Authors: Noëlle Sickels
The Medium (18 page)
Given Helen's new sense of unbalance, Billy's shortage of free time was actually a boon. She was easier when their time together was measured. They were more likely to spend it necking, which banished any hesitations either of them had about the other. If they didn't talk, they couldn't disagree.
JUNE 1942
Helen's graduation was a low-key affair. Lloyd was not the only boy who had left school to join the Armed Services, and their classmates decided to leave empty chairs on the stage in the alphabetical places where they should have been seated. There was one such chair next to Helen, with a rectangle of oak tag taped to it lettered with the name Michael Scully. Mike was training in Colorado with the Tenth Mountain Division, learning to fight on skis.
The principal read a list of past graduates who'd lost their lives, most in the Pacific, including two in the recent Battle of Midway, the first big victory against Japan, and it was impossible not to wonder how many of the boys on stage would also leave and never come home. Helen had spotted a few gold-starred flags in people's front windows, indicating a family member had died in the service. You didn't need to be psychic to know the number of those flags would be increasing, as would the number of flags with blue stars. There was even one such banner in a window of the White House. It had four blue stars, one for each Roosevelt son in the military.
As the valedictorian droned on about the grave responsibility of this graduating class to save the world from fear and evil, Helen surreptitiously laid her hand on Mike's empty chair. She received no intimations of what lay ahead for him. Such premonitions were rare for her, but they did come, especially now when men in uniform were encountered daily in every
public place. She'd gone a few times with Rosie and other girls and women to take baked goods to the troop trains stopped at the water tank at the south end of town, and it took only a brush against a uniform sleeve as some boy reached out the train window to take a donut from her tray, for Helen to get a flash image of that arm blown off and lying beside him on a muddy battlefield. She met twenty or thirty soldiers for every one that presented her with a vision, and the visions were not always gruesome, such as the time she saw a shy farmer from Iowa lifting the skirt of his first woman in a dark, cobblestoned alley. But the possibility of a disturbing mental ambush was always there.
public place. She'd gone a few times with Rosie and other girls and women to take baked goods to the troop trains stopped at the water tank at the south end of town, and it took only a brush against a uniform sleeve as some boy reached out the train window to take a donut from her tray, for Helen to get a flash image of that arm blown off and lying beside him on a muddy battlefield. She met twenty or thirty soldiers for every one that presented her with a vision, and the visions were not always gruesome, such as the time she saw a shy farmer from Iowa lifting the skirt of his first woman in a dark, cobblestoned alley. But the possibility of a disturbing mental ambush was always there.
She never told anyone of these seeings, not even her grandmother, who would have scolded her for not keeping her abilities in closer check. Helen believed it wasn't right to try to prevent the premonitions. It seemed her own particular brand of sacrifice for the war effort. Those boys, so jocular and flirtatious as they crowded at the train windows, were actually going to have to face what she foresaw, and more. How could she presume to protect herself from merely seeing it for a moment? Still, she didn't dare join the bus trips to the USO canteens at Camp Kilmer and Fort Dix, where she'd have to dance with soldiers. What more thorough visions might such contact provoke?
Emilie had offered to host out-of-state soldiers for Sunday dinner, so once in a while there'd be two or three green privates at the table, politely conversing with Walter about war news or their hometowns, praising Emilie and Ursula's cooking, smiling at Helen as she leaned to clear their plates. Luckily, only one young man so far had provided her with dire foreknowledge. She saw him lying in the arms of another soldier, his chest covered with blood, his eyes glazed with pain and bewilderment. She found some comfort in the discovery that just before
he died, the grime and noise around him would disappear from his awareness and he'd believe he was reclining on the grass in his West Virginia backyard watching his little son toddle after a butterfly, the scent of freshly baked cherry pie wafting from an open window in the tidy white house behind them.
he died, the grime and noise around him would disappear from his awareness and he'd believe he was reclining on the grass in his West Virginia backyard watching his little son toddle after a butterfly, the scent of freshly baked cherry pie wafting from an open window in the tidy white house behind them.
Strangely, Helen's certitude that after his dying agonies he'd attain peace and a new kind of existence was less consoling than that he'd have that final glimpse of earthly contentment. The stories of “her boys” had not lost power for her, but they couldn't assuage the tragedy of too many people dying too young.
