Rubies from Burma

by Anne Lovett

  That’s my secret, she said, and I knew she was saying that just to be mean.

  I wanted to know if he was really planning to marry her. The very next day after she left for work, I looked for another letter. I searched the dresser under the underwear, the bedside table drawer among the gum wrappers and pencil stubs, on the high shelf of the closet, under the mattress, even behind her old Nancy Drews in our little bookcase. I dared not go snooping in Momma and Chap’s room, and she wouldn’t have put them there anyhow.

  Later on that afternoon, Momma was in the kitchen ironing clothes and listening to Stella Dallas. In my room I turned the pages of a Nancy Drew, puzzling out the words I didn’t know. Nancy usually found what she was looking for, and this time she had found something in an old clock.

  Too bad we didn’t have an old clock. All we had on the wall was a picture of Jesus, all smiling and holding out his hands to the little children. It was pasted on a sort of tin plate that covered up a pipe in the wall.

  Well, Brother Ben Higgins always said that Jesus was the answer.

  I put down my book and scrambled up on the dresser. I tugged at the pie plate little by little, and then all of a sudden it came out of the wall with a sproing, and some papers flew out. I almost fell off the dresser but caught myself just in time and held on breathing hard. There were letters on the dresser and on the floor around me. I hurried down and gathered them up, hoping Momma hadn’t heard. If I got caught my goose would be cooked.

  I held my breath and listened to the radio voices. Darling, I didn’t really mean it. (sob sob)

  I opened a letter and unfolded it. No secrets—the camp, the chow, the buddies, how he missed her. The next one was just about some of his old friends, did she have news. And the next was all about stuff to eat. But the next one read like this, all the way at the bottom: Doll, we’ll have a bang-up wedding when I get back. It would only upset my folks to know we jumped the gun. After they get to know you as well as I do they will love you just as much.

  Mae Lee! Momma called me to come help put away the clothes. My feet felt like somebody had cemented them to the floor and my throat felt like I had swallowed a bucket of sand. I finally croaked I was coming, just a minute.

  I climbed back up and stuffed the letters back in the pipe and was really, really careful not to get any handprints on the wall. When I got to the kitchen, Momma said, what’s the matter, you’re all out of breath. Have you been up to something?

  I’m afraid I just stood there with my mouth open and Momma said have you been jumping on the bed again?

  Well, um, I said and looked down at my feet.

  You are too big for that. It will collapse and one day it might break and I’ll let you off this time but next time you’ll get a switching.

  All right, Momma, I said, and took the basket of clothes and went and put the socks and undershirts and slips and step-ins away in everybody’s room. There were no more cigarettes in Ava’s underwear drawer. I came back to the kitchen.

  Can I have a drink of water?

  Use the jelly glass, she said.

  I poured some cold water from the icebox and drank about half of it down. Then I took the glass to the table. Do you think Ava and Duke got married? I said.

  She turned around so fast and had such a look on her face. What makes you say that?

  I was just wondering, I said. So many weddings this summer.

  They most certainly did not, she said, and don’t say anything like that in front of your daddy. And do not mention it again.

  My face was burning but I turned to the butterbeans.

  She had taught me well. I knew how to slide my finger down and slip the casing off, and it was fun to pop the cool beans off the sweet-smelling pods. For a while anyway. I soon got bored listening to the soap opera but perked up when a dashing pilot came into the story. When is Chap going to be finished with that plane? I asked. I sometimes went into the garage and watched him work on the engine, when he’d let me.

  I hope he doesn’t get in trouble, she said.

  Why?

  It’s the law, she said. All airplanes now belong to the war effort.

  But it’s still in pieces, I said. Part here and part out at the farm.

  I don’t know if that makes a difference, she said. It’s a good thing he got most of the parts already, or he’d never find them. He got the flying bug back in the first war, and he’d be out there now if it wasn’t for his hearing. She sighed. Now hush and let me listen to my story. Get him to tell you all about it.

