Keep Smiling Through by Ann Rinaldi Read Free Book Online

carefully. Don't forget, darling dresses can be made out of feed bags. Keep your courage high and your lipstick handy."
    Everyone gave her a round of applause. Then they went back to talking about the fight.
    Was Mr. Vineland right in saying that making money on the war was wrong? Or was Mr. Schoenfeld right? He had stepped up his egg production to keep up with the war need.
    The Lone Ranger would know, with his unswerving sense of justice; I was sure of it. But the Lone Ranger wasn't here. Only our plain, ordinary neighbors and my family were here.
    As we put our coats on, Beverly Vineland came up to us. "Please don't think harshly of my father, Mr. Hennings. He worries so about Harry. And my Al."
    "Does it matter what I think, Beverly?"
    "Yes. Everybody in the neighborhood looks up to you. You've got the biggest house and the best job. You go into New York every day. You know what's going on. We're sure you have some answers."
    She was looking at him as if he were the Lone Ranger.
He doesn't have any answers,
I
wanted to yell at her.
You should see how confused things are in our house!
    Still, my father got all puffed up and important looking when she said that. Elizabeth would say it was his executive look. "Well, I'll tell you one thing that's going on, Beverly. Every day in Penn Station I see young boys going off to war. I see them saying good-bye to their families. It's awful," my father said, "just awful. And you're a good girl to stick up for your father. From now on we buy our eggs from Mrs. Leudloff."
    She got tears in her eyes. "Thank you, Mr. Hennings. You've always been a good neighbor."
    "What do you hear from Al?" my father asked.
    "He's well, and they're shipping him to a different place. But he doesn't know where. And did I tell you, Mrs. Hennings?" She looked at Amazing Grace. "When he comes home, he's bringing his parachute. I'm going to have my wedding gown made out of it."
    "That's nice." Amazing Grace sniffed. "Did you see the jumper I made Kay?"
    "Yes," Beverly said weakly.
    "Nobody even noticed it." Grace's nose was out of joint.
    "Well, golly gee willikers," Beverly said, "everybody's making their own clothes these days. Tell Mary I've got some new Glenn Miller records. And I'm on day shifts next week. So we can listen to them, evenings." She worked for the telephone company.
    "I'm going to make Kay a dress out of feed-bag material. She'll be wearing it to the next meeting," Amazing Grace told her.
    My heart fell inside me. The bags our cow feed came in were a kind of strong muslin, printed with flowers.
Now I have to have a feed-bag dress?
    I knew why. Amazing Grace couldn't stand to be bested by anybody. If Beverly could make her wedding gown out of her boyfriend's silk parachute, Amazing Grace would make me a feed-bag dress. Well, I wouldn't wear it. Everybody
knows
feed-bag material when they see it. It means you're poor and can't afford to buy fabric, I don't care what they say about being patriotic.
    I knew my father wasn't poor. Stingy, yes, but not poor.
    In the worn backseat of our '38 Oldsmobile, Martin nudged me. "You've got to go back to the old Nazi spy now for eggs. Just
because Mr. Schoenfeld bragged how much money he's making on the war."
    "I heard it," I said.
    "I told you I'd cloud their minds when you got up to say the Pledge of Allegiance, didn't I?" Tom whispered.
    "You're right, Tom." I answered. "You did real good. They hardly even looked at me."

CHAPTER 8
    All that spring I went to Mrs. Leudloff for eggs. It had nothing to do with Mrs. Leudloff herself. I was sent because Mr. Schoenfeld and Mr. Vineland had had a fight. Mary said it was because our father had to show his support for Mr. Vineland, whose son was fighting the war.
    I thought it strange that we should support the war effort by buying eggs from a German lady instead of a Jewish man. But that year everything seemed strange. And kept right on getting stranger.
    The morning after the Farmers Cooperative meeting,