Keep Smiling Through

by Ann Rinaldi

  Keep Smiling Through

  Ann Rinaldi

  * * *

  Harcourt Inc.

  ORLANDO AUSTIN NEW YORK

  SAN DIEGO TORONTO LONDON

  * * *

  Copyright © 1996 by Ann Rinaldi

  Reader's guide copyright © 2005 by Harcourt, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,

  or any information storage and retrieval system, without

  permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the

  work should be mailed to the following address:

  Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  First Harcourt paperback edition 1996

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rinaldi, Ann.

  Keep smiling through/Ann Rinaldi.

  p. cm.

  Summary Ten-year-old Kay, living with her family in

  New Jersey during World War II, makes the painful

  discovery that doing the right thing is not always easy

  and often has unexpected consequences.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  1. World War, 1939–1945—New Jersey—Juvenile fiction.

  2. German Americans—Juvenile fiction.

  [1. World War, 1939–1945—United States—Fiction.

  2. German Americans—Fiction. 3. Courage—Fiction.

  4. Stepmothers—Fiction. 5. New Jersey—History—

  20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7 R459Ke 2005

  [Fic]—dc22 2004054034

  ISBN 0-15-205399-9

  Text set in Berkley Old Style Book

  Designed by Lon J McThomas

  C E G H F D

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  To all who served abroad to make the world free,

  and to all who kept smiling through

  on the home front.

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am indebted to Susan Feibush, Librarian at the Somerset County Library in Bridgewater, New Jersey, for helping me run down facts on the Bund meetings in this state during the war. Susan was tireless in her efforts.

  Thanks go to Karen Grove, my editor at Harcourt, for her ability to see the merits of the story I submitted. And to the students at Edgewood Elementary School in Yardley, Pennsylvania, whose eyes went wide when I told them what it was like to be a child in this country during World War II. Their interest spurred me to write this book in the first place.

  * * *

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. All the people and events portrayed in the book are the products of my imagination or are included to lend authenticity to the story.

  World War II was the background music against which my childhood was played out. I was seven years old when war broke out. I do not remember what the world was like before it and, once it started, I thought the atmosphere of war was normal.

  I clearly understood what was going on, of course. Everybody did. We were fighting to destroy a monstrous evil that threatened to take over the world. We had to win. In order to do this everybody had to sacrifice and pull together. So we did just that.

  Fear was all around. Nobody bothered to shield children from it. On Saturday afternoons at the movies we may have watched films dedicated to fantasy and frivolity, but the newsreels gave us the larger-than-life black-and-white images of London being bombed, refugees fleeing their homelands, our ships being torpedoed in high seas, our men fighting in the trenches, on the beaches, and in the air, and in general, all the turmoil, confusion, destruction, cruelty, and terror that accompanies a war. Then on to a Donald Duck cartoon or Lassie Come Home.

  We children on the home front were expected to integrate all the horrific images of war into our lives and not only adjust, but do our chores and schoolwork, save our pennies and buy war stamps, and give up such things as sugar, extra shoes, and all hope of new toys—and keep our mouths shut and stay in the background, too, while the grown-ups around us went about the grim business of survival in a world gone mad.

  Today, my six-year-old grandson can get his mother to send away for a policeman's outfit from a catalog. It will come with everything a policeman uses, everything except a gun—because today's parents think that if their children don't see a toy gun or know that a policeman uses one, they will become better people.

  Perhaps they are right. The jury is still out on that one. My generation stakes no claim to perfection. And each generation works with the legacy it is given. Ours was war.

  In my childhood, bombsights came in cereal boxes. With instructions. Most of our radio programs involved war and killing the enemy. We went about our business of killing Germans and "Japs" on the playground. Nobody had the least bit of concern. Where today's kids know what product is the latest commercial tie-in to a new book or movie, I knew the difference between a P-38 and a P-41. I knew all about Flying Fortresses. I knew what the Luftwaffe was (the German air force) and who the Desert Fox was (German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel).

  I did not have a favorite rock star, but a favorite general (Douglas MacArthur). I knew about places like Guam, the Marianas, Leyte Gulf, the Battle of Midway.

  I knew all the excitement and the theater of war, and the bleak realities. I absorbed them as I absorbed the fact of gold-starred flags in the window when a family member was killed in action and gas ration stickers on the car.

  Life became deprived and threadbare during the war, but it also became incredibly rich in commodities like pride and accomplishment.

  And for all of it, as a generation of youngsters we did not grow up hating, vicious, fearful, or dysfunctional. Though today, I still cannot look at a movie involving Nazis, for all the old images and fears that it invokes. And whenever I hear sirens I think of air raids.

  Most of the kids I grew up with became whole, contributing citizens, stayed married to their original mates, raised good children, worked hard, and took their lumps as they came, without complaining. Most are happy. Why? I think it is because we learned, early on, the distinct difference between good and evil. And what was important. It is that simple.

