Sisters in Arms

by Kaia Alderson

  “What did you think of that Colored one we just saw, that cocky one?”

  Grace stood stock-still.

  “Did you hear how she bragged about outwitting her professor? Said she’d welcome the challenge of leading a group of women overseas and making something out of nothing.”

  “Oh, that one,” a slightly younger voice chimed in. She almost sounded like she was in awe. “I’d never have the nerve to say something like that in an interview.”

  “You know, it’s the uppity ones who wind up causing the most trouble. But maybe a taste of military life is just what she needs to put her attitude in check.”

  “Her application is impressive. Her recommendation came up from Washington by courier. She got that Bethune woman to write it for her. You know, that Negro who always has her picture in the paper with Eleanor Roosevelt. Her school transcripts were in there too with a glowing note from the college president clipped to them. Hmm, it says here she had a 3.8 grade point average. But have you ever heard of Howard University before?”

  Grace tensed. They had to be talking about Eliza.

  Grace herself had graduated from a state college that had nowhere near the prestige of Howard. While the student enrollment there had been in the hundreds, her college president could not have picked her out of a lineup, much less written a note of glowing praises about her.

  Well, you always knew it was a long shot. Grace frowned. She clutched her bag tighter to her chest. Maybe she was biting off more than she could chew with this particular ambition.

  What had they called Eliza? Uppity? Grace shook her head. No. While that had been Grace’s initial impression too, she now remembered Eliza more as confident. That was an emotion she had in short supply at this moment. There was a lull in the women’s conversation. It was now or never.

  It’s time to face the music.

  She knocked on the door, then pushed it open. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

  Grace smiled, then proceeded to give these women the performance of a lifetime.

  Chapter 5

  THE STREETLIGHTS WERE threatening to come on when Eliza returned to her family’s Edgecombe Avenue brownstone. The dining room doors were open as she entered. She could see Mother setting down a plate of steak and potatoes in front of Daddy. Darn, she was really late.

  “Look, Lil,” her father boomed from his seat. “Our daughter has decided to join us. Have a seat. You’re just in time for dinner.”

  So much for her plan to hide out in her room. Eliza pivoted back toward the dining room. “Daddy.”

  She set down her bag at the end of the table opposite her father. Eliza was not in the mood to be near him, much less talk to him. Her emotions were still raw from his stealing her article. Then Daddy tapped her usual seat. The one next to him on his left. The one where she normally hung on his every word while he expounded on the news of the day. The real news.

  As soon as she sat down beside him, Daddy didn’t waste any time laying into her. “Your mother tells me that you were extremely late showing up at that luncheon today.”

  He lifted his water glass to his lips and took a longer than usual sip. He stared her down the whole time. He took his time in returning the glass to the table.

  Eliza almost fell out of her chair. Her mouth froze into an O. How had her mother even known? There must have been at least seventy-five other women in attendance, none of whom had been Mother.

  She looked back and forth between her parents. Her eyes lingered on her mother, the gossip queen. She balled her fists on either side of her plate. She wanted to shake the woman sometimes. Eliza picked up her own water glass and took a sip.

  “I find it interesting she would say something like that,” she started, “considering she wasn’t even there.”

  “A dear friend of mine had to pull strings to get you an invitation and to have you seated at her table.” She looked directly at Eliza and raised her eyebrow.

  Eliza attempted to engage her mother in a staring match. But the younger Jones woman had yet to achieve her mother’s level of stare-down mastery. A second or two later, Eliza looked away, opting to study the design on the china plate before her instead.

  “Well, you didn’t have to tell him,” she mumbled.

  “I do when your actions make me look bad.” A shrinking violet, Mother was not. “Instead of pouting like a toddler, why don’t you tell us why you’re so late for dinner instead?”

  Damn, she’s not cutting me any slack.

  “I . . .” Eliza’s mind raced for an acceptable excuse. I took the wrong subway. I got off at the wrong stop. I got lost. I fell asleep on the train. Any one of those would do, but she was reluctant to use any of them. Eliza was not in the habit of lying to her parents. She did not want to start now. It was her life. It was time she started taking charge of it, truthfully.

  “I was at the Army induction center downtown.”

  It was Mother’s turn to hesitate. Eliza watched her mother’s spoon hover over the soup bowl. She thought she saw her mother’s mouth curve into a flash of a smile, but it disappeared just as quickly.

  “Were you?”

  Emboldened, Eliza lifted her chin. “Yes. I was.”

  “What on earth were you doing down there?” her father’s voice boomed, ending the intimate exchange between mother and daughter. “That has nothing to do with your society beat at the paper.”

  Eliza drew up all her courage, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t go down there for the paper. I went down there for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I went down there to enlist in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.”

  Her father stared at her for a moment. Then he shook with laughter. Spittle flew out of his mouth as he did so. “My daughter in the U.S. Army? Not while there is breath in my body. C’mon, tell the truth. You have a boyfriend we don’t know about, is that it? Did you go down there with him?”

  “There’s no boyfriend, Martin.” Mother was frowning now, her irritation evident in both her words and her face. She gave Eliza a pointed look. “I would know about him if there was one.”

