Don't You Know There's a War On?

by Avi

  “Yes.”

  “A pilot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, wow. . . . What’s he fly?”

  “P-38s.”

  “They’re my favorite. Where’s he stationed?”

  All of a sudden she covered her face with her hands.

  “Miss Gossim,” I said, starting to get frightened. “What’s the matter?”

  “Howie, I don’t know where he is.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then, seeing how upset she was, I said, “You know, when my pop writes, the censors take out that sort of stuff too. We just got a Swiss-cheese letter from him. My mom thinks he’s in Liverpool. Merry Old England. Only he’s coming back out of convoy. See, for Easter. I don’t know why. It sure ain’t safe.”

  “Do you worry a lot about him?” she asked.

  “You bet. I get all these really bad dreams. About his ship getting hit by torpedoes. With all these sharks in the water. They eat him alive. There’s this blood and gore. Arms and legs go floating by. A whole head—”

  “Howie! How horrible!”

  “I know, but he always comes home. I bet your . . . husband is just not allowed to tell you where he is either.”

  “Howie,” she whispered, “I . . . I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

  “You don’t?”

  She got all silent. Then, with a little sigh, she said, “I’m afraid for these days it’s a rather common story. You see, we met last Christmastime at a servicemen’s canteen. We liked each other—a lot. Really hit it off. For six days we palled around. Suddenly he got orders to report overseas. Though we didn’t know each other for very long, we . . . got . . . married.

  “But, Howie—I don’t know why I’m telling you these things—it happened so quickly, maybe he didn’t have time to inform anyone that I’m . . . his wife. Or maybe in the rush he lost my address. Except that would mean, if something happened to him, I . . . I wouldn’t ever know.”

  I stared at her. She was holding one knee up, leaning slightly back. The top part of her bathrobe had fallen away so I could see part of her bosom. I stared.

  “Then of course,” she went on, not paying any attention to me, “like tonight, the sirens go on, and it’s dark, and here I am, alone, thinking so much about him . . . the way you do about your father.”

  I swallowed hard. “Miss Gossim?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you’re married, how come . . . how come it’s still Miss?”

  That room was pretty dim, but I could see she blushed. “Oh, well, we married . . . quickly. Not really a secret. But almost one. At Borough Hall. We agreed we’d have a real wedding. As soon as peace comes. When he comes back. . . .” Her voice went fruity as she added, “If he comes back.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Smitty.” She took a deep breath and looked around. “I’m not a very good hostess, am I? I should be offering you something. Would you like a glass of milk? A cracker? I don’t have much.”

  “No, thanks.”

  She sat there, thinking I didn’t know what. Then the candle sputtered out. It got darker than before. Maybe the dark made me feel, you know, bolder, ’cause I said, “I bet I know why you got fired.”

  “Do you?”

  Like in class, I raised my hand. “Can I say?”

  “Yes. . . .”

  “Dr. Lomister wanted to marry you, but when he found out you were already married, he got so jealous he fired you.”

  She came out with one of her big laughs. But she got serious again quick. “No,” she said with a sigh. “That’s not what it is.”

  I felt stupid.

  “But what made you think that?” she asked.

  “Just did.”

  I waited for her to say something else. When she didn’t, I said, “Then . . . how come you got fired?”

  She sighed.

  “Did your mother die?” I asked.

  “No. She’s living in Indiana.”

  “Then how come you’re living here?”

  “Howie Crispers, now I know why you got your name.”

  “Why?”

  “Knock knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “How.”

  “How who?”

  “How-ie Crispers.”

  “Don’t mean nothing.”

  She got up and stood by the window, arms folded, and looked at the blacked-out city. “It’s so dark,” she said.

  I felt like saying it was pretty dark inside. Instead I went and stood near her, staring out the window too. Searchlights were still sweeping the sky, looking for enemy planes. I could smell her flowerlike perfume.

  “Do you think German bombers are coming?” I asked.

  “We’re very far from Europe,” she said. “I think we’re perfectly safe.”

  “That’s what I told my kid sister.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Gloria. She’s in third grade. Mrs. Khol’s class.”

  “Of course.”

  “What about spies?” I asked. “You think they’re around?”

  She looked at me. “You do worry a lot, don’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Well,” she said, “I have to admit, I worry too.”

  The two of us, side by side, kept staring out the window.

  “Howie,” she asked, “why are you so interested in me?”

  I was afraid to look up. My heart was pounding. I said, “I guess . . . I like you. A lot.”

  She reached out and mussed my hair. “When my baby comes,” she said, all quietlike, “and if it’s a boy, I hope he’s as sweet as you.”

  Slowly it began to sink in what she was getting at. “Miss Gossim,” I said, still staring out the window, “are you . . . going to have . . . a kid?”

  “Yes,” she whispered after a moment.

  “Really?”

  “Really,” she said, sounding very sad.

  I was afraid to look at her. “Is . . . is that how come Lomister fired you?”

