A Pledge of Silence (28 page)

Margie followed Irene through the parking lot. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Is he sick? Was there an accident? Mama sounded so evasive when I talked to her.” She took the passenger seat, and Irene started the engine.

Margie received the news of her father’s death four months earlier while sitting in the car he had restored for her as a present for graduating from nursing school. A year ago, he’d suffered a heart attack. Everyone thought he had recovered, but then another, bigger one hit, killing him almost instantly. Since then, Irene said, Mama hadn’t been herself. Maybe having Margie home would help.

Irene switched on the car’s heater and warm air blew on Margie’s face. This couldn’t be true, she thought. She’d survived to get home and safe. Her mama and daddy were supposed to be here, just as they always had been. Through a constricted throat, she said, “Tell me about Mama.”

“She’s not sleeping; I hear her pacing around. The doctor gave her sleeping pills, but she’s not taking them. She won’t leave the house. When friends visit she’s … well, short with them. Some have stopped coming.”

“That doesn’t sound like her.”

“I didn’t think so either. The only thing keeping her going is Billy. She watches him while I’m at work. Sometimes she calls him Frankie. I’m glad you’re home, Margie. She really needs you.”

Unseeing, Margie stared out the window, not at all confident she could muster the strength to be needed.

Sleet slicked the roads between Ann Arbor and Little River, making driving hazardous and slow. The car sloshed through rivulets of slush, and the windshield wipers slap-slapped. Margie gawped at the changed landscape. Farmland once devoted to acres of corn and wheat now sprouted only boxy apartment complexes, low-slung motels, crowded trailer parks, and restaurants. Garish neon lights illuminated miles of formerly unlit roadway.

Irene said, “The factories work three shifts. Before they built these apartments, rooming houses in town rented out rooms in shifts too. It was crazy.” She slowed to negotiate a patch of ice. Once past the slippery spot, she said, “Mama’s cooking your favorite meal. She jumped through hoops to get extra sugar for a dessert.”

“She didn’t have to do that,” Margie said, not sure what her favorite meal had been.

They passed the diner where she and Abe spent many date nights. It looked the same as before—red, white, and shiny chrome. In town, the windows of Mitchell’s Department Store and Haley’s Hardware displayed meager wares. Making their appearances after she left, Home Made Cafeteria, Nick’s Pool Palace, and Brian’s Irish Pub filled storefronts on Main Street. The Strand Theater’s marquee advertised
Spellbound
with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. A sign in front of her church read
Spaghetti Dinner; Every Thursday at 5 pm; All are Welcome
. A bus chugged by, spewing exhaust. “What happened to the trolley?” she asked.

“They pulled up the tracks for salvage. Buses run through town and out to the factories now. It’s how I get to work.”

They caught up to a horse-drawn hay wagon bedecked in red, white, and blue, loaded with old tires. Teens riding on top shouted and whistled. A base drum boomed, trumpets blared, and streamers whipped in the February-cold air. Cheerleaders chanted, “We tell the story! We tell the whole story! This is Bulldog territory! Are you proud to be a Bulldog?” The other kids shouted back, “Yes! We! Are! Go Bulldogs!”

“Basketball game?”

“Not tonight. The kids collect tires for salvage. There’s a rivalry between them and Ypsilanti.”

Margie smirked. “You keep the car in the barn, right?”

“With the door barred,” Irene deadpanned.

Irene turned on North Bensch Road. The real countryside started beyond the high school. The last of the day’s light painted the landscape purple and gray. Houses set back on acreage nestled among outbuildings and fences that corralled cows, horses, and chickens. Margie knew who lived at each place the car sped past: the Sheldens, with their seven children; the Browns, who’d had a new baby just before she had left; and the Robbinses, whose grandmother lived to be 101 years old. Just one more mile down the road, Margie knew, her mother would be watching out the window.

The house looked the same, with its wrap-around porch and tall windows glowing with warm light. Margie saw a silhouette move from the window toward the front door and felt her heartbeat quicken. Before she got to the porch, Mama had the door open. “Come in! Come in! I was getting worried.”

“The roads were bad, Mama, but we’re here.” Billy toddled forward, grabbed Irene’s leg, and buried his head in her skirt.

Margie stepped forward with her arms outstretched. “Hello, Mama.”

