Free The Kingdom of Brooklyn by Merrill Joan Gerber Page B

Valley, her perfume.
    A box in the beauty parlor fills up with jewelry. Gilda says it’s fake, but I don’t know what she means. It’s as real as my fingers that jangle and untangle the chains—as real as my cheek that I hold the cold, round stones against. Rubies and diamonds glitter on the table with the nail polish bottles and shampoo tubes and all the clips and curlers and bobby pins. Women arriving to get beautiful drop off these strings and rings and things of gold. I’m told the jewels will build air strips in New Guinea. The natives there will do anything for a shiny necklace. I don’t blame them. I would do anything to have one myself.
    One night Gilda has a Kits for Russia party. The next night she has a Bandages for Our Boys party. Her customers come to our house at night and go upstairs to sit at Gilda’s kitchen table. We hear their comings and goings. Laughter, footsteps on the stairs, the doorbell ringing and ringing. My heart yearns to fly up there to celebrate whatever they are celebrating. Gilda has told me they roll gauze into neat bandages for the soldiers on the front and make kits for Russia because “they have nothing in Russia.” It seems the Russians desperately need sugar for their tea and soap for their baths and thread because their clothes are in tatters.
    My mother keeps casting her eyes at the ceiling; all that noise from upstairs, all that chatter and wild laughter. She doesn’t like it. At night I’m not allowed to go up and watch because soon it will be my bedtime. My father says to her during one of these parties, “Why don’t you go up and roll bandages?” She says to him, “Why don’t you ?”
    Something is changing in Gilda. She’s braver and noisier; she’s busier and bossier. She gets on the phone and tells people how to get busy to win the war. “I can’t carry a gun, but I can shoot my mouth off” is what she tells one of her customers.

    A great event takes place in our neighborhood. Gilda marches in a parade carrying a magnificent American flag on a long pole. She leads an army of brides like herself down Avenue P, all of them in white with red crosses, their skirts and hair flying in the wind, their gauze headdresses shivering like butterflies’ wings. The Avenue N shul is sponsoring a war bond rally on Avenue P. I am on my father’s shoulders, high above the crowd. My grandmother stands down below, spinning her head from side to side, in order to see better. My mother has stayed home with The Screamer, which is always perfect for me.
    At every corner are bridge tables where women are selling war bonds. I’d like to be as important as those women. They take money and write down names. My father—counting out five- and one-dollar bills—buys two twenty-five-dollar war bonds although my mother warned him not to do anything that would put us in the poorhouse. I worry that he might be doing something bad. But it doesn’t look bad. He’s very happy to do it. He’s proud. Besides, he pays only eighteen dollars and some change for each war bond. This, he tells me, is a bargain because in a few years they will be worth more than he paid. And, in the meantime, they will be winning the war.
    Gilda and the women march to drums and flutes. The women march like beautiful soldiers in a ballet, without heavy boots and guns. They march but really they dance and their dresses blow in the wind. I tangle my fingers in the curls of my father’s head and love being this high, this far-seeing.
    When the parade is over (it goes for two blocks), Gilda comes up to us, her cheeks flushed, smiling happily. She talks to my father, not once letting the smile slip away, and holds onto my leg, but I have the feeling it’s my father she’s really touching although I know it’s me. They are both laughing—their faces are lit by laughter. I feel my father’s shoulders shake