“Well, what do you say, girlie-girl?”
Puzzled, Saffee says, “Nothin’.”
“Nothing?” Grandma Pearlman furrows her brow. “Hasn’t your mother taught you manners? It’s best to say, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ not . . .” The old woman pauses, struggles to find the pocket of her black shawl, and brings forth a handkerchief to wipe away escaping spittle.
“So,” she demands again, “are you going to be a good girl?”
Saffee guesses she should offer a “yes, ma’am,” but the unfamiliar words won’t come.
For a few moments, Grandma Pearlman’s eyes seem to penetrate Saffee’s face. Then the old woman sighs, again fatigued. Saffee stands quietly at her side, wondering why Grandma Pearlman looks as she does, smells as she does. She waits until the gray head falls forward in slumber and then she walks away.
When Easter approaches, Henry and Maude make plans to invite their two great-grandchildren for Easter dinner. On Saturday morning, Henry spends considerable time in the backyard. About noon, Joann rushes into the bedroom. All she can see of Saffee are her high-top white shoes sticking out from under the bed where the girl is studying a parade of ants.
“Saffee, get out from under there, quick! Mr. Henry says he wants to show you something.” She pulls Saffee by the ankles, helps her up, and brushes off her dusty dress. Joann leads her daughter out through the back door, trying to smooth her hair as they hurry.
Stepping into the squinty sunlight, Saffee sees tall, bony Mr. Henry smiling proudly as he surveys a thornbush. The sun sparkles on hundreds of sugared gumdrops that the man has laboriously stuck onto every thorn he could find. Saffee catches her breath at the thrilling sight and steps closer.
“Oh! It’s candy!” she says. She reaches out an eager hand and pulls off one luscious piece.
“No! No! It’s not for you! It’s for my Philip and Katherine. They’re coming tomorrow.” Mr. Henry, suddenly embarrassed, glances at Joann. “Oh . . . well. You can keep it, of course . . . yes, you may have one.”
Saffee steps back quickly and hesitantly puts the soft, sweet treat into her mouth. Although seen through welling tears, the gumdrop tree is the most tantalizingly beautiful thing she has ever beheld.
But it is for someone else.
“Saffee, hurry up now, eat your oatmeal,” Joann says as she stands at the kitchen sink filling Grandma Pearlman’s water pitcher. “I see Beanie coming up the walk.” Even after a year, Beanie, the sizable, middle-aged Irish woman the Pearlmans call “Cook,” is not used to having a child “underfoot” in her kitchen at mealtime.
Beanie doesn’t usually move fast, but today she bursts into the kitchen and blurts, “Joann, where’d you say that man a yours is at?”
Alarmed, Joann almost lets the pitcher slip from her hands. “He’s on a navy ship.”
“I know—but where’s the ship exactly now?”
“I don’t know, his letters can’t tell me where it goes. Everything’s secret in war. What’s the matter, Beanie? Tell me!”
Saffee pauses her spoon in midair listening to the distressed exchange.
“Oooh,” Beanie moans, shaking her hands up and down as if that will help her to think more clearly. “Well, what’s the name of the ship he’s on?”
“Nels told me not to tell anyone. He said no reckless talk.” Desperate to know Beanie’s news, and knowing that his ship is the USS Alamosa, Joann reveals, “His ship starts with the letter A.”
“Saints be praised.” Beanie sinks into a chair at the table across from Saffee as if to catch her breath. She tells Joann that her husband, Johnny, was on his way home from the rail yards near Suisun Bay at ten o’clock the night before and heard “a terrible ’splosion.” She says it was “one a them ’munition ships,” but she can’t remember its name. “It was Byron or Bryan, or somethin’. Yeah, that’s it, the USS Bryan. I knew it din’t start with A. Blew up high in the air when they were loadin’ it. Johnny sez that’s only ’bout twenty-five mile from here. Didju hear it?”
“I must have been asleep,” Joann says, her head bent in relief. The pitcher is overflowing. She leans weakly against the sink and turns off the tap.
Not comprehending the conversation, Saffee says, “Mommy, when we gonna have shigger again? I like shigger on my oatmeal.”
Lacking no drama, Beanie continues her report, telling Joann she heard that the explosion had lit up the sky like red and orange fireworks. Her husband wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in the area had burned. Joann is shaking. She sinks into the chair beside Saffee and through clenched teeth declares, “I hate this war.”