The War That Saved My Life

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  “I won’t again so long as I have no cause,” Miss Smith said. She hugged Jamie to her, then stood. “I’ll be asking Jamie. I don’t want him ridiculed, looked down upon, or punished in any way for using his left hand.”

  The teacher sniffed. Miss Smith stood, and guided me to follow her out. I wanted to wait in the hall to be sure the teacher didn’t immediately tie Jamie back up, but Miss Smith said we needed to leave. “I’ve knocked her pride a bit,” she said. “We need to let her get it back.”

  I didn’t see why. I said, “I could have told them he hates being tied.” But I didn’t really understand why the teacher tied him, and I said so.

  Miss Smith sighed. “Ada, which hand do you eat with? When you hold a fork?”

  I held up my right hand. “This one.”

  “Why? Why not use both?”

  “This one feels better,” I said.

  “That’s right. And Jamie eats with his other hand, his left hand. He always does. That hand feels better to him.”

  I guess he did, but I’d never noticed. I’d never cared. “So?”

  “So he’s learning to write now, and it’s much harder to write with the hand you don’t eat with. I’ll show you, when we get home.” She opened the main door of the school, and we went out. A chill wind swirled some dead leaves around the steps. “In the Bible the good people stand on God’s right, and the bad people stand on the left, before they get cast into hell. So some—people—”

  “Idjits,” I supplied.

  “Yes.” She smiled at me. “Some idiots think left-handedness comes from the devil. It doesn’t. It comes from the brain.”

  “Like that man you were talking about,” I said.

  “What? Oh, Dr. Goudge. Yes, he’s Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. Where I studied.”

  “And he’s left-handed, like Jamie?”

  Miss Smith snorted. “I’ve no idea. I didn’t read Divinity. I never met the man.”

  She’d lied. I looked at her sideways. “So you didn’t go to Oxford,” I said. Wherever that was, whatever it meant.

  “Of course I did,” she said. “I studied maths.”

  We walked down the road. “Is a clubfoot like that?” I asked.

  “Like being left-handed? In a way. It’s something you’re born with.”

  “No, I mean, is it what that teacher said? A—a mark of the devil.” It would explain everything, I thought.

  “Ada, of course not! How could you think so?”

  I shrugged. “I thought maybe that was why Mam hated me.”

  Miss Smith’s hand touched my shoulder. When she spoke, her voice was uneven. “She doesn’t—I’m sure it’s not—” She stopped walking and turned to face me. “I don’t know what to say,” she said, after a pause. “I don’t want to tell you a lie, and I don’t know the truth.”

  It was maybe the most honest thing anyone had ever said to me.

  “If she does hate you she’s wrong to do so,” Miss Smith said.

  I shook that off. It didn’t matter, did it?

  Leaves skittered around the tips of my crutches. My bad foot swung in the air. I started down the road again, and after a moment Miss Smith followed.

  “Will you ride Butter when we get home?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “I still can’t make him trot.”

  “Persistence,” Miss Smith said. “That’s what Lady Thorton says.”

  I’d asked. Persistence meant to keep trying.

  The very next day, before Jamie went to school, Miss Smith took us to the post office to register for our identity cards. It was a war thing. We would all get cards to carry with us, so that if the Germans invaded, the government could tell who was German and who was English by asking to see our identity cards.

  They could also tell because the Germans would be speaking a different language. That’s what Miss Smith said. While we stood in line, she explained that all over the world people spoke different, not just different the way I sounded different from Miss Smith and Maggie, but different like actual different words. Jamie wanted to hear different words, so Miss Smith told us some. She said they were in Latin, the only other language she knew. “But it’s a dead language,” she said. “Nobody speaks it anymore.”

  Clearly this wasn’t true, since she just had been speaking it, but I didn’t say so. Jamie asked, “If we kill all the Germans, then their language will be dead. Bam!” He pretended to shoot a German.

  Miss Smith pursed her lips, but we’d gotten to the front of the line, so she didn’t reprimand him. Instead she told the registry man her name, her birthday, and that she wasn’t married and didn’t have a job.

