Skylark and Wallcreeper

by Anne O'Brien Carelli

  She struggles to sit up. “I can walk! Let me walk!”

  I can hear Maria in the hallway shouting, “In their beds. It’s the only way. We don’t want anyone falling.” She steps in the room and hands me two glow sticks and checks the tape. I bend the glow sticks and secure them with the tape so that Granny’s bed has its own lights. “Ready to roll?”

  There are National Guard soldiers everywhere. They’re carrying people on chairs, on their mattresses, and on the few evacuation sleds that had been hanging in the stairwells and stacked in the hallways. They try to calm Granny’s neighbors, but some of the residents are screaming and grabbing anyone who rushes by.

  Granny’s too quiet. Her eyes are closed, but she fingers the tape across her blanket. While I stuff her slippers and some clothing into a flowered tote bag, I explain that she’s going to be carried down the stairs, but I won’t leave her side.

  I don’t tell her I have no idea how they’ll get her out of the building. Or where we’ll float to after that.

  “Red box!” she shouts. “Red box!”

  It doesn’t surprise me that her mind would drift right now. She’s usually pretty focused when I visit, but sometimes she says things that don’t make any sense. Maria has explained to me that occassionally Granny’s mind checks out for a bit. “She is eighty years old, after all,” Maria commented. I know it’s dementia because I’ve been hanging out at a nursing home.

  I’m supposed to pretend that she’s carrying on a normal conversation. “Yes, red box,” I repeat patiently, as I check for batteries on her backup oxygen tank.

  “Lily, get the red box in the closet,” she says clearly, those light blue eyes of hers staring directly into my hazel ones.

  I dig around in the small suitcase in her closet, but no red box. Should I tell her I already put it in the tote bag?

  “Shoes. In my special shoes.”

  I pull out the only pair of fancy shoes that Granny’s brought from her apartment. She told me they were her wedding shoes, but they look pretty beat-up. Fake crystals are sprinkled on the pointed blue silk toes. A long, red, velveteen box is in the bottom of one of them. The box is decorated with tiny gold circles around the edge.

  Two National Guard soldiers enter the room and grab the sides of Granny’s mattress, saying nothing as they lift her in the air. She screeches, and the female soldier smiles at her. “Don’t be alarmed, dear. We’ve practiced this, and you’ll be fine.” She lifts my backpack from the bedpost and slings it over her shoulder.

  “Wait!” I shove her fancy shoes into the tote bag and slide the bag under the blanket so the tape will hold it in. I give Granny the red box. “Here you go, Granny.” The soldiers carry Granny to the doorway of the room as her pillow falls to the floor.

  “No!” she yells back at me. “Take this, Lily!” The two soldiers press the sides of the mattress against her to squeeze through the door. I can barely see the top of her head with its wispy white hair and one frail arm in the air, clutching the thin red box.

  Chapter 3

  Low Tide

  The hall is crowded as the National Guard soldiers carrying my granny join the line of moving mattresses. Confused residents join the pack, clutching bags and small suitcases, or just wads of clothing. Nurses are shoving them into any winter coats they can find in the back of closets. Some of the residents have white bath towels draped around their shoulders.

  WM, definitely the loudest resident in the entire nursing home, stands in the hall wrapped in an orange wool poncho. She’s tied a yellow-and-red-striped scarf around her neck brace. “What can I do?”

  “You can sit in that wheelchair and stay there!” One of the nurse assistants, clutching a large cardboard box labeled FREEZE-DRIED COLD CUTS, kicks a wheelchair over to WM. I reach into the box and grab a plastic bag of frozen turkey slices and shove it into the front pouch of my hoodie.

  WM has been here in rehab for two weeks. She named herself WM. “I’m a Walking Miracle!” she tells everyone. Her son seems to be almost as old as she is. He’s always arguing with her when he visits. She broke her neck when her horse tripped, so he moved her to the city to be closer to him. He’s mad that she was on a horse.

  “I learned how to ride on the steppes of Siberia!” she told me. “I was a diplomat.”

  I had to look up what a diplomat is. I have to look up a lot of things the residents tell me about their lives. They have a million stories, and now they’ll have one more to tell.

