An American Story

by Debra J. Dickerson

  Lowery pulled a pad to him and began to write, narrating aloud ominously: “OT Dickerson, despite her demonstrated excellence and natural leadership, refuses to assist her flight in accomplishing its mission. Preferring her own leisure time and . . .”

  I drew myself to my full height, stood at my tallest “attention.”

  “Sir, I’d be honored to compete for a squadron position.”

  We exchanged salutes and I marched away. At least this time, I didn’t cry in the hallway.

  ——

  I had to be an officer. I had to. I was mad as hell about being forced into this competition—which, as Eddie’s daughter, I saw as the world trying to keep me from becoming an officer—but there was nothing I could do but try my absolute best. Captain Lowery backed me up every step of the way. The Air Force didn’t just tell me I could achieve if I wanted to, it showed me how.

  Captain Lowery gave me the applicable regs so I could prepare for the boards; in the meantime, I redoubled my efforts in everything else—academics, athletics, room inspections, personal hygiene and posture, bone density. Whatever.

  Flight commanders assign flight jobs based on their assessment of their OTs’ aptitudes, then nominate some, like me, to compete at the squadron level. That board sends the cream of the crop on to compete at the group level. The group selects for its level, then sends the three remaining OTs on to compete for the top three wing jobs; these are announced in front of the entire wing at the graduating class’s last commander’s call. Each level had its own process, which I had to master to win. In the end, it all came down to meeting the board of current leaders; each picked its own successors based on flight commander recommendations, our OT records, but most of all on their personal assessment after “eyeballing” us. There were probably eight board members and perhaps fifteen of us being evaluated. The board would pose essay-type questions and we each had to answer one of our choice. The questions would range in subject from current events to the significance of different aspects of OTS’s training philosophy.

  The afternoon we met the board, I met my competition for the first time. All white, all male, all oozing confidence and bonhomie. Perversely, it relaxed me. There was no way little old black Debbie from north St. Louis was going to be chosen over these white boys, not by a board full of white boys just like them. Never gonna happen. All I wanted was to acquit myself honorably and show Captain Lowery that I’d given it my all.

  In the anteroom where we waited, some protocol OT came out and briefed us on the procedures for reporting in to the board and for answering the questions. It was meant to fluster us (otherwise it would have been spelled out in the regs for us to study): something like, march in, about-face, salute the flag, about-face and say “Sir, OT Dickerson reports as ordered, sir,” assume parade rest between questions, salute before speaking . . . on and on. They wanted to see how we responded to pressure.

  Several of my competitors panicked, begging the OT to repeat the sequence and frantically pacing about, working out their choreography. Watching them, I realized it would be best to just do whatever I did confidently, without hesitation. It would matter less that I forgot to about-face than that I was sweat-drenched and tentative. My father taught me that. “If you gon be wrong,” he’d say, “be wrong the right way.” Once when I was small, without a hint to us that anything was amiss, my mother calmly called a cousin to come baby-sit, waited for her to arrive, then drove herself to the hospital in crippling pain from internal hemorrhaging after major surgery. This bunch of college boys was not going to see me sweat.

  We marched in and took our seats. While the current OT wing commander explained procedure, I had another of those moments.

  I could see everything and everyone in the room all at once, like through a fish-eye lens. I never moved, yet as I “sat at attention,” I could see up and down that row of scrubbed, white, male faces. I could look across the room and see that row of scrubbed, white, male faces. And I could see my own glaringly brown hands on my womanly brown thighs, as ordered. My brown heels locked at a forty-five-degree angle, brown spine ramrod, brown breasts jutting as proudly as 34B’s can. Dignified surroundings. Comfortable conditions. Respectful treatment. The flag symbolizing America’s acknowledgment that she needed me and what I had to offer. Open-ended possibilities.

  I belong here. I earned this.

