Mare's War

by Tanita S. Davis

My grandmother looks at me over the frame of her sun-glasses. “She was fifteen, the same as you are, but she wasn’t about to let anyone push her around.”

  I thump my foot against the door, wishing that Mare would come to the point.

  “The people who dragged her kicking and screaming off of that bus certainly were what you could call white supremacists,” Mare continues. “She had to have known that something was going to happen if she kept sitting where she wasn’t wanted. But she stayed seated,” Mare goes on, flicking a glance over her left shoulder and smoothly changing lanes. “Sometimes you just have to act on the strength of your convictions, no matter what someone else might think.”

  I curl my toes in my sandals. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Skinheads, neo-Nazis, white supremacists—they believe what they please, but don’t let that change you.”

  I open my mouth, but Mare keeps going. “Granted, I’d better not catch you ever rolling down your window and shouting like you don’t have some kind of common sense, but you can’t let people control how you act. Don’t let them make you afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I insist. “I just don’t want to get killed because stupid Tali gets all road-rage-y and yells at some skinhead.”

  “Shut up, Octavia. For your information—”

  “Hush.” Mare’s voice is flint.

  I sit, seething, while Tali leans back and looks out the window.

  “So, whatever happened to Claudette Colvin?” I blurt. “If she was so great, why hasn’t everybody heard of her?”

  Mare sighs. “Well … the civil rights movement had a minister as one of its foremost leaders. Claudette got pregnant by a married man just about the time her case came to trial, and they decided she wasn’t such a good poster child for equal rights.”

  Tali clicks her tongue in disgust. “That is so completely wrong.”

  Mare sighs again. “Well, things were different back then.”

  The sun continues to climb in a cloudless blue sky. The CD ends, and Mare turns on the radio again to NPR and is listening to an author interview. Tali is staring out the window, looking glazed.

  Just before Mare says it’s time for a bathroom stop, we pass an old truck with Tennessee license plates, a gun rack, and a Confederate flag in the rear window. The truck is dusty and brown; the driver, old and leather-skinned. Unable to stop myself, I risk a look into his face, feeling my stomach clench as our gazes meet.

  He gives me a brief, impersonal glance, then his eyes return to the road.

  In a moment, he’s a receding speck in the mirror, just one brown truck out of many on an endless road.

  12.

  then

  All week long, the lieutenant has us marching our close drills. It is hot on that parade ground, and we stand and sweat till our clothes stick to us, but we do the best we can. When it is too hot, some people faint. First time that happened, folks start to break ranks and carry on, and Lieutenant says we can’t be doing that—we have got to keep our eyes forward, no matter what. She calls it “military discipline.” I call it crazy. If I drop dead out there, somebody better be coming to pick me up!

  Sometimes I don’t know what Uncle Sam needs with women in this man’s army. They tell us we here to “free a man to fight,” but I don’t see no men being freed up by all this marching back and forth in this hot sun. They got a song they sing, the WAC song, which is all about duty and defending our country’s honor. Well, I don’t know about that. All I can say is, “Better the devil we know.” And I know we sure don’t need no Japs coming all the way from across the water trying to boss folks around.

  Some of these girls would like to have died when we had to clean the latrine—but Lieutenant said, “Ladies, make us proud,” and we did. That commode at Miss Ida’s gave me all kinds of practice, and I make sure everyone sees I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. We clean it once, then we study at class, then we polish it again—on our knees. Lieutenant said she wanted to eat off that latrine floor, and she could. I can’t wait to write Feen and tell her we all get to use the flush commodes here. Won’t hardly know how to act when I get home.

  Not that I’m putting home in the front of my mind.

  For inspection, we need to lay open our footlockers and have our gear on display. We have to hide things we ain’t supposed to have or we get on the hot seat. Can’t nobody stop Annie from bringing in fruit from the kitchen, so we eat it quick before the captain comes. Then we drill and march and drill. The lieutenant says she’s gonna put rocks in Phillipa’s shoe so she can tell her left from her right, but I have got the hang of it now; I have a corn on my left toe, so I know my left from my right. We got more shots, and they make me sick, but the army don’t let nobody die unless they get on sick call first. We all of us have got stiff arms the next day, but we still have got to salute.

