With Every Letter: A Novel Read online

  “I understand, ma’am.” But why was she only talking to Mellie?

  “Each squadron must run as a team. In the field, we’ll need to rely on each other. If you girls don’t get along, the brass will see it as a sign of feminine weakness and undependability.”

  Mellie’s lips tingled.

  Lieutenant Lambert frowned at her pen. “I don’t know how to say this, Philomela. You’ve been here two weeks. Your flight of six nurses is the least cohesive here at Bowman. And every time I look, you’re alone.”

  A band of pain constricted around Mellie’s chest. “I tend to keep to myself.”

  Captain Maxwell crossed his arms and huffed. “That’s the problem.”

  Lambert tapped her pen on the desk. “I indulged in a phone call to Edna Newman at Walter Reed. Now, she wanted me to know what a competent and caring nurse you are. The patients sing your praises. But the girls—well, she said you didn’t have a single friend there.”

  Mellie blinked hard. “It’s never interfered with my work, ma’am.”

  The chief grimaced. “I understand, but this isn’t a ward. We have to work together, and we can’t let one person drag us down. This is too important for the future of nursing, for all the wounded men who need our care. We cannot fail.”

  “I won’t drag you down. I’ll make an excellent flight nurse.”

  “I’m sure you would—if you could work independently. When I looked at your application, I was impressed by your time in the wilderness. You have skills that would be useful to us in the field, but only if you share them. This must be a team effort or we’ll fail. You need to get along with the other nurses.”

  Captain Maxwell paced to the other side of the room. “No room for hermits here. Plenty of other nurses—friendly, pretty girls—would love to take your place.”

  Mellie gripped her hands together hard in her lap. She mustn’t succumb to tears. “I want to be a flight nurse. More than anything. What do I need to do?”

  Lieutenant Lambert shot the surgeon a quick glance, then back to Mellie. “You need to show improvement. You need to make some effort. I’ll give you one more week, but no longer.”

  Mellie had failed to make a friend in twenty-three years of life, and now she had one week. Impossible. “One week?”

  The chief leaned over the desk, her eyes filled with compassion. “I do want you to succeed, Philomela.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” She tried to smile but couldn’t.

  The chief dismissed her, and Mellie escaped out into the hallway. Her vision blurred over, and she couldn’t see where she was going. She leaned against the wall, out of sight of the office.

  What now? Competent and caring wasn’t enough? She had to have friends too?

  She’d found a job she was passionate about, a job that used all her skills for great good, where she knew she could succeed and excel. Suddenly a wall loomed before her, a wall she couldn’t climb.

  All her life, always rejected. In the Philippines, the girls didn’t like her because she was too American, and in America, the girls didn’t like her because she dressed funny and wore her hair funny and her smile split her face in half—like a monkey, they said.

  Mellie’s eyes stung and she swiped tears away. Ernest knew how to make friends. Perhaps she could ask him for advice. Yes, she’d write another letter and ask him.

  But it would be too late. She had a week, only a week. A sob gurgled in her throat.

  “Better look for her replacement.” That was Captain Maxwell’s voice.

  Mellie sucked in her breath. Eavesdropping was rude. She should leave, but her feet wouldn’t budge.

  “I am.” Irritation tinged Lieutenant Lambert’s voice. “Please remember, you are in charge of your flight, but I make the personnel decisions for the nurses.”

  “Can you at least find someone who doesn’t look like she’s wearing a beehive on her head?”

  Mellie clapped her hands over her ears and dashed out of the building. A beehive? Her fingers explored the braids that wound from her hairline up to her crown.

  All her life people had made fun of her hair. Was that the problem? If she cut her hair and looked more like the other women, would she be able to make friends?

  Through her hazy vision, she made out the nursing quarters. She strode inside and into her empty room.

  Georgie’s sewing scissors sat on her bunk on top of folded blue fabric. Mellie grabbed them and wheeled to the little mirror over the sink. She couldn’t change her darker skin tone or her wide slash of a mouth.

  But she could change her hair.

