Dolls of War

by Shirley Parenteau

  On Sunday, Macy came downstairs wondering if anyone knew it was her birthday, her twelfth. That was important, but maybe not to the Farrells. Rain and wind had battered the coast for most of the week. After church, the sun broke through like a special birthday welcome.

  Aunt Ida handed her a card from Papa. “This came for you yesterday, but your papa would want you to have it today for your actual birthday.”

  Macy tried to swallow her disappointment that Papa hadn’t come in person. A note in the card wished her a happy day and said that he was sorry not to be there. With gas rationed and tires impossible to replace, he had to limit his driving.

  Uncle Emory surprised her by suggesting a birthday walk on the beach.

  “I know you’ve wanted to go to the beach, but it’s too dangerous on your own. You might not see a sub surfacing out there in the waves until the Japs were already on the beach with their rifles.”

  “I’ll keep watching the water,” she promised.

  He patted the binoculars he wore at his belt. “I’ll watch the water. This looks like a good day for you and Aunt Ida to take a look along the wave slope. A storm like this last one may have brought any number of treasures.”

  One of his rare smiles warmed his face. “Maybe the sea washed in something just in time for your birthday, a pretty rock or shell you can put on your windowsill for a souvenir.”

  Aunt Ida’s smile made her look younger and a little bit mischievous. “They say gold pieces from a wrecked Spanish ship sometimes wash ashore at Cannon Beach up north. I don’t see any reason the waves couldn’t wash one of them down here.”

  Treasure! And sand and ocean. Macy could hardly wait. She all but skipped ahead of the Farrells as they walked up the gravel road toward the highway. The salty, mysterious scent of the ocean was already stronger, along with the restless rush of waves.

  Before they crossed the highway, Aunt Ida reached for her hand. “Cars cut a pretty pace on the paved road. You wouldn’t believe how fast some of them drive through here, even with the speed limit lowered to thirty-five miles per hour during the war.”

  Macy clasped the hand Aunt Ida held out to her, but inside she was still skipping. At last, she would walk on the beach. It had been so near all the time she’d been here. At night, she leaned out her window just to listen to waves rolling onto the sand.

  “Now, I need your promise,” Uncle Emory warned. “You’re to stay close by, and if we see anything suspicious, you run for the highway and home the moment we tell you.”

  “Suspicious? Like what?”

  “Like that submarine I was talking about earlier.”

  “Good heavens, Em, you’ll have the girl begging to go back to the valley. Let her enjoy a day on the beach.”

  “Enjoy your day,” he told Macy seriously, “but stay near enough that we can keep you safe.”

  Macy promised, wondering who was right: Aunt Ida, who didn’t seem worried, or Uncle Emory, who expected to see the enemy behind every wave.

  As far as she could tell, the waves were just waves. After crossing the highway and railroad tracks to follow a trail between the humps of a sand dune, she gave all her attention to the beach, which seemed to stretch forever in both directions.

  She’d wanted to come here for so long. If an enemy stormed the beach today and ruined everything, she was going to be really mad.

  The wave slope, where the tide stopped coming in and began going out, held heaps of driftwood, shells, and seaweed, all arranged and left behind like a giant scalloped tablecloth. Macy couldn’t wait to explore.

  “Don’t go too far,” Aunt Ida warned. “I’ll find a nice log to shelter behind. The wind’s coming up strong.”

  Mr. Farrell — Uncle Emory, Macy reminded herself again — was already scanning the waves for submarines. While Aunt Ida settled behind a large driftwood log out of the wind, Macy ran to see what the storm had washed in.

  Seagulls shrieked overhead while she collected pieces of oddly shaped driftwood. One looked like a fish, another like a long-legged bird. A third might have been a submarine. She decided not to keep that one.

  Below the driftwood and seaweed, rocks tumbled in the waves. Some of them glowed as if with an inner light. Agates! She ran to collect one before the next wave washed it out. It was an amber color. She held it to the sunlight to look into the translucent depths. Maybe she would leave all the driftwood, but she was keeping this.

  Uncle Emory stood on a nearby dune with his binoculars. As Macy started toward him with the agate, she noticed a glint of reflected light from under some driftwood on the wave slope. Curious, she walked closer.