  Granny’s traveling mattress disappears down the stairs as I try to get Mr. Flynn’s pudgy arms into the sleeves of his coat. I pull over a chair from the side of his bed and help him sit in the doorway of his room.

  The soldiers are suddenly swarming the floor, working fast. They’re joined by men in yellow hard hats and glowing red jackets that say TUPPER LAKE RESCUE on the back. They’ve come from way up north in the mountains. They don’t seem to need to talk to each other.

  “That’s good, Lily.” Maria passes by with an armload of diaper boxes. “Do that with everyone!”

  “But Granny . . .”

  “And tell them we’re going where there’s heat, light, and bathrooms,” she shouts back to me. She turns to a man in a hard hat and asks quietly, “Is that true?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you’re going to the Armory.”

  “In Brooklyn?” Maria dumps the boxes at the nurses’ station. Brooklyn is right next door to Queens, but it seems like it’s another country.

  “There’s a pool there. Bring your bikini.”

  Maria actually laughs as she turns and weaves her way back around the trail of loaded mattresses and plastic evacuation sleds carried by strong men patiently waiting their turn to go down the stairs. The wind starts shrieking again, and instead of heightening the fear of the residents, it seems to settle them down. They know they have to go.

  Maria hauls another box from the storage closet—this time bandages—and shoves it at me. The closet is usually locked and can be opened only with a secret code that the nurses know. But now it’s wide open and Maria keeps pulling out supplies and stacking them at the station.

  The rooms near us are now all empty. The hall is beginning to quiet down as people pour down the stairs.

  “Find a cart,” she snaps as she tosses medications into a metal box. “And one of those Guard dudes.”

  “Can’t do supplies, ma’am.” A short, muscular guardsman grabs a rolling office chair from the nurses’ station. “People first.” He pulls Mr. Flynn to his feet, then presses him gently onto the chair so that soft and round Mr. Flynn is squeezed between the armrests. The Guardsman rolls him down the hall to join the line.

  But before he moves on to the next resident, the Guardsman carefully tucks a bed-sized plastic blue pad over Mr. Flynn’s short legs. “Keep you dry,” he says as he grabs more of the pads meant for bed wetters from Maria’s stash at the nurses’ station. “Waterproof!” He fist-bumps a hard-hat man as they pass around the pads.

  The last person on the floor, Mr. Tennenbaum, in his matching plaid robe and slippers, is ushered through the door to the stairs. A few people wait inside the stairwell for the soldiers to help them down the four flights. One of the hard-hat men is making jokes, but the residents aren’t smiling.

  Now the only sounds on the floor are the roaring wind and spatters of rain pelting the windows of all the empty rooms.

  I pull over a tall cart with shelves that are supposed to be stacked with food trays. It has been turned into a rolling library. I shove dozens of tattered books and magazines to the floor and stuff Maria’s supplies anywhere they’ll fit. The supply cart has a bum wheel and it squeaks as I walk backward and pull it to the head of the stairs. I wonder if anyone’s going to carry it down. We’ll need it at the Armory.

  A blast of cold air comes from the stairwell, and lights flash as soldiers with headlamps move up and down the stairs. I have to get to Granny.

  “This is nothing,” I hear WM say to Mr. Cummings, who can’t hear a
word she’s saying. “When I was in Bangladesh . . .”

  The stairwell is crammed, but I slide by repeating, “’Scuse me, ’scuse me,” until I see the pink beret that someone has pulled onto my granny’s head. I’m really glad I remembered to stuff that hat into her bag of belongings. She loves that old faded thing and often wears it at night when she’s sleeping.

  “Still traveling?” I grab the side of her scrunched-up mattress. She doesn’t look at me. Her face is pinched and pale in the dim light from an emergency lantern held up by a soldier posted at a landing. I don’t want to worry about her, but I will. She’ll do better if I’m nearby.

  “Water’s receding,” the soldier says to my granny’s mattress carriers. “Low tide.” He lifts the lantern and spreads light on the stream of soldiers in camouflage, ponchos, and red jackets, who are holding up residents wrapped in anything that can keep them warm. I wish I had grabbed a towel to tuck into my jacket.