  I had clarity. I had confidence. Not based on besting others, just a confidence based on knowing that I could do this. I could do anything I needed to. I could handle myself with dignity and these white men could do whatever they were going to do about it—judge me fairly or not. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t intimidated. I wasn’t invested in their external validation. I could do this, but I didn’t need this. They could select me or not. Either way, I was going to feel just fine about myself. I was going to work hard regardless of the outcome and the world could reward me or not.

  Tension crackled from everyone on my side of the room but me. Uncertainty about what questions we’d be asked was beginning to take a toll on me, though. What if I waited too long and let a question I had covered go by?

  Hyperaware, I remembered something from my childhood. I had to be baptized before I could become an actual member of the church I’d been attending from birth. When I was ten or so, at Emmanuel’s yearly revival, my parents decided it was time we all got baptized and “join church.”

  Starting one Sunday night and continuing every night that week until the following Sunday, revivals were frightening, nightmarish events. The adults screamed and moaned with even greater vehemence than usual; the ministers ratcheted up their fire and brimstone to horror-movie proportions. It was weird being at church on a Tuesday night at midnight. Worse, the unbaptized had to sit up front all alone without our parents on “the moaners’ bench.” Everybody stared and pointed at us and we were viewed as if demons rode on our shoulders. Adults exhorted us to repent our evil ways and preached at us nonstop. What if we died unbaptized? Straight to hell, young lady! Die? Me? What fiends I thought them.

  Each night, after terrorizing us for hours, they’d set up chairs at the altar while the donation plates went around and “open up de arms a de choich.” You had to get an adult to pray with you at the altar before you could sit in the chair and ask to be baptized, pretty please. That was the only way to get off the moaners’ bench. It was such a nightmare, I just sat there night after night while all the other kids dragged one of their parents up to the altar and ended the torture. But I was frozen. I couldn’t move. Every night at home, Mama begged me to ask for her like everybody else already had on the first night, but I couldn’t open my mouth, I couldn’t move my legs. I just hoped it would eventually end without me having to exercise any volition.

  The last three nights, I was all alone on the moaners’ bench. I had nightmares for years about it. The longer I put it off, “the deeper the sin sunk down” in me, old-timers cautioned. If we’d been eastern European peasants, they’d have made the sign of the evil eye and thrown garlic at me. Only Mama showed me compassion; the other adults thought it was the “debil” in me. The other kids thought me a moron. Finally, on the last possible night, after all the sermons had been aimed directly at me by name, I finally forced myself, sobbing with terror and humiliation, to go get Mama to pray for me.

  Before the board chair got three words of the first question out of his mouth, I was on my feet.

  “Sir! OT Dickerson would like to answer the question, sir.” I didn’t know and didn’t care if those were the right words.

  To my surprise, my competitors were demoralized. Their faces turned red, their eyes grew wide, their lips pursed. Conversely, every member of the board was looking at me like I’d just thrown myself on a grenade.

  “Perhaps I should actually give you the question, Miss Dickerson,” the OT squadron commander joked, and the board chuckled approvingly.

  My competitors were squirming. Adding insult to injury, I got a softball question—something like the signific
ance of athletics and how I thought that helped build good officers. It was a total freebie. Finally, all those Dead White Men and my fancy vocabulary paid off. I was eloquent and, I realized, unafraid of public speaking.

  Two minutes before, I might have been on a higher plane of enlightenment and above such petty competition, but watching their faces fall—I was loving it! It was true, still, that I didn’t need a fancy title to know who I was. But damn, it was good to win! It was another victory, like beating Sister Flight’s dorm chief downstairs every morning, and victory is intoxicating. Habit-forming.

  In the anteroom, waiting to be called back in for the results, I was roundly congratulated. My competitors were gracious and generous. They assured me that I would go on to the highest levels and none of them chalked it up to affirmative action. Several asked me to coach them on public speaking and deportment. I was ashamed of my racist assumptions.

  Along with several others, I was sent forward for the group competition. Lowery and my flight mates were ecstatic. My fame preceded me at the group competition. Even in the anteroom before we went in, my competitors were both deferential and proud of me. Talent and leadership are acknowledged in the military and these men gave me my due.

  I answered the first question there and at the wing level; no one made a move to claim a question until after I’d spoken. Then, in what I took to be the highest compliment, they lunged to be the next speaker. That’s leadership, I realized: a good example. I resolved to set a good example on purpose, though, instead of inadvertently.

  Three of us were finally selected to compete for the highest positions: OT wing commander, deputy wing commander, and group commander. It was like the Miss America Pageant; it was just a question of who was queen and who the runner-ups.

  I was far from done with my fraud syndrome and self-limitations, but it was clear I had to rethink some things. I was not at all convinced I could handle one of the top three positions, they were so “highly visible.” Among our duties would be mingling with top officer brass at ceremonial functions, running the nine hundred OTs, and, last but hardly least, staying on top of our own personal OTS requirements—OT colonel or not, I wouldn’t be exempted from anything any other OT had to do, but I would have extra duties they did not have. What if my grades fell? What if I forgot something little like a zipper and got my 341 pulled (the ultimate training horror) because more was expected of me? How would I get it all done? Though I was what OTS called a “PFT animal,” I still had yet to accomplish the twelve push-ups required for female OTs. It was embarrassing—I’d have no legitimacy with the OTs. In the midst of my angst, once again, the Air Force showed its brilliance.

  Before the wing board, we three were required to attend a mixer with the outgoing wing and group staff. I was irritated at the extra duty: I still had shoes to shine and regs to memorize. Had it not been obligatory, I’d not have gone.

  I showed up for the mixer sure that the outgoing OT wing commander and staff would be luminous like stars or, I don’t know, spout Sun Tzu, or have the Stars and Stripes tattooed on their chests or something. But they were just guys. Worse, they were just OTs.

  They had great grades, great athletics, and oozed drive, but they still spent the mixer griping about unfair room inspections, sleep deprivation, and the flight commander who just wouldn’t lighten up. Several were openly studying from the flash cards OTs cart everywhere.

  Those guys had to study and shine shoes and march around in the hot sun just like me. They had no magic: all the smarts in the world won’t let you pass an Air Force history test you haven’t studied for. They won’t iron your uniforms just right and they won’t do your push-ups—only I could do those things. If I studied and ironed and exercised, I could do all the same things they did. They were just people—talented people—but talent alone can never be enough.

  Listening to all the griping, I could see that it really was in my own hands. Even the highest-ranking OTs bitched and complained and whined on the phone with mom, then they got off their butts and did the work. That’s the only magic there is.

  I was selected OT wing commander.

  BOTTOM RAIL ON TOP

  That same weekend, I was “bedposted.”

  My upper-flight OTs “nuked” my room. When I came back from learning that I was OT wing commander, the number one OT among the nine-hundred-plus there, I found my room had undergone a surprise inspection. The report was replete with demerits, more than I’d gotten in any previous three-week period, more than the worst sad-sack OT got.

  Funnily enough, my roommate’s side of the room remained perfect while my side had been sabotaged—drawers hung open, nothing was flush with the edge of anything else, and there was actual trash under my bed.

  I got the message: you can’t make it alone.

  Harsh though it may have been, it gave me time to think while my buddies, my whole class, fled to our first authorized off-base weekend and I, the new “wing queen,” was on lockdown in my room.

  Being OT wing commander gave me a sense of responsibility that filled my every waking moment. It was such an honor, such a position of trust, such an expression of the Air Force’s commitment to fostering and endorsing talent wherever it might be found, that I knew I could do nothing to bring dishonor on myself, my flight, my flight commander, my squadron, my group, my wing, my fellow OTs. It was never off my mind.

  Not that I found the responsibility oppressive. On the contrary, once it was settled and the Air Force’s decision was made, my fears were calmed. I was the daughter of Johnnie Florence and Eddie Mack: I had no choice but to see this through with dignity or SIE. To that end, I determined two things—one negative, one affirmative.

