by Sarah Bird
“Mace, don’t be like that,” Moe warns, but my father goes on, acting as if he were speaking to a retarded person.
“D, period. Y, period. Temporary duty assignment.”
Kit stands beside me to hear better.
“I know TDY, Mace. I want to know where and for how long.”
“That’s classified.”
“Is it because of the plane blowing up? Are you going to SAC? Were there nuclear weapons? Are there nuclear weapons?”
“Classified. Classified. Classified. And classified. Any other bright questions?”
“Mace, for God’s sake, you’re leaving your children on this goddamned island. Should I try to get us emergency leave?”
“Emergency leave? Emergency leave! Why don’t you just send Ho Chi Minh a nice note and alert him to all of our strategic circumstances? No one is getting emergency leave.”
“Mace, maybe you don’t care about me, but if you care about your children, tell me: Are we safe here?”
“I don’t have time for this crap. I have to get back to the Flight Line. I’ve got a hop out of here in twenty minutes.”
Zippers rasp in the silence that follows as he opens his flight bag.
“Bernadette! Front and center!” I almost tip the iron over in my haste to answer my father’s call.
In the bedroom, my father is hefting his B-4 bag off their bed. I can feel Moe’s anger in the air. My father tosses me the keys to his Corvette. “You’re on deck.”
“Bernadette,” Moe says, her voice tight, coming from deep in her chest. “Wait for your father outside.”
I leave the bedroom but linger in the hallway. Moe’s voice is so quiet, I have to stop breathing to hear her say, “Tell me this. Do you not tell me anything because of the Air Force or do you stay in the Air Force so you won’t have to tell me anything?”
“I doubt I’ll be back for the rest of the month.”
“Christ, Mace. A month?” Moe’s voice is shrill. “You’re going to be gone for a month? Why?”
“If you must know, my dear”—he pronounces the words “my dear” as if he were really saying “you asshole”—“the civilians are involved now. Everyone from the Joint Committee on down. They’re talking reversion. Giving the island back to our yellow brothers. They need their Community Liaison Officer to peace them off.”
As annoyed and generally irritated as my father sounds, the depth of loathing in his voice when he pronounces his job title, Community Liaison Officer, takes my breath away.
I tiptoe out to the living room, where I find Kit, beaming.
“Did you hear that?” she whispers gleefully. “A month! I’ll be back from Tokyo before he knows I’ve ever left. I told you I’d handle Daddy.”
Wild Root Creme Oil
“You’re riding the clutch! Stop riding the clutch!”
I don’t know what impulse possessed my father to allow me to drive his Corvette other than he doesn’t want to leave it at the Flight Line for the next month, and since Moe is too mad to drive and Kit had her license suspended, I’m his only choice. Sitting behind the wheel of my father’s beloved car turns me from a mediocre to a criminally awful driver. I jerk my foot off the pedal. The Corvette hiccups forward and dies in front of the Base Dispensary.
Without a word, I get out and trade seats with my father. He taps the tachometer, talks to me about RPMs, and tells me which numbers to watch for when I shift. I can’t remember the numbers for any longer than it takes me to nod my head, pretending I understand. The sound of the engine fills the silence after this lecture. I glance at my father, at his graying crew cut, and try to recall when he stopped oiling his hair and cut it so short. When he stopped resembling Dean Martin. All I can remember for sure is that his friends back at Yokota used to call him Wild Root, for Wild Root Creme Hair Oil. For a second I remember his squadron commander, Major Wingo. Major Wingo had a Corvette. He had it shipped over from the States for what Moe whispered to me was a ruinous amount. My father mentioned that Corvette, “Wingo’s heap,” every day. Each time the overseas gas caused its engine to ping or the Japanese roads tore hell out of the shocks, we would hear about it, but in a way that was both gloating and loving and told us how much our father yearned to have “a heap” just like Wingo’s.
“So, who are these Damsels in Dissent?”
The breath turns to concrete in my throat. In one glance, my father tells me not to even consider lying.
“Um, a … sort of … antiwar group.”
“Bernadette, answer one question for me, will you?”
“Yessir.”
