I gave the boats a last salute and grabbed Lily’s hand, and we ran home.
On the way I noticed little purple flowers on the pickleweed, a hermit crab struggling to carry his house on his back, and a piece of sea glass, round and smooth and blue as the sky. I could have drawn such lovely things in my old book instead of dead shrimp.
But I did enjoy looking closely at the dead creatures I drew, examining them, studying them, finding what was odd or funny or mysterious about them. I’d miss that.
Maybe, I thought as Lily and I shuffled through the sand, maybe I should start a new book, with drawings of living things, like moon jellies and starfish and sagewort, and people to celebrate and cherish: lovable people like Lily and Pete and Rosie. Brave people like Dwayne Fribble, who went to war and died there—and maybe even Rocky, who braved the criticism of his decision not to go. And Mrs. Dunsmore, who chooses life.
Yes, a new book, a book of life, My Book of Life. I’d be sure to include a drawing of the pretty purple sand dollar, Lily’s new blond braids, and Pete’s funny, freckled, almost-six face. And I just happened to have ten cents for a new notebook. I’d think it a good omen, if I believed in omens. It was good luck anyway.
That night I told Lily, “I’m going to start a new book, a book of life, full of beautiful, wonderful things that I love, and Miss Lily’s picture will be on page one!”
“Me, Millie? You love me?”
“Of course. I just didn’t notice for a while.” I hugged her, and I meant it.
“I decided on my doll’s forever name,” she said. “It’s Millie Junior.”
“That’s sweet, Lily, but let’s see what you think tomorrow.”
“She’ll still be Millie Junior tomorrow, and that’s final. Millie Junior and I voted on it.”
Mama was awake early the next morning. She made herself a cup of coffee and I had Ovaltine. Not hot chocolate, which had gone to war, but warm and sweet. Mama and Pop both working had sure improved our menu. Maybe soon a lamb chop or a roast chicken would find us.
“I heard from Lily,” she said, “that you were playing with matches last night, setting things on fire. Do I need to worry about you when I’m at work?”
I smiled. “Not playing exactly, Mama. We had a ceremony, I was very careful, and I won’t have to do it again.” I spread grape jelly on my toast and took a bite. I realized I had never told Mama or Pop about the Book of Dead Things. They wouldn’t have approved and maybe would have stopped me. At the very least I’d have gotten a cheer-up lecture. “The ceremony was pretty silly but it felt important. I was working on something in my notebook but I was finished. It had to go, but not just into the trash. I needed something big and dramatic and, oh, final.”
Mama put her arm around my shoulders. “My Millie, my interesting, original, wonderfully odd Millie. What would I do without you to brighten my day?”
Brighten? Old doom-and-gloom Millie? What was happening? I leaned into Mama’s warm side, careful not to get jelly on her bathrobe.
Rosie wrote me a letter! She didn’t move back to Chicago for good but only until her family packs up and moves west! The warm beach weather was good for her mother’s lungs, so the whole family will be living here permanently.
We left so fast I didn’t have time to tell you. We’ve rented a house at the north end of Mission Beach, close by the Piggly Wiggly and just over a mile from you. My dad, who’s too old for the army, will join a law firm there and my mom will get better. We move in June and next year you and I will be at Pacific Beach Junior High together! Luckily my brother will have graduated to tormenting the high school. Leo is almost as bad as Icky but much cuter, and girls seem to like him. Explain that. Can I bring you anything from Chicago?
You, I thought. I miss you. But instead I wrote and said, How about a picture postcard of your Lake Michigan? Does it look like Mission Bay?
Pop had a day off, so he treated Lily and Pete to a picnic lunch at the point while Mama slept off her double shift. I stayed home to finish my letter and took it to the post office to mail.
The day was sunny and warm with a soft breeze. Perfect spring weather. The curlews, sandpipers, plovers, and oystercatchers would be leaving us for the summer, to be replaced by flocks of tourists. Travel posters at the market and the library and the window of the real-estate office on Mission Boulevard lured visitors with the promise of San Diego sunshine but also offered the sight of big ships slipping in and out of the harbor, squadrons of planes crossing the sky, and aircraft searchlights sweeping the night. I shivered. Did people really come to San Diego to see signs of war? Creepy.
The war was changing the world, and I didn’t know if it could be changed back. But there will always be the same sky, the same ocean, the same bay. There will be the tides flowing in and out, the fishy smell of the mudflats, the squawks of the gulls, the peace of the small waves on the bay, and the sparkle of the sun on the quiet blue water. I took a slow, deep breath.
But what about me? Was I the same person I was before the war started? I didn’t think so. The war came like an earthquake and shook everything and everybody up, and I, like the world, was changing.
I crossed over to Mission Boulevard and put the letter in the drop box at the post office. Mission was no longer crowded with soldiers and sailors and marines. The war had taken them away, and they were off fighting other soldiers somewhere. But there was Spider Grossman. No aloha shirt. No swim trunks. This Spider was a soldier.
