The Silver Star (10 page)

Liz kept knocking.

“Go away!” Mom shouted.

“We love you, Mom,” Liz said.

“You don’t love me. You hate me!”

“Please, Mom,” Liz said. “We do love you. We’re just trying to be realistic.”

“Go away!” Mom screamed again.

The door shook with a bang and the sound of shattering glass. Mom had thrown something. Then she started sobbing hysterically.

We headed back to the lobby. There was a line of people standing at the reception desk, but Liz went right to the front, and I followed.

The clerk had polished black hair and was writing busily in a ledger. “The line starts back there,” he said without looking up.

“We have a bit of an emergency,” Liz told him.

The clerk looked up and raised his eyebrows.

“Our mom has locked herself in her room and won’t come out,” Liz said. “We need help.”

We trooped up to Mom’s room with the clerk and a security guard. She was still crying and refusing to open the door. The clerk went to a house phone and sent for a
doctor. When the doctor arrived in his white jacket, the security guard took out a master key, opened the door, and led him into the room. Liz and I followed.

Mom was lying on the bed with a pillow over her head. The doctor, a small man with a mild Southern manner, stroked her shoulder. Mom took the pillow off her face and stared at the ceiling. Her
makeup was smeared. Liz and I were standing by the wall, but Mom didn’t look over at us. Liz put her arm around my shoulders.

Mom let out a loud sigh. “No one understands how hard it is to be me,” she told the doctor.

The doctor murmured in agreement. He told Mom he was going to give her a shot that would make her feel a lot better, and after that she could probably use a couple of days of rest and
observation at Commonwealth Medical. Mom closed her eyes and squeezed the doctor’s hand.

The clerk ushered Liz and me out into the hall. “Now, what are we going to do with you two?” he asked.

“We have an uncle in Byler,” Liz said.

“I think we’d better call him,” the clerk said.

After talking to Uncle Tinsley, the clerk ordered us each a ginger ale that came with a maraschino cherry, as well as a plate of little sandwiches—turkey, shrimp salad,
cucumber—with the crusts cut off, and we ate them at a tiny table in the enormous column-filled lobby. An ambulance had arrived at the back entrance for Mom, the clerk told us, and the doctor
had helped her into it. The bellboy brought our suitcases down, and after we finished our sandwiches, we sat there waiting. The clerk kept coming over to see if we were all right. As the hours
passed, the bustling lobby grew quieter, and by the time Uncle Tinsley showed up, pushing through the revolving doors just before midnight, it was deserted except for our new friend the clerk
straightening things up behind the counter and a janitor polishing the marble floor with a big electric buffing machine.

Uncle Tinsley’s footsteps echoed off the high ceiling as he walked through the lobby toward us. “I was hoping to see you again,” he said, “but I never imagined it would
be this soon.”

Mom had me
a little worried, but to be honest, I was relieved to be back in Byler. I hadn’t been looking forward to moving to
New York City, where, according to Uncle Tinsley, if you screamed for help, all people did was close their windows.

After a couple of days, Mom called. She was feeling a lot better. She’d had a little bit of a meltdown, she admitted, but that was due to the stress of going back to Byler after all those
years. She talked to Uncle Tinsley, and they decided that what made the most sense was for Liz and me to stay in Byler for the time being. Mom said she would go on to New York by herself, and once
she’d gotten settled in, she would send for us.

“How long do you think it will take Mom to get settled in?” I asked Liz.

We were getting ready for bed, brushing our teeth in the birdwing bathroom. To save money on toothpaste, Uncle Tinsley mixed together salt and baking soda. Once you got used to the taste, it did
make your whole mouth feel well scrubbed.

“There’s getting settled in,” Liz said, “and then there’s getting a grip on things.”

“How long will that take?”

Liz rinsed and spit. “We might be here a while.”

The next morning, Liz told me she hadn’t slept all that well because she’d been thinking about our situation. It was entirely possible, she said, that for whatever
reason, Mom wouldn’t be ready to send for us by the time summer was over. That would mean we’d go to school here in Byler. We didn’t want to be a burden to Uncle Tinsley, who was
clearly set in his widower ways. Plus, although he lived in a grand house and his family used to run the town, the collars of his shirts were worn through and he had holes in his socks. It was
obvious his tight budget didn’t include providing for the two nieces who’d shown up on his doorstep unannounced and uninvited.