  “Mother . . .” Eliza began.

  “Girl, hush.” Her father placed his hands flat on the table. “If there isn’t any boyfriend, then somebody had better explain to me what my daughter was doing with that damned Army all afternoon.”

  Her father’s freckled light tan face was beginning to bloom crimson splotches. It was never a good sign when Martin Jones’s face turned red.

  “Be mindful of your pressure, dear.” Mother reached out for her husband’s hand. He snatched it away.

  “I’m not some damn baby, Lillian. I just want to know what the hell is going on.”

  “I already told you what’s going on, Daddy. You’re just not listening.” And then Eliza added quietly, more to herself, “As usual.”

  “You got one thing right, young lady.” Her father threw his linen napkin on his plate and pushed his chair back from the table. “I am not going to sit here and listen to no nonsense about my daughter going into the Army. I forbid it.”

  He stood up and began walking out of the formal dining room. He stopped under the threshold and turned. He held up a finger, pointing it at Eliza.

  “You go back down there to that induction office and tell those people that you made a mistake, that you changed your mind.”

  “I will, just as soon as you print a retraction in the paper saying that I wrote that front-page copy and not you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” Eliza stood up, almost knocking over her chair in the process. “You stole my article, Daddy. How could you?”

  “Stole her article? What is she talking about, Martin?”

  His head whipped back and forth between his daughter and his wife. He spared a big, toothy grin for his wife. “Nobody’s stolen anything, baby. It’s like I’m always telling you. Eliza here just doesn’t understand the newspaper business.”

  “I don’t un
derstand the newspaper business,” Eliza echoed. “How is that possible when I have lived and breathed it from the time I could walk until I went off to college?”

  “Hold on, what I meant was—”

  “No, Daddy. I will not ‘hold on.’ And I am not going anywhere to tell anybody that I’ve changed my mind. I’m in the Army now as of this afternoon.”

  “Not the white man’s Army, you’re not. I forbid it.”

  “You should’ve thought about that before you put your name on my byline. It’s too late. You don’t get to call the shots over what I want to do with my life this time, Daddy.”

  He put a hand to his chest and took a deep breath. “You will go down there and tell them people whatever you need to to get out of it. And after that, young lady, you are grounded.”

  “You can’t ground me. I’m twenty-three years old.”

  “I don’t care if you are one hundred and three years old. As long as you live under my roof you will do what I say.” He turned to Mother. “Lil, you go down there with her and make sure she does it. I know some folks down in Washington. I’ll call them in the morning. But for right now, I’m going upstairs to lie down. I have a headache.”

  Both mother and daughter silently watched as the head of the household lumbered out of the dining room. Eliza sat back down. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She bit the inside of her lip. She and Daddy had never screamed at each other like that before.

  Once they heard the thump of her parents’ bedroom door close, Lillian Jones turned to her daughter.

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll have to go back anyway to pick up my formal orders. If I get in, that is.” Eliza picked up her fork and shrugged. She stabbed into her salad. “At least I don’t have to lie about it now.”

  “Good.” Her mother smiled. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Just so we’re clear, I wouldn’t be going back there to get out of it.”

  Her mother silently sipped a spoonful of soup with all the grace of the socialite that she was. She put her spoon down, then dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “I know that. I’m just tagging along to make sure you follow through. Why did you think I called Dr. Bethune on your behalf in the first place?”

  “Mother! You didn’t!” Eliza grinned.

  Her mother grinned right back at her. “Oh, you better believe I did.”

  Suddenly, Eliza didn’t mind having a gossip queen for a mother. Well, not as much.

  Chapter 6

  I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY you keep saying you enlisted in the Army, Grace.” Mama, who had been lying on the sofa, pushed herself onto her elbow. “You were supposed to get into Juilliard, not the Army.”

  “No, Mama.” Grace sighed. She had spent the last ten minutes—ten minutes that had felt like a lifetime—trying to make Mama understand how her Juilliard audition had become enlistment papers. By this point, she felt like she was beating a dead fish that had already been pulverized.

  “Juilliard isn’t going to give me the money I need to go to school there. But the Army will, if I stay in for two years.” The requirement was actually at least two years, but really until the end of the war plus six months. But she was not in the mood to explain all that when Mama still couldn’t wrap her mind around the basic fact that she was talking about a future that had nothing to do with music. “Look at it this way, I’ll be entitled to more pay, opportunities, and benefits.”

  And, hopefully, more of a life.

  Grace didn’t dare say that last part out loud. Mama would throw a fit if she knew Grace had any dreams that excluded her or the plans she had made for them, much less one that took Grace away from the confines of their already cramped Harlem apartment on West 120th Street and left Mama behind.

  “You can’t join the Army. They don’t let women into the Army. They definitely don’t let women like us into the Army.”

  Grace sighed. “They do now, Mama.”

  “Who’s going to take care of me when you wind up dead like your brother?”