“You in a uniform?” I asked. “I thought you joined nothing.”
Spider saluted. “Uncle Sam called me.”
“San Diego’s a navy town. Why didn’t you join the navy?”
“I’ve seen enough anchor tattoos to last me a lifetime. No way. Just call me Private Grossman, U.S. Army.”
“What’ll happen to your tattoo parlor?”
“Why? You wanting a tattoo?” I grimaced, and Spider snickered. “My brother’s still here, inking anchors and Mom tattoos while I’ll be on a tropical island in the South Pacific, under a coconut palm, drinking cocktails with rum and fruit.” He patted his army duffel. “I even packed an aloha shirt, just in case.” He saluted again as he left, duffel over his shoulder.
I hope you’re only joking, Private Grossman. I knew enough from the radio about the dangers of the army in the South Pacific. I shook my head as I crossed over to the ocean side.
The beach was packed with barefoot girls in bathing suits, sunburned women and children, and old folks with their faces to the sky, but very few young men.
I had spent ten cents from Albert’s quarter to buy a war-bond stamp at school. I calculated that only 187 more dimes would entitle me to buy a twenty-five-dollar bond and help win the war. I’d used three cents for the stamp to mail my letter to Rosie and saved two cents toward a bottle of nail polish for my newly grown fingernails, even though Mama wouldn’t let me wear it until high school. The final ten cents would buy me a cheeseburger at the Burger Shack. The Shack, I heard, had a new person behind the counter. A tall person with wavy hair and a smile like a toothpaste ad. Rocky. Would my heart pound and my hands grow sweaty like they used to?
Rocky took a wet rag and wiped the counter in front of me. Did he remember me?
“How’s your leg?” I asked him. “Did it heal okay? Can you still surf?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, but I don’t have much time for surfing. I start college in June.” He put a stack of napkins down. “I know you don’t think much of me, skipping the service to go to school, but the country needs engineers, too, you know.”
So he did remember.
“Sorry, Rocky. I was bossy and wrong. I shouldn’t have judged you,” I said. “If you want to fight the war by being an engineer instead of a soldier, do it. I’m sure you’ll be a fine engineer.” Rocky smiled, and my face grew hot. He was still a dreamboat. That hadn’t changed. I wiped my sweaty hands on my shorts.
&nbs
p; Rocky gave me the burger and slipped me a Pepsi on the house. The mustard tingled my tongue, and grease rolled down my chin. You can’t beat a Burger Shack burger.
As I crossed back to the bay, I passed Mr. Bell sitting on a bench in front of his store, sunning his shiny white shins. “Well, lookee here, it’s the McGonigle girl. Out enjoying the spring sunshine?”
“I think the new year should start in spring. Everything is new and fresh and hopeful.” I sat down next to him. “It’s weird. The war brought big changes to the rest of the world, but Mission Beach seems mostly the same.”
“Well,” said Mr. Bell, “some changes are just harder to see. My son Walter is a fighter pilot over Germany, and Simon, my youngest, is in the navy, too. We don’t know exactly where he is.” His eyes grew teary for a minute before he went on. “Sugar is hard to get, there’s no butter and very little meat to sell, and I’m blamed for the shortages. I think sometimes about catching octopus and selling it as steak.” He shook his head.
“You could go into business with George.”
“Haven’t seen George in a while. The navy ordered the Portuguese tuna boats to work as supply and patrol boats in the Pacific. George joined his brother on his boat.” Mr. Bell smiled. “They’re officially the Yacht Patrol, but because they deliver food, everyone calls them the Pork Chop Express. Wish they’d express a few of those pork chops this way.”
“I think of George sometimes, with his squirt bottle of bleach,” I said. “I thought it was so sad that the octopuses were yanked out of their comfortable dens just to be killed and eaten.”
“The war has yanked many of us out of our comfortable dens, but not all change is bad. With no boys at home to fuss over, Mrs. Bell is happily volunteering with the Red Cross. My brothers-in-law have fine new jobs at Consolidated Aircraft, and I myself have made new friends while scouring San Diego for groceries. And you look prettier than ever.” He winked.
“You’re a smoothie, Mr. Bell.” I waved goodbye and headed down San Gabriel to the bay. The sound of the gulls, the smell of the mud, and the softly lapping water just offshore were my world, my home, familiar and soothing. My shoulders relaxed as I inhaled and exhaled slowly and deeply. I took off my shoes and wrote a big McGONIGLE in the mud before it was gone.
Then I added an exclamation point—McGonigle! This time it was not for protection but celebration. After months of bad war news, the radio reported that the U.S. Navy was gaining in the Pacific. No one said the war would be over soon, but any good news was long overdue and welcome. Lily was less sickly, she still got A’s in arithmetic, and her doll was still named Millie Junior. Pete was wheeling and dealing his way into bubble-gum riches without trading away his clothes. Rosie was coming back and we would be together in junior high in the fall. I would be a teenager at last. Mama and Pop were happy to be working and doing their bit for the war effort. I could see in their faces the uncertainty that change brought but also the possibilities. Did my face look like that, too? I hoped so. I wrote in the mud once more: Millie! Millie McGonigle! And I grinned.