Being at the latter end of the alphabet, Helen was one of the last to receive her diploma. Soon after she'd resumed her seat, the class stood to sing the alma mater, followed by
God Bless America
and
The White Cliffs of Dover,
which the graduates had chosen because it recognized the current plight of the world yet managed to be hopeful. The song had been recorded by five different big bands and their singers, and all had been Top-Twenty hits, Kay Kyser's making it to number one.
God Bless America
and
The White Cliffs of Dover,
which the graduates had chosen because it recognized the current plight of the world yet managed to be hopeful. The song had been recorded by five different big bands and their singers, and all had been Top-Twenty hits, Kay Kyser's making it to number one.
Ursula had badgered her, Walter and Emilie had granted their consent, and Billy had stopped short of forbidding her, but it was Rosie who finally convinced Helen to begin taking clients at seances.
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A week after graduation, Rosie and Helen were pulling wagons door-to-door, collecting scrap metal to bring to a depot at the Elks Lodge. The Elks had affixed placards to each wagon.
Rosie's placard urged “Slap the Jap with the Scrap,” while Helen's cheerily asserted “Praise the Lord, I'll Soon Be Ammunition.”
Rosie's placard urged “Slap the Jap with the Scrap,” while Helen's cheerily asserted “Praise the Lord, I'll Soon Be Ammunition.”
Housewives pulled odds and ends out of garages and cellars to give to the girls. One woman proudly presented them with a stack of washed, flattened tin cans she'd gathered from her neighbors. After only two blocks, one wagon was nearly full.
Turning up the next sidewalk, they spotted a woman only a few years older than they hanging laundry in her side yard. Most of it was diapers. A fat baby sat on the grass gnawing a piece of zwieback, his chin smeared with wet crumbs. The woman turned towards the girls. She removed a wooden clothespin from her mouth and put it into her apron pocket. Her face evinced only mild curiosity.
Helen made an admiring comment about the baby, which failed to produce the customary maternal smile, and then Rosie launched into a brief spiel about the salvage drive, winding up with the impressive announcement that the town of Englewood was even tearing up its trolley tracks to donate.
“Sorry,” the woman said, bending to lift another diaper from her basket. “We got nothin' here.”
“Not even newspapers?” Rosie said. “We're not collecting those, but you can leave them on the curb first Sunday of every month, and someone will come by for them.”
“Don't read newspapers,” the woman said, continuing her chore. “Don't need newspapers to know the world's in a jam.”
Rosie threw Helen an exasperated glance.
“You don't have to give anything big,” Helen said. “Most people are surprised what they've got laying around.”
“Like razor blades,” Rosie suggested. “Did you know twelve thousand razor blades can make a two-thousand-pound bomb?”
“Don't have twelve thousand razor blades.”
“Well, of course not,” Rosie said, an edge coming into her voice.
Helen pulled her wagon closer to the woman.
“Just look at what we've gotten so far,” she said. “Maybe you have something of the same kind? Like this old iron shovel. This shovel can be converted into four hand grenades.”
The woman glanced briefly at the contents of the wagon, then shook her head. From an upstairs window came the sound of a young child crying. The woman looked up, squinting against the sun.
“My other boy's awake,” she said. “And I got dinner to start.” She picked up the baby and started to walk away. She hadn't finished hanging the laundry. As irritating as the woman had been, Helen had the urge to do the job for her.
“Don't forget to save your used cooking fat,” Rosie called after her. “The butcher will buy it when you've got a pound.”
The woman didn't acknowledge that she'd heard Rosie, though the baby graced them with a gummy grin from over his mother's shoulder. The screen door slammed behind them.
“Let it lay, Rosie,” Helen said, seeing her friend was tempted to follow.
“I was just gonna tell her how the glycerine in one pound of fat can make a pound of powder for bullets.”
“She doesn't want to know.”
“If those boys were bigger, she'd want to know all right.”
“Let's hope so.”
“I'm gonna leave her a booklet anyway,” Rosie said. She put a copy of
A Kitchen Goes to War
on the worn welcome mat at the front door.
A Kitchen Goes to War
on the worn welcome mat at the front door.