  First, I decided that I would not respond to any agenda other than the Air Force’s. Initially, I had spent a lot of time paranoically mind reading: who was out to see me fail because I was black? because I was female? Should I avoid the other blacks or seek them out? avoid the other women or seek them out? Would they expect favoritism, score-settling against the whites and the men? Speaking of that, didn’t whites and men deserve a little “in your face” attitude anyway? (I couldn’t help thinking of the slave who escaped to fight for the Union and saw his former owner being led away in chains by Yankee soldiers. “Bottom rail on top now, Massa!” he’d crowed.) Shouldn’t I try to prove to everyone that a black female could do as well as a white male? But how to do that? Maybe I should focus on assuaging the fears of the white males, let them know that I was Air Force through and through.

  There was no way out of thoughts like that. Whatever else could be said about such a focus, it was surely true that it gave my volition, the volition which had propelled me to high office without any assistance from those to whom I mentally kowtowed, to others. This self-limiting conundrum led to my second, affirmative guiding principle as OT wing commander.

  I decided to focus on living up to my position rather than on all the ways I might fail. If I failed, too many important things failed with me and I would not let that happen. (There had been a few black or female OT wing commanders before me, but not very many. I didn’t ask for the particulars and no one offered the information. Race never came up in the selection process or afterward, as far as I know.)

  My position gave me a sort of low-intensity bravery that is hard now to describe. When you’re acting only in your own behalf, it’s reasonable to play the odds and not exert yourself beyond your comfort zone if there’s little to be gained. But I felt that I had to go for broke in every situation; the other OTs didn’t need me showing them how to be a low-key OT—that came naturally. At the same time, I was also determined not to be a little tin-soldier GI Joe having napalm for breakfast and sleeping with my combat boots on. As with that confusing procedure for meeting the board, I believed that the point was for me to try my damnedest but in the most openhearted way possible. I didn’t want to be merely right, my actions merely sufficient. I wanted to push my limits as sincerely as possible. That was as much as a leader
could ask of any subordinate, so that’s what I determined to give. My uncomplicated best, no more, no less, no excuses.

  Over the course of that weekend, I inventoried both my head and my room. The wing staff was housed in “Club Med,” a special suite of rooms in the headquarters building. I’d have to move there, away from my flight but to a single room on Monday, so I used my bedposting as an opportunity.

  I emptied my room of everything I could do without. The regs say what you can and can’t have. In typical OT fashion, I’d hoarded everything allowed by regulation—blow-dryer, curling iron, limited amount of makeup, etc.—and focused on stowing it in accordance with the room inspection regs. Now, I decided to turn the reg on its head and live with as little as possible. If it wasn’t going to help me be a better officer, it was out of there. My drawers went from jam-packed to nearly bare.

  To my surprise, I didn’t miss any of the things I threw out. Rather, it was freeing; out of sight truly is out of mind. I’d see female OTs wearing makeup or fancy hairdos and think, Why? With the limited amount of time, with the tiny margin of error we have . . . why? Holding on to those things was holding on to civilian life and that was the last thing I wanted. There would be time for the extras later. After I was an officer.

  Physical fitness was the only area I had any doubts in. Unlike basic or the active-duty Air Force, OTS was a very athletic place. Everybody had to meet the minimum requirements, like everywhere in the Air Force, but at OTS, going above and beyond the PFT requirements got you “merits” (which you could subtract from your demerits) and set you apart. Being considered a “PFT animal” was just one more way to push yourself; also, to be DG, you had to excel in every category. The OT wing commander ought to be a PFT animal; it was as simple as that.

  At OTS, there were constant PT requirements, which led up to seven PFTs, a mini Olympics. You had to pass every event in at least one of the PFTs to graduate. I came to OTS in incredible shape from three years of serious running, aerobics, and weight training. I aced each component of the PT program except, to my chagrin, the twelve push-ups required for women.