A/N: Well, I'm trying something new! This is a completely AU fic, mostly set in the 1940's, with some other decades thrown in. It's going to start off pretty slow, but really picks up around the third chapter. Give it a shot!
I haven't abandoned TaSM, and I'm still going to be working on the college years, I just needed a little break. I've been writing in that universe for a year!
And just so everyone's clear, this is definitely a Brittana story, so don't worry.
Also, a quick warning, there will be some racially-charged language since this is set in the 1940's. And I take some creative license historically.
I hope you like it and let me know what you think!
Prologue: New York, 1979
Santana turns off the water running into her bathroom sink. She shuts her eyes, resting her hands on the sink, just listening to the buzz outside her bathroom. Silence is something she has become accustomed to, something she is missing today. City silence, she likes to call it, because the buzz of Manhattan never seems to truly dim. The wailing of sirens and car horns and laughter always come through her window, but in her apartment, it is always just her and her thoughts. She likes it. Today, however, she can hear her children arguing, her grandchildren giggling, and the low voice of President Carter coming through the television set. She slowly rubs lilac scented lotion into her hands, massaging it into the fine wrinkles that are just beginning to form. She likes her silence. She likes this too. It's different, yet comforting, somehow.
"Mama, està bien?" Blanca asks through the door, lightly tapping on the frame.
"Sí, mija," Santana says, opening the door, her smile a little too bright. She's putting on a show, and she knows her daughter knows it. "Te preocupes demasiado," Santana says, wrapping her arm around her daughter's shoulder. Blanca chuckles as they walk into the kitchen together. She tucks a stray, feathered hair behind her daughter's ear. "I don't understand this hairstyle, Blanca," she says. "If you keep dying and frying your hair, it is all going to fall out."
"Now who's worrying too much, Mama?" Blanca says with a grin.
"Abuela!" Kristen yells, "Mom's letting me make the empanadillas!"
"They smell delicious, Kiki," Santana says, using her nickname for her youngest granddaughter. She walks over to where Kristen is stirring ingredients and pretends to smell the uncooked food. "Where is your sister? And your cousins? Why aren't they helping you?"
"Amanda was helping Uncle Edward with the pollo al jerez, but she got bored, so she, Ryan, and Vanessa are in the living room."
"I see," Santana said with a smirk, gently ruffling the little girl's hair.
"Help me with the empanadillas, tía?"
"Sí, Kiki," Blanca laughs at the little girl, covered in flour and sauce and lord knows what else and moves between her mother and her niece to help with the cooking.
"Don't laugh at me!" Kristen says, waving her spoon at Blanca. "And don't call me Kiki. Only Abuela is allowed to call me that." Kristen scowls at Blanca.
"I'm very sorry, Kristen. Now, let's see what kind of mess you've gotten into." Blanca says, laughing at her niece. Santana smiles, ruffling Kristen's hair before she follows the sound toward her living room.
It's strange to see her apartment so full; she has gotten so used to having all the space to herself after all these years. The apartment's not huge—it's still New York after all—but it certainly had enough space to raise three children and it's nice to see it filled again. Sometimes she feels like her life is just a huge, mocking vacuum when she hears the sound of her own bare feet echo off the wooden floors, or when the most noise in her apartment is the rustling as she grades papers.
Today is different.
Today, her son Edward and his wife are fighting, as usual, in what they think are hushed whispers in the corner of the room. Amanda, Ryan, and Vanessa are sprawled on the floor of her living room, crowded around a book.
"¿A qué miran?" Santana asks her grandchildren, trying to peer over their shoulders and shutting off the TV.
"Photo album," Amanda says, not looking up from the book. Santana slowly lowers herself to the ground to get a better look. She smiles softly at the pictures of herself as a teenager.
"Abuela, when are these pictures from?" Amanda asks, still not looking up from the album.
"The end of high school, I think," Santana says, leaning over her to touch a picture. "This is your Great-Aunt Quinn, your grandfather, and myself getting ready to go to the Savoy."
"Is this before the war?" Ryan asks, rolling from his stomach to his back to look at Santana.
"Just before, I think," Santana says.
"I didn't know you were a nurse, Abuela," Vanessa says, touching a photograph of Santana at the training base, her head thrown back in laughter, her hand grasped around her hat to keep it from falling off. She's armed with a Billie Holiday album under her arm.
"Is that how you met grandpa?" Vanessa asks.
"No, my dear," Santana says, pulling her granddaughter close to her body. "I met your grandfather well before the war. He asked me to marry him before he shipped out. I became a nurse to try and help as many men like your grandfather as I could."
"You always go back to pictures of the war, mama." Blanca says, now leaning in the doorway.
"I'm not the one who pulled them out!" Santana defends, glaring at her daughter, who still, much to Santana's satisfaction, cowers at her mother's icy stare.
"Is that grandpa?" Vanessa asks, pointing to a picture of a young Sam with his arm around a young Santana. He was in his Navy uniform, his hair messy beneath his hat and a lopsided grin across his face. Santana nods.
"That's your grandpa," she says, smiling. "I can't believe all of my children ended up with those ridiculous lips," she laughs. Edward pouts his lips out to a giggling Vanessa.
"Look at how young Aunt Quinn looks here!" Edward says.
"She does look so young," Santana says. "It's amazing that I haven't aged a day over 18," she continues, eyeing herself in the picture.
"Who is this, Abuela?" Amanda asks, pointing to a picture of a blond with her hair hanging loosely around her shoulders. She's in a men's army uniform, tailored to fit her small frame. Her grin stretches from ear to ear with a cigar in her hand.
"Brittany," Blanca replies from the doorway. Santana looks up; Blanca is nowhere near the photograph. She and her daughter make eye contact for a moment, and Santana can't decipher what the eye contact means. It's a cross between "I know you better than you think" and plain smugness.
The rest of the family is silent, waiting for Santana to elaborate on who the young woman is in the picture. Santana tucks a hair behind Amanda's ear.
"You know, your great-grandparents brought me to this country in 1928. It was just before the depression, and of course they had no way of knowing that the stock market would crash and there would be no work for a Puerto Rican academic like your grandfather and that he would spend the rest of his life shining shoes in Spanish Harlem. He never complained though, he always just made sure that I knew the opportunities I would have as an American," Santana says, rolling her eyes.
"That sounds like Grandpa," Edward says. "Always too proud and too humble at the same time."
Santana nods. "I never really understood why they brought us here. Back then I just desperately wanted to go back to Puerto Rico. I didn't even remember it, but I always thought that it must be better than here. I met your grandfather and Aunt Quinn my first year in high school. We had moved from a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn to an integrated neighborhood in the Bronx, with better schools."
New York: 1938
"Spic! Get out of our school and go back to Puerto Rico!"
"Too many spics around here these days."
"Go home!" Santana ignores the taunts as she makes her way to the picnic table at her new high school.
"Ignore them," a boy says, sitting next to her. He has a plaid shirt tucked into shorts that were a bit too long for him. His hair was unnaturally blond, as though he had spent all summer outside and combed into an uncomfortable side part. "They're all jerks. Don't let it get to you." Santana doesn't say anything to him and he doesn't push it. "I don't know what they have against Puerto Rican's anyway," he says.
"We're not like you" She tries to conceal her accent as she speaks—and tries even harder to not sound like she's concealing her accent.
"Well, I don't know what they have against Puerto Ricans then. I'm Sam. This here's Quinn."
"Santana."
"We get it too." Quinn says, speaking for the first time. "Pollack this and Pollack that. You learn to just let it roll off of you."
"Well isn't this appropriate. The pollacks eating with the spic. Might as well get some niggers in there and we'll really have a party." Santana turns slowly to face the boy who had just spoken to her. She glares daggers in his direction. He stops and looks at her, clearly unsure of what to do. Santana stands, straightens her pencil skirt, and slowly approaches him until she's inches away from his face. He opens his mouth to say something, but she's too fast, spitting directly at him. At first he's shocked, and Santana stands with her arms crossed smugly, but before she can say anything he slaps her across the face. Quinn and Sam watch the exchange, their mouths hanging open. Santana, instead of backing down, slaps him back.
"Listen, you puta, you come near me or my friends again, you'll get a hell of a lot worse than some spit and a slap in the face, understand me?" The boy continues looking at her in shock and Santana returns to her seat as he retreats back to his friends.
"That's not exactly what I meant by letting it roll off of you." Quinn says, eyes wide with shock at Santana's behavior.
"I'm not going to just sit by and take that. You shouldn't either." Santana leaves her lunch on the table and returns to the school building, leaving the other two in shock.
"I like her," Sam says to Quinn, taking a bite of his carrot stick with a grin plastered on his face.
"She's certainly…a character."
"You never told me that story, Mama," Edward says.
"You three never asked. New York was not this kindest place to be a Puerto Rican in the 1930's. I don't know why I'm telling you this. You three know that New York wasn't the kindest place to be Puerto Rican in the 1950's and 60's either."
"Thank god for West Side Story," Edward joked. "Now everyone thinks we're like Natalie Wood!" Blanca laughs.
"Finish your story, Mama."
"I'm sure you know how the rest of the story goes."
"Tell it again," Vanessa says. "I don't know it!
"It's boring." Santana shrugs, rolling her eyes. "You all know the ending!"
"We don't think so."
"I'll tell the abridged version. Your grandfather asked me out three times before I finally said yes."
"Why didn't you want to go out with Grandpa?"
"I thought his lips were silly. I called him Trouty Mouth."
"What made you change your mind, Mama?"
"Your abuela. She was concerned that I was never bringing boys home, like my sisters, so finally I caved in and accepted a date to a school dance. I think Quinn was a little jealous at first, but she got over it eventually, obviously."
"And you were together ever since," Kristen sang.
"Exactly. Just like a fairytale. Now, what do you say we get this mother's day dinner on the road!" Santana asks her children and grandchildren. "You know, you can't just leave empanadillas, Kristen, they take love and nurture to come out so delicious."
"Like you know anything about that, mama," Blanca says, laughing.
"You three came out okay, didn't you?" Santana scoffs.
"The only thing Mama knows how to nurture are her precious empanadillas," her other son chimes in, laughing.
"Enough, all of you!" Santana says with a grin. "Get off your lazy butts and help me cook," she says, walking into the kitchen, knowing her children will follow behind her.
Santana sips her coffee and hums along to a jazz tune on her record player. The apartment smells like dinner and children and Blanca's Pomeranian and dark coffee and a little like her lilac hand lotion. She likes it. She knows she should downsize, but she has rent control in a nice part of Manhattan and she likes the idea that her children always have their childhood home to come back to, if they ever need it. Kristen and Vanessa have already gone to bed, so now just her children, in-laws, and the teenagers still awake, quietly reading their magazines or comic books, or doing crossword puzzles.
"What's that, Mama?" Blanca asks, looking over at Santana, evidently noticing her humming.
"Just an old tune."
"What's it called?"
"Easy Living. It's from an old Jean Arthur film."
"Which is better—teaching, singing, or being in school?"
"They're equally good. Sometimes, my students talk me into singing. Sometimes I think I will only truly be happy if I can sing my dissertation to my students."
"That's not the same. Do you miss singing?"
"Sometimes." Her daughter looks sadly at her. "You're inquisitive tonight, what's going on?"
"I'm just curious." Santana continues to stare at her, obviously expecting a better answer. Blanca sighs. "You know Tammy, my friend from college who just got married last summer?" Santana nods. "Her dad just passed away suddenly."
"Well, please send her my condolences," Santana says.
"It made me think about how few of daddy's stories I have. I was so young when he died. I don't want to not know your stories too."
"Oh, for crying out loud, Blanca. I'm not going anywhere." Santana says, rolling her eyes at her daughter. "I'm going to be one of those cranky old ladies who's just annoyed that she's still alive after everyone else has passed on. I'm probably going to be stuck on this earth until I'm well over 100." Edward laughs from his seat on the couch.
"Your story, earlier didn't really tell us who Brittany was. In fact, it didn't really mention Brittany at all." Blanca says. Santana chuckles.
"You are so much like me, sometimes it frightens me." Santana replies, rolling her eyes. "You never know when to just let something go."
"You were avoiding talking about her, weren't you?"
"Not avoiding, per se. Just…trying to keep the past in the past."
"I've seen you looking at that picture before." Blanca says.
"Others too," Edward chimes in. "Other pictures of the two of you."
"My goodness. Didn't anyone ever tell you that curiosity killed the cat?"
"That was your job," her sons say, simultaneously, laughing.
"I obviously did not do a very good one. I know you fools, and I know you're not going to let this go, but it's a long story, and I don't know if you all are old enough to handle it."
"Mama! We're middle-aged!" Edward says.
"Speak for yourself, Edward!" Blanca yells, "I'm still young!"
"Cut it out, both of you, or Mama isn't going to tell the story."
"I don't even know where to begin."
"I find the beginning is always a good place to start." Edward says, using a line Santana frequently used when her children were young and in trouble and she needed information. Santana sighs, placing her coffee on the table in front of her.
"Well, I suppose it begins with the war. Aunt Quinn, your father, and I had all graduated from high school, and none of us knew what we were supposed to be doing. Quinn took a job as a typist and I sewed at my mother's dress shop. Your grandfather began work at a light bulb factory."
"I thought Dad always wanted to be a lawyer."
"I think it's something he discovered about himself during the war. Something about defending those who didn't have the means to defend themselves. You know how your father was. Before that, he worked at a light bulb factory and complained everyday about how the little pieces of glass dug their way under his skin. I sang some nights up in Harlem, much to my mother's chagrin. I was always a little too…carefree for her. I guess that's the word. It was a fun six months. We were young. We didn't care much about anything other than where the new place to dance was and who the new hot jazz star was and what film Cary Grant was going to make next. And I'm sure you know the next part of the story," Santana says, sounding bored. "Pearl Harbor happened. We were all at work, listening to it on the radio. Your father came back to find me and Quinn in my mother's kitchen and announced that he was enlisting. He asked me to marry him the day he left. After he left, Quinn and I were restless. We had always been a trio, in a way, taking on Brooklyn together. It was hard, seeing so many of our friends and classmates leave and we felt so…helpless, I suppose is the word. It was Quinn's idea that we join the Army Nurse Corps. So, as soon as we turned 18, we did."
"Mama, you're just telling another story about Dad…"
"I'll get there a lot faster if you stop interrupting, Blanca." Santana says.
"Sorry," Blanca whispers.
"As I was saying, we joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1942. I enlisted under a fake name. Puerto Rican's weren't allowed to join the Army Nurse Corp, but you know they didn't keep records back then the way they do today. So, I became Santana Lopresti, a particularly dark skinned Italian girl from the Bronx. No one questioned it. You know they used to have a particularly unsavory name for dark skinned Italians from Sicily, and people were ignorant and no one said anything to me about it the entire time we served abroad. We met Brittany during training, before we went abroad, at our training camp in Long Island."
New York: 1942
"You got a beau?" Dolores asks the bunk, her question obviously not geared toward anyone in particular. It's their first day in training, and it's been all fittings for uniforms and military codes and protocols. The barracks is really the first time any of the women have had to talk to each other.
"No," Quinn offers. "Just haven't met the right guy." A few other girls nod in agreement. Santana tightens a large curler in her hair.
"Speak for yourselves. I am engaged," Santana says, waving her ring around for the other girls to see, her usual bravado amplified for the moment. She was treated to a round of squeals, from everyone other than Quinn, who simply rolls her eyes.
"He in the war?" Dolores asked.
"Navy. Last I heard he was stationed in the Pacific, but he couldn't be specific."
"You miss him?"
"Of course," Santana says. Her voice has that hint of defensiveness to it that makes Quinn stare at her for what may only be a fraction of a second. Quinn's eyes squint and Santana understands that Quinn is trying to read her face. Santana's eyes quickly return to that steely gaze she has perfected after all these years of harassment. She knows Quinn will never be able to read that face, because Santana doesn't know what she's feeling. It's as though all of her emotions try to inhabit her expression at once and she ends up looking lost, angry, or maybe scared. She doesn't know what she feels so her face says everything.
The women chat about their beaus or fiancés or husbands as they finish their hair and settle into their bunks, but Santana isn't listening anymore, lost in her own thoughts about Sam. There is movement long after the lights are out as the women get accustomed to their new twin size beds, the itchy sheets, and the strange noises because most of them are so far away from home.
Santana does miss Sam, she thinks to herself, turning over again to try and find any position that will allow her to get some sleep. She doesn't understand why the question bothers her so much, but, regardless, it does. He's funny and sweet and charming. Sure, she doesn't understand his interest in a lot of things, like cheesy vaudeville acts or the Amos and Andy radio show, when she would much rather be uptown dancing to Chick Webb play at the Savoy, or whatever hot band they had up there now. Sam isn't the greatest of dancers, but her mother told her that was no reason to not date someone. Now she guesses that it's no reason not to marry him.
She misses him. She knows she misses Sam. She rolls over again, trying to drown out the sounds of other women crying quietly into their pillows about men overseas whom they haven't seen in weeks and months. She wonders if she misses Sam the right way.
"You're thinking a lot," comes a voice from the bed next to her. It's nearly pitch black in the room, but when she turns she sees the outline of blond hair in rollers and large, blue eyes looking at her.
"You're perceptive." Santana bites, rolling her eyes. The girl doesn't respond.
"You thinking about your fiancé?"
"Why? Are you trying to live vicariously through me, pretending you were lucky enough to have a beau to miss?"
"No. I'm married. His name is Artie. He's in the Pacific too, like your Sam." Santana is surprised the girl was listening to the earlier conversation. She doesn't think she's heard her say anything since they arrived at the camp.
"Have you heard from him?" Santana asks softly.
"No. Not since he left."
"I'm sorry," Santana says. "I'm sure you'll hear from him soon." The young woman shrugs, making the military blanket scrunch up around her neck.
"What's your name?"
"Santana Lopresti."
"I'm Brittany Abrams. You shouldn't think so much, Ms. Santana Lopresti. It will give you wrinkles."
"I'll keep that in mind, Mrs. Brittany Abrams." Before long, Santana could hear Brittany's breathing even out. Mrs. Brittany Abrams was probably right. She should try to think less so she could get some sleep.
