The Truth According to Us (9 page)

June 15, 1938

Dear Ben,

Observe postmark. I am residing in Macedonia, West Virginia. Thy will be done.

Layla

June 17

Dear Layla,

Blame your father. Blame yourself. Don't blame me.

Ben

The morning after Miss Beck's arrival, I awoke earlier than usual. I spent a few moments fingering my new scab, and then I remembered the night before. Had Father come back? Sometimes he went away and didn't come home for days. I quick bounced out of bed and into the hallway to take a look through his keyhole. Father's door was kept closed, so you had to peek through the keyhole if you wanted to know whether he was there. I couldn't see him, but I could see that the curtains were drawn, which meant that he was inside, asleep. So that was all right.

I sat down on the stairs to wait for Miss Beck. I had it all planned out. When she opened her door, I would pop up and pretend to be on my way downstairs for breakfast, just like her. Over breakfast, I would peruse the newspaper and converse on world events.

That would be the beginning. After that, I would insinuate myself into Miss Beck's favor by becoming her faithful assistant. Authors always needed assistants, to help them sharpen their pencils and copy their notes. Maybe she'd even send me to the library to look things up for her. Soon we would work side by side, exchanging a few cryptic words that no one else would even be able to understand. When her book was printed, it might say in the front, Special thanks to my assistant,
Wilhelmina Romeyn, without whom I could never have completed this work.

But that would be gravy.

My hours of toil would naturally win Miss Beck's heart, and before long she'd reveal the secrets of her (possibly royal) past. To me alone she'd confide the truth of her palatial home and pampered youth and how her father had come to lose his fortune in the Crash. Or maybe Miss Beck had run away from home. Anything was possible! I'd lend her my hankie if she started to cry and give her my youthful counsel and we'd be friends, at least as much as a lady like her could be friends with me. And, best of all, I for once would know something that no one else knew. I'd never tell, though. I'd be a vault.

Miss Beck didn't come out of her room, and my bottom went to sleep. I decided I would go downstairs and eat some breakfast while I waited for her.

The back door was open to the morning cool, and I gobbled up my breakfast while Jottie drank coffee and read the newspaper backward, the way she did. The last of my milk gulped, I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “Think Miss Beck'll wear that white suit again today?” I asked Jottie's newspaper.

A newsprint corner flapped down, and Jottie's eye blinked at me. “No. Yellow dress with a square neck. Looked real nice.”

She had already been and gone. Jottie didn't know where. Or when she'd be back. I'd been thwarted. I moped around thwartedly for a little while, until Jottie said something about idle hands being the devil's playthings, and I made tracks out the front door before she could give me some awful chore to do. I sulked a little more out on the sidewalk, because no one was up yet. Then I took myself off to Capon Street, to the headquarters of Geraldine Lee's army.

For how many years had I longed to be in Geraldine's army? It must have been three or four. It seemed like hundreds. It seemed like I'd stood on the banks of Academy Creek for my entire life, watching the battalions of plum-throwing children as they advanced, retreated, and bayed like wolves, wishing with all my heart that I could join them. If
I had been offered a choice between salvation and induction, I know which I would have chosen. But I couldn't pass muster. The rules were straightforward. There was only one: To get into Geraldine Lee's army, you had to fight Geraldine. Fighting Geraldine was mostly symbolic; you didn't have to beat her up—no one could do that—you only had to wrestle her to the ground. But wrestling Geraldine to the ground was no cakewalk. She was a year younger than me, but she was great big and fat, and she had six little brothers and sisters who skittered up while you were grappling and kicked you in the shins. All six of them were mean and skinny; Bird said Geraldine ate their food and it had turned them.

I had always been puny, and I was puny still. From first grade on, children had demonstrated their muscles by picking me up and lugging me around the playground, and it did me no good to holler about it. They thought it was funny. I was taller now—I had grown four inches since January—but I hadn't gained any weight to go along with it, and I was altogether a pitiful specimen of a twelve-year-old, according to Miss Nellie Kissining, the basketball coach at the Race Street School. She had washed her hands of me. Mae said I looked like I'd been put on the rack. Jottie said I'd fill out before I knew it, which was an unnerving idea. I was weak as a kitten from all that growing and, I suppose, from so many years of sitting on the sofa with a book in my hand. There were some days I couldn't even hold the book up and I had to set it on the floor and drape my head over the side of the cushions to read.

All of which explains why I had been standing for long years in the dirt while the scourge of war laid waste to Macedonia. Specifically, Geraldine's army was scourging Sonny Deal's army, except when they stopped fighting each other to band together against the Spurling children. I had tried to worm my way into Geraldine's ranks by helpfully calling out the location of Sonny Deal's troops from the branches of the red oak in our backyard, but her soldiers would have none of it. They told me to shut up. It only increased my longing to be one of them.

I had to bag Geraldine first. Geraldine was real nice about it—she was always willing to let me try. She'd stand there, big as a shed, and I'd
leap at her, thinking that if I could just get going, I could push her over. A couple of times, she tottered a little, but I think she was only doing that to make me feel better. Mostly, she shrugged me off like a horsefly.

In former days, I had despaired. But since the parade—since the birth of my ferocity and devotion—I'd devised a cunning stratagem. The cunning part was the element of surprise. Frank and Joe Hardy and Mr. Sherlock Holmes were all of them big believers in the element of surprise, and I guessed what was good enough for them should be good enough for me. My plan was to sneak up behind Geraldine and knock her flat.

