The War Librarian, page 15
We sat silently for a moment—both of us thinking, I imagined, about how different my nana’s life could have been. How different would Jane have been if she’d had an aunt to fill in the gaps? How different would my world be?
Mabel whispered her next question as if she were afraid to hear the answer. “Was she happy?”
I considered my Nana’s life. I could see so much of it from where I sat: the postcards from my mother on Nana’s refrigerator, the framed photographs of me sprouting up through the years. It wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, but she had chosen it. I had enough faith in her to think she would have done things differently had she wanted to.
“I think so,” I said finally. “I hope so.”
Mabel nodded. “I hope so, too.” Then a soft smile crept across her lips. “She had a wonderful granddaughter, after all.”
Uncomfortable with the naked emotion in Mabel’s voice, I asked the only logical question. “And you? Do you have children?”
“No.” Mabel’s soft shoulders curved forward. “I never did have kids.”
I was surprised by that. Mabel smelled like chocolate chip cookies and was shaped like a hug. But maybe my grandmother’s disappearance had affected her more than she let on. Or maybe she was like Jane, a woman with little desire for a family.
I twisted to look at the clock on the wall above Mabel. “I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but I have to be back at the Naval Academy tonight. And I’ve got the whole apartment to go through.”
Mrs. Peregrine had offered to store some of Nana’s personal things until I had a space for them. The rest of it, I would leave here for the estate sale I’d arranged. I wouldn’t be present, but that was fine. I wasn’t one to form emotional attachments to old relics like chairs or potato mashers.
Mabel bit her lip. It made her look young, and I imagined her as Nana must have known her. She’d have been so young when Nana left for France.
“I understand if you need privacy,” Mabel said. “But I would so love to stay and to help you.” Her eyes grew rheumy with tears. “This is the closest I’ve been to Nellie in decades.”
I hated to admit it, but I wanted Mabel to stay, too. I hadn’t known she existed three hours ago, but now she was the nearest link I had to the woman I loved and worshipped more than anyone else. I couldn’t have Nana back, but Mabel could bring to life a part of her I’d never known.
“Of course you can stay.”
* * *
—
Mabel offered to clean out the kitchen while I dealt with the more personal parts of the apartment like Nana’s bedroom and my old room, but I hated the thought of leaving a stranger unsupervised in the apartment. Even if that stranger was Nana’s sister.
Instead, I sat in the living room, where I could keep an eye on Mabel, and pored over Nana’s letters. Her handwriting had grown better with age, and it was difficult to decipher her young ramblings, but I was determined. I learned about the garage attached to an old chateau where she stayed in Bazoilles-sur-Meuse and the strange hours she kept. I learned about the occasional snatches of beauty she glimpsed between the battlefields as she crisscrossed the country, the flowers she picked and kept in her car to remind her of home. I smiled at that. Nana had kept a vase of roses in the kitchen the whole time I’d lived with her; I could so easily imagine her with wildflowers strewn about the car.
By the time I’d finished the letters, my eyes were wet. How young Nana had been when she’d served in France, how vibrant.
I rose and busied myself with the books on Nana’s shelves so Mabel wouldn’t see my tears fall. There was so little in here worth keeping. I’d save Nana’s car prints, though I wasn’t allowed decor in Bancroft Hall and would have to leave them with Mrs. Peregrine for a time.
Once Mabel finished in the kitchen, we moved together into my bedroom. I’d put a few framed photographs into a box to keep.
Mabel pulled one of the photographs out. “You and your mother?”
I nodded. The picture had been taken in 1955, a year after I’d been born, and Jane’s dark hair was long and loose. The camera had caught her in motion: hair flipping and face blurry, arms outstretched to hold my hands. I stood on the ground, my chubby fingers wrapped around hers, completely still. Mom claimed we’d been dancing when the photograph was taken, though of course I couldn’t remember.
“She wasn’t at the burial . . .”
I knew what Mabel was asking in her polite way. Was she dead? Estranged? Too sick to come?
“She doesn’t live in D.C.,” I said. “She’s hard to reach.”
Mabel cocked her head like a puppy, just as eager to comfort. “She doesn’t know about Nellie yet?”
“She’ll call eventually,” I said. “I’ll tell her then.” It wasn’t a task I relished.
Mabel had moved on to rubbing her elbows now, each with the opposite hand. “You don’t know how to reach your own mother?”
“Nana raised me,” I said shortly.
Mabel’s eyes welled with sympathy. “Oh, honey. I wish I had been around. I could have helped you both. I’m so sorry about everything.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I didn’t need anyone but Nana.” And I certainly didn’t need Mabel’s pity. “She raised me to be everything my mother wouldn’t have—to be strong and self-assured and responsible and brave. I wouldn’t be at the academy if I’d been raised by anyone else.” I shrugged, a practiced move. “My mother found her own way to be happy. So did Nana and I.”
The papery-thin skin on Mabel’s neck pulsed as she swallowed. I waited to see if she would protest, but she didn’t.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. In my life, the absence of someone has always been the loss of them.”
