THROUGH THE CHURCH’s narrow windows, Edna could see the ladies from the Preparedness Committee lining up chairs and putting out leaflets. No one else had arrived and she didn’t like to be the first to walk in. Instead she went around behind the church and found herself in a dismal little cemetery, bereft of the comforting canopy of trees, without so much as a bench or a ledge where she might sit. Two of the graves were new; it gave her an uneasy feeling to see the dirt mounded up so lightly. She would have preferred a more solid barrier between the dead and the living: a carpet of grass, a thorny rose-bush.
Edna reached in her pocket for the leaflet she’d picked up at the train station. She’d been carrying it every day, until it was creased and creased again, but she hadn’t shown it to anyone. The idea of someone like Edna boarding a ship for France seemed so far-fetched that she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. She could only hold the notion in her imagination, like a dream she was in danger of forgetting, until tonight, when any girl in possession of that leaflet was invited to come and join the effort.
She took three turns around the cemetery, staying just out of sight until she heard voices and knew that a few others had arrived. It was early in the evening by that time, at the blue hour just before winter’s early sunset, when the lights dimmed and the lamps inside the church glowed yellow through the windows. She walked around to the entrance and was met by a woman at a card table taking down names. Edna gave hers and accepted another copy of the leaflet she already had.
As she looked around the room, she at once felt uneasy and out of place. If there was another factory girl present, Edna didn’t recognize her. This was a convivial crowd of well-to-do young women in fur-trimmed coats and good hats. Were these the women who went to war? None of them looked particularly suited to it.
Along one wall was a table filled with trays of cookies, sandwiches, and teapots, but Edna noticed that no one else took anything to eat and thought that perhaps it wasn’t done in their circles.
She was standing in the very back of the room, uncertain as to whether she ought to stay or leave, when she felt a hand on her elbow. She turned to see a cheerful, round face, framed in blond curls. The woman wore a plain dress-suit of gray wool twill, but Edna had the idea that it had required some effort to find anything so somber in her closet.
“Are you Edna?” she said. “Oh, I know you are, because I ran over and looked at the list after you signed in. You have what my father calls a seriousness of purpose. You belong with us, I just know you do.”
Edna couldn’t help but feel cheered by that little speech. No one had ever come right out and told her that she belonged anywhere.
“I want to do my part” was all she could think to say.
“And you will! I’m Ruby. How rude of me. Come sit with us right in the front. I insist. You’re my guest now.” She put her arm through Edna’s, and they walked together like sisters to the very front row, where Ruby deposited her in a chair alongside several similarly polished young women. “Make friends!” she called, and ran to the refreshments table, returning almost instantly with two cups of tea and enough cookies to pass around. “No one ever eats at these things, and I don’t know why. It’s such a waste. If we’re not going to eat them, we should send them to France, shouldn’t we?”
That provoked a round of easy laughter among Ruby’s friends, and then it was time to bow their heads and hear a prayer for the fighting men in France. After that, a woman introduced only as Mrs. Roberts took the podium and gave a short speech. She spoke in a resonant voice accustomed to elocution.
“There are those who insist this isn’t our country’s fight. There are those who say that our duty is to our homeland, and that the best we can do is to fill a barrel with old coats and send it over. But every woman here knows better.”
She gave a definitive nod as she said it, and was rewarded with a chorus of applause. Edna looked around at all the young and beautifully turned-out women in the room and wondered again if she had a place among them.
“Then there are those who do their part by rolling bandages and sending cheques to the relief groups and knitting socks. That’s just fine, for those who want to do it. With such terrible shortages, every dollar makes a difference. The men freeze in the trenches and the hospitals run out of supplies. The needs are endless, and there are those who want to put themselves to the task of meeting those needs. That’s fine work, but every woman here wants to do more.”
Another cheer, louder this time, went around the room. Edna felt herself swept up in it.
“And we can do more, but we must train and organize and prepare ourselves. Everyone here must consider carefully what she has to offer. Paris is overfull of women who are eager to help but haven’t the training. So I ask you: Can you dress a wound? Can you run an automobile? Can you work at the telephone switches? Because this is what the English and the French are calling for. If you can knit, stay at home and do it from here. If you can go around and collect donations, then by all means do that. But if you have something to offer the soldiers”—here a little laughter went around the room—“other than your pretty little face and a kind word, but something of substance, then you are wanted in France, and we shall be sure that you go.”
Edna stood with everyone else to applaud, although she didn’t know, at that moment, what she might do to be of service to France. She couldn’t dress a wound or run an automobile.
A stack of cards went around, and they were asked to mark the skills they had to offer. Edna was relieved to find a dozen or more boxes she could check, from canning and cooking, to sewing, to factory work and the operation of small machinery. She was surprised to see that Ruby and her friends marked almost nothing.
“Why, we’ve never had a cook who would let us anywhere near the kitchen,” Ruby said, as she watched Edna fill in her card. “I don’t know how you managed to learn all of it.”
“It isn’t difficult,” Edna said, “if you just want a chop in a pan and some potatoes.”
“That’ll suit the soldiers just fine, I imagine,” Ruby said. “But you know, in spite of all her talk, Mrs. Roberts won’t stop any of us from going. She just wants us to take a few Red Cross classes first, and that’s no trouble. When would you like to sail?”
“Sail?” Edna hadn’t considered that she might just step on board a boat and go.
“Well, you have to pick a date. Oh, you haven’t turned your card over.” Ruby flipped the card around and showed her the reverse. On it were four dates over the next few months, along with the names of the ships and, next to that, two numbers:
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