  A perfect globe of heavy translucent blue-tinted glass lay almost covered in driftwood and seaweed. Macy picked it out, tossing aside a long hollow length of kelp. It was hard to believe that this beautiful float had traveled all the way across the ocean after holding up a fishing net somewhere far away, maybe even Japan.

  “Drop it!” Uncle Emory’s shout rang from the dune. He skidded down the steep bank, spraying sand to either side before landing near Macy. “Drop that thing before it explodes in your hands.”

  “It’s just a glass float.”

  “You can’t see into that thing, not clearly. There could be a bomb inside just waiting to bump up against one of our ships and blow it sky-high.” He snatched it from her and hurled it onto a bank of jagged rocks holding tide pools at the waterline.

  Macy gasped. “Don’t!”

  She was too late. Shattered glass flew. Macy couldn’t help thinking of Miss Tokyo. The doll wasn’t made of glass, but she could be damaged. Uncle Emory could destroy her like the float.

  If the float had held a bomb, they’d have both been dangerously close. But there were only heavy shards of glass on the wet sand and rock.

  Uncle Emory looked pleased. “That’s that. Did you have something to show me?”

  He admired the agate, but Macy’s pleasure in the stone had faded. Uncle Emory worried too much. There hadn’t been a bomb in the float. Maybe there weren’t any submarines in the water. Uncle Emory and Aunt Ida should allow her to play on the beach every nice day.

  There was no point asking to come to the beach alone. She kicked her way toward Aunt Ida through the silvered driftwood and glossy green kelp along the wave slope.

  Another mass of long blade like leaves curled just ahead. Macy put all her frustration into kicking the mass apart. Her foot hit something that rolled. Rosy glass glinted beneath the green lengths.

  Another float? Macy glanced toward the dune, where Uncle Emory was scanning the waves again. Quickly, she knelt and pushed the seaweed clear. The float was a perfect heavy globe of rose-tinted glass. She lifted it to peer into the center.

  No bomb inside. Of course not. It was just a float, washed free of a fisherman’s net, but what a pretty one. She had to save it. But how could she? Uncle Emory would smash it as quickly as he’d smashed the more common blue float.

  She grabbed a nearby length of driftwood and used it to poke innocently at the sand with one hand while snuggling the rosy float close to her body on the side away from Uncle Emory. Logs had washed down from somewhere and been storm-tossed and sun-bleached on the higher part of the beach.

  Macy walked to wave-piled drift near the first rise of the dunes. Kneeling on the far side of the biggest log, she dug a nest of soft sand.

  Miss Tokyo would love to see the rosy color, she told herself as she arranged driftwood over the glass, hiding it. Satisfied that no one would see it, she sat back on her heels. How could she keep the float safe or even come back for it when she wasn’t allowed to come to the beach alone?

  That night as she lay pressed to the space between the wall and the bed, she told Miss Tokyo about the shattered float and the hidden one. “We have to keep you secret, so don’t make a sound!”

  That made her giggle, because of course she made all the sounds for Miss Tokyo. Why was she warning the doll to keep quiet?

  And yet, when she didn’t talk
for the doll, she could feel words pressing inside her that Miss Tokyo would say if she could talk.

  “Did I tell you about the scrap collection? I haven’t had time to gather Mr. Oakes’s cans, but luckily his nephew hasn’t come yet.”

  “Maybe he won’t come, Macy-chan,” she made the doll answer, knowing the hope was her own.

  “I only had the cans Aunt Ida gave me when we turned them in after school on Friday. The other girls had more, but when I added mine, we were ahead of the boys, so everyone was happy.”

  “They’ll be happier when you take in Mr. Oakes’s cans,” the doll answered in her high voice.

  Macy grinned, thinking Miss Tokyo was right and looking forward to next Saturday, when she would take in the baby buggy filled with tin cans and surprise them all.

  The week passed quickly. Macy had hoped to run back to the dune for the float on her way home from school, but Linda from her class lived farther down the highway and walked with her each day.

  There was no reason to keep the float a secret from Linda, except that Linda might go after it herself. It’s mine, Macy told herself silently, and it’s in danger.

