Louise's Crossing Read online

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Write us,’ she said.

  ‘You know I will.’

  She left without her usual lecture about what was proper and appropriate for a single woman to do, even in wartime. Thank goodness.

  Dellaphine was at her range in the kitchen, hovering over two cast-iron skillets with chicken bubbling in hot lard. I loved her fried chicken. I was pretty sure they didn’t fry chicken in England.

  ‘Oh, Dellaphine, thank you for fixing chicken today,’ I said. ‘I don’t know when I’ll have it again.’

  ‘Miss Phoebe said to cook your favorite things for Sunday dinner,’ Dellaphine said, keeping her back to me as she turned the chicken with her granny fork. ‘But why someone who won’t even tell her friends when she is leaving them or where she is going should get a special dinner is beyond me.’

  Her daughter, Madeleine, looked up from the kitchen table, where she was browsing through the colored newspaper, and said, ‘Momma, you know Louise can’t tell us where she’s headed. It’s secret.’

  Dellaphine turned away from the range and glared at the two of us, one hand on a hip, brandishing the fork. ‘We should let those foreigners fight for theyselves,’ she said.

  Madeleine just shook her head as she turned the newspaper pages, knowing there was no point in arguing with her mother.

  ‘Once I get to my posting, I can write you, tell you where I am and give you my APO address to write back to me,’ I said.

  ‘I ain’t got no time to write,’ Dellaphine said.

  I started to speak, but Madeleine gave me a warning look. Best slink away, I thought, moving toward the door.

  ‘Wait,’ Dellaphine said. She turned and picked up a round tin and handed it to me. It had to weigh two pounds. ‘I made you some pralines for your trip,’ she said. ‘They don’t melt and keep real well. Don’t worry if you start to see little white spots on them after a few weeks. They’re still good. That’s just the sugar crystallizing.’

  For the first time all day I felt a lump in my throat.

  ‘Dellaphine, thank you so much.’ It must have taken all our sugar and butter and extra hours in the kitchen for her to make these.

  ‘It was nothing,’ she said, turning back to the range, stabbing a chicken breast to turn it. ‘Go on and set the table now. And Miss Phoebe say to set out the champagne glasses.’

  I found Ada in the dining room throwing one of Phoebe’s lace tablecloths over the table. She was better put together than she often was on Sundays, wearing a caftan and matching turban. Ada’s gig as a clarinet player in the Willard Hotel band kept her up late most Saturday nights. She smoothed out wrinkles in the tablecloth as I went to the china cabinet to get plates.

  ‘Done packing?’ she asked.

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘I can tell you’re excited. Aren’t you at all scared?’ Ada lived most of her days scared. She was married to a German Luftwaffe pilot who’d left her and returned to Germany when the Nazis took power. She didn’t dare try to get a divorce for fear some nosy government bureaucrat would notice the paperwork and send her to a German-American internment camp.

  ‘I should be, I guess,’ I said. ‘But I’m just not.’

  Ada collected silverware from a drawer and followed behind me as I set down the plates.

  ‘February is not a great time to cross the Atlantic,’ she said.

  ‘Thousands of people are doing it,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, and hundreds don’t make it.’ She caught my eye, which I’d been trying to avoid. ‘Is it too late to change your mind? You’re a civilian. No one can make you go.’

  ‘I want to go.’

  ‘That’s just wacky, honey,’ she said. ‘You can serve your country right here.’

  ‘Someone has to staff our offices overseas.’

  ‘I guess so. You know how much I’ll miss you, don’t you? Heaven knows who Phoebe will rent your room to next!’

  We were unnaturally quiet at dinner. I was the only one who appeared to have an appetite. I greedily worked my way through fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. The green beans were canned, but we’d put them up ourselves with beans from our Victory garden, so they were still darn tasty. No one else – Phoebe, Ada, Milt or Henry – was doing justice to the meal. And they were avoiding meeting my eyes. I didn’t know whether to be grateful they were so fond of me or annoyed that they were spoiling what might be my last Sunday dinner with them for a very long time.

  Phoebe broke the silence. ‘Do your parents know where you’re going?’ she asked.

