Last night while Tali was driving, Mare mentioned to her that she would have let me drive last night.
Tali said, “Why? She doesn’t even have her permit yet. She doesn’t even want her permit.”
My sister thinks she knows everything, but as usual, she’s wrong.
I want my permit. I want to stand in line, fill out the papers, walk up to that high counter, and take the test, filling in the squares with the right letter of the multiple choice.
What Tali doesn’t know is that I already took my permit test. And flunked. Big-time.
I looked at the paper and those lines of answers. Which one was right? Which one was half right? There were too many ways to choose, and I just … froze. I couldn’t mark anything. Mom waited and waited for me, and when the DMV was ready to close, I crumpled up my paper and walked away.
The lady was really nice. She said I could come back and try again. I was crying too hard to answer.
I made Mom promise not to tell Tali. Or Dad. Or anyone.
Everyone knows that only freshmen ride the bus. It’s bad enough that Tali might get a car. If I can’t even get my permit, she’ll think I’m an even bigger loser than she already does.
The bell jingling in the doorway of the gift shop isn’t the only thing ringing. There are something like seven different kinds of wind chimes for sale, all cheap aluminum and clattering pottery. The lady behind the counter looks up as I walk in and frowns as Tali comes in behind me.
“What can I do for you girls?” she asks suspiciously.
Tali, hands in her pockets, gives the saleslady a bored look behind her sunglasses. “Do you have visors?”
“That’s your keepsake?”
Tali rolls her eyes. “Might as well be,” she answers me. “It’s not like I want anything else from here.”
The woman frowns, obviously offended. “I’ve got caps, not visors. Top shelf in the back on the left.”
Tali shrugs and moves away from the counter. I wander along behind her.
I’d say this gas station in Yuma, Arizona, was a tourist trap, except there’s nothing here any tourist in her right mind would want. I mean, fake turquoise on leather key chains, little kachina dolls, and all that stuff would be fine, except most of it even says it’s made in China.
I hear the little bell on the door jingle again, and the air sets all the wind chimes clattering.
“Tali. Can I have the keys?” Mare’s voice is too loud for the tiny air-conditioned trailer where we’re browsing.
“Yeah, all right.” Tali slouches from around a corner and hands them over, then sniffs. “Did you have a nice smoke?”
“Girl, don’t you start with me,” Mare warns her.
“Actually, you’re doing pretty good.” Tali grins. “I’ll bet I can get you to quit by the time we get back home. You’ll live longer, Mare. You’ll thank me.”
Mare huffs and turns to riffle through the postcards at the front of the store while Tali twirls the sunglasses display next to her.
“Have you girls sent your mama another postcard?”
“We’ve only been gone for three days!”
“Folks should write more letters. Pick out something any-way,” Mare insists.
“Octavia,” Tali bleats. “Come help.”
I put down an orange Somebody in Yuma, AZ, Loves Me T-shirt and shuffle up to the front of the store.
“Oh, look at that one. That’s cute,” Tali says, waving a postcard with a smiling sun under Mare’s nose. “I’m sending this to Suzanne.”
“Your girls look so much alike,” the saleslady says, beaming at Mare. “Are these your daughters?”
I roll my eyes. Tali is tall, and I am short. Tali’s hair is wild and dyed and cool. Mine is, at the moment, shoved into a frizzy ponytail. This saleslady really wants us to buy something.
“Mare, I’m bored,” I interrupt. “I’m going back to the car.”
“Give me your keepsake first,” Mare says.
I point to a random postcard. “That one.”
“Yuma’s Tiny Church?” Tali gives me a look. “Okay, that’s random even for you.”
I look at the postcard I pointed to and see a picture of, as she said, a tiny church. Flipping over the stiff rectangle, I read that the church is only seven feet by twelve feet and is built “just north of the Swinging Bridge to Nowhere.”
I don’t want anything to be funny right now, but this is. My smile stretches across my face and eases the tightness I’ve been feeling around my chest. The Swinging Bridge to Nowhere. It totally sounds like our trip.
