War and Millie McGonigle Read online

  “Mama, you can’t mean it! We’re already too crowded. Where will she sleep, and—” I knew. There were only two bedrooms in the cottage, and sure as shootin’, Cousin Edna wouldn’t be bunking with my parents.

  “She’ll move in with Lily and you, and Pete will use the sofa.”

  “But—”

  “I know. I know what you’re going to say. She has no sense. She loses her glasses and leaves her false teeth lying around. She smells of too much perfume, hair dye, and her stomach trouble.”

  Stomach trouble, Mama called it. Truth is, Edna was a stink machine, burping and hiccuping and passing gas. Hook her up and she could power all the stoves in San Diego!

  “Edna is family,” Mama continued, “and we’ll be there for her. That’s what my mother would have wanted.” She blinked hard a few times. “And that’s it.”

  “Can’t we pay someone to live with her? Or build an extra room on our house, like a—”

  “And where do we get the money for that? We lost the store in the Depression, your dad can’t find work, and I scrimp and save to feed us all on less than eight dollars a week.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing.” Mama stubbed her cigarette out in a saucer and wiped her eyes. “This is a family, not a democracy.”

  As if that hadn’t been obvious every day of my life. “But I won’t speak to her until the day I die,” I shouted as I stomped into the bedroom and slammed the door. I stuck my head out the window and took a deep breath. Some people said the mudflats stink. It could be pretty strong at times, but to me it was the smell of home.

  Airplanes roared overhead, three of them, looping and diving. My belly cramped. No doubt a training mission from the naval training base in Point Loma, but the sound was ominous. These planes could just as well be Nazis coming from Germany to bomb Mission Beach. Folks said it was only a matter of time before they came here, bringing war with them. And they expected me to cheer up. Phooey to that.

  After dinner, as I was getting ready for bed, I heard Mama and Pop outside. Mama was almost shouting. This might not seem such a big deal to most people, but my mother graduated from the School of No Arguing or Whining, where she studied Never Raise Your Voice and Act Like a Lady.

  “We’re not going to keep my mother’s radio, Martin,” Mama was saying. “I’ll sell it with her other things to Big Ernie’s Second Hand and buy what we need: shoes for Lily and Pete, a warm jacket for Millie, a new ribbon for my old hat. We can pay the electric bill and eat something every once in a while that’s not spaghetti or a fish you caught. A radio is just a frill.”

  “A radio is not a frill. Things are happening in the world, things we need to know about. And our children should—”

  “I don’t want to know, and the children don’t need to be frightened.”

  “There’s a war on, Lois.”

  “Not here.”

  “Not yet.”

  Pop would win the argument, I knew. I myself was of two minds about a radio. On one hand, I could listen to The Aldrich Family as I had at Gram’s. Henry was a teenager and I would turn thirteen next summer, so I needed to know all I could about being a teenager. But a radio would bring war news right into the house. The war was in Europe, thousands of miles away, in places I couldn’t spell, and I wanted it to stay there.

  What with sickly Lily getting all the attention, and smelly Edna moving in, and no money, and the war coming closer and closer, I felt the dread that was all too familiar. I wished I could be like Ralphie’s turtle and just pull my head in, but instead I closed my eyes and burrowed into my pillow.

  War! War! War! Would America be attacked? What if bombs killed us all? Gee whiz, I wasn’t even thirteen yet. Was this all the life I’d get? Never have a date or a kiss or grow breasts? Christopher Columbus!

  That night I dreamed of hundreds of enemy airplanes roaring by, but it turned out to be Pop snoring. Good gravy!

  Cousin Edna moved in with her greasy green face cream, pink flannel nightgown, and Jungle Gardenia perfume. Edna thought she smelled like a tropical princess, but the perfume definitely had a hint of funeral parlor.

  Pete was only five and a half, so it was a great adventure to sleep in the living room. He wore his Lone Ranger pajamas and called the couch his bunk.

  Lily got the twin bed to herself, of course. That left the big bed for me to share with Cousin Edna. I confronted Mama: “Why me? I’m the oldest. Don’t you think I should have first choice of bed?” Let me win, Mama. This time, let me win.

