The large sign at the entrance to the compound was written in clear, bold letters: "What you do here, What you see here, What you hear here, please let it stay here."

Sneaking past the guards onto the grounds of Fort Pryman Shard wasn't the hard part. In fact, it was deceptively easy. All I had to do was wait beside the gate for a group of those women in the bandanas with their lunch sacks to make their way past the guard, smiling and flirting, asking him about his mother in a way that made him blush, and insinuate myself into the group. Within minutes of arriving at the front gate, I was in.

But now I stood rootless in the middle of the roundabout by the front entrance, trying to get my bearings. The entire edifice had been transformed once again, now containing no high school, as I had known it wouldn't. My father had explained to me when I was young that the place was originally built to be the fort. The school was an afterthought.

So in the place of the sign that had either read "East Township High School" or "Good Citizen Academy," depending on which reality you happened to frequent, there was instead no sign, just an American flag. It hung in bold colors, fresh creases from its nightly folding still visible in checker marks throughout its surface, bristling occasionally at the whiffs of warm summer air.

And near the main building was a series of other buildings, mostly sitting in the area that would eventually become the track field behind the high school, or the wooded patch of land that wasn't used for anything anymore by the time I was growing up, except a convenient place for ditching students to make out.

Now an entire complex of buildings occupied that space, and as I walked with purpose from one end to the other, trying to avoid the suspicious gazes of the roaming guards, I saw that each building was marked with only the smallest sign, designating it with a series of letters and numbers—Y12, X10—instead of a name.

Hundreds of people milled about, making it easier for me to avoid detection, and they made their way with swift steps through the muddy clearing in the middle of all these interconnected buildings, all with one thing in common: ID tags. Lots of them. In several colors, all seeming to identify which buildings they were—and were not—allowed to enter.

There seemed to be three types of people entering the buildings: white men in even whiter lab coats; workwomen, some as young as me, all wearing either simple shift dresses or blue men's work pants and blouses, their hair tied up in yellow scarves; and the Mexican women who entered all the buildings with their cleaning carts in tow, mumbling inaudibly to each other in Spanish and making eye contact with no one.

I must have paced back and forth for over twenty minutes, a determined look on my face to indicate I was in a huge hurry, while I scanned the faces for any variance.

White men in lab coats.

White women in overalls.

Mexican women in drab gray dresses, a broom seemingly glued into their hands.

Finally I realized that I would either have to make a move or leave. The world wasn't going to change around me while I sat there. I tentatively approached the front door of the building labelled Y12, wiping my hands on my trousers even though they weren't actually dirty. I took a deep breath. Could I just sneak in?

What would they think of me, if I walked through time into that building?

"¿Estás perdida?" a voice asked me.

I turned to see one of the cleaning ladies facing me, a wrinkle of confusion in her tired forehead and a rag in one hand.

Shoot. Spanish. Not my strong suit.

"Um... no, no estoy perdida. Gracias."

I either just told her that I wasn't lost or that I wasn't lying. I couldn't remember which, although in that moment, I actually was both of those things. I smiled awkwardly and excused myself, walking with purpose across the grassy knoll and back past the guard in his little booth. He looked at me with a million questions on his lips, but I was long gone before he ever got a chance to voice them.

*

The window of Graussman's pharmacy—which was apparently one of the oldest buildings in town—contained a random assortment of personal items, including a couple of wedding bands displayed within well-worn clamshell cases. Scanning the rest of the offered goods—an old watch, a scuffed-up guitar with only three strings, a small radio—my eyes finally fell on what I'd been hoping to see: a handwritten sign, "Layaway/pawn, see owner."

I had already checked out the rest of the street, and this was the only business that seemed promising. If they couldn't help me, I didn't know how I'd get any cash.

I retied the sleeve around my hair, trying to emulate the look I'd seen on some of the girls at the base, and walked inside.

The little bells jangled overhead, announcing my presence.

A young woman, maybe twenty-five years old, was standing behind the glass display counter, with even more wares arranged within it. Her hands were busily moving in steady loops, sewing a hem on a dress.

"Excuse me?"

She looked up, a helpful face with a ready smile, sitting under a generous pile of brown curly hair pinned up above warm brown eyes. "Yes, dear?"

"I was wondering if, um..." I twisted the ring nervously on my finger, then slid it off and placed it on the counter. "if you'd be interested in buying this. Pawning it, I mean."

Her face fell when she saw what I had offered, and she put down her sewing onto a little table by her side. Her tender eyes offered me a piteous smile. "Wait right here." She got up and stuck her head into the doorway of a little office behind the counter. "Dad," I heard her say, "there's another one."

I cleared my throat, my fingers resting nervously on the ring, which made the metal casing around the diamond scratch lightly against the glass.

Another one?

I thought about grabbing the ring and running. Did she know it wasn't mine? But before I could make a decision, an older man with a potbelly and two identical tufts of white hair springing out over his ears emerged from the little office. Peering at me over wire-rimmed bifocals, he looked like a kind little elf. The thought made me smile to myself, which in turn made me trust him.

His daughter took her sewing to a bench over in the corner. The message was clear: I had been passed off. I would be dealing with the father now. He leaned over the ring, grabbed a loop from a chain around his neck, and inspected it closely.

He sighed heavily, placing the ring with the utmost gentleness back in front of me.

"Did your man not come home, dear?"

I inhaled sharply at the question, specks of dust from the ancient goods and musty old clothes filling my nostrils in the process. "Oh, no," I said, tripping over my own mouth. "No, it's not that. He's fine. We just—we need some money."