On Capon Street, I approached Geraldine's house with caution, but I needn't have. Mr. and Mrs. Lee were too worn out from all those children to trim their hedges. I crouched low inside a rhododendron and waited. Sure enough, Geraldine came out, smacking her lips and burping, and then began to stroll about. The other children must have been eating her scraps, because she was alone. All at once, she did the strangest thing: She began to dance. Not a real dance like the fox-trot, nor even a tap dance, which you couldn't do on dirt, anyway, but a swaying, whirling dance. I guessed it was a ballet dance, and for a moment or two I was just thunderstruck, but then I realized that this was a fine time to employ the element of surprise. I got myself ready, and the next time Geraldine spun by with her back turned, I burst whooping out of the rhododendron and pounced on her. She fell pretty heavy, but I had my legs around her middle and my arms around her neck, so it didn't hurt much.

“Gotcha!” I hollered, and that Geraldine was such a nice girl, she didn't take a swipe at me. She agreed that I had knocked her down fair and square and welcomed me into her army. She'd been pulling for me all along, she said, and she was glad I'd finally made it, because she needed a spy and she knew I'd be fine at that. How do you know, I asked. She said the way I'd snuck up on her showed natural talent. I had to agree that it did.

We did a lot of talking, there in the rhododendron. It turned out
that the war with Sonny Deal's army was just to keep in practice for the real war, which Geraldine said Mr. Lee said was against the Reds. According to Geraldine, the Reds were running Washington, and that was only four hours away on State 9, which meant we needed to get ready. I thought that if the Reds were in Washington, I would have heard about it, and when Geraldine told me that American Everlasting was full of Reds, I said I didn't think so, because I knew folks who worked there and they weren't Reds. How do you know they aren't, Geraldine asked, and it occurred to me that this could be yet another matter the grown-ups had not seen fit to reveal to me. I fell silent, and Geraldine said it didn't matter if I didn't believe her about American Everlasting, as long as I took a vow to fight the Reds. So I did, and then we got down to the business of training, which was mostly creeping around in the bushes to spy on Mrs. Lee. She didn't do anything except hang sheets on the line, but Geraldine thought highly of my creeping and promoted me to officer on the spot. She said I was a born sneak.

When I heard the noon whistle down at the mill, I zipped home for lunch. I wouldn't have if I'd known it was hash. We all despised hash, every last one of us, but Jottie felt obliged to make it because it stretched leftover roast to two meals.

“Is this enough, Jottie?” said Bird. She had eaten two bites.

“No. Two more.” Jottie clamped her mouth shut to get her hash down. “It's good for you.”

“You should be grateful,” said Mae. “Some poor little children, all they have to eat is okra and lard sandwiches.”

“You!” yelped Bird, pointing her chin at Mae's plate. “You ain't even had
one
bite. At least—”

“Bird,” said Jottie. “What have you been doing this morning?”

Bird scowled. She knew she was being diverted. “Secret,” she said grumpily.

“Fine. You can have your secret,” said Mae. Bird scowled worse than ever. She had thought they'd try to wheedle it out of her. Mae turned to me. “What about you, Willa?”

“Geraldine and I are getting ready to fight the Reds,” I said.

“Oh. You got in,” observed Bird. She swallowed another lump of hash and shivered all over.

“What Reds?” Jottie asked. She fixed me with her eyes. “Got in where?”

“Geraldine's army. Geraldine says that American Everlasting is full of Reds.” I paused to see what effect this announcement would have.

“She did, did she?” Jottie didn't seem too worried about the Reds.

“Yes, and she says the Reds are running Washington and we've got to be prepared to fight. Even kids have got to get out and fight the Reds. Says Geraldine.”

“I swear, I don't know what possessed Irma to marry that man,” said Mae.

“It was that suit of his. Remember?” said Minerva. “She even said so at the time.”

“Now listen here, Willa,” said Jottie, frowning at Minerva and Mae. “There are no Reds at American Everlasting, and the Reds aren't running Washington, either.”

“Mr. Roosevelt is running Washington,” said Mae. “You know that.”

“And just you remember to keep your politics to yourself, young lady,” Jottie said. “You'll bring the wrath of Cain down on our heads if you go around telling people that American Everlasting is Communist.” She put another forkful of hash in her mouth, and her eyes watered. She swallowed and then smiled. “Though I'd like to see Ralph's face when he heard it.”

Minerva and Mae snickered. In earlier days, I might not have noticed, but now I did. “Who's Ralph?” I asked, as innocent as a baby.

Jottie lifted one eyebrow. “Mr. Shank, and as for the Communists,” she went on, “maybe they have their reasons. That czar was no great shakes. Drinking champagne when his people had nothing to eat but rotten potatoes. And letting that Rasputin come into the palace with his big burning eyes and dirty hair.”

“Who's Rasputin?” I asked.

“Lionel Barrymore,” said Minerva.

“Rasputin was a monk who turned his burning eyes on the czarina until the poor woman was hypnotized and handed over the crown jewels. Emeralds and rubies trickled through his fingers like water,” said Jottie, wafting her hands through the air to show trickling. Father said that if Jottie sat on her hands, she wouldn't be able to talk atall. “The czarina ground up pearls to put in her bathwater, and the poor people trudged through the snow in little felt shoes. I don't blame them for turning Communist. I don't blame them a bit.”