Eleven

WHEN THE GUARD PUSHES Frieda through the heavy oak door, another girl tries to squeeze out, through the gap, but the guard shoves her back and throws the bolt. "Didn't do nothing," says the girl. "Let me go!" She raps on the small round window in the door. "Jesus Christ, come on. Let me go."

Getting no response, the girl approaches Frieda and shoots out a glamorous arm. "Flossie Collins." She shakes hands firmly, like a man. "All you need to know about me now is that I'm peeved. I'm peeved and I'm getting us out of here." When she turns about, her hair—a bouncy flapper's bob—sparkles with a quick audacious shimmer. She resumes her exasperated rapping.

Frieda wishes she'd stop. The sound's too loud, too near. Everything around her closes in.

The room is in the basement of the Ayer Town Hall, and must normally be a secretarial office: there's a multigraph machine, an unplugged percolator. Filing cabinets have been uprooted and pushed against a wall and now support piles of cotton facecloths. By another wall are four canvas cots. Thumbtacked to a corkboard are outdated notices—Easter hours, last year's hunting regulations—and a poster promoting income-tax compliance: GOVERNMENT CAN ONLY BE AS WEALTHY AS YOU ARE: OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.

Flossie bangs again now on the glass, three brutish times. "Come on! For Christ's sake, open up."

The guard appears at the window with mirthless, yellowed eyes. "That's enough, now. Quit your racketing."

Leaning fiercely forward so her nose bumps the pane, Flossie says, "You can't lock me in here."

"Can and did, so shut your saucy mouth."

"I got rights!"

"And we got responsibilities. Section Thirteen of the Draft Act says no prostituting within five miles of a military—"

"Don't give me 'Section Thirteen'! I wasn't prostituting, and you know it. How could I be prostituting all alone?"

The guard's eyes narrow in sallow exasperation. "Fine, then. Suspicious conduct. Vagrancy. The charge don't matter. Didn't you read your circular?"

"Aw, hang your damn circular." Flossie gropes behind her for a multigraphed directive, which she crumples and hurls at the window. "Hang it, and go hang yourself, too."

"You little chit, don't you talk to me that way. Now you can stew till the protective officer comes." His fleshy face disappears from view.

Flossie inflicts a last ineffectual blow on the door, then turns, eyes alight with accusation. "What's a matter with you, girl? Not helping me out a whit."

Frieda says nothing. It hurts to breathe—not physically (her ribs are hardly bruised), but in an unappeasable, existential way. Each breath means that she's alive and has to face what happened, has to face whatever happens next.

Flossie flicks a wrist in her direction. "You obviously didn't come in without putting up a fight. Why ain'tcha fighting anymore?"

Is that what everybody will assume—that Frieda's dress was torn, her face muddied and scraped, in a tussle with the arresting officer? She's enraged—and consoled—that no one might know the truth.

"Where'd they nab you, anyhow?"

"Don't know," Frieda manages to say. "Some road."

"With a feller?"

Frieda shakes her head.

"Good, they got nothing on you neither. We'll both be out of here in no time." From her handbag, Flossie takes a gaudy pink beret and settles it atop her blond bob, as if readying for imminent release. "Trust me. I've been in the life a while now, and I've had my run-ins with the law. No john means no witness, no conviction."

Wouldn't Frieda want a witness, to attest to Flynn's cruelty? How could they jail her for what he did? She's not a hooker! But the guard said the charge doesn't matter. Frieda points to the circular, crumpled on the floor. "What about—?" she starts to ask, but Flossie interrupts her.

"What's it with that shittin' piece of paper? You'd think it was the Holy Writ or something."

When Frieda asks if she's read it, Flossie turns aside; she rakes her beret to a stiff, defensive angle. "I guess I ... I've never been much for reading."

Frieda retrieves the notice and carefully unfolds it. It's printed on a quarter page of thin, off-white paper, as if the girls aren't worth a whole sheet. "'ATTENTION WOMEN,'" she reads aloud. "'You are in quarantine and cannot be released on bail. You will be sent to the detention home and examined by a medical doctor. If you are found ill with a venereal disease you will stay until such time as the doctor deems you negative. All criminal proceedings against you will be deferred until this notice of cure has been received, at which point any possible conviction, and related sentencing, will be addressed. No lawyer can obtain your release.'"

"Quarantine! What're we, lepers?" Flossie crosses to the door, whams her fist. "I'll be goddamned if I—let me out of here!" She paces, a caged cat, all hiss and hackles. Then she stops short with the dawning of a notion. "'No lawyer,' huh? How 'bout a judge? Gent I know in Boston, we went together some. One night he snuck me with him into the courthouse, and we did it right there, on the bench. Bet he might not want that spread around. You're good with words, sister? Could you help me write a letter?"

But Frieda, dumb with fear, thinks, No use, it's too late. The doctor will know everything. He'll know. She flinches—as if already she can feel the doctor's fingers, probing in the place that aches from Flynn.

Flossie claps her hands in Frieda's face. "What're you, a hop-head? Aw, forget it." She flings herself down onto a cot.

Frieda lies down also, her limbs fetally bunched, wishing she could go to sleep forever. Secretly reaching into the cup of her brassiere, she searches for the only comfort left: Felix's words. All she finds is fabric, dirty flesh. The letter must have fallen as she ran.

They're sitting on their cots eating dinner—burnt pea soup—when the guard lets in a tall, big-boned woman. She enters in a fluster of exerted reassurance, eyes wide, her spine mainstaystiff.

"All yours," the guard mutters to the woman, and takes his leave.

"Call me Alice," the woman says. "I'm the protective officer ... but don't worry about the 'officer' part." Glancing at both girls, she presents a lax smile—or maybe it's just her overbite.

Protective sounds good to Frieda—Alice's voice is like tapioca—but Flossie wants nothing to do with her.

"I know your type. You're one of them awful creepin' Jesus ladies, come to rescue all the friendless girls. Well, no thanks!" She heaves about to face the wall.

Alice's cheeks quiver with visible affront, but she tightens her smile and coughs decisively. "I'm afraid to say, Miss Collins, that creeping's not my style. But with that attitude I can see why you'd be friendless." Looking pleased with her rejoinder, she sends a wink to Frieda. Her eyes are the blue of a Mrs. Winslow's bottle.

They move away from Flossie, to some functionary's desk. Alice urges Frieda to take the rightful seat, while she pulls up another, lower chair. For a long minute she lets them sit in silence. Can she tell that talking might crack Frieda in two?

Finally Alice says, "You sure look down on your uppers."

With her jutting teeth, Alice isn't overly pretty, but has a purposeful, built-to-last face: high cheekbones and a plain, straight-edged nose. Frieda guesses her age just shy of thirty.

"My father," Alice says, "calls it 'a case of the mulligrubs.' But I guess you've got reason to be blue." She asks if Frieda has ever been arrested before, if her family will be worried by her absence. Is there anyone they should reach by telephone?

No, Frieda tells her. There's nobody.

With a stung look, Alice shakes her head. "I can gather, then, why you'd feel desperate, Frieda, but desperate measures only make things worse. When you break laws, you can get yourself sent away for years. In places far rougher than this. Do you want that?"

Frieda looks away. She mumbles no.

"Of course not. And nor do we. But we also don't want girls writing their own ends when they should just be barely starting out! You need to be kept from the soldiers, and they from you."

Frieda tugs the knob of a warped drawer that sticks. "You don't even know me. I'm not like that."

"Oh, but I do. I know your type up and down, Frieda. You're no hardened case like some others that I've met." Here she points bluntly back to Flossie. "You're not really a bad girl at all—or maybe one who's been told she's bad, so acts it. You've just come to flirt a bit with soldiers. But you've got to understand, Frieda, that being a U.S. soldier doesn't make a man into a saint. He's still the same creature that he was before induction. What's needed of you now is self-control."

Across the room, Flossie sniggers. "And them? They go scot- free?"

"The Army"—Alice's voice turns flat, domesticated—"is holding soldiers to a new standard, too. And to prove to the higher-ups that this is the right course, we have to help as best we can." She takes Frieda's hand, firmly squeezes. "Can you tell me about the soldier you were caught with?"

"Wasn't caught with anyone," Frieda says.

"The one you 'visited with,' then. Will that do?"

Felix—how she wanted to fall and let him hold her up. She says, "I never saw who I wanted to visit with."

If only she could say what really happened. There would be questions, though; her answers would be wrong. Did this Flynn force you into the jitney? No. Force you to the shack? No.

How, then, can she say she didn't want it?

"...a bit more cooperation," Alice is saying. "I've heard enough tall tales to reach the moon. Now, nineteen? Is that correct? I see that's what you told the inspector."

For some reason—exhaustion? Alice's calming gaze?—Frieda is inspired to tell the truth. In a spent voice, she offers, "Seventeen."

"You're still your parents' child then, legally. When was the last time that you saw them?

"Dead," Frieda says.

"I'm terribly sorry. Both?"

Again the truth trickles out of her. "My father. Guess my mother's still alive."

"But you've quarreled. She's locked you out. The ties are cut."

Frieda nods. The account is near enough.

Alice scoots closer, and the difference in their chairs is emphasized; it's as though she wants Frieda to feel taller. "Look at you," she says, her voice lowered. "All tatters and scratches and down-in-the-mouth, sure, but even so, your innocence pokes through. You don't have to come to this. You don't." Because Frieda isn't yet of age, Alice explains, they might possibly circumvent the rules. If she agrees to reconcile with her mother and go home, if she proves herself capable of control...

