Jeffrey B. Romanczuk
1348 Hillvale Road
Louisville, TN 37777-4657
© J.B. Romanczuk
2,986 words
. . . and if I die in Vietnam,
Send a letter to my mom.
Pin a medal on my chest
And tell my girl I did my best.
—Airborne Rangers cadence jody
A quiet spring day when I was eight, we decided to play “War.” David and Donald—who are identical twins and had been my best friends—had a friend from school, Barry. Barry had invited them to his neighborhood and they brought me along. Don was on my side and Dave on Barry’s for the game.
Although from one moment to the next, it is difficult to say which twin is my closer friend, for most of our childhood Dave was. He was always about my size, whereas Don is a little more muscular, although our same height. Dave is only six minutes older than Don. Both twins are dark featured, brown eyes and dark brown hair. I have blue eyes and blond hair. Even so, when we were a lot younger, we pretended to be “the triplets.”
I was uncomfortable in Barry’s neighborhood and a little tired of playing when I noticed Barry across the street, his head above a wooden fence. I crouched behind some front steps—which weren’t as big as the steps to houses in the neighborhood where Dave, Don, and I lived. I got the machine gun fixed on Barry as he tried to pull himself over the fence. He had only his feet over when I opened fire, R-R-RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! Not only did the gun make that noise when you remembered to pull back a lever on the side before pulling the trigger, it was printed just like that on a sticker over the opening the lever rode down. I shot Barry in the head again. R-R-RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT. He landed on the other side of the fence, pretending he had beaten the bullets.
“I got you, Barry!”
“No you didn’t, kid!”
That he didn’t remember my name made me even angrier and I hollered, “Yes, I did, you jerk! Right in the head.”
“No you didn’t. I ducked in time.”
The lady whose yard he just landed in came to her doorway. She said, “Boys, stop that fighting. Don’t be playing with guns.” Her tone was demanding, but the plea was clear. I looked up. In a green dress and wavy, auburn hair, she looked younger than my mother was. But there was something tired or worn about her which made this woman seem older. She turned away, back into her house.
“Let him go, John,” Donald called from the car he ran to, covered by my shots at Barry.
“No, Don,” I replied. “I got him clean in the head.” Then I yelled to Barry, “Kid, you die or I quit!”
Barry stomach-flipped over the fence, landed on the grass before the cement walkway, then remained still for the count of ten. However, Barry stayed alive too often as the afternoon got colder. Our fighting again attracted the same lady from earlier.
“Boys,” she said, “I think it is time to stop playing war.”
By this time, though, I had Barry in a headlock and he was biting my hand. We separated when she called because her voice sounded so close.
“Who’s that old buzz?” Donald asked.
“Mrs. Sustradania. She’s a nice lady,” Barry said with a conviction childlike and sincere. “Her son Billy is a lot like my Dad. We played together a lot.” He continued, “And Mrs. S always brings me in for cookies and cake and junk. Not for the last few days, though. I thought she was away.”
Barry proved correct about her kindness. Just as he had finished praising her, she called to us, “You boys must be hungry by now. Want to come in for some cookies and tea?”
“Told you,” Barry whispered, and ran over to her steps. David, Donald, and I were a little apprehensive, but more than a little hungry. Barry motioned to us to follow him.
We left our guns and jackets in her parlor. Most of the stuff in there was shades of green. In the dining room was a shiny wooden dinner table with rounded off corners and heavy chairs. As we took seats at the table, Barry introduced David and Donald to the woman. He forgot my name again, so I said, “I’m Johnny, Mrs. Sudsia.”
She laughed and said, “I’m Mrs. Sustradania, John. But you can just say ‘Mrs. S’ like Barry does. It’s easier, right?” Then she laughed a little again. Her laughter lessened my embarrassment and also made her seem younger than I thought she was in the front doorway. She wore clothes very old ladies wear, though. Mrs. Sustradania had on an olive colored dress that went to her knees, with an ugly collar and thin green, matching belt. Her stockings were rolled down to her calves, revealing a pair of pale blue veins behind each knee.
I tried not to look at her too often, but something about Mrs. Sustradania demanded my attention, and I stared. Her expression, her whole manner, was uniquely yet inextricably haggard. I remember thinking life shouldn’t be as hard as grown-ups like Mrs. Sustradania made it seem. Then I recalled an incident with my father which happened about a year earlier. I was crying over some seven year old’s problem and, without finding out why, he said, “If you think you have problems now, I want to tell you something: Every year it gets worse.” I didn’t feel any better for that perspective, but I stopped crying. Now I felt somehow like a bystander at the scene of an accident, who sees how horrible it is but cannot turn away.
Mrs. Sustradania took my attention from her ugly black shoes by heading for the kitchen to quiet the tea kettle. Barry trailed after her, leaving David and Donald on the opposite side of the table, mirroring my quizzical looks.
“Does she look tired to you?” Dave whispered to me.