This made his eyebrows knit together in worry. He looked down at my belly and then back up to my face. "Now listen, dear, if this is for something...untoward, I can't..."

I wasn't immediately sure what 'untoward' referred to, but I could certainly guess. I was just making things worse. "No, it's not that, I—" Pull it together, Marina. Speak clearly. "We're new in town. We're looking for work. He's back from the war and we need some money to get settled. That's all."

He nodded slowly, his mouth forming a small O as if he was just catching up with my story.

"You two hoping to work at the base?"

"Yes."

"Well, that clearance will take a long time. But you might be able to secure housing while you wait."

I nodded. "That would be great."

"Don't you have any savings, dear? Any family you can call?"

I shook my head absently, trying to say as little as possible. "No."

His eyes fell back down on the ring with a determined and heavy sigh. "Well, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do..." Scooping up the ring, he gently placed it in a cigar box sitting up on the tallest shelf on the back wall, letting the lid fall over it. "I'm gonna keep that ring right in there, you hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm not going to sell it. When your man gets his first check—or when you do—you come on in here and you give me three dollars a week to buy it back. In the meantime..."

He disappeared into the back office for a minute, and I could hear him clattering around in there. I looked over to his daughter, and saw that she was smiling pleasantly in my direction. After a moment, her father came back out and handed me one hundred dollars in ten-dollar bills. "That ought to get you through the month."

I opened my mouth to protest, pretty sure that even in the nineteen forties, that ring was worth more than a hundred bucks. But what leverage did I have to negotiate? Was I going to go to the other pawn shop in town? There wasn't one, and we both knew it.

"Now, you stay here while I make a phone call," the old man instructed, shuffling back into the office. "I'm going to try to get you into one of the new married units they're putting up out in the fields."

"We don't need a married unit—" I began.

"Oh, you'll need it," the man smiled warmly. "Now that your man's back, you'll be glad of the second bedroom soon enough." His glance wafted down to my stomach again for a moment as he turned to enter the office.

I knew I should be happy since this transaction had worked out pretty well, but I couldn't help but feel grossed out instead. The complete freedom with which men were talking about me and my body was beyond surreal. I knew it was a different time and all, but I didn't realize it would be this bad.

I turned while I waited for him to come back and examined a rack of dresses nearby. They were all made in the same style, but from a range of different fabrics and patterns. I picked up a nice green one, rubbing the rough material between my fingers.

"You like that one?" the daughter asked, coming around the counter to check on me now that her father was gone.

"Did you make it?"

"I did. I make them all," she said proudly. "Truth be told, they're from a pattern, but I always like to add a little extra flair."

"It's really lovely."

"Try it on," she urged, guiding me by the back in the direction of a curtained changing area.

"Um..."

"Oh, it's all right, I'll give you a deal for it. I know you're saving your money. I couldn't help but overhear."

I hesitated, the dress clutched in my hands, and her eyes fell down to my feet. A soft look came over her as she took in my black boots—part of the Russian outfit. "Do you only have the men's shoes, dear?"

I nodded awkwardly, trying to hand her back the dress.

But she seemed undeterred, taking me aside and whispering in a conspiratorial kind of way. "When the war first started," she confided in me, "I had to sell my very last pair of stockings. Oh, it broke my heart. I wore my brother's pants for a week to hide my bare legs."

I smiled, grateful that she was taking the pressure off of me to explain my clothes. Her hand reached up and lightly touched the sleeve I was using to wrap up my hair, and she nodded affectionately. "The sacrifices we make for the war effort, eh?"

Then she led me by the arm over to the dressing room. "I'm going to make you my pet. You go right in and try on that dress, and I'll fetch you some stockings. They're rayon, I'm afraid, but no one will know the difference."

Once I had on the dress, stockings—which I eventually figured out how to secure into the garter belt she passed me under the curtain—and some shiny new pumps, my new friend led me over to the counter again.

She was pinning up my hair, rouging my cheeks, and painting my lips red by the time I got around to asking her what her name was.

"Call me Mimi. Everyone does."

"Thank you for being so nice to me, Mimi."

"Oh, I'm happy to do it. You know, dear, you really must wear a hat when you work in the sun. You could be a great beauty, but you're much too tan."

And despite the voice in my head telling me to let it lie, I just couldn't. "I'm not tan, I'm Mexican."

To Mimi's credit, her hand only hesitated for a quarter of a second before she leaned back in to finish up my lips. "Well, I won't tell anyone," she whispered, offering me another friendly smile.

I glanced over to the small office, where I could hear Mimi's father finishing up his phone call with a sign-off of, "And a pleasant day to you and yours." Before he came back out, Mimi leaned in one more time.

"You know, I've got a little bottle of Lilac cream in the back," she smiled. "You just massage it in every night for a month," she continued, demonstrating on herself how to rub the cream into her cheeks, "and it'll lighten you right up. It's what Rita Hayworth uses."

Mimi's dad came out of the office then. "Good news," he beamed, "I've secured you one of the new units. You can move in tonight." Father and daughter both clapped their hands in delight, and I could only offer them what I hoped looked like a genuine smile in return. 

*****

Author's note: I've loved exploring the way Marina's relationship with her ethnicity has changed over the course of the two books. I feel like it's such an important part of the growing-up process: embracing and being proud of who you are, what you look like, what your culture means to you. Especially now that she's been dropped in the past, she's had to take ownership of her identity in a way she never did before.

Anyone relate?

Keep reading for chapter 36!