  During breakfast on Saturday morning, static blared from the shortwave radio as usual while Uncle Emory twisted the dials. Suddenly, a woman’s voice came through, startling them all.

  “Listen!” Uncle Emory exclaimed as an announcer identified the station. “I’ve tuned in Japan!”

  “So, Soldier Joe,” the young woman said in accented English through a blur of static, “do you remember dolls from America? Maybe your big sisters saved money to buy one. Maybe your mother made clothes for a doll. This was fifteen years ago, Joe. You and your fellow soldiers were little boys then. Do you remember?”

  In a low voice, Macy said, “She’s talking about Friendship Dolls.”

  “Your sisters wrote sweet letters, Joe,” the woman said as the static faded. “The letters asked little girls in Japan to be kind to the dolls and love them.”

  Aunt Ida said, “She’s aiming her talk at our soldiers, isn’t she, the way that awful Tokyo Rose does with her broadcasts? Why is she talking about dolls?”

  “All the way from Japan and coming in clear as can be.” Uncle Emory beamed at his radio as if he’d built it from scratch and it was suddenly performing properly. Macy leaned closer to hear the Japanese woman’s broadcast.

  “Do you wonder what happened to those sweet dollies, Joe? We gave them parties when they came. It’s sad, though, Joe. Our great General Tōjō says they’re symbols of the enemy. So sad. No more parties.”

  Macy felt her eyes getting wide. All those dolls — more than twelve thousand of them — were seen as enemies in Japan, just the way Miss Tokyo was seen as an enemy in Stanby.

  “Our soldiers treated the dolls the way they will treat you, Joe,” the woman’s voice continued through new static. “They smashed their heads with rifle butts. Bam! Bam! Bam! And our little children? They watched and clapped their hands.”

  “No,” Macy exclaimed. “Oh, no!”

  “My land,” Aunt Ida said with a gasp.

  “I don’t believe they clapped,” Macy said. “They’re just children. They wouldn’t clap when dolls were smashed. They wouldn’t!”

  “Our countries are at war,” Uncle Emory said, as if Macy might have forgotten even for a minute. “You’ve got to expect things like that.”

  Aunt Ida said, “The Japanese sent some dolls to children here in return.” Then her mouth clamped tight, as if she’d just remembered that Macy was here because she cared too much for one of those big Japanese dolls.

  “I’d like to put a bullet through any doll they sent,” Uncle Emory said. “We don’t want their trash here any more than they want dolls from us.”

  Macy saw him catch an anxious look from Aunt Ida. When he turned to Macy, he looked the way the pastor at home looked when he was about to make an important point. “Pearl Harbor brought our country together against the enemy. We won’t stand for anybody attacking us.”

  He waited as if he expected an answer. Macy could only think of little children watching soldiers smash the American dolls. She would never believe that those children had clapped their hands.

  Uncle Emory’s voice roughened. “That’s why you’re collecting scrap. Just don’t forget the Victory Garden. Every bit of food we grow for ourselves means food we don’t have to buy. And that leaves more canned goods available for our soldiers.”

  “And more ration coupons saved,” Aunt Ida added.

  Macy nodded and pushed away her bowl.

  Aunt Ida said, “Before you start on the Victory Garden, dear, will you help me take the sheets off the beds so I can get them in the wash?”

  Fresh horror swept through Macy. Aunt Ida was going to take the sheets off the beds. She might pull the beds away from the wall. She would see Miss Tokyo. And then she would tell Uncle Emory, and he would destroy the Japanese doll.

  “I’ll bring my sheets downstairs,” she said quickly.

  “You do that, dear. I want to sweep behind and under the beds, and it’s easier when the coverings are off.”

  The rice puffs Macy had eaten felt like they were exploding all over again inside her stomach. She gulped down a last spoonful because the Farrells didn’t approve of waste, and pushed to her feet. “I’ll get my sheets right now. I . . . I want to get started collecting cans as soon as I can.”

  She raced up the stairs without waiting for an answer. She had to get Miss Tokyo away. Where could she hide the doll? It didn’t matter. She would find a place. First she had to get Miss Tokyo out of the house.

