The War that Saved My Life (6 page)

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked. She sounded cross.

I blinked. I was hungry. Crashingly, achingly hungry. I was used to that too. What was I supposed to say? Did Miss Smith want me to be hungry, or not?

“Why didn’t you wake me this morning?” she said.

I’d never wake her. I wasn’t stupid.

“Come.” She reached an arm toward me. “It’s gone late. I’ve got to get you to the doctor, and we need to do some shopping.”

“I don’t need help,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, and hauled me up.

I tried to shake her off, but my foot ached so terribly that in the end I let her help me back to the house. Jamie was already inside, sitting at the table eating canned beans and toast. I slid into a chair in the kitchen. Miss Smith thumped more beans onto a plate. “Your bandage is filthy already,” she said.

I took a deep breath. Before I could speak, Jamie said, “I told her she wasn’t ’sposed to go outside.”

“Rubbish.” Miss Smith’s tone was sharp. “Of course she may go outside. We just need a better system. Those shoes you were wearing yesterday—”

“Those were Mam’s,” I said.

“I could see they weren’t yours,” Miss Smith said. “Though I don’t suppose you can wear a regular shoe.” I shrugged. “Well, we’ll see what the doctor says. I’ve hired a taxi to take us there and then we’ll come up with something. Don’t get used to it. I can’t afford cabs very often.”

I nodded, because that seemed best.

It turned out that
taxi
and
cab
were both words that meant automobile. Two rides in two days. Astonishing.

I knew what a doctor was, though I’d never seen one before. This one had funny things like panes of round window glass stuck in front of his eyes. He wore a long white coat like the butcher back home. “Hop on up here,” he said to us, patting a big wooden table. Jamie hopped, but I couldn’t. “Ah,” said the doctor, noticing my foot. He lifted me onto the table.

Mam never touched me unless it was to hit me. Jamie hugged me, but of course he never picked me up. People were all the time touching me here. I didn’t like it. Not at all.

The doctor poked and measured and inspected Jamie and me. He made us take off our shirts, and he held a cold metal thing to our chests with tubes that ran up to his ears. He ran his hands through our hair and studied the scratchy places on our skin. “Impetigo,” he said. This made no sense to me, but Miss Smith pulled a little notebook out of her purse and wrote something down.

“They’re pretty severely malnourished,” he said. “Looks like rickets starting in the girl. Lots of sunlight for her. Good food. Milk.”

“But what do I do with them?” Miss Smith said. “I’ve never been around children.”

“Feed them, bathe them, make sure they get plenty of sleep,” the doctor said. “They’re no more difficult than puppies, really.” He grinned. “Easier than horses.”

“The horses belonged to Becky,” Miss Smith snapped, “and I never had a dog.”

“Who’s Becky?” Jamie asked. I shushed him.

“And what about Ada’s foot?” Miss Smith said. “What am I supposed to do about that?”

I tucked my foot beneath me. Miss Smith tapped my knee. “Show him,” she said.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want them touching me more. My foot was out of sight, bandaged, and I was managing to walk some, and I thought that ought to be enough.

Miss Smith yanked my foot out. “Behave,” she said.

The doctor unwrapped the bandage. “My, my,” he said, cradling my foot in his hand. “An untreated clubfoot. I’ve never seen one before.”

“I thought clubfeet were rather common,” said Miss Smith.

“Oh, yes. Certainly. But nearly always successfully resolved in infancy.”

Miss Smith sucked in her breath in a way I didn’t understand. “But why wouldn’t—” She looked at me and made her voice stop.

Successfully resolved,
I thought. My foot was not successfully resolved. It sounded like I’d done something wrong. Mam always said my foot was my fault. I’d always wondered whether that was true.

And
clubfoot.
That was my foot. A clubfoot.

The doctor poked at my clubfoot and twisted it and stared until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I thought of Butter, how he smelled so warm and good, how his breath felt against my hand. Instead of going to an empty place in my head, now I could go to where Butter was, and that was easy.

“Ada,” Miss Smith said loudly, “Ada. Come back. Dr. Graham asked you a question.” She was tapping my face. The doctor had wrapped my foot in a fresh bandage. It was over.

“Are you in very much pain?” he repeated.

How much was very much? What did he want me to say? I shrugged.

“Did you understand what he said about seeing a specialist?” Miss Smith said.

I looked at her. She looked back.

“Yes or no?” she said.

I shook my head.

Miss Smith and the doctor exchanged glances. I felt like I’d said the wrong thing.

“Dr. Graham thinks a specialist might be able to operate on your foot.”

I didn’t know what a specialist was. I didn’t know what they meant by the word
operate
. But I knew better than to ask questions. “Okay,” I said.

Miss Smith smiled. “It sounds scary, I know, but it would be a wonderful thing. I’ll write to your mother right away, to ask her permission. I can’t imagine she’ll object. Meanwhile Dr. Graham’s fetching a pair of crutches for you.”

Crutches were long pieces of wood you stuck under your armpits, so you could walk using the crutches and one good foot. Your bad foot, if you had one, didn’t have to touch the ground at all.

Crutches didn’t hurt.