  ‘Not exactly, but they know I’m going overseas,’ I said. ‘But I’ll write them just as soon as I can, of course.’ I’d gotten leave to spend a long weekend with my family in Wilmington, North Carolina, so I could say goodbye. It was about the longest three days I’d ever experienced. My mother and father were appalled that a single woman would even dream of accepting an assignment that took her across the Atlantic Ocean in February to live in a foreign country for who knew how long. I responded patriotically, reminding them that this was war and young women were being asked to do all sorts of things that would have been unheard of a few years ago. We had to make sacrifices. I didn’t remind them that I was thirty years old, had been living for two years in DC by myself and made a salary they wouldn’t believe if I told them. And that I was thrilled at the prospect of living in London. I was so relieved to board the train to go back to DC that I went straight to the bar car and ordered a Martini.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Milt said. He pulled an item that clinked out of his pocket and handed it over to me. ‘It’s my lucky charm,’ he said. We had to chuckle, since he’d lost his left arm in a jeep crash on a Pacific Island. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘it could have been my right arm.’

  It was a cheap St Christopher’s medal with a four-leaf clover stamped on the other side, threaded through with a chain. It was tarnished and dinged up, maybe from damage that had occurred during Milt’s accident.

  ‘My pals gave it to me before I shipped out,’ Milt said. ‘And I got back home, didn’t I?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, pulling the chain over my head. ‘I’ll bring it back to you.’

  Henry was a middle-aged crusty sort, awfully straight-laced, and I don’t think he approved of me or Ada – single women working and doing pretty much what we wanted to. Ada and I thought he had a crush on Phoebe, but as far as we could tell he’d never acted on it. He was sort of a sad sack really.

  ‘I’ve got a gift for you, too,’ Henry said to me, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out two coins that glinted in the candlelight and dropped them into my hand. Two twenty-dollar Liberty Head gold pieces, worth much more than their face value since Roosevelt had taken the country off the gold standard. I hardly knew what to say. I just stared at them, gleaming in my hand. I had no idea what these would be worth on the black market, but it would be plenty.

  ‘Henry,’ I said, ‘I can’t accept these. They’re worth too much money.’

  Henry shrugged. ‘I bought them a long time ago,’ he said. ‘At face value. Look here,’ he said, ‘you know I don’t approve of you leaving the country; I don’t know where you’ll be going or what you’ll be doing, but it could be dangerous. Gold gets you out of a lot of situations that nothing else will. So carry them with you all the time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will.’

  Ada had already given me her gift in the privacy of my bedroom, a set of pink long underwear. ‘Just because you need to wear layers of clothes in this weather doesn’t mean you can’t have feminine unmentionables,’ she’d said to me.

  Talking openly about my departure seemed to have loosened everyone up. Milt reached for the bowl of mashed potatoes and soon my friends were tucking into their meal with more enthusiasm. Dellaphine brought out one of my favorite desserts: apple pie.

  Phoebe served me a large slice. I ate every crumb of it.

  ‘Let’s have our champagne in the lounge,’ Henr
y said, ‘where the fire is.’ We trooped down the hall and settled into our usual seats. Milt stoked the fire while Henry popped the champagne cork and filled our glasses. Phoebe took two glasses into the kitchen for Dellaphine and Madeleine. I was toasted by all and felt myself blush.

  ‘Please, stop,’ I said. ‘Enough.’

  The telephone rang. Henry went out into the hall to answer it.

  Milt made the most of his absence. ‘Don’t pay attention to Henry,’ he said. ‘Or’ – and here he winked at his mother – ‘what other people say. I think it’s swell what you’re doing. I wish I was shipping out somewhere.’ With his one hand, he pulled a cigarette out of his pack of Lucky Strikes, stuck it in a corner of his mouth and lit it with a Navy Zippo.

  Henry came back into the lounge. ‘It’s for you,’ he said to me.

  I went out into the passageway and picked up the receiver. It was Alice.

  ‘It’s time,’ she said. ‘Are you packed?’

  ‘So soon? I thought it would be a couple more days.’

  ‘You’ll be picked up at five thirty tomorrow morning and taken to the ship,’ Alice said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Are you packed and ready?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Bon voyage, then. Take care.’

  ‘I will.’

  She hung up, and I stood in the hall for a few seconds, still holding the telephone receiver.

