by S. Rose
Kitty still loved her dolls as if they were flesh-and-blood children. I was teetering on the edge. When I played with Kitty, her enthusiasm carried me away, and the dolls magically sprang to life. But sometimes, when I was alone, the sparkle in their plastic eyes grew dim; the magic fluttered like a bird with an injured wing, heralding the end of an era. Everything else was slipping away. I desperately wanted to hold on to childhood just a little while longer.
I poked my head through the hatch in the attic floor and nearly fell over backwards. There were far more boxes than the last time I’d been up there, all neatly arranged and labeled. My mother must have been secretly packing things away all month while I was at school. Here I’d been complacently going about my business while my parents plotted and planned to ruin my life. And Tante had been in on it. The betrayal made angry tears rise to the surface, but I wouldn’t cry. I sniffed with an air of indifference and casually remarked that the dust bothered my nose.
As soon as the hatch shut behind us we were released from our everyday lives, ready to be transported to a world of our own making. It wasn’t so much an attic as a stage for our imaginative play, a private place where we might fully unleash our childhood fears and fancies, uninhibited by adult interruption. Sometimes, it was a ship at sea, and the rough wooden plank floors were the deck. Or the cavernous roof was the ship’s hold, and we two hapless stowaways. Kitty and I had been pirates who sailed the seven seas, although I couldn’t have actually named all seven. During an ice storm over Thanksgiving break, we were Pilgrims for three days straight, crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower.
I let Kitty choose what to play, and she didn’t have to think twice: it would be the heartrending drama of two young soldiers’ wives in a remote French village, caught behind enemy lines during World War Two. She’d heard plenty of war stories at home, which must’ve been terrifying, especially coming from a dad with one arm, but play is a healthy child’s weapon against fear and sorrow. Whenever Kitty was feeling anxious about anything, I just knew we’d end up back in France.
We built an impromptu set for our production, making furniture from some boxes and pushing others aside to arrange a little kitchen. There were four old caned chairs with part of the seats unraveled. We chose the two best ones and used a big box for the table. The hand-carved wooden rocking cradle that Grandmother Sigurdsson had brought from Norway was stored under the eaves, covered with a canvas cloth. My aunt and mother had slept in the cradle before me; now it was being saved for my real babies someday. I wasn’t supposed to play with it, but I carefully laid Kitty’s baby dolls over the canvas, certain that no one would be the wiser, and the cradle would be none the worse for it.
For costumes, we used my aunt’s old dresses and some crushed fancy hats that had been stored in a trunk for at least twenty years. I can’t imagine what she was saving them for, but I’d learned that people who lived through the depression hated to throw anything away. The dresses were faded and patched and so long, they dragged on the floor—just perfect for two impoverished young mothers in war-torn France. Even though it didn’t make sense to wear hats in the house, we each chose one and put it on, then settled down to Act One.
“Oh my, what a shame,” Kitty lamented over the pretend dinner table. She put down her teacup and pointed to her skirt with a dainty finger. “Our clothes are in rags. When this dreadful war is over, I shall buy a beautiful new dress.”
“What color, dear?”
“Pink, with a matching hat. I know . . . we’ll go shopping in Paris and buy a whole new wardrobe.”
“That will be lovely; but how I wish we had more for supper. I’m worried that our children will have stunted growth because we have no meat.”
The sun hit the rooftop, and the temperature rose. By afternoon, the attic was stuffy and steamy from the rain but that only made our hardship seem all the more genuine. As the hours wore on, we dug deeper into our imaginary world until the place between real and make-believe began to go fuzzy at the edges.
“I haven’t heard from my darling husband in months.” I shook my head sadly, fanning my flushed face with a wide-brimmed hat.
“Nor have I,” Kitty said.
“What if . . . what if they never come home? What if—?”
“Oh, you mustn’t say that. The children might hear,” she said in a lowered her voice.
“What if my husband loses an arm or a leg?” I ventured.
Kitty cast her eyes toward heaven and pledged, “I will love my husband just the same, until the day he dies, even if he loses an arm and a leg.”