  Then she pushed us forward. “Ada Smith and James Smith,” she said. “They’re living with me.”

  The registry man smiled. “Niece and nevvy, are they? Must be nice to have family staying. I can see the resemblance, sure enough. The girl has your eyes.”

  “No,” Miss Smith said. “They’re evacuees. The surname is just a coincidence. I don’t know their birth dates,” she continued. “It wasn’t on their paperwork, and the children couldn’t tell me.”

  The man frowned. “A great big lass and lad like that, and they don’t know their own birthdays? Are they simple?”

  I stuck my right foot behind my left, and stared at the floor.

  “Of course not,” Miss Smith snapped. “What an ignorant thing to say.”

  The man didn’t seem put off by her tone. “Well, that’s very nice, I’m sure,” he said, “but what am I supposed to put down on the form? The government wants proper birth days. There isn’t a spot for ‘don’t know.’”

  “Write down April 5, 1929, for Ada,” Miss Smith said. After asking me how much I could remember about Jamie being a baby, she’d decided long ago I must be ten. “For Jamie put February 15.” She looked down at us. “Nineteen thirty-three,” she said. “We’re pretty sure he’s six years old.”

  The man raised an eyebrow, but did as she told him.

  “What’s all that mean?” I asked, when we were back out on the street.

  “Birthdays are days you get presents,” Jamie said gloomily, “and cake for tea. And at school you get to wear the birthday hat.”

  I remembered Miss Smith asking us about birthdays, when we first came to her, but I’d never heard about a birthday hat. Turns out it was a school thing. At Jamie’s school his teacher posted birthdays on a big calendar, and when it was your birthday you wore a hat and everybody made a fuss over you.

  When Jamie’d said he didn’t know his birthday, his class had laughed at him. He hadn’t told us that.

  “But now we have birthdays,” Jamie said contentedly. “What you told the man. I’ll tell teacher this afternoon and she’ll write it on her calendar.” He smiled at Miss Smith. “What was it?”

  “February 15, 1933,” Miss Smith said.

  “It’s not your real birthday,” I said.

  “Close enough,” Miss Smith said. “February 15 was my father’s birthday. Jamie can use it.”

  “Is your father dead?”

  “No,” Miss Smith said. “At least, not so I’ve heard. I think my brothers would tell me. It doesn’t matter if Jamie shares. There are only 365 days in the year, and there are a lot more people in the world than that. Lots of people have the same birthdays.”

  “But it isn’t Jamie’s real birthday,” I said.

  “No, it’s not.” Miss Smith turned and bent over so she was looking directly at me. “When I find out your real birthdays, I’ll change your identity cards. Okay? Promise.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t mind a temporary lie. “How do you find out?”

  Miss Smith’s nostrils narrowed. “Your mother knows. When she answers my letters, she’ll tell us.”

  Could be a long time, then. I doubted I’d ever go to school
and wear a birthday hat, but still— “Will we have cake for tea on my birthday? On the day you told the man?”

  “Yes,” Miss Smith said. A sudden look of sadness washed over her face, then disappeared so quickly that if I hadn’t been looking right at her, I never would have seen it. Sadness? I thought. How did I know that was sadness? And why would Miss Smith be sad?

  “That was Becky’s birthday,” Miss Smith said. “It’ll be nice to have a reason to celebrate the day again.”

  “That’s a lie,” I said. I wasn’t angry about it, but it was one.

  “Oh.” Miss Smith forced a laugh. “It is and it isn’t. It will be hard for me, but I’d like very much to be happy again.”

  Stephen White and his colonel invited me to tea. They sent me a proper invitation, written out, by post, and Miss Smith handed it to me without opening it. I stared and stared at the marks on the paper, but I couldn’t make sense of them. Neither could Jamie, no matter how hard he tried. “The writing’s wiggly,” he said. “Not like in books.”