“I want two of these,” I tell Mare, grinning.
“That’s a nice church,” she says absently. “Did you want to drive out that direction?”
“No, thanks. I think we’re close enough to the Bridge to Nowhere already.” Smirking, I head back toward the car.
15.
then
It is nothing but time passing, but I can’t hardly remember what Bay Slough looks like. I have been here at the training center in Fort Des Moines for eight months, and it’s up at the reveille horn, then listen for the whistle, fall in, march, fall out, work, mess hall, lights-out, taps. My feet get tired of these boots, which we got to wear all day now that we marching in the mud, but I am used to them. We have got physical training every day, even if the weather is bad, and I don’t get worn out running no more. “We are making soldiers out of you civilians!” Hundley hollers at us like she is possessed. She runs us in close order drill, and rumor is going around about something big they are making us train so hard for, but nobody knows what for sure.
There’s a snap in the air now that it’s November, and we wake up in the dark, and we shower in the dark; it is dark at breakfast and dark at dinner. The army keeps us running all day long! No day with Miss Ida ever wore me out like this.
Before lights-out, most of us head for the shower ’cause it’s never enough time to get all ready in the morning. It tickles me to remember the first time we got to the showers. We all about had a fit ’cause there isn’t nothing but showerheads, all six in a row, and no curtains, no walls for privacy. There ain’t—I mean, isn’t—no privacy in the army, they tell us, so we go in and shower and keep our eyes on the floor. Now we all so tired don’t nobody—nobody cares anymore. You should hear the songs we sing in there, too!
The uniforms they give us
They say are mighty fine
But I need Lana Turner
To fill the front of mine.
Oh, I don’t want no more of army life.
Gee, Mom, I wanna go home.
I don’t want to go home, though, not me. Last thing before I go to sleep, I close my eyes and think hard of Feen. I still say my prayers, but Mama always say the Lord doesn’t have no use for girls who can’t act right. Maybe I am one of those girls. Maybe I am uppity to have left Mama and Bay Slough. Maybe I won’t ever have no home. Sometimes I still don’t know if I did right.
It has been raining for ten days straight, and we spend most times wet and cold. The army issues us all long raincoats, but when we have to stand out till they call roll, all those things do is leak. Captain say wear a bath towel up under the collar so at least we don’t get wet all down our backs. That helps some. We march double-time to get to class and to mess, but we can’t run too hard. We still have to stop and salute. Isn’t that some kind of crazy? We are going to catch our death standing around like fools in the rain, but officers stand there until they get their “courtesies,” and God help you and your demerits if they don’t get them fast enough. Annie broke down and cried this morning ’cause she can’t stand to get up out of bed and get rained on and have to salute and salute all over again. We have all been gigged pretty regularly since the rain began.
It is so cold I can hardly stand it. It didn’t ever get cold like this in Bay Slough, and after lunch we stand in formation doing mail call, shivering so hard we can hardly hear.
“Boylen!”
“Ma’am!” My ears
suddenly get clear.
“Letter, Boylen!”
All around me, everybody is looking. I see Gloria Madden rear back like somebody just slapped her, she is so surprised. I turn and give her a look.
Ruby grabs my hand and squeezes it. She’s been feeling awful sorry since she gets something from her sisters, her cousins, her mama, and her Sunday school class almost every week.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I say when Lieutenant Hundley hands me a letter from … Feen!
I can’t keep my teeth from chattering, even though I have what feels like fire in my stomach.
When we are dismissed, I run back to my bunk. My hands are shaking as I open the envelope.
November 12, 1944
My dear sister, Marey Lee,
I found out from Sister Dials where the Women’s Army Corps is stationed. I hope you get this letter.
Marey Lee, I sorely miss you, though I like it just fine in Philadelphia. I am at the top of my class and best friends with a girl named Francine Simpson. She calls me Josey.
We are collecting for the March of Dimes to end polio and to buy a P-38 named for our school. The school is selling war bonds and collecting scrap for nickels and dimes.
