Las estrellas de oro.

[??] Ay! It's hot in the store today. Reminds me of my last summer in Mexico, when I was 5. And there she is in the corner, thinking I can't see her. Thinking I can't feel what she is doing. She doesn't know about this instinct I've developed, but she also doesn't know I understand.

These ladies are not thieves, just mothers with too many children who haven't learned to spread out their ration points. She sticks a 2-pound bag of sugar into her bloomers, and I shake my head but say nothing. When she comes to the counter with her other goods, I simply charge her for the sugar. She looks as if the shame will kill her. I offer her son a candy. It is not rationed. I can hand it out as I please.

Mexico. My only real memories are of the heat and the way my older sisters held their heads high when they walked along the boardwalks, the way my brothers talked of the things they would do, the fine girls they would marry, as they stocked shelves in my father's dry goods store. They belonged in a place like San Antonio, a place far from the dust and poverty and violence of Saltillo, and they knew it even then. America is our home now, and we never complain. Our mother's eyes no longer burn with worry.

A colored kid comes in. He calls me Boss Lady, and I laugh. I'm 25 years old. By now the only people I should be bossing are my own ninos. But the war has changed things. I will not marry until it is over. Tomas understands that. He's stationed at Camp Hood, and he knows I love him, but he won't ask me to walk away from the store. He accepts I will not be one of those soldiers' wives following her husband from base to base, dumped in some old, ugly place with bad plumbing and windows that won't close. And I'm sure not going to be one of those heartbroken ladies with a kid or two and a husband off at war. My brother Alejandro is in Detroit working for the defense industry. He tells me I should join him. He tells me about the money I could make, but my place is here. Besides, how could I leave my mama?

I thought my brother Eduardo was loco when he volunteered me to run his store after he joined the Navy. "But, Eddie," I said, "I have no experience."

"Oh, you'll do all right," he said.

And I have. I'll stay till the war ends, till Eddie comes back.

I do all the buying and selling and take care of the ration points. I make good money, $45 a week, but we're not getting rich. The government won't let us. Just yesterday, a woman planning her daughter's quinceanera begged me to sell her extra sugar under the counter. She had the money, she said. "You have plenty of food in this store," she said. "It's not right for you not to share."

"And what if I get caught?" I said. "We'd lose our permit. Borrow some sugar from your neighbor. Use molasses. Don't ask me again."

Old Senor Zamora frowned when he heard how I had spoken to her. There are those in the neighborhood who think a young woman shouldn't hold such a high post. But I believe people will take you for how you behave. I've always been seen as a lady. Like my sisters, I hold my head high. It's a plus to have that respect, to have the respect shown our family.

When Eddie married, my father gave him $50 worth of merchandise to start his own grocery store. Eddie was ambitious. He had only half a dozen cans of sardines to start out, yet he had the nerve to put out flyers saying they were on sale. That half-dozen sold, and he dashed to the wholesale house to get more. He did the same with canned milk and sugar. When pinto beans were in season, he bought three times more than would sell, so when the other stores tan out, he'd still have some. Now ours is one of the biggest stores in the city, but I still greet almost everyone by name.

The government inspector will show up any day now, but I'm not worried. There's a new coat of paint on the walls. The shelves are clean, and the accounting and rationing books are in order. He will mark our store perfect condition again, and I will display his report with a swell of pride. Eddie's wife is in the back, tending to her seven children, and I'm grateful that, as much as there is to be done today, as humid as it is, as bad as my feet hurt, at least I'm not standing in her shoes.

Most days I work from 7 to 7, but not today, gracias a Dios. We close early on Thursdays because the downtown stores stay open till 9. This is the day I usually do my shopping, the day I go to the movies or to my sewing club. We eat pan dulce and embroider pillowcases and linens for our future, for the days we will marry our boys. On Thursday nights I get away from this place, from the responsibilities and the feeling of being so tied down.

