Early Warning

Thanks for your letter! I’m always happy to read anything you have to say, and no, I am not at all tired of you talking about your cousin Tim or telling me how much you miss him! You should miss him. I consider him a murder victim, not murdered by the Viet Cong, but by Lyndon Johnson and the rest of the imperialist pigs who are perpetrating an illegal war that they will never win. I know that you don’t hear such things at THE MADEIRA SCHOOL, but you are old enough to know the truth. When I was your age, I was walking around the farmhouse, staring out the windows, and wondering what was out there. Now I know, and I can’t say that it has made me happy, but it has made me strong. There have been many things that we have not been able to do anything about, but the Vietnam War is something that we can do something about. There is going to be a march in New York on April 15, a Saturday (here in San Fran, too). You should think about how you might get to that march. I don’t know the rules at your school. But there is never anything wrong with breaking rules, and in fact, you should practice as soon as you can. You are a good girl, which is a convenient cover story for you. No one expects you to misbehave, so, at least for a while, you can judiciously misbehave (not sex and drugs, if you know what I am getting at and I hope you do not).

Then there was stuff about Rosa and her daughter, Lacey.

By midnight that night, Janet had forged a brief note from her mother: “Back from Florida the other day. See your Dad is still in Palm Springs. Guess the hotel is a mess, and he needs to stay for at least another week. By the way, Nedra is very ill, and she asked to see you. A Surprise. Don’t know what is going to happen, but you should come home this weekend, Love, Mom.” She’d stuck it in the envelope from an earlier letter, careful to tear off the postmark in a ragged way, as if she had ripped open the letter. When she took it to Miss Green, her housemother, the next day, she saw instantly what Aunt Eloise had been getting at. Miss Green barely glanced at the letter, just gave Janet a big smile and said, “Of course. Do you have train fare?” And, yes, she did.

The most adventurous part of Janet’s trip to New York was something she would not be telling Aunt Eloise: that she spent Friday night on a bench in Penn Station. She did fall asleep, but only for an hour or so, with her purse between her chest and the back of the bench and her arms through its handles. She was awake by the time the crowds began to trickle through the building, and when she saw two girls in pigtails walking with two guys in army-surplus jackets, with long hair, she followed them as they headed uptown.

When the protesters began to head out of Central Park to Fifty-ninth Street, Janet was toward the front. She didn’t dare speak to anyone, but she smiled several times and got smiles back. When they passed in front of the Plaza Hotel, where her mom had taken her for tea a couple of times, Janet looked east down Fifty-ninth Street; it hadn’t occurred to her until right then that there were lots of people she knew who might see her, even if everyone in her family was out of town. The barriers were jammed with old people gaping. The only shouting was coming from the protesters, who were screaming “End the war! Stop the bombing!” Janet screamed that, too. Aunt Lillian had said that Tim was killed by a grenade — a piece of shrapnel had entered the back of his head, and he died right away — and that was all Janet needed to know. She screamed until she was hoarse, thinking of Tim pitching balls to her when she was eight, and of herself striking out over and over until, finally, he tossed it right at the sweet spot where her bat was headed, and her bat hit it.

At some point, Janet realized that the tall white man and the shorter black man that she was right behind were Dr. Spock and Dr. King. There was a way in which Janet had not quite believed that Dr. Spock existed, like Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima, but here he was, smiling and laughing, even when they passed a sign that read “Traitors!” And then she looked back. Because there was a little dip in the road, she saw the most thrilling sight she had ever seen, which was miles of people extending as far as it was possible to extend, into the buildings, into the clouds. They marched toward the East River, to the UN. The last time she was here was a field trip in sixth grade. She found herself a spot.