  I was quiet while the dashing pilot flew across the country to save a dying boy with the serum with ice forming on the wings. The engine sputtered and coughed and the pilot said, Oh, no, I’m losing altitude! There was this keen whining sound and the announcer said in this low disturbing voice, tune in tomorrow.

  Ava came roaring in the door, and when she got to the kitchen she looked like she was fit to bust. I got something to tell you that you ain’t going to believe, she said.

  Don’t say ain’t, said Momma, frowning. She switched off the radio.

  I quit, Ava said.

  You what?

  She giggled like she was my age. Momma—Hardy Pritchard offered me a job!

  Momma’s face was calm but her pale blue eyes looked like ice on the wings of a plane. You are not going to take it, she said.

  I am, Ava said.

  But Ava, I said, and gave her a look. What about—

  What about what, twerp? The way she looked at me, I was glad she didn’t have an iron poker in her hand. She might look soft, all curves and curls, but inside she was full of nails and bricks.

  The back door opened.

  Everything got quiet all of a sudden.

  Chap closed the door. What the hell is goin’ on? Why are you all sittin’ around like somebody died?

  She says she’s going to work for Hardy Pritchard, Momma said.

  Ava put her chin up. He’ll be paying me enough to move out of here. I’ll move out if you stand in my way.

  I’ll kill the bastard first, said Chap. I seen the way he looks at you and now he’s tryin’ to break up my family.

  Ava spoke very calmly. He needs a secretary. His old one got on the bus and rode clear across the country to be with her husband at the Navy base in California.

  But you aren’t a secretary, Momma said.

  You’re a soda jerk, I said.

  Shut up, Ava said to me, and then to Momma and Chap, I studied shorthand and typing in school. They were my best subjects.

  It ain’t right, Chap said.

  I can’t go back to the drugstore, she said. The Doc blessed me out.

  What the hell did you do?

  Well, she said, you know there are regulars who come in every day and have their coffee and breakfast before they go to their offices.

  Yes, I know, Momma said.

  Sometimes Hardy Pritchard sits with them and sometimes he doesn’t.

  He should be having breakfast at his house, Momma said.

  I think she sleeps late, Ava said. You know she has nerves.

  What does that mean, nerves, I said, since it was the second time I had heard it.

  Never you mind, Mae Lee, said Momma. Go on, Ava.

  Well, I was refilling their coffee and one of them said, So what’s really going on with the Jews over there?

  Nothing, it’s just propaganda to get the Jews to finance the war.

  Wait a minute, Hardy Pritchard said. I expect there’s a lot we don’t know.

  I poured coffee into their cups, Ava said. I think you are right, Hardy Pritchard, I said. You guys are sitting in the drugstore drinking coffee and eating doughnuts and some of us have loved ones out there fighting.

  Who asked you, girlie? one of the men said.

  Yeah, women should be seen and not heard.

  Hey, lay off her, said Hardy Pritchard. They all turned to look at him but he didn’t back down. She is entitled to her opinion even if it ain’t the same as some of ours.r />
  You are right, I am, Ava said, and I think—

  Ava, come here for a minute, called Doc Weir from the back of the store, and she asked the men to excuse her and she went back there to the scales.

  I did not hire you to air your opinions, he said.

  Ava told us that she started to open her mouth and thought of her job, because what she was earning was helping us out a lot since it didn’t look like Momma would be well enough to teach next year. So she shut up and said yes, sir and when she went back to the counter all the men had left. She smashed two eggs by accident when she was putting supplies away.

  The next day who should come in for lunch but Hardy Pritchard. She didn’t see him at first because he was early and she was making a new pot of coffee, dumping the old grounds and cleaning the basket and putting in fresh coffee, then she scraped the breakfast bacon grease off the grill, getting it ready for grilled cheese and hamburgers. When she turned around there he was sitting at the counter and had not said a thing, just sitting there watching her work and it made her sore.

  What do you think you’re doing sneaking up like that?