  Lieutenant Hundley posts a paper on the duty roster that shows us how to lay out our bunks, our shelves, and our clothes rack. Gloria Madden come into our barracks to see Phillipa about some trifle or another, but then she stays, leaning against our bunks like she ain’t got nowhere to be. Ever since she got her uniform together, that Gloria thinks she’s cute, trying to pass inspection wearing her red nail polish and flipped-up hair.

  Gloria leans down to where I am working on my footlocker and points into my box. “What’s this?” she say, reaching for a little bit of paper sticking out under my cosmetic box.

  “Nothing,” I say quick, and poke it back in.

  “Oh, nothing is nothing.” Gloria tries to make her voice like she’s the commanding officer. “What you got in there, Boylen? Love letters? That wouldn’t be GI, now would it?”

  “Cut that out,” Peaches says. “Gloria, can’t you find your own footlocker?”

  Gloria smiles, but I know she’s feeling mean. “It’s probably letters from her mama, trying to tell her to get her behind home,” she says. I can’t help it; I flinch. Everybody knows I haven’t got but one letter all the time we’ve been here.

  “Gloria Madden. Don’t be like that,” Phillipa says, looking ashamed of her friend.

  Gloria stretches out her eyes all big, like she’s sorry. “Oh, Marey Lee, I forgot,” she says, her voice all honey sweet. “Now, how come you don’t get any letters like everybody else? Didn’t you tell anybody where you were stationed? Or don’t your people know how to write?”

  I hear Peaches suck in a big, loud breath. My neck heats up, and I slam my footlocker hard.

  “Calm down, Marey Lee,” Peaches says, but I don’t need that. I know better than to get into it with Miss High and Mighty. She’s out looking for trouble, and Lieutenant Hundley say there’d better not be none around here unless we want to be get “gigged,” what they call being on punishment detail, peeling spuds and scrubbing latrines with toothbrushes the rest of the month.

  “My people knows how to read and write just fine, Miss Gloria Madden! My sister, Feen, was top of her class last year. Don’t you talk mess about my family, Gloria Madden. There ain’t no call for that.”

  “I was just asking, Marey Lee,” Gloria says. She raises up her hands and backs up all sweet, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “I didn’t mean any harm. I swear.”

  I throw open my footlocker again. Lieutenant Hundley won’t be happy if that letter from Miss Ida pokes out from my things. I have got to get ready, and I don’t have time to pay any mind to Miss Gloria Madden.

  But like a low-down snake, Gloria flicks her forked tongue out to say one last poison word.

  “Don’t worry, Marey. You’ll hear from your folks soon. Unless you ran away and didn’t tell your mama where you went … You know I hear some girls do that? They aren’t even twenty and go off without anybody’s say-so.”

  I keep moving my hands in my footlocker, making my uniforms and equipment all nice and straight, but I can feel my face freeze. I can hardly hear over the roaring in my ears. Peaches say something, and then Gloria says, “Goodbye, girls,” as sweet a
s birdsong.

  “Marey Lee. Are you all right? Marey?” Peaches looks worried.

  I ain’t gonna let a little piece of nothing like Gloria Madden rattle me. She does not know a thing about me, nothing. I force my hands not to jitter while my heart slams hard.

  “I’m fine,” I say, and my voice sounds loud.

  I’m scared deep down, in my gut, but inspection is coming. I dust off my knees, straighten my hat, and get on with it.

  The battalion captain is a big white man with white gloves. He rubs the walls. He looks under the beds. He looks under the mattresses. He hollers that our shoes aren’t in a straight line, but I swear he kicks one. For once, Annie’s got her hat on straight. Nobody finds no fault with me, except my necktie ain’t—isn’t—straight. Shoot. Well, you can’t win ’em all. When it is over, we draw a deep, deep breath and fall out. It is time for the Saturday parade.

  We march out to the field and stand at attention while the brass talks. We stand till our feet are numb, but I can take it, ’cause I hear tell we draw our pay today, after lunch.

