A Woman's Place Read online

  “You trying to change the subject on me, Miss Helen?”

  “In fact, I may not get dressed at all today. Who’s going to see me? It’s the nurses’ day off, and my parents never have any visitors. All their friends are either dead or too old to make sick calls.”

  “Why don’t you invite some of your own friends over?”

  Helen stood and carried her plate to the sink without replying. She didn’t have any friends—but that was by choice.

  “If you don’t mind, Minnie, I think I’ll listen to the radio in your sitting room. I need to hide in there until after noon in case Father feels well enough to putter around downstairs today. He’ll want to know why I’m playing hooky from church, and I don’t feel like explaining why I no longer believe in God.”

  “Miss Helen! I don’t believe a word you say. You know perfectly well there’s a God.”

  “Well, if there is, then my father is the spitting image of Him. They’re both rich, both powerful, and they both like to order people around like pawns in a chess game. Neither one of them has ever shown much love, and any decisions they’ve ever made for me suited their own interests, not mine. Together, they’ve ruined my life.”

  Minnie gazed at Helen in disbelief. “Now you got me good and worried, Miss Helen. I been working here more than twenty years, and I ain’t never heard you talk this way before.”

  “Even though Father knows he’s dying, his heart hasn’t softened in the least. I resigned from my teaching job and rented my home to tenants so I could move in here and take care of him and Mother, and he hasn’t shown one ounce of gratitude. He orders me around like I’m one of the servants, and he argues with me over every little thing.”

  “He ain’t feeling well, Miss Helen—”

  “So he wants everyone else to feel just as miserable. He’s unfailingly grouchy, demanding, and ungrateful. Every single day he reminds me that he’s leaving his fortune to me. I got so fed up yesterday that I told him I planned to give away every last cent of it and live a simple life. I just might do it, too.”

  “Ain’t so simple living a simple life,” Minnie said. “Being poor is hard work. Being a poor colored person is even harder. I don’t recommend you try it, Miss Helen.”

  “I almost did it once, you know, when I was younger. I nearly gave all of this up for love.”

  “And I’ll bet you’re glad that you didn’t. Nothing good happens when you think with your heart instead of your head, let me tell you.”

  “Maybe you’re right. … But it’s too late now. I’ll never know.” And Helen would have to live with what might have been for the rest of her life.

  Minnie chopped the potatoes into quarters and spread them in the roasting pan with the meat and carrots and onions. “This here will be done cooking at twelve-thirty,” she said as she slid the pan into the oven. “But you and me ain’t done having this conversation about believing in God, Miss Helen.” She untied her apron and hung it on the kitchen door, then shoved her arms into her coat sleeves. “My granddaughter’s gonna be here any minute to take me to church. And you better know I’ll be praying for you today.”

  “Don’t waste your prayers on me, Minnie. The doctors say that my parents haven’t much time left. Pray for them instead.”

  “Gonna pray for all of you,” she said. She closed the back door behind her.

  Helen hid in the servants’ den all morning, but her father didn’t come downstairs. At noon she finally went upstairs to get dressed, then took Minnie’s roast beef out of the oven and carried a tray of food to her father. She walked into his room and out of it again before he had a chance to say a word to her. She picked at her own plate of food for a while, sitting alone in the kitchen, wishing Minnie was there to keep her company. Then Helen cut pieces of meat and potatoes and carrots into tiny pieces and took another tray into her mother’s bedroom.

  “Do you want me to help you with this?” Helen asked.

  Her mother cupped her hand to her ear. “Pardon me?”

  “Do you need help eating?”

  “No, I can do it. And you don’t have to shout.”

  Helen sat in the chair beside her mother’s bed, drumming her fingers on the armrest. The long afternoon stretched endlessly before her. “Would you like me to read to you?” she finally asked.

  “What did you say?”

  “Never mind.” Helen would have to shout to be heard and would end up hoarse. She longed to do something, to take charge, but she was helpless, trapped in a silent, loveless house, waiting for everyone to die.

