Secret City

by Julia Watts

  It came to me in English literature class. Miss Connor was reading us this poem about how no man is an island, and I started thinking about how sensible she is. She even looked sensible, with her thick glasses and her brown hair pulled back in a neat knot and her flat shoes that wouldn’t hurt her feet as she stood up at the blackboard. And she had to know school is important, or else she wouldn’t be a teacher.

  When class was over, I went up to her desk.

  “Yes, Ruby?” Miss Connor said, smiling. She had a gap between her two front teeth. When she taught us The Canterbury Tales and got to the part about the Wife of Bath’s gap teeth meaning she was amorous, she had blushed.

  “Miss Connor, I was wondering…after school, could I maybe come by and talk to you for just a minute?”

  * * *

  When I went back to see Miss Connor, she was already putting on her sweater and packing up her things. “If you need to go, I can always come back another time,” I said.

  “No, Ruby, I’m happy to talk with you,” she said. “It’s just that I’m dying for some fresh air. I thought we could walk down to the drugstore for a soda. If it won’t embarrass you to be seen at the drugstore with your old English teacher.”

  “You’re not old”—I had stopped myself in time from saying “you ain’t old,” remembering who I was talking to—“you can’t be more than twenty.”

  “Twenty-three,” she said, with her gap-toothed grin.

  I wasn’t at all embarrassed to be seen out with Miss Connor. If anything, I was flattered that such a smart, educated lady was willing to be seen out with me. What I was embarrassed about, though, was that I didn’t have any money. Would they even let me sit at the counter at the drugstore if I didn’t buy anything? I’d just have to see what happened when it happened, I decided.

  We walked through Townsite, the main shopping area. The A and P must’ve gotten something new in because housewives were lined up way outside the front door. With food and household goods in short supply, when the store got in a new shipment, the word spread like hot gossip. “Bacon,” one wife would tell another, and off they’d race to the store, telling other wives along the way.

  “Wonder what they got in today,” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Miss Connor eyed the women in line. “It must be something good, though. Those canned hams last week nearly caused a riot.” A woman in a head scarf carrying a full grocery sack passed us then, and Miss Connor said, “What’s new at the store today?”

  The woman looked around like she didn’t want to say anything, her cheeks flushing pink. Finally, she reached into the sack and held up a roll of toilet paper. “This,” she said.

  Miss Connor laughed. “Well, I know where I’m going when we’re finished at the drugstore.”

  In front of the drugstore, Miss Connor stopped to study a new poster which showed a pretty young brunette woman wearing red lipstick and a housewife’s dress and apron. Underneath the picture it said, People died because she talked.

  “Well,” Miss Connor said, “I hope this poster doesn’t scare you out of talking to me about whatever it was you wanted to discuss. I assume it wasn’t a matter of national security?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The drugstore was filled with kids around my age, talking and laughing, Kleen Teens in store-bought sweaters and new saddle shoes already caked with Oak Ridge mud.

  “Any of these kids in your crowd?” Miss Connor asked.

  “I don’t have a crowd,” I said.

  “All the better.” Miss Connor patted my shoulder. “This country was founded on rugged individuality. So…shall we have a soda?”

  The moment of truth. “You go on. I…uh…didn’t bring any money with me today.”

  “Well, in that case, it’s my treat. Is a cherry Coke all right?”

  I looked down at the black and white checked floor. “My daddy always says not to take handouts.”

  “It’s not a handout,” Miss Connor said. “You’re my guest, and I insist that you have a soda with me. Now why don’t you go find us a place to sit?”

  When Miss Connor brought our Cokes to the table, she said, “I’m fairly sure it’s not a breach of my professional ethics to buy a student a Coke. Besides, teachers here get paid so well I could buy everyone in the store a Coke if I liked.”

  “Jobs here pay good,” I said, enjoying the Coke’s sweet fizz. “That’s why Daddy came here—for the money and to help with the war.”

  “That’s why everyone came here,” Miss Connor said. “What else could possibly bring someone to such a remote little place—a fondness for mud and wooden sidewalks?”

  Until her words, I’d never thought of Oak Ridge as remote or little. “I love it here,” I said, not able to help myself. “I was living in the country before, and it seems like here there’s always something to do. There’s the library and the movie theaters and the stores. Plus, all the people buzzing around and working on whatever it is they’re working on. It’s…it’s…” I’d run out of words all of a sudden.

  “Exciting?” Miss Connor asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Miss Connor sipped her Coke. “Yes, I feel that excitement, too, but in a different way. For you, it’s exciting because you’re a country girl living in a town for the first time. For me, it feels more like I’m a city girl who’s accepted a position teaching in a one-room schoolhouse on the frontier. I feel like a pioneer.” She looked at me hard through her thick glasses. “But we came here to talk about what you wanted to talk about, Ruby.”

  “Well…” I stared at the melting ice cubes in my glass, not knowing where to start. “I guess it goes back to what we were saying about how good the pay is in Oak Ridge. My daddy talked to a girl my age who works in the cafeteria—says she makes enough to live on and some to save and spend, besides. So Daddy took the notion that I ought to quit school and get a job.”