This is what I'm looking forward to as I go to the window to straighten the blue star that hangs there for our Eddie. Outside, the Martinez girls skip rope on the sidewalk. They call to me to come out and count for them. What they really hope is that I will jump. I laugh and tell them it's too hot today, that I want to stay inside by the fan, but they plead with me from the doorway.

"Run down to the corner and look for Manuel's truck," I tell them. "Tell me when he's coming, and I'll give you a piece of leche quemada." My sister and her husband have run out of canned milk at their store, and I have told them they can have some of mine. I'm hoping Manuel will take a look at the fan while he's here. It has stopped oscillating.

But before the girls can run off, there is a loud noise, like the buzz of an insect near your ear. The girls point toward the sky. "Senorita Vallejo," they say, "[??]mira!" I follow their tiny fingers to a place where a column of smoke rises. In an instant, I have the older girl's shoulders between my hands. "What did you see, Carolina?"

"A plane," she says. "It went down behind that tall tree."

"Stay here," I tell her. "Watch the store for me."

I should not leave, of course, not without calling for my sister-in-law, at least, but I have to see it. I have to feel this war that has wrapped around me like an old man's serape but not yet touched me. I want to feel as though there is something I can do about it. We are surrounded by bases--Fort Sam Houston, Randolph Air Force Base, Kelly, Stinson Field. Navy seamen visit from Corpus Christi.

We know them all, the soldiers, the airmen, the sailors. We dance with them at the USO near the Alamo. We sacrifice for them, giving up our nylon stockings for their parachutes, wearing the same shoes day after day, cutting the material for our dresses short to ensure they have enough fabric for their uniforms. Sometimes, though, like air or the spirit of God, you can be surrounded by something and still have to work to believe it's real.

Before I reach the crash site, I hear the news from the neighbors. An aviator on a training mission lost control of his plane. I see one piece of his body here, another there, and I cover my eyes and turn away. This I should not see. This was a man, someone's son and brother. Mama would say I should not have come. This is none of my business. But now that I'm here, I cannot move.

I stand with the women, weeping and praying to Our Lady as some of the men put the body back together while others try to shield us from the view that will never leave us. Senora Cruz hands the men her rebozo and they cover the body with it. Senora Cruz is known for her shawls. The women in the neighborhood come to her for advice or ask her to make special rebozos for their daughters. We have given this young man the best we can offer and that finally loosens the bonds of our grief.

I need to get back to the store, but my feet will not hurry, and my mind will not let go of an image of a mother or a young sweetheart replacing her blue star with a gold one. And now I cry as I walk down my street because I have failed before to notice just how many gold stars there are in the windows of my little neighborhood. I was foolish to think I could help that boy, that I could touch this war. It dances out of reach, like an evil spirit, taunting us.

The Martinez girls are full of questions when I return, but they are too young to hear such things, so I shoo them away. I remind myself there is work to do before closing, that I can best honor the ones who die by doing my part.

My friend from Connecticut wrote once to complain, "There are no men here anymore. You have them all in San Antonio." I think about that aviator and wonder if he could have been a Connecticut boy. Until today, I didn't think much about where these young men came from or where they went when they left us. Of course, I knew most were here for only a short time, that it was our duty to entertain them, to see them off well, but I never let myself imagine what happened next.

Tonight I will not go to my sewing club. I will say a rosary for that pilot and his family instead. I will remind God that I have already lost one brother to leukemia, another to an accident, and ask him to please spare Eddie, to keep Tomas at Camp Hood and let no other woman tempt him. I will thank him for my many blessings and ask him to forgive my selfish heart.

I had thought we were such a powerful country that this war would be over in a month. Now it is dragging on into years. I have been waiting for the war to end so I can start my life, a life with Tomas. Now I realize esta es mi vida, this is my life. It is true I am not where I expected to be, not even where I always want to be, but coming home from that crash today, seeing the door to the store standing open, my sister-in-law with the baby on her hip, the customers waiting patiently at the counter, I know I am where I need to be.

TERESA R. FUNKE is a writer in Fort Collins, Colorado.