“Back so soon? No villainous Ford inspectors to thwart today?”
Jane shook her head. “Today I was translating—trying to explain …” Ebbely, sensing a need to talk, motioned her to take Fritz’s chair. “May I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why is color so important?”
“Whatever are you talking about, child?”
“I know whenever you call me ‘child’ in that way you think I am really being stupid.”
Ebbely reached over, patted her hands clasped in her lap. “No, not stupid, my dear—perhaps surprising might be more appropriate. What do you mean by ‘color’ exactly?”
“There are so many black men now and many of the people who had the beds before them are angry and afraid—today one of the immigrant women hid her children and wouldn’t tell me where because she was certain the savages would eat them.”
“That bad, eh?”
“Yes.” Hesitating, Jane smoothed the broad pleat of her skirt. “Ebbely—is black always frightening?”
“What an intriguing thought. Possibly. But then we mortals are such slaves to color in general.”
“How?”
“We identify the sexes—by pretty pink and very dependable blue. For morality, white always signifies good; black—evil. We mourn in black, yet shrouds are white. Because they have no pigment, albinos are frightening; Negroes perhaps because they have too much? If one’s skin turns yellow, one’s blood is tainted.”
Captured by his own train of thought, Ebbely took fire. “Lavender is for sweet-scented sachets, but deep purple is for evil witches and sorcerers. To entice, sweetest sugar is white—coffee a bitter brown—perhaps just enough a degree away from black for us to accept it. Even red has its subtle connotations. Blood, bright crimson when alive, when congealed—becoming dark. The heart is pure red on Valentine’s Day but the darkest shade of scarlet is given to women who have strayed.”
Suddenly embarrassed, Ebbely avoided further questioning by asking Jane why she hadn’t discussed such weighty concerns with her husband instead of him.
“I couldn’t wait until he got home. Anyway—when you explain things I can understand the real meaning not just the words. Like that spiritual you showed me—I didn’t just hear it—I felt it.”
After the first wave of patriotic frenzy and while the nation waited for an adequate expeditionary force to be assembled, supplied and trained—most of the population resumed their daily lives with but minor adjustment to being at war. Wives saved extra pennies in pickle jars marked liberty bonds, made do with voluntary meatless days, even wheatless ones. As the latter concerned only the conservation of bleached flour, Hannah reigned supreme, offering to teach some of her more Americanized chaperone-Watchers how they too could make her famous rye bread and best yet, her blackest pumpernickel.
Morgana’s sightless precision rolling bandages for the Red Cross encouraged both Rosie and Henrietta to volunteer. Not to be outdone and rather envious of their white uniforms and nunlike head scarves emblazoned with bright red crosses her sister Serafina sacrificed two mornings a week to join them, announcing that if she gave any more time to the victory effort her father’s import liquor business would fail as she and she alone knew how to keep his books. When Peter wouldn’t allow Dora to replace a man by becoming a trolley girl, she bested him by taking the vacated place of a young butcher’s apprentice called to the draft. Soon her specialty of highly spiced pork sausages had a fame all their own in Polishtown.
Feeling it was time to do his patriotic duty, Ebbely gave up the road, went into partnership with the manufacturer of the ugly bloomers, secured a government contract to supply the US Army with its long winter underwear. His financial future assured, he decided to dedicate himself to lifting the spirits of the troops “to be,” as he put it. Though music was supposed to calm the savage beast—henceforth he would use it to rally young men to fight for love and glory for this, his Promised Land.
Early one morning, his Lizzie impatient to be off and running, he kissed Hannah a fleeting good-bye, vowed to ring-a-ling, and with a bundle of sheet music and his new banjo by his side sped off to rouse the youth of America at Camp Funston—in the far-off land of Kansas.
As every woman now wanted at least a hint of visual soldiering, the uniform look became so fashionable. Jane was kept busy sewing military-looking edging on lapels and cuffs on travel costumes and day wear, shortening skirts to the new wartime length of one-eighth of an inch above a lady’s anklebone. As the momentum of preparation for war increased—so did Jane’s dressmaking business flourish.
Michael too caught the war bug. With an upside-down colander strapped to his head—a broken broom handle as firepower—he fought the good fight shooting Huns in the back yard. While his brother silently watched, Michael shouted waging war with his best friend Gregory from across the street.
“Bang, bang, you’re dead!”
“No, I’m not!” Gregory shouted back.
“Yes, you are!”
“No, I’m not!”
“You’re a Hun. Bang! Now you’re dead!”
“No, I’m not!”
“But I kill-ed you!”
That evening when she told John—at first he laughed then frowned saying he did not approve of his son playing at war.
“But, John—everywhere—everyone is talking of nothing else. All the boys in the neighborhood are playing soldier and all the girls are Red Cross nurses.”
“What the others do is not my concern—war is not a game and I will not have a son of mine thinking it is. Is he still awake?”
“Yes.”
Having learned that even when not absolutely real any and all killing was wrong even when necessarily right, this last part of his father’s lesson he found very confusing; still as his hero had said it—Michael knew it must be right and accepted with glee his father’s consolation gift of new drawing paper, a whole box of watercolors with even a brush—and from then on busied himself painting colorful explosions.
As they had been doing since 1916, more and more university students left to join the British and French forces, becoming the first fighter pilots in the first war that reached its killing potential up into the sky.
Jane forever fascinated by what was beyond her immediate horizon wondered what it must be like to become a bird, see the earth below from its perspective. What an amazing concept—what a breathtaking invention it was that lifted men from their earth allowing them such borderless freedom. When she asked John what he thought of the new fascination of flight—his enthusiasm was as informative as it had been for the Paris sewers.
“It’s reconnaissance, Ninnie, the first time in a war when photographs taken from above can be used for identifying the terrain. As the horseless carriage …” John smiled remembering her first use of the expression. “… has done away with horses, so will the flying machine do away with carrier pigeons.”