  Also we learned one other thing. There is something called the "common good." As children we were taught to sacrifice for it. We were taught that our own needs and desires were not that important. As for our troubles, well, somebody always had it worse. If you got potato soup for supper because meat was rationed, you were lucky. The children in Europe were starving. Others suffered in concentration camps. How lucky to be an American!

  I still think that way. It's simplistic, I know, and nowhere near politically correct these days. But my children somehow feel the same way. And if I have anything to say about it, so will my grandchildren.

  As Winston Churchill, British statesman and one of the heroes of World War II, said, ". . . democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

  Ann Rinaldi

  1 August 1995

  CHAPTER 1

  I was ten the year I learned that you can be good and do the right thing and sometimes it all goes bad for you anyway.

  It isn't a useless thing to know. I just wish I hadn't learned it so soon, that I could have gone on forever believing what our radio heroes were teaching us in that spring of 1944: that all you have to do is stand up for truth and have an unswerving sense of justice and
you will be rewarded in the end.

  It doesn't happen that way. And that was the one thing Queenie didn't tell me before she left us. She told me everything else, though, so I really can't blame her. If it wasn't for what she told me, I never would have made it through.

  I don't blame her for leaving. Nothing she did for us satisfied my father and Amazing Grace.

  Amazing Grace is the name Queenie gave to my stepmother. It fits. She is amazing, but in a way I can't figure.

  How can anybody be that ornery and live? Never mind. She married my father after my mother died. And since then she's killed happiness in our house wherever it tried to grow. That is her best talent. Queenie says everybody has one.

  "Can you keep a secret, Kay?" Queenie asked as she put the last of the dried supper dishes away.

  "Yes," I said. "Have I told anybody you're teaching me to tap-dance?"

  "Ssh," she said. "Amazing Grace would kill you if she knew."

  "I don't care."

  "Yes, you do. You doan wanna get her in a rage."

  "You're the best tap dancer, Queenie. I love you as much as I love Shirley Temple. But Amazing Grace says Shirley Temple is too old for me to love, that she's a teenager now, like my sisters."

  Queenie laughed. "Shirley's more than a tap dancer. That's not her best talent."

  "What is, then?"

  "Bein' a little girl forever. For all little girls, everywhere. But now, 'nuf talk 'bout Shirley. I want to tell you a secret. I'm leavin' tonight."

  "Leaving?" The word made no sense.

  Oh, I understood the word, all right.

  My mother had died when I was born. If that wasn't leaving, nothing was. But not Queenie. I could feel the world moving under my feet.

  "You can't leave," I said. "You already left the South, where your people are poor and not treated right. This is where you came. Where would you go to from here?"

  She laughed again. "New York," she said.

  "But then you can come back at night!" My father went to work in New York every day and came back at night.

  "No, honey, I can't. I'm goin' with my prince. He's comin' to get me tonight. Now, I told you he has a good job in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And I told you I came to work for your father just to hold me over, until my prince could come get me."

  I felt ready to cry. "I didn't think he would come, Queenie."

  She sat on a chair and drew me toward her. "I told you, too, that princes always come. Sooner or later, if you wait long enough, all girls' princes come to get them. Like in the Walt Disney movies. If you believe. Didn't I tell you that?"

  "Yes." I looked at her, into her yellow-brown eyes. Queenie is the only person I know who has less to believe in than I do. And yet she believes, more than anybody, in wishing on stars, in whistling while you work, in letting your conscience be your guide. And in princes.

  "I'm glad your prince is coming, Queenie," I said. I wasn't glad, but it was the right thing to say. "But I don't know how I'm going to stand it here without you."

  "You'll stand it, baby."

  "How?"

  "How?" She thought for a moment. Then she smiled. "You know that song that lady, Vera Lynn, sings on the radio? The one your sisters like? 'Bout smilin' through."

  I nodded yes.

  "You just keep thinkin' of that song. And keep smilin' through. And like it says, we'll meet again someday. Meanwhile, you'll grow up into somethin' fine."

  "A tap dancer," I said. "I'll practice even if you're not here. And Mary said that this Saturday, when we go into town for my shoes, she'll get me Mary Janes."

  Queenie sighed and shook her head sadly. "She oughtn't to do that, baby."

  "Queenie, you know I want Mary Jane shoes more than anything in the world," I whispered.

  "I know, Kay. But we doan always get what we want in life. Sometimes we get other things instead."

  There was nothing I wanted more now than a pair of Mary Janes. "All the girls in school have them, Queenie."

  "I know that, too," she said in that singsongy, patient way of hers, "but if Mary buys them, Amazing Grace will only make her take them back. She says they're bad for your feet."

  "But if Mary buys them, maybe it will be okay. You know Mary is Amazing Grace's favorite."

  "That woman doan have favorites. She doan like nobody. Not even herself. Besides, with the war on an' you only bein' allowed two pair of shoes a year, for certain Amazing Grace won't allow one to be Mary Janes. Now doan you make Mary buy them, or there will be trouble. An' I won't be here to hold you when your stepmother gets done with her lashin' out."