  Miss Connor leaned in toward me. “Ruby, am I correct in assuming that if you wanted to obey your father’s wishes, you wouldn’t be talking to me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Because you know I’m going to tell you to stay in school. But I’ll tell you something else: I’m not just telling you to stay in school because it’s what I’d say to any student. I’m telling you because you, Ruby Pickett, despite your backwardness, despite the ungrammatical mess that sometimes comes out your mouth, have a fine mind. Except for the grammar errors, the first theme you wrote for me in English literature was more insightful and promising than anything written by the scientists’ children who are your classmates.”

  Nobody had ever come right out and called me smart before, and I got so choked up I could barely say thank you.

  “There’s no need to thank me, Ruby. I’m just stating the facts. And for a girl with your backwoods background and your fine mind to end up in Oak Ridge, the new home of some of the greatest minds in the United States, is nothing short of miraculous. There is opportunity for you here, Ruby. Opportunity much greater than a job slinging hash in a cafeteria. Here, you can get the education that will help you rise above your circumstances.”

  It was such a stirring speech I felt like I should applaud or something. But before I could say or do anything, Miss Connor whispered, “By disobeying your father’s wishes, are you in any…danger?”

  It took me a few seconds to figure out what she meant, then I said, “Oh, gosh, no. Daddy wouldn’t whup me or throw me out or nothing. He’s the best feller in the world. That’s why I hate to disappoint him.”

  “Ruby, has anyone every told you the story about the crabs in the barrel?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “When crabs are in a barrel, if one crab tries to get out, tries to rise above its circumstances, the other crabs reach up with their claws and drag it back down. Don’t let your family drag you down, Ruby.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” But even as I agreed with her, I thought, what if the crabs don’t grab the runaway crab because they don’t want it to
succeed? What if they’re trying to hang on to the climbing crab because they love it so much they can’t stand to see it go? But then I wondered, do crabs really love each other? Do they even have brains?

  “Ruby, would it help if I wrote a letter to your father explaining why I think you should stay in school?”

  “Thank you, ma’am, but no. I don’t think Daddy would take much stock in what you say because he thinks you’re a dried-up old maid.”

  Miss Connor laughed so hard some of the kids at the counter turned around to look at her. She wiped her eyes with a napkin, then said, “You stay in school, Ruby Pickett. And you tell that father of yours that I’m happily engaged. My fiancé just happens to be a little busy fighting a war right now.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  And I left her to go home to my barrel of crabs.

  October 15, 1944

  A day like yesterday could never have happened back home, where I spent my Saturdays doing chores and wishing I had somewhere to go or something to read. But yesterday, in this strange, new, magical place, both of these wishes came true.

  After I helped with the breakfast dishes I walked down to the library to return Wuthering Heights. I’d checked it out because Miss Connor said if I was going to read swoony stuff, it was best to stick to the Brontes. Wuthering Heights was good, but I have to say I liked Jane Eyre better. Jane was a good girl with good sense—somebody I’d like to have for a friend—but that Cathy, sometimes I wanted to slap her cross-eyed.

  I turned in the book at the librarian’s desk, then went to browse in the fiction section. If books were food, I’d be too fat to fit through a door. As soon as I finish one, I’m ready for another.

  I was scanning over the books’ spines to see if any of the titles sounded especially interesting when all of a sudden I heard a loud “Waah! Waah!” I looked up to see a young woman—pretty, with honey blonde hair—holding a bald, chubby-cheeked baby who was howling for all she was worth. The woman bounced the baby in her arms, made shushing noises, then whispered to me, “Please excuse little Sharon. Nobody’s ever told her you have to be quiet in a library. And even if someone did tell her, she wouldn’t listen.”

  “That’s why it’s great to be a baby,” I whispered back. “No rules, just do whatever you feel like doing.” I reached out and offered the baby my pointer finger, which she grabbed in her fat fist. Her expression unclouded, and she looked at me with curious blue eyes.

  “She likes you,” the woman said, sounding surprised. Her eyes were the same blue as the baby’s, but they had the dark circles under them peculiar to under-rested mothers.

  “Nah,” I said. “She just knows a sucker for babies when she sees one.”

  I am crazy about babies—their jowly little faces, their soft skin. When Garnet was a baby, I played with her all the time and washed her and dressed her like she was my own baby doll. I was the same way with Baby Pearl. Even though I’ve never been able to see myself as a bride, I can imagine being a mother. Now there’s a sentence that would make Mama’s hair turn white! What I really mean is, I wish there was a way for a grownup lady to get a baby without being married. A respectable way, that is.

  “So, Baby Sharon,” I crooned. “Read any good books lately? Any recommendations?”

  The woman laughed. “Oh, she’s no help. She has appalling taste in literature. But maybe I can make some suggestions. What’s the last book you read?”

  “Wuthering Heights,” I said. “Jane Eyre before that.” I was surprised how easily I was talking to this stranger—a stranger with a Northern accent and a string of probably-real pearls around her neck. But this lady wasn’t like the snooty one who had watched Mama and me hang out clothes. She was young, and she had a nice face…open and kind. Plus, she had a run in her stocking, and her red lipstick was smeared, which put me at ease somehow.