  When she could no longer stand the aching silence, Helen carried the radio from the sitting room into her mother’s bedroom and tuned it to a channel that played classical music. Halfway through the first movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the music halted abruptly.

  “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin.” The announcer’s grave voice made Helen’s heart speed up. “A spokesman at the White House has just confirmed that shortly before eight o’clock this morning, Hawaiian time, the nation of Japan launched a surprise air attack on U.S. military installations on the island of Oahu. All of the principal American military bases in the Hawaiian Islands were struck, including the United States’ Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor.”

  “What did he say?” Helen’s mother asked.

  “Nothing.” Helen quickly turned off the radio. “There’s something wrong with the transmission. Technical difficulties.”

  Helen’s mother had mere months to live. Why burden her last days with news like this, especially after all of the other losses she’d suffered in her lifetime? Helen could hardly comprehend the news herself. If it was true, then America was about to become involved in another war. The carnage and destruction of the Great War would be repeated, like a returning nightmare. The first war had shifted Helen’s life from its foundations. A second war just might complete the destruction.

  “Maybe you should take a little nap,” she told her mother. Helen helped her get settled beneath the mountain of blankets, then carried the radio into the den and turned it on again.

  “… Several battleships and destroyers are in flames, and the injured are pouring into emergency facilities. There are reports of sailors trapped in their berths in the sinking ships, still asleep when the first wave of enemy aircraft struck without warning. The unofficial death toll stands at more than nine hundred and is expected to rise.”

  Helen listened in stunned silence for more than half an hour before finally turning off the radio for good. How could a loving God allow such a disaster to happen? How could He stand by and watch as helpless men died in their bunks? If He wasn’t able to stop something this evil from happening, then He wasn’t very powerful. And if God could have stopped the carnage but had chosen not to, then Helen didn’t see why she was expected to trust Him.

  “Where were you when all this was going on?” she asked aloud. But there was no God to hear her question, much less answer it.

  * Rosa *

  Rosa Bonelli awoke with a humdinger of a hangover. The sun had climbed above the apartment building across the street, and as the light shoved its way into her room, it sent a bolt of pain straight through her head. She squinted at the alarm clock beside her bed. Ten-thirty in the morning. What day was it? Sunday? Oh, for crying out loud! Rosa had to be at work in an hour, and her head felt like it was about to crack open like an egg.

  She crawled out of bed, pulled on a bathrobe over her underclothes, and lurched out to the kitchen, hoping to find some tomato juice. The spindly kitchen table had enough liquor bottles on it to start a small nightclub, but there was nothing in the refrigerator except a sour smell. Rosa cursed and closed the door, leaning against it for support.

  She wondered where Mona, her worthless excuse for a mother, was. Then she remembered that Mona was working the breakfast shift for a friend today. Rosa ransacked the cupboards for a bag of coffee and the percolator, careful not to bang the cupboard doors too hard and mak
e her headache worse. The percolator had just started to burble when Mona’s latest deadbeat boyfriend, Bob Something-Or-Other, appeared in the kitchen doorway in his boxers and undershirt.

  “Hey, what’s all the racket out here?” He grinned, showing his misshapen teeth. “You killing roaches or something?”

  “Nope, just making coffee.” Rosa quickly turned away, tying her bathrobe closed. She didn’t like the way Bob always looked her over like he was undressing her with his eyes. She had sized him up as a creep the day he’d moved in, and she’d felt uneasy around him ever since—especially when Mona wasn’t home. Rosa had known from day one that he’d never be a father to her. She had waited in vain all of her twenty-two years for one of Mona’s many boyfriends to step up and be a father to her. It hadn’t happened yet.

  “You want a cup of this when it’s finished?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure.” Bob didn’t move from the doorway. “Dang, but you sure are a pretty little thing.”

  She wanted to smack him with a frying pan, but Mona didn’t own one. Rosa knew she needed to get dressed and out of there before big-eyed Bob started getting ideas. She quickly found two mugs in the cluttered sink and rinsed them out.

  “I gotta get ready for work while this finishes brewing,” she told him. “Excuse me.” She tried to slip out of the kitchen, but Bob blocked her path.