  “Almost there, Granny,” I whisper in her ear. She still doesn’t look at me. She slides a shaking arm out from under the thin blanket and flops it against my chest. She’s still clutching the red box. “Take this.”

  I start to shove the box into the pocket in the front of my hoodie, next to the packet of dried turkey. “Not there! You’ll lose it!” she barks at me. Granny never yells at me. What’s so important about a dumb box? She must be really scared.

  The Guardswoman raises her eyebrows at me. “Tough old bird, aren’t ya?”

  “It’s Miss Collette!” Granny snaps back. She closes her eyes but I know she’s on high alert. She never really naps—just shuts her eyes until there’s a new sound and then flicks them open again.

  I shove the narrow box into the back pocket of my jeans. As we reach the bottom of the stairs, we hit a traffic jam. I lean against the wall, pull my socks up high, and retie the boot laces nice and tight. The boots are beat-up and clunky, but they make me feel strong.

  I check my phone. The battery is low and there’s weak service, but I manage to text my mom: Granny fine. Going to Armory Bklyn. It would really drive her over the edge if she managed to get here and we were gone. No matter when I text her, she texts right back. But this time the phone doesn’t make a sound.

  There’s a strong smell of garbage as we step into slimy mud that’s covered by a few inches of gray murky seawater. More soldiers in olive-colored rain ponchos and high rubber boots are trying to clear a path with snow shovels, but the muck slithers back. It comes up to the top of my boots, but at least it’s not the swirling high water like before.

  The furniture we’d lifted onto tables is soaked, and the filthy floor is littered with plastic toys from the resident recreation room. A beach ball sits oddly in the corner. Two days ago the residents had formed a circle in this room and tossed that ball around to strengthen their muscles. Granny had batted it with glee as it soared to the other side of the circle. Now it sits on a new beach on the first floor of Rockaway Manor.

  We slosh through the gook, mud splashing onto the bottom of Granny’s mattress. The air is bitter cold as we all move outside, but the rain has settled to a weak drizzle. I tuck the blanket around Granny’s neck, but the Guardswoman touches my hand. “Time to unload,” she says, and points to the street.

  A row of bright gold school buses, engines rumbling and red lights flashing, are lined up, filling the entire block. “Can you sit up?” The soldier slides her arm under Granny’s back.

  “I’m trapped!” Granny waves at the rows of duct tape. “Get me out of here.”

  I pull the blanket and wrestle with the tape as Granny pushes her legs free. She’s still high off the ground as the two soldiers patiently hold her mattress away from the dirty water. More people in red jackets suddenly appear and hold a long blue tarp over the shivering residents. “Just another day in Queens,” one of them says as he smiles at me. I’m shaking from the cold and don’t feel like smiling back.

  Granny manages to wiggle free. The Guardswoman adds Granny’s tote bag and my backpack to a luggage cart loaded with suitcases, duffel bags, and stuffed garbage bags. She easily scoops up Granny. “Does she need a chair?” She nods toward the beeping wheelchair lift on the side of the bus, where WM is waving to the crowd as her wheelchair is slowly raised.

  “She’s going to want to walk,” I say at the same time that Granny mutters, “Let me walk!” The Guardswoman gently lifts Granny in her arms, carries her up the steps of the bus, and places her carefully on a bench seat in the front. The bus is almost full and strangely quiet.

  I realize that no one knows where we’re going.

  “We’re headed to heat, light, and bathrooms!” I shout to the passengers, some of whom can barely be seen over the tops of the dark green seats.

  A feeble cheer answers me, the nurse assistants louder than everyone. That seems to inspire the residents to start chattering as I plunk down next to Granny. She’s sitting in the corner of the seat and adjusts the collar of her coat.

  “We’re almost there, Granny,” I say, even though Brooklyn seems far away and I’m not sure if there’s overflowed ocean in the way. Where will we go if all of Queens is flooded?

  “Pas de problème.” She stares at me but doesn’t seem to be seeing me.

