by Helen Frost
Ollie sharply looks away, walks faster.
As we approach the gate, I stop myself
from reaching out to open it for him, and he finds
a way to unlatch it, swing it open, catch it, and close it
behind us with one hand. We keep walking, our footsteps
falling in a steady rhythm. Eventually
Ollie breaks our silence with one word:
Lucky, he mutters. And then, I’m supposed
to feel lucky because I still have one arm.
(Luckier than Frank—I regret the thought
the second it crosses my mind.) What kind of luck
is that, Ollie asks, to go through life
thinking about all the ways it could be worse?
I could have lost both arms, both legs, I could
be blind and deaf, I could have burns on my face
so bad you wouldn’t know me, I could be nuts,
I could be
dead.
I saw all those things, he tells me,
in the army hospital. Are they supposed to cheer me up?
Muriel, I’m telling you—he searches for words—
this stinks. I try my best to think of something
wise and comforting to say.
Yes, Ollie, is all I can come up with,
it sure does.
A Few Sentences Each Day
Muriel
Every afternoon (five days in a row now),
Ollie and I take a walk together—today
we follow Crabapple Creek all the way
to Reuben Lake, the rhythm of our steps
accompanied by small sounds of birds,
chipmunks, a family of raccoons, the crunch
of dry leaves, and, when we reach the lake,
the back-and-forth lament of a pair of loons.
Returning home along the road, Ollie
glances toward the school. What time
is it? he asks. One o’clock, I answer. Grace and Emma
won’t be out for two more hours. Ollie turns his face
away from me; he may be embarrassed
that I’ve guessed he’s thinking about Emma.
I don’t know if I’ll ever graduate, he says.
I can’t seem to think straight; my mind keeps
wandering back to things I don’t know how
to think about. A horse whinnies and comes over
to the fence; Ollie pulls up a handful of grass
and feeds him. Animals always seem to trust you,
I say. He nods and starts to speak, but
doesn’t. A shudder passes over him, and
we walk home in silence—not the kind where
two people are so comfortable that nothing
needs to be spoken, the kind where
something is trying to be said
and no one knows the words.
As soon as we get home, Ollie
goes into his room, shuts the door,
and stays there until dinner.
Daisies on a Pillowcase
Emma
Mother needs a good, reliable friend
these days, more than she ever has. I wish she would
go with me to the Jorgensens’. Each day she says, I’ll go tomorrow.
She’s been embroidering daisies on a pillowcase for five weeks! It’s best
not to push her, Mrs. Jorgensen says. Your mother can’t talk about Frank yet,
but she probably can’t think about anything else. Be patient, Emma, grief takes time.
Yes, but so does my schoolwork plus cooking and washing dishes and hanging clothes
and dusting furniture and cleaning out the horses’ stalls. While Mother grieves, those
endless tasks aren’t doing themselves. Has Father, or anyone, even noticed that I’m
doing most of Mother’s work, all my own, and half of Frank’s? Will I ever get
time to grieve for my brother? (And, in a way, for Ollie.) When can I rest?
Now I’m ashamed of this anger—a mix of exhaustion and sorrow
that bubbles up, then settles down. Here comes Ollie. Could
he help stack the firewood? I have clothes to mend.
The Phone Rings: Two Short, One Long
Muriel
I’m home alone, except for Ollie,
who is sleeping at noon on a Monday
while Mama and Papa are at work.
The phone rings: two short, one long—
our ring on the party line. You have
a long-distance call, the operator says,
from Washington, D.C. (Could it be Aunt Vera?)
Hello, am I speaking to Mrs. Jorgensen? (Danish accent,
a younger woman, not Aunt Vera’s voice.)
No, I answer, this is Muriel, her daughter.
May I help you? A slight pause, then,
I am wanting to speak to Mr. Jorgensen,
Vera’s brother. I tell her I’m home alone.
Can you give to your father a message for me?
(No, I’m tempted to reply, we’ve had all
the bad news we can take.) Of course, I answer,
picking up a pencil. My name, she says,
is Ruby Madsen. I am living
in Washington, and I have been
picketing the White House with Vera.
She is in prison for five weeks now.
(Five weeks? I’ve lost track of time!)
They are beginning to see they can’t
prison us forever—they release a few
women already. Vera still refuse to eat,
no matter how hard things are for her.
You know how strong she is in her mind,
but in her body she is very weak now.
We are hoping they release her next week,
but she can’t travel alone then. I want to ask
your father can he come to Washington
to travel home with his sister. Ruby gives me
a number where she can be reached, and asks me
to have Papa call her back or send a telegram.