  “Whoa, whoa. What’s your hurry, Rosie?”

  “It’s Rosa, not Rosie. And I gotta be at work in less than an hour.”

  “Seems like you’re always running off somewhere. Can’t we sit down and visit a little bit? Make friends?”

  “Maybe another day.” She had half a mind to tell him that they could be friends when pigs learned to fly, but she didn’t want to make him mad with Mona gone. She tried to squeeze past him again, but he grabbed her arm.

  “I know you like a good time, Rosie. I seen you running around the clubs every night. You and me could have a lot of fun together now that Mona’s at work.”

  “I said, some other time!”

  Bob was a big guy and, judging by the grip he had on her arm, very strong. Rosa’s heart began to pound harder than her head—and it took a lot to make Rosa Bonelli afraid. She tried to think what to do, but her hung-over brain wasn’t working yet. Bob mistook her hesitation for interest and pulled her close.

  “Come here, babe … .”

  “No! Let go of me, you big jerk!” She lifted her knee as hard as she could, and Bob grunted in pain, doubling over. As soon as she felt Bob’s grip loosen, Rosa twisted free and ran to her bedroom, slamming the door and locking it. Thank God it had a lock! She heard Bob lumbering down the hallway, right behind her. He pounded on the door as if trying to smash it down.

  “Let me in, you little tease! You can’t prance around in your underwear every morning and then tell me you ain’t interested! Open the door!”

  Rosa yelled back, telling him exactly where he could go as she scrambled into her waitress uniform and shoes. Any minute now either the lock or the door was going to break, and the big goon would be inside. The only other way out was through her bedroom window and down the fire escape. She tugged the window open and looked down. Dirty city snow blanketed New York, and judging by the gust of cold air that slapped her in the face, the temperature was below freezing. She had no way to retrieve her coat and gloves from the front closet.

  Bob began to curse as he pounded on the door. “Open up or I’ll kick the blasted door in!”

  Rosa grabbed a sweater and climbed over the windowsill, making her way down the wobbling fire escape, doing her best to ignore the five-story drop. Particles of rust flaked off on her hands as she gripped the railing. She hoped the rickety old steps would hold her weight.

  Suddenly they ended, and she had to drop the last six feet to the ground. Her knees were shaking so hard they gave out, and she collapsed onto the sidewalk in a heap. People stared at her as if she’d just escaped from the loony bin. She could imagine what she looked like with half-buttoned clothes and uncombed hair and no coat. She didn’t care. Rosa scrambled to her feet again, worried that Bob might chase after her. She took off at a run, jogging the four blocks to the restaurant where Mona worked.

  “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re out of luck,” Mona said when she saw Rosa. “I’m not giving you any more money.”

  “I’m not here for money,” Rosa said through chattering teeth. “I just had a narrow escape from your darling Bob. He tried to grab me and—”

  “Were you flirting with him? I know how you like to flirt, Rosa. I told you you’d get yourself in trouble someday.”

  “I wasn’t flirting! I was trying to make a pot of coffee, and he came after me!”

  “I don’t believe you. Bob isn’t like that.”

  “Hey! Did you notice that I don’t even have a coat on? I had to climb down the blasted fire escape to avoid being raped!”

  “I don’t have time for all your carrying-on, Rosa. I got customers waiting. What do you want from me?”

  “What do I want? For starters, I could have used a father for the past twenty-two years. Someone to watch out for me and protect me from creeps like Bob. But I suppose that’s too much to ask.”

  Rosa whirled away before Mona could reply and ran for the door, grabbing a customer’s coat off the rack on her way out. It was a long walk to the diner where she worked, and she had plenty of time to get her tears under control before she arrived. She would go back to the apartment for her clothes and things when she was sure that Bob wasn’t home, but she made up her mind to move out for good. She couldn’t live there anymore.

  “Hey, do you know anyone who’s looking for a roommate?” she asked her friend Lorraine when she finally arrived at work. Business was slow, too early for the servicemen from the nearby navy base to arrive, so Rosa and Lorraine had time to talk.

