Back to the Garden (12 page)

Mr. Howard snorted, but he said, “He’s a good kid.”

“See?”

“I guess it would be all right.” She glanced at her bag, which I had insisted on carrying, and then back at me. “There’s a guest room?”

“Of course,” I replied, taking her elbow and leading her. “Fit for a queen. I’ll even put a pea under your mattress if you want.”

“That was a princess.” Naomi buttoned her coat as we walked. The sidewalk was dusted with snow and we left footprints in it.

I sighed. “Well, I hope the princess can live with macaroni and cheese for dinner, because I don’t think the grocer’s still open.”

“Rations?” she asked knowingly, hands in her pockets.

“I was hoping for a big juicy steak.”

She groaned. “Oh, that sounds like heaven. It’s been so long since I had a steak.”

“Or bacon,” I commiserated. My mouth watered at the thought. “Remember bacon?”

“Afraid not.” Naomi shook her dark head. “We don’t eat pork.”

“Are you—?” I didn’t want to finish the sentence, but I didn’t have to.

“With a last name like Leibovitz, you thought we were…what, Catholic?”

I flushed. “I didn’t want to assume.”

She shrugged. “I’m not afraid to say I’m Jewish. I’m proud to be a Jew.” I admired the jut of her chin, the emphasis of her convictions. “And I’m proud of my husband and what he’s fighting for.”

“You should be.”

I knew it was coming, and braced myself for it. “So why aren’t you over there?”

“I’m not a U.S. citizen,” I replied. “And they tell me you have to be one to join the army.”

“Oh.”

We walked in silence down the street. Just around the corner was the grocer, and while I swallowed my guilt—I always wondered, should I tell people I wanted to go to war? That I tried to get drafted? That they’d refused me three times? It seemed overly defensive on my part, and I usually just said nothing—I was hoping they’d still be open.

“You can see the water from here,” Naomi observed, and I glanced up at the coastline. The dock where my father shipped out, probably the same one her husband had left from a few hours ago, was obscured by the railway station but you could see a thin line of water under the orange setting sun. My mother called this area “Transportation Central,” because the bus station, train yard and boat dock all converged down here at the edge of the water.

“You can see it from our house, too.” I steered her around the corner, thrilled to see a line out the grocer’s door. It was probably the first time I’d been really happy to stand in a ration line. In spite of there being a war on, I was embarrassed to think all we could offer a guest was some meatless dinner. Besides, I knew my mother would be disappointed if I didn’t bring home rations, and I couldn’t bear disappointing two women in one day. “We’re right on the water, so we have blackouts on that side of the house every night.”

“Really?” Naomi’s eyes widened as we took our place in the ration line. “You have to do everything in the dark?”

“Oh, they gave us black shades,” I explained, pleased at the movement of the line, which didn’t even stretch to the end of the shop. This wasn’t going to take nearly as long as I feared. Maybe my Irish luck comment was coming true? “We pull them down, and viola, the house goes dark on one side.”

“Are they really afraid someone might attack?”

“We are at war.” I nodded. “After Pearl Harbor, it’s a real possibility.”

I felt her shiver next to me, and I didn’t think it was from cold. I wanted to put my arm around her, but without the excuse I’d had at the bus station, I thought it would be too forward. Still I was thrilled when she took a step closer, pressing into my side.

“I wish this war was over.” Naomi glanced toward the water again, although we couldn’t see it at all now—the line had moved.

“We all do, dearie.” The woman in front of us turned and looked at me from under the black veil of her hat. She’d obviously been listening. “I’ve lost one son already, and have two more over there.”

“I’m so sorry,” Naomi murmured. She looked sad, and I decided, even if she was still just as beautiful with her mouth turned down at the corners, I didn’t want to see that expression again in these next few hours.

I glanced at the woman in front of us and saw her speculative look, her narrowed gaze. Thankfully, I avoided the usual questions as the line turned into the grocer’s, and she was served next.

“So I shouldn’t ask if they have pork chops?” I teased.

“I hate to have you spend your rations on me,” Naomi said seriously as I hopefully handed over my ration stamps. I’d lost weight this year on rations, with only two eggs allotted a week, a few ounces of butter and cheese per person, and meat scarce—the grocer at the other end of town sold horse meat, which my mother refused to buy, although I’d considered it. Protein was scarce, but we all made sacrifices because there was a war on.

