The Magic Of Ordinary Days Part 5

When I slid back in behind the steering wheel, I caught Rose studying my belt.

"What?" I asked her.

She shook her head and looked out through the windshield. Then, apparently changing her mind, she turned back to me and asked, "Are you expecting?"

My keys fell to the floorboard.

I couldn't believe it. I was unable to speak, unable to answer her question. Already it was noticeable, and so soon. I had seen a doctor for verification back in Denver but hadn't suffered one morning of sickness, hadn't felt weak or faint, and hadn't even realized my abdomen was growing. Checking off the time, I realized it had been over three months, that certainly it made sense I should now be showing. As I searched the floorboard for the keys, I felt the powerlessness once again rush in and consume me. I remembered the first day I had allowed myself to acknowledge the possibility, and by then I was over a month late. It was too unbelievable that I couldn't control the processes transpiring inside the confines of my own flesh, so unbelievable that I had ignored the clear signs. Although I had feared the truth, I told no one for another two weeks in hopes that it was just some cruel trick of nature. But after weeks of walking around with a bomb buried inside me, I finally went to Abby, and she went to Father.

Abby had meant me no harm. She had a.s.sumed that Father, as the head of our family, needed to know, that he would come up with a sensible plan. Father didn't speak to me for two more weeks; he wouldn't even meet my eyes. Then he summoned Abby and Bea over to the house, where he ushered the three of us into his study. He sat us down and announced that he had been in touch with his old friend Reverend Case, and that I would marry a bean farmer out on the plains. I remembered sitting there in his cool leather chair and staring at the perfect part in his hair. It was so straight. Had he sectioned it off with an ice pick?

Bea had begun to cry.

"Oh, Father, please," Abby was saying. "There must be other options."

Bea spoke up between sobs. "She could go to a home for unwed mothers, then give up the baby for adoption."

Abby said, "I knew a girl who went away to visit a maiden aunt for about six months. That was the story. We could say the same-"

"No," Father interrupted her. He stared at me through the spotless lenses of his gla.s.ses. "We must all bear the consequences of our actions."

"This is too big," Abby said in a whisper. "This is too big a consequence."

As Abby and Bea continued to plead for me, Father took off his already immaculate eyegla.s.ses and scrubbed the lenses again until every imaginary speck and smudge had vanished. If I had done something we could hide, if no one could have ever found out, I might have been forgiven. For us, family dignity was one of our chief concerns. But this thing-I couldn't even say the word-the P word. It made my transgression so bountifully obvious.

Father placed both hands flat on the desk and began to rise, signaling that our discussion had ended. "My decision is made. The arrangements are all in order." Before he put his gla.s.ses back on, for just a second, I thought I glimpsed just a touch of something not totally clear, a fine mist coating his eyes. But he said, "Livvy, you leave on the train next week."

Near the gas pedal, I finally found the keys. I looked up at Rose and Lorelei and almost laughed. Only two nights before, Ray had asked me, "Don't you need to see a doctor?" I had thought he was referring to an accident I'd recently had. While working in the garden, I had cut my foot on an old piece of gla.s.s hidden in the dirt. Now it occurred to me-his true concern was the reason I had come here in the first place.

Of course, others would a.s.sume this a happy event. I said to Rose and Lorelei, "Yes, I am expecting." Then I managed a smile.

Lorelei squealed and clasped her hands together. "Do you have any clothes?" she asked.

Perhaps I wasn't yet listening to her. She meant maternity clothes, of course. "No, no, I don't."

Rose sat up straight in the seat and smiled. "We can sew. We have our own Singer. Back in California, that was our family business-tailoring. Our father made the finest suits in all of Los Angeles, often for moviemakers. What could we make for you?"

"It isn't necessary," I said, but soon realized that it was necessary, for them. In this way, they could return the favor of my driving. "I'll take that back. I would like a dress for church. In Wilson, a minister preaches on Sundays. A man I most admire."

"What are your favorite colors?"

I didn't care, but I remembered the false eyes. "Blue and red, like the eyes of the swallowtail."

Lorelei asked, "Are you hoping for a boy or girl?"

Again I was momentarily unable to answer, for it was another question I had never considered. "I suppose the Singleton family would prefer a boy."

"But what about you? Would you prefer a daughter or son?" asked Lorelei.

I remembered a young man I'd known at the university, a quiet, soft-spoken, serious student who had always dressed as if he were going to church. He'd avoided the draft all through college, then, at his father's urging, had joined the Marines upon graduation and became a Corps pilot. He was shot down and killed during his first combat mission in the Battle for the Eastern Solomons, never once having the chance to teach blind children, as had been his ambition.

"If I were able to choose, I'd take a daughter." I met Rose's eyes. "At least girls don't get drafted, don't get pressured to go off and fight in wars."

"Do you ever wonder," began Rose slowly, "why there must be so much war?"

What a question it was, and one I'd often asked my professors. "All the time I wonder. Throughout all of my history studies, I was constantly amazed and distraught by the near constancy of it, all across time."

Lorelei chewed a nail. "Do you think that human beings are naturally warlike?"

I shook my head. "I can't believe that. I can't let myself believe that."