I tried to visualize that for a moment. “Well, what if he loses both legs?” I asked quite seriously.
“I’ll love him no matter what,” she said staunchly.
We were jolted back to the grownup world when my mother called us down for supper. Kitty was allowed to stay, and the two of us got to sit by ourselves on the covered front porch. After Mom left us with the plates of tuna hotdish, I wrinkled my nose and made a big yuck face. Kitty giggled so hard that milk came out her nose.
Tuesday, it was still raining. We took up where we’d left off, and as the day wore on, the plot thickened. The mood became more somber and the danger more imminent. As the afternoon was coming to a close, Kitty surprised me by suddenly leaping from her seat in the middle of our invisible dinner, nearly knocking the plastic teacups to the floor.
“Oh no . . . I hear the Nazis outside! We must save the children. Quick, let’s hide in the trunk,” she said desperately, pointing to the musty smelling wooden chest with some moth-eaten clothes, tucked under the eaves. We’d already gone through it to find the dresses, and the lid rested open against the sloping rafters.
Kitty rushed over and began to toss moth-eaten sweaters and old dungarees onto the floor. She tried to climb in, but her legs were too short and got tangled in the long dress. I gripped her around the middle and hoisted her over the side. She plopped down in the bottom of the chest and stretched both arms out to me. “The babies!” she cried. I retrieved and handed over Molly and Polly. “Hurry, Cassandra, bring the other children,” Kitty pleaded, holding out her little hand imploringly, “I hear the enemy coming.” Her blue eyes shone with emotion, and her cherubic face glistened with sweat. I grabbed Kissy and Chatty and piled them on.
“Betsy won’t fit,” I said, leaping into the only spot left in the trunk. “But don’t worry—she’s old enough to hide herself.” I grasped the lid with both hands and sat down carefully, mindful of the dolls, then slowly lowered the domed cover over our heads. It came to rest on an old shoe that I’d wedged in, to prop the lid open a bit so we could breathe. We sat in the stifling darkness with only a sliver of light.
“Shh . . . rock the baby,” I whispered urgently. “Molly is starting to cry.” I pointed to the offending doll. “They’ll discover us!”
“That’s Polly,” she corrected.
“Sorry . . . it’s dark.”
“There, there, hush darling,” Kitty crooned softly, cuddling her baby doll to her tiny chest. Her voice echoed softly in the dark. Everything about Kitty was delicate and sweet, and in the musty closed space the sweetness was magnified. Even her sweat smelled good, like fresh mowed grass drying after a rain.
“We must keep very quiet,” I warned my dolls. “No, sweetie. Mommy can’t get you a cookie now,” I whispered. “Shh.”
Suddenly, there was a loud, hollow sound from my bedroom below. “What was that?” Kitty asked in alarm. I knew Mom was packing up all my winter clothes; she must’ve shut the big cedar chest that held the woolens. Now it was empty.
“Dear God, they’re coming,” I cried, seizing the moment for improvisation.
“I guess this is the end,” Kitty said sadly. She thrust aside the dolls and managed to squiggle over to climb on top of me. “I’m glad we’ll die together, my love!” I enfolded her small body into my arms and held her tight. She was soft and warm and smelled a bit yeasty, like the inside of a fresh-baked loaf of white bread.
“I don’t want to die,” I whimpered in the dark, suddenly unsure if we were still play-acting. Then I felt Kitty hiccup against my chest as she began to cry for real.
“Aaahh,” she wailed softly.
I flung open the heavy lid with one great shove. It banged loudly against the rafters, stirring up a cloud of dust that floated in a narrow column of light from the attic window. I squinted as my eyes adjusted from the darkness. “Please don’t cry. Look. We outsmarted those Nazis—they’ve gone away forever.” But Kitty was still sobbing. “We’re saved,” I shouted, trying to salvage our fun.
“Ooohh,” Kitty whimpered, squeezing me tighter. Her reddened face was smeared with grimy tears, and a bit of clear snot dribbled to her upper lip.