I took the package the grocer handed over and paid for the purchase. I had change set aside for that purpose, although flashing the twenty dollar bill occurred to me.

“Lamb?” I inquired, peering into the paper bag. The grocer was an old man with a bulbous, gin-blossomed nose and bleary eyes, and he just grunted an agreement as he took my money. I glanced behind me, seeing we were the end of the line, and leaned against the counter. “Do you have any beef steaks?”

He grunted again, shaking his head, but I knew better than to leave it at that. This time, I did pull out the twenty. “I can pay you.”

His eyes lit up like I was Santa Claus and he called over his shoulder, “Mama! Two strip!” He looked at the money, and then at me. “Two enough? It’s all I have.” Two days wages for two steaks. I didn’t have to break the twenty, though, and for that I was grateful.

“Steak!” Naomi murmured as we left the shop. “What a treat!”

“This is turning out to be quite the lucky day,” I agreed, forgetting about her unhappiness, her husband gone off to war.

And, it seemed, she had too, at least for the moment. “It is, isn’t it?”

She reached for my hand, and I juggled the bag and her suitcase in one arm so I could clasp it for the short walk around the corner and down toward the beach. I saw our lights on—we were allowed to show them on this side of the house—and knew my mother was home, probably worried and wondering where I’d been. She, too, was in for a surprise,

—

I stretched out on the sofa with a groan as Naomi settled in front of the radio, tuning the station. We didn’t get the best reception and often listened through static about news of the war.

“I’m stuffed!” I announced happily, rubbing the pouch of my belly. An entire steak, a whole potato—with butter!—and even carrots from the summer garden, stored for the winter in the larder. They were a little rubbery raw, but cooked they were quite tasty.

“Want to dance?” Naomi teased, settling the radio on some big band music.

I groaned. “Not on your life. Quick, someone push me back into the water!”

The sound of her laughter, coupled with my mother’s as she joined us in the sitting room, was enough to make me giddy, if the food hadn’t already done its job.

We all sat quietly for a while, although I admit I was watching Naomi through half closed eyes. Dinner had been a delight, both women talking animatedly, getting to know one another. I could pretend, and did, that the beautiful woman beside me was mine, and not married to a man headed halfway across the world to face certain death—if not his own, than someone else’s. It was a lovely fantasy, although I knew it was just that. I had no designs or intentions of making it anything else. Instead, I just enjoyed basking in the company of two beautiful women who couldn’t help but be their feminine selves. It fed me more than the huge meal ever could have.

That’s when the news came on the radio. Every time, we hoped it would be the end of the war, and every time, it wasn’t. This was no different—FDR making another statement about the atrocities happening overseas. We all listened, the jaunty edge immediately taken off our evening, the wind in our sails stilled by reality.

“The United Nations are fighting to make a world in which tyranny and aggression cannot exist; a world based upon freedom, equality, and justice; a world in which all persons regardless of race, color, or creed may live in peace, honor, and dignity.”

Naomi sighed, and I watched her as we listened to FDR speak, her eyes cast down, her mouth set in a small rosebud. The speech wasn’t long—just long enough to put a damper on the mood. Then the news came on, and they were talking about the Recy Taylor case—a young Negro woman, a wife and mother, forced into a car by four white men and “ravished.” That’s what they called it on the radio. We couldn’t say the word “rape” in 1944.

“That poor, poor girl.” My mother sighed, turning a page in her book. She’d always been progressive in her views—much more than my father ever had. “We’re fighting for equality overseas, and we don’t even have it in our own backyard.”

“My cousins are in Poland,” Naomi spoke softly, her hair still falling in her face. “They’re in hiding—at least, I hope they still are. They got a letter out to us early in the war, saying they were safe, for now. But the world just isn’t a safe place anymore, is it?”

“No,” my mother agreed, marking her place and looking at Naomi. “But I’m not sure that it ever really was.”

“I need some air.” And with that, Naomi was gone in a flash, her coat plucked from the rack as she headed out the front door.

“Patrick,” my mother started, but I was already up.

“I’m going.” We weren’t supposed to go out after dark. There were wardens who patrolled up and down the beach, and you could actually get arrested for being out after curfew.

