The Painted Table(7)
“Mommy!” Saffee hits her spoon against the cereal bowl, splashing milk.
“Saffee, stop it!” Joann snaps. “Maybe we’ll have sugar when the war’s over.” Then more softly, “I hope.”
Beanie stands and puts her plump arms around Joann. “Sorry to give ya such a scare, Joann.”
“Thanks, Beanie. It’s okay.”
It’s been a long time since anyone has offered Joann a comforting embrace. When will her man hold her again? A ship blew up, an ammunition ship. “Hazardous,” he had said. What an awful word.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHORE LEAVE
1944
In the middle of the night, Saffee often awakens to see Joann rereading letters from Nels. When a packet of mail arrives about every two or three weeks, Joann eagerly tears them open and cries. Having no one else with whom to share her lonesomeness, she sometimes reads to Saffee, even though all the child understands is that her daddy is gone and her mother is sad. At such times especially, Saffee, like the young Joann, yearns to be held, but her mother is too tired, too stressed to realize it.
“‘The sun is so hot on deck we don’t wear shirts and we look like lobsters,’” Joann reads to Saffee one evening. “‘I wonder if I’ll ever get used to the constant pounding of the ship’s ingine and the rope hamick they spect us to sleep in.’”
Joann is sorry about her husband’s discomforts, but in addition, Nels’s substandard English continues to be a source of consternation. “Oh dear,” she laments to Saffee, “your daddy doesn’t spell any better than he talks.” She’d naively assumed before they married that she would teach him a thing or two in that department.
He writes about the “rough charcters” he serves with, and how he seems to find more favor with “the brass” than they do, getting recognition for his eagerness to do well. Although the ship is camouflaged as a merchant vessel, there are opportunities to “fire our big guns” at the enemy. He’s not a very good shot yet, he writes.
One letter relates that a Japanese radio station plays American music over the intercom by day and at night broadcasts the sultry voice of a woman named Tokyo Rose, who coos steamy, generalized accusations of GI wives misbehaving back home.
“I know it’s propaganda to brake down our morale,” Nels writes, “but sometimes the other men on bored get pretty riled up by it. I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about you, Joann. I know our love will never be corrupted, no matter what crazy Rose and these guys say.”
One day, poring over a newly arrived letter, Joann exclaims, “As if being on an ammunition ship isn’t bad enough, now he tells me it’s manned by criminals released from prisons!” Looking at Saffee, but not seeing her, Joann’s voice falls to a strained whisper. “Japanese subs thick as the fish in the water . . . crazy bombers in the air . . . and now criminals right on his ship. Maybe the military doesn’t mind losing them—but what about my Nels?”
Alarmed by her mother’s distress, Saffee asks, “Mommy, what’s a crim-nal?”
Joann rips open the next letter. It contains more disappointment. He’s getting shore leave in Portland, Oregon, not in San Francisco! She drops the letter and puts her head into her hands.
“Joann.” Maude straightens to full height, somewhat taller than her housekeeper. “Of course I understand you want to see your husband, but remember, we already let you go several days to get your girl, and now you want to leave again? I hardly think you’d expect us to keep . . .”
Joann interrupts, her words tumbling rapidly as she pleads. “You know that Sapphire doesn’t get in the way at all and she’s very quiet. The train trip only takes one day, I’ll stay the next day, and then I’ll come right back.”
“That would be three days. My goodness.” Maude folds her arms across her narrow chest and takes a few steps away as she ponders the situation. “This war is so disruptive,” she says under her breath. “Gasoline rationing. Food shortages. And now the help . . .” She turns around and says more gently, “Please stop wringing your hands, Joann. I’ll discuss it with Mr. Henry and let you know.”
Maude and her husband give their reluctant permission for Joann to take a three-day trip to Portland, leaving Saffee at the house. Joann meets Nels and they spend fifteen hours together, mostly at an inexpensive waterfront hotel. When she returns, she is pregnant.
“Mommy! I rode an elephant! I rode an elephant with Mr. Henry!”
“I know, Saffee. I know. You’ve told me five times.” Joann is surprised, and pleased, that Maude and Mr. Henry treated her little girl to the zoo. Saffee had had the time of her young life, and the unexpected gesture makes Joann feel less guilty for leaving “Daddy’s little girl” behind when she went to Portland.