  “Oh, then I know exactly what you ought to read, if you haven’t read it already,” she said. She stepped over to look at a certain section of the fiction shelves, and I had to step along with her because the baby still had ahold of my finger.

  “Ah, here it is!’ she said, pulling a book from the shelves. “It’s not an old book, but it’s got that same dark, romantic feeling as the Brontes’.”

  She handed it to me. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. “Du Morey-ay—is that how you say her last name?” I just started taking French at school, so I’d been learning that things that ended in er weren’t necessarily pronounced ur.

  “Yes.”

  “Daphne du Maurier—I believe that’s the prettiest name I’ve ever heard. It sounds like music, don’t it?”

  “It’s a lot more musical than Iris Stevens, that’s for sure.”

  “Is that your name?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m Ruby Pickett.”

  “Ruby Pickett,” she said, smiling. “I don’t know…that’s kind of a musical name, too.”

  “Hillbilly music, maybe,” I said, feeling embarrassed at my country name and homemade clothes all of a sudden. Iris was wearing a simple skirt and sweater, but they were nice and obviously store-bought. “Well, Baby Sharon,” I said, “I reckon I’m gonna be needing my finger back now.” She was holding on so tight her little knuckles were white.

  “Oh, sorry,” Iris said, trying to peel her daughter’s fingers off mine. “My heavens, what a grip! It’s a wonder she hasn’t cut off your circulation.”

  As soon as her hand was disconnected from mine, Sharon began to howl again, as if my finger had been the only source of happiness she’d known in her short life. “I’d better get out of here before they throw us out,” Iris said. “It was nice to meet you, and Sharon thanks you for the use of your finger.”

  “Nice to meet you’uns, too,” I said. “And thanks for the book.”

  * * *

  That evening, as soon as we’d eaten our last bite of supper, Daddy clapped his hands and said, “Who wants to go to the show?”

  “I do! I do!” Opal and Garnet and Baby Pearl yelled. Being older, I didn’t yell, “I do! I do!” But I still thought it. We never went to the show before we moved here because we were too far out in the country and too poor besides.

  “I don’t know,” Mama said, “I’ve got all these here dishes to get washed.”

  “Leave ’em till in the morning,” Daddy said. “Won’t nobody be here to see your dirty dishes if we’re all out at the show.”

  Mama grinned, said, “Oh, all right,” and went to change into her good dress.

  At the show, Daddy told us girls we could each pick out a little box of candy. It took Opal and Garnet and Baby Pearl forever to decide what they wanted, but I knew I’d have chocolate-covered peanuts because I love them, and I have a special way of eating them to make them last. I pop a peanut in my mouth and let the chocolate melt slowly. Sometimes I suck on it a little, but I never chew until the last of the chocolate taste has disappeared from my mouth. Eating them this way, I can make the box of peanuts last all the way through the newsreel, cartoon, serial, and feature.

  It’s always exciting after you get settled down in your seat, and the lights go out so you know the show is about to start. The newsreels upset me sometimes, though, because they’re the only times I really see the war. I hear about it on the radio and read about it in the newspaper, but there’s something about seeing the faces of those soldiers up there on the big screen—a lot of them just two or three years older than me—that makes it almost too real to stand. And I know these boys are brave and strong, but I also know they’re kids with mamas and daddies, and looking at them makes me wish even harder that the war could be won and over so they could home safe.

  And then that made me think I wished I could do something more to help, and I thought again about quitting school and working. But would slinging hash in a cafeteria really help us win the war? Or could I do more for my country by getting educated and contributing to society in some way? I knew what Miss Connor thought, and I knew that in my heart, I agreed
with her. But I also knew that sometime before long, Daddy was going to ask me if I had made my decision, and I knew telling him I had decided against his wishes was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.

  But then the cartoon came on, and I knew Bugs Bunny wouldn’t want me to sit there worrying. Bugs wanted me to forget my troubles for a while, enjoy the show, eat my candy, and laugh. So I did.

  October 19, 1944

  When we sat down to supper tonight, Daddy said, “A right queer thing happened at work today.”

  My ears pricked up. I wondered if Daddy was going to say something that might give me a clue about what all the workers in town were so busy doing.

  “There’s this feller, Floyd Adkins, that started working on the crew about the same time I did. A quiet feller and a real good worker—never missed a day. But today he didn’t show up.” Daddy was slicing an onion over his pinto beans with a pocket knife while he talked. “Well, I was kindly worried about him. I was afraid he might be bad off sick or something, so I asked the foreman about him. All the foreman said is, ‘He’s gone.’ That didn’t seem like much of an answer, so I said, ‘Did he quit?’ The foreman said, ‘All you need to know is he’s gone. They’ll be somebody to replace him tomorrow.’”

  “Did any of the other fellers know what happened to him?” Mama asked.

  “No,” Daddy said, “but one of them said what happened to Floyd wasn’t that quare after all. He said after you’ve been working here a while, you see that—somebody’ll be here one day, then gone the next. Fired and shipped out of town, most likely for something they said or did. Can’t keep anybody around who’s a threat to security, he said.”