The needle stretches long before diving down. I stare at it, and clutch her knees, “But I’m eighteen!”
“May Eloise, the way you carry on! You’ve only just last month turned seventeen, a fact I know better than anyone.”
I lay my head on her lap. “I despise how a silly number confines me.”
“Yes, well, welcome to womanhood.”
I close my eyes, knowing all too well this particular gripe.
I’m doomed.
World War II has left a mark on everyone. But her mark is of a different sort.
Millions of able-bodied men have enlisted or been drafted, and they left good jobs behind, opportunities wholly unavailable to women before now. For the first time wives are earning paychecks while their husbands serve.
Women have been secretaries, telephone operators, and the like, before. But factory jobs are the manly-labor type. They’re better paying and more fulfilling for a change.
The trouble is that my father is 4F — unable to enlist on account of his bad left leg. He was born with the affliction and hadn’t paid it much mind until it kept him out of duty. That broke his proud heart.
Mother and her friends say — whenever he’s not around — that many husbands don’t want their wives to earn the money in the house. That’s a man’s job.
She so wants to get her hands dirty in a new way. It sounds exciting to her, and I agree. She implored him to relent, but he wouldn’t budge. Not her friends, not the government, not even Rosie the Riveter could convince him to let her have a factory job like he has.
Instead, she cooks more meals and does more housework, watching the children of neighborhood women who drive far distances to work at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, where they rivet patches of aluminum over bullet holes, on real airplanes! That’s awfully exciting.
However, the distance is long — a whole eighty-eight miles from Albany — so they need Mother’s help while they stay overnight on cots set up in local shops, rather than make the trek there and back. Nearly six hours a day is too much for anyone in the back of a pickup piled high with tired ladies.
Realizing this might be my shot, I try another tactic, “You know how it feels, don’t you? To be stuck home while your friends have all the fun?!”
Tired blue eyes narrow with thought.
Have I gotten through?
I boldly press on.
“There will be boys at this dance, May, and I do remember life at your age, thank you very much!”
“And chaperones! The nuns would never let anything happen to me. I won’t be alone. I’ll have my friends and all of the Sisters present. They’ll watch over me! I’ve done all of my chores. The stew doesn’t need to be watched. I’ve even sliced all the bread and covered it so it won’t stale.”
We look over as two more children scream past us.
“Constance! Julian! No running in the house!” Neither pays her any mind, so Mother focuses her strictness back on me. “Nuns or no, boys your age cannot be trusted!”
I pull myself up and trudge to the wallpaper, picking at the charming peach and green pattern with a fervor while it grows darker outside, my doom cemented.
“May Eloise, was that you who made holes in the kitchen wallpaper? I thought it was the children!”
I drop my hand, innocently shaking my head, which could mean either one, depending on your interpretation — it wasn’t me or it wasn’t them.
I didn’t mean to tear the walls up. I just get so fidgety being cooped up like some caged cockatiel.
Father enters with soil on his coveralls, feet in socks darned more than twice. He sheepishly grins and crosses the room to kiss her forehead. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I, Dottie? I’m sorry I’m late.”
“Change before supper and I’ll forgive you.” Glancing to the ground, Mother adds, “You remembered to take your boots off before you walked in!”
“I do remember some of the things you tell me,” he teases before asking, “Now May, why the long face?”
I glance to suspended needle and thread. “Just feeling a little blue, I guess.”
He walks on by. “Dinner will change that. I’ll be down in a jiffy.”
Mother calls after him, “Fred, it won’t be ready for another hour!”
His calloused hand grabs the staircase rail, socked foot paused on the first step. “That so?” Thoughts play as he arrives at a new idea. “My pickup was giving me trouble. Think I’ll have a look before washing.”
“If you walk into that garage now I’m afraid you’ll never return!”
“I’ll always return to you, Dot, you know that.” He whistles by us, into the kitchen, where he calls back from the garage door, “If there’s food on the table!”
With love and exasperation mingling in her eyes, a smile peeks out. “That man!” She stands up, and puts her sewing away. “You didn’t tell your Father about the dance.”
“No.”
“Nor that I forbade you to go.”
“That was between you and I.”
“That was a mature thing to do.”
I frown, “Thank you,” and absently smooth the side hem of my shirtwaist dress where it bunches by the belt no matter how I tame it.
Mother sighs at my burden. “You can’t wear that old thing to a dance. Why don’t you put on your blue taffeta? It brings out your eyes and it’s not that out of fashion. What with fabric rations, no one can fault you for not having a more current party dress, can they?” Under her breath she adds to herself, “I didn’t have time to make one better but it’s too late to worry about that now.” Raising her voice again, she adds, “You can wear my stockings since yours have runs.”
I rush to throw my arms around her soft figure. “Oh Mother! Can I go, really?”
She laughs, hugging me, “Yes, but stay close to Sable. That’s a girl with a good head on her shoulders. Lily on the other hand…” Mother trails off and