My nose began to burn the way it does when you’re about to cry, but I sneezed instead—ahhchooo—so hard it sucked the breath from my lungs and made me snort for air. Kitty sat up, startled from her weeping; then an elfish smile broke through the gloom. She wiped her eyes and blew her snotty nose into the skirt of my aunt’s old dress with a loud honk.
I clambered out of the trunk, retrieved Chatty Cathy, and pulled the string. “Let’s have a party.” Chatty’s grainy voice emanated from rows of little holes in her back. Peals of giggles ensued, chasing away the specter of parting, at least for another day.
THE SUN CAME out at last. In the backyard, a flame-red cardinal perched on the telephone wire and preened his damp feathers. He sang out with the joy of a summer morn, a song so precious that it made my heart skip and at the same time, ache. Everything about my home was suddenly sweeter, each blade of grass greener. The dogwood tree that Grandpa Sigurdsson had planted—and we were never to climb—was covered in pink blossoms. I wanted to open my arms wide, wide enough to hug our house and hold it tight. I loved every board and every shingle; even the way some blue paint was chipped away on the backdoor was dear to me now.
With only three days left, we were eager to play all our outdoor games at least once. I was itching to do something physical after two days in the attic and suggested we start with jump rope. After lunch, we put on our roller skates, the kind made of heavy steel that went over your sneakers and tightened with a key but always came loose and slipped off in the middle of skating. We went around the block six times. It was a double sidewalk with light cement squares that made our skates bump when we rolled over. As we passed all the neighbors’ houses, I tried to take in the details to save like a movie picture in my mind. I waved to ladies taking in their laundry from the clotheslines. Mrs. Olsen’s sheets were blinding. How did she get her sheets so white?
We stopped to help a boy who’d tipped over his red tricycle and couldn’t set it right. In an instant, his tears turned to smiles, and he peddled off as fast as his little legs would go, without looking back.
It was still daylight after supper. I don’t know where we got the energy, but we made chalk squares on the sidewalk and played hopscotch until our mothers called us to go inside.
That was the shortest week of my life. The days whizzed by like the houses we passed on our roller skates. The last day, we raced around and around the block in a frenzy, as if by going fast enough we might somehow escape the passage of time. It almost seemed to work; the summer light lingered until well after eight.
As my final day at home was coming to a close, I slipped out after supper to call on Kitty, only to find her rushing up the sidewalk toward me. We decided to climb the old, gnarled tree in her backyard, up to the first fat branch that we could straddle like a horse. From there we could see down Elmwood Lane, across the block and all the way to the schoolyard. We hiked ourselves face to face and played our hand-clapping games one more time. Kitty and I knew all the songs and all the claps, but that evening we kept coming back to one.
Oh jolly playmate, come out and play with me. And bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree. Slide down my rainbow, into my cellar door. And we’ll be jolly friends, forever more, more-more, more-more!
I’m sorry playmate, I cannot play with you. My dolly has the flu. She threw-up in my shoe! There ain’t no rainbow. There ain’t no cellar door. But we’ll be jolly friends, for ever more, more-more, more-more!
We sang it again and again, clapping faster and faster each time, gripping the tree trunk with our legs so we didn’t get knocked off balance by the force of the clapping. The bark was rough, and by the time Kitty’s mother called her in for her bath, we had crinkly imprints in our bare thighs because we wore summer shorts.
I was about to go to bed when the front doorbell rang. Mom wondered aloud who could be calling as I followed her downstairs. The outside light was on, and through the open door I saw Kitty standing forlornly on the front porch in her pajamas and pink robe, with fuzzy white slippers shaped like bunnies on her feet. She was holding her Kissy doll. Mrs. Gunderson stood behind her in a housedress and apron, with both hands on Kitty’s shoulders as if to prop her up. She was a modest, shy woman; her eyes were downcast as she apologized to my aunt, who she addressed formally as Miss Sigurdsson, for calling so late.