  Mellie held the scissors between her and her image. Her long hair was part of her identity. Who would she be without it?

  She gazed deep into her own dark eyes, which looked so much like her mother’s eyes in the single photograph she owned.

  Her mother. The haircut started it, her father said. If she hadn’t bobbed her beautiful long hair, she wouldn’t have plummeted into decadence and neglected Papa and Mellie. And she wouldn’t be dead.

  Mellie’s head slumped, and she braced her hands on the edge of the sink. The scissors clattered inside. She couldn’t do that to Papa. He lived. He had to live. And when he returned, she wanted him to find his little Mellie just as he left her.

  She raised her head and studied her face, so different from every other woman she knew. Would a haircut have made a difference anyway? Would women flock to her because of a haircut? Would she trust their friendship if they did?

  “No,” she whispered.

  She swayed, and she gripped the sink for support. Now what? She had a week to make friends or she’d lose the chance to become a flight nurse.

  If she couldn’t or wouldn’t change her appearance, that left her behavior. How could she learn in one week what other women had learned over a lifetime?

  Sounds outside drew her attention, and she peeked out the window around the yellow ruffled curtains Georgie had sewn. Men and women walked in small groups and passed each other with bright greetings. They made it look so easy.

  In the distance, Georgie and Rose came into view. The C-47 drill must have been dismissed. Rose’s sleek dark blonde head dipped closer to Georgie’s brown curls. Their faces looked serious as they talked.

  Mellie had overheard dozens of their conversations. They shared everything, from the mundane to the intimate. Openness seemed to be the foundation of their friendship.

  A shiver ran through her. As a girl, whenever she’d shared anything about herself, the other girls were baffled or derisive. If she opened up here, she ran the high risk of rejection.

  She retrieved the scissors from the sink and returned them to Georgie’s bunk. Georgie and Rose had sat there when Mellie said ladies didn’t shorten their hair. If she shared, she ran the risk of hurting others.

  Mellie straightened her service jacket. For the sake of her dream, for the sake of becoming a true nightingale who brought comfort and mercy to others, not just on the ward but in the outside world, she had to take both risks. “Lord, I don’t want to be rejected, and I certainly don’t want to hurt others. Please help me.”

  She charged outside, to the wide blue sky, onto the open green lawn, away from the shelter of her forest.

  Georgie and Rose strolled in her direction. They’d made friendly overtures in the past, and they were her only hope.

  Mellie marched up and stopped right in front of them. “I want to make friends.”

  Rose’s head tipped to one side, and Georgie’s eyebrows elevated.

  Mellie pressed her hands over her mouth. “That was awkward, wasn’t it?”

  “A bit.” Georgie gave her half a smile, which melted into concern. “Have you—have you been crying?”

  Mellie jerked her head toward the administration building. She nodded. “Lieutenant Lambert gave me one week. If I don’t learn to get along with others, I’ll be replaced.”

  Rose cleared her throat. “So you want to be friends with us to keep your job.”

>   “No.” She turned back. Alarm pulsed in her ears. How could she be open without hurting them? “All right, the deadline drove me, but I do want to make friends with you. I didn’t fit in anywhere growing up, and I’ve never had friends. I’m tired of being alone. And I—I like the two of you. You’re kind to each other, to me, to others. And you sing.”

  “We sing?” Georgie said.

  “I like that.”

  Georgie cracked a smile. “You have a beautiful voice. We could use a soprano.”

  Mellie’s shoulders relaxed. “I’m a soprano.”

  “We know.” Rose winked at her.

  A smile crept up Mellie’s face, but she stopped before it scared them away. “To be honest, I don’t know what to do next.”

  Georgie took Mellie’s arm and tucked it under hers. “How about you join us at the mess for dinner? We’ll get to know each other better and take it from there. Do you like that idea, Philomela?”

  Mellie nodded. Her throat clamped shut, but she swallowed hard so she could speak. She wanted to give them something special, something she’d never given anyone but Papa. “Please. Please call me Mellie.”

  8

  Oran, Algeria

  November 21, 1942

  “Best part of this leave—no mud,” Larry Fong said. “Far cry from Tafaroui.”