  I didn’t sneak; I’m sitting here big as day.

  Well, what can I do for you? She took her pad out of her pocket.

  You’re a good worker, he said. It’s what I can do for you.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Can you type?

  I can, she said. Second best in my class. Why?

  I’ll have some iced tea and a club sandwich, he said, looking at the person who had hunkered down on the stool beside him. How you, Jimbo? he said. She took the other order because she could do two orders at once and fixed him his club sandwich and his tea and then those red stools started filling up with people and the fans were turning overhead and I could just see it there, cooler inside the store while outside it was hot beating down and everybody drinking their milkshakes and eating their hamburgers and club sandwiches and tuna fish and grilled cheeses while she brushed off the sweat from her forehead.

  Hardy Pritchard ate the club sandwich and went back to talk to Doc Weir and got a prescription filled and then he came back and ordered an ice cream sundae and after he had finished that he ordered a cup of coffee and Ava thought he was never going to leave but finally the people had left and took a glance back at Doc and when he saw Doc was busy, he leaned over and said, come to work for me.

  She looked at him like he was kidding but he looked serious. I don’t know if I want to, she said, but then he told her how much she was going to make, and she thought about how tired her feet were and how she came home every night with her hair smelling of grease and medicine and Doc Weir’s grumpiness.

  Hardy Pritchard is not so bad Chap, she said, and we really could use the money, and this is my big chance to be a secretary instead of a—she looked at me—a soda jerk.

  Chap just looked at her, his hands turning his beer bottle around and around. He lays one hand on you and I’ll blow his head off.

  Thank you Chap, she said, and smiled. Momma did not protest. Maybe because she suspected I knew something because of my question. If Ava was really married to Duke Radford, then it might be okay.

  I wish I had said something. But they never listened anyhow.

  Chapter Six

  It was the second week in September, and there hadn’t been any letters from Duke in a long, long time. And Ava didn’t care.

  She never looked in the mailbox, never asked if anything had come for her. She went out with Dotty and Barbara to dances on the weekend, and as the weeks dragged on by it seemed my sister wasn’t ever at home.

  Momma and Chap sat at the kitchen table with beers and talked in low voices about her. Better for her to enjoy herself, they said, than sit home and mope. What if he never comes back?

  I popped out from behind the living room sofa. He’s got to come back, I shouted at them. He’s just got to!

  Little pitchers have big ears, they said. Why do you care so much?

  I had no answer that they would like.

  On the fourteenth of November, I pulled a letter out of the mailbox, a letter all crumpled and stained, a letter from him.

  I ran in the house with the letter, to the kitchen, where Momma was standing at the stove where a pot was coming to boil. A letter, I said, and she turned and saw from my face who it was from.

  Ava needs to see it first thing, she said. Put it on the hall table on top of the rest of the mail, she said. Is there anything for me?

  I don’t know, I said, scuffing my toes on the floor. I left it in the box.

  Momma had infinite patience with me. Go get it, she said, then come in here and grate this cheese. I looked at the cheese, bright orange, a good kind of smelly, resting on a cracked plate.

  But Momma—

  Just go.

  I ran to get the mail, legs pumping across the cold yard, then put it on the hall table all out of breath, Duke’s letter on top. I settled at the yellow Formica table with the cheese, running it across the grater and watching the little curls drop onto the plate. The pot on the burner hissed and sizzled as she dropped macaroni into it.

  Chap’s car rumbled up in the back and then he came in the door, grinning at me, and I shoved the plate of cheese aside and leaped up to get a hug and then I got him a beer and opened it. He shrugged off his leather jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. He settled down with the beer and took a long guzzle. Then he ran his hand through his dark curls. Go play in your room a few minutes, Mae Lee, he said.

  But the cheese.

  Dinner can wait. Your momma and I have to talk.

  I washed my hands and went to my room, then I slipped back out and tiptoed into their room, into their clothes closet, behind Momma’s Sunday dresses. I pressed my ear to the wall.

