蜜芽传媒

EVACUATION 鈥� THERE AND BACK

My mother kissed me goodbye on my wet cheek, pinned a hankie to my blue coat and left me in a room full of screaming children. All of us were waiting to be chosen by foster parents. 鈥淢ummy,鈥� I pleaded. I tried to find her, but couldn鈥檛 push through the crowd. I was four years old and too small, and she was gone.

We were evacuees, most of us from London, joining the eight hundred thousand children already relocated, my big sister among them. My little brother would be next, two years from now, when he was four and old enough.

Evacuation was supposed to spare us from the war, but looking out my new bedroom window, I see black silhouettes in the night sky and jagged blasts of orange and red flames: Spitfires and Hurricanes fighting the Messerschmitts, all of them trying to protect their fat, black bombers. I hear ack-ack guns firing up from the ground: sharp, shattering sounds of white light. I feel the vibrations, like the beat of a big drum, pounding through my body and I am part of the battle for the sky. Sometimes, when the sirens scream, my legs won鈥檛 walk to the window, and I slide under my bed and curl into a tiny ball, hoping the floorboards will open up and I will disappear. And every morning I gaze at the sky and wonder why it isn鈥檛 broken.

Watching is always better than hiding in air raid shelters, breathing in other people鈥檚 fear: the dark damp holes in the ground, the closets under the stairs, or the Morrison shelter, an iron coffin, a trap inside the house. Or wearing a gas mask sucking the air from my body, like a giant pillow pressed over my face. I never cry though. When you鈥檙e terrified, you can鈥檛 cry. Fear devours all other emotions.

Most foster parents didn鈥檛 want us evacuees. If they had space, the government compelled them to take us, and gave them an allowance, and precious food and clothing coupons to compensate. I stayed with three different foster parents. The first were old and kind. They lived in a one-bedroom cottage and told me fairy stories in front of the fire. But when my mother saw that I slept in the cupboard under the stairs, and that a 鈥榤eal鈥� consisted of jam and bread, she demanded I be placed elsewhere. So I was. But I refused to say goodbye, as if saying goodbye would make it real. You weren鈥檛 allowed to cry, you had to 鈥渃ome along now,鈥� and 鈥渂e a good girl.鈥�

My second foster parents had two children of their own, a boy and girl, about five years older than I. Nobody wanted me, I could tell. They never said hello and I ate my dry bread alone in the kitchen, and used the dark, spidery lavatory in the garden. The mother was always angry, and slapped me and shook me, and shut me in a room full of boxes and creatures that live in the dark. I missed the cozy cupboard under the stairs. I stole raw potatoes and worried I would go to hell, and picked the leaves off the hawthorn bush, tiny green shiny leaves from wild bushes in the lane. The taste was bitter, like the potatoes, but the chewing satisfying. I wanted to run away, home to my mother, but didn鈥檛 know how, or where home was.

Bombs found my second foster parent鈥檚 home. I was in church when they dropped, shattering the windows, scattering the worshippers. In silent beauty the colored glass flew around me, fast and slow at the same time, then fell to the floor, like a broken rainbow. The nuns who brought me walked me home. The closer we came, the stranger the house looked. In fact, except for the front walls and a birdcage swinging in the window frame, it had almost disappeared. I looked, but didn鈥檛 see the bird. I didn鈥檛 see the family either. We walked in hurried silence past the broken house, the only sound the nuns rosary beads swishing with their habits, my mind filled with so many questions I couldn鈥檛 utter a word. I felt sick from the smell of wet smoke coming up from the bricks.

I moved that day to my third foster home of strangers. We met in their kitchen, the mother and father and their grown-up daughter, whose dark eyes protruded from her empty face. A cloud of gray enveloped the house and the people who lived there, the only color a square of green grass outside the kitchen window, with purple flowers in the dirt border.

This mother did say hello, but her arms were folded across her chest, like nuns when they are angry. The father looked up at me, raising an eyebrow and noisily cleared his throat of phlegm. Did they know about the bombed house? I wouldn鈥檛 tell. They didn鈥檛 say anything. Or maybe they thought I should have been there when the bomb dropped.

There were no toys, no books, no games. Curfew and black-out forced you to stay in your room, alone. Every night of silence I tried to put myself to sleep by thinking of my own family, imagining what they looked like, waiting for them to take me home. I dressed them well, not in the rags I wore, and pretended we were together again, laughing and cuddling and eating soft-boiled eggs with golden yokes in our beautiful warm house.

Sometimes, during my night watch, searchlights would sweep over the sky, piercing the dark with white streams of light and the airplanes appeared as pale shadows and their bursts of fire, gray smoke. My night show now spoiled, I discovered war could be exciting, much better than the nothingness eating away at my insides while I waited for something to happen.

For almost five years I watched the night sky, alone, in breathless wonder from my window, or hid in holes in the ground and closets under the stairs, listening to the thunderous sounds in ice-cold terror. And then the bombing changed. Instead of airplanes, V-1 then V-2 rockets came streaking through the sky. There were no air-raid warnings. The rules were gone. You must hold your breath and listen with all your senses. When the V-1 rocket engines stop their whistling sound, you count in the waiting silence: one thousand and one, one thousand and two鈥攊f you get to one thousand and three, you are still alive. The V-2 rockets tore through the sky in fierce silence, until they hit the ground.

Then, just as I thought war would be my life forever, I was told it was over. I could go home. Worrisome thoughts tormented me: my mother didn鈥檛 know where I was, the war wasn鈥檛 really over. Then Patsy, my sister arrived at the door to fetch me. She was all grown up, with pink lipstick and long curly hair, and her clothes were clean, almost new. But I knew it was she from her friendly smile, and the way she called me 鈥淛oanie,鈥� and squeezed my sticky hand. Patsy threw my wrapped rags into a rubbish bin at the railroad station, promising to give me some of her clothes. I closed my eyes so Patsy would not see my tears.
The train to London was packed with children, all of us jubilant at our new freedom.

蜜芽传媒 was only six stations away, so close. Buses and trucks roared by us stirring up grit in the gutters and making soiled newspapers fly. We walked past holes in the ground and propped up buildings to our street of cement air-raid shelters and its vacant lot covered in rubble, and front gardens full of weeds. The world stopped and started again to the sound of my pounding heart. This couldn鈥檛 be it, something was wrong. Where was the street I had dreamt about, longed for? Patsy opened the door to our house and we walked to the living room. Torn wallpaper exposed the walls lath skeleton.

My mother and my brother were waiting for me, my father was away. We stared at each other, wordlessly: more strangers. And I was the last to come home.

That night my mother drew me a hot steamy bath, and poured in pink crystals, scented like roses. My first real bath. Then she began to undress me. I pulled away, mortified, 鈥� Mummy, I鈥檓 a big girl now.鈥� I could tell that I hurt her, but I had to say it. Four when evacuated, I was nine now. Her hand dropped from my shoulder and lowering her head, my mother left, quietly closing the door behind her. I sat in the bath long after the water turned cold, shivering.

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