  “I can squeeze you in my place somewhere,” Lorraine said after she’d heard Rosa’s story. She handed her a handkerchief to dry her eyes. “My place is small, but we can figure something out. You can’t live with a jerk like Bob, that’s for sure.”

  Lorraine loaned Rosa some makeup and a hairbrush. It took a long time for her hands to stop shaking so she could pour coffee. She eyed the door nervously all day, worried that Bob would show up, looking for revenge. She thought her shift would never end.

  Halfway through the afternoon, the guy from the pretzel stand on the corner burst into the diner, shouting loud enough for the whole world to hear. “Hey, did you hear the news? They just interrupted the Giants game—the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor this morning! They tried to sink the whole U.S. fleet!”

  “Aw, you’re crazy,” a customer at the counter said. “Japanese planes can’t fly that far. They’d run out of fuel.”

  “Well, they sure as shootin’ did! Turn on a radio and see for yourself.”

  Rosa brought the check to a group of sailors in a booth, pausing to flirt with them so they’d leave her a big tip. Then she hurried to the pass-though window to listen as the cook turned on the radio in the kitchen. Static hissed like frying hamburgers, then the news announcer’s voice finally tuned in:

  “… in Pearl Harbor where the United States was attacked early this morning. The battleship Arizona, the West Virginia, and as many as nineteen other ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet have been damaged or sunk. The Japanese also destroyed more than one hundred eighty American fighter planes parked on the tarmac. The death toll is close to one thousand and rising … .”

  “Holy smokes!” the cook breathed. “We’re in this war for sure now. I may as well head on down and enlist.”

  Rosa leaned against the counter, her strength draining from her legs for the second time that day. But Bob’s clumsy attack was nothing compared to this one.

  “I don’t want to believe it’s true,” Lorraine said. She and Rosa clung to each other, listening to the grim news.

  “… The attack on Pearl Harbor has effectively crippled the American fleet, leaving th
e United States vulnerable to further attacks. President Roosevelt is expected to ask Congress for a declaration of war—” The cook shut off the radio in disgust.

  “I’m a mess,” Lorraine said, wiping her tear-streaked mascara on her apron. “Come on, let’s take a break.” She pulled Rosa into the ladies’ room.

  Rosa leaned against the tiled wall, staring at her hollow-eyed reflection in the dingy mirror. “You know what, Lorraine? I’m sick and tired of not knowing which way things are gonna go when I wake up every morning. My life is like riding the Scrambler at Coney Island: All I can do is hang on tight while it spins me in circles and shifts direction every other second.”

  “The Scrambler’s great if you got a cute guy to hang on to.”

  “Yeah, but at the moment, I got no one. I’m sick and tired of all the bumps and turns, tired of working dead-end jobs and fighting off creeps like Bob. I can’t count on anyone or anything to be there tomorrow. Sure, some of the sailors I dated swore up and down that they loved me, but they didn’t stick around any longer than my mother’s worthless boyfriends do. And now this—a sneak attack, another war. Everything’s gonna change.”

  Lorraine blotted her lipstick with a paper towel. “Maybe we should join the WACs or something.”

  “Nah, they make you keep your room clean and get up real early in the morning.” Rosa poked at her hair, tucking some loose strands beneath her hairnet. “I know life isn’t a fairy tale with a happy ending, but I’m really not asking for much in life—just a nice guy who loves me.”

  “Yeah, and maybe a cottage in the woods, like Snow White.”

  “With my luck, I’m gonna wind up with the seven dwarves instead of the prince.”

  “Hey, Rosa, your customer needs more coffee,” one of the other waitresses told her as she and Lorraine emerged from the bathroom.

  “So what else is new?” Rosa sighed and picked up the coffeepot. Even when life threw curve balls, some things never changed. If only the carnival ride would end so she could go home with her handsome prince.

  * Jean *

  Jean Erickson sat in the Majestic Theater, holding her boyfriend’s hand, but her thoughts kept straying from the Sunday matinee movie to the essay that she needed to write for tomorrow’s history class. She silently composed her arguments as the film Sergeant York played across the screen.