I’ll give him the message, I promise.
I stay on the line to find out how many
people have been listening in.
Two clicks—no, three. Who else, besides
the operator, heard our conversation?
I hitch up the horses as quickly as I can—
I want to reach the lumberyard and give Papa
this message before he hears it as the gossip
it will become within the hour.
Muriel Can Help
Muriel
I don’t see how I can go, Papa says to Mama.
We’re shorthanded at work as it is these days.
He studies Mama’s face. Could you go? he asks.
Mama shakes her head. It’s all too much; I’m
going to quit my job—Ollie needs me at home.
But that’s the reason I can’t do this for Vera.
How could I be away for a week right now?
Ollie objects—he’s finally woken up, after sleeping
for twelve hours a day, six days in a row—I have to
learn to take care of myself sometime, Ma.
Go ahead, if you want to—Muriel can help me.
Mama glances from me to Ollie, and then
to Papa; she opens her mouth, closes it—
she doesn’t want to go, she’s hurt that Ollie
doesn’t think he needs her, and neither she,
nor anyone, questions Ollie’s assumption
that “Muriel can help.” They all know
I’ll do what’s asked of me, in this, as always. I see
in that glance a long lifetime ahead of me—am I to be
“my brother’s keeper”? His right arm? Even as
I’m forming words, about to spill them out,
I’m wary of hurting Ollie and Mama,
wishing Papa would come to my defense
before I s
ay things I’ll regret—and then Grace,
sitting quietly, combing out the tangles in
Eliza Jane’s long hair, looks around
at all of us. Maybe Mama could stay home,
she says, and Muriel could go.
Crazy Ideas
Muriel
Sometimes the most obvious idea remains
hidden, and when it shows itself like this,
we all wonder how we missed it.
Within a day, it’s settled: I’ll take the train
to Washington, D.C., next Tuesday, meet
Aunt Vera and travel home with her.
She’ll come here and rest for a few days,
then continue on her own, back to Chicago.
Papa jokes about Aunt Vera’s friends: Radicals,
freethinkers—be careful not to come home with too
many crazy ideas, Muriel. He’s smiling, but does he
mean it, too? I’d bet anything he had to convince Mama,
and now he’s warning me about her worries.
Emma has come for supper (without her parents—
Not quite yet, she said to Mama). Sitting between
Grace and Ollie, she heartily approves.
Go ahead, Muriel—I can help with your chores
while you’re away. And Grace chimes in,
I will, too, Muriel. Go to Washington! Come home
with all the crazy ideas you want. A shadow
passes over Ollie’s face, but he says nothing
at the time—it’s only later, after we’ve walked
home with Emma, and the two of us are coming back
together, that I realize how worried Ollie is,
how much he counts on me since he’s been home.
I’ll only be gone a week, I try to reassure him.
I know, he says. It’s just that you’re the only one
who lets me talk about what happened
over there. He pauses at the gate,
leans his weight against it, glances
up at me—yes, he sees, I’m listening.
I’m starting to remember things, he tells me.
Ollie’s Patchwork Story
Muriel
A rat with a man’s face, Ollie says. Or a man
with the face of a rat. I don’t know which.
I hated those filthy rats. They scurried
through the trenches, tried to chew into
our rations, got into our bedrolls.
Then one night, I was eating, and I looked
up to see one staring at me. I saw its hunger,
and I was hungry, too, and then in that same
moment, a man behind me threw a stone
and hit it, and it leaped into the air and
tried to run and couldn’t, and it curled up
and died. Ollie is struggling not to cry;
he’s determined to say what he can see
while he can see it. There was a tank
rolling toward us—was it that same day?
It’s all packed together in my mind, it’s hard
to separate. The nurse in the army hospital
told me I carried my buddy Phil out
of harm’s way; I saved his life, she said,
before I lost my arm. I don’t remember that.
I remember a soldier coming toward me
with his rifle pointed at my chest. He looked
at me—he saw me, Muriel. The rat was hungry,
he was hungry. Did that soldier see that I was
hungry, too? Of course he could have killed me.
But he didn’t—I had my rifle strapped
across my shoulder. He must have had
a moment of compassion—I don’t remember
this—but think about it, Muriel. A
German soldier looked me in the eye
and didn’t kill me. Instead—I’ve thought
long and hard about that moment—my
enemy decided to … disarm me.
A Sharp Yes-and-No Shoots Through Me
November 1917
Toward—I Don’t Know What
Muriel
Mama’s birthday is coming up, Grace says. Take this,
and add it to your egg money—see if it’s enough
to buy her a new hat in Washington. She gives me
all her money, a stream of warm coins poured
from one of her old socks into my hands.
