Dandelions and Doodlebugs

By Rowena Zahnrei

“Megan!”

Megan Pargeter jumped to her feet, batting the wrinkles from her worn, patched skirt.  Her mother strode into the room and made a bee-line for the windows, her sturdy brown shoes clacking on the floorboards. 

“How many times do I have to tell you, child,” the woman scolded, hastily pressing the paper back into place against the glass and readjusting the thick blackout curtains.  “That paper is there to prevent the glass shattering in case there’s another bombing nearby.  What were you doing at the window anyway?  You know how important it is that these curtains are kept tightly closed, especially now, with night coming on!”

Megan hung her head. 

“Sorry, Mum.”

Her mother sighed. 

“Well, there was no harm done.  Just don’t do it again, love.”  Smoothing out her apron, she attempted a cheering smile. 

Once, such smiles had seemed a natural part of her mother’s face, but the war had worn them thin…just as it had sharpened her cheeks and deepened the dark half-moons beneath her tired eyes.

“Supper’s nearly ready.  Why don’t you go call your sister?”

Megan groaned. 

“Just, please say we’re not having cabbage again.  I honestly can’t face another night of cabbage soup!”

“The cabbage is what we have,” her mother said flatly.  “And you should be thankful all you have to complain of is the lack of variety in our food.  God willing, the cabbage spoiling will remain our gravest concern.”  She straightened her shoulders and raised her chin.  “Now, go fetch your sister.”

Megan found Winifred in their parents’ room listening to the wireless.  The rapid-fire, clipped voice of the announcer warned of yet another air attack likely to occur sometime that night.

“More doodlebugs,” the eight-year-old said.  She looked up at her sister, her round face drawn and pale.  “It’s happening again, isn’t it?  Another Blitz?”

“The Blitz was three years ago,” Megan said.  “These are just a few doodlebugs.”

“No, it’s happening again!” Winifred fretted.  “Mum will send us away. Back to the country, like before.  I don’t want to go!”

“Winnie, the doodlebugs won’t hit here,” Megan assured her.  “They can’t!  It’s like lightning:  they never hit the same place twice, and this street’s already been bombed.”

Winifred turned off the wireless, her eyes fixed on their mother’s colorful quilt. 

“Megan,” she said, her voice small and thin.

“Yeah, Winnie?”

“Could I sleep in your room tonight?”

Megan bit her lip, moving to sit beside her sister on the bed.  “You’re really scared, aren’t

you?”

Winifred curled onto Megan’s lap.  Megan stroked the girl’s long, tangled hair, distantly jealous of the rich, golden color--so different from her own short, black curls.

“Don’t worry, Winnie,” Megan said.  “There’s nothing to be scared of.  Daddy’s out there somewhere, and he’ll shoot down whatever comes our way.  He’s got a better plane than any of those Germans.  He’ll protect us!”

Winifred didn’t respond.  She chewed nervously at her hair, her sapphire eyes distant and dim.

Megan jumped off the bed. “Ugh, Winnie, don’t do that,” she reproached.  “You’ll start coughing up hairballs, like a cat!”

“Don’t care,” Winifred mumbled, slowly raising herself to sit in a gloomy, disheveled hunch.  “I’d rather eat my hair than cabbage soup.”

Megan frowned, instinctively mimicking her mother’s scolding stance. 

“Well, cabbage soup is what we have, and you should be grateful for it,” she lectured.  “Now, come on, stop your winging.  Chin up.  Let’s see that smile, yeah?”

Winifred lowered her eyes, brushing the clinging hair from her mouth and face.

“Megan…”

“What is it, Winnie?”

“What if Daddy can’t stop all the Germans?”  She spoke softly into her chest, not daring to look up.  “What if they get him first?”

Megan stiffened, unable to respond. 

That was the dreaded question.  The question their mother would never allow them to ask out loud. 

“Fears are made realities when you speak them aloud,” she’d told them time and again, her nervous hands always moving, always busy knitting or sewing or polishing or cooking.  “But speak of hopeful things, and your hope will grow.  Your Daddy will come home.  Wars can’t last forever, and evil men too must die.  One day soon, this war will be done.  And the world out there will be green and good once more.”

“Yes, Mum,” Megan had said, and she’d tried to mean it.  Pretended hope was better than no hope at all. 

But her mother’s fantasy couldn’t stand up to the pain in her sister’s eyes.  It couldn’t disguise her mother’s careworn face, or the way her busy hands trembled whenever a truck rolled by or a knock came at the door. 

Megan knew the truth…inside.  The truth her mother masked with stories; locked in her heart with a sprig of potpourri.  Her father was only one man.  Only one man in a small, metal plane.  More than likely, he would never come home again…

Megan shuddered hard, shaking her head like a dog with a flea. 

“No, Winnie!” she said.  “You mustn’t think like that!  Daddy will be fine.  He’ll come home and the war will be over and everything will be just like it always was!”