  "Well, even if I don't get Mary Janes, I'll be a tap dancer," I said.

  She touched my hand. "You know I never lie to you, baby."

  My heart fell. No, she didn't.

  "You may not be a tap dancer, Kay. But you'll be somethin' fine. Remember, Queenie told you so."

  "How will I become something fine?" I asked.

  She got up to fold the dish towels and hang them on the rack. "Doan know, baby. But you remember. The Lord doan close a door, but He opens a window. Jus' like He did for me. You just' keep smilin' through."

  Queenie was almost as big on the Lord as she was on Walt Disney. I go to Catholic school, where Sister Brigitta smacks me with a ruler when I can't do my times tables. So I was having a little trouble believing the Lord was going to open any windows for me.

  Besides, right now I wasn't so happy with the Lord. He had opened a window for Queenie. And now she was leaving.

  ***

  Later that night, I lay in my bed listening. And when everybody else was asleep and the house was quiet, I heard Queenie creep down the attic stairs by my room. I got out of bed and knelt on the floor at my window. For a few minutes, I waited.

  The night was bright, cold, and moon flooded. I heard the car's wheels on the gravel drive before I saw it. Then, when I did see it, I thought it looked just like a chariot should look. Long and shiny and low.

  It stopped. Below me I saw Queenie come out of the house. Someone inside the car opened the door. And just before Queenie got in, she turned and looked up at my window and waved. I waved back. Then she got into the car, the door thudded closed, and the car moved slowly around the drive, out of my sight.

  CHAPTER 2

  The next morning my father stood at the foot of the attic ^stairs, yelling for Queenie. "Time to get up and start breakfast!"

  But, of course, there was no Queenie. I dressed quickly and slipped downstairs. The kitchen was cold. No one had started the fire in the stove.

  My sisters, Mary, who was sixteen, and Elizabeth, seventeen, knew they should do something, so they were scurrying around trying to get breakfast on the table. They both had early shifts at the arsenal, where they worked in the office. My father had to catch the 7:35 to New York. My brother Martin, who was fourteen, was putting wood in the kitchen stove. Tom, twelve, came in from outside with a fresh pail of milk from our one cow.

  "Where is she?" my father asked about Queenie.

  Nobody answered.

  "Martin and Tom, get dressed for school," my father ordered. "Kay, go up and wake Queenie."

  "She's gone," I said.

  "Gone?" He looked at me as if the fault were mine. "Where?"

  "I don't know," I lied. "But I heard a car outside last night and I looked out the window, and she drove away in the car."

  "Why did she leave?" My father was bewildered. People left him all the time. Since my mother had died we'd had about ten housekeepers.

  "I don't know, Daddy," Mary said, "but come and sit. I'll make your eggs, just the way you like them."

  He sat at the dining-room table and Mary fussed around him. Elizabeth didn't. She ate her breakfast alone in the kitchen, then she started to make sandwiches for herself and the rest of us.

  "Daddy," Mary said, "Beverly's father said Tony and Marie are looking for work." Beverly Vineland, who lived across the road, was Mary's best friend.

  "Have Beverly send them ov
er to see me tonight, then. Girls, you'll have to do the dishes when you come home tonight. And see to supper. Kay, pile the dishes in the sink before you leave for school. Mary, keep some eggs warmed on the stove for your mother."

  Amazing Grace was still sleeping. She was expecting a baby. Her first. And she needed lots of sleep, good food, and waiting on.

  "Daddy, Kay doesn't have mittens and it's cold out," Mary told him.

  He was finishing his breakfast. "Did you lose them again?" he asked sternly.

  "I left them on the school bus," I said.

  "Then ask everyone on the school bus if they found them."

  There was no way I could do that. We rode five miles to St. Bridget's on the bus for the public-school kids. It was their bus, not ours, and they never let us forget it. And they didn't bother to speak to us.

  "Kay's hands are red and chapped," Mary said. Only Mary could be so brave as to speak up like that. Elizabeth and my father barely spoke to one another. And when they did, it always went wrong.

  Now, taking heart from Mary's bravery, Elizabeth came into the dining room. "Daddy, everyone in our department at the arsenal is buying war bonds," she said.

  "It isn't polite to interrupt, Elizabeth."

  "Daddy, you know we never talk."

  "If we don't, it's because you don't wish to, Elizabeth."

  I saw tears in Elizabeth's eyes. But she kept on. "My supervisor called me in again yesterday and asked me why I wasn't having fifty cents a week taken out of my pay for war bonds. My supervisor said it was only patriotic."

  "I can't afford patriotism," my father said.

  "But, Daddy, Mary and I are the only ones not giving for war bonds. My supervisor thinks it's because I'm selfish."

  "Let him think it, then." My father got up and went to the closet and took out his overcoat and fedora hat.

  "Her, Daddy," Elizabeth said icily. "My supervisor is a woman."

  My father waved his hand in disgust. "No wonder," he said. "Whenever women are in positions of authority they become troublemakers. I told you. I can't afford patriotism!" He yelled it.