“We need to get jobs,” Liz said.

I thought that was a great idea. We could both babysit. I might be able to make some money delivering
Grit
magazine, like I had in Lost Lake. We could mow lawns or pick up branches in
people’s yards. Maybe we could even get store jobs working cash registers or bagging groceries.

At breakfast, we told Uncle Tinsley about our plan. We thought he’d love the idea, but as soon as Liz started explaining, he began to wave his hands as if to dismiss the whole thing.
“You girls are Holladays,” he said. “You can’t go around begging for work like a couple of hired hands.” He dropped his voice. “Or coloreds,” he added.
“Mother would roll over in her grave.”

Uncle Tinsley said he believed that girls from good families needed to develop discipline, a sense of responsibility for themselves and their community, and they got that by joining church
committees or volunteering as candy stripers at the hospital. “Holladays don’t work for other people,” he said. “Other people work for Holladays.”

“But we might still be here when school starts,” Liz said.

“That’s a distinct possibility,” Uncle Tinsley said. “And I welcome it. We’re all Holladays.”

“We’ll need school clothes,” I added.

“Clothes?” he said. “You need clothes? We’ve got all the clothes you need. Follow me.”

Uncle Tinsley led us up the stairs to the little maids’ rooms on the third floor and started opening musty trunks and cedar-lined closets stuffed with mothball-smelling clothes:
fur-collared overcoats, polka-dotted dresses, tweed jackets, ruffled silk blouses, knee-length pleated plaid skirts.

“These are all of the finest quality, hand-tailored, imported from England and France,” he said.

“But Uncle Tinsley,” I said, “they’re kind of old-timey. People don’t wear clothes like this anymore.”

“That’s the shame of it,” he said. “Because they don’t make clothes like this anymore. It’s all blue jeans and polyester. Never worn a pair of blue jeans in
my life. Farmer clothes.”

“But that’s what everyone wears today,” I said. “They wear blue jeans.”

“And that’s why we need to get jobs,” Liz said. “To buy some.”

“We need spending money,” I said.

“People think they need all sorts of things they don’t really need,” Uncle Tinsley said. “If there’s something you really need, we can talk about it. But you
don’t need clothes. We have clothes.”

“Are you saying we’re not allowed to get jobs?” Liz asked.

“If you don’t need clothes, you don’t need jobs.” Uncle Tinsley’s face softened. “You do need to get out of the house. And I need to concentrate on my
research. Take the bikes, go into town, visit the library, make friends, make yourselves useful. But don’t forget, you’re Holladays.”

Liz and I walked up to the barn. We’d had a hot spell recently, but an early-morning shower had brought some relief, and the wilting butterfly bushes had sprung back to
life.

“Uncle Tinsley’s wrong,” Liz said. “We do need to get jobs. And not just for clothes. We need our own money.”

“But Uncle Tinsley will get mad.”

“I think Uncle Tinsley doesn’t really mind us getting jobs,” Liz said. “He just doesn’t want to know about it. He wants to pretend we’re all still living back
in the day.”

Uncle Tinsley had patched the flat tire on the bike he’d ridden as a kid. It was a Schwinn, like Mom’s, only it was a guy’s bike and it was blue, with a headlight and a
saddlebag. Liz and I got the bikes out of the garage and rode into town to look for work.

We had forgotten that it was the Fourth of July. A parade was getting under way, and people were lined up along Holladay Avenue, entire families sitting in folding chairs and on the curb, eating
Popsicles, shading their eyes against the bright sun, and waving enthusiastically as the Byler High School band marched along in red-and-white uniforms. It was followed by the pom-pom-waving
cheerleaders and baton-twirling majorettes, red-coated foxhunters on horseback, a fire truck, and a float with waving women in worn sequined gowns. Finally, a group of older men in a variety of
military uniforms turned up the avenue, all of them looking very serious and proud, those in the lead using both hands to hold big American flags out in front of them. Right in the middle of the
group was Uncle Clarence, dressed in a green uniform, moving stiffly and looking a little short of breath but keeping pace. As the flags passed, most of the people in the crowd stood up and
saluted.

“Here come the patriots,” Liz whispered in that sarcastic tone she’d picked up from Mom.