  This was it. It was really happening. I was crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a flimsy cargo ship in the dead of winter during wartime to take up a job in London, a city almost destroyed by German bombings, where shortages of almost everything made living there a constant challenge. I walked back into the silent lounge and met my friends’ eyes.

  ‘So,’ Phoebe said, ‘did you get your orders?’

  It would be stupid to dissemble at this point. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow.’ I didn’t tell them how early. I hoped to slip away without having to make any more goodbyes. ‘Milt, Henry, could you take my footlocker downstairs tonight?’

  ‘Of course,’ Henry said. He examined the height of the champagne left in the bottle. ‘I think there’s enough for us all to have one more swallow,’ he said.

  TWO

  I tiptoed down the dark hallway carrying my suitcase and musette bag. I didn’t want to wake anyone. All the goodbyes of last night had worn out my nerves. I stopped to leave a letter to Phoebe and Ada on the hall table. There was a paper bag waiting there with my name on it. I guessed what was in it – leftover fried chicken and apple pie, wrapped up tightly in wax paper. Bless her heart; Dellaphine was taking no chance that I’d starve today. Unbuckling my musette bag, I tucked the food inside.

  I stood on the sidewalk outside, waiting for my ride. Even with my scarf wrapped around my head and face, and my hat pulled down over my ears, my face was cold. Jiggling on the spot, I glanced up and down the dark empty street. The streetlights were shaded, casting a minimum of light – enough to keep you from tripping over a broken piece of sidewalk, maybe. I’d read there were no streetlights allowed now in London. You had to carry a flashlight everywhere.

  It was five twenty-five a.m. when I saw the nondescript black Chevy sedan come around the corner and pull up in front of me. A large colored man in work clothes got out of the driver’s seat.

  ‘Lester!’ I said.

  He grinned at me, showing several gold teeth. Lester was a messenger and driver at OSS; he knew every shortcut in the city. Our office, the Morale Operations Unit, was just one of many that depended on him.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘At your service.’

  I reached out and clasped his hand warmly. ‘I’m glad to see you,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye to you on Friday.’

  ‘I’m glad too, Mrs Pearlie. But then Miss Osborne said she didn’t trust anyone else to get you to your ship.’ He glanced down at my two cases. ‘That can’t be all you are taking,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’ve got a footlocker inside in the passageway.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Be as quiet as you can. I don’t want to wake anyone up. I’ve had all the goodbyes I can handle already.’

  I watched Lester stride toward the front door and let himself in quietly. In the next minute I tried to memorize the look of the house where I’d lived for two years. Where my new life as an independent working woman had started. The front stoop, where there was just enough overhang to shade you from a downpour. The double window in the lounge where Phoebe had hung her Blue Star Mothers banner with two blue stars embroidered on it. The lounge itself – the only room in the house apart from the dining room where we had space enough to gather. Ada and I had surprised Phoebe by making slip-covers for the faded suite of furniture last summer. I had met Joe there the first night I arrived in Washington.

  Lester came out of the house, carrying my footlocker easily on one shoulder. He stashed it in the Chevy with my suitcase before opening the car door for me. I scooched into the passenger seat, relieved to get out of the cold. Lester slid into the driver’s side.

  ‘So, where are we headed?’ I asked.

  ‘Ma’am, you got to tell me,’ Lester said, drawing a sealed envelope out of his jacket pocket and handing it to me.

  It was a plain envelope with my name scrawled on it in Miss Osborne’s harried handwriting. My orders. Opening it, I read the short paragraph. I was to go to the Washington Navy Shipyard and board the SS Amelia Earhart bound for Great Britain. In approximately four weeks the ship would dock in Liverpool and someone from OSS would meet me and escort me to London. That was all.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we need to go to the DC Navy Shipyard.’

  ‘Doggone,’ Lester said. ‘I was hoping it was Baltimore. I know a place there that makes the best mussel chowder.’

  He started the engine and shifted the gears. We pulled away from the curb. I noticed a light on in the kitchen, where Dellaphine would be starting breakfast. It was Monday, so it would likely be Cream of Wheat with canned fruit and toast.

  ‘I’ve never heard of a ship named after a woman before,’ Lester said, as we drove south on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  ‘Well, when you build thousands of Liberty ships and you can only name them after dead people, you’ve got to dig deep for names,’ I said. I was pleased actually to be assigned to a ship named after Amelia Earhart. She was one of my heroes. ‘Did you know there are twenty-some of these ships named after colored people?’

  ‘I did,’ Lester said. ‘I seen the SS Booker T. Washington steaming down the river once. They must have run out of women’s names,’ he said, chuckling. ‘But you know about those Liberty ships, don’t you? They’re welded instead of riveted.’

  Here it came.

  ‘I heard one of them seams didn’t hold and a ship just split down the middle and the two halves just sunk,’ Lester said, and then chuckled some more.

  Liberty ships were built in modules from a British master plan and then welded together. The modules could be adapted to carry passengers, dry cargo or oil and gasoline. The ships were built so quickly and cheaply that no one expected them to last more than a few years.

  ‘You’re not scaring me,’ I said. ‘I’m sure the ship is perfectly safe.’ At least, more of them arrived at their destinations than didn’t.

  As we drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, DC’s famous monuments and buildings loomed in the darkness. We passed the State Department and then the White House. It was lit by special lighting designed by General Electric, designed not to cast glare into the house and disturb the residents sleeping, or trying to sleep, in their bedrooms. The watch was changing; two Army trucks were discharging soldiers to take the place of those who’d guarded the President all night.

  Pennsylvania Avenue swerved south for a bit, passing the massive Treasury Building fronted with tall marble Ionic columns, then angled southeast again. Past the Capital and the Library of Congress. Lester changed gears.

  ‘I’m about to turn on to New Jersey Avenue
, Mrs Pearlie,’ Lester said. ‘Mrs Osborne asked me to make sure you didn’t want to change your mind.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I answered. Although my heart rate picked up and my stomach roiled, I was still eager to take up my new assignment.

  My first job had been at the Wilmington Shipbuilding Company and I thought I knew what a naval yard would look like, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when Lester pulled away from the army checkpoint at a government entrance and drove into the Washington Navy Yard. We arrived in time to hear whistles signal the change of shift across the 155-acre yard. Thousands of workers left their posts in more than a hundred buildings and dozens of ships, and thousands more took their place. The streets were packed with men and women, white and black, wearing work clothes and carrying lunch buckets, crowding on to buses to transport them home. Lester and I were stuck in traffic and I just gawked. As dawn broke, the yard’s floodlights cut off.

  ‘I know a shortcut,’ Lester said, shifting the car into reverse. He maneuvered away from the parade of buses and turned down a street that paralleled the yard’s perimeter fencing.

  A few blocks south, the street dead-ended at the Anacostia River. We turned left and drove along its banks until we came to the docks and quays. They seemed to go on forever. Ships of all kinds lined up like sardines in a can, most being loaded with cargo and a few in dry dock being painted or repaired.

  Lester stopped next to a colored longshoreman loading a reel of steel cable as thick as his arm on to a cart. A mule with one ear cocked our way was harnessed to the cart, ready to tote the wooden reel on to the nearby dock. He snorted at us, his breath steaming from the cold.

  ‘Do you know where I can find the Amelia Earhart?’ Lester asked him. ‘It’s a Liberty ship, supposed to depart today?’

  The man pointed further along the waterfront. ‘About a mile down,’ he said. ‘It’s almost finished loading.’

  The Amelia Earhart rocked gently at her berth. I had done a little reading up on Liberty ships once I knew I’d be traveling on one. Sure enough, this one was just as ugly as promised. It had an ungainly hull which accommodated five cargo holds. Three booms and a couple of davits with their dangling winches and chains looked like tall spiders crouching on deck, which was packed tight with jeeps, trucks and even a locomotive. What little room was left on deck was taken by the minimal superstructure amidships which wrapped around the engine stack and held the wheelhouse, the bridge and, below deck, the galley, mess, wardroom and berths for passengers and officers. Like most Liberty ships, this one carried artillery for its defense, a three-inch/fifty millimeter gun at the bow, a five-inch/thirty-millimeter caliber at the stern and eight twenty-millimeter guns that resembled oversized machine guns – two forward, two aft and four amidships. The guns were manned by an Armed Guard – forty or so Navy gunners commanded by an ensign. The crew, commanded by a master, numbered around sixty. The crew were merchant mariners, not members of the military, but with the war some were trained by the Navy.