The time captured on film is early World War II. I date it by the ages of my brother and myself. I am perhaps 6, he 3, both of us fair and curly-haired. We are dressed up for a wedding. I am wearing a blue-and-white striped dress under my blue spring coat. My long blond curls, brushed into submission by my mother, frame a face that is rosy with excitement. My brother wears short pants, but a red bow tie fights the collar of his white shirt to escape and
–before this brief film record is over–is sitting straight up and down under his chin. He is too young to act the ”little man” convincingly, and he darts between the adults, pulling at arms and jackets for attention.
There is sunshine all around. It glints off the copper handrails that divide the gray concrete steps leading to the vestry of the large brick church that forms the backdrop for the bride and groom, who smile winningly at the camera my father has pointed at them. There is a whirring sound as he records this moment, soft and steady, although the figures on the film look stiff and the shots that sweep the entire group do so in a curiously old-fashioned stop- and-go way. The members of the wedding party are posing, as if for still photographs, and my father is not yet comfortable using the movie camera, a gift from my grandparents on the Christmas just past.
The groom, my uncle, wears a uniform, as does the best man. My new aunt, fresh from Kansas, dimpled, smiling, wears a white gabardine suit and a small white hat with a wisp of veil. Her corsage of red roses bounces on her shoulder when my uncle hugs her. Her maid of honor is in a flowered dress.
After the customary close-up of the groom kissing the bride, the best man takes off his cap and puts it on my little brother`s head. He struts before the camera my father holds, peering out from under the brim with bright, serious eyes. He likes playing soldier. Within six weeks, the best man, smiling, handsome at the wedding, will be dead, shot down over Germany.
The war is almost over, although we are not aware of it, only hopeful. My uncle, back in Detroit on leave, sits at our dining room table, which has been elegantly set. I cleaned the silver myself, sitting at the table in the breakfast nook all morning, working with a wet rag and a small jar of silver polish, a grayish paste that got under my fingernails and puckered the skin on my fingertips. My mother had wiped all the crystals on the chandelier with vinegar water and gotten out the good dishes with the gold trim.
For dinner we are having roast beef from Mr. Waltermire, the butcher. The roast probably took almost all the coupons in the ration book my mother kept in her purse, but she did not seem very worried about it. She had made hot rolls to go with the beef dinner. The margarine for the rolls came from Mr. Waltermire`s store, too, in a plastic bag. My mother punctured the color button in the bag, and somehow the red liquid that gushed out turned the white, lardy-looking margarine yellow as my brother and I took turns kneading the contents.
The conversation is about the war. My uncle talks about the bombing raids he has flown. My aunt smiles gently at him, a tremulous smile, and her eyes glisten with love and tears. My uncle will be ”going back” in a few more days, and although I do not know where the places are that he names, except in a very general way–they are ”in Europe”–I know that my aunt does not want him to go, and I see that the glances my parents exchange are serious.
I think my uncle looks very tall and handsome in his uniform, and my brother and I are fascinated by the patches on his sleeve and the medals he wears. I have wanted to ask all evening why we can`t hang a star in our window for my uncle–I am so proud of him that I would like to let our neighbors know that we have someone in our family in the war–but I was told before dinner not to ask questions because the grown-ups wanted to talk. There are a lot of stars hanging in windows in our neighborhood. Some of them are gold. When the new gold star appears, my mother takes a plate of cookies to the house, and she is always quiet and sad when she comes home, even when she did not know the soldier who`d been killed. I have only known one of them myself–a young man who used to deliver the newspaper to our house. His parents had moved to Detroit from Germany with their parents after an earlier war, and now he has been killed fighting Germans. My brother and I speak of him sometimes when we take our wagon from house to house to collect tin cans and foil, or on our way to school on the days we buy our Liberty Stamps. We are doing these things, we tell each other solemnly, for Herman-who used-to-deliver-the-paper. Neither one of us really believes that he will not come home when the war is over.
Dinner is over, and my mother takes the plates to the kitchen. (I am too awkward at this age to be trusted with the good dishes.) When she comes back, she brings coffee for the grown-ups, four cups on a tray. My uncle lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair. ”That was a wonderful meal,” he says. At my brother`s urging, he blows smoke rings. I watch him closely and notice that there are dark smudges under his eyes. When my mother hands him his coffee, he takes it, and the cup rattles in the saucer, and some of the coffee sloshes over the side. My mother looks at my father; it is one of her
”significant” looks. My brother and I are excused from the table and told to get ready for bed. When my uncle returns my goodnight kiss, his hand trembles against my back.
