“On Tuesday it’s showing Spellbound and The Postman Always Rings Twice,” Mare called back. “I think I saw both of those right when they came out.”
“I’ve never even heard of them.” Tali shrugged.
“Spellbound had Salvador Dalí and Alfred Hitchcock in it,” I said smugly, glad to know something Tali didn’t. “I saw that on Jeopardy!”
“Dork alert,” Tali said snidely.
“Boy, oh, boy,” Mare had sighed, looking nostalgic. “They just don’t make them like this anymore.”
When we got back to the hotel, Mare and I watched movies by ourselves. We found Stormy Weather on a cable station, and it was pretty funny to hear Mare going on and on about how she’d just loved Lena Horne when she was young and wished she could sing and how her friend Dovey Borland had had a set of pipes just like Lena’s. Sometimes Mare sounds so much like me and my friends I for-get that she’s old. Sometimes I think even she forgets she’s old.
I love hearing what Mare did in the military and all the stuff she learned. It’s hard to believe that she just essentially walked off a farm and learned Morse code. It’s amazing.
Tali scrapes down into the bottom of her milk shake with a long metal spoon, dragging up the last of the cookie chunks and melted ice cream. Mare reaches into her bag and sneakily puts her hand on her lighter but stops and rolls her eyes at Tali’s huge fake coughing spasm.
“One of these days …,” Mare mutters, and puts her lighter away. “Octavia, get me some gum, will you, baby?”
I can’t believe they’ve both still kept their agreement: Mare doesn’t smoke where Tali can see her, and she’s not too good at sneaking out when Tali doesn’t notice. Tali doesn’t listen to her music where Mare can see her, but I know what she’s doing every time she puts on a hat or pulls up her hood. So does Mare. To help herself out, Mare has been chewing nicotine gum, and Tali’s been enduring the silence in the car by asking questions.
“So, Mare. Weren’t there any other African Americans overseas?”
Mare pops a square of grayish white gum out of its plastic compartment. “Sure there were—but they were male soldiers. Something like one point two million African Americans fought in World War II. They sent a lot of us overseas. I’d say almost fifty thousand.”
“That many African Americans?” Tali asks. “Too bad there aren’t that many pictures.”
“Pictures?” I ask.
“You know.” Tali gestures vaguely. “In history books and stuff.”
I don’t remember ever hearing about African American women in World War II before. Everyone knows about Rosie the Riveter, and probably most people know that there were Red Cross nurses sent everywhere. At school we heard a little about the Tuskegee Airmen, but I didn’t know anything about this. I never even heard of the Red Ball Express till Mare mentioned them. And I wonder why I didn’t know that there were so many African American truck drivers in Europe during the war.
I can’t believe our teachers never mentioned this and that my parents never said anything. I know Mare embarrasses Dad, so he doesn’t talk about her a lot, but shouldn’t other people, or at least history books, have had something to say about the African American women who went overseas? I expect there to be some kind of plaque somewhere or some kind of statue commemorating them. But when I mention it, Mare says there’s not—at least not one that she knows of anyway.
“But it’s history,” I insist. “Shouldn’t people tell you about history?”
“It’s there if you know where to look, but the colored WACs are also part of segregation history,” Mare reminds me. “Talking about segregation isn’t as nice and neat as talking about being the ‘greatest generation’ that won the war. For some folks, it’s just stirring up bad memories.”
Tali licks her spoon. “The Women’s Army sounds like bad memories anyway. I could never see enlisting. Can you see me putting up with drill sergeants hollering in my face all day?”
“It wasn’t all hollering,” Mare says, “and you could take it if you had to, Tali, but you don’t. Your parents are doing better for you than my mama did for me, and I thank God for it.”
Tali sounds subdued. “Yeah, things would have to be pretty bad to make the army look good.” We’re quiet for a moment, then Tali puts down her spoon.
“Mare?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Did they ever put Toby in jail? Did anyone ever … do anything to him?”
Mare looks away, her expression closed. “That’s not how things were back then.”
“Then I’m glad we don’t live ‘back then,’” I blurt. “He could have killed you, and nobody did anything? How is that ‘the good old days’?”
Mare shrugs away the topic. “Nothing else we could do. We lived with it. Folks did what they had to, and we all got by.” She sighs and glances toward the door. “You girls about done with that mess you call breakfast? We’d all better use it before we get on the road again.”
“Mare,” Tali groans. “Telling me to ‘go potty’ before we leave? Hello? Seventeen. I’m. Seven. Teen.”
“And you still have to pee at seventeen same as seventy,” