Chapter 8
In those days, a letter from Japan, even from a military base, took weeks to reach an address in the States.
So Leonard was already gone a month before I learned that he had, in fact, been put on laundry detail the day he arrived in Kyushu.
He wrote that they were keeping him busy: When he wasn’t folding shirts, he was doing drills or scrubbing something.
In his next letter, he wrote that he’d been getting a little free time, and he enclosed two swans made of folded paper.
He explained that this kind of folding was called origami, and though some Japanese people could make all kinds of things, he’d only learned to make a swan.
I was glad that he’d sent me two of these swans, as I kept one on my dresser, pristine, and every time I saw it, I thought, Okay, see? He’s fine.
The other swan I unfolded and refolded until I figured out how to make one myself.
On the first day of summer vacation, I showed Janet how to do it, and one afternoon, we tore out the pages of a magazine and made dozens of swans to give to our friends.
I was doing all this, making origami swans and working at the library, going to school and acting as if all was fine, even as I began to worry, and even as that worry turned to panic.
I’ve already acknowledged, and will acknowledge again, that a part of me perhaps wanted to get pregnant that night in Bradenton.
But once I was back in my regular life, that part of me was gone.
For a while, I was able to convince myself that I was just late, and that the worrying itself was causing the lateness to go on and on.
But by early June, I could no longer tolerate the smell of a cooked egg, much less the taste of one.
I’d always loved eggs, and when Mae noticed I was holding my breath and declining even my favorite omelet, she asked, “You’re not expecting, are you? ”
She was joking. As far as she knew, I hadn’t been on a date since Leonard and I went to the Harvest Bash dressed as Phyllis and Walter. But when she saw my face, she apologized.
“I tease you because you’re a good girl,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I can be a little crass.” She gave me a pleading look. “Don’t mention it to your dad, okay?”
I could only nod, dazed and full of dread.
Mae could be crass, compared to my mother, and she only went to church on Christmas.
But she, too, had standards. She’d once mentioned an unmarried pregnant girl from her hometown, and though there’d been sympathy in her voice when she said the boy who was responsible left town, she still called the forsaken girl trash.
I’d asked, “Do you mean she was trash before it happened? Or because of it?” It was a serious question.
But Mae had only waved her hand and said, “Oh you know, the whole family, trash.”
And my father, of course, would never have mentioned such a girl in the first place.
I could tell no one of my terror. Irene and Roberta were kind girls, but they were truly good girls, smart and ambitious. What I’d done was outside the bounds of what was expected of us and everyone we knew.
—
The heat of previous summers in Florida had not particularly bothered me.
But that summer, as the days grew warmer, I spent most nights awake and sweating, staring into the whirring box fan in the window, and wishing I was Janet, carefree and snoring softly in her bed.
More than anything, I wanted to talk to Leonard.
And yet I was too afraid to write out my fear in a letter.
I knew that army mail was often censored, and it seemed possible that incoming mail might be read as well.
I imagined an older man in uniform, mustached and officious, sending my letter back to my parents.
This sounds paranoid, but I can say that I felt like a criminal, as if I’d committed an actual crime.
I can see why I would feel this way. They still call out-of-wedlock births “illegitimate,” and it’s not the baby who did anything wrong.
On the first official day of summer, a radio announcer reminded us that the sun would soon start setting a little earlier every day.
He meant it to be encouraging, that we were headed for milder temperatures.
But I heard only the certainty of time passing, and the inevitability of what would unfold.
I got out a sheet of stationery and wrote only eighteen words:
Leonard, I think I’m expecting. I’m never this late. I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do.
It seemed both unnecessary and unwise to sign this letter, or to write my address on the envelope, which I mailed from a postbox near the library.
Once it disappeared into the slot, irretrievable, I felt as if I’d set a giant machine in motion.
Leonard would have to tell his father, who would have the satisfaction of thinking he’d been right about me all along.
Mrs. Lifton would know that the word of her future daughter-in-law meant nothing.
She would know I was the kind of girl who promised one thing and did another, the kind of girl who could look right at you and lie.
But Leonard would help me, as soon as he knew. He would do whatever he could. Of this, I was certain.
—
Two days later, Mae found a pillowcase full of firecrackers under Bobby’s bed.
It turned out that for weeks, he’d been using his allowance to build a stockpile in preparation for the Fourth, even though we had a firm rule in our house against firecrackers, because, as Bobby put it, exactly one person in Mae’s dingaling town had blown his thumb off in 1928.
When Bobby came home from the pool to find that Mae had first soaked the entirety of his Texas Busters, Sputtering Devils, and Step-on Torpedoes in the kitchen sink, and then spread them on a towel in the front room, he said a curse word at regular volume, and my father looked at him as if he’d vomited on the rug.
My brother had, by then, grown too big to be taken over a knee, but no one was surprised when he was sent to his room without dinner.
The weekend that followed was especially hot and humid, and early Saturday morning, Mae, my father, and Janet left for the beach.
I told them I couldn’t go because of work, which was true, though I was glad for the excuse.
Bobby, still in the doghouse, was given a big pot of potatoes to peel, and our father said if he knew what was good for him, he’d have the task completed before their return.
“Don’t you help him,” my father told me. “He lied, and he cursed, and he needs to face the consequences. You, on the other hand, should kick back and rest.” He looked at me, frowning. “You’ve been looking a little tired, honey. Are you feeling okay?”
I told him that kicking back and resting sounded nice.
And indeed, when I got home from the library, I spent the rest of the afternoon lying in bed in front of the window fan, the shades pulled low to keep out the sun.
There was still enough light that I could see the origami swan on my dresser, and I imagined the mailbag with my letter to Leonard in the hold of a ship, maybe already halfway across the ocean.
It might be in Leonard’s hands by early July.
I didn’t know if, or when, the army would let him come home.
There was one thing I did know. I wouldn’t finish high school. I’d wanted to go to St. Pete’s junior college and train to be a teacher. Leonard’s father would never believe it, but it was the truth.
When I finally emerged from my room, the light in the kitchen window had softened to dusk, and crickets were singing at full volume.
Bobby sat shirtless at the kitchen table, peeling the potatoes.
I asked if he’d eaten, and he said he didn’t have time to eat.
He’d gotten a late start, and he wasn’t sure when they’d be back.
I almost admonished him, but he looked so downhearted I got out a knife and sat beside him.
“You never had to do this,” he muttered. “You never get in trouble. You never do anything wrong.”
Just you wait, I thought. But at that moment, I was okay, enjoying the work.
One thing I’m good at is peeling potatoes—I’m quick, and I get all the skin.
So as sour as Bobby was acting, I knew he was glad I was there beside him.
I thought about how when he was little and sweet, a toddler with chubby knees, we’d sing “Swinging on a Star” together.
I would sing the melody, and he’d do the bum ba dee dum backup.
At the part that asked Or would you rather be a fish?
he would pucker his lips and flap his little arms, and when I sang Or would you rather be a pig?
he would oink, and doing this had been just about his favorite thing in the world.
He was older now, and in a bad mood because of the potatoes.
But when I started to sing “Swinging on a Star” as I peeled, he smiled a little, still peeling, and to my surprise, he soon joined in with the bum ba dee dums. When I got to the pig question, he oinked with his old gusto.
That got us both laughing, and for a good minute, my troubles receded from my mind.
But then he nudged my knee and asked me to sing “Dream a Little Dream.”
I hesitated, though I knew why he wanted me to sing it. Our mother loved this song. Most nights, she’d sing it to us as a lullaby. When she was too tired, she’d just say the one line from it before shutting off the light: Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you.
Bobby set down his knife. “Nora?”
“Just thinking about her,” I said, wiping my cheeks. What I didn’t say was that I hoped he’d been wrong that day we saw the manatee, when he said our mother was still with us. I didn’t want her seeing me now. She would be so disappointed.
“You don’t have to sing it,” Bobby said. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I told him I was fine, though it was clear that I wasn’t. After a few moments, he patted my back, as if he was the one who was older.
—
Maybe a third of the potatoes remained unpeeled when we heard the car in the drive. Bobby kept frantically peeling, even as the screen door creaked open and Janet ran in wearing her sailor swimsuit and matching cap, excited to tell us about the dead fish they’d seen on the beach.
“It was bigger than I was!” She held her sunburned arms high over her head.
“All bloated up like a balloon! The birds wouldn’t leave it alone, and we could smell it in the air all day.
” She moved toward the table and stood on tiptoe to peer into the pot of potatoes.
“Oh,” she whispered, frowning at Bobby. “You were supposed to be done.”
He gave her a tortured look. “Where are they?”
“Outside talking to Mr. Vitori.” She tugged at her swimsuit strap. “There was an invasion. The communists did an invasion.”
The knife stilled in my hand. “What invasion? Where?”
She appeared frightened by the question, or the intensity of my tone. I stood, patted her shoulder, and hurried to the front room. The screen door opened again, and Mae appeared, a towel around her neck.
“There was an invasion?”
“Well, hello to you, too.” She wiped her feet and turned to the kitchen. “Janet, come on back to the bathroom now. You’re tracking sand all over the house.”
“Mae,” I said. “Where was the invasion?”
“I forget. Far from here.” She looked past me. “Janet! Don’t make me tell you again.”
I pushed open the screen door just as my father was coming up the steps, his forehead shiny with sweat.
“Where was the invasion?”
“Korea.” He hung his keys on the hook and crouched in front of the radio.
I held my breath as he turned the knob, dialing through static and piano music.
He was breathing heavily, and his beach shirt smelled like sweat.
“The North Koreans invaded the free south,” he said.
“Did it early, while everyone was sleeping. It’s still morning there, and they’re just steamrolling through. ”
He made a pummeling motion with his fist, and he didn’t notice when I flinched. He wasn’t being cruel. My father still believed Leonard had broken my heart the previous fall, and he’d taken to referring to him as “the idiot” if he referred to him at all.
“Will there be a war?” I asked. “Will we be in it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody wants that. But if we let them take this, they’ll just take more.”
“It’s by Japan,” I said. I was talking to myself. “Korea is close to Japan.”
My father held up his hand. He’d found the news, an announcer breathlessly reporting the NKPA capture of a coastal highway, and terrified South Koreans fleeing a city just forty miles from the fighting.
I could hear Bobby still at work in the kitchen, the scrape of the knife, the peelings dropping into the bucket.
Even in my panic, I understood he was hurrying to finish the potatoes, scared that my father would go into the kitchen and see that he’d started too late.
But my father and I both stayed by the radio, still and silent even during the commercial breaks. Through the front windows, I watched insects flutter in the glow of the light by the door. In Korea, and in Japan, it was late morning.
After a while, my father noticed my distress and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “God be with that city.”
I had to look away, shamed by his assumption that I was thinking of the South Koreans fleeing for their lives. For I was like Bobby, trapped in my own fear, my own heart.