“Her eyes look like they’re goin’ to fall out,” Don remarked.
“I think she was cryin’,” I whispered back.
“Yeah,” they said in unison. Then Don said “I wonder what the heck is goin’ on?”
Barry returned first, with an orange ceramic jar full of chocolate chip cookies. He sat at the head of the table and skidded the jar to the middle. Mrs. Sustradania came in carrying a tray with Chinese looking symbols on the bottom of it. On top of it were five matching cups of hot water with their string tags over the edges, into the saucers. Mrs. Sustradania sat next to me and passed out the teas. David and Donald each took a handful of cookies and put their own stacks on the table in front of themselves. This forced a smile from hostess. Mrs. Sustradania slowly sipped her tea as we quickly ate her cookies. They were the large, crunchy, name-brand kind with the big, soft chips. And the tea was strong.
The only sounds for the next few minutes were chomping and slurping. The warm tea melted the delicious cookies in our mouths. Mrs. Sustradania finally camouflaged the eating sounds by asking:
“Does anyone know what tomorrow is?”
I raised my hand. It made Dave, Don, and Barry laugh. Then I put down my arm and blushed. I hated being embarrassed and hated blushing even more. Hand-raising is a habit I took to because of school. A funny habit, sometimes, I guess.
“Yes, Johnny?” Mrs. Sustradania said, just like a teacher.
“Sunday,” I answered. I knew because school and my mother made me go to mass on Sundays. David, Donald, and Barry were “public” school kids. I was a parish, or “parochial” school kid. But if it didn’t make a difference on snow holidays, it surely didn’t on Saturdays in spring.
“That’s right, but tomorrow is a special Sunday.”
We knew Easter was over. We waited and she said, “Tomorrow is Mother’s Day!” She was genuinely disappointed we didn’t know and asked, “Didn’t you boys get your moms anything?”
So it was Mother’s Day. We knew something about that. I looked at Dave and Don; they had the same thought. Barry was a year or two younger than we were, and still unaware Mother’s Day involves either cards or flowers. It seemed ridiculous to ask your mom for money to buy her a card or flowers. But it was equally dumb to ask our dads for the money. “She ain’t my mother. She’s my wife.” He had a point there. But I was an eight-year-old kid. I didn’t have an income.
So what could we get our mothers, by surprise or otherwise? Somehow we knew we were guilty, though. Contrite silence fell over the dining room.
Mrs. Sustradania broke this silence by saying she would see what she could do about this; then she excused herself. She reentered her dining room about five minutes later, bearing a shoe box, glue, colored stiff paper, and three pairs of scissors. We said nothing in the time she was gone and remained silent as Mrs. Sustradania placed the things on the table.
As Mrs. Sustradania returned from putting our cups in the kitchen sink, Barry asked her “What are you goin’ to do, Mrs. S?”
“I am going to watch,” she answered. “You boys are going to make cards for your mothers.” Then more pleasantly, Mrs. Sustradania added, “I’ll help, of course.”
“But my mom went away with some guy,” Barry protested.
“She is still your mother, Barry. Sometimes adults—” Mrs. Sustradania stopped herself. “Open the box, Barry,” she said, seeming annoyed. Then the nastiness disappeared as she added, “Please.” It was strange how she could stop and start her emotions as if her feelings were electrically wired to some red and green buttons. Still, we began to notice her emotion for each event happening and each thing she made happen, though always compatible with the situation and sincere, was somehow cautious and distant, too.
Barry lifted the lid of the shoe box; inside were some pencils, pictures, and old canceled postcards. “Choose one,” Mrs. Sustradania commanded as she went to the end of the table opposite Barry.
David and Donald took a picture of two Irish Setter puppies wrestling. Barry chose a picture of a little boy in what must have been his father’s police uniform. I found an old postcard of a fair-haired boy sitting on a boardwalk railing. As we went to work on the homemade Mother’s Day cards, Mrs. Sustradania sat silently, and was staring away the first time I looked up at her. Then her eyes were looking back at mine and I quickly looked away.
“Yes, Johnny?”
Obliged to speak, my mind flicked through things to say. Finally I asked, “Did your kids give you cards?” Social small talk was an area new to me, but this seemed like a decent effort and I was proud of it.
But she didn’t answer for so long I started to doubt she heard me, then doubt I had said anything. A long moment later, she blinked twice, slowly, and said, “No.”
“Billy and John didn’t send you cards, Mrs. S?” Barry couldn’t believe it.
“Well,” she answered carefully, “you know how John always forgets.” She continued, not to Barry or any of us, “After all, he’s busy with his family and business down in Florida.”
She looked so sad I was glad I had the card to pretend I was occupied, so I didn’t have to look at her. I trimmed the corners of the postcard and glued it to a blue piece of folded construction paper. Then I wondered what message to put inside.
“What about Billy?” Barry asked.
The stillness that washed over the dining room had an answer before she did. “He died last week. I didn’t know how to tell you, Barry.” Then Mrs. Sustradania started to cry openly.