  I haven’t had wages since I spent all I had to get out here. The first time the paymaster doles out my pay, my knees go weak. A private draws twenty-one dollars a month wage, men and women alike. From that they deduct my gear: my uniform skirts, blouses, jackets, and caps—winter-weight wool and summer-weight cotton khaki; my gloves, vest, hat, anklet socks; my winter all-weather utility coat; my neckties, scarves, stockings, exercise togs, tags, comb, towels. Even my slips come out of that. Even my drawers—winter-weight wool, summer-weight cotton khaki—are part of the uniform, and if Lieutenant wants to see ’em, they’d best be on me during inspection. Still, by the time they equip me and I send some money to Mama, I still got more change than I know what to do with. We hear the white girls are buyin’ bonds, and some of us buy bonds, too, to support Uncle Sam while puttin’ a little by for later on. Me, I’m aimin’ to save my money in my own purse. I want a house. A brick house, with a big kitchen and white curtains.

  But first, I’m gonna get me some lipstick, and Annie says she dying for a cherry milk shake from the lunch counter in the PX. She says we should request to go to a dance off base, but I don’t know about that. I ain’t seen many colored boys yet around here, and I know we won’t be dancing with no white U.S. Army officers. Peaches say girls dance with girls sometimes. Makes no difference to me, since I can’t dance nohow, but Annie Brown is crazy. We got to go somewhere—soon. Annie’s been sneaking out to officers’ clubs to spy, and she is going to get her behind kicked straight out of here before long. She says cleaning grease traps on punishment detail won’t bother her, but I say that girl is out of her cotton-picking mind.

  Last thing I buy at the PX is a box of stationery. I sent a letter to Aunt Shirley, care of the Philadelphia post office, and I been waiting three weeks so far, but there is no word. No telling how long it will take for them to find one Shirley Wright in all that big old city, so I been saving up and writing a little to Feen every day on the back of my letter from Miss Ida, till Peach give me some notepaper. Now I got pretty cards of my own, and all I need is a place to send ’em.

  I think about Feen so hard it seems to me that she ought to feel it all the way in Pennsylvania.

  When Lieutenant Hundley tell us one morning to fall out in our physical-training uniform, I know we’ve got a long march coming. Sure enough, we march at double-time a mile away to a little house, where we form up lines and wait for our orders.

  We have equipment to train with, and we know it from class. At school they train us how to use the gas, and they say it don’t make a noise. They say death comes at you like swamp fog if you’re not careful. We’ve already been drilling and drilling to open our packs, put on our masks, and take ’em off quick. When Lieutenant pulls out masks again, somebody gets to groaning about another drill. But then Hundley point us up the hill, says it’s time to go to the little house.

  It’s real quiet in that little brick house way up there on the hill, away from everything else. If Lieutenant Hundley let us stand around and look long enough, we would’ve seen the whole camp laid out—mess hall, chapel, reviewing stand, barracks, supply. Lieutenant Hundley marches us way up there, then lines us up to instruct us. She looks at us hard.

  “Ladies,” she shouts, “listen up! You’ll go in. You’ll put your mask on and pull it tightly against your face. We will open a tear gas canister in the chamber and you will note that it has no effect on your breathing—and you’ll know the mask is working. Then, when I give the signal, you will take a deep breath of air and pull the mask off. You will hold that breath of air! The gas will fill your mask. Now listen up! You will put the contaminated mask back on and blow hard into it. This will clear the mask of gas and let you continue breathing. You will not mess up! If you mess up, you will not soon forget it. Fall out.”

  “You will not soon forget it,” she says. I square up my shoulders and find out my breath is coming hard. Hundley gives the order to move, and we march in and do what we are told. I know my drill. I put my mask on quick, and I stand there, looking out those bug eyes. The mask is musty, and my stomach is jumping. Annie Brown behind me says, “Keep me, Jesus,” and pulls on hers. The way the lieutenant talked, she’s got us all scared.

  They say that gas kills you slowly.

  We all march up and hang back when we get to the entrance of that little house.

  The lieutenant shouts, “Move! Move!” and we pick up the pace and stop dragging our feet. The door clangs shut behind us like eternity.

