said, ‘I need you to ask someone. You know lots of people. Tell them I’m a very good worker and I’m available to start immediately. And I know French. And I’m not afraid of blood.’
I didn’t think I was afraid of blood.
Uncle Fish stood up and put on his top hat.
‘This calls for some thought,’ he said, ‘and thinking calls for lunch.’
So he offered me his arm, and Simeon stood back as I swept by him, in case of continuing fireworks. We went to Child’s restaurant for corned beef hash and fried eggs.
I asked about Cousin Addie. Cousin Addie, he told me, was quite the talk of Duluth. She had tried to join the marines, but when she realized all they were offering was work as a stenographer, she had used strong language to the recruiting sergeant and then gone directly to the bank to organize her own war work.
She had bought four large gasoline-powered vehicles for a mobile hospital and was having them shipped to France at her own expense. Better yet, she was going with them. I was hurt that Cousin Addie hadn’t thought to invite me along. Especially as I’d written her a letter and explained we were made of the same stuff. Her mobile hospital was going to have an operating theater, with its own lighting generator and a laundry and a disinfection unit, and it was all in trucks that could be driven to forward positions. Uncle Israel said she wouldn’t see change out of twelve thousand dollars.
I asked him if I had twelve thousand dollars.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Have some peach pie. Girls like pie.’
But I was eager to be off to the Red Cross. It seemed to me that once they realized I was kin to Addie Minkel of Duluth I’d be on the next boat to France.
I said, ‘Uncle, how long would you say it might take a person to learn to drive a truck?’
‘Pops,’ he said, ‘I’m going to introduce you to Max Brickner’s wife at Surgical Dressings. I can’t be party to anything that might lead to getting shelled or sunk, so don’t ask me. As it is, I have the feeling I’m never going to hear the end of this from your Ma. And anything that incommodes Dora has a habit of turning right round and incommoding me.’
Red Cross headquarters was all comings and goings. Telephones rang, vehicles arrived and left, and Isabel Brickner’s hair had worked loose from its pins.
‘Of course I can use you,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you answer that telephone?’
I took a message about surgical scrubs while Mrs Brickner searched for shipment manifests and sent an avalanche of papers onto the floor. Uncle Israel looked on, smiling.
‘Looks like you could do with a filing clerk, Isabel,’ he said, ‘and Poppy’s a good little tidier-up.’
Mrs Brickner straightened up and looked at me.
I didn’t even allow her time to open her mouth.
‘No I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m a hopeless tidier. But I’m strong and healthy and I want to do something for the boys at the front.’
‘Do you, Poppy?’ she said. ‘Then take off your coat, roll up your sleeves, and report to Room 19.’
And so I began the next stage of my war effort. I sat at a long table with a dozen other girls, rolling cotton bandages and singing songs.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching
I spy the Kaiser at the door
But we’ll get a lemon pie and squash it in his eye
Then there won’t be a Kaiser anymore
It was after five o’clock by the time I finished my turn at the Red Cross and boarded a trolley-car to go home and face Ma. The sun was still shining and I felt full of energy. Some of the girls said it was boring work but I thought it was the greatest fun. You were allowed to make coffee and talk, about anything at all, even beaux. And, anyway, I felt certain this was only the beginning.
As I had explained to the other girls, as a mustard heiress I would soon be coming into my fortune, and then I’d be able to buy a surgical flotilla like Cousin Addie and go to the Western Front and save lives. After I told them that they were much more welcoming. As soon as I walked into the room I’d see them smile. Hot Stuff, they called me, because of Minkel’s Mighty Fine Mustard.
I walked the last ten blocks, composing myself for Ma, and when I looked down 70th Street I could see camouflaged transports moving slowly down the Hudson toward the open sea. I was, I had decided, now effectively head of our household. Pa was gone, Honey had her own establishment, our help had all left us and Ma was advanced in years and enjoyed very poor health. I bounded up the front steps, ready to take on the world.
Ma didn’t answer when I called out, but I found her in the library, sitting in Pa’s old chair with a duster in her hand. It was the first time I had ever known her enter that room.
‘So many trinkets,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I don’t know why he was so particular about them.’
I said, ‘Ma, I have found a position with the Red Cross and I have to go there as often as I possibly can to do essential work, but I promise that I’ll take care of the dusting, and I’ll leave you a luncheon tray, and be home in time to make dinner for us. And if some day you are very indisposed, I might be spared from my work, just until Honey can come to sit with you, for we all have to make sacrifices you know.’
‘There will be no need for a luncheon tray,’ was her first response.
I said, ‘It came to me, after Reilly said she was needed for the munitions, that I had to volunteer, too. Uncle Israel took me along and they were so grateful to have me they begged me to start right away.’
‘How industrious you’ve been,’ Ma said. ‘And Israel, too. And how convenient, for it so happens I’ve decided to answer my country’s call, too. We shall both be modern working women, and in the evening we shall eat sandwiches.’
I said, ‘Ma, what ever kind of work can you do?’
It seemed most capricious of her to rise from her sick bed and become modern on the very day of my own triumph.
‘I shall make jam,’ she said. ‘I have joined,’ she announced, ‘the National Campaign for the Elimination of Waste. Let me see no more crusts left on the side of your plate, Poppy. Let me see no more cake toyed with, on account of dryness.’
I am sure I had never toyed with cake in my life.
Still, suddenly Ma and I had full and important lives. We talked all evening about household economies we might make as part of our war effort. I even steered our conversation round to the expedience of riding in public trolley-cars.
‘Only be sure to wear your gloves,’ Ma said, ‘and to wash your hands at the very first opportunity. Minnie Schwab rode on the elevated railway, you may remember, and immediately became ill with a hacking cough.’
‘What a pity,’ I crowed, ‘that Honey can manage nothing more demanding than her Widows and Orphans Bazaar.’
‘Now,
