Rachel’s already teasing the boys about skating with her. She promised to teach Lily to dance on skates. I don’t care. I just want to go skating. I hope our class wins!
Macy couldn’t understand why Lily wanted to be with popular, flirty Rachel. She told herself she didn’t care.
Every day for two weeks when Macy walked home from school, she slid her shoes along the pavement, pretending to be wearing roller skates and practicing moves. Thinking that Nick and Hap would laugh at that, she glanced at Hap’s house as she passed. His mother stood in the big front window, placing a gold-star flag against the glass.
The air whooshed out of Macy’s chest. She clutched the pickets in the fence. That didn’t mean . . . It couldn’t mean . . . No!
She should ask. . . . She didn’t want to ask. . . . Asking might make it true. And it couldn’t be true.
She was scarcely aware of Mark crossing the street until he stood close to her and asked, “What do you think of your Jap friends now?”
“What?” she asked, too numb to think.
“Your friends,” he repeated, sounding even meaner than usual. “Your Jap friends. You know. The ones fighting our boys on Guadalcanal. They killed Hap.”
She stared at him. In her head, she understood what he’d just said. In her heart, his words didn’t make sense. “No,” she said. “No!”
“Yes! One of their sneaky crew threw a grenade. Hap dived on it to protect his friends. It ripped out his guts.”
Macy dropped to her knees, leaning into the nearby weeds to throw up until nothing was left inside her. Grief swelled through her chest. There was no room left for air. Gasping and clutching the pickets for support, she struggled to her feet. To her own ears, her whimpers sounded like a small wounded animal.
“I guess that makes Hap a hero,” Mark said in the same nasty voice. “I say it makes him stupid. I’ll bet his friends all ducked out of the way.”
Macy had room for another emotion after all. Hot anger blazed through her. Without thinking, she reached for one of the decorative rocks under the pickets.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Mark asked. “You gonna hit me?”
Macy straightened up. “I’m going to knock your lying teeth out of your mouth.”
As she swung her arm back, the house door opened, revealing one of Hap’s neighbors. “Children,” the woman called. “Play somewhere else, please. We need quiet.”
The interruption gave Macy time to think. Mark wasn’t worth the trouble she’d been about to bring on herself. She let the rock fall.
“Get rid of that doll,” Mark said, and walked away.
Macy looked at the woman on the porch. Should she ask if what Mark had said was true? No. The gold flag and request for quiet told her all she needed to know.
Tears welled through her. Turning, she ran for home. She had to talk to Miss Tokyo and Mama.
She veered into the museum, shoving past the heavy front doors. Her father stood quickly from behind his desk.
Macy cried, “They killed Hap.”
She ran down the hall to the doll and fell sobbing to her knees. “Mama,” she said between sobs, “I can’t grow up and marry Hap. The war killed him.”
She raised her head to look at the doll. The gentle eyes looked sad. Instead of an almost-smile, her lips looked as if she were about to speak. But she was silent.
“Hap loved you,” Macy told Miss Tokyo. “He knew the war wasn’t your fault.” Her voice broke, and she lowered her head to her arms on the doll’s stand. Beneath grief, deep fear hovered, no matter how she tried to push it down. If Hap had been killed, what was happening to Nick?
Despite her love for Miss Tokyo, she hated the generals who had caused the war that killed Hap and was killing a lot of other men. Who might kill Nick. No! She would not even think that. Despair boiled through her. Mama’s book held beautiful pictures of shrines and flowers and pretty ladies in kimonos.
But men from Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. They were killing men on islands in the South Pacific and on ships in the waters around them. Grief for Hap wrenched her. Again, she pushed back the fear that Nick could be killed, too. Her thoughts spun until they made her dizzy.
Her father’s strong arms lifted her into his lap. He held her, not talking but stroking her back and hair, comforting her in silence while anguish tore away her thoughts.
Finally, she curled close with her head on his shoulder. “I’m so scared,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said. “We all are.”
