Gingersnap

J
ust a couple of dreams? Is that what you think? That all of it would have happened without her?

You think I would have gotten myself to Brooklyn, and brought Theresa with me?

Would I have found Coney Island, with the sand like silk under my feet? The waves roaring in my ears? The taste of salt in my mouth?

What about the bakery?

The bakery!

All right. Maybe
.

But what about Elise and her story?

Yes, most of all, finding Elise, her hair escaping from her bun, her arms around me?

Could I have done all that alone? I don’t think so
.

If you don’t believe in ghosts or voices that come out of almost nowhere, there’s probably no sense in reading what I have to say
.

Then again, you might be surprised
.

“I
’ll be right there, Rob,” I called.

Did my brother hear me?

He was in the kitchen chopping onions, the knife going a mile a minute. WJZ Radio was blasting news to anyone who wanted to listen. It was all about the war in the Pacific. I didn’t want to think about it.

I clumped into his boots. They were huge and much too heavy, but who knew where mine were? From my window, I’d seen a flower in the swampy pond at the end of our garden, a buttery yellow lily.

Amazing. It was late for flowers, almost winter. It might be close enough to pick. I was going to find out.

I took the path out back, stamped through the
weeds, then stepped into the water, sliding a little. Mud and old leaves oozed up around my feet. From the corner of my eye, I saw something floating around on the other side of the pond.

My hat?

My old Sunday hat, the blue ribbons trailing behind, completely bedraggled!

How did it get there?

I couldn’t be bothered about that right now. It was the flower I was after.

I sloshed in a little farther. The water was freezing; I could feel it right through Rob’s boots. Then the mud covered the boots. I couldn’t take another step.

It reminded me of something I’d seen in the movies: a girl sinking to her nose in quicksand. “Arghh,” I whispered, just the way she had.

One day I’d be a movie star. I’d be grown up, and the war would be over. Or I’d be a famous chef, wearing a tall white hat, with movie stars crowding into my restaurant.

“Hey, Rob!” I yelled toward the house. “I’m stuck in here.”

He waved from the kitchen window, the chopping knife raised in his hand. “On my way, Jayna,” he yelled back.

I waited, paddling my hands in the icy water, wiggling my toes in his boots. The pond was filling in with
old leaves and branches; the stream that fed it was no more than a trickle. Rob had said it wouldn’t be a pond much longer, just a patch of mud.

A couple of insects skated across the water and a blue heron high-stepped around the reeds. The turtle we called Theresa was in the middle of the pond, teetering on a thin branch that had broken off from the willow tree. Her shell was thick and curved, a beautiful brown and gold.

What would she do when her pond turned into a patch of mud? She’d have to take her dinner-plate-sized self and lumber off to find a new place.

What about me, when Rob left next week? He wouldn’t be coming home from the naval base every night. He’d be halfway around the world on a destroyer, fighting in the war I didn’t want to think about.

Theresa blinked with heavy lids. Maybe she was wondering about me, a skinny creature who fed her dried bugs and raw hamburger meat every day, a creature with sudden tears in her eyes.

I brushed at my face with two muddy fingers.
Think about being a movie star. Rich and famous. Think about that tall chef’s hat plunked over my ginger hair
.

Rob came across the yard and swung me out of the brackish water, leaving one boot stuck in the muck. My brother, Rob, nine years older than me, was big and bulky because he loved to cook and, even more,
to eat anything he cooked! He was great at it: burgers and fries, steak and baked potatoes, lemon meringue pie and apple turnovers.

No wonder he was a cook in the navy. And now he’d be on a destroyer, the
Muldoon
, cooking for the sailors.

Do not waste one minute thinking about the
Muldoon.
Not even one second
.

Rob looked at my muddy self. “So why were you trying to take a bath in the pond?”

I pointed to the yellow flower.

“You’d never reach that flower in a million years.”

“It was almost my last chance,” I said. “When you leave, I’ll be halfway across town, staying with Celine.”

Another thing not to think about! Celine, our landlady, would drive me out of my mind.

“Bad enough we have to have dinner with her every other minute,” I told Rob. “Worse that she’ll take care of me full-time.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I rushed on. “Don’t even say her name. I don’t want to think about Celine tapping around on Cuban heels, her hairpiece looped over one eye, telling me to act like a lady.”

“Poor Celine.” Rob leaned back against the scrawny willow tree. “Actually, she’s been a good friend and a good landlady.”

I wanted to say,
Don’t go
. I wanted to throw my arms
around him and say,
We just made ourselves into a family a year ago
.

Not much of a family, only two people, but still so much better than before. I closed my eyes, remembering the day he’d come for me.

“Why don’t you wait?” Mrs. Alman, the foster woman, had said.

“Not even a second.” Rob had smiled at both of us. “No more Sunday visits. I’m old enough now, legal.”

I’d run down the path with him, looking back for a second to wave goodbye to Mrs. Alman, and in the car, the two of us had laughed with tears in our eyes.

“If only you didn’t have to go,” I said now. “Suppose you get killed?”

He shook his head. “Wait a minute, Gingersnap.”

My mother’s nickname for me.

Before I knew it, he’d sloshed into the water that didn’t even reach his knees and took three enormous steps toward the flower. He reached out with one hand, almost touching it.

I held my breath as the flower bobbed just out of reach.

“Yeow.” He slid into the mud, water spraying onto the bank, then came up, holding a stone in his raised hand. “No flower today, but this is for you, the world’s best soup maker. Now you can make stone soup.”

I grinned. I could do anything with a pot of
vegetables, a little stock, a chunk or two of meat, and a pinch of basil or oregano.

The stone just fit in my hand. As I looked down at it, I could imagine a face: indentations that were almost eyes, a small curved nose.