  “What, Granny?” I had grabbed the tape-covered coverlet before the Guard could toss it on the pile of drenched and muddy mattresses stacked up on the street. I really want to wrap the blanket around me—my jean jacket isn’t warm at all—but I drape it over Granny so that her nose, glassy eyes, and pink beret are all that can be seen.

  “We’re in good hands,” she says. Maybe she’s still with me, after all. Sometimes she drifts off and then comes back. Lately she’s been suddenly switching to speaking French, even though she hasn’t spoken it for many years. She seems to go off somewhere for a bit, then returns to English.

  I know that she came to New York from France when she was a lot younger, but she never talks about it. I’ve tried to get her to teach me some French words, but she always manages to change the subject. I signed up for Spanish in school and wish I’d chosen French.

  “Tu es en sécurité maintenant. Mais tu dois être vigilant!” She reaches out her tiny, freckled hand and pats my arm. She stretches the blanket so that it covers my legs, and gives me a tired smile.

  I don’t like this. She’s drifting, and I don’t know what she’s saying.

  She pokes my side. “Did you bring your bikini?” She gets a half smile out of me. Even when it seems as if she’s in another world, she surprises me.

  “Everybody, hold on—we’re moving out!” The bus driver pulls the doors shut, and the engine roars, then settles into a rumble. “Let’s get some heat in here!”

  The bus beeps loudly as the driver backs it up a few feet. He honks twice, and we’re all jostled as the bus lurches forward. I scrunch closer to Granny and put my foot on the back of the seat in front of us to keep us from rocking around. The rain has started again, and it whooshes against the bus windows. Granny is still murmuring in French.

  The red box pokes me, and I push it back down into my back pocket. “Granny—what’s in the box, anyway?”

  She snaps her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. As she turns toward the rain, her head flops back against the seat.

  “Granny?” The pink beret covers the wisps of her white hair. I reach out to adjust it so that I can see her wrinkled face.

  “Signe ici.”

  “What?” I lean in closer.

  “Sign here.”

  Chapter 4

  Resist

  Brume, Southern France

  Winter 1944

  As Collette runs down the hill on the bumpy cobblestone street, the cold sucks her breath and freezes her chest. She weaves around the people from her village who are hurrying up the hill. They’re wrapped in anything they can find to keep warm. Some are hulks of many layers, and only puffs of breath can be seen as they struggle to get home quickly.

  It’s one of
the coldest winters the village of Brume has ever seen. Collette has heard that all of France is covered in ice.

  As she hurries through the village, she stays alert. German soldiers will stop and question anyone who seems suspicious, even a child like Collette, alone on the streets. As she dodges townspeople rushing to get home before dark, she wonders which ones will be plucked from the crowd by a German soldier and declared an “undesirable,” never to be heard from again. She’s watched the Germans round up French men to work in labor camps in Germany. Entire Jewish families have been deported.

  The German soldiers own the village now. They’ve seized homes, railroads, and shops, or anything else they want. Elegant lampposts that dot the village, once lending soft light at night, have been snuffed out. If the soldiers need a house, they take it. If they want to eat, they raid farms of food and livestock that families have hidden away.

  Over the last four years, in the midst of a world war that has spread across Europe, France lost the fight against Germany. Hitler’s armies marched into Paris and occupied the northern section of the country. Now most of the southern part of France is under German control, too.

  Collette’s beloved Brume is in the south, just fifty miles away from the Mediterranean Sea. Perched on a granite-and-limestone slope, the small village has changed little since medieval times. Collette makes her way through narrow, winding streets lined with solid rock churches, stately homes, and rows of stone houses and shops. She crosses open courtyards and town squares marked by high, ancient buildings and elaborate fountains where farmers’ markets once flourished. Townspeople used to gather at the markets to select ingredients for the evening meal and sit in a café to gossip with neighbors.

  For hundreds of years, the morning mist has settled in the olive groves and fields of lavender surrounding her town. But now a once-abundant countryside has gone empty as the war continues, and the people of Brume are forced to spend most of their time scrounging and foraging for food to survive. The fountains are silent, most shops are closed, and the markets are empty, except for the occasional long line of hungry townspeople desperately seeking rare potatoes or meat.