Standing, he carried her from the museum and back to their kitchen. While she slumped on a chair, wiping tears from her face with a kitchen towel, he made hot chocolate for both of them and added a few hard-to-find marshmallows.
Without speaking, they watched their marshmallows melt into the chocolate. When Macy stood to locate Nick’s blue-topped map pin and place it in the safety of San Francisco Bay, Papa didn’t protest.
Three men came in when Papa opened the museum on Saturday morning. Their message was clear before a word was spoken. Neighbors, Macy thought, and yet today they were strangers. She stepped backward, closer to Papa.
The men’s eyes were cold. Their mouths were set in dangerous lines. She had never seen them like this. She wanted to run but was afraid to move.
Mr. Broward stepped forward. Before the war, he had been a cheerful man behind the butcher’s block who picked out special cuts for Miss Rasmussen. He was clearly in charge of the group, but there was no doubt that all the men were set on a single purpose.
Mr. Ames from the gas station put it into words. “We’re here for that Jap doll, James. Step aside.”
Mr. Bradford had been with the first group, months ago. The grocer had changed from the kind man she had known all her life. This was what war did, made strangers out of friends, even when battles weren’t being fought in your town.
“That doll stands for people who are killing our boys,” he said. “Hap Davis defended the doll. And look what happened. The Japs killed him. Word’s all over town.”
The pain of Hap’s death struck Macy as if new to her. The gold star in his family’s window seared her memory. She’d been too shocked by her own grief to realize that anger was building in others.
“Everyone in town is torn up over losing Hap,” Mr. Broward said, breaking into Macy’s thoughts. “We want to see somebody pay, here and now. The Jap doll will do. A bunch of folks are building a bonfire in front of the courthouse.”
Did they mean to burn Miss Tokyo? Macy looked to Papa for help. His eyes were hard and angry, but he said nothing. She thought he must have said it all the last time men came, but then they’d only wanted to put Miss Tokyo in storage.
“Her kind isn’t wanted here,” Mr. Ames said. “She’ll burn. For Hap.”
Papa wrapped one arm around Macy, pulling her to his side. She realized she had taken a step forward without thinking. Papa’s hold told her it was too late. He said to the men, “Burning the doll won’t help Hap.”
“We’ve formed a committee,” Mr. Bradford said. “We’re set on keeping our city safe.”
“The doll is no danger to this city,” Papa said. “Neither is the museum.”
Macy looked from one to another of the men. None looked willing to listen to reason. She knotted her hands into fists so tight, her nails dented her palms.
“That Jap doll puts us all at risk,” Mr. Broward said, his eyes looking even harder.
“She probably has a secret radio inside,” Mr. Ames snapped. “She’s probably radioing the Jap fleet right now.” He glanced around as if expecting enemy soldiers to smash through the Stanby’s doors.
Papa said, “I think you know how foolish that sounds. If you’re looking for a reason to destroy city property, you’ll have to do better.”
Mr. Bradford asked, “Is the museum’s safety reason enough for you? The longer that Jap doll stays here, the more riled up people get.”
Mr. Ames cut in. “Hap Davis getting killed is all i
t took. There’s talk of burning the whole blasted Stanby to the ground.”
Macy felt Papa stiffen. She clutched his sleeve. “Papa!”
“Go to the house,” he said without looking at her. “See to supper. I’ll take care of this.”
“There’s nothing to take care of,” Mr. Broward said, “except for you stepping out of our way.”
Macy looked toward the room with Miss Tokyo, frantic to get to her. Papa gripped her shoulder, turning her toward the back door.
Despairing, she looked up at him. “Papa.”
“Go home, Macy,” he said. “Now.”
He’d used her name, but it made her feel worse, not better. He was going to let them take the doll and didn’t want her to see it. She knew he couldn’t fight them all and maybe even the whole town. But Miss Tokyo was her friend! In Macy’s heart, Miss Tokyo held part of Mama! Papa felt that way, too!
“Go,” Papa said again, sounding as hard as the men.
