Remembering how crowded it had been when they’d shared the rooms with her paternal aunt and uncle for ten months after they arrived in Philadelphia—Mutti and Vater on the narrow kitchen bed, Pia sleeping on the floor—she knew how lucky she was to have an entire bed to herself. Eventually her luck would change, either when the landlord found out her aunt and uncle had moved to New York and he needed room for more tenants, or when the twins got too big to sleep with Mutti. But for now, she relished being able to stretch out and turn over on the horsehair mattress.
Thinking about it now, she couldn’t wait to go to bed later. Exhaustion weighed her down, making her lungs and limbs feel heavy and slow, every thought and movement an effort. She couldn’t wait to eat, then escape into sleep, so she could stop thinking about the little girl who grabbed her hand during the parade, and Mary Helen and Tommy Costa, Mr. Ferrelli, and the man in the trolley. She wanted to stop thinking about the trolley man’s bloody face, and the flu, and the horrible things happening in the city, and in this very building. It was too much. Then she remembered Finn’s brother and prayed he wasn’t sick too, even though in her heart of hearts she knew the truth. Hopefully Finn would send her a note saying she was wrong, if she heard from him at all.
After setting her water bucket next to Mutti’s near the washbasin, Pia put her books on her bed, the familiar aroma of vinegar, boiled potatoes, and the sharp tang of lye soap wrapping her in an invisible cocoon of home and safety. She wanted to close the window to keep the comforting smells in and whatever was happening in the city out. It made no sense, of course—fresh air was supposed to ward off influenza—but the urge to shut out the disease and fear-filled air everyone else was breathing outweighed any common sense. She knelt on the bed and put her hands on the sash, ready to pull it down.
“What are you doing?” Mutti said.
“It’s chilly in here,” Pia said. “May I close the window?”
“We will shut it when the boys wake up,” Mutti said. “The fresh air is good. We need to keep it open when they are sleeping.” She went over to the table, picked up a spoon, and held it out to Pia. “Mrs. Schmidt brought this over. To keep away the flu.”
Before getting off the bed, Pia glanced over at Finn’s window. It was open, but no one looked out. She got down and went over to her mother. “What is it?”
“A sugar cube soaking in...” Mutti furrowed her brow. “I cannot think of the word. Kar . . . karo . . .”
“Kerosene?”
Mutti nodded. “Ja. I took one and gave one to the boys too, with a little water. This is for you.”
Pia made a face. Back in Hazleton, they ate violets and drank sassafras tea to keep sickness away, not kerosene. But no violets or sassafras trees grew in the Fifth Ward, or anywhere in the city as far as she knew. Knowing she had no choice, she took the spoon and put the sugar cube in her mouth. It tasted sweet and oily at the same time, as if she were eating a piece of candy rolled in tar. Trying not to gag, she chewed and swallowed as fast as she could. Mutti gave her a ladle of water from the bucket, but it didn’t help. The inside of her mouth tasted like mud and lantern oil. She grimaced and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
“That was awful,” she cried.
Mutti put a finger to her lips. “Shh, don’t wake your brothers. They have not been happy all day.” She took the spoon and put it in the washbasin, then sat down at the table and picked up a darning egg from her mending basket.
“They probably didn’t like the medicine,” Pia said.
“Medicine is not meant to taste good,” Mutti said.
Hoping supper would get rid of the horrible taste in her mouth, Pia went over to the coal stove and lifted the lid on the simmering pot. Potato soup. Again. Due to the war, they were supposed to sacrifice by having wheatless Wednesdays and meatless Mondays, but she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had meat at all. Maybe it was Easter, or Christmas. Vater had tacked the newspaper articles on the wall before he left, to remind them to keep sacrificing while he was gone. As if they had a choice.
If you eat—THESE—you eat no wheat/CONTAINS NO WHEAT:
Oatmeal, potatoes, rice, hominy, barley, and 100 percent substitute bread.
100 percent breads:
Corn pone, muffins, and biscuits, all kinds of bread made only from corn, oats, barley, and all other wheat substitutes.
Don’t waste ice. Don’t waste ammonia.
A ton of ice waived may mean one pound of ammonia saved. One pound of ammonia saved may mean twenty hand grenades. Twenty hand grenades may win a battle.
Potatoes are a splendid food. Excellent for your body. Delicious when well cooked.
What they do for your body: They are good fuel. They furnish starch, which burns in your muscles to let you work, much as the gasoline burns in an automobile engine to make it go. One medium-size potato gives you as much starch as two slices of bread. When you have potatoes for a meal, you need less bread. Potatoes can save wheat. They give you salts like other vegetables. You need the salts to build and renew all the parts of your body and keep it in order. You can even use potatoes in cake!
If only we could get muffins and biscuits and meat, Pia thought. She glanced at her mother, who was picking up a tattered sock and scrubbing one hand on her apron. Her flour-sack blouse hung loose on her shoulders, exposing her thin neck and jutting collarbones, and her brown skirt hung like a faded tent over her legs. Her jawline and cheekbones stood out in sharp angles in her pale face, and her waist-length blond hair, which Pia used to love to brush and Mutti now wore in a loose braid, looked limp and dull. Pia wasn’t sure how much longer her mother could keep nursing the twins without eating more, but Mutti refused to spend what little money they had on formula when she could feed her babies for free, and she didn’t want to use the jars of Mellin’s Infant Food on the shelf until absolutely necessary, even though doctors said Mellin’s mixed with cow’s milk was superior to mother’s milk. But they only had water to mix it with, anyway.
Pia wanted to look for a job to bring in more money, but Mutti hoped the war would be over soon, Vater would return, and things would go back to normal. In the meantime, Pia was only thirteen and needed to stay in school as long as possible, especially because the laws for Germans seemed to change every day, and there was no way of knowing how much longer she’d be allowed to attend. Finn had offered to teach her how to steal food at the open-air market, but she refused. Mutti would never eat stolen food, not to mention the trouble she’d be in if she got caught. The first time she saw Finn stuff a brisket under his jacket, she’d been shocked—and asked him afterward how taking meat was any different from robbing bottles and rags from the old colored woman. He said the boys who did that were trying to cause trouble by stealing from someone who already had nothing, but he was trying to help his family survive. Like him and everyone else unlucky enough to live in the Fifth Ward, she’d been dealt an unpredictable lot in life, he said, and someday she might need to slip a loaf of bread beneath her shirt to stay alive. Having been taught that taking something that didn’t belong to her was wrong, no matter what, she hadn’t been convinced. But she had to admit she was beginning to understand. Desperation was a powerful thing. Now she wished she’d listened to him. She supposed she could still try stealing if things got any worse; then she remembered she was too scared to leave the house.