"But the circular—"

"Let me worry about that." Alice stands; she towers over Frieda. "Think about it tonight—about how much freedom means. When morning comes, maybe you'll be wiser."

All night, Frieda is kinked with sleeplessness, two strands of fear raveling within her (seeing Mama again; never seeing her). She pulls one strand loose, the other tightens.

Flossie is awake, too, and churlishly tossing. "'I can see why you'd be friendless'? What a load! You think she has friends? You just think?"

Yes, Frieda guesses, Alice does. But she keeps the thought prudently unspoken. And doubles up again with indecision.

When a clock somewhere strikes two, she thinks, Felix! Oh God, Felix! All these hours, waiting in the woods. But no, it hits her: no. The whole thing was a trick. Felix doesn't know she tried to come.

Between her legs she feels raw, as though the skin has been pared. Like a catch in the throat before a cough. It's from Flynn, or from Felix, or maybe she has to pee. Could that be all it is? She calls the guard.

"No funny business," he says. "I'll be right outside the door."

In the bare, airless bathroom she thinks of Flynn, the train's toilet. She knew she shouldn't follow him—would have known, if she wanted to. But she wanted more to trust him, to trust them all, find Felix. (Were the other soldiers against her, too? Is everyone?) When will she learn to stop letting want to be trump is?

Now the need to pee is overpowering. She squats and she clutches at her hitched-up, ruined dress. ("Ruined?" Mama would say. "Hardly! Let me have a go." And she'd find a clever way to mend it.)

Maybe if Alice helps. If she keeps Hirsch away. If Alice talks with Mama first, maybe.

Frieda pushes and pushes, but barely a dribble comes. Still, she thinks. Whatever else, still sick.

In the morning, Alice brings company: Mrs. Sprague.

Mrs. Sprague, with her strange girlish braids and cleanly smile, her voice like someone urging a dog to stay. (Of course. She said she visits just-caught girls.)

"This?" she says, wheeling on Alice. "This is the girl we should be soft with?"

"Her name," Alice says, "is Frieda Mintz."

"Oh, I know. I met her back in Boston. I tried to find her, but she gave a false address."

Alice stares at Frieda: accusing? apologizing? To Mrs. Sprague, she says, "She's young. She could still change. Remand her to her mother, where she belongs."

"Oh, really? Which mother—the one she swore was dead? Now, Alice, we can't always get so sentimental and risk being constantly made fools of." She fusses around the room, running her thumb for dust, as if this were the parlor of her home.

Frieda can't tell how much of the bluster comes from anger and how much masks embarrassment for having been too trusting. (They share at least this one thing, then, this failing.) Mrs. Sprague has a jilted look—her eyes darting sadly—that makes Frieda want to say she's sorry.

But then the woman cuts a glance at Flossie, who's lain all this time on her cot, feigning sleep, pink beret pulled to shade her eyes. "If I'm right," says Mrs. Sprague, "I think I've met her, too. Or maybe they all start to look the same."

Frieda clamps her jaw. "I'm not like her."

"Oh, really?" says Mrs. Sprague. "Well, how strange then that you're both here."

"But I'm not a hooker. I've never sold myself."

This gets the woman's veins bulging. "Is that what you think this is about—money?" She punctuates the last word with a gray, jabbing finger. "Does debasing yourself for free make it somehow patriotic? Tommyrot! It makes no kind of difference."

Alice steps between them. "But it does. It makes a difference. That's the point of intervening now. Keep in mind whom we're trying to protect."

"'Never sold myself,'" mocks Mrs. Sprague. "What she apparently fails to grasp is that charity girls like her are just as bad—no, worse than prostitutes. With a prostitute, at least the soldier knows he's courting trouble. She ... she's like a spy is what she is."

Frieda says, "You act like I've gone and slaughtered someone. Why do you care so much? I'm just one girl."

Mrs. Sprague looks apt to throw a fist. "Just one girl, yes. But the soldier you infect—that any one girl does—will be sidelined for three weeks at the least. How many more lives will it cost, Miss Mintz—tell me!—when this soldier, lying sick in some hospital ward, can't make the charge beside his mates?"

I didn't infect, Frieda might say, I was infected. But she's stymied by Mrs. Sprague's outburst. Suddenly Frieda wonders: Has a son of hers been lost? Is that what gives her eyes their mournful look?

Alice, face cast down as though it's she who's been steam-rolled, lifts an interceding hand, then drops it. Across the room, Flossie slowly rises from her cot, looking flummoxed in the morning light, diminished.

Mrs. Sprague faces Alice, hugging her own chest in a posture of private agony. The bluster and the jabbing imputation have dissolved, replaced by what seems genuine dejection. Frieda can now see her as a mother: a woman who at one time must have held a newborn child, nursed it, powdered its soft skin, only to suffer the inevitable treason of its growing up.

"Oh, Alice," says Mrs. Sprague. "Is our work entirely wasted? Do they even understand the harm they cause?"