  But Mama said, “You know Lily is delicate and needs her rest. Edna is a fidgety sleeper, so it has to be you.”

  Lily rolled and stretched as she delighted in her own bed. “You could have a bed to yourself if you were special like me.” She coughed a little cough and smiled. “But you’re not. Too bad for you, Millie.” Lily had some kind of lung trouble and used it to get her way, and Mama let her. I wished I were an only child, except I’d miss Pete. Maybe he could come and visit me sometimes.

  I stormed out of the room, and who could blame me? Lily always came first. Lily, the favorite child, who was seven but babyish. Lily, who was sickly and needed coddling. Lily, who was too weak to sweep the floor or take out the garbage. Lily, who still slept with a doll that had a new name every week because Lily couldn’t decide on one. This week she called it Pepsi. Who the heck names a doll Pepsi? Only cutie-pie Lily, who looked like the movie star Shirley Temple with her corkscrew curls and dimples. Lily was a pill and so was Shirley Temple. I was tempted to sprinkle some sticker-bush thorns in that precious bed she gets all to herself, but I’d probably get blamed. So unfair.

  I could tell by the fog of gardenia fumes that Edna was home. In the kitchen Pop was struggling to get Pete out of his wet bathing suit while Mama slammed pots around and grumbled about trying to stretch one box of Kraft macaroni and cheese with enough plain noodles to feed six people. And the radio blared about the war, about Nazi submarines sinking British ships, and the massacre of thousands of Jews someplace in Russia. It was a nightmare.

  Pushing aside the coats in the front closet, I crawled in with an apple, looking for some privacy, five minutes away from my family and the radio.

  Someone knocked on the closet door. Five minutes. I couldn’t even have five minutes’ peace. “What?”

  “Cousin Edna,” said Pete, “has a date and she can’t find her teeth. Mama’s making dinner and Pop is washing Lily’s hair, so I’m looking for the teeth. I need you to help me.”

  A date? Who would date Edna? She must be over forty! Curious, I joined the hunt. Pete searched under the sofa, behind the rocking chair, under the rug. I dug through the bedroom closet while Edna turned out dresser drawers, muttering as she searched. Finally she dropped onto the bed. “Mein Gott, what will I do? Mein Gott.” Irish Cousin Edna had once dated a German butcher, who left her with a smattering of German words and a fondness for sauerkraut. “I can’t go out with no teeth!”

  I looked closely at Edna. I had pledged never to speak to her again, but someone had to tell her. “Good gravy, Edna, your teeth are in your mouth!”

  Edna smacked her head. “My glasses! I meant my glasses are lost.”

  We undertook another search and Pete found Edna’s glasses stuck in her copy of Photoplay magazine. Edna clapped her hands. “Yes, I remember now. I was reading about Clark Gable! Such a good-looking man. I do like a man with a mustache.” She put her glasses on. “Now I can see to make myself beautiful.”

  “Good luck,” I muttered, and I pinched the Photoplay magazine to read later. Clark Gable. Yowza!

  Edna brushed her hair down and pinned a mat of black fur in the back. It looked creepy and weird. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s a rat,” said Edna, her mouth full of bobby pins.

  “A rat?”

  The very word drew Pete over. “A rat?” he echoed. “Where? Can I see? Can I have i
t?”

  Rolling her hair up over the rat, Edna said, “A rat is padding to give my hairstyle fullness and body, so the magazines say.” She stabbed the rat with bobby pins. “See? I look like a movie star.”

  “It looks like you have a sausage on the back of your head,” said Pete.

  “Pooh,” said Edna. “It’s very stylish. Betty Grable, watch out! Edna Duffy’s coming!” She coated her lips with lipstick, smacked them together, and checked to make sure her teeth had not turned red.

  With a final spray of perfume, Edna proclaimed herself ready. She plunked her hat on her head, and calling “Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye” and blowing kisses, she left.

  I opened the windows wide.

  Pete pulled on my sleeve. “Who would take Edna on a date?” he whispered.