"I don't believe it, either," said Rose. "Most of us would find some other way to settle our disputes."

I agreed. "Most of us are naturally peaceful."

"It's only when the wrong leaders come into power that the peace disintegrates," Lorelei concluded.

"If only the leaders of all countries could be women," I said, and we laughed together at the notion, the impossible nature of it.

Then we were silent, each of us lost in our own gnawing thoughts.

Rose put a hand on my arm. "It must be a difficult time to be carrying a baby."

I hadn't thought of it until then. This baby would most likely be born while this deadly war, the worst and most brutal in history, still raged. And Rose's sympathy for me in the face of what was happening to her, in the face of her lost home, lost education, and imprisonment, touched me profoundly. I swallowed back tears. "I'm sure it'll end up okay."

"Yes," said Rose. "We must all believe that, mustn't we?"

Lorelei studied me over the next few moments of silence. Her eyes saw more than I thought I was showing. "Is Ray Singleton your husband?"

I realized then, that in all the time I'd spent with them, I'd never introduced Ray or even mentioned him in our conversations.

"Yes," I answered. And legally, he was.

Nine.

Back in La Junta, we found a Woolworth's with a section for sewing, including a row of fabric bolts lined up along the back wall. First, we searched through a pattern book until we found a maternity dress we all approved of and decided would suit me. Then we looked at fabric.

As she ran her hand along the bolts, Rose said, "All of the jackets my father made were lined with the finest silks."

Lorelei said, "We did all the finish work by hand, with tiny st.i.tches our grandmother taught us to make. You couldn't see them from the finished side."

I selected jersey fabric of navy blue with tiny white polka dots, a package of pearly b.u.t.tons, and needed notions. Then we took turns trying on wide-brimmed straw hats. Already my face was checkered with big freckles darker than my birthmark. Rose, Lorelei, and I chose for each other the most flattering hats to save our faces from the endless prairie sun. Then we flipped through dime novels and picked one to buy, pa.s.s between us and read, and then later discuss.

All during the time we spent in the store, I had the same feeling of disbelief that had sheltered me during the months since Mother's funeral. I moved and spoke just as before, in a manner that looked so normal. No one would know that the center of me had been hollowed out with a shovel. But on our way back to the truck, we pa.s.sed by a soldier in uniform, and my own feelings of reproach welled so powerfully within me that I lost my step. Lorelei fell a step behind, too, but for an entirely different reason. She turned around and swooned over the soldier as he walked behind her and down the street.

"What did I tell you?" whispered Rose. "She's boy-crazy."

As we drove back, we followed truckloads of other j.a.panese interns traveling back from the fields. Farther north, we came upon a truckload of German POWs sitting on the flatbed of a truck similar to Ray's. The truck was pulling onto the highway and coming our way. I knew they had to be POWs because, although they wore regular clothes and looked average enough, they were accompanied by three armed MPs.

I sat up in the seat. I had known the Axis POWs were near, but had never seen any of them before. Ray had told me that while they were working the area, they stayed in barracks set up at the Rocky Ford fairgrounds. He'd even had some help from them earlier in the summer when he was harvesting the cash crops.

Germans, possibly n.a.z.is, right here in our country, as faces on human beings. Amazingly, I had heard nothing but good reports about the German and Italian POWs. Some of those from Camp Trinidad were so likable and trustworthy they had earned the friendship of the people in the bordering community. Teachers and other civilians were even volunteering to go into the camps to teach cla.s.ses in English, one of many educational opportunities offered to the prisoners and the subject most requested by them. On the radio, once I heard that one group of women who baked and cooked for the POWs found themselves so carried away in adoration, the sheriff of the county had cautioned them to stop, reminding them we were still at war.

I eased off the accelerator. I wondered how the Germans would appear in person, without the flattening effect of the newspaper pictures and impersonal newsreels. The truck went by me so fast, however, that I saw only a blur of many faces turned toward the road and not enough to form an impression.

Rose, who sat closest to me, must have been reading my thoughts. "Some of them are nice enough."

"Have you met?" I asked her "Often we work the same farms."

Remembering the reports I'd recently read, I asked, "Are the POWs still n.a.z.is?"

Rose lifted her shoulders and sighed. "I suppose some of them are. But most of them are just beginning to learn English, so we can't talk in much depth. And when we do talk, we don't usually discuss politics."

As I accelerated again, I asked, "Have you read anything about the death camps?"

"Yes," Rose answered.

"Do you believe the numbers of murders that are being reported?"

Rose frowned. "I'm beginning to. Yes."

I had to make myself concentrate on driving. But I couldn't stop thinking about it, either. Those eight hundred thousand pairs of shoes. At Majdanek alone. "Do you think the average German soldier knew?"

"If they did, they probably wouldn't admit it. And regardless, they would probably disavow any connection to it. Just as we want to claim no part of the war conducted by j.a.pan."

Lorelei peered around her sister. "Do you want to know what song is their favorite?" She waited for my nod, then said, " 'Don't Fence Me In.' Isn't that funny?"

But I found it all too awful to be funny.

