A Woman's Place (24 page)

“It would have to be without pay.”

“I don’t think she cares about pay. And I might be able to get a temporary replacement for her. Helen knows a woman who already has an electrician’s diploma. She might not need much training. Do you think we can get her to fill in for Rosa? Are they hiring new workers?”

“We always need skilled workers. What’s her name? Have her come in and talk to Mr. Wire tomorrow. And I’ll ask about the leave of absence, but it should be okay.”

Jean felt happy for her friends as she began the long walk home; Ginny was staying, Rosa was going, and Helen’s friend might be getting a job. Then she remembered that her own plans to resign had been postponed, and she knew she needed to write to Russ right away. Surely he would understand that Jean was needed here for another month.

I went to work this morning,
she wrote in her letter that night,
intending to give my two weeks’ notice, but I’m afraid there has been a change of plans. I need to help Rosa, one of my workers, go see her husband before he is shipped overseas. If I resign now it will affect production. I’m so sorry, Russ. I can’t leave for at least another month. It would be irresponsible. Please have patience with me for a little while longer so I can help out my friend
.

At work the next day, Earl called Jean aside. “I went to bat for Rosa and got her some time off. But you’d better brace yourself for more harassment if you fall behind in your quotas. The two shifts that come after yours will have to pick up the slack, and some of those workers won’t be too happy about it. Just so you know. I sure hope Rosa decides to come back to work once her husband ships out.”

“What about Helen’s friend? Can’t she fill in for Rosa while she’s away?”

“I talked to Mr. Wire about her. He said he’d look over her file. I guess Helen Kimball went to see him, too, and applied a little pressure.”

Jean was so busy at work that a week went by before she realized that Russ had never answered the letter she’d written. At first she made excuses for him, blaming it on the post office or on too much farm work. But when two weeks passed without a letter from Russ, she could no longer fool herself. His silence had to be deliberate. He must be angry with her for not quitting immediately and coming home. She thought she understood how Ginny Mitchell felt, working against her husband’s wishes and becoming
estranged
, as Ginny put it.

The night before Rosa’s last day of work, Jean fled to her room after supper to write yet another pleading letter to Russ, begging him to understand, to have patience. She pictured the little grove of trees on the hill where he wanted to build a house for her, and she couldn’t stop her tears.
“If he loves you,”
her mother had said,
“then he’ll want God’s will for your life.”
Jean knew that helping Rosa see her husband had been the right thing to do. If only she could convince Russ to see it that way, too. Tears splotched the writing paper as she searched for the right words to convince him.

Above the ruckus that her nephews were making downstairs, Jean heard someone knocking on the front door. She held her breath as Patty answered it, always afraid it would be a dreaded telegram about Bill. A moment later Patty called to her.

“Jean? Someone’s here to see you.”

Jean had the wild thought that it was Russ, coming in person to hog-tie her and carry her home to Indiana. She jumped up and went to the dresser mirror, dismayed by how disheveled she looked. She quickly combed her fingers through her hair, but there was nothing she could do about her red, swollen eyes. She tucked in her blouse and hurried downstairs. Earl Seaborn stood near the door. Jean didn’t know if she was disappointed or relieved that it wasn’t Russ.

“Did I come at a bad time, Jean? Are you all right?” He eyed her teary face with concern.

“Yeah. I’m fine … it’s nothing.”

“You sure?” She nodded. “Listen, Jean, I thought I’d better come over and tell you this news tonight before you found out at work tomorrow.”

“Oh no. Please don’t tell me that Rosa’s leave of absence fell through.”

“No, it’s about Helen Kimball’s friend—Thelma King.” Jean felt a surge of relief. “She has been hired to work at the shipyard, probably because Helen Kimball applied pressure. But she won’t be working in your department and I think I know why. Were you aware that Thelma King is a Negro?”

“What? No … what difference does that make?”

“I’m so furious about this that I … I can hardly talk about it without raising my voice and throwing things. They gave Thelma King a job in maintenance.
Maintenance,
Jean! I found out that she really does have an electrician’s diploma from a trade school in Detroit—I saw it in her file when Mr. Wire stepped out of the room for a moment. The only reason I can think of why she wasn’t hired for your crew is because she’s a Negro. All of the electricians and other skilled workers at the shipyard are Caucasian; all of the maintenance workers are Negro.”

“Earl, that’s terrible! I can’t believe it!”