Everything is lively up here in the city. There are big buildings, and to get our stamps, we line up on the walk downtown. There is a butcher shop and a candy store right down our block, and it’s just a street over to get milk. Aunt Shirley makes a fuss over who I walk with ’cause some of the girls don’t have manners like I do. Aunt Shirley fusses a lot.
Have you seen Miss Beatrice Payne in the army? Aunt Shirley says it isn’t decent for a girl to be working with all those men. She says to watch out for certain kinds of mannish girls up there ’cause they’ve got unnatural desires.
Aunt Shirley says the army has you girls there to keep the men happy. I know you are not up to THAT, Marey Lee. Anyway, Mama won’t let you come home if you get pregnant. And I know you’re coming home to get me! If you did get pregnant, you know I’d help you. We could live in a house by ourselves, just us.
Sister Dials wrote to say that Mama is keeping company with a man again. I am glad you aren’t there.
Your loving sister,
Josephine Louise Boylen
I can’t hardly stop laughing to start crying or start crying ’cause I’m smiling so hard. I can’t hardly wait to run to mess after that. Peaches and Annie and Ruby look at me with sharp eyes when I sit down, stare at my red eyes and my swollen-up nose. My hands are still shaking when I pick up my fork, but that can’t stop my smile.
Since I was small, Mama always said, “Watch out for your sister,” and I put myself between Feen and the rest of the world to keep her safe. I put my plans on hold to watch over her. I got lost when Mama sent Feen to Philadelphia, but now everything feels all right.
I feel like Sister Dials always says she feels at church, like the glory has come down on my soul. My shoulders feel like something has just slipped down, and off, and fallen on the ground. I want to stand up and shout. It feels like forgiveness. It feels good.
I stop my foolishness, though, when I think about that girl talking about me and a baby. The only men around here I see are the ones hollering at us to hurry up and march, and Staff Sergeant Hill’s surely not a man. And I have a thing or two to say to Auntie Shirley about filling Feen’s head with talk about mannish girls. Aunt Shirley had best look to her own business and leave mine and the U.S. Army’s alone.
I’m relieved, the next day, that I got Feen’s letter ’cause next morning we fall in and Lieutenant Hundley gives us the order to pack up to move out! All the gossip about going to move somewhere is true—Captain Ferguson’s got our orders. Suddenly all those hush-hush rumors get downright loud. We pack up our gear, and they tell us we better take everything and ship the rest home. I don’t have much civilian stuff, so I send on Mama’s coat, write Feen a quick note that I got her letter and I’ll tell her more when we get where we’re going, and then get on with it.
I’ve got fifty pounds of gear on my back when we climb up into the troop carrier. We bump and jounce over the roads to town, then get on the train.
Peaches marches by with her head up high, but she got her a look on her face.
“What have you heard?” I ask Peaches when we get on the colored car. The lieutenant makes us sit in groups, by squadron. Miss Communications Department Carter has to pass me and sit in the back.
“We’re going to Paris, France,” she hisses at me, and keeps stepping.
“What’d she say?” Annie wants to know. “St. Louis?”
I don’t know nothing about no Paris, France. Annie say they talk English there, but I got a ball of nerves in my gut. We’re going over where them Germans be shooting their gas. We’re supposed to “free a man” to go to the front. What hap-pens if he doesn’t want to go, neither?
What happens if I forget how to use my mask? If I get that gas in my lungs, it will kill me dead. I hear about folk who didn’t duck fast enough when those grenades came in and got their hands and arms and legs blown clean off. I can’t go to France. I can’t go where they’re throwing them grenades. I can’t go and leave Feen. I can’t. I can’t.
“Marey Lee? You feeling all right?” Annie looks my way.
I sit down in my seat and breathe real deep, trying not to let her see me sweat.
“I’m all right,” I say. Isn’t anything a body can do now but wait.
After all them nerves and my stomach twisting like I ate some bad shrimp, I shoulda known Peaches Carter didn’t know no kind of nothing. We shipped out as far as Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia!