  Tom chuckled. “Where the mud is deep and gooey.” Rains had hit a few days after they secured the field, and as he’d predicted, created a mess. They needed pierced steel planking for quick runways and hardstands, but PSP was deemed a low shipping priority by someone in Washington who’d never winched a Spitfire out of ankle-deep red clay mud.

  He and Larry gazed over Oran’s harbor, where a breakwater protected three wharves in the blue-green bay. Crews labored to clear wreckage. During the Torch landings the French had demolished most of the port facilities, and two Allied ships had been shot to pieces in a deadly, failed attempt at a frontal assault.

  Tom turned and faced Oran’s collection of sand-colored and whitewashed buildings. Rocky, scrub-covered hills cupped the city, and an old Spanish fort perched high on the westernmost hill.

  The fighting had shifted to Tunisia, where the Allies made slow progress. Their goal was to meet up with Montgomery’s British Eighth Army approaching from Egypt and surround Rommel in Libya.

  Tom inhaled briny air. “We’ve got a few hours. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to buy something for my parents and sister. And I’m hungry.”

  “Me too. Let’s hope we don’t get dysentery.”

  “If so, we’ll join the line at the dispensary when we get back.”

  Tom grunted. His whole platoon had come to town on leave today. Most had scattered to sample the red wine the Algerians produced in abundance—or to search for syphilis. They’d keep the battalion medical detachment busy.

  Tom and Larry headed down a narrow street lined by four-storied buildings with wrought iron balconies and shuttered windows. Other than the garbage in the street, it looked like a postcard of Paris.

  The leave motivated his men to work. The B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 97th Bombardment Group were transferring the next day from Maison Blanche Airfield near Algiers to escape constant attack from German planes based in Sicily. They needed more facilities at Tafaroui. Captain Newman had offered the company leave if they met the deadline. He’d looked at Tom when he said this, not at Quincy or Reed.

  Bribery only went so far, but he refused to scream and threaten like Quincy or leave cold, imperious orders like Reed. In time, Tom’s friendly persuasion would work. It had to.

  A group of Arab boys in short dirty robes scampered past. They gave the Americans the “V for Victory” sign. “Okay! Okay!” they shouted.

  Larry pulled a blue booklet from his pocket. “If only we learned Arabic as fast as they learned English.”

  The street opened up to a plaza lined with open-air stalls. “A bazaar,” Tom said.

  “A souk,” Larry read from Instructions for American Servicemen in North Africa. “That’s what it’s called in Algeria.”

  “Souk.” Thank goodness Newman had assigned Larry as his platoon sergeant. The man spoke French and was fascinated by the local culture. He made a good surface-level friend, but Tom couldn’t afford to let him or anyone in deeper. Emotions acceptable for other men churned behind his smile, too dangerous to reveal.

  Strong, exotic smells wafted in the air, and hundreds of people milled about—French men and women in European dress, Berbers and Arabs in turbans and robes, and American servicemen in uniform. After the French surrendered on November 11, everyone acted as if the three days of fighting had never happened.

  “Great rugs,” Larry said. The first stall held carpets fashioned in colorful diamond patterns. “Need one for your tent?”

  “They’d go well with my crystal chandelier.” Tom fingered the short wool loops on one of the rugs. “Wish I could send one to my mom. Kind of big.”

  “Smaller ones over here.” Larry lifted a rug about two feet long. “My dad would like this.”

  The stall owner engaged in intense bargaining with a Frenchwoman, but he sent Tom a predatory salesman’s glance.

  “Let’s keep looking,” Tom said. “We can come back.”

  The next stall held baskets full of grains, and the one after that displayed citrus and figs and dates. Tom marked its location. At the end of the day, he’d buy a load of fruit to supplement the tinned rations and motivate the boys.

  A salty sea breeze set items in the next stall jingling. Tom strolled over. Jewelry—that’s what he’d get Mom.