“I don’t want to believe it, either. I really like Mr. Wire. I don’t know if this decision came from him or from someone higher up. But no matter where it came from, it stinks! I just thought you should know.”

“Have you told Helen Kimball?”

“Not yet—because I really don’t have any proof that it is a racial thing. I wasn’t supposed to see Thelma’s file. Technically speaking, there isn’t an opening for an electrician on your crew because Rosa is coming back. And I’m afraid if I make a fuss, Thelma King will lose her new job in maintenance. She says she’s thrilled to be working in any department. They promised her that she might be able to work her way up.”

“But you don’t believe it?”

“I’ll be watching to see what happens when there is an opening for an electrician.”

“Are you going to fight for her?”

“You bet I am! This isn’t right, Jean. I know how it feels to be discriminated against. But at least my handicap is a physical one. The only ‘handicap’ Thelma King has is the color of her skin. You bet I’ll fight for her!”

“I admire you for that.”

“Sorry. I guess I got a little carried away. Thanks for letting me get it off my chest—I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Earl, wait,” she said as he turned toward the door. “Would you like to stay awhile? Have a soda or something?”

The frown left his face for the first time since he’d arrived. He smiled faintly. “Yeah, that would be great.”

CHAPTER 20

March 1943

“The U.S. government announced that meat rationing will begin this week.”

*
Rosa
*

Rosa watched through the window as the train crawled out of Stockton, and she wondered how she would ever sit still all the way to Virginia. She was so excited she wanted to crawl out of her skin! She told herself to be patient, that she had a long journey ahead of her, but it was hard to stay calm when Dirk was waiting for her at the end of the trip. Dirk! She would finally hold him in her arms again and never ever stop kissing him. How could she help being excited?

It seemed like she’d already spent a hundred years waiting in the Stockton train depot for the trip to begin. Dirk’s parents had insisted on driving her to the station—with plenty of time to spare, of course. Mr. Voorhees always had to arrive at every function at least an hour or two early. He nearly wore out the platform once they got there, pacing up and down, looking at his watch a hundred times until the train finally arrived.

Neither of Dirk’s parents had seemed happy for her when she’d told them she was going to Virginia for Dirk’s furlough. Mr. Voorhees got all grumpy and agitated, as if he didn’t like the idea of them being together.
“Too bad,”
she wanted to say.
“We’re married and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Mrs. Voorhees seemed embarrassed by the idea of a second honeymoon. That’s why it had surprised Rosa when they offered to take her to the train station in downtown Stockton. They’d surprised her even more by waiting with her until the train arrived. Tena had packed a hamper for Rosa with enough food to feed everybody on the entire train.

“Please, give my love to Dirk,” Tena whispered as she hugged Rosa good-bye.

“I will,” she promised. But she had a whole bunch of her own love to give him first.

Eventually the train picked up speed and steamed into South Bend, Indiana, a few hours later. Rosa switched trains to catch the “Lakeshore Special,” which headed across northern Indiana and Ohio to Buffalo, New York, then journeyed across New York State during the night to Albany. There she changed trains again, going south to New York City. With only an hour layover in Grand Central Station, she didn’t have enough time to visit her mother. Instead, she changed to a third train headed south to Philadelphia and Washington and eventually to Norfolk, Virginia, where Dirk was stationed.

Every time the train chugged into a station, Rosa saw crowds of people greeting one another or bidding each other a tearful good-bye. Soldiers were always granted boarding preference, and the other passengers had to squeeze in around them in the remaining seats. She always chose one beside a woman, if she could. Dozens of men in uniform tried to flirt with Rosa, but she refused to give them the time of day.

“I’m a happily married woman,” she informed them, “on my way to see my husband.”

Along with sailors and soldiers, hundreds of women crowded the stations, trying to reunite with their husbands. Rosa talked to several of them on the long trip and learned that some, like her, were visiting their husbands at their military bases. Others had been living close to a base to be near their husbands and were now returning home after the men had been sent overseas. The whole world seemed to have been turned upside down and shaken hard, with people cruelly torn away from their loved ones. Rosa wondered how long until it would all be over and life returned to normal.

By the time the train neared Dirk’s base, Rosa felt tired and wrinkled and grubby from sleeping on train seats for two straight nights. The tiny washroom in the coach was filthy from overuse, but she took her time primping and applying her makeup and perfume, wanting to look and smell her very best when she saw Dirk.

Rosa’s heart speeded up as the train finally pulled into his station. She yanked the window open, braving the cool March air to hang out of it and scan the mobbed platform. Even in a sea of uniforms, Dirk was easy to spot, so tall and fair-haired and handsome in his uniform.

“Dirk!” she yelled. “Dirk, over here!” At first he didn’t hear her above the noise, so she put her fingers in her teeth and whistled. He turned his head at the sound and his face lit with joy.

“Rosa!” He dodged between people, running toward the train, jogging alongside it until it finally halted.

Rosa wished she could shove her suitcase out the window and climb out behind it, but she waded into the crowded aisle, hefting her suitcase and the food hamper, and pushed her way forward. She was so impatient to get off that she wanted to knock all the people down and climb over them to get to Dirk.

At last she reached the door and leaped down from the train and into his arms, dropping her baggage to the ground. Dirk hugged her so tightly she thought she might pop open. It felt wonderful—wonderful! The crowd buffeted them as they stood on the platform kissing, but she didn’t care. She was back in his arms and that was all that mattered.

“Hey, don’t cry, beautiful lady,” he said when he finally looked into her eyes.

“I can’t help it! I love you so much, Dirk! Let’s get out of here and go to the hotel.”

“Honey, you read my mind,” he said with a grin.

Oh, how she loved his smile and the way it made his eyes crinkle—she loved everything about him! She clung to him as he picked up her suitcase and the basket of food and led her out of the station to the street. She didn’t intend to let go of him for three whole days.

“I started looking for a hotel room as soon as you wrote and told me you were coming,” he said as they walked. “That’s when I found out that every hotel and rooming house within miles of the naval base is filled to capacity. I’ve been working night and day, begging everybody I met, trying to find us a place to stay. Finally, one of the ensigns had mercy on me and told me about a family who sometimes rents out a spare room in their house. It’s not very fancy, and you’ll have to share the family bathroom …”

“I don’t care! Can you stay, or will you have to go back to the base at night?”

“I’m staying with you, honey. I have a three-day furlough. We can be together night and day for the next seventy-two hours.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight for one minute of that time. I might even stay awake all night so I can keep looking at you.”

“Oh, Rosa …” He pulled her into his arms again and kissed her. Neither of them cared that they were standing in the middle of the sidewalk alongside a busy street.

“Let’s splurge on a taxi,” Dirk said when he came up for air. “A bus will take too long.”

Rosa put her fingers in her teeth and whistled for one, too impatient to politely flag one down. She loved him so much she could hardly breathe.

They went straight to their rented room, and for the first twenty-four hours they never left it. If someone had asked Rosa what the room had looked like she couldn’t have described it. They for-aged for food in Tena’s basket whenever they got hungry but finally had to leave when the food ran out. They walked a few blocks to a cozy Italian restaurant on the boardwalk that their landlady had recommended and sat side-by-side in a dark booth with a candle on the table. They ordered Chianti and spaghetti.

“I want to hear all about your work, Dirk. Tell me what you learned to do in corpsman school—unless it’s too gory.” He laughed and kissed her.

“A corpsman usually helps the ship’s doctor. But there aren’t always enough doctors to go around, so a smaller ship might have just a corpsman. If we get into a combat situation, I’ll be giving basic first aid—applying compress bandages and splints, disinfecting with sulfa powder, injecting morphine, and so on. We try to stabilize the patients until they can get to a surgeon onboard a hospital ship.”

“Will you see wounded men who are all bloody and banged up?”

“If I’m assigned to a war zone, I will. We’re taught emergency measures—how to stop the bleeding and deal with shock and trauma. But don’t worry, Rosa, battles aren’t fought every day. In between times, I’ll be doing a lot of routine stuff, like handing out headache pills and dealing with seasickness. I’ve also learned how to take care of guys who’ve had too good of a time on shore leave.”

“Do you like your job?”

“Yeah, I do. I’ve learned a lot of interesting things.”

They hadn’t talked about Rosa’s job, and she was afraid to mention it, afraid he might want her to quit the way Ginny’s husband and Jean’s boyfriend were always nagging them to do. But the need to know finally outweighed her fear.

“Can I ask you something, Dirk?”

“Sure, honey.”

“I like my job at the shipyard a lot, but your father said that if you told me to quit he would expect me to obey you. And your mother said you were a lot like him—” She stopped when Dirk laughed out loud. “What’s so funny?”

“Rosa, honey, I may be a lot like my father in some ways, but I don’t think I would ever dare tell you what to do.”

She slammed down her water glass with a bang. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dirk gently rested his hand on top of hers. “It means that one of the reasons I fell in love with you was because of your fiery Italian temperament. Why would I ever want to change you?”

“But I can’t cook like your mother—in fact, I can’t cook at all. And I can’t clean house the way she does, either, or bake bread.”

He laughed again and pulled her close, holding her head against his shoulder. “If I wanted all of those things I’d live at home for the rest of my life and never get married. I want
you
, Rosa.”

“It’s just that … I never had a home like yours. I don’t know how—”

“I know you didn’t, honey. You told me all about it when we first met. That’s my gift to you—to be the kind of husband who works hard so you can have the home you deserve. I love you more than I ever imagined I could love someone, Rosa. Just return that love. That’s all I’ll ever ask from you.”

She couldn’t imagine a love like that, couldn’t imagine that someone would want to give so much and ask only for her love in return. She felt another wave of guilt for going to bars, laughing with other men, dancing with them and getting drunk. Dirk’s father was right: If she loved Dirk, she wouldn’t do all of those things. As she held Dirk in her arms, Rosa silently vowed to change, to be the kind of wife he deserved. She sniffed as her tears fell, and Dirk held her away from him for a moment to look into her eyes.

“What’s wrong, Rosa?”

“I want it all so bad, Dirk! I never cared about much of anything before. I just lived day by day, I guess you could say. But I know what I want now—you, our life together. And I’m so afraid!”

“Our lives are in God’s hands. All we can do is pray.”

Rosa gazed at him in astonishment. They were the same words his father had spoken. “I don’t remember you talking about God when we first met back in Brooklyn.”

“Didn’t I? I guess I had too many other things on my mind.” He began kissing her neck, sending chills all over her. “We’ll have a lifetime to get to know each other, honey.”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“Umm-hmm,” he murmured.

“I been going to church with your mother and father, and I was wondering … Is all that stuff as important to you as it is to them?”

He stopped kissing her and sat back, thinking before he answered. “That’s a good question. It is important to me—but in a different way than it is for them, I think. They took me to church all my life, and I do believe everything the Bible teaches. I know Jesus died for my sins. But it has always seemed like my parents’ religion—you know what I mean? Once I got away from home and started seeing new things and meeting all kinds of people, I had to grow up and take a good look at my Sunday school faith for the first time. I guess I had to decide if it’s important to me or not—and I’ve discovered that it is. I admit it scares me to think about being shipped overseas. They say there aren’t any atheists in foxholes. I know I’ll keep praying—and I hope you’ll be praying, too. I meant it when I said that our lives are in God’s hands.”

“I’ll keep going to church with your folks if you want me to.”

He traced his finger down her cheek. “Only if you want to go, Rosa, not because anyone is making you. Your faith has to become your own, just like my parents’ faith had to become mine.”

They left the restaurant and went to a dance at a serviceman’s club near the base. Rosa loved to dance—fast, slow, and everything in between. But tonight she wanted every song to be a slow one so she wouldn’t have to leave Dirk’s arms. He seemed so different compared to the other sailors and soldiers—fun-loving and a great dancer, but never rowdy or crude. He never used bad language around her, like the men at the factory or the Hoot Owl did, but was always a gentleman, pulling out her chair for her and opening doors. He was also the most handsome man in the room.

She hadn’t known Dirk very well when they’d eloped, but now that she’d met his parents she could see things in him that she hadn’t noticed before. How he bowed his head to pray before he ate. How he treated women and older people with respect. How clean and neat he was, picking up after himself and never leaving a mess for her in the bathroom.

Rosa felt so peaceful and calm when she was with him. It was one of the things that had attracted her to him, but she hadn’t known how to put it into words when they’d met. She only knew that she felt at rest when she was with him, as if Dirk had found the key to the motor that had always run, nonstop, inside her and had gently, firmly, shut it off. Maybe it was contentment. Rosa felt content.

During the day they walked along the beach, holding hands. The spring air felt cool, but they sat on the sand and snuggled beneath a blanket they’d borrowed from their room. Rosa had found what she’d longed for all her life, and she was terrified that she would lose it. She’d never thought about death before, but now it consumed her thoughts. She looked out at the huge ocean and shuddered to think that Dirk would be crossing it soon, going into danger, facing submarines and torpedoes and bombs and bullets.

“Are you too cold?” he asked when he felt her shiver.