  So I had to ask Miss Smith, which made me angry. She read it out—tea, Stephen and the colonel, Saturday, October 7—and all the while I grew angrier and angrier that I couldn’t read the words myself. Miss Smith looked up at me and laughed. “Ada, what a face!” she said. “It’s your own fault. I’m happy to teach you.”

  Easy for her to laugh. What if I tried and found out I really couldn’t learn?

  “I’ll write back an answer for you,” Miss Smith said. “You want to go, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want her having to write for me.

  “Why not? You’ll have something nice to eat, I’m sure, and Stephen’s your friend. The colonel’s an old man, but he’s kind and has some interesting stories.”

  “No!” I said. I added, “Stephen’s not my friend.”

  Miss Smith sat down and looked at me. “You told me he carried you to the train station,” she said. “That sounds like something a friend would do.”

  Maybe.

  “The way you helped Margaret Thorton when she was hurt. You were a friend to her the way Stephen was a friend to you.”

  I did want to count Maggie as a friend. I guessed I wouldn’t mind counting Stephen as one, only it was harder to be friends with someone who helped you than someone you’d helped.

  “I know you know how to behave nicely,” Miss Smith continued. “You did when we went out for tea the other day. And I’d walk you to the colonel’s house, and pick you up again when you were through. You wouldn’t be there very long. Perhaps an hour. You’d have a treat and a cup of tea, and talk. That would be all.”

  I scowled. “Why do you want me to go?”

  She sighed, air coming out her nose so she soundedlike Butter. “I don’t. I don’t care what you do. Only I thought you’d like to be around someone your own age, for a change, and I was happy for you that you’d gotten the invitation.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t feel happy. I felt something else. Scared? I didn’t know. “I don’t want to go,” I said. “You don’t have to write anything.”

  “I have to write and decline the invitation,” Miss Smith said. “You’ve got to answer, either way.”

  I hadn’t known that, of course. I kicked at the chair leg with my good foot while she got out paper and a pen. She wrote something down, then shoved it toward me. “That says: ‘Miss Smith regrets that she is unable to accept your kind invitation for October seventh.’ That’s how you say no politely. And quit kicking the chair.”

  I kicked harder. I didn’t care if I was polite or not. “I don’t need the colonel staring at my foot,” I said.

  “How could he?” Miss Smith asked. She grabbed my good foot and held it still. “I said, stop it. And the colonel wouldn’t be staring at you under any circumstances. He can’t see much of anything. He’s gone blind.”

  On the actual day of the seventh it rained, cold and hard. I couldn’t ride. Miss Smith gave Jamie scissors and a magazine with pictures of planes in it, and he was happy cutting them out and then flying them around the rug. I didn’t have anything to do. “I couldn’t have gone to that stupid tea anyhow,” I said.

  Miss Smith looked up from her sewing machine. She’d found some old towels and was turning them into dressing gowns for Jamie and me. Dressing gowns were like coats you put on over your pajamas in winter when you weren’t in bed. It wasn’t winter cold yet, but it was cold enough that Miss Smith had lit the coal fire in the living room. That and the kitchen range kept the house warm.

  “We’d have used my big umbrella,” Miss Smith said. “You still could have gone.”

  “Can I go now?” I asked.

  Miss Smith shook her head. “Once you’ve given your answer you can’t change your mind,” she said. “It’s not polite.”

  “I don’t care about polite!”

  “Maybe not,” she said, crisply, “but the colonel does, and tea parties are about being polite.”

  I stomped my crutch. It landed on one of Jamie’s paper planes, smashing it into the rug. Jamie howled. I didn’t care.

  Miss Smith got up. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “My stomach hurts!”

  “You’re angry,” she said. “But you can’t take it out on Jamie. Say you’re sorry and see if you can fix that plane.”

  “I’m not sorry,” I said.

  Miss Smith pressed her eyes shut. “Say it anyhow,” she said.

  “No!”

