Grace quirked up an eyebrow when Eliza’s name was called out. So Little Miss Thing had made it through after all. Grace hadn’t had a doubt about it. She looked around. There were four other Negro women in the group besides her, and for that she was thankful. But none of them was the girl she had met at the induction center a week ago.
That’s odd, Grace thought. Eliza had seemed so polished and put together. Definitely not the kind who would run late or, worse, flake out altogether on a commitment such as this. Grace wondered where she was.
The other women nodded at each other politely, but they were all busy saying final goodbyes to their families. Grace imagined there would be time enough to get to know one another on the train.
However, Grace noticed that of the white recruits in their grouping, none had yet to acknowledge them.
“I guess this is it.” Grace smiled despite her own trembling lip. This time her father not only allowed Grace to wrap her arms around him, but he gave her a tight squeeze as well.
“I know I haven’t been around as much as you would have liked lately . . . as much as I would have liked. Especially now that . . .” He looked off into the distance as he composed himself. “But I just want you to know that I’m proud of you. Proud of you for your talents with the music stuff and for having the guts to go off and do something like this.”
Grace bit her lip to hold the tears forming in her eyes at bay. “I don’t know what to say, Daddy.”
“Ladies, I said let’s move!” the officer hollered, causing Grace to jump. Her father frowned in the officer’s direction. He grabbed her arm before she could step too far away.
“One last thing. The Army is full of people like that.” He jerked his head at the now pink-faced officer. “People like that don’t expect much out of people like us.” He gestured his fingers back and forth in the space between their bodies. “They don’t think we have sense enough to excel at anything they hold dear, much less know how to tie our shoes. Don’t let any opportunity to prove them wrong pass you by.”
Grace nodded in understanding. “I won’t, Daddy.”
“Remember, half the fun is the look on their faces when we show them how wrong they are.”
Father and daughter shared a knowing smile and then hugged one last time. Daddy picked up Grace’s suitcase and headed toward the platform. “No, Daddy, I have it. I need to get used to lugging it on my own.”
“But your hands. Your piano fingers . . .”
“Will just have to adjust to a little abuse. I doubt I’ll have the free time to practice much anyway.” Grace bit the inside of her lip at the lie. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him that she had decided to quit playing altogether. It would break his heart. Guilt tugged at her insides once again at all the extra shifts he had taken over the years to pay for her piano lessons.
They had now reached the train platform. Daddy handed over the suitcase to Grace.
Another officer with another clipboard asked for her name, checking her off when she provided it.
“I love you!” Daddy yelled out after her as she stepped away. Grace quickly hurried to her assigned Pullman sleeper car before she embarrassed herself with a display of emotions. She couldn’t believe it. She was on her way. She was really doing this.
She set her things down on a bottom bed berth, then quickly lowered the window.
“I love you too!” she yelled out back at him. Then just as quickly raised the window. The exhaust accumulation left a smell in the tunnels beneath Grand Central Station. The last thing she needed was to start the trip with the stench befouling their already snug accommodations.
She returned to the berth where she had dropped her things and looked around. With a father who was a Pullman porter, Grace had been in and out of train cars all her life. But never before had she had the opportunity to ride in a sleeper car berth as a passenger.
Since it was evening, the beds were already set up. She pulled out her nightgown for later, then tucked her suitcase and bag in the compartment under the bed. She peeked out into the narrow passageway. From what she could tell, everyone else had been paired off in their individual rooms.
I guess I’m the lucky one who has a room all to herself. But having no bunkmate left her feeling rather lonely. The wall separating her from the room next door was thin. She could hear the excited yet muffled conversation of her neighbors as they introduced themselves and settled in for the long trip.
Grace sighed. She’d never had many friends, so she was used to the loneliness by now. Still, it would have been nice to have connected with someone right before she left New York.
She could hear the doors on either side of the car slam shut. That meant they would be rolling out any minute now. She closed the door to her room, locking it. Now all she could do was wait for the adventure to begin.
