The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

In the morning Jamie had wet the bed. I’d half expected it, but Mam, sleeping
on the other side of Jamie, was furious. She smacked his bottom hard and told
him it’d better not happen again. “Else you’ll sleep on the floor,” she said.
Jamie sobbed. He wasn’t used to being smacked anymore. “Quit crying,” I
whispered, my arms around him. “You’ve got to. Crying makes it worse.” To
Mam I said, “I’ll wash the blanket.” I reached to the floor for my crutches and
my shoes.
They were gone.
Mam saw the look on my face. She laughed. “Missing your crutches, are
you?”
“Why didn’t you get me crutches when I was younger?” I asked.
Mam snorted. “I told you,” she said. “I don’t want you going anywhere. I
don’t want anyone to see you.”
“But my foot could have been fixed. When I was a baby—”
“Oh, so now you believe all that too? That’s what they said, those nurses,
wanted me to spend money, wanted to take my baby and my money and put
you in hospital for months, all my money, and nobody was going to tell me
what to do with my money and my kid. Wouldn’t have worked anyhow.
When you was a baby your foot wasn’t half as ugly as it is now.”
I tried to absorb all this. But Jamie had thought of something else. “What
about when the bombs come?” he asked. “Where’ll we go then? At home we
had a shelter—” He stopped, his eyes widening with fear. I understood. It was
a mistake to call Susan’s house home.
But Mam didn’t notice. She just snorted. “Ain’t no bombs in London,” she
said. “Haven’t been, not once, and the war’s been on a year.”
It was a Saturday, but Mam said she’d be working that night. The factories
ran around the clock. She dozed on the dry side of the bed while I toasted
bread for breakfast and made tea. When she woke, she and Jamie went out to
buy food. “Where’re your ration cards?” Mam asked.
Susan had them. She would have given them to us, if Mam hadn’t been in
such an all-fired hurry to leave.
I played dumb. “Dunno,” I said. Jamie started to speak, but I glared at him