A Thousand Stars (Chapter I)

by Annie Howard ‘25

Jeannie stooped low to tend to the vegetables They grew earnestly, and everywhere – each little spout trying desperately to reach the sun She hiked up her faded cotton skirt and knelt down gingerly on the ground beside them, trying her best not to muddy her knees. In another time, she might have been examining the beauty of each green stem, but as many like her were nowadays, she was ever presently distracted.

What will it be? Two months? Three? She knew for certain it had been a month since the D-Day invasion.

A week since his last letter. Everything in between was hazy.

And what did Jeannie do during this time? She thought back, way back into the depths of her mind, but couldn’t seem to remember anything at all She waited, she watered the vegetables, she sewed caps for Red Cross nurses with her church group

And for the love of God, here was another day Another day where she waited and watered and sewed, and rose out of bed each morning and buttoned her skirt and uncurled her hair and painted on her lipstick and stared up at the sky by the side of her garden and willed it to be different

A voice called to her, foggy in her head, clouded by her thoughts.

“Jeanne, I need those vegetables for dinner!”

And there was her mother, always watching, always listening, always nagging. Jeannie stood and brushed loose soil from her cotton skirt. She picked up the large woven basket she had brought with her and began filling it with the last of the spring peas. They fell right off the tender vine, sloping and curving around the prickly wire trellis.

The women on the posters looked happy. They had bright rosy cheeks, hair done up in perfect, dark rolls, an overflowing basket of produce in their arms, nursing it like they would their own children Jeannie told herself she wanted to be like that To be like her mother To be like her friends But she hated the peas She hated their smooth shells, she hated their smell She choked them down at dinner

“Don’t dally, for Christ’s sake,” Mrs. Gordon called again from the doorway. Jeannie picked up her basket and headed for the house.

Mrs. Gordon gave her daughter a sad sigh as she climbed the sagging porch steps and glanced over at the stars in the window. Jeannie walked straight to the kitchen and pretended she didn’t see the pained look in her mother’s eyes

It helped to think back to a time when two blue stars hung in the left window When she clutched her father’s duffel, saw him climb aboard the train in his newly pressed uniform, kiss her mother goodbye

She remembered him taking the bag out of her hands, only to disappear into the metal train car, filled with other men that looked exactly the same Just one green uniform in a sea of many One star in a giant galaxy One grain of sand from the beaches blood would soon be shed on

“I’ll be back soon, I promise, ” he said

Letter after letter he wrote He told them he was busy training to use his rifle, the radio How he wished he could taste her mother’s pecan pie He told them he smelled victory They were close Any day now

Any day turned into any month

The earth turned and the seasons changed, and an officer was on the front steps of her house with his hat in his hands. Her father became a gold star in the window.

The blue star still remained. Jeannie gazed at it constantly. A good luck charm wishing her well every time she went out. It was her only hope.

He was her only hope.

The war may as well be lost if that blue star was ever to turn gold Let the Germans bomb the states, she didn’t care Her mother was a fighter by day, a waterfall at night Jeannie pulled her weight as best she could, digging up vegetables from the garden, carefully calculating how much they had left on ration cards She baked bread for grieving neighbors by stretching the dough out on a sheet pan as far as it could go

She kept her head down, her hands busy, and her ears alert The blue star promised he would come home But so did the gold star

Why promise if you aren ’ t sure?

Jeannie’s body and soul were in the hands of Providence, the stars in the sky, the Germans.

One stray rocket and it could be over. One wrong shot, a step on a landmine. One telephone call, one knock on the door.

Jeannie’s nights were sleepless. The stars in the sky were haunting reminders of what could be.

As she set the basket on the table, Mrs. Gordon sliced off a tiny slab of butter from the thinning stick on the counter and put it in an iron skillet where it sizzled and popped with excitement Without glancing at her daughter, she said, “Set aside a cup of the peas for us to have with the salted ham ”

Jeannie wanted to exclaim, “To h*ll with it To h*ll with this d*mn war, ” but she held her tongue Instead, she grit her teeth and continued shelling the wretched peas