My cousin Richie is being baptized. My uncle, in a dark blue suit, grins at the camera my father points in his direction. My aunt holds Richie, but the baby does not show in the picture; she appears to be holding a bundle of blue blanket in her arms. There is a fleeting shot of a young dark-haired priest in a black cassock. He has just performed the baptismal ceremony, cleansing my new cousin of Original Sin and saving him from the fate of unbaptized souls. By the time Richie`s sister Elizabeth is brought to this same church to be baptized, a year and a half away, the young priest will be gone. He will have run off with a nun from the parish school. No one will tell me of this, of course. I will overhear it, spoken of in hushed tones by my mother and my aunt. No one will know where the priest and nun have gone, and I will understand that perfectly, knowing that they are hiding from the Wrath of God, which I believe will be delivered in the form of a lightning bolt. I am too young to be either scandalized by the event or titillated by the speculation about it. I am mainly perplexed about why anyone would want one of the grim-faced, tight-lipped nuns who teach me for a wife.
It is always fun to go to dinner at Frank and Millie`s, even though we eat at the kitchen table off everyday dishes. My brother and I shepherd our young cousins–Richie, Elizabeth, Amy–in and out of the house and help feed them. On rainy or snowy evenings we entertain them in their room. The house is small, and they share one L-shaped room. My brother–now tall and gangly, with braces on his teeth and a mean right, which he usually aims at me–condescends to examine Richie`s model planes; Elizabeth, Amy and I play with their paper dolls when I am in a good mood. Usually, though, I would prefer to be in the kitchen, helping Millie and listening to her and my mother talk about second and third cousins who are real people to them but only names to me and whose lives seem infinitely more fascinating than my own. They all live in places like Nebraska and Kansas and Colorado, far away from the tumult and, at times, the terror of city life, and everything about them–even their names–seems foreign and exciting, like the plot of a good book.
”Did you know that John and Loretta`s girl is in the running for Miss Kansas?” Millie might ask, indicating a letter on the table.
Or, ”I heard from Aunt Katie last week,” my mother would offer. ”I guess that Edmund`s John is thinking of entering the priesthood.”
My Uncle Stanley, who ”wintered cattle” in Wyoming; my mother`s cousin, an FBI agent killed in a hail of bullets outside a train station; another cousin, female, who played on soap operas, first on radio and then on television . . . family lore heard no place else, recorded only in the letters that crisscrossed the country–that was what I wanted to hear. My sense of family, albeit a romanticized view, was served up with dinner at Frank and Millie`s kitchen table.
Usually, though, my brother and I would ”help” by taking the youngsters to their room, keeping them ”out from underfoot,” Millie would say. Eventually one of the adults would call us for dinner. Aunt Millie is a good cook. She enjoys good food herself. She has gained a lot of weight, and now she shies away from my father`s movie camera whenever he brings it along to record some family occasion–a birthday or anniversary. My uncle seems to have gotten thinner and thinner as the size of both his wife and family has grown. They are having a ”hard time,” my mother says.
Eventually my father receives a promotion that takes us away from Detroit, and within a few years I have married and moved to that part of the country that always so intrigued me when my Western relatives were mentioned. News of my aunt and uncle filters to me through my mother`s letters: The children are growing; Frank has a new–and better–job; they have bought a new house. There is nothing extraordinary in these reports, no major triumphs or disasters. An occasional photograph finds its way to me. Millie, heavier than I remember her, but smiling. I find it hard to believe that my handsome soldier uncle and my laughing, lovely aunt who always seemed so much younger than my parents appear to be catching up to them in age.
For a few years I am caught up in my own concerns and those of my own family. Then I have the chance to go to Detroit for a journalism conference. When I call my parents to tell them about the upcoming trip, they tell me that Millie has cancer. ”We didn`t tell you before,” my mother says. ”There was nothing you could do. She`s in the hospital for treatment, but it`s not doing any good.”
When I arrive in Detroit, I call Frank. He wants to pick me up at my hotel and take me to see Millie that night. When he meets me in the lobby, he is an old man. His hair is completely gray, and he is bone thin. He explains why Millie is in the hospital he is taking me to instead of one closer to their home; it is less expensive. They are still having a struggle, a ”hard time” financially.