  She hesitated. Then she said, “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “There’s a rule that says teachers can’t be . . . expecting and teach.”

  “How’d he find out?”

  “Mrs. Partridge told him.”

  “Creepers! Why’d she do that?”

  “She was trying to help me.”

  I thought about what Miss Gossim said for a while. Then I said, “But what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll go back to be with my mother.”

  “In Indiana?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s so far!”

  “Not really.”

  “In a midsized city?”

  “On a farm, actually.”

  I looked up at her. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Me, I was sort of dying.

  “Well,” she said, “I can’t stay here. Not alone. Not without a job. Or money. I have very little. So I save a little every week. I hadn’t planned on going back quite so soon. But now I will.”

  I kept studying her face. “How come you don’t have more money?”

  “I’m afraid teachers don’t get paid much.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No. But Howie, when I go, how will Smitty ever find me? Or, if something happens to him, how will I ever know? I have no way of contacting him.”

  So then I said, “Maybe I could speak to my mom and you could stay with us. You could come here every day and check to see if he came.”

  She sort of smiled. “I don’t think that would work. I think I better stick to my plan.”

  For a while neither of us said anything.

  She turned to me. “Howie, I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. But I must admit, it’s good to talk to someone. Except you must promise that you won’t tell anyone about these things. Are you good at secrets?”

  I held out my fist, pinky out. “I swear.”

  She looked at my hand. “What’s that mean?”

  “When you make a swear
, you do pinkies.”

  She laughed her laugh and held out a fist, pinky out.

  I did the chop.

  Just as I did, the air raid siren started blaring again. The all-clear signal. The city began to blink on.

  Miss Gossim gave me a little shake. “Howie, I think you better get on home. I’m sure your mother is very worried.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Howie!” she called after me as I headed down the hall toward the steps.

  I stopped and turned.

  “Remember your promise,” she called.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said, and hurried away.

  When I stepped out of the apartment onto the sidewalk, I looked up. The city lights were back. And all the stars were gone.

  PART TWO

  THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 1943

  Eighth Army Artillery Smashes

  Nazi Tank Waves Without Yielding.

  U.S. Wounded Stick to Guns to Beat

  Off German Thrusts.

  Ration Points Set for Meat,

  Canned Fish, Fat, Cheese.

  Director of the Office of

  War Information Reveals

  U-boat Toll in Recent Convoys.

  24

  OKAY, NEXT DAY, Thursday, plenty of stuff happened.

  First off, even though I walked with Denny to school, I still didn’t tell him what happened the night before. He never asked. The truth was, I was keeping it to myself. I didn’t want to share.

  After checking headlines at Teophilo’s, Denny and me talked about the war. What was going on in North Africa. Where his father was. The Pacific news. And my father, wherever he was, dodging Nazi U-boats.

  In school I kept watching to see if Miss Gossim would act different to me. She didn’t, except once. Sort of. It was at family news time. Gladys Halflinger announced to the class that her mother was expecting. When she did, I thought Miss Gossim took a quick look over at me. Maybe I was only wishing it.

  Then, it being Thursday, we did war stamps.

  War stamps went like this: The U.S. government had to buy all kinds of stuff for our soldiers. Guns, ammo, airplanes, ships, tanks. So what did they do? They borrowed money from people by getting them to buy war bonds. The thing was, they borrowed from kids too by getting us to buy war stamps.

  When you bought a stamp, you pasted it in a special book. Fill your book and you’d get a twenty-five-dollar war bond. The government promised to give the money back with extra. Soon as peace came. Most of us bought only one or two stamps a week, so it took a long time to fill a book. Almost as long as it took to win the war.

  You could buy stamps for ten cents or twenty-five cents. I liked the ten centers best. They were red with a picture of a minuteman on them.

  Thursday, Billy Wiggins was war-stamp monitor. If you were war-stamp monitor, you stood in front of the class and made a speech about why it was a good thing to buy stamps and support our boys in the war. Then we kids would line up. As Miss Gossim watched, we’d buy stamps from the monitor. Stick them in our books.

  That time, Billy made a speech about how bad Hitler was. Nothing I didn’t know. Then, as the kids paid their coins, making a little pile on Miss Gossim’s desk, I noticed she was looking at the money. Looking upset, actually. Then I remembered her saying how little money she had, being a teacher and all.

  I was thinking, Holy moley, how am I going to help her? I mean, she only had a couple of days left. Maybe she had a plan for her life, but I didn’t. It was what the movie serials—like in Dick Tracy Against Crime Inc.—called “a desperate situation.” If something didn’t happen, there wasn’t going to be a next week. It was gonna be “The End.” Goom-bye.

  But at three o’clock, all she said was “Children, study your history books tonight. Tomorrow we’ll have our test on the American Revolution.”

  25

  AFTER SCHOOL, Denny and me, we were walking home. No one was saying anything ’til he said, “Learn anything new about Miss Gossim?”