“Naomi!” I saw her walking, shoulders hunched against the February cold. “Wait up!”

It was snowing hard now, which was always disconcerting, to be walking in sand while it snowed, but I knew if I let her get too far, I’d lose her. Breaking into a run, I caught up, breathless, and found myself holding a sobbing woman in my arms for the second time that day.

She railed against me, although I knew it was more than me, as she struggled and hit my chest and screamed and swore. I’d never heard words like that coming from a woman’s mouth—it was both sobering and heartbreaking. And then she collapsed, spent, and I couldn’t hold her as we sank down to the cold sand. I rocked her, the way my mother used to rock me after bad dreams, for a long time.

“Naomi, listen, we—”

“No!” Her head came up, and in the moonlight, her eyes flashed darkly. “Not another word. I’m so sick of words.”

“But—” I had to protest. If we stayed out there much longer… “Shut up!” Her directive was followed with the easiest way to make me, although I was so surprised, she knocked me off balance. Her kiss knocked us both backwards into the sand and snow, and we tumbled there together, oblivious to the cold, our bodies creating enough heat to keep us from feeling it.

I didn’t want to take advantage, but the softness of her body pressing, her mouth slanting, her tongue—oh god, her tongue slipping into my mouth, so eager and hungry—all made it impossible to resist. She unbuttoned her own coat, and I did mine, her breasts pressing full against my chest as she kissed me again and again.

My erection was a monumental ache, and as she straddled me and rocked, blocked by far too many clothes, her skirt riding so far up her hips I felt the edge of her stockings on her thighs as I held onto her, I thought I would explode right there. When she reached down to unzip my trousers, the small, soft tug of her hand like heaven’s own, I groaned and began undoing her blouse, lost in the sensation.

She encouraged me, whispering, “yes, yes,” as I fumbled one-handed with her brassiere, the other filled with the soft globe of her bottom, pressing her hard against my crotch. She grew quickly impatient with me and undid it herself, letting her breasts spill free, and I thought I would die in the midst of those mounds of flesh, my tongue and mouth making wet trails back and forth between them.

“Wait,” she whispered, and I sighed when she stood, lamenting the loss of the soft press of her body, afraid it was over, that she was going to realize what we were doing and call it off. Instead, she pulled her skirt up high and undid her garters so she could pull her panties down and step out of them. I couldn’t see nearly enough of her in the dark, just a dark triangular patch against the pale white of her skin in the moonlight, but my hand had a mind of its own and cupped her mound as she stood splayed above me.

“Oh yes,” she whispered, moaning softly as I explored the soft folds of her flesh, the slickness inside, and I nearly let go the moment my finger entered her, the place I wanted to bury myself, forever and ever. Her legs wouldn’t hold her and she lowered herself onto me, straddling my hips again, this time flesh against flesh, no material left to separate us as she kissed me and rocked, the curly mass of her pubic hair parting over my shaft as she looked for the best angle.

I’d never done this, but I didn’t want to tell her that and she seemed to know just what she was doing, just what she wanted. She sighed happily as she slipped me inside of her, settling down into my lap and wiggling. Me, I nearly died, my fingers gripping her hips so hard I thought I’d bruise her, but I couldn’t help it. Every nerve in my body was as taut as piano wire waiting to be played, and that’s just exactly what she did.

She played me, rode me, taught me with every circling motion of her hips, and I went along for the ride, panting in her ear as the dark curtain of her hair blocked out the moon. The words she’d used earlier in anger, she now used in love, urging me on, driving me toward dizzying heights. Again, those words from a woman’s mouth, so powerful, so moving.

“Naomi, oh… god… I’m…”

She shuddered in my arms, biting my neck, her face buried there as I drove up into her, the tight channel I was lost in squeezing again and again, drawing me deeper, taking my pulsing seed with every contraction. There was, in that moment, no cold, no dark, no world, no war…there was only Naomi, and me connected to her, through her, to everything, together beating as one heart “I’m cold,” she murmured, snuggling closer. Her coat was open and covering us, mine beneath, but our bodies’ natural cooling mechanism after such exertion had kicked in, and we were slick with sweat “We need to go back,” I gasped, still out of breath, not wanting to even say the words. “We’re not supposed to be out on the beach after dark. We could get arrested.”