“Bernadette, tell me what I’m supposed to think when some butt-sniffer from OSI comes in and puts a folder on my desk detailing my oldest daughter’s subversive activities?”
“Subver—!”
“Tell me what an officer of the United States Air Force who has given his life—his life—to the protection and defense of this country is supposed to think about that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. Well, then, Bernadette, answer me this. Do you know what they’re going to think in Hanoi when they learn that the children of the officers of this country’s military are protesting the war? Do you think they’re going to believe that America is committed to this struggle? Do you think they’re going to hasten to the negotiating table to end this war you, apparently, object to?”
“No. Probably not.”
“No. Probably not. What exactly are you damsels dissenting?”
I would like to write an essay. I could write an essay on this topic. But speak? My father’s majestically peeved tone stifles the futile words. I shrug, utterly miserable. “The war?”
“The war? I’d gotten the general impression that it was the war. What precisely about the war do you object to?”
It’s that word “precisely” that stops me, makes me abandon hope. All I want now is for this conversation to be over. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. Before a young woman who has been housed, clothed, and fed her entire life by the United States government criticizes that government, wouldn’t you imagine she should have an exceptionally clear, an exceptionally precise idea, of what it is she’s protesting?”
“Yessir. I guess, sir.”
“Toward that end, I’m going to supply a few legitimate gripes to help you fill in the blanks a little. Containment, that was Curtis LeMay’s big theory after War Two. No country in the history of the world has ever exercised such restraint. Contain, not conquer—that was the mission after the war. That was the mission of the Thirty-eighty-first in Yokota. Do you think Germany would have been content with that if they’d come out on top? Japan? No, we got a pretty good glimpse in Nanking, Singapore, the Philippines of just exactly how Japan celebrates victory. We were it, Bernadette. The glittering edge of America’s sword. Look where it got us.”
I am astonished by everything my father is saying, by the tone of regret he is saying it in, but mostly by the simple fact that he is saying it to me.
“Would you like some ideas about what you damsels might want to dissent? Try this. The Vietnam War is the only war in the history of man where enemy territory is sanctuary. Where we systematically bomb our allies into oblivion, while the enemy’s country is off-limits. What genius thought up those ‘rules of engagement’?”
My father doesn’t care that I don’t answer. He seems to have forgotten that I’m sitting next to him.
“No one’s ever fought a war like this before, where you hand the enemy your ass on a platter, then have to snatch it away and hit him over the head with it. The numbnuts in Washington think we’re going take Charlie apart with preannounced saturation raids. Nebber hoppen, number-one daughter. What none of them wants to hear is that the North Vietnamese have created the most impenetrable ground defense in history around Hanoi and Haiphong. Berlin? Vienna? Tokyo? Piece of cake compared to what Charlie’s got.
“It’s a parody of warfare. An expensive half-ass interve
ntion in the wrong cause in the wrong country in the wrong part of the world. You want an example? We have to have visual contact to shoot the mothers and they’re launching Atolls and SAMS at us from anywhere they goddamn care to.”
My father gives a comradely gasp of exasperation now that we both agree on how ridiculous this war is.
“Here’s the good news. Here’s what you can go back to college and tell your peace-puke buddies: We’re not actually killing many humans over there. That much I can guarantee them. You know what we should do? Yeah, get the Damsels working on this angle. Put them on pensions. Every mother-loving one of them. Pay every man, woman, and child in North Vietnam what—thirty thousand? Forty? Hell, pay ’em fifty thousand a year for life. It’ll be cheaper than what we’re doing now.
“Ike, here’s what I liked about Eisenhower. When LeMay came to him saying the Bolsheviks were gonna crawl up our heinie if SAC didn’t get all the B-fifty-twos they wanted, Ike told him to pound sand. That you can build thirty-five—thirty-five!— elementary schools for what one strategic bomber costs and that good schools were going to keep America a hell of a lot safer in the long run than B-frigging-fifty-twos.”
The guard at the Flight Line waves us through with a crisper-than-average salute. We are routed far around the site where the plane blew up. A plume of black oily smoke marks the distant spot.