“Wait!” a voice called out from outside. “I’m here! I’m here! Don’t leave!”
Grace looked out the window to see what the commotion was about. Out on the platform was a bedraggled, very not polished and not elegant Eliza Jones running up to the train. Neither the conductors nor the officers still on the platform looked happy to see her.
I guess she’s not so perfect after all.
Grace felt tears welling in her eyes. She waved to her father one last time. The last thing she wanted was for these Army men to think she was the weepy type. She pulled down the window shade before any of her tears fell.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at her door. Well, pounding would be a better way to describe it.
“I’m not decent,” she sniffed. “Who is it?”
“Hurry up,” a male voice said from the other side of the door. “It’s your new bunkmate and we can’t get going until everyone is stowed away in their berth.”
“My bunkmate?” Grace brightened at the idea. It looked like her wish for a new friend had been granted after all. Then just as quickly, she was filled with a sense of dread. No, not her! Anyone but her.
She got up slowly, abandoning the strand of hair that was halfway rolled onto her curler. Each step was heavier than the last. Maybe if she took too long to open the door, whoever it was would become impatient and move on to the next berth with open space. That only got her another round of banging on the door.
Shoot! Her own fantasyland this was not.
Grace wiped her face with a handkerchief, then unlocked the door.
She was almost knocked over by a body coming in. “What the . . . ? Hold on, I said I wasn’t decent.”
“I’m sorry. So sorry,” an out-of-breath Eliza gasped. She turned around to the officer still in the hallway, who thankfully had averted his gaze down the passageway. “Thank you for accommodating me. I promise you I never run late. It’ll never happen again.”
“It had better not,” he grumbled before marching down the hall and onto what Grace presumed was the sleeper car for the male recruits. To himself he added, “Another reason why they shouldn’t have let girls into the Army.”
Grace narrowed her eyes at his back. And that is another reason why I intend to become the best soldier I can be. If only to prove him wrong.
“Come in.” Grace ushered Eliza inside. Once she closed the door again—and locked it—she added, “What a jerk.”
Eliza dropped herself onto the bed with a thud. Grace gave her a good looking over from head to toe. Eliza was a sweaty mess. Gone was the polished woman she had met a week ago at the induction center.
“You look like you’ve just gone through literal hell.”
Eliza smiled. “I feel like it.” She paused a moment to take in her new accommodations. “I forgot how small these rooms could be. I never had to share one before. This should be fun, the two of us in here together.”
“Yeah, fun,” Grace echoed with a frown. It was obvious that Eliza was quickly making herself comfortable on what had been her bed up until thirty seconds ago. Her sympathy for the girl was quickly evaporating.
“Well, uh, the upper bun
k is ready to go. I was just getting ready to go to sleep myself.”
Grace watched as realization dawned on Eliza’s face. The girl took in Grace’s suitcase and toiletries that had been laid out on the bed. That is, the toothpaste and washcloths that were now being smooshed by Eliza’s behind.
“Oh yes, of course.” Eliza pulled Grace’s hair maintenance tools out from under her. But the girl didn’t get up from where she sat. “It’s just that . . . well, it’s just . . . Would you mind terribly if you moved to the top bed so I can be on the bottom?”
The car lurched forward as the train began to move out of the station. Grace grabbed on to the top bunk to brace herself. They were finally on their way. This should be a bittersweet moment for her. But instead, she was raging mad.
“You want me to move . . . to the top?” Grace asked. This girl barely made it onto the train in time, and now she was asking Grace to accommodate her further?
“I know it’s a lot to ask. But I’m terrified of heights. I’ll spend the whole night worried that I’ll fall.” Grace watched dumbfounded as Eliza widened her eyes and her mouth spread into a smile. Grace inclined her head. That angelic expression had no doubt been Eliza’s bread and butter into getting her way in the past.