I kept quiet. Mom, who’d gone to antiwar rallies where protesters burned flags, had been telling us for years about everything wrong with America—the war, the pollution, the
discrimination, the violence—but here were all these people, including Uncle Clarence, showing real pride in the flag and the country. Who was right? They both had their points. Were they
both right? Was there such a thing as completely right and completely wrong? Liz seemed to think so. I usually had pretty strong opinions, but now I wasn’t so sure. This was complicated.

When the parade passed, the people in the crowd started folding up their chairs and spilling onto Holladay Avenue. We walked along pushing our bikes. Ahead, we saw the Wyatts coming up the
street. Joe was carrying Earl, who held a little American flag. Uncle Clarence had medals above the breast pocket of his green uniform, and he wore one of those skinny army caps with patches and
pins covering both sides.

“I do love Independence Day,” Aunt Al said after giving us both hugs. “Reminds you how lucky we are to be Americans. When my Truman comes home, he’ll be marching
alongside Clarence in that parade.”

“But he’s thinking of reenlisting,” Joe said.

“Why?” Liz asked. “We’re losing the war.”

“We’re losing the war here at home with all these goddamned spoiled draft-dodging protesters,” Uncle Clarence said. “We’re not losing the war over there. Our boys
are just trying to figure out how to win. They’re doing a hell of a fine job. Truman himself says so.” He turned on his heel and stalked off.

“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Liz said. “Doesn’t everyone know we’re losing?”

We all started walking up Holladay Avenue toward the hill. “People have different views,” Aunt Al said. “It’s a touchy subject around here. There’s a tradition of
service in these parts. You do what your country asks you to do, and you do it with pride.”

“I’m enlisting when I graduate,” Joe said. “Not waiting to be drafted.”

“My Clarence was in Korea,” Aunt Al went on. “So was your daddy, Bean. Got the Silver Star.”

“What’s that?”

“A medal,” Aunt Al said. “Charlie was a hero. He ran out into enemy fire to save a wounded buddy.”

“You’re enlisting?” Liz asked Joe.

“That’s what guys around here do,” Joe said. “I want to fix helicopters and learn to fly them, like Truman.”

Liz stared at him in disbelief, and I was afraid she was going to say something sarcastic, so I changed the subject. “We’re going to go looking for jobs,” I told Aunt Al.

“That’s a tall order,” she said. There was not a lot of work around Byler these days, she explained. The folks on the hill sure didn’t have money to spare. She and
Clarence couldn’t even afford a car, and neither could a lot of the neighbors. Over on Davis Street and East Street, where the doctors and the lawyers and the judges and the bankers lived,
most people had coloreds who did the cooking and washing and gardening. However, there were retired folks around town who may have the odd job or yard work.

“Sometimes I get little jobs, but I make more money selling fruit and scrap metal,” Joe said.

“Still,” Aunt Al added, “you might land something, God willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Liz and I spent the next couple of days knocking on doors all over Byler. Most of the folks on the hill apologetically explained that in times like these, they were lucky if
they could pay their bills each month. They couldn’t afford to fork over hard-earned cash to kids for jobs that they could do themselves. Our luck wasn’t much better at the fancier
houses on East Street and Davis Street. A lot of times, black maids in uniforms answered the doors, and some of them seemed surprised when they learned we were looking for the kind of work they
were doing. One older lady did hire us to rake her yard, but after two hours’ work she gave us only a quarter each, acting like she was being extravagantly generous.

At the end of the second day, Liz decided to check out the Byler Library and I rode over to the Wyatts’ to tell Aunt Al that the job search wasn’t going so well.

“Don’t be discouraged,” she said. “And wait right here. I got a surprise for you.” She disappeared down the hall and came back with a ring box. I opened it, and
hanging from a little red, white, and blue ribbon was a star-shaped medal.

“Charlie Wyatt’s Silver Star,” she said.

I picked up the medal. The star was gold and had a small wreath in the middle surrounding a tiny second star that was silver. “A war hero,” I said. “Did he have a lot of war
stories?”

“Charlie was quite the talker, but one thing he never did like to talk about was how he got this Silver Star. Or, for that matter, anything about that danged war. Charlie never wore that
star, and he never told people about it. He saved one buddy, but there were plenty others he couldn’t save, and it weighed on him.”