“How can you know that?” Winifred demanded, tears streaming down her cheeks.  “The man in the wireless said--”

“Forget the wireless!” Megan snapped, her own eyes burning with tears of fury she refused to shed.  “All it ever gives us is bad news anyway.  Now…”  She straightened, drawing in a deep, calming breath before holding out her hand for her sister to take.  “It’s time for supper and you’re coming with me.  If you carry on like this, I won’t let you sleep in my room tonight.”

Winifred's eyes widened, and she slid off the bed, clasping her sister’s fingers in her cold, clammy hand.

“No, Megan, please let me stay with you?  I don’t want to sleep alone.”

Megan looked down at her sister and bit her lip.  It hurt to see her this frightened.  It hurt so much…

This isn’t fair, she thought fiercely to herself.  Why can’t the fighting just end?  Why can’t things be safe again?  Why can’t the world be safe?

Her eyes were stinging again, but she quickly blinked it away.  That kind of security wasn’t real.  Megan had seen enough to understand that.  But, she had promised Daddy she would be brave for Mum and Winifred.  And to be brave, she had to lock away her terror and her anger and allow herself to believe her mother’s words - to trust the illusion that everything was going to be all right. 

For Winifred, she had to believe…

“Very well,” she said at last.  “You can stay with me.  But you have to cheer up.  No more of this kind of talk.”

Winifred nodded eagerly. 

“Yes, Megan.  We can tell each other stories, and then neither of us has to be afraid.”

Megan smiled, a small grin that slowly spread across her thin face. 

“Right.  After all, you can’t be afraid all the time.”

“That was a close one.”

Megan turned over in bed and looked at Winifred on the spare cot, curled up under their mother’s quilt.

“It shook the house,” Megan acknowledged.  “They’re flying pretty low tonight.”

“Do you really think Daddy’s up there somewhere?” Winifred asked, her large eyes gleaming in the near-complete darkness.

“Probably,” Megan answered through a yawn. 

Something distant…a low vibration…tickled deep in her ears. Megan sat up, her spine rigid with fear.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, her voice tight.

“Doodlebugs?”

Winifred climbed out of bed and rushed to the window.

"Winnie, get back to bed!” Megan whispered, not wanting to wake their mother, sleeping in the next room.  “Don’t open the shade!”

“I just want to see how far away they are,” Winifred whispered back, and carefully lifted the thick shade.  She peeled back the translucent paper and cupped her hands around her eyes, pressing her nose against the cold glass as she struggled to see through the darkness and the smoke from distant fires.

“Well?” Megan asked, clutching her pillow to her chest.  

We’re safe, she told herself, crushing her rising fear into the pit of her stomach.  We’re in my room.  Our mother is close by.  We’re in our own home.  We’re safe...  We’re safe...  We’re--

“I can’t see a thing,” Winifred complained.  “It’s so dark out there.  But wait...  I think I hear a buzz--”

Megan’s world exploded in a blinding flash of light.  The shock of the blast threw her from her bed, knocking her violently against the wall.  For long, uncounted moments, she could only sit where she’d landed, dazed, unable to understand what had happened.  When she finally opened her eyes, she found she was looking out into the moonlit street through a cloud of dust and smoke.

Half of her small room was completely gone.

Megan surged to her feet, screaming her sister’s name, ignoring the throbbing in her head and arm as she frantically picked her way through the burning rubble, searching for any sign of the little girl.

There!  That flash of white had to be Winnie’s nightgown! 

Megan crashed to her knees, digging through wood and plaster--

“Winnie...”

“Grammy! Grammy, wake up!”

Megan Pargeter opens her arms to catch her granddaughter in a hug. She holds the little girl close, the child a warm and solid bundle in her arms.

“Your Grammy wasn’t sleeping, love,” Megan tells her. “Merely resting my eyes.”

“Grammy,” the little girl says. “I found a dandelion puff! You have to watch me make a wish!”

Jumping down from Megan’s lap, she runs down the porch steps and brings the dandelion puff close to her lips. She closes her eyes for a long, intense moment, then opens them and blows as hard as she can, the soft, gray-white seeds gleaming gold in the sun’s fading light.

“Look! Look, Grammy!” she cries and laughs in delight. “I blew all the seeds off in one go! That means my wish will come true!”

Megan smiles down at her granddaughter, her haunted eyes gladdened by the girl’s happy enthusiasm. 

“That’s wonderful, Winnie, dear,” she says.  “What did you wish for?”

“For Mommy to be safe while she’s away.  And the other Army doctors too,” the child answers.

Megan bites her lip; her heart twists in her chest.  For that moment, the look in her granddaughter’s eyes reminds her so much of her sister…struck down by a bomb so many years ago... 

Making her way down the porch steps, Megan joins her granddaughter on the lawn, bending to pick a dandelion puff of her own.

“I think I’ll add my wish to yours,” she says.

“And then can we read each other stories?” Winifred asks eagerly.

Megan smiles. “Of course we can, love,” the old woman assures her, and gives the child’s nose an affectionate tap.  “After all, we can’t be afraid all the time.”