Of course. I already regretted my harsh tone. “I’m sorry, too,” I said. I pulled the photograph from Mabel’s hand and placed it back in the box, then grabbed another to put beside it.
“You ran?” Mabel studied the picture, which showed me and the other girls on my track and field team after a district win.
“I still run,” I said. “Only now, I do it with a whole bunch of men.”
Mabel shook her head. “I hardly believed they were letting women in. What’s it like?”
I could tell her about the aggression from the men and the condescension from the officers. The uniforms that didn’t fit right and the heels and the purses. I could tell her about the scrutiny, the pressure to prove that women belonged at the academy as much as the men did.
“It’s everything I’ve ever wanted,” I said instead. Because if I said it enough and acted as if it were true, I was sure it would become reality.
I stacked the rest of the photographs quickly so as not to invite comment, then led Mabel to Nana’s bedroom. It felt like a private place. This was where I used to come when I missed my mother late at night but hated to admit it, when I claimed nightmares about dragons or war to keep from having to tell Nana what was really wrong. She’d always known anyway, and she’d wrap me in her long, thin arms and hold me to her chest until I fell back asleep. The nights I spent in her bed were the nights I slept best.
I still needed her now, I supposed. I was hardly sleeping at the academy at all.
But there had been times I’d taken care of Nana in this room, too. I’d brought her breakfast in bed when she was too depressed to eat and crept in for the key to the apartment when I knew she wouldn’t be able to let me in after school.
It was as hard to admit that my war hero wasn’t infallible as it was to admit I missed my mom.
I didn’t blame Nana for her vulnerability. But inwardly, I promised I’d never fall prey to it myself.
Now Mabel and I stepped over the threshold gingerly. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits, but we both tiptoed as if we did. Nothing much of Nana remained in the room. The furniture and most of the clothing could be sold; all I wanted was Nana’s watch, her Motor Corps uniform, and the box of her personal effects. I pulled it down from the shelf as Mabel riffled through the dresses hanging in the closet and glanced at what lay on top. Three photographs were visible: one of me posing before the Lincoln Memorial with two teeth missing from my smile, another of my graduation, and one of my thirty-four-year-old mother pregnant with me.
I sucked my teeth and pushed that one aside. I hated the pictures of Jane’s pregnancy, acutely aware that she’d resented every minute of it.
I rested the box on my hip bone. “I think that’s everything. And I have to start heading back to Annapolis. Do you need me to walk you down, call you a cab?” My voice was brisk, but I didn’t know how else to say goodbye. Not when I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Nana.
“Can I have your address?” Mabel asked. “I just don’t . . . I just found Nellie, and I don’t want to lose her again.”
She was so free with her emotions, so honest. It was dangerous. Like I might let my grief spill out to match hers.
I scrawled my address on a piece of paper and passed it over. “I can call you every once in a while too, if you don’t mind giving me your number?” I surprised myself by asking. But she was Nana’s sister. And though I had lost my nana, I didn’t have to lose this link to her, too.
Mabel pressed her phone number into my hand. “Thank you,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. “Thank you so much.”
I waved goodbye as she let herself out, but I didn’t follow her down the stairs and get on the bus back to Annapolis like I’d promised.
Instead, I stretched myself across my nana’s bed and cried.
Nana was supposed to be the one who’d never leave me.
Chapter 15
Emmaline Balakin
October 1918
Less than a week had passed since I’d gone to Paris with Nellie, but already I was stretched too thin to breathe. On a grand scale, things were looking up for the Allies: Cambrai had fallen to the British, and the Lost Battalion had escaped what had seemed like certain death. But the destruction left in victory’s wake was devastating. We were receiving hundreds of new casualties daily, and from opening to closing every day, the recreation hut was full to bursting with men. They gathered to play cards and piano, to listen to songs on the phonograph and visit with friends from other wards—but most of all, they came for the books. As soon as I had a book sorted, cataloged, and displayed, it was gone. They came back just as quickly, most men finishing entire novels in a day or two for lack of other entertainment.
One day I overheard a cluster of men discussing The Call of the Wild in the recreation hut. Men from seemingly every ward joined to share their thoughts on everything from the quality of London’s writing to the nature-versus-nurture debate. The book inspired the men to share stories of the dogs they’d had as children and pictures of their families and puppies in America. One raucous group of soldiers even had a howling contest.
I loved how important the book had been to the men in stretching their imaginations, challenging their assumptions, and creating new communities. But the hustle and bustle of the recreation hut was too much for me most days, and I preferred to push my wheelbarrow full of books from ward to ward for the men who were bedridden.
Later in the week, I made my way back to the unofficial colored ward. It was already colder than it had been just a week ago, and I shivered without the heat of the radiator to warm me. The mud on my ankles and calves was clammy against my skin.
“Burt, Perlie. Joshua.” I greeted the three men I’d come to know best as I’d read The Call of the Wild to the ward. All three men went through books like they were bandages. Most of their ward mates had moved on, but these three had injuries too prone to infection. “How are you all?”