The doctor said, “See? I knew she could smile,” and Miss Smith shook her head and said, “I don’t believe it.”

The doctor’s place was right in town, near the train station. On crutches I didn’t need a taxi, so we walked right down the main street. I walked down the street, bad foot and all, and nobody stopped me. We went into the shops and bought meat and veg and groceries. I went into the shops and nobody turned me out. At one point Miss Smith said, “Ada, would you hand me three of those apples?” I’d been careful not to touch anything up until then, but when she asked I figured it must be okay, and I did it and it was. The shopkeeper didn’t even look at me.

The shops had so much stuff in them they gave me a jittery feeling. There was too much stuff to see. And I’d never known anyone to buy as much food as Miss Smith did, all at once. She paid for it too, straight up, with cash. Not a thing on tick. I nudged Jamie, and he nodded. Miss Smith was rich.

On the sidewalk, Miss Smith counted her remaining coins and sighed. She led us into a stern-looking brick shop. The inside was just people standing behind counters. You couldn’t tell what they were selling at all.

“What’s this place?” Jamie asked.

“It’s a bank,” Miss Smith said. “You’ve been to banks before.”

I didn’t know why she’d think so. I’d never even heard of a place called a bank. Miss Smith scribbled on a scrap of paper and gave it to one of the men behind the counter, and he counted out money and
gave it to her
.

“A money store,” Jamie whispered, eyes wide.

I nodded. We sure didn’t have one of those on our lane.

We were back wearing our clothes from the day before—we couldn’t have gone into town wearing only Miss Smith’s shirts—but Miss Smith had washed them so we looked and smelled nice. She marched us into a store that sold clothing anyhow, and bought us each a new set of clothes, top and bottom, and something called underwear, which she said we had to wear from now on—three sets of that—and stockings and then shoes for both of us, Jamie and me.

“I got shoes already,” Jamie said, eyeing the stout boots Miss Smith chose. “And Ada, she don’t need ’em.”

Miss Smith ignored him. The shopkeeper, an unpleasant man with hairy eyebrows, said, “These evacuees is nothing but trouble, isn’t they, miss? My missus is that fed up already, she’s wanting to send them home. Filthy little rats wet the bed.”

Miss Smith gave him a look that made him shut his mouth, except he begged her pardon first. And when we walked out the door I had a brown leather shoe on my good left foot.

A real shoe. For me.

Miss Smith had had to buy a whole pair. The man wouldn’t sell her just one. She carried the other shoe in a bag. “We’ll save it,” she said. “Perhaps someday...”

I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t ask. I was getting tired, even with the crutches, and I only wanted to think about the walk home. But Jamie danced in front of me, smiling. “If they can fix your foot,” he said. “If they can fix it!”

I smiled back at him. Jamie was such a hopeless fool.

Another thing Miss Smith did was exchange her old radio batteries for charged ones. Some folks in our lane had had radios, so I knew about them, but, as usual, not close up. Miss Smith’s sat in the main room on a glossy wood cabinet. As soon as we got home, Saturday night, she put the new batteries in and started it up. Voices came out, talking.

Miss Smith sighed. “I wanted music,” she said. She reached up and switched it off. “I suppose we’ll have to hear all about the war, eventually.” She yawned and sat without moving.

I thought of the food we’d bought. Apples. Meat. I stood up. “Want me to make some tea, miss?” I asked, by way of suggestion. “Cut some bread and dripping?”

She frowned. “Of course not.”

I sat back down, disappointed. I was hungry again. But then, we’d already eaten twice that day, if you counted the bread we swiped in the morning.

“It’s nearly time for supper,” Miss Smith said. She gave me a sort of a smile, although, like Mam’s smiles, it didn’t make her look happy. “I’ll make supper. It’s my job to take care of you.”

Right.

But then she got up, and she did make supper. A huge supper. Ham. Boiled potatoes. Little round green things called peas, that came out of a can. Tomatoes, like the one Jamie swiped, only cut in thick slices. Bread, with butter. So many different colors and shapes and smells. The peas rolled around my mouth until I bit them and they squished.

Supper was like a miracle, it was, all that food all at once, and yet Jamie, worn out and cross, refused to touch anything except ham. I wanted to smack him. Hot food and meat. Miss Smith might not want us, but she was feeding us fine. Not to mention, I had a shoe. That meant she didn’t mind if I went outside.

“Leave him,” Miss Smith said tiredly, when I started to tell Jamie off. To Jamie she said, “You can’t have second helpings of anything until you’ve taken one bite of everything on your plate.”

There had been pieces of cloth on the table, folded under the forks. Before she started eating Miss Smith had put hers on her lap, so we had too. Now Jamie took his cloth and used it to cover his head. “I want
ham,
” he said, through the cloth.

“You may have more ham after you’ve tried a bite of everything,” Miss Smith said. “You’re allowed to dislike food, but not before you’ve tasted it. And get that napkin off your head.”

Jamie hurled his plate against the wall. It shattered. Miss Smith screamed.

I tackled Jamie. I grabbed a piece of tomato off the floor and mashed it between his lips. He spat it at me. “Eat it!” I roared. I grabbed peas and shoved those down his gullet. He choked and gagged. Miss Smith yanked me loose.