  “Maybe the Three Stooges?” I said. And I went nyuk-nyuk-nyuk and rubbed his head with my knuckles. Pete was my favorite McGonigle. He was funny and curious and told the truth.

  Like Gram.

  Gram always said I was her special girl, her macushla, her sweetheart. It was what her own grandmother had called her. Mama didn’t really want me once she had Lily to coddle, and Pop was too busy looking for work or flipping burgers at the Shack when they had need of him. Busy as she was, Gram always had time for me. We talked about things like why Lily was such a pill (Gram disagreed but she listened) and why I couldn’t quit school and get a job on a fishing boat (she had no good reason, in my opinion), but still we had fun.

  Gram and I liked the same things. Eggs scrambled, not fried. Big rainstorms. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” jokes. Words that feel good in the mouth like chortle and muffin and fling. We thought Frank Sinatra was too skinny and Groucho Marx the funniest Marx brother, but we liked Harpo best.

  She taught me to dance the Charleston, like she did when she was young. We’d bend our knees and swing our arms, and our skirts flew. “Dance-mad Tillie, they used to call me,” she said. “They’d holler hotsy-totsy and You’re the bee’s knees, and I’d dance, dance, dance.” They obviously spoke a different language then.

  She used to brush my scraggly, sun-bleached hair with her silver brush, a hundred strokes to make it shine, though it never did, and sing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” It was her favorite song after “Down on the Picket Line” and “Which Side Are You On?”

  Sometimes we played poker with her neighbor Barney, who was at least a hundred. Gram loved poker, but I’d get grumpy when I lost. And I always lost. She said it would be dishonest to let me win, but I think she just liked winning herself so much. She’d rub her hands together with glee and scoop up all the matches in the pot. There’s no dancing or games on Bayside Walk these days. And no Gram.

  When I was scared, Gram would make me weak tea and toast and let me sleep in her bed. She said she’d always be here to keep me safe. But she isn’t. Whose special girl was I now?

  Instead of me having the dreamboat Mr. Lester for sixth grade, Uncle Sam got him. I got stuck with the world’s oldest teacher, Mrs. Gillicuddy, who retired from being retired to come and torture us.

  Today for current events she made us watch a filmstrip about the war in Europe. Planes cut through the sky like black birds. Sirens wailed, bombs whistled, and then boom, boom, boom! All you could see was flames and rubble as buildings exploded and whole streets disappeared in fire. People ran in panic as soldiers pulled bodies out of the wreckage and carried stretcher after stretcher of the dead. My heart pounded and I had to close my eyes a lot of the time.

  There was a little girl, no older than Pete, carrying a stuffed bunny. The bunny’s long ears flopped as the girl ran. There were flashes of light and then darkness. What happened to her, I don’t know. I sat frozen with fear. Who could do such awful things to little children? It should even be against the law to make us watch it, but sadly no one came to arrest Mrs. Gillicuddy.

  I thought about that film all the way home. What happens when a bomb hits you? Do you explode? Burst into flames? Or melt like ice cream the way the bad witch in The Wizard of Oz did?

  Once home, I tried to hide in the closet to think and read, but Mama said I had to come out and help her or she’d drag me out by my earlobes. I’m nothing but unpaid labor around here. There oughta be a law.

  Mama and I made meatballs for dinner. Actually they were more like rice and breadcrumb balls with a tiny bit of meat in them. Mama learned lots of food-stretching tricks during the Depression, and we had to eat the results. I patted the mixture between my palms and remembered George handling the octopus. “How poor does someone have to be to eat octopus?”

  “It’s not a matter of poor, Millie. Don’t be snooty. Octopus is just another kind of fish. Some people think it’s a delicacy.”

  “Have you ever eaten it?”

  She nodded. “It’s tasty, if a bit chewy. I don’t cook it for us because your pop doesn’t like it.”

  “Well, then, I wish he didn’t like perch.” I kept rolling meatballs. “I feel sorry for octopuses. I watch them scramble out of their holes in the mud, thinking they’re escaping the bleach, only to be caught by something worse—George and a stewpot.” I shivered. “Is that what the world is like now—only war and death and winding up in a stew?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Millie, that’s enough. You’ve gotten so gloomy and overdramatic lately. And make those meatballs smaller.”