My father backs into a parking space beside a hangar and puts it in neutral, warning me, “I don’t want the last sound I hear before I get on that bird to be my reverse gear getting stripped out.” He reaches behind the front seat and pulls out a briefcase, his attention already on the men gathering in the Ready Room. “So, you going to do this? Get the Damsels working on this pension plan?”
The sound of my father joking comes back to me like a lullaby from childhood whose words I can no longer remember, and only the tune floating far back in my head proves that I ever really heard it. “Sure,” I answer.
“I’m telling you. Fifty thou a year will be a bargain. Save us billions of dollars and the lives of untold young men who—” He pauses while the trembling roar of a departing jet vibrates the earth beneath us.
“Bernadette, if this FUBAR of a war is still going on then, tell your brothers—” He looks around guiltily and finishes starchily, his eyes avoiding mine. “Advise them of the procedure.”
For a fraction of a second, I can’t believe that my father has asked me to prep his sons on how to dodge the draft. I nod, afraid to answer, to reveal that I might have misunderstood.
“Help your mother while I’m gone. This has been a difficult adjustment for her.”
“Yessir, I will, sir.”
My father slams the door and walks away. Heat shimmers pouring off the concrete runway make his image wobble. I remember other flight lines, other times, and it suddenly seems odd to see my father walking toward a plane wearing his regular uniform and not the flight suit of a pilot.
Spic ’n’ Span
I dig rock and roll music.
The worst of all the bad rocklike songs that are Okinawa’s sound track wakes me. Through sleep-filmed eyes, I watch Kit gyrating in front of the mirror, dancing to the clock/radio. It is almost two in the afternoon. I wonder if I’m falling into Moe’s lethargy. Kit has her shoulders hunched up around her ears and appears to be doing an impression of a hyperkinetic dwarf digging for something. Perhaps his chestful of treasure. Her face is even squinched into a pruney dwarf expression. As she throws wee shovelsful of imaginary dirt over her shoulder, I marvel, realizing that it is possible for my sister to look unattractive.
I groan and bury my head under the pillow. I am so grateful for the sound of an electric drill that obscures any further proclamations of Peter, Paul, and Mary’s passion for rock and roll music that it takes me a moment to wonder who might be driving a hole into the concrete hallway.
I emerge just in time to face my equally sluggish brothers gaping in wonder as our mother hangs the last of the three framed fans that have sat on the floor for the past year.
“All hands on deck. We’re gonna snap to today.”
Overnight, Moe has shed the logy, dazed look she’s worn the entire time I’ve been here. She has the manic energy peculiar to TDYs I remember from our time at Yokota, when my father left on his mysterious temporary duty assignments and Moe was in charge of our family for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. Seeing that old animation is startling. It is as if she’s been lying in wait for our father to leave so she could take over again.
Moe barges into the girls’ room, where Kit is practicing a sporty pirouette to “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” Kit sees Moe and groans. “Oh, no, not the bags.”
Moe has a webbed belt buckled around her waist with six bread bags tucked under it. As she shakes Bosco awake with one hand, Moe plucks Daddy’s nail clippers off of Kit’s vanity with her free hand and drops them into a middle bag that already contains the cuticle scissors and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Clearly the Bathroom Bag.
After we PCS’d out of Japan and Moe returned to an economy where a captain’s wife could not afford domestic help, she developed the bag system. With a bag for every room looped around a belt at her waist, Moe went about her day returning the objects her six children and husband scattered throughout the house to their rightful spots. I am delighted to see the bags reemerge. As Bosco begs to be left alone, Moe scoops up the carrot peeler and a box of matches that Kit has been using to melt together the remnants of old lipsticks and dumps them in the Kitchen Bag.
“Man your battle stations. We’re going through this house today like shit through a goose!” At the word “shit” Bosco pops her eyes at me and starts to understand that the normal rules are off. Manicure tools clanking against the carrot peeler, Moe strides down the hall, yelling at Bob and the twins to “Look alive! You boys are on yard detail. Let’s get this place shaped up and then go have some fun!”
Out in the living room, Moe cranks up the hi-fi with her housecleaning battle anthem, Rosemary Clooney singing “Come On-a My House.”