In Wilson, I pulled over and gathered out all the coins I could find in my change purse. Inside the booth, first I dialed Abby, who didn't answer. When I tried Bea, however, she answered on the first ring.

She sounded so young. "Livvy, I can't believe it's really you. We've missed you so badly. How are you?"

"Fine."

"Oh, my dear, it's been so gruesome here without you. Are you well? When can you come to visit?"

When I didn't answer, she went on. "Father has had the influenza, but he's fine, really fine now. And you don't know the news about Abby and Kent. He's being shipped off, away from Fitzsimons, a.s.signed to go overseas." Bea paused. "But Abby is acting so brave, wouldn't you know it? Always the strong supporter. Saying they need him on the front lines more than she does, especially now more than ever, with the end so near."

Finally I found my voice. "If only it would end before he has to go. Tell Abby I'll pray for Kent every night."

"Of course I will." Bea waited, then her voice deepened. "Oh, how is it really, Livvy? Is he good to you? Because if he isn't, remember what Abby advised. You always have options."

Options? I could remember once having options. "I can't think about that now."

"Of course you can't. Just take a rest out there, and after the baby comes, things will look clearer. Now. Do you think you'll be able to come home for the holidays?" When I couldn't keep up with her, Bea filled the dead s.p.a.ce. "It's going to be so terribly sad without Mother for the first time. We can't possibly manage without you, too. You'll just have to come. We simply won't take no for an answer."

Bea went on in this manner for quite some time, almost carrying on a conversation with herself. But her voice sounded so good to me that I let her go on and on. I added more coins as the operator asked for them, until I had completely run out of change, and Bea and I were forced to say a rushed goodbye.

As I hung up the receiver and looked outside the telephone booth, I realized that for just the briefest moment, I had escaped. Bea's voice had picked me up and plunked me back in the home where I had once belonged. Although Rose and Lorelei waited for me in the truck, it took me a while before I was able to move toward them.

Options, Bea had said. Back in Denver and before I left, we had discussed those options. With no place to go and no personal means, I couldn't disappear on my own, but staying in Denver was impossible, too. Having a baby without a husband ruined a girl's life forever. Abby's suggestion had been to marry as Father insisted, give the child a name, then divorce and return with the baby to Denver. Our mother had always taught us that divorce was a distasteful thing reserved for the lower cla.s.ses and for movie stars, but our generation was more enlightened. We were fighting the worst war in history, and if humanity survived it, we wouldn't sacrifice everything in our lives, ever again. Already the divorce rate was soaring, probably due to the large number of hasty wartime marriages. Of course, Mother had also taught her daughters to stay virgins until after marriage, something Abby and Bea had managed to do.

I slipped back into the driver's seat and turned over the ignition. Earlier that morning, I had met Rose and Lorelei at the pay telephone in town, as they had a.s.sured me they could walk that far. But now they directed me to a large horse barn outside of Wilson where many of the farmworkers lucky enough to partic.i.p.ate in the Agricultural Leave Program spent their nights. Draped by lanterns, the open doors revealed beds of hay inside, personal belongings and clothing stacked on hay bales and on overturned crates, workers milling about as if in preparation for the night to come.

I tried to remember the first time I had heard of Congress's plans for j.a.panese American internment. I recalled that my first impression had been one of approval, that certainly we couldn't chance domestic disloyalty in the face of this terrible world war. But now, as I sat beside Rose and Lorelei and gazed out at this barn-this farm camp, as they called it-I wavered. Certainly these two girls posed no threat to our country. In fact, all the farmworkers seemed to be the most peaceful of people. They had volunteered to help with the harvest, tough physical labor at best, to leave the camp and stay here in conditions little better than those provided for our livestock, all to earn a measly nineteen dollars a month.

This was temporary, I kept telling myself. At war's end, they could return to the homes, businesses, and places in society where they had lived before. I found myself wishing I'd never seen this camp.

Perhaps someday, we could all make it back to the places where we started.

I didn't believe it, but I tried to.

Ten.

By the time I reached home, it was after sunset. On moonless nights, black sky and prairie horizon blended into one dark veil. But with no blackout curtains required here in the middle of the countryside, I could see stark white light coming from the kitchen window, letting me know that Ray was inside. I climbed the steps and found him sitting at the table eating heated-up leftover chicken.

"Sorry about that," I said.

He set down his fork. "I got by on my own for years before."

I slid down onto the chair next to him and checked the pot. Perhaps I'd try some myself.

Ray said, "We're thinking on trying winter wheat this year." He picked up his fork and started to eat again. "We plant it in the fall and let it grow for a couple of weeks until the cold makes it go dormant. If winter's not too bad, then in spring, the wheat'll come alive again."

But I'd long lost my initial curiosity about farming. Now I had to pretend to be interested. "How will you know?"

"If we get a lot of snow, it protects the plants like a blanket. But if winter's cold and dry," he said, shaking his head, "they're lost."

I grabbed a plate and picked out a chicken breast. "Is it worth the risk?"

He looked surprised. "Of course it is. That wheat could feed a lot of folks."

I found myself staring at the oily indentation across his forehead caused by wearing that old hat of his all day long.

He finished eating, then leaned back in the chair. "Where were you today?"