Things are different at Fort Oglethorpe’s Extended Field Service Training Center. For one thing, we know a little something when we get here—that we are in for some “training,” for “extended field service.” We going overseas for sure now.
Some folks are not happy about that. Miss Gloria Madden, for one. She was all set up to do specialist training back at Fort Des Moines. She thinks she wants to be some kind of officer. As for me, I am glad there is no chance of that just yet!
We march off that passenger car in Chattanooga, and they load us up onto more trucks—but this time, we got seats and a tarp over our heads. When we finally get out to the post, they march us over to supply and give us more gear. Now we’ve got helmets—like green metal slop buckets with straps—and wool helmet liners. They tell us to sign for snow jackets and liners Annie says folks use when they ski. We sign out wool and twill trousers, wool gloves, high-top lace-up brown shoes, and shoulder bags. We have to wear some of that just to march it back to our new barracks, and it is heavy and warm. We are going someplace pure cold, as I see it.
The barracks here look like somebody just threw them up with a few nails, just little shanties with no niceties. The walls are raw timber, and there’s no paint anywhere. Every-thing smells like pine, and little beads of pitch leak out of the walls, making everything tacky. There are gaps under the doors.
“How are we supposed to keep our uniforms looking good?” Dovey rants, pointing to the gap. “How’re we sup-posed to keep that pine tar off of everything, and the dust?”
We complain and mutter, but barracks aren’t the worst thing we see as we fall back in and march through our new digs. As we take in Fort Oglethorpe, we are shocked that it is right-out, loud-and-clear segregated.
In little old no-’count Bay Slough, we don’t bother with segregation. We don’t have Whites Only signs; Bay Slough barely is big enough for one stoplight and a drinking fountain outside the courthouse, not to mention two. Nobody needs signs to say who can be where or do what. We all just know, and what we don’t know, we get told right quick by our mamas, our aunties, the church folk, or just someone passing on the side of the road.
At Fort Des Moines, we were segregated, sure, but not like this. At Fort Oglethorpe, there are signs—Colored Drinking Fountain and White Drinking Fountain; Colored Latrine and White Latrine. Annie and Phillipa march ahead of me in
the line, and I see them stiffen right up. Those signs make me feel unwelcome, but we don’t have much time to think about it.
Other than the signs, there ain’t—isn’t—much difference between Fort Des Moines and Fort Oglethorpe except size. We still have classes just like at Fort Des Moines, and our training continues with Staff Sergeant Hill and a man this time, a Staff Sergeant Bothwell, who run us all over the place. In school, they give us pictures to look at so we can identify types of ships and types of enemy aircraft we might see in the sky. We look at guns of all kinds and have to memorize what kinds they are by sight. They show us maps of the whole world, and we look and see where Europe is, just a little bitty bit of land way over there across the Atlantic Ocean.
The first time I looked on the map, I couldn’t hardly tell what it was way out there. Europe didn’t look like much, but that evil Hitler wants to take it anyway. Hitler also wants Russia, and that’s a big old country, bigger than the States, for sure. Staff Sergeant Bothwell says if we don’t stop him now, Hitler might just bring those Nazis this way.
Not if the Women’s Army Corps has anything to say about it!
Our second week, they teach us the “protocol” in case we get captured. That is a terrifying thought, but they tell us that the Germans know about the Geneva Convention, and they won’t kill us. They tell us what we can say—our name, rank, and serial number—and what we can’t say—nothing else. We won’t tell those Nazis nothing, but mostly ’cause we don’t know nothing to tell them.
As the days go on, we run through obstacle courses, climb over huge logs and up walls, and even wriggle around on our stomachs in the dirt under barbed wire. Our drills have something new: guns. The first time we ran our drills with our packs on our backs and I heard those guns go off above my head, I would like to have died. Me and just about every girl in our platoon started hollering and screaming as loud as she could. Ruby screamed, but she kept moving. She says her mama taught her to shoot back home. I screamed, but for a while, couldn’t nobody make me do nothing but put my hands over my head.
Mare's War Page 9
