By the time they’d walked a few blocks to see store windows with animated displays, light snowflakes had begun falling. The flakes added to the magic of loudspeakers playing “Jingle Bells” as they stood outside a department store window, pointing out the moving figures inside.

  “Mrs. Santa’s baking cookies,” Macy said, watching the smiling figure with a white apron over her red dress travel on a rail back and forth from her cookie-making table to the open oven door. Santa rocked beside the fire, reading a long list of names. In the next window, elves busily loaded bright packages onto a sleigh.

  “Oh, look!” Lily exclaimed, pointing. An elf in a bright-green suit and shoes with pointed toes had reached the end of his track. He turned with a painted grin as the track circled.

  “He’s looking right at us!” Macy said.

  The mechanical elf raised one hand and waved. Lily shrieked and clutched Macy. They both giggled while the elf slowly moved away on his track to the toys waiting to be loaded onto the sleigh.

  “You have a new boyfriend,” Macy teased.

  “Me!” Lily exclaimed. “He was waving at you!”

  Laughing, they moved on to the next window. They couldn’t forget the war for long, though. Posters had gone up overnight on walls and fences and even between the store’s lit windows. One of them showed Uncle Sam pointing straight at the person reading it and declaring, I want you for the U.S. Army.

  “Me?” Lily asked, giggling.

  Macy couldn’t laugh now. The next poster showed a torpedoed ship sinking into the ocean. Big words warned, Loose Lips Might Sink Ships.

 

‹ Prev