The Magic of Ordinary Days by Ann Howard Creel

take no for an answer.”
    Bea went on in this manner for quite some time, almost carrying on a conversation with herself. But her voice sounded so good to me that I let her go on and on. I added more coins as the operator asked for them, until I had completely run out of change, and Bea and I were forced to say a rushed goodbye.
    As I hung up the receiver and looked outside the telephone booth, I realized that for just the briefest moment, I had escaped. Bea’s voice had picked me up and plunked me back in the home where I had once belonged. Although Rose and Lorelei waited for me in the truck, it took me a while before I was able to move toward them.
    Options, Bea had said. Back in Denver and before I left, we had discussed those options. With no place to go and no personal means, I couldn’t disappear on my own, but staying in Denver was impossible, too. Having a baby without a husband ruined a girl’s life forever. Abby’s suggestion had been to marry as Father insisted, give the child a name, then divorce and return with the baby to Denver. Our mother had always taught us that divorce was a distasteful thing reserved for the lower classes and for movie stars, but our generation was more enlightened. We were fighting the worst war in history, and if humanity survived it, we wouldn’t sacrifice everything in our lives, ever again. Already the divorce rate was soaring, probably due to the large number of hasty wartime marriages. Of course, Mother had also taught her daughters to stay virgins until after marriage, something Abby and Bea had managed to do.
    I slipped back into the driver’s seat and turned over the ignition. Earlier that morning, I had met Rose and Lorelei at the pay telephone in town, as they had assured me they could walk that far. But now they directed me to a large horse barn outside of Wilson where many of the farmworkers lucky enough to participate in the Agricultural Leave Program spent their nights. Draped by lanterns, the open doors revealed beds of hay inside, personal belongings and clothing stacked on hay bales and on overturned crates, workers milling about as if in preparation for the night to come.
    I tried to remember the first time I had heard of Congress’s plans for Japanese American internment. I recalled that my first impression had been one of approval, that certainly we couldn’t chance domestic disloyalty in the face of this terrible world war. But now, as I sat beside Rose and Lorelei and gazed out at this barn—this farm camp, as they called it—I wavered. Certainly these two girls posed no threat to our country. In fact, all the farmworkers seemed to be the most peaceful of people. They had volunteered to help with the harvest, tough physical labor at best, to leave the camp and stay here in conditions little better than those provided for our livestock, all to earn a measly nineteen dollars a month.
    This was temporary, I kept telling myself. At war’s end, they could return to the homes, businesses, and places in society where they had lived before. I found myself wishing I’d never seen this camp.
    Perhaps someday, we could all make it back to the places where we started.
    I didn’t believe it, but I tried to.

Ten

    By the time I reached home, it was after sunset. On moonless nights, black sky and prairie horizon blended into one dark veil. But with no blackout curtains required here in the middle of the countryside, I could see stark white light coming from the kitchen window, letting me know that Ray was inside. I climbed the steps and found him sitting at the table eating heated-up leftover chicken.
    â€œSorry about that,” I said.
    He set down his fork. “I got by on my own for years before.”
    I slid down onto the chair next to him and checked the pot. Perhaps I’d try some myself.
    Ray said, “We’re thinking on trying winter wheat this year.” He picked up his fork and started to eat