  Bangles and necklaces and earrings, much bolder than Mom wore, with bright stones set in copper or brass or silver, and lots of doohickeys dangling down. A bracelet caught his eye, formed of delicate links set with stones of cobalt blue, turquoise, olive, and amber. With her fair coloring and blue eyes, Mom would like that.

  Tom turned to find the trader—and he saw the brooch. Concentric circles of the same stones as the bracelet surrounded a star of brilliant blue. Mom wouldn’t wear it, but he saw Annie in his mind. At least Annie as he pictured her, unusual and exotic, with dark eyes and hair, the kind of girl who traipsed through jungles and drew birds.

  Would she like a pin? Sure, she wore a uniform on the job and she probably didn’t go out much, but why shouldn’t she have something pretty, something unusual and exotic?

  The trader sidled up, wearing a creamy turban and robe, speaking a long string of Algerian Arabic, and gesturing to the jewelry.

  Tom racked his brain for the word for yes. “Naam.”

  “Naam? Mleh. Mleh.” He smiled and stroked his curly black beard. More Arabic, maybe some French mixed in.

  “Larry?” Tom said. “Need some help bargaining.”

  “How much you willing to pay? I’ll start lower and work my way up.”

  Tom paused. Fifty francs to the dollar. “Hundred fifty each.”

  Larry spoke with the trader in French. He turned back to Tom, eyes big. “He only wants fifty.”

  “Wow.” Tom pulled out some of the large French money. Seemed like stealing, but the trader grinned as if he were the thief.

  Larry bought a necklace with red stones for his mother and a similar one in green for his sister.

  At the next stall, the merchant held a bowl under their noses. “Couscous? Couscous?”

  Tom stared into the bowl—little beady things, kind of like Malt-O-Meal, with chunks of meat and vegetables on top. “Larry, any idea what couscous means?”

  “Looks like a grain, but tastes like noodles. They cook it with gravy and lamb and vegetables.” Larry waved the booklet in front of Tom. “You ought to read this thing.”

  “The same booklet that says, ‘Little rainfall is experienced on the coast’?” Tom pointed to the bowl. “Want to try couscous?”

  The merchant closed his eyes, smiled, and rubbed his stomach. “Mleh. Mleh.”

  “Mleh means good,” Larry said in a slow, high voi
ce as if talking to a small child. “And yeah, I’d love something with flavor. I don’t know how you white boys eat that bland stuff you call food every day. Must be why you’re so pasty.”

  “Careful. You’ll end up round eyed and pasty yourself.”

  Larry let out a low growl. “Make my life a lot easier.”

  “Nah. That’s the coward’s way out.” That’s what Mom told him every time he grumbled about changing his name. Cowardly and deceptive. It would be a lie, and lies were always exposed by the light. The truth might be difficult, painful, and alienating, but how could he lie every time he wrote his name?

  The merchant seated them at a table that backed up to a low whitewashed wall, set bowls of couscous before them, and poured cups of minty-smelling green tea.

  Tom dipped his spoon into the bowl. “Here goes.” Strange spices hit his tongue, like nothing he’d ever tasted before. Not hot-spicy, just strange.

  Larry mumbled in contentment. “Cumin, coriander, garlic, mint. There’s more to seasoning than salt and pepper.”

  “Maybe one new seasoning at a time.” Tom swallowed. This would take some getting used to. He scooped another spoonful.

  Something brushed his leg.

  He startled, and a chunk of meat dropped to the ground.

  A little dog darted out and grabbed it.

  Tom laughed. As a boy, he’d always had a dog. He picked out a chunk of meat—lamb wasn’t his favorite anyway—and held it out, clucking his tongue.

  The dog’s pointed ears pricked up. His brown eyes honed in on Tom and sized him up with an intelligent look.

  “Come here, little guy. You hungry?”

  “Don’t encourage him, Gill.”

  “He looks hungry. Come here, boy.” Every one of the dog’s ribs showed under his short-haired coat. Beautiful coloring—golden brown with white paws and chest. His tail curled in a complete circle, the underside white like a deer’s.

  He took a step toward Tom, then another, and snatched up the meat.