“BILLY!” Barry shrieked, dropping his scissors to the floor.
Mrs. Sustradania controlled her tears, her head twitching nervously as she sucked air through tight lips. “You liked him a lot, didn’t you?” the mother said to Barry. Then she turned to us, “Bill used to spend much time with Barry.”
“And with Sally,” Barry added.
“And with Sally,” Mrs. Sustradania echoed. “Then about seven months ago, Bill was drafted. “Can you read?” she asked, looking at me. It took most of the courage I had to keep eye contact with her. It frustrated me to think she needed to share a feeling I was too young to feel, and I wished I were older.
“A little,” I answered. “I’m in Group B at school.” In case she wouldn’t know what this meant, I added “I’m okay at it.”
She pulled from the pocket of her ugly green dress a yellow piece of paper and opened it for me. Nowhere in the words did it say anyone was “dead.” It said some “William J. Sustradania was taken while advancing with a patrol.” I glanced through the rest of the words, looking for dead, like it couldn’t be true unless that particular word were used. Something felt fake about reading this and knowing real war wasn’t pretending anything. The back of my tongue went dry as my eyeballs started itching. Some of the older guys from our neighborhood went to Vietnam, too. But they came back for days, then for good. William J. Sustradania was dead and I was reading how his mother found out he was never coming back. I wanted to cry, and I felt a tremble in me, like before crying. But I didn’t cry. Was he dead from Vietnam, really? He could have been taken prisoner. Taken? I guess he was dead. The telegram didn’t say “dead” anywhere, though. “Taken” was as close as they came to it.
“‘Taken’ means dead?” I asked Mrs. Sustradania as I handed her the letter. She kept it in her hand instead of folding the letter back into her pocket.
“I’m afraid so, John,” Mrs. Sustradania said. “I had hoped ‘taken’ would mean much more—or much less.”
We didn’t understand this, but let her comment go by. I had finally decided on the message for my card. I wrote: “For Mom on Mother’s Day. This wasn’t my idea, but I hope you like it. Love, Johnny.”
I sat awhile, just looking around, proud of the card in front of me. Mrs. Sustradania asked if she could see it. She came over behind my chair, and read my card. She told me it was nice. David and Donald finished their card and she read it. I don’t know what it said, but the card made Mrs. Sustradania laugh and seem younger briefly. Barry wasn’t finished yet, but I could tell mine looked better than his card, and better than Dave and Don’s. Mine was the best. I could tell.
Barry finished his card and handed it to Mrs. Sustradania. She read it quietly. Then she began to tremble and cry as she reread the ugly purple card aloud: “Happy Mothers Day Mrs. S!! You’re my Best Mommy. Thanks, Barry.”
The lady picked up Barry and squeezed him. She carried him into the parlor. We followed her. Dave, Don, and I picked up our jackets and rifles as Mrs. Sustradania put down the letter and put the black, purple, and red crayoned card on her fireplace mantel, next to a picture of a guy in an army hat and coat. She said she would keep it there. Barry noticed a black leather box next to the picture as she was lowering him to the floor.
“What’s that?” he asked. Barry knocked the box off the ledge on his way down and we saw a star hanging on a red, white, and blue ribbon fall out.
“Was that Billy’s medal?” Barry’s eyes were wide.
Mrs. Sustradania hugged and kissed Barry before letting go of him. “Yes,” she answered, beginning to look old again. She handed the medal to Barry, then to us. She could tell Barry was looking at the Silver Star like he wanted it, so Mrs. Sustradania added, “I keep meaning to give it to Sally. But I can’t bring myself—”
“What did he get it for?” Barry asked.
“He got it for—.” She looked at the citation accompanying the medal, but those words didn’t sound like Bill at all. “Oh, dying, I guess.” Mrs. Sustradania looked like she was going to start crying again. As her eyes caught mine, I had a thought to hug her good-by. But when Don crossed in front of me to give Barry his guns and coat, the moment and the thought passed.
As we walked outside, Mrs. Sustradania called after us, “I pray you boys are not taken if that time comes.” Her shoulders were trembling like they could no longer hold back. “The war will end before that, I’ll pray. You won’t be taken.” As her head collapsed into her hand, Mrs. Sustradania looked oldest the last time I saw her. She shook and cried at her doorway until tears left dark green wet spots on the fabric of her dress.
David and Donald said good-by to Barry, then we made our way back to our neighborhood. When I got home, I gave my mom the card. She read it, smiled, and asked if I made it at school. I told her what went on with Dave, Don, and Barry at Mrs. Sustradania’s house. Then my mom put the card on the TV. When I came home from school the day after Mother’s Day, it was on a paper pile on the kitchen table. The following day, the best Mother’s Day card was at the bottom of the kitchen trash bag. And I just knew Barry’s lousy card was still on that green mantel with the soldier’s picture, the silver star, and the yellow letter.
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