Alice At The Home Front Read online

  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 Elsi
e, 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.

  She peered in every direction without finding the plane, but still she kept looking for what seemed a long time. She thought her ears must have frozen off her head, because she couldn’t feel them anymore, and her ribs were sore from leaning out. Why had Mother done this? Why couldn’t Mother take her spotting seriously? Never mind, she would show her in the end that this was her right work, a job that she could do, and better than anybody else. She believed in herself, even if Mother didn’t. She had to find a way to retrieve the binoculars or find someplace else to spot, but she knew both were impossible. She sneezed hard three times as she got used to the warmth of the room. Inside herself, she felt satisfied at having at least tried. This is what she was supposed to be doing, no matter what anybody else thought. This was her job.

  * * *

  “You’ve eaten nothing tonight,” said Mother that night at dinner. “At least eat one or two mouthfuls of vegetables.”

  “Suppose I’m a tiger. Would I eat vegetables?”

  “You don’t look like a tiger.”

  “But if I was, I’d die of hunger without any meat.”

  “You have some meat. Look.” Mother pointed to a puny little piece of chicken.

  “I mean real meat,” Alice clarified. “Tiger’s meat. Steaks and roasts.”

  “I’m surprised you even remember those cuts. They’ve been rationed for a long time. They’re for the soldiers.”

  “I know,” said Alice, remembering why. She thought of the soldier in his tent, with a waiter in a white uniform appearing and serving him a steaming steak, and the soldier saying, “Thanks, buddy. Now I can get strong again. And be sure to thank that little girl in Providence.”

  Alice skirted the vegetables, speared the lump of chicken with one stab, and popped it into her mouth.

  “Attagirl,” said Gramp, patting her hand.

  Chapter Three

  Sandbags

  From her room, Alice could hear a lot of arguing going on in the stairwell. It was Gramp, her mother, and another voice she recognized as Mr. Hopkins, the air raid warden.

  The night before she’d had terrible nightmares of planes shot down and screaming toward the earth, just like in the news reels, spiraling closer and closer toward her. She could see the pilots, their faces frozen, open-mouthed, eyes bulging with terror at what would happen. But Alice couldn’t move away, couldn’t run from it; her legs were frozen, stuck into the earth. She saw one plane whining through the air directly above her with pieces of metal falling away, plummeting down on every side; the fire from the engine shot out, the terrible heat approaching her head, burning red hot, about to collide with her. Then suddenly the plane veered off to the left, and she heard a loud crash and a splintering of crushed metal and saw flames shoot up and then a column of smoke rising from the rubble. It had been so close. She’d had this dream, or one like it, several times before. She felt her forehead covered with little pinpricks of moisture and wiped them away on her pillow along with her fear.

  From the second floor, Alice peered down at the carpeted landing to see what the ruckus was about. Mother was saying they couldn’t possibly convert the basement into an air raid shelter. It was too damp, too dark, and too uncomfortable, and besides, she’d seen a family of black widow spiders nesting by the water heater.

  “A family of black widows?” the warden sniggered. “You mean lots of black widows living together?”

  “Nonsense, there are no black widows in a New England winter,” Gramp interrupted.

  They didn’t spot Alice crouching on the stairs.

  “It’s not a question of comfort, Mrs. Calder,” explained Mr. Hopkins. “It’s a question of not getting in the way of an exploding bomb.” He scratched his head under his hard hat with “Warden” printed on it. Mother hated hats in the house.

  “I think the landing in this stairwell would be just perfect,” Mother said. “There are no windows. A bomb couldn’t possibly get in. We could sit on cushions”—she threw open her arms—“sip tea, and wait for the all clear.” She tilted her chin back to show she wasn’t going to give in.

  “Maddy, we’ve been told we should get under a table,” said Gramp. “We’ll carry the old dining room table from the sunroom down to the basement and put a mattress under it. We’ll make a bulkhead with sandbags, just like they say to do in the regulations.” Gramp looked at Mr. Hopkins for his approval.

  So this was the plan! Alice wondered if Mr. Hopkins would want to help carry a table down three flights of stairs to the basement, even if he was Gramp’s buddy and an air raid warden to boot.

  “What?” exclaimed Mother. “The mice would be into that mattress in a minute. And besides, the dining room table has a pedestal under it.” Her voice rose with irritation. “How could we possibly sit there? Why on earth do we need a table? We’ll be perfectly safe right here on the landing!” Her eyes flashed—a sign, Alice knew, that she’d had enough with the stupidity of these men. But Mr. Hopkins and Gramp kept very still and waited until she had gone back downstairs. Alice could tell by their whisperings and nods that they had quietly agreed behind Mother’s back to get help carrying the table. Gramp had seen Alice listening in and gave her a wink.

  Alice thought about the sandbags. What a great idea! The little knitting needles in Alice’s brain began clicking as she schemed. There was a room in the attic that led out to the roof. It hadn’t been used since Ella, the cook, had taken a job in the shipyards. She could crawl out of the window and lean against a buttress on the roof and spot planes there all day long, or at least after school. Not at night, of course. They used blind people to “spot” the night planes, because their keen hearing was best at recognizing which engine belonged to which plane.

  Alice took a strand of hair she’d been chewing on while thinking, stuck it behind her ear, and completed her plan. Sandbags would be perfect to provide safety on the roof. Just lug up a few sandbags and dump them around the window in case a bomb caused a fire. Carry up a thermos of Postum and a peanut-butter sandwich. That and her logbook would make her a real spotter, maybe even a member of the Ground Observation Corps some day. People would find out she knew the planes a lot better than they did. In the meantime, she’d better find out from other spotters how they did their job. But—she almost forgot! Mother had taken the binoculars! How would she get them back? And how would she get Mother to change her mind? Alice thought hard. She played with her hair, twisting it round and round; poked a finger through the tiny hole in her sweater, making it wider; and chewed on her thumbnail until it almost bled. Then she grinned to herself and
cried, “That’s it!”

  The next day, Sunday morning at 6:30, she sat down beside Gramp on his big, creaky bed while he was half asleep and pinched his toes until he listened to her.

  “Ow! What’s the problem, Alice? Up nice and early, ain’t ye?”

  “Gramp, I’ve got a wonderful idea. Now listen!” She pinched another toe. “Are you listening? Say yes.”

  “Yup, uh! Yes.”

  “You know those big binoculars that are too big for me?” She hoped Mother hadn’t told him she’d taken them away.

  “Yup. Have to grow into ’em.”

  “No, Gramp. That’ll take too long. There’s another pair; you know which ones I mean.” She shook his shoulders. “Let’s go find them.”

  She had to wait what felt like hours for Gramp to get up and get dressed. At least he didn’t take time to shave. Then he followed Alice to the third drawer of the dresser in the corner. At one time it had belonged to her grandmother, now on her way up to heaven, Alice hoped.

  Alice pulled out a small pair of elegant, mother-of-pearl binoculars she knew had been very expensive in their day. Until now, Alice had a problem with the spotting because of the big binoculars. Try as she would, there was no getting them to close tight enough for her to see through both lenses at once. She’d been looking through first one glass and then the other, which was a waste of time and forced her to refocus when the planes changed altitude or direction. Now, with the mother-of-pearl glasses, she had a perfect fit. Gramp had them tucked away lovingly, in memory of their “happily married days,” Mother had said.

  “Don’t know about them, Alice.”

  “Gramp! Look how they fit me!” Alice chose the perfect argument. “Don’t you want to help the war effort? These glasses will spot the enemy planes! These glasses will save all of Rhode Island from the bombing by the Krauts.”