On Bayside Walk, Pete, Ralphie, and MeToo were pulling Ralphie’s wagon, loaded with metal parts that clanked and clunked. “Good for you guys,” I said with a salute. “I can see the movie now: Pete, Ralphie, and MeToo Win the War!”
“Me too!” shouted MeToo.
Icky came barreling down the walk on his bicycle, tooting his horn. I was feeling different these days. Lighter and even cheery. I didn’t need an archenemy. Could we be friends? Should I stop telling him to drop dead? Should I lie and say something nice about Dwayne? Just in case, I gave Icky a small smile.
He swerved so close to me that I had to jump off the walk. “If it ain’t Mil-dreadful, ugly as ever,” he called as he passed by.
I shrugged. Some things, I thought, never change.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
On December 7, 1941, war came to America’s children. Some picked up toy guns and shot at pretend enemies. Others had nightmares for the rest of their lives. Millie thought the war came like an earthquake and shook everything and everybody up. The terrible years of the Great Depression, with poverty and unemployment, soup kitchens and shantytowns, were ending.
War brought new opportunities—women went to work at aircraft and munitions factories. Millions of men of all creeds and colors could join the armed forces. The government built thousands and thousands of houses across the country for workers and families.
But the war also brought troubles: sacrifice and dislocation, new fears, a new enemy, the internment of Japanese Americans, air-raid drills, food shortages, and constant war news on the new and scary radio. I wondered how a young person, after suffering through the deprivations of the Depression, coped with the upheaval. I knew she’d need to find courage and solace somewhere.
For many years I’d heard my husband Philip’s stories about their small house on the bay, long before the bay was dredged and Mission Bay became a famous resort. The warm bay water lapped at the sand when the tide was in. There was swimming and surfing, and children went without shoes from June until September, and their feet grew callused and summer-wide.
Phil would row his small boat out where the reeds and cordgrass grew tall and read comic books until his nose was sunburned and his empty stomach growled. He watched seals tumble in the water and fished for perch and halibut, although more often his hook brought up stingrays and little sharks, which flopped in the bottom of the leaky boat.
Most intriguing to me were descriptions of the vast mudflats, stinking, slippery, and mysterious, which appeared like magic when the tide was out. The mud was pocked with pickleweed and eelgrass. Shoals and small islands, home to colonies of mussels and to sand dollars that stood on end in soldier-like rows, were revealed. The mudflats teemed with insects and small crustaceans, which drew curlews, sandpipers, and plovers, who poked in the mud for their dinner. And early in the morning, Portuguese fishermen would be out catching the octopuses, whose hiding holes the ebbing tide had uncovered.
I knew I wanted this for anxious, fearful, worried Millie. As the world changed, Millie could find strength and wisdom through simple things and the natural world, nurtured and soothed by the tides flowing in and out, the fishy smell of the mudflats, the squawks of the gulls, the peace of the small waves on the bay, and the sparkle of the sun on the quiet blue water. So Millie moved into South Mission Beach, San Diego, and you can find her and her story there.
A NOTE ON THE RESEARCH
There are many pieces to Millie’s story, and I had a lot to learn. The internet helped me with 1940s slang, music, food, and fashions. People wrote about and posted their memories of Pearl Harbor online. I accessed headlines from the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times and back issues of the San Diego Historical Society quarterly history journal online.
In print, I used the volumes Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla, The Navy in San Diego, and Surfing in San Diego from the invaluable Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing. Titles such as Daddy’s Gone to War by William M. Tuttle, Jr.; War Comes to San Diego from the San Diego Historical Society; and Peg Kehret’s memoir, Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio, made history personal. Two pamphlets, Official Guide Book of the San Diego Zoo, 1947, and the Coca-Cola Company’s Know Your War Planes, I found on eBay. But by far the most important and richest resource was traveling to San Diego and walking on Bayside Walk in South Mission Beach, watching the waves on the bay, imagining the mudflats, hearing seagulls and waves breaking on the ocean side, and listening to Phil’s stories and memories. That all made Millie’s story truer and much richer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to:
Michelle Frey and her team at Knopf for their help and guidance in turning my story into a real book.
Elizabeth Harding for her good sense and enthusiastic support.
The San Diego Historical Society and the Vintage San Diego Facebook sit
e for photos and documents.
Philip, my first and best reader, for keeping me relatively sane by making me laugh even in the hard times.
And every author I ever read for teaching me about putting words together.
KAREN CUSHMAN is the Newbery Award-winning author of The Midwife's Apprentice and the Newbery Honor book Catherine, Called Birdy, among many other popular novels for young readers. She was born just a few months before the United States entered World War II, and parts of the book are based on her husband's experiences growing up in California during the war. Today she lives on a soft, green island near Seattle, Washington.
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War and Millie McGonigle Page 16