  Once we’re inside, I can hear my breathin’ in the mask, loud in my ears. My heart is drummin’ and bumpin’ up in my chest. The gas is as silent as breath. It gets foggy, but I can breathe, and my chest eases up some. We look around at each other, blinking behind our masks, and we are all right. Then Hundley hollers something, and I see folks wrestling off their masks. I take a big old gasp of air, pull off mine, and hold it … hold it … hold it…. My eyes start to burn, and my skin starts to sting. I got to cough. I lose my breath. I try to say something to Lieutenant Hundley, and that gas catch me by the throat with fangs like fire.

  I try to hold my breath again, but I can’t hold it, and I got to cough ’cause the gas got me choked and is burning my eyes. I can’t see, my eyes is pasted closed ’cause they burn like fire, and I burst out coughing, trying to breathe in, and it burns like lye—in my eyes, in my nose, in my mouth. I can’t breathe—it’s in my eyes. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

  I can’t breathe!

  Lord Jesus, we gonna die in here.

  I can hear somebody hollerin’, but I can’t scream ’cause I can’t breathe and I can’t suck up no breath. I remember my mask and try to pull it on, but there ain’t no air, and I can’t clear it out. My eyes burning up in my head, and I got snot choking me. Somebody hit me, chokin’ and coughin’, and I go down, hard, on one knee, then stumble up again. Some folks start spitting up like drunks. I can’t see nothing, but folks is shoving, trying to find the doors. I slip to my knees, and someone kicks me, and I know I’m gonna die in here. I can’t get my breath, and that burning is on my skin, and my ears are ringing. Next thing I know, somebody is dragging me outside.

  I pull off that mask and cough and cough and cough, rolling around in the dirt, snot smearing all over my face. Girls is cryin’ and folks is vomiting up all over the place. Lieutenant Hundley is hollerin’ at us, “Face the wind! Don’t touch your eyes. It is just tear gas. It is just tear gas, you big babies! I said take a breath and blow it out!”

  I cry worse than Feen cried in the dark. For the first time since I left home, I cry like my heart is broke for Mama, for Feen, for Bay Slough. I ain’t going back in that little house and can’t nothing make me, not Captain Ferguson, not nobody. Lieutenant Hundley is trying to kill us. Some body vomits on my shoes, and I don’t got nothing to wipe them clean with, but I don’t care. I am sick and shaking and howling with my mouth wide open.

  I cry till my
eyes can open. My throat is all swollen up, and I can’t hardly talk. When we can finally see, we got to wipe out our masks. Everybody use the same rag and scrub hard, but we can’t see what we are wiping away. Gas has no color.

  Hundley comes around to see if we are all drinking water, but I don’t care. I don’t want nothing but to go home.

  “Get up, Marey,” Dovey croaks at me. Her voice sounds like her throat pipe’s been scrubbed with steel wool. “Hundley says we got to do the drill again.”

  I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

  “Come on, Boylen,” Dovey croaks again. “Get up, girl.”

  Before I can say nothing, I hear Gloria Madden squalling like a baby. “I can’t! I can’t do it! I’m not going back in there.” I wipe my eyes, looking around. High and Mighty Madden bawls just like a motherless calf. Now, I am not no braver, but won’t nobody catch me hollering about it like that. This can’t be no worse than the time Mama packed my arm with salt that one time I tore myself against a barbed wire fence. This can’t be worse than the time Mama popped my shoulder back. I been hurt before. I been scared before.

  “You can’t make me!” I hear Gloria scream and cry some more.

  That is enough to get me right up on my feet. I might be so scared I can’t even run, but I put my hand to the plow, and I don’t aim to look back. My swollen, watery eyes find Dovey’s.

  “Let’s go,” I say. She puts her arm around me and leads the way.

  Gas. Gas! Looks like fog, but it kills you dead. For the first time, I wonder ’bout those soldiers we studied back in school. They must have been scared to death out there in France.

  “Fall in!” Lieutenant Hundley holler, and our platoon get into place. Then Lieutenant say, “All right, ladies. Let’s do it again!” and we do. We march in there with our legs shaking, and I can hear Annie praying behind me. Underneath my mask my lips move as I do the same.

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  “Gas!” Hundley holler, and we see that fog coming till we can’t hardly see.