They hugged, Mama’s grip tight. “Just let me hold you.”

Margie snuggled into the warm, calming embrace she had dreamed about for three long years. The scent of her mother’s sachet brought back little-girl memories. “Are you doing all right?”

Mama stepped back. “A day at a time.”

In the corner, Dad’s chair still stood angled toward the fireplace, the cushion depressed, an afghan thrown over the arm as if he had just gotten up to go into the kitchen. However, his eyeglasses, smoldering pipe, and stack of books no longer cluttered the side table. A pile of folded diapers and a wooden toy truck had taken their place.

Irene lifted Billy up. “This is Aunt Margie. Can you say hello?”

He ducked his head into Irene’s neck.

“Hello Billy,” Margie said. The child looked exactly like his mother, with the same heart-shaped face and softly curling light brown hair.

He burrowed deeper into Irene’s shoulder.

She laughed. “Give him a minute and he’ll be all over you.”

Mama had set the dining room table with her best china, silver, and damask linens. The meal
was
Margie’s favorite—she remembered—chicken and gravy, Mama’s special dumplings, big and soft as pillows, with green beans from last summer’s garden put up in mason jars and stored in the cellar. Apple pie followed for dessert.

Though they all enjoyed the delicious food, conversation felt stilted. Mama said she liked Margie’s new haircut and asked about her trip from San Francisco. Margie told Mama and Irene how decadent she felt ordering room service at the hotel last night, and about the soldier on the train rushing home to get married before shipping out again.

Preoccupied with feeding Billy, Irene added little to the chit-chat. “Why are you such an imp tonight?” she said in exasperation as she scraped food from the front of her blouse.

The three women turned their attention to the child. Wasn’t he adorable with his rosy cheeks and curly hair? He looked so much like Irene, didn’t he? Smart as a whip, too, he already knew several words. Still, Margie found his refusal to eat and whining annoying.

Irene helped clear the table before taking Billy upstairs for his bath. While her mother filled the kitchen sink with soapy water, Margie put all the leftovers in covered bowls, including the chicken bones, half-eaten dumplings, and a few green beans from their plates. She drank the milk left in Billy’s cup. Watching her daughter, Mama’s brow furrowed as she plunged her hands into the dishwater.

Although it had been years since Margie worked in this kitchen, she knew where everything went in the cupboards, even guessing right about Billy’s bowl and cup.

Turning to her mother, she said, “Tell me about Daddy.”

Moving deliberately, Mama rinsed a big pot under hot water and put it in the dish drainer. “He had two heart attacks, you know. He slowed down after the first one, but he walked to the post office every day, no matter the weather, hoping for a letter from you or Frank. He didn’t suffer, Margie. The last heart attack was massive. He was gone before the ambulance got here.” She pursed her lips and sniffed. “He never gave up believing you’d come home.”

“Did he know where I was, or even if I was alive?”

“No. We heard very little. Your friend, Evelyn, called and said that she had been with you on Corregidor, and that you were doing okay. I asked why you hadn’t come home with her. She said something about her fiancé. Why couldn’t he have helped you too?”

“Getting out wasn’t that easy, and he didn’t have anything to do with it anyway. Evelyn had an uncle high up in the navy who got her out of the Philippines.”

“We read in the newspaper that the Japanese had captured Corregidor,” Mama said. “Not too long after, we got a telegram saying that you were missing in action, then … nothing. About a year ago, Myra heard through the Red Cross that a group of nurses were being held at a prison camp in Manila. She couldn’t get names, but we had to believe you were there. It’s all we had to hang on to.”

“I’m sorry, Mama. I would have written if I could. I worried about you and Daddy too.” She dried the big pot and put it away in the bottom cupboard behind the frying pan and an assortment of lids. She said, “I do have some good news. I met someone. We’re going to be married.” She told her mother all about Wade and the coincidence of them not bumping into each other until they met at Santo Tomas even though they grew up a few miles apart.

“Oh, my! Oh, dear! Wade Porter? I know who he is. I knew his mother Barbara. She died young, and his dad remarried. I worried so, thinking you were on your own over there.”

“I had friends. Good friends. Gracie and Kenneth, Ruth Ann, Tildy, Boots.” She couldn’t bring herself to say Helen’s name yet. “We were like a family. We helped each other through it.”