I am grinning when I catch Kit’s eye. She is the only one old enough to remember TDYs past, since they ended abruptly after Japan. Our father’s absences back then were odd little grace periods when we all took a vacation from being in the military. Once the house was cleaned, Moe might decide to borrow a projector from Base Supply and let us stay up all night to eat powdered sugar doughnuts and enjoy multiple viewings of what she considered the choicest of all TDY films, Little Women. Then we would sleep all the next day and have ice cream for dinner. On one of the last TDYs before we left Japan, Moe and Fumiko took me, Kit, the twins in their stroller, and Bosco in Moe’s arms off on a trip that included a visit to the Kamakura Buddha, a glimpse of a bathtub made of pure gold in the shape of a fish, and the discovery that sweet potato tempura was the one Japanese food all of us would eat.
Though it’s only been a few hours since our father left, the kitchen and living room are spotless and smell of Lysol. The washing machine and dryer both chug and whirl in the garage, and a warm cloud of Tide-perfumed air billows in. On the door of the refrigerator is a crisp new duty roster.
Everyone: Make bed. Gather/sort laundry. Police own area.
Abner: Mow and edge lawn. TODAY!!
Buzz: Fix window screens: TODAY!!
Bob: Put away army men: TODAY!!
Bosco: Clean bathroom: TODAY!!
Kit: Clean living room: TODAY!!
Bernie: Float.
“Float” is nurse talk, meaning that my jobs will never start and never end. Beneath that is another chart divided by days that tells who is on KP that night. This part ends with the warning NO COLORECTAL RESPONSE! which is more nurse talk for not disappearing into the bathroom as soon as it is time to do the dishes.
“Look alive in there!” Moe yells into the boys’ room.
I grab the local Okinawa edition of Stars and Stripes, expecting the top half of the paper to be filled with a photo of the runway explosion, to r
ead some explanation, no matter how lame, for what happened. But the fire that could be seen throughout the entire island is not mentioned anywhere. I switch on the radio.
This is Air Force Sergeant Alan Renfro, your Jock on the Rock here at Armed Forces Radio 650. The time at the tone will be fourteen hundred hours. BEEEEE. Skies are mostly clear with winds from the northeast at approximately ten knots an hour. Sounds to me like perfect weather for a … “Stoned Soul Picnic”!
I rush to turn the radio off but am contaminated by the opening lyrics.
Hurry on down for a stoned soul picnic—
I snap it off and leave to find the Spic ’n’ Span.
Moe somehow infects Bob, Bosco, and the twins with that secret TDY clubhouse experience, and they dive into their chores without protest or recusing themselves to the bathroom. Only Kit is immune. Without asking permission, she disappears when the convertible of cool teens pulls up.
“Eileen Root, you get your fanny back in here!” Moe calls after Kit, but Kit sails on out to the waiting car as if she hasn’t heard. “Oh, well, she doesn’t know what fun she’s missing,” Moe says, dismissing her middle daughter.
A second later: “The egg man!” From the front window above the kitchen sink where she is scrubbing cockroach corpses out of the broiler, Moe spots an Okinawan man pulling a cart after him. He passes by our house. “Why isn’t he stopping?”
“Because you’re always asleep.” Bosco always has the answer.
“I am not always asleep. I’m awake now, aren’t I?” Moe grabs her purse.
“Moe, you can’t go out like that!” Bosco yells, but Moe is already out the door. My little sister and the twins gather at the open door and watch as Moe runs out to stop the egg man. Across the street, a couple of wives and the tribe of redheaded children are in the front yard. The twins’ faces tense as Moe slows when she sees the two women. They are both in shirtwaist dresses, hose, and polished flats, and their hair has been ratted and sprayed into dos that bubble up around their heads and flip at the ends. Moe is barefoot. The purplish ropes of her varicose veins pop out beneath the housecoat she wears under her belt of many bags. The wives and pale children glance up like baboons on the veldt at our mother’s approach. Bosco and my brothers plaster themselves out of sight against the wall. Abner leans forward and jerks Bob, still standing at the open door in his Mighty Mouse underpants, back into the shadows. They wait and watch. Moe pulls her housecoat around herself and marches forward.