When we reach the hospital, a cavernous old brick building in the inner city, Frank asks me to wait in the corridor while he goes to the ward to get Millie. While I wait, hospital sounds and smells assault me; I begin to feel ill myself.
The woman Frank leads out to me on his arm is dressed in a white robe and wears white ribbons in her hair. She is smiling, slim, glowing. She looks years younger than her husband, and healthier. I find it hard to believe that she is really ill, and we sit together on the hard wooden chairs provided by the hospital and talk about our children. The only sign of sickness comes when Frank goes back to the ward and returns with a colorful star quilt, which he tucks over her lap and around her legs. Millie touches pieces of the pattern gently and smiles. I know that she is recalling the time when Frank or herself or one of their children wore the dress or shirt that has been so carefully cut and sewn into the design.
The star quilt. Millie had seen them as a child and I have come to know them as an adult–that explosion of pulsating color and design that reflects the Morning Star so vividly. Among the Sioux, the star pattern, always with eight points, takes on special significance. It is used ceremonially for marriages and naming ceremonies, and to honor someone for deeds well done. it figures in the Yuwibi ceremony, conducted to seek a lost person. The history of the pattern goes back to the 1830s–and perhaps further; perhaps, some scholars say, to the Aztec calendar. But those are concerns of researchers;
for me, the significance lies in the explanation of an old Indian woman made of the pattern: ”The Star,” she said, ”is a circle reaching out to the family members, the relatives, to protect and keep them in the circle of life.”
Two days of meetings later I leave Detroit. I don`t have time to see Millie again, but I do talk to her on the phone from my hotel room. Her voice is strong and she laughs a lot during our conversation. I imagine her smiling above the pattern of her quilt as she sits up in her hospital bed, surrounded by other patients in a twelve-bed ward. ”Bring the children next time,” she says. ”I`d love to see them.” She means it.
I promise to do just that, and soon. I mean it, too.
When I get home, I find that, while my plane was somewhere over the Rocky Mountains, Millie has died.
I never see Frank again. My life ties me to the West–which has, I have discovered, its own tumult and terrors–and there are no more trips to Detroit. My mother`s letters mention him from time to time. I recall that there was some trouble with one of the children, but whether it was serious or not I cannot remember. Then there came an announcement from Frank of his remarriage–to one of the nurses who cared for Millie, my mother tells me. I sent a polite note welcoming his wife to the family, and that was my last correspondence with her until a few years later when I wrote a letter of condolence on the occasion of Frank`s death.
They are all gone now, the young handsome members of that long ago wedding party. With the exception, perhaps, of the maid of honor in her flowered dress whose name–first or last–none of us can remember.
My brother and I are no longer either fair or young. Our hair darkened as we grew up and then grayed. We are older now than Millie was when she died.
I did not mourn the death of the young flier who still puts his cap on my brother`s head in an old and faded film. The loss was not mine, and I was too young then to know what death meant. But I have thought of him in these intervening years, when the term Killed in Action was applied to men my age and then, later still, to the sons of my friends. And I have cried for his life, cut so short, at ceremonies honoring the returning veterans of a more recent conflict, seeing the young men on the reservation wrapped in star quilts as part of their welcome home. In their glad smiles and the beaming faces of their families and friends, I have caught for a moment in my mind the scene in front of the church on Frank and Millie`s wedding day.
I am no longer surprised to discover that priests and nuns are real people and behave as real people do. It has become quite common, now, for men and women who made vows at a young age to change their minds–and their lives –as they grow older. All the young men I knew who became priests, and some of the older ones I knew only as ”Father,” have left their Holy Orders to marry. And although I no longer believe in lightning bolts seeking them out, it is a tribute, perhaps, to the staying power of lessons learned at the hands of nuns that I cannot imagine those consecreated fingers engaged in acts of passion.
And what of other lessons, learned in harder ways?
I see Millie, sitting in a hospital corrdidor, lovingly recalling the moments of her life preserved in a quilt, the design of which promises the brightness of a new day. The laughing bride and the dying woman merge into one, and the image blurs and dissolves into other people, other places. Slowly, a pattern emerges. The various pieces touch each other only briefly, but touch they do, and in that touching form a starburst of color. In every life there are endings and beginnings, such snippets of material pieced together to be warming to the eye, the flesh, the heart. We call them memories, and on them we base our sense of self. The fabric of our lives may be stretched taut across the frame, and many hands may be busy with the stitching, but the finished product is of our own making. That was a secret Millie may have known, and one that I am just now learning.