Mama hesitated. “Do you mind me asking, dear, what happened to Royce?”

“He was killed on Bataan. The Japanese shot him while he was helping a fallen soldier. I don’t know much else.”

Mama’s hand went to her chest. “Oh! I knew it had to be bad. I’m so sorry.”

“It happened three years ago. I’ve gotten past it,” Margie said, even though she knew she hadn’t.

The dishes washed and the kitchen straightened, she wandered from room to room, all of them smaller than she remembered and somehow faded to sepia. A mirror over the fireplace reflected the living room, and family pictures crowded the mantel. One, tinted by an artist’s brush, showed a pretty young girl with curly red hair that fell onto the shoulders of a soft-green blouse. She had blue eyes, pink cheeks and full lips.

Margie stared at her graduation picture, remembering it being taken in the studio downtown, an important event for high school seniors. Her gaze moved to her reflection in the mirror, where she saw an angular, gray face with creases around the mouth and on the forehead, and sunken and haunted eyes. She could not find one iota of resemblance to the smiling girl in the photograph.

Mama came into the room. “I hope you don’t mind. We put Irene and Billy in your room. It was the only one large enough for a bed and a crib. You’ll be in Frank’s room. Is that okay?”

Margie pulled herself away from the picture. No, it wasn’t okay. She wanted her own bed in her own room, with all her books and the bits and pieces she treasured, and to have her clothes hanging in the closet exactly as she had left them. What she said was, “Sure, anything’s fine,” visualizing Frank’s dingy blue room cluttered with model airplanes.

She hefted her duffel and climbed the stairs. On the landing, portraits of all four grandparents hung on the wall. She paused to study their faces, seeing similarities between generations she hadn’t noticed before.

When she stepped into Frank’s room, it smelled of fresh paint and glowed a soft yellow. New sheers hung at the window, and a reupholstered chair was tucked into a corner. Her maternal grandmother’s cherry four-poster bed took up much of the room, neatly made up with a new hand-stitched quilt and matching pillows. She read the bottom corner square of the quilt: “Welcome Home, Margie. With love and gratitude from your friends at Little River Methodist Church.”

How wonderful to be home surrounded by love! Yet, she tossed and turned in the big bed all night, her body still swaying with the rhythm of the train, and her ears tuned to detect sounds of an enemy approaching.

Chapter 19

Little River, Michigan, March 1945

March in Michigan is a mean month, the beauty of pristine snow a memory and the warmth of spring only a desire. Margie looked out at the brown and white landscape and complained, “I’m so cold. I don’t think I’ll ever feel warm again.”

“You’re skin and bones,” Mama said, handing Margie an afghan to wrap up in before heading to the basement to stoke the coal furnace.

A fedora-topped reporter published her story in the local paper, and civic functions kept her busy. Little River organized a parade in her honor, with the Girl and Boy Scouts, and veterans groups from the American Legion joining the other marchers. From a flag-draped dais, the mayor presented her with the keys to the city, and the high school band belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The Rotary Club and the Little River Women’s Club asked her to speak to their groups: when she obliged, everyone clamored to ask questions about her experiences.

She talked about Bataan’s monkeys and toucans, the beautiful orchids high in the trees, getting lost in Corregidor’s amazing Malinta Tunnel. She stressed the importance of mail from home. She kept silent about her constant fear, being rife with disease, numb with despair, and living with death. She didn’t mention the swarms of deadly mosquitoes, the snakes, the lizards … dirt raining from the rock ceiling or blood filling her shoes … the weevils she ate … the too-short coffins …

The war dragged on as a weary public’s interest waned. To incite outrage, the United States government released the Bataan Death March records, whipping the country into a frenzy. After reading accounts of bayoneted and beheaded prisoners of war strewn like trash along 60 miles of road between Manila and Camp O’Donnell, Mama turned off the radio and hid the newspapers from Margie.

Keeping Margie in the dark wasn’t difficult, because all she wanted to do was sleep. She couldn’t seem to get enough of it. Her appetite, which had returned, disappeared again, and she felt queasy most of the time. She smiled and laughed through welcome-home teas, luncheons, and visits from old friends and neighbors, but they were exhausting ordeals to get through. She missed her army friends who shared her torments and fears. She needed to talk with someone who understood about the images stuck in her head, and the dreams from which she woke up crying.