At the last minute, Kitty insisted upon presenting Kissy as a going away gift. I knew it was her favorite doll and I didn’t want to take her, but Kitty cried and made me take her anyway. I agreed, on condition that she take Betsy Walker in exchange. The walking doll wasn’t nearly as special, but I couldn’t very well swap for a defective Chatty Cathy.
Our mothers held the traded dolls so we could share one last embrace. Fresh from the bath, Kitty smelled so sweet, like pastry for the heart. “I love you to bits,” I said, holding her tight.
“Please don’t go,” she wailed.
“I wish I could pack you up with my dolls and take you away,” I said, which for some reason made Kitty more upset; she sobbed so hard I was afraid she might throw up. “I’ll be home for Christmas,” I promised.
8
THE LIGHTS SNAPPED on at five a.m., interrupting a strange dream. I was a lone stowaway, deep in the hold of a ship that looked suspiciously like our attic. I thought I heard someone say it was heading to Norway.
“Rise and shine, Puddin’ Pie.” My father was in high spirits.
“Aw, Dad . . . I’m so tired.” I put the pillow over my head.
“You’ll get plenty of sleep in the car; get up and come to breakfast.”
Mom laid out three bowls and plopped a box of frosted flakes on the kitchen table, which we were leaving behind because there was no room for it in Grandpa’s house. By way of a greeting she snapped, “Don’t just stand there, Cassandra—get the milk.” My mother was never a morning person, but my father had insisted we hit the road in time to beat the moving truck as well as the traffic. “It’ll be too late to unload the whole truck tonight,” Mom groused as she poured boiling water into the mugs of instant coffee. “We’ll get stuck paying for an extra day anyway, so why torture ourselves by rushing off at this ungodly hour?”
They’d already argued about hiring a truck at all, since Grandpa Parsons’ house was small, and Dad said it had enough furniture to get by. But Mom pointed out that they’d have to hire a truck just to bring up my four-poster bedstead and matching armoire, otherwise, “What would Cassandra sleep on, and where would she put her clothes?” She insisted on having at least some of her own things, like the living room lamps and a desk and especially the maple bedroom set they’d received as a wedding gift from Morfar. There were also numerous boxes of keepsakes and knickknacks that my father called junk—which hurt my mother’s feelings—but in the end he hired the truck.
I suspected that our early departure was also to avoid last minute goodbyes with my aunt. I was tipped off when my father told me to be quiet so we wouldn’t wake her; he pointed toward the floor with a look that said I’d better listen.
“But who’s going to do my hair?” I whined piteously, regressing to the level of a five year old due to the early hour and my sleepless night.
My father was at the counter, wrapping one last box with pac
king tape. “Come on over here.” He brandished the enormous kitchen shears, snipping the air briskly. “I’ll do itfor you.”
I gasped as he grinned with a devilish sneer.
“George,” Mom retorted. “That’s not very nice. Cassandra, you’re going to have to learn to do it yourself,” she said wearily. “You’re a big girl now. Maybe it’s time you got a new hairstyle, something a little more manageable—”
She was interrupted by a soft but audible tapping on the door to our flat. “Shit,” my father hissed under his breath. I leapt from my seat and ran to open it.
My aunt was at the landing, wearing a perky smile as if it were any sort of morning. I saw my brushes and ribbons in the pocket of her ruffled white apron. She carried a silver tray with homemade pastry, a steaming pot of real coffee, and a pitcher of cream. The pastry was still warm; she must have been up baking at three in the morning. “God morgen,” she said cheerfully in Norwegian.
“Tante?” I queried softly. We hadn’t discussed my imminent departure ever since she’d expressly forbidden it. I didn’t know what to expect. She looked over my head and peered nervously into the living room. No one was coming.
“Listen,” she whispered urgently. “You mustn’t make a fuss, or your father will send me away. I just couldn’t let you go without saying goodbye.” The rims of her eyes were red from tears. I’d never seen her eyes look so pained. It’s a good thing her hands were full, or I think she would have reached out and held me tight, and then we both would have lost it completely. I nodded vigorously. It would be our secret.
