Free A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith Page A

grandma in the doorway.
    “Really?” She made a mocking look. “Young lady, you got a lot to learn.”
    She mopped the perspiration on her neck and lifted a wicker suitcase. Cora caught sight of a bronze badge on a red, white, and blue ribbon pinned to her stout bosom.
    “Wait!” Cora said. “You’re a Gold Star Mother.”
    “Don’t make no difference to some people.”
    “So am I!” Cora pointed to hers.
    The woman’s reddened eyes slowly softened. “Where’d you lose your boy?”
    “France.”
    “Mine, too.” She rocked back and peered at Cora. Her dark brownface was all chubby cheeks that crowded her eyes into crescents when she smiled. “Looks like we both going to the same place.”
    “New York City? The Hotel Commodore?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And then are you going on to Paris?” Cora asked.
    “So they tell me. If I stay on my feet.”
    When she finally followed Cora into the women’s waiting room, nobody paid attention to the colored woman in the purple hat; everyone was in too much of a rush. There was no “waiting” in this cosmopolitan crossroads, where a flood of women from all walks of life, loaded down with shopping bags and children, went in and out at a fabulous rate. The place was more elegant than the clientele, done up like a feminine palace in pink and gold, with round mirrors and clusters of crystalline electric lamps floating from the ceiling as if conjured by a magician. An attendant in a black uniform was handing towels to each patron, and most of them tossed some pennies in a dish.
    “I can’t hardly afford to even pee in here,” the grandmother observed.
    Cora left her to search for Katie McConnell, even asking strangers if they went by that name, but Katie had not arrived. It was 6:45 p.m.
    The elderly black lady had found a seat on a pink settee and invited Cora to sit down. Cora settled beside her, eyes on the door.
    “Lookin’ out for someone?”
    “A member of my party. We’re supposed to meet and take the train to New York. Her name is Mrs. McConnell,” Cora added, as if saying it would make her appear.
    “What’s your name, young lady?” the grandma asked.
    “Mrs. Blake. What is yours?”
    “Mrs. Russell.”
    Cora turned to her and gasped. “Mrs. Russell? You’re in my party, too. Party A?”
    Mrs. Russell fumbled with her purse, put on her glasses, and came up with a letter that had the familiar seal of the War Department. “Party A. There you be! Mrs. Blake, member something—”
    “Coordinator.”
    “Let’s see. There’s a couple of other names … and at the bottom it says Mr. Thomas Hammond and Miss Lily Barnett, R.N.”
    “That’s the army officer and the nurse assigned to our group. Oh, good Lord!” Cora continued in a rush. “What a stroke of luck for us to run into each other! Well,” she decided, “this was meant to be! I’ve been waiting and waiting to hear back from you. Didn’t you get my letters?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Don’t you live in Prouts Neck?”
    “Whose neck?”
    Cora threw up her hands. “Oh, never mind! The army must have sent the wrong address. I understand there will be more than four hundred of us going on that ship. You can’t really blame them.”
    Mrs. Russell objected vigorously. “That exactly what the army
do
. I ain’t hardly got any letters from my son, Elmore. And those I did receive did not arrive until a whole year after he died.”
    “What a shame. Did Elmore fight in a place called Meuse-Argonne, do you know?”
    “Yes, indeed.”
    “Sammy, too. He was in the Twenty-sixth Infantry, the Yankee Division.”
    “Elmore was in the Ninety-third Division, Service of Supply,” Mrs. Russell said proudly.
    “Good for him,” Cora echoed, with no idea what that meant.
    But it must have meant something, because Mrs. Russell was still nodding to herself with pleasure.
    “He was a hard worker and a good son. The Germans killed him with a bombshell. You just can’t keep the devil in the