“Better now you’re here.”
Burt and Perlie returned the books they’d borrowed previously, though Joshua admitted with a sheepish smile that he hadn’t finished his quite yet. “Take as long as you need,” I told him. “That’s one of the beautiful things about a book. You can make it last however long you need it.”
“Do you have any new ones?” Burt sorted through the wheelbarrow.
“Not yet, I’m afraid. I hope to get the chance to unload the second crate of books from Paris on Sunday.”
“You’ve been busy, then?”
“Yes. The hut has been swarmed with men gathering to discuss The Call of the Wild. They’ve been arguing, debating, rereading, simply chatting . . .” I bit my lip as I realized that it was perhaps insensitive to tell these men about a world they weren’t welcome to join.
Burt raised an eyebrow. “I wish I could participate. Much of my work at Morehouse is on the myth of genetic superiority.”
“I won’t pretend to know as much as the professor, but something did rub me the wrong way when you read us that last scene with the American Indians,” Perlie said. “My wife is part Cherokee. Which means my girls are, too. And they’re no savages.”
“His daughters are real cute,” Joshua said to me. “Makes me miss the days when mine were young.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Do you have a picture, Perlie?”
“My wife Josephine just sent me a new one.” He rummaged under his mattress and then presented me with the photograph. “Tess is seven, and Annie is four.”
The two girls in the photo beamed with their arms around each other, sitting squished together on wooden porch steps. They had the sweetest, widest smiles like their father’s, though Annie’s had a hint of mischief in it. Tess’s hair was lovingly braided in two thick strands, and Annie’s was pulled back in a barely controlled mass of curls. They both wore white like little angels, the color bright against their dark, glowing skin.
“Look at them,” I murmured. “They are too sweet for words, Perlie.”
“I know.” He ducked his head with a wink. “That is, thank you kindly.”
We both laughed, but then his face turned dark. “I hate being gone from them. I’m afraid Annie will hardly remember me when I get back.” He sucked in a breath. “But I try to stay positive. I’m fighting this war for them, after all. Surely things will be different once we go home. My family will be treated like patriots, not like second-class citizens.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I don’t know,” Perlie admitted. “But I hope so. Otherwise, why am I here?”
Burt grimaced. “Why, indeed? It’s easy for the rest of the country to forget we’re risking our lives for them when we’re put in segregated units and wards.”
I rubbed my temple, hating the thought that a book I’d read in so many wards might have negatively influenced other soldiers’ opinions of people like Perlie’s wife and girls. But the only way to change the narrative would be through introducing another one. And unlike Jack London or even Francis Galton, whom several soldiers were citing with alarming frequency, these men weren’t allowed in the library to share their stories.
A few short months ago, I would have been disturbed by this but not sure what to do about it. Perhaps I would have read something by W. E. B. DuBois or Paul Laurence Dunbar, and compared their writings to those of the classics I’d grown up enjoying. But I wouldn’t have acted.
Now I took a deep breath. “What if we brought the library to you?”
Joshua gestured toward the wheelbarrow. “Is that not what you’re doing already?”
I surprised myself with my next words. “There’s more to a library than books.” I thought back to my training. Benjamin Franklin had been inspired to create the first lending library after a social club meeting, and he had considered it a success because it had improved conversation among Americans.
“I can bring the conversation into this ward,” I said slowly, still thinking. “The debates, the chatter.”
“How?” Perlie ran his thumb over the photograph of his daughters.
I bit my lip. This was the part my mother was good at. It had never been my forte. Just one year before I’d started work at the Dead Letter Office, President Wilson had tacitly allowed segregation of federal organizations and incited a wave of firings and demotions across the nation. The few colored postal workers who’d managed to retain employment in D.C. were sent to the Dead Letter Office, where the public was spared the apparent indignity of having to interact with them. I always felt guilty that all I had to offer Robert, the colored man who worked beside me for several years, was a smile and daily “How are you?” when my mother would likely have lobbied his case until it ended up in the courts. But my mother was gone, and I owed it to her and the world I inhabited to use my own position for good. “What if we start a discussion group?” I finally asked. “The men are gathering unofficially now, but we could make a club out of it. Meet here, where there’s more space anyway.”
Burt raised an eyebrow again. “You think the men will be willing to come here?”
“I know some of them will,” I said, thinking of Nicholas. “But we can try to entice others. I’ll bring the phonograph.”
“I don’t think a jaunty tune will overturn centuries of hatred,” Burt said wryly, and I cringed.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Burt, Perlie, and Joshua shared a look. “Bring the phonograph,” Perlie said when they broke eye contact. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”
* * *
—
The recreation hut and its library were closed Sunday morning so men would go to religious services at Base Hospital 18’s chapel. Bleary-eyed and tired after hours of sirens at night, I resisted the urge to sleep late and resolved instead to sort the unopened crate of books from the ALA and prepare for the book club that would be running in Burt, Perlie, and Joshua’s ward.