  You heard what that Glenda Shale has been sayin’ around town, Chap said.

  I heard, Momma said, but I don’t believe it.

  Talk is she’s jealous. She and Pritchard, huh.

  I thought she went to San Diego with her husband.

  He went without her.

  Momma was quiet for a minute. That girl was always lazy, she said.

  I am tellin’ you, Gwen, our Ava is gonna lose her reputation and there goes Mr. Dulany Radford and anybody else worthwhile.

  Poor Celia. Hardy Pritchard is some cross to bear.

  Poor Celia! Is that all you can say! I’m gonna shoot the sumbitch.

  Hush, Chap. It’s just loose talk. We have got to hold our heads up like we heard nothing at all. If she quits now it’ll just prove what they say. And she can’t go back to the drugstore. What’ll she do? Work at the plant?

  Shit, said Chap. Over my dead body.

  Hush, said Momma.

  Then I heard the chair scrape back and steps were coming my way. I had nowhere to go so I scooted back to the far corner and held my breath. Chap took off his work boots and stuck them in the closet and got out his old slippers. I sucked breath, afraid he’d hear my heart slamming in my chest. As soon as he shuffled out, I shoved the coat aside and jumped out into sweet air smelling of Momma’s powder. I ducked back into my room and opened a book, and then I heard, all at once, Momma calling me and the front door bumping closed. Ava was home.

  Going back to the kitchen, I saw her looking through the mail on the table. When I got there, Momma had finished the macaroni and cheese and Chap was drinking another beer. I took the plates and laid them on the table. Ava walked in. It seemed like God had stopped the world from spinning.

  What’s going on? She looked from one to the other.

  You’ve got a letter, I said, and the world wobbled a little and began to turn again.

  This? She reached in a pocket and pulled it out.

  Read it, read it.

  She pocketed it again, her eyes narrow. All in my own time. It’s my letter.

  We waited for her to say something else.

  She shrugged. Can we have supper? I’m hungry.

  Chap
turned on the radio so we could hear the news while we ate, which filled up that empty space Ava was making. The announcer was saying the Americans had landed on some islands and were advancing against the Japs and it made me think of Willie and his brother. The British, he was saying, are advancing in the BCI theater planning to take back Burma.

  Ava looked up then, got up from the table, and hurried back to her room fast as she could without running. No fair, I called, because that would mean doing the dishes by myself.

  Leave her be, said Momma. Let her read her letter in peace.

  Why oh why was she so soft on Ava? My hands deep in soap bubbles, I knew I was going to find that letter.

  When I got home from school the next day, all ready to look behind the Jesus plate for the letter, Momma had milk and molasses cookies waiting for me in the kitchen, a treat because of the sugar and butter rationing.

  They’re not too bad, she said. I used that oleo. We’re raking leaves and gathering nuts this afternoon.

  She needed the pecans for Christmas. I ate my milk and cookies, all the while thinking of the letter, and she tied on a headscarf and bundled up in her old coat and her gloves and we went out and raked and picked up nuts, plunking them into a tin bucket. Her face was shiny and rosy from the sun and the cool air, but she soon got tired and left me to finish up. I sure wished the doctors could fix whatever it was that was making her so weak.

  I was hurrying, trying to finish, so I could search for the letter before Ava got home. And here came Willie Pennyman walking down the road, whistling one of those gospel tunes that sounded happy and sad at the same time.

  Hey, Willie, I said. How’s your brother?

  He gon’ be home for Christmas, Willie said. Your momma pay you for raking?

  No money. Just milk and cookies, I said.

  I rakes for money, he said. Mis’ Celia Pritchard, she pay good, and Mis’ Lila Potter too.

  I leaned down and picked up a handful of nuts. Want some?

  Don’t mind if I do.

  I walked over to the fence and handed them over. Where does Mis’ Celia live, Willie?

  Over to Oakdale Street, he said, cracking two nuts together in one hand. It ain’t far.