They'd been giving everyone the free booklet of recipes for meatless dishes and sugarless desserts. There were no serious shortages of food in the United States, as there were in Britain and Europe, but the federal government had set ceilings for
food prices and distributed ration books to everyone, even children. So far only sugar was being rationed. Meat was still unrestricted, but people were being asked to cut back to guarantee that the troops would be well-fed.
food prices and distributed ration books to everyone, even children. So far only sugar was being rationed. Meat was still unrestricted, but people were being asked to cut back to guarantee that the troops would be well-fed.
“Do you plan to stop by Tuesday to see if you can smell a pot roast cooking?” Helen teased. Observing “meatless Tuesdays” was considered a patriotic act.
“I just might,” Rosie replied, smiling.
After the girls had delivered their loads and received the list of the next day's addresses, they went to the library square and sat on a bench watching the fountain splash in the sunshine. A nearby kiosk, in the past posted with minutes of civic meetings, announcements of church social events and bake sales, and offers of free kittens, was now plastered with war-related posters. A handsome pilot grinned on a recruiting poster declaring “Fly to Tokyo, All Expenses Paid.” A man in a suit stood admiring a woman dressed for factory work in a kerchief and overalls as she announced “I'm Proud: My Husband
Wants
Me to Do My Part.” And emblazoned across a drawing of two tall red gasoline pumps was the reprimand “When You Drive Alone, You Drive with Hitler.”
Wants
Me to Do My Part.” And emblazoned across a drawing of two tall red gasoline pumps was the reprimand “When You Drive Alone, You Drive with Hitler.”
“My mother told me Mary Steltman's gotten a job at Bendix making instrument panels for planes,” Helen said pointing to the poster of the woman worker.
“Old whining Mary? I wouldn't think she had it in her.”
“Even Mary must've figured out nobody wants to hear whining these days.”
Rosie walked over to the kiosk and studied the poster with the pilot.
“You heard about that new Women's Army Auxiliary Corps?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I'm gonna join.”
“Really?”
Rosie turned to her friend. “Really.”
“Gosh, what'll you do, do you think?”
“Whatever they tell me. The idea is to do things like office work and driving trucks and making maps so the guys can go fight. But I hope I get an overseas assignment.”
“What about your folks? With your brothers already in it, will they let you go, too?”
“They can't stop me, Helen.”
One look at Rosie's face would convince anyone she was immovable. But Helen knew her well enough to spy a tiny flicker of uncertainty in her defiant eyes. Some part of her wanted approval, even though not getting it wouldn't prevent her following through.
“Have you told them?”
Rosie nodded.
“What'd they say?”
“My mother never says much about anything. She took it pretty good, said I was grown now, and she supposed I could make up my own mind. And my father ⦠he ⦠well, he kind of laughed, but not in a way like when something's funny. He just laughed, and then he stopped short, like he was gonna cough or spit, and then he said ⦠he said he already had enough sons.”
Rosie sat down again.
“I keep thinking about Jimmy,” she said, “stuck in a Jap prisoner-of-war camp, maybe sick or hurting, and Owen in England with bombs dropping, waiting to ship out somewhere and get shot at, and then I think about them coming home some day and asking what it was I did to help the war. I want to be able to look them straight in the eye and say I did all I could.”
Helen took Rosie's hands in her own.
“You're grand, Rosie,” she said. “Absolutely grand. And you'll
be the best soldier any girl could be. I just know it!”
be the best soldier any girl could be. I just know it!”
Beaming, Rosie threw her arms around Helen, and the two hugged enthusiastically.
“Helen,” Rosie burst out when they'd disengaged, “why don't you join, too? We'd make a super team!”
Helen shook her head slowly.
“I don't think so, Rose. It's not for me.”
“Don't say that. You haven't even thought about it. Say, what if I go in first and send you a scouting report, and then you decide?”
“You sure better write to me! But not as a scout.”
As she spoke, Helen had stood up to go, but Rosie remained seated.
“What are you so worried about?”
Helen took a deep breath and let it out.
“I can't be around too many soldiers, Rosie. I don't want to be finding out who's going to die and who's going to make it back.”
Rosie stared soberly at her.
“You can do that?”
“Sometimes.”
“Could you tell about my brothers?”
Helen sighed. “No. I have to be with the person. To get a really strong picture, I have to touch him.”
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