There was no choice. She rushed down a hall past the stairs to the storage room and out the back door. A light rain was falling. She scarcely felt it. A storm raged inside her head.
When she reached the steps to the house, voices made her turn and look back. The three men were leaving. Mr. Broward had Miss Tokyo over his shoulder as he might carry a slab of beef. The long ends of the doll’s obi whipped in the wind.
Macy clamped one hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Her heart slammed so hard in her chest, her ribs hurt. She had to run after them, to stop them somehow.
What could she do? Grabbing the banister, she forced herself one step at a time up the stairs, away from the men taking Miss Tokyo to be burned.
As if a rubber band had released her, she rushed into the house and up to her room. Anguished tears streamed down her cheeks. She flung herself facedown on the bed.
“I loved Hap, too,” she said with a sob. “I was going to grow up and marry him. And now I can’t. Because he’s dead. But that doesn’t make me want to burn down the museum!”
She reached across the bed to her nightstand and the valentine from Hap. For a moment, she pressed it close, as she had done countless times before. She pictured Hap’s carefree grin and the kindness in his eyes.
“I loved him,” she whispered. “I really, really did. I don’t care if I am only eleven.”
She could almost hear Papa calling her foolish. Everyone would think that. It was why she had never shared the valentine with Papa or anyone else.
She opened the card and read the words she had memorized long ago. Then she looked at them again, really looked at them. Possibilities raced through her head so fast they made her dizzy.
The men would make speeches before they burned Miss Tokyo. Mr. Ames loved to make speeches. And he’d want a good crowd gathered while the bonfire blazed higher. Maybe they hadn’t even lit it yet. Maybe people were still bringing wood while Mr. Ames excited them with his speech.
Urgency drove her to her feet. “They’ll listen to you, Hap. They’ll have to!”
Clutching the valentine in one hand, she scrambled from the bed and raced for the stairs.
As she ran down the street, Macy heard Mr. Ames shouting. He was making one of his speeches, all right. Papa called him inflammatory. He sounded now as if his words could light a bonfire all by themselves.
As she came closer to the courthouse, she saw the bonfire that people were building in the street, mostly of sticks and firewood, but with at least two kitchen chairs thrown in. She had hoped the rain would put out their fire. Instead, it had stopped, letting sunlight touch the heap of wood.
Mr. Ames’s voice became clearer: “We all know the Japs will come. We’ve heard it on the news. They’re coming, all right. They’re coming here with bombs and guns!”
Macy caught herself glancing at the sky and mentally pinched her arm. She had to keep her mind on what she knew was true. Miss Tokyo needed her. Where was the doll?
She glanced past the bonfire and saw Miss Tokyo lying in the grass beside the sidewalk, her legs sticking out of her kimono. She didn’t look graceful now. She looked abandoned. For a moment, Macy wondered if she could sneak over, grab the doll, and run. She pushed the thought aside. Even if she got away with Miss Tokyo, she would just be
putting the problem off for a little while.
“We all know the Jap farmers came here and planted their farms to point to airports,” Mr. Ames shouted. “We know the Japs on the coast arranged their fishing boats around our harbors, watching which ships came in. Before we shipped them off to internment camps, they reported those ships to their bosses.”
Macy had heard those rumors on the radio. Papa said they were foolish and just excuses for sending people like Betsy’s family away to camps ringed with barbed wire.
“What about that big doll?” someone shouted.
A woman answered. Macy recognized Mr. Ames’s wife. She echoed his warning from the museum. “She probably has a secret radio inside. She’s probably broadcasting to Japan right now.”
“Cut the Jap doll open!” a man yelled.
“Let’s see what’s inside,” another called.
Feeling desperate, Macy looked from one to another. Hap’s parents stood in the first row with friends around them. Their eyes were red, but they held themselves straight, with their shoulders squared and their heads high. Hap would have been as proud of them as they were of him.
“Where’s an ax?” someone yelled.
“NO!” Macy’s loud shout startled even herself, but she got attention. Several people turned to look.
She walked right up to Mr. Ames. “Why are you doing this? For Hap?”