  Now, remember, I hadn’t told Denny nothing about my visit to Miss Gossim’s. For that matter, I never told him I’d seen her looking over the cliff either. Hadn’t even told him where she was living.

  At first all I said was “I guess she’s still only got ’til Monday.”

  He said, “When do you think she’ll tell the class she’s going?”

  “The last hour, I bet.”

  Then he said, “You figure out yet why she got fired?”

  Soon as he said that, I knew I couldn’t handle it alone. I was a kid. This was supercolossal grown-up stuff. If I was going to help Miss Gossim, I needed help.

  So I said, “Remember the other day when we were collecting, how I followed her?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I found out where she lives.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said, smooth as a Fudgsicle. “Hicks and Orange. That apartment building. Apartment Five-C.”

  I looked at him, really annoyed. Then I remembered that he knew about her father being dead and he hadn’t told me none of that stuff either. So I said, “How come you know so much about her?”

  “Because,” he said.

  “Because what?”

  “Because I do,” he explained.

  I was about to get really mad at him and call off our no-secrets pact. Then I remembered I hadn’t told him stuff either. So we were almost even. In fact, the only way to get really even was to let him know what happened to me. So I said, “Well, I know a lot more.”

  “Like what?”

  “Hey, wise guy,” I said, “how come I’m supposed to tell you stuff when you don’t tell me the stuff you’re supposed to tell me?”

  “I dunno,” he said.

  But, let’s face it, the best part about having a secret is telling someone. So after a while I said, “Promise not to tell?”

  Right away he poked out his pinky. No two ways about it, Denny loved swears. We hooked. “No fins,” I said.

  “No fins,” he echoed.

  I chopped.

  “Okay,” I said, “she . . . she got fired because she’s going . . . to have a baby.”

  He stopped dead short and stared at me, mouth open, like he was waiting for a fly to pop in. You can’t believe how good I felt knowing something he didn’t know.

  “That really true?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “How come you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “She told you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, kind of casual, the way the hero says it in movies.

  “She did? When?”

  So I upped and told how I visited Miss Gossim in her apartment. The more I said, the more his mouth hung open.

  He said, “You saying she really, truly—no fooling or nothing—told you?”

  “Swear to God.”

  “Oh, wow. How did she look?”

  “Like a movie star.”

  “What . . . what was she wearing?”

  “A bathrobe.”

  “A bathrobe! Willikers. . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Glassy.” Then I said, “Only I didn’t tell you because I told her I wouldn’t.”

  “Then how come you’re telling me now?” He sounded angry.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Hey, Denny . . .”

  “Hay is for horses.”

  “Come on, Denny, tell the truth. How much you like Miss Gossim? A whole lot, right?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Well, can’t we both like her and still be best friends?” I asked.

  He thought a minute. “Suppose.”

  “Then you should tell me how come you knew all that stuff about her I didn’t know.”

  So Denny said, “Remember when Lomister put me in the office for running down the hall to the bathroom when I had the runs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When I was sitting in there, I asked Mrs. Partridge all about Miss Gossim. She told me
.”

  “You didn’t spy or nothing?”

  “Do I look like a J. Edgar Hoover?”

  “You wear a bow tie.”

  “Doesn’t mean . . .”

  Then I said, “Come on, Denny, I really want to help her. Only I don’t know what to do. I mean, if you were going to be . . . you know . . . expecting . . . would you know what to do?”

  “Boys can’t have babies.”

  “I know that! I’m just saying, if you could, would you?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Well, then, okay. It must be scary. When she leaves, we probably ain’t ever going to see her again.”

  “She going home to Indiana?”

  “Yeah,” I said, sore because that was still another thing he knew which now I knew, only he hadn’t told me before.

  We went on, checked the headlines at the newspaper stand, but when we got to his tailor shop, I was still sore. So all I said was “See you in the morning.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “I have to make a delivery for my mother first.”

  “Okay. Goom-bye.”

  “Hey, Howie,” he called after me.

  “What?”

  “Plant you now, dig you later.”

  I trudged off, not looking back. I was thinking, What was the point of telling him all that? I still didn’t know how I was going to help Miss Gossim.

  26

  WHEN I GOT HOME, I sat on my front stoop. The sun was shining warm enough so that windows were open. The skinny pin-oak trees in their squares of dirt had some green buds. Kids were jumping rope. Playing marbles. Hopscotch.

  Not wanting to think about Miss Gossim, I started studying my American history book.

  But Gloria, up in the apartment, had the radio on so loud I could hear the soap opera she was listening to:

  “Time now for The Romance of Helen Trent! The real-life drama of Helen Trent, who—when life mocks her, breaks her hopes, dashes her against the rocks of despair—fights back bravely, successfully, to prove what so many long to prove in their own lives . . . that because a woman is thirty-five—”

  I ran up to the apartment. “Gloria!” I screamed. “Turn the radio off! I’m trying to study!”

  All she did was make it lower.

  Being already upstairs, I sat in the kitchen and kept reading. After a while Gloria came into the room.