  Of course Mama didn’t understand me. Most of the time she didn’t even hear me. I felt like Joe Btfsplk—the sad little guy from the Li’l Abner comic strip with the permanent rain cloud over his head.

  Pop was home for dinner, not temping at the Burger Shack, Edna and her Jungle Gardenia were out on a date again, and we had meatballs and spaghetti instead of fish. It would have been a not-so-bad day except for school and the awful filmstrip. After that, of course, I had no appetite, though I thought I’d better nibble on a meatball or two to keep my strength up.

  “So how are my fine children this fine evening?” Pop asked, tomato sauce on his chin. “Lily, Millie, got anything to share? You guys in college yet? What’s taking you so long?” No one laughed. There was only the noise of spaghetti slurping.

  He had asked Lily the favorite first, I noticed. Like always. But it was okay. I didn’t want to even think about school.

  Pop pointed at Lily with his fork. “Come on, Lil, tell us, how’s second grade?”

  “I want to go to school, too,” Pete interrupted. “Why can’t I? I have things to learn.”

  Pop’s mouth was full of meatball, so Mama said, “The school here at the beach doesn’t have a kindergarten yet, but next year you’ll be in first grade, complaining about school like your sisters.”

  Pop wiped his sticky red chin with his napkin and nodded in agreement.

  “Next year.” Pete huffed. “It’s always next year or next week or next something. Never today.” He sucked in a string of spaghetti. “What if there is something I need to know right away but I don’t know it because of no school? What if that ruined my whole life? How would you feel?” He dropped his head onto the table in misery and—ow!—got spaghetti sauce in his eyes. Then there was wailing until Mama mopped him up.

  Lily announced, “I got an A in arithmetic today, and I didn’t wheeze once.” Today’s boast from Lily. What a pill!

  Pop nodded. “Well done, Lil.”

  “And I’m going to call my doll Arithmetic.”

  “Great name for a doll. And you, Millie?”

  I frowned and took a bite of meatball before answering. “School is…school. I have to wear skirts and shoes and sit inside all day, and I can’t even see the bay. Mrs. Gillicuddy is awful, sixth grade is boring, and Florence is not there anymore.” Florence was my best friend. She had moved away when her dad joined the army.

  Mine was a split classroom. Half were immature little fifth-graders and the rest were boys, except for stuck-up Felicity Kendell, who wore tight, f
uzzy sweaters and hung out with a bunch of older kids from the junior high. “There’s no one I even talk to except Dicky Fribble when I have to, and I hate Dicky Fribble.”

  “Who doesn’t?” said Pete.

  “Give it time,” said Pop. “You may be surprised. He could turn out to be your best friend.” He chuckled at the very idea.

  “Or maybe,” I said as I chewed, “Hitler will drop a bomb on us and it won’t matter anyway.”

  Mama shouted, “Millie!”

  Lily squealed, “Bomb?” and began to cry.

  Pete pulled his cap guns from the holster around his waist and fired off a few rounds—Bang! Bang! Bang! “Take that, Hitler!” Smoke and the sulfurous smell of the caps filled the air.

  That did it. Lily was scared quiet and I didn’t have to talk about school anymore. Mission accomplished.

  The front door swung open and slammed against the wall. Edna dropped onto the sofa with a shuddering sigh. “My date didn’t show up, the louse.”

  “Which Stooge was it?” asked Pete.

  “Quiet, Pete,” said Pop.

  “No Stooge,” Edna said, “but Harold. Stupid old Harold. I should have said yes to Leonard, who is boring but at least shows up.”

  Mama changed the subject. “More meatballs, Martin?” she asked Pop, passing him the bowl. “And, Edna, we’ll talk more about these dates of yours later.”

  Getting ready for bed, Edna hogged the bathroom while she pinned her dyed black hair in little snails all over her head. Lily and I sat on the edge of the bathtub and watched her. “Do you like living with us?” Lily asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Edna said through the bobby pins held in her teeth. “I miss Tillie. She was funny and nice and hardly ever angry with me when I did dumb things.”