  She pictured the doll standing against a target, maybe with a blindfold over her eyes, while Uncle Emory aimed his rifle.

  By the time she reached the top of the stairs, she was gasping for breath. She grabbed the door frame, swung around it, and paused, trying to hear over the pounding in her ears.

  Downstairs, Aunt Ida hummed as she walked into the big bedroom on the first floor.

  Macy rushed to her bed, dropped to her knees, and squirmed beneath. She grabbed Miss Tokyo and backed out, pulling the doll with her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We have to get you away. Right now.”

  The blanket had fallen from the doll’s face. Macy paused to look at her, seeing as if for the first time the doll’s gentle eyes and sweet hint of a smile. “Mama,” she whispered into the air, “you don’t think the children clapped. Do you?”

  She couldn’t hear Mama answer or even answer for her in the high voice they always gave the doll. Why wasn’t Mama answering?

  Maybe Mama didn’t think Macy could get Miss Tokyo to safety. “I promised,” she said. “I promised Mama and Hap. I’ll save you, Miss Tokyo. I promised to save you for them.”

  She heard tears in the voice she gave the doll as she answered shakily, “Will you save me for yourself, too, Macy-chan?”

  A tear slipped from Macy’s cheek onto the doll’s face. She brushed it away with one hand. “Yes. I love you, and now you have to hide again, but not under the bed.” Carefully, she rewrapped the blanket around the doll, then pulled sheets from the bed and crumpled them around the bundle.

  Where would the doll be safe? The garage? The Farrells took firewood from the stack every day, but the stack lined one entire wall. There must have been at least a hundred pieces piled there. Maybe Miss Tokyo could hide under the far end.

  She carried the blanket-wrapped doll to the stairway and listened with her entire body. A fresh burst of static told her that Uncle Emory was still working with his radio. She didn’t hear Aunt Ida, but time was running out. She could feel minutes rushing past.

  Quietly, she moved down the stairs. Her chest hurt as she held her breath, trying so hard to hear that she wouldn’t let her own breathing make a sound.

  She was almost to the bottom of the stairs when she heard Aunt Ida humming, the sound coming closer. Macy didn’t have to see her to know that Aunt Ida was heading for the stairs with her broom and dustpan.r />
  If you can’t go back, go ahead as if you mean it, Macy told herself, repeating one of Mama’s favorite sayings.

  She put a smile on her face and started down the stairs, passing Mrs. Farrell. “Bye, Aunt Ida. I’m off to do my part for the war.”

  “Leave your sheets at the bottom of the stairs,” Aunt Ida said. She looked more closely at Macy’s bundle before adding, “Do you want your blanket washed, too, dear?”

  The blanket poked out between the sheets. Macy hesitated, thinking fast. “No. I promised Mr. Oakes I’d pick up his empty tin cans. And I . . . uh . . . need it.”

  “Of course you do. You’ll want to cover the empty cans so they won’t blow off,” the woman said, her expression clearing. “That’s thinking ahead, dear. Good for you.”

  Relief swept through Macy. “Thank you, Aunt Ida. I have to hurry now.”

  She ran down the rest of the stairs, clutching Miss Tokyo in her bundled blanket as she left the sheets, fearing at every step to be called back.

  Inside the open garage, she swept her glance around and discovered a folded brown canvas tarp. It was nearly the color of the firewood. She lowered her bundle to the garage floor, whipped open the tarp, and quickly rolled Miss Tokyo from the blanket onto the tarp, taking care to fold the heavy cloth over the doll’s head and feet.

  “They’ll take in firewood from nearest the door,” Macy whispered, and moved down the garage to the end of the woodpile. She lifted several pieces of wood near the end, hoisted Miss Tokyo and the tarp into the hollow she’d made, and carefully placed lengths of wood on top.

  She stepped back to pick up the blanket and check her work. Anyone looking closely would see the tarp and wonder why it was in there, but people pretty much saw what they expected to see, and the Farrells expected to see a neat stack of firewood.

  Miss Tokyo was safe. For a while.

  “I’m sorry,” Macy told her softly. “It can’t be pleasant in there, but it’s the best I can do for now, Miss T.”