“You bet it’s for Hap,” Mr. Ames said loudly. “That brave boy gave his life to keep us safe from the Japs. And from Mussolini’s thugs and from Adolf Hitler’s goose-steppers.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with Miss Tokyo!” Macy yelled back.
“Go on home, little girl,” someone called from the crowd. “That doll’s going to burn for what the Japs did to our boy.”
“Hap didn’t want her to burn,” Macy shouted back. “He didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.”
“Shut your mouth, girl,” Mrs. Morris called from across the bonfire. “Nobody wants to listen to a kid.”
“Will you listen to Hap?” Macy held up the valentine she had never shared with anyone. The valentine was private, but she didn’t care if they thought she was silly to love Hap when she was only eleven. What they thought of her didn’t matter anymore. “Hap gave this to me for Valentine’s Day when he was home on leave. This is what he wrote inside.”
Hap’s writing was kind of scrawled, but she knew the words by heart. She read them in her loudest voice, to reach even the people at the back of the crowd. “ ‘Happy Valentine’s Day to a brave girl.’ ”
She paused to look around the crowd, making sure they were listening to Hap’s words, then brought her attention back to the card. “He wrote, ‘I’m counting on you to win the fight at home and take good care of Miss Tokyo for me.’ ”
She held up the card. “See! He drew a valentine heart and signed his name inside.”
Mrs. Davis looked as if she were fighting tears. Macy felt sorry to make Hap’s mother even sadder, but maybe they were memory tears and she’d feel better for letting them out.
Mr. Broward came toward her. “Let’s take a look at that.”
It was hard to let the card out of her hand. The Christmas card and the valentine were all she had of Hap. What if they put it into the fire?
“She won’t show it,” a woman shouted. “She wrote it herself!”
Mr. Davis left his wife to come toward Macy. “We know our son’s writing. Let me have a look.”
She wanted to tell him how sorry she was about Hap, but it didn’t feel like the right time. In silence, she handed the card to Hap’s father.
He read to himself, his lips moving as if he murmured the words so low no one could hear him. Then he walked back to
his wife and offered the card to her. Tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks, but she reached out a trembling hand.
She took the card, glanced at it, and pressed it against her chest. “It’s Hap. My boy wrote this. He . . . he wanted to save the doll.”
Others asked to see the card. Mr. Davis took it gently from his wife and handed it around a circle of doubtful people.
“I promised I’d look after her,” Macy said. “I promised Hap.”
No one was paying attention to her. They were all looking at the valentine or talking with Hap’s parents.
Then Hap’s mother said in a voice that trembled but stayed firm enough to be heard, “Hap was fascinated by the doll’s accessories. I’d forgotten! He was only six the first time he saw them. He came home and talked for days about all the little furniture and the silk lamp shades made by real silkworms way off in Japan. I . . . I guess he never forgot about that big doll.”
Hap’s father spoke in a no-argument voice. “We won’t be burning that doll. We won’t go against one of our boy’s last wishes.”
Mrs. Davis left the people around her and came to Macy, holding out both hands. Gently, she took Macy’s hands in hers. Tears made her eyes shiny and her cheeks wet, but she smiled. “Thank you. You’ve returned a memory I’d forgotten — we both had — when every memory we have of him is precious.”
Macy saw that people were leaving, walking toward their homes. Some of them looked as if they’d been sleepwalking and were surprised to find themselves out in the street.
Macy lifted Miss Tokyo, hoisting her high on one hip. “I’m taking her home now.”
“Go on, then,” Mr. Ames said in a gruff voice that might have been disappointed. “But keep her out of sight, you hear?”
Miss Tokyo was heavier than Macy remembered. Six long blocks home stretched out forever. As she walked, the doll slipped on her hip. She hoisted her again and then again.
Finally, she sat on the curb to rest. “I don’t care how much you weigh,” she told the doll, her voice fierce. “I’ll keep you safe. I don’t care if my arms fall off.”
Dolls of War Page 8
