“What was that about water balloons?” I asked, striving for a friendly tone.
None of them spoke for a second and I stood there feeling intrusive. It took me a moment to realize I was staring at Honor. She was almost regal looking, the way she held her tall, slender frame. Her eyelashes were thick and unusually long like her brother’s and her eyes were startling, as green as jade.
“The boys and Honor put them water balloons atop the back door,” Hattie said, “so when Lucy, who was but four years old—”
“Five,” Lucy corrected her.
“When she give the door a little push,” Hattie said, “them balloons dropped down on her.”
“Oh.” I gave Lucy a sympathetic look. “It must have been hard to be the youngest.”
She shrugged, looking away from me. “It wasn’t bad,” she said.
“I’ll take care of that tea, Miss Tess,” Hattie said. “You git inside before you catch your death.”
“Will you be at the meeting today, Lucy?” I asked.
“Can’t,” she said, lifting her hand to study her pink fingernails. “I’m meeting some friends at the country club.”
“And I need to get back to my babies, Hattie,” Honor said, handing the sack of clothespins to her cousin.
“Nice meeting you, Honor,” I said, reaching for the door.
“You, too, ma’am,” she said.
I shut the door behind me and walked toward the kitchen window, listening, wondering if they were going to talk about me, but now the three of them spoke only in whispers. I felt ever so slightly betrayed by Hattie. Maybe, though, whatever she was saying was in my defense.
*
I expected the Ladies of the Homefront members to be around Ruth’s age, so I was shocked when I opened the front door to find Violet and several of her girlfriends standing on the landing. Violet looked equally surprised to see me. We simply stared at one another for a moment. I was first to recover.
“Please come in,” I said, stepping back with a smile. Although I’d seen Violet the two times I’d attended church, these were the first words I’d spoken to her. I felt bad for her and wanted to treat her kindly. “Miss Ruth and the others are in the living room.”
They walked past me without a word and I followed them into the living room. I doubted they realized how close I was behind them, because I heard Violet whisper to one of her friends, “I didn’t think she’d be here.” Her friend squeezed Violet’s shoulder in sympathy. “Just ignore her, dear,” she said. “Pretend she’s not even here.”
I wished I hadn’t agreed to come to the meeting, but it was too late now. I walked into the living room and sat down on the edge of one of the folding chairs that Hattie and Honor had set up. I sat there alone, my own false smile plastered on my face.
When all sixteen of the women were seated, Ruth took her place at the front of the room. Her navy blue skirt and jacket fit her slender body perfectly. Her white hair was freshly coiffed and she wore a pearl necklace as well as a small gold brooch that formed the initials LHF. Ladies of the Home Front. All of the women had one of those brooches, I noticed. All of them except me.
Ruth gave the women a welcoming smile as she stood in front of them, her hands folded together at her waist.
“As always,” she began, “it does my heart good to see young women at a Ladies of the Homefront meeting.” She smiled directly at Violet, who sat in the row in front of me and to my right. “Congratulations for recognizing the importance of maintaining our femininity in the face of the many modern forces trying to turn us into men,” she said. “We are the fortunate ones, of course. The ones who don’t have to put on trousers and do men’s work. But we all know that many other women are not so lucky. They’ve had to go to work in the factories and offices, taking over jobs our brave men cannot do right now. Through Ladies of the Home Front, we’re doing our part to prevent these girls from becoming hardened, chain-smoking women who’ve turned away from their Christian values and who will have forgotten their gentle natures by the time their poor husbands come home.” She prattled on and on about how we “Ladies of the Homefront” needed to help the hardened women hold on to their feminine values even as society seduced them to become more masculine.
I kept glancing at Violet. I couldn’t help myself. She seemed enraptured by every word from Ruth’s mouth. With that pale, silky hair and delicate features and ivory skin, she was simply one of the most stunning creatures I’d ever seen. Despite Henry’s denials to Ruth about caring for Violet, how could he not be captivated by her? I thought of how easily he had fallen into bed with me. Had he also slept with her, perhaps many times over the years? She’d probably been much smarter than me, finding a way to protect herself from getting pregnant.
One of Violet’s friends raised her hand and Ruth acknowledged her with a nod.
“I saw a girl I used to pal around with the other day,” the girl said. “She used to be so lovely, but she had to go to work in one of the hosiery mills and I barely recognized her. She was wearing dungarees on the street and smoking. Her fingernails were actually yellow. I talked to her for a while and she said she likes her job, that she has no intention of quitting when her husband comes home. Isn’t that worrisome? Sometimes I think this is a flood we can’t stop, Miss Ruth.”
“Well,” Ruth said, “I don’t pretend to think we can stop it in every case, but we can let women know we’re here for them and they’re not alone.”
Another woman, this one middle-aged with short salt-and-pepper hair, raised her hand. “My niece is a nurse,” she said, and my ears instantly pricked up. “Now, the truth of the matter is, we need nurses, don’t we? We need nurses and teachers and librarians and other female occupations. So I think our challenge is helping those women—the ones who do the jobs we desperately need—we need to help them resist the pressures that come along with being a working woman as well as a wife and mother.”
I didn’t hear the conversation that followed because I wasn’t really listening. I was caught up in the fact that this woman had a niece who was a nurse. Did she live nearby? I would love to meet her, someone who would probably be more like me than anyone I’d met so far.
Everyone gathered in the dining room after the meeting, pouring themselves cups of tea and nibbling cookies from china plates.
I approached the woman with the salt-and-pepper hair. “Excuse me,” I said to her. “I was curious about your niece. Is she an RN? A registered nurse?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I believe she is.”
“I wonder if I could meet her,” I said. “I have my nursing degree, though I still need to take the licensing exam to become an RN. I’d enjoy getting to know—”
“Tess, dear.” Ruth was suddenly at my side, her perfume at war with the scent of tea and cookies. “Could you come into the kitchen with me for a moment, please?”