  The question, while not unexpected, made Grace wince. She had long since given up on trying to understand her mother or how her mind worked. She knew that there would be initial resistance to her announcement about her joining the WAAC. It always surprised her whenever Mama showed her just how selfish she could be. Grace recalled numerous times she had been left all alone in this apartment while Mama was off at some women’s club rally, church mother board meeting, or a last-minute fitting for one of her clients.

  But to bring up Tony like that? Leave it to Mama to pull no punches. Grace began to revisit her own doubts about what she had signed herself up for. Maybe it wasn’t too late to back out.

  No. The word came to her in Tony’s voice. You’re going. If you don’t leave now, you never will.

  “Mama, like I explained, I’ll be making more money in the military than I ever would with you at the shop or by scraping by teaching private piano lessons and hoping for a teaching job to come through.” Grace reached over to fluff the pillow behind her mother’s back. “And Dad will be back soon.”

  Her father was a Pullman porter on the New York to Charleston line. His route had him away two or three weeks and home for one. He was due to come back home in a few days. Hopefully, before she was ordered to ship out to training camp.

  “That’s what your brother said when he left. You see how well all that extra money worked out for him,” Mama mumbled as she leaned back into the pillow.

  Go . . . her subconscious said in a ghostly voice.

  Grace took Mama’s hand and willed herself to have more courage. “I already talked to Mrs. Perez upstairs. She said she can check in on you in the morning and the evening when Dad is away on a trip. I was planning on sending her a dollar or two for her trouble.”

  “Trouble? Is that what I am now? You know, the only reason my hands are like this . . .” Mama was sitting fully upright now. She held up the fingers on her left hand that wouldn’t straighten all the way anymore. “. . . is because of all that hand stitching I did so I could put food on the table for you. And this is how you treat me. You go off to God knows where and you—you pawn me off as ‘trouble.’”

  Grace looked up at the ceiling and sighed. She counted to three before she opened her mouth to respond, scared of what might fly out if she didn’t keep herself in control. She lowered her chin, tapped out the opening strain of Moonlight Sonata on her right thigh, and smiled. “You know that’s not what I meant. Of course you’re not trouble. You’re my mama.”

  Mama waved her off. “I don’t know why I’m getting my nerves all worked up anyway.” She cackled to herself. “You’ll be back soon enough. Just wait until they make you do all that running.”

  Here she goes. Grace didn’t respond out loud. There was no point in defending herself when Mama got like this.

  Grace went into the apartment’s kitchenette. She raided the icebox and cabinets to scrounge up some dinner. There wasn’t much. Just some black beans and rice Mrs. Perez had brought over, a hunk of cornbread, and some dried beef strips. She threw it all into the pot on the stove and turned on the gas. Grace made a mental note to gather everybody’s ration books and hit the market tomorrow.

  Mama’s eyes flicked up and down as she looked over Grace moving through the kitchen. She huffed. “Yeah, the only athletic thing you know how to do is run away. With your out-of-shape self.”

  Grace had been reaching back into the icebox for a packet of oleo, or whatever passed for butter ever since rationing had gone into effect. But she stilled at Mama’s insult.

  Don’t do it. Don’t say anything. Keep in control.

  Grace pressed her thumb against the yellow capsule in the middle of the packaging. Hard. And then harder. The capsule broke. She slammed the softened mass onto the counter. She had not meant to do that as hard as she did. But Mama’s words had hit their target. “Maybe you’re right, Mama. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

  Mama flinched at the u
nexpected noise. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Grace’s hands gripped the edge of the counter. A one. Two. Three. She tapped out the first six notes of Moonlight Sonata with her fingers.

  “Nothing, Mama.” She looked up at the clock on the wall. She could do this. “Nothing at all.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Grace picked up the package. She began kneading the yellow coloring that had released from the broken capsule into the rest of the margarine.

  “Humph.” Mama settled herself back onto the sofa. “Maybe this Army thing will do you some good. You could use some discipline again.”

  Grace flung a spoonful of the now yellow margarine into the pot. She placed the utensil down on the counter carefully despite her shaking hands. “Yes, Mama.”

  “When you were performing . . . it gave you discipline. You used to practice every day. It was a sight to see. I used to brag to all my friends about how good you looked up there onstage, seated at a big old piano, and the lights focused on you . . .” Mama looked away as her words trailed off. “We used to be somebody around here. Everyone knew who the Steeles were, who you were . . . who I was. And now they don’t.”

  “You’re right, Mama. I don’t have discipline.” Grace didn’t have the energy to remind Mama how it had been her unreasonable demands for endorsement fees that ended her access to the pianos at Mr. Lieberman’s store. Come to think of it, all the goodwill that had been extended during Grace’s brief period of stardom had ended when Mama had insisted that she could manage her daughter’s burgeoning musical career herself.

  “What a waste.” Mama paused. Grace chose to say nothing, instead giving the simmering pot of food her full attention. She used a wooden spoon to give the contents a stir.

  One. Two. Three. With her free hand, she tapped out the six notes again.

  “Well, maybe they’ll teach you how to cook. Put you in the mess hall. Then you’d be more useful around here when they send you back home.”