All of it? I ask. Yes! She’s certain. Grace
almost makes me want to stay right here
with her and Ollie and Mama and Papa—
I start to think of everything I’ll miss. But my suitcase
is packed, and Papa calls out, We don’t have
all day. I hug Grace—Thank you. I’ll be home
in eight days. Help Mama all you can.
I ride to town with Papa, buy my ticket,
board the train, and wave goodbye.
And then the whistle blows and I’m carried
out of the life I know, toward—I don’t know what.
The world goes by outside—we pass farms like ours:
a girl no taller than Grace leads three cows to pasture;
a young man rides his horse along a rough dirt road;
a woman holds two chickens she’s just killed,
her large hands encircling their necks;
a little boy waves at us and grins when I wave back.
At every stop, young men get on the train,
their mothers weeping as they say goodbye: soldiers,
sailors, whole and bright-eyed like Frank and Ollie were
five months ago. I want to jump out of my seat
and stop them: Stay where you are, stay home!
Don’t go to war! Everyone around me
is offering them food, thanking them
for things they haven’t even done yet.
The young men soak up the admiration,
stand a little taller. It isn’t that they’re foolish—
I’m sure they’re brave and smart.
But they don’t know what’s coming.
They haven’t seen the look in Ollie’s eyes
as he struggles to recall what happened;
they haven’t tried to comfort Mrs. Norman.
Here with Grace
Ollie
Who’s to say I can’t? I have an arm, a left foot, a
right foot. We set up a system: rope, hook, and pulley.
Pa encourages me: I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. He’s sure I
can lift a bale of hay from down here on the barn floor up into the
loft—I’ll be there to pull it up and over, he says. I’m here with Grace,
who watches from a safe distance—I’m determined to do this by myself. I
lay the rope straight out on the ground and use my arm and feet to roll the
hay bale onto it. Holding the rope in place with one foot, I can tie a knot. I
do that twice, then hook the bale to the pulley rope. (It’s not hard, I’ve
often done this.) I sit on the rope’s other end as I reach and pull. A
man is more than arms and legs, Pa said. (Tell that to Emma.)
Ma argued: It’s too much to attempt at this point. (She
might be right.) The bale rises—I’m scared I’ll
lose it. I don’t. I’ve got it! Pa calls down.
Look Deeper
Muriel
These buildings—they’re enormous!
How could people build something so high?
This is Washington, D.C.! I’ve never seen so many
people in one place—everyone rushing about
as if they have important business.
That lady’s hat is three times the size of her head—
it must take a hundred hat pins to hold it in place!
Ruby Madsen meets me at the station; I recognize her
by her gold-and-purple suffrage sash, her long black cur
ls,
just as she described herself. She’s not much older than I am.
You must be Muriel! Are you hungry? Yes, and yes—
we go to the station café and sit down.
We are expecting Vera to be release tomorrow,
Ruby tells me. Until then, I show you around.
Will you like to see National Woman’s Party
headquarters while you’re here? I nod—there is so much
to see! Ruby has been in America for two years; she came
on her own from Denmark when she was seventeen.
I’d like to hear her whole life story, but she’s
anxious to get back to the picket line.
As we leave the café, I feel a tug at my skirt—
a girl about four years old, with dirty tear streaks
down her face, holds out her hand to me. I reach
into my pocket for a coin, but Ruby shakes her head
as we walk on. It’s a bad idea, she says,
to courage beggar children. This is not
a safe place for them—someone use
that little girl. The child’s face
stays with me—shouldn’t someone
help her? As we move through the station,
more children approach us, two boys, another
little girl, then an old man in tattered clothes
who looks so hungry I give him the apple
I still have from home—Bless you, miss, he says.
I smile, but almost immediately a woman
carrying a baby holds out her hand,
and I don’t have another apple. People
who look like they have plenty of food and money
walk past and no one begs from them. Why is everyone
asking me? I ask Ruby. She studies me: You have
a kind face, she answers. Outside the station,
we get into an electric streetcar that pulls us along
the tracks, without horses. The streets are so busy—
hundreds of buggies, motorcars, bicycles,
young men and women walking arm in arm.
I’m dizzy from looking. We pass a row of mansions
with grand doorways and white pillars;
then gradually things change—smaller houses,
dirty streets. Just two more blocks,
Ruby says. It’s hard to describe what I see.
This neighborhood … it looks … so … I pause.
Poor? Ruby suggests. I nod, a little embarrassed.
Look deeper, she says. (A rat runs by.