  “Jamie, come here.” Miss Smith sat down on the sofa and opened her arms, and Jamie crawled into her lap. Ever since she’d hugged him in his classroom, he’d been cuddling up to her. I could hardly stand it. “Your sister’s having a hard time,” Miss Smith told him. “She didn’t mean to rip your plane.”

  I wanted to say, I did too, only it was such a lie. I never meant to hurt Jamie. He just sometimes got in the way. But looking at him curled up on Miss Smith’s lap made me want to scream. Nobody did that for me.

  Except that Miss Smith patted the space beside her. “Sit down,” she said. “No, really. Sit.”

  And then she put her arm around me, and pulled me halfway over.

  She did.

  I was almost on her lap.

  “You’re so stiff,” she said. “It’s like trying to comfort a piece of wood.”

  It felt very odd to have her touch me. Of course it made me tense. But I didn’t go away inside my head. I sat on the sofa with Miss Smith’s arm around me, and Jamie breathing soft near my shoulder, and I watched the coal fire flicker, and I stayed right there, right there in that room, and none of us moved for half an hour. Jamie fell asleep, and Miss Smith and I just sat, neither of us saying a word, until it was time to put the blackout up, and make tea.

  Butter refused to ever do anything but walk.

  I was nice to him. I tried hard not to smack him, even when his laziness angered me. I brought him treats, and I brushed him every day, and sometimes when I rode him I dropped the reins on his neck and just let him wander around the pasture however he liked. When I stood at the corner gate and called his name, he came right to me, every time, and he stood without being tied while I brushed him and put his bridle on. I knew he liked me. He really did. But he wouldn’t go faster, no matter what. He wouldn’t run, and until he would run, I knew we’d never be able to jump.

  I was afraid Lady Thorton hadn’t meant it when she said I could ask Mr. Grimes for help, but in the end I decided I had to take the chance.

  “I’m going to visit Mr. Grimes,” I said at lunch one day. It was a cold day; I was glad to be wearing one of Maggie’s old sweaters.

  Miss Smith gave me an eye. “How and why?”

  “I’ll ride Butter,” I said.

  Miss Smith stared.

  “I do ride him quite a bit,” I said. “We get on well He’s a very nice pony. He wouldn’t mind taking me t
here.”

  “Ada,” Miss Smith said, “I may be negligent, but I am not blind. I’m well aware how much you ride that pony.”

  “Yes, miss,” I said.

  “I’ve told you and told you to call me Susan,” she said. “Your refusal to do so is starting to feel like an affront. Why do you want to visit Mr. Grimes?”

  “I just want to,” I said. “He was nice to me. Susan,” I added.

  She rolled her eyes. “And?” she prompted.

  “And I’m having trouble with Butter and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I can’t hardly get him to move. Miss—the iron-face—I mean, Maggie’s mum—”

  “Lady Thorton,” prompted Miss Smith.

  “Yeah. Her. She said if I had trouble I could ask Mr. Grimes for help.”

  Miss Smith picked up a piece of carrot with her fork. She put it into her mouth and chewed slowly. “It hardly sounds like Butter,” she said. “When I rode him he was quite keen, and he’s not gotten that much older.” She picked up another piece of carrot. “All right,” she said, after she’d chewed it and swallowed. “You may go. Do you remember how to get there?”

  I nodded. It was easy, just the two turns, plus there was a fancy fence and iron gates at the start of the drive. Couldn’t miss those.

  Miss Smith said, “If you’re going to be riding out on the road, it might be better if you put a saddle on him. You could take the right stirrup off, so it wouldn’t bang against his side.” She knew I wouldn’t be able to use the right stirrup. It would hurt too much.

  “Is his the little one?” I asked. There were three saddles in the storage room, hung on racks and covered with cloth. Two were the same size and one was smaller.

  “Yes,” Miss Smith said. “I’ll show you.”

  “’S all right,” I said. “I don’t need you.”

  She looked at me for a long time. “I never know what to do for the two of you,” she said at last. “I should have gone to Jamie’s school earlier. I probably should supervise you more. But you’d hate it, wouldn’t you?”