“What makes you think I’m not ‘terrified’ of heights too?” Grace held her fingers up in air quotes for emphasis.
Eliza’s smile fell. This time, she looked Grace in the eye, woman to woman. “Because I can tell that you’re not afraid of anything.”
“Actually, everything scares the mess out of me.” Grace folded her arms across her chest. “Especially heights.”
This was a total lie, of course. But Grace was not about to let this obviously spoiled woman-child swoop in and totally disrupt her sense of order. If where she slept was that much of a concern, then Eliza should have made sure to get down to the station on time.
Eliza stood up—finally—and moved to the side. “Fine. I’ll take the stupid one on top.”
GRACE SPENT THE remainder of the night regretting that she didn’t cave and take the top bunk.
As soon as Grace started drifting off to sleep, Eliza began her first of countless climbs up and down to get a glass of water, to go to the toilet, to come back and nudge Grace awake to help her find the toilet, to find her hair bonnet in her suitcase . . . it was yet one reason after another for the first half of the night. Through it all, Grace knew she couldn’t say one blessed word in protest because she had brought this upon herself.
At around half past midnight, Eliza finally went to sleep. That’s when the snoring began.
“Unbelievable,” Grace muttered to herself. She would’ve never thought someone so cute and dainty would be the one to call in the hogs so loudly. She covered her head with her pillow and said a silent prayer to not be placed in the same barracks or unit as Eliza once they arrived in Iowa.
Eliza’s snores became louder.
“Dear God, make it stop. Please.”
That particular prayer went unanswered for hours.
Eventually, Grace drifted off to sleep but was roused soon after, when she felt the train begin to slow down. She gave up on the idea that she might get any rest that night. She got up and pulled on a sweater over her nightgown. The temperature in the car had dropped noticeably. Grace sniffed. The air smelled like rain.
She exited the sleeper compartment, taking her blanket with her. There was a small lounge at the end of their car. Perhaps she could close her eyes in peace there.
She also brought some blank music sheets with her. The rhythms and sounds of the train ride had worked a new tune into her brain.
Once settled in one of the lounge’s chairs, Grace gazed out the window. There were a few streetlights streaking past. This would have been an absolute no-no back in New York, where a mandatory dimout had been in effect since the middle of May. Too many merchant ships had been blown out of the water by German U-boats along the East Coast since the United States had entered the war. But this far inland, Grace imagined that enemy attacks from air or by sea would be less of a concern.
As the train’s brakes screeched to a complete stop, Grace wondered where they were exactly. The station outside was dimly lit from what she could see out the window. Finally, she saw a sign that read COLUMBUS.
Thanks to her father’s job as a porter on the railroad, she knew the name of every city on the Eastern Seaboard from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina. Her geographical knowledge was lacking once she started looking west. Aside from maybe Philadelphia and Detroit, her mind went blank on what cities lay between New York and Chicago.
A group of women walked past outside the window. From what Grace could tell, there had been a few stops so far where newly inducted WAAC officer candidates had gotten aboard. So this wasn’t necessarily an unusual sight. What made this particular group unusual was that the first in this line appeared to be a brown-skinned woman, followed by too many white women for Grace to count. And the fact that they were escorted by a row of soldiers on either side of them.
Grace scoffed, “Now there’s something you don’t see every day. This group must be quite the handful.”
A gust of cold air whooshed in when the outside door opened. Grace tightened her sweater around her. The women’s footsteps sounded like clomps against the metal steps as they climbed aboard. A few minutes later, that same Negro woman who had led the line entered the lounge where Grace sat.
“Oh, hello,” the woman said with a start.
“Good evening. Or should I say morning?”
“Sorry. It’s a little after five o’clock in the morning. Wasn’t expecting to see anybody at this hour.”
Grace shrugged. “My new roommate snores.”
The apples of the woman’s cheeks blossomed into a full smile. “That’ll do it.”
“I’m Grace.” She extended her hand.
The woman put down her bag and took Grace’s hand. “Nice to meet you. My name is Charity Adams.”
“Nice to meet you. I hear a Southern accent, but I doubt we’ve veered that far south on this train route. The station sign said Columbus. But Columbus where?”
“Ohio.”
“What’s a Southern girl doing all the way up in Ohio?”
Charity shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
“My roommate didn’t sound like she’d stop snoring anytime soon.”
As it turned out, Charity was actually a teacher from Columbia, South Carolina, who had been taking graduate summer classes at Ohio State University when she submitted her WAAC application.
“The last two days have been a wild ride. I had brought almost everything I owned with me to summer school, only to turn right around to haul it all back home to South Carolina. I had forty-eight hours to go home and drop it all off, then get back here to report for my induction in time.”
Grace felt her jaw fall in astonishment. Her last week at home had felt like a whirlwind, with gathering the supplies on the recommended packing list. Then she’d had to repack her suitcase several times to squeeze everything into the suggested one to two pieces of luggage.
Charity stretched into a yawn. “Okay, now I’m tired.”
“Well, now I feel bad for keeping you awake.” The truth was Grace wanted to learn everything there was to know about this Charity Adams. Grace always considered herself tall. But she felt like a runt next to this woman. Not only was she tall, but she was intelligent and witty and had a confidence about herself that Grace could only wish for.
Charity excused herself and headed back to her sleeping compartment.
It had taken longer for her than most, but Grace’s parents had been so proud when she had finally finished her degree from Hunter College. But to find out that Charity had gone on to start a graduate degree program as well? Grace felt another wave of shame wash over her for that disaster of an audition at Juilliard.
If you had gotten that Juilliard fellowship, then you wouldn’t be here, she reminded herself. No, she w
ould still be in New York under her mother’s thumb, miserable. Grace scratched out a few more notes on her sheet paper. Truth be told, veering off course into the WAAC would actually open more doors for Grace. Her service would allow her to earn veterans’ benefits once she finished her commitment. She could go to school wherever she wanted and study whatever she wanted. She would no longer be limited to the precious few fully funded fellowships in New York City that were available to girls who had ambitions like hers.
Logically, this all made sense. But she wondered whether she had given up too easily on the concert pianist dream, regardless of the fact that it had really been Mama’s dream more than hers. She shoved the sheet music back into her portfolio.
All these shoulda, woulda, couldas were pointless now. Grace was in the Army. Going back was no longer an option. Only forward.
Chapter 9
Des Moines, Iowa
July 19, 1942
NEXT STOP, DES MOINES!”
The boom of the conductor’s voice broke the silence in the train car, jolting Grace from her doze.
“Ladies, get your stuff together. We’re getting off here.”
With the time zone change and spending time stuck in train stations both planned and unplanned, Grace had had little sleep over the last thirty-six hours.
First the air-conditioning had conked out somewhere near Toledo. That had required them to get off the train and wait for the conductors to find another Pullman car to load them onto. Then, once they had arrived in Chicago—late—they had learned that they had missed the afternoon Rock Island Railroad train that would’ve taken them to Des Moines. That meant that they had been stuck in Union Station for the better part of the day, waiting for the evening one. None of the Army officials in Chicago were willing to let a trainload of young women loose in the city for a few hours. It was almost time to go to bed once they had finally boarded.
She peeked out the window for anything that would clue her in as to what time it was, but it was dark outside. A blue-black sky covered the landscape racing by, with only stray wisps of moonlight peeking out of the thick clouds to illuminate the houses, separated by large, hilly breaks that could only be farmland, and an occasional line of trees. Grace remembered hearing about a federal project where stands of trees were planted across the Midwest to act as windbreakers to stop the horrible dust storms that had crippled the region a few years ago. It was hard to make out in the dark, gloomy night, but some of those trees looked young enough to have been part of that effort.
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