Alice At The Home Front (2 page)

“Is there a teacher you don’t like?” Miss Prichard continued.

“N-o-o,” said Alice, “but where’s Mr. Anderson, the science teacher?”

“I’m afraid he went off to war. Of course, we all miss him.”

Alice shrugged and bit her lip.
Off to war. And I get left with a mother who won’t even let me spot planes.

Miss Pritchard leaned forward. “Sometimes, when we do things like write words on the sidewalk, it’s because we want to look important or cleverer than someone else.”

“Not me,” said Alice.

“Or maybe we need some attention.”

Now that’s really stupid
, thought Alice. She leaned over and tried to dig a little hole in the rug with the toe of her shoe.

“Would you like to have a talk with Miss Cutter about this little matter?”

“Who’s Miss Cutter? What little matter?”

Alice knew Miss Cutter, the school psychologist. Uh oh, maybe she’d be sent to the loony bin or maybe even to jail! She’d hate the stripes on that scratchy convict uniform and the watery cabbage broth they served you, with bugs in it. She’d stage a strike; that’s what she’d do. She’d tap Morse code on the bars and call all the convicts together for a meeting in the yard. Then they’d line up—

“You know, Alice,” Miss Prichard interrupted her thoughts. “What we were saying about your writing on the—”

“I won’t do it again,” said Alice.

“Oh, well, in that case … maybe we can just put all this aside. That is, if you promise, Alice.” She gave her a look from under her glasses.

“I promise.”

“When you’re angry,” Miss Prichard said carefully, “you know you can always make a drawing about it in art class instead of—”

“I promise,” said Alice firmly.

Miss Prichard got up from her chair. Alice did the same. She shook Alice’s hand. Hers, Alice noticed, felt as dry as a piece of salt cod. For a moment, Alice was sorry she had disappointed this nice lady.
How come I’m the only one who does things like that?
she wondered, echoing Miss Prichard’s question.

Miss Prichard stood at the entryway. “You can go back to class now,” she said and turned away.

Alice reached over behind her back to a blue vase on the table. She tweaked a wisteria bud from its branch in the vase. Then she flicked it purposely at the portrait of Miss Whittaker’s tight, prim smile and slipped out the door.

Chapter Two
 

Bandages
 

Alice looked out on the newly fallen snow that lay like a pressed, white sheet over the land and stepped out the door. She felt completely different from the way she had the week before. She’d heard that Jimmy Brownell was moving back to town. He’d been an exchange student out West. Swell! She skipped happily down to the corner. Jimmy was her favorite. Maybe she even had a crush on him. He always made her laugh. Even now, she was laughing remembering how he’d stand up on a sled and whisk down Suicide Hill backward. Everybody on the slope screaming when they saw him coming and scrambling to get out of his way. Jimmy, with his brown, curly hair springing up like corkscrews around the rim of his cap and his cracked front tooth. She felt warm all over just thinking about him. When would she get to see him? She’d heard he was going to do something special for the war effort and that he was very patriotic. Alice thought hard and decided she’d better contribute something as well. Then she could tell him all about it.

Today after school, instead of walking home to her big, messy room that she shared with no one, being an only child, she changed directions. There was something much more important to do at the Red Cross. She turned the corner and down the narrow path people had made with their shoes through the snow, toward Thayer Street and past Anthony’s, where she used to buy deluxe chocolates after school (until Mother put a stop to it, that is). There were no more chocolates at Anthony’s now, or anywhere else. Well, except for the other store farther up the road.
That
store was behind a door with a “closed” sign on it. It wasn’t closed at all, of course. It was where the laundry people sold black-market candy to naughty children—candy that was supposed to go to the troops. She’d caught Prudy Wainright coming out of there one day and scolded her.

“Don’t you know chocolate’s supposed to go to the boys fighting at the front?” Alice had asked. “You’d better save up your allowance to buy war stamps like the rest of us, dummy.”

Prudy had blushed red like a tomato, to Alice’s satisfaction. If Alice couldn’t buy black-market chocolate, why should Prudy? Besides, buying war stamps was a good way to donate to the war effort. When the book was filled, you got a war bond, and later, when the war was over, you could cash that in and get back your twenty or fifty dollars plus a little more. Alice knew most all the kids saved up their allowances for war stamps.

Alice walked on past the “closed” door, feeling proud that she wasn’t tempted to go in. Not that she would. Not alone, anyway. She hurried along, singing the latest song on the radio from “Your Hit Parade”:

Milkman, keep those bottles quiet

Can’t have that jive on my milk diet

Been working in the factory all night,

Turnin’ out production, all right …

Alice daydreamed:
Somebody asks me if I buy black market chocolates, I’ll say, “Certainly not. Who do you think I am? I work at the Red Cross every day after school. And I’m very good at folding bandages.” And they’ll smile and say, “Well, young lady, you’ll have to come down to the radio station and tell us all about it.” And that night, Gramp will turn on the big, wooden console in the living room to listen to the war news with H. V. Kaltenborn. The studio will interrupt and say, “We want to introduce our audience to Alice, who’s working for the war effort. A real patriot—”

Her street was coming up. Two large posters faced her as she approached the Red Cross center. The first one was spattered with snow and showed a picture of a blonde lady with her index finger on her lips. Written underneath was: “A slip of the lip will sink a ship.”

“Why?” she had asked Mother.

“Because if a spy overhears somebody talk about which ship a sailor will be on and when it will be sailing, the spy can report back to the enemy, and they’ll blow up the ship!”

Alice imagined an enemy sub racing under the Atlantic Ocean, tracking down a troop ship, and then shooting off a torpedo, the torpedo whizzing along the bottom of the ocean and blasting the ship to smithereens with all the soldiers and sailors—blown sky high and splashing back down into the ocean. It would be awful. She promised herself to watch out for spies at the grocery store. She wondered if she could recognize one if she saw one. If she had secret information, then she’d outsmart them. She’d leave notes behind the canned tomatoes giving false dates of a troop ship’s departure.

On the other wall was a big poster of Uncle Sam with a top hat. “Save our troops. Buy bonds TODAY,” it said.

“I have,” Alice told him, as she sang to herself “Any Bonds Today?” and entered the Red Cross building.

Inside, Mother was in charge. Alice thought she looked swell in her white smock with her black hair tucked back behind her cap and her Pink Lightning lipstick. Mother’s shiny dark eyes softened when she was nice and flashed when she was angry. Not like Alice’s gray-green eyes.
Gray-green isn’t even a color
, thought Alice. Blue eyes and brown eyes were real, normal colors. The only time Alice had seen gray-green eyes was on a puma in the zoo—and in the morning when she brushed her teeth.

Alice looked around and spotted her place at the last session when Mother had shown her how to fold bandages. She’d been really patient with her, not exasperated as she was at home when giving Alice chores—more like Alice was not her daughter at all but another volunteer like the other girls.

The room was filled with girl volunteers from nearby schools who gave up their free time to the Red Cross center. Alice knew many of them had fathers or brothers in the service. She was the youngest one there.

“I don’t need to remind you to wash your hands,” Mother announced, looking at each girl seated around the long table. “These bandages are for wounded soldiers. They have to be carefully folded, with the selvages tucked in. Remember that one loose thread can get stuck in a wound and hurt or cause infection. There is no room for sloppiness.” Alice felt the importance of what she was doing and took pride in how she worked. She looked at the plain, square cardboard in front of her, with flaps on all four sides. She cut the gauze and placed it carefully in the center. Then flap! Down on one side. Flap. Down on the other. Then flap, flap. Closing the other two, she had a neat, square bandage with no threads sticking out—if she was careful. At the end of the table, Mother took a quick look at the pile of bandages and found one with the threads exposed. She pulled it out and looked up, counting down the table to see whose stack it was. The girls looked up as well, and Mother glared around the room, pursing her lips until she met a pair of eyes that didn’t want to be stared at. It was Dorothy.

“We have to be extra careful, Dorothy,” Mother said. “Are you sure you want to do this work?” Dorothy sank into her chair and nodded a yes.

Mother said, “I’ll not warn you again.”

She approached Alice. “Are you making two-by-twos or four-by-fours today, Alice?” Mother asked, passing her the gauze.

“Two-by-twos,” she answered, happy to see Mother take an interest.

“That’s good, Alice.”

Alice reasoned that the four-by-fours would be for more serious wounds, and the two-by-twos would be for nicks or where a bullet had just grazed the skin. It was easier to make four-by-fours but safer to make two-by-twos. With the four-by-fours if she made a mistake, the soldier with the big wound would be in great pain, because of a thread or because his bandage wouldn’t cover the wound properly. Alice always had in her mind’s eye a soldier lying there, scared and secretly wanting his mommy and wanting to go home. Then the ambulance person would bring in another soldier who wasn’t wounded so badly, maybe he had just a scratch, and the nurse would take out a box of two-by-twos from Alice’s home town, Providence, Rhode Island. The same two-by-twos she had made with her own hands right here today, and the nurse would say, “Good thing these bandages came in—just the right size.” The soldier would smile at her, and they’d begin to talk, and after the war, they’d get married. All because of Alice’s two-by-twos.

An hour went by. As the youngest one there, it seemed an awfully long time, and Alice’s shoulders hurt a little from the tension and the table being too high for her. She carefully picked up her pile of bandages, placed them in the box provided, and scooted it down the table. She waved good-bye to the older girls around the table and to Mother, who smiled and nodded. Alice knew she meant, “Good job, Alice,” and she smiled back.

Alice was itching for something sweet and wondered if Elsie was home. She turned the corner from Brown Street into Angel, past a long line of cars at the gas station. Drivers waiting with their ration books to buy a couple of gallons stamped their feet and cleared the film of snow off the windshields. Alice walked through the gate to Elsie’s front door. Like most of the girls in her class, Elsie was bigger than she was. And smarter, Alice thought. Elsie let her in and led her through the living room. Her mother was a member of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) in the women’s branch of the navy and was away most of the day. On the mantle was a photo of her in a smart, blue uniform.

All along the walls were photographs of courageous Aces—pilots standing beside their planes. Most were of Elsie’s father, who was a famous fighter pilot. Beside his portrait in uniform were some colorful ribbons and shiny medals mounted in frames. Alice thought it was a bit strange to turn a living room into a museum for your father, but maybe it wasn’t strange after all, because he was so famous. Alice’s uncle served in the war too, but he wasn’t famous, because (as Alice had told herself a million times) he’d caught that cold so they taught him Arabic instead and sent him to Egypt. He never got to fly a plane.

“Does your father speak Arabic?” asked Alice.

“No, why?” said Elsie, leading her into the kitchen.

“My uncle does,” answered Alice. “He sends me scarabs. They’re like beetles. They bring good luck.”

“I can make fudge with my eyes closed,” interrupted Elsie, reaching for a pan and spoon. Alice saw her grab an enormous tin of cocoa. She was sure it had been there since before rationing, because no one could buy cocoa any more.

“I was hoping you would.”

Elsie began mixing cocoa and sugar in a pan, stirring it, adding butter, and cooking it up with a wooden spoon while Alice waited. Elsie made the best fudge in the whole world, and it more than made up for not being able to buy candy bars.

“I love it,” said Alice, wondering if Elsie would let her lick the pot but didn’t dare ask. “You make the best fudge in the whole world,” said Alice to see if she’d be offered the pan.

“I know,” said Elsie, licking it herself.

Afterward, when Alice had eaten too much and was feeling a little sick, she started for home. On the way, she thought about her uncle and how she would ask him to send her an Egyptian mummy with all the trimmings, little mummy cats, and a gold mask like the one in the museum. She would turn the sunroom into a pyramid tomb. She’d copy hieroglyphics from the
National Geographic
onto the walls and invite all her friends to see a real dead mummy, maybe with a little tree resin leaking out at the bottom. And at night it would get up and walk the streets and go straight to Elsie’s house and stare in her window and scare the wits out of her. Then maybe Elsie’s father and mother would be home more often, and she wouldn’t have to live in an empty house with nothing but photographs of him and nothing to eat but fudge.

At home, Alice got out her deck of plane cards with the airplane profiles that she had been memorizing. So far she could recognize the profiles of a Lockheed P38 and a B29 bomber, a Messerschmitt and a Fokker. She’d never actually
seen
a Messerschmitt, but she’d recognize one if she saw it flying by. She waited awhile, counting the spaces left for stamps in her war stamp book, and then hearing a sound, she rushed to the window. Without her binoculars, she tried to spot the plane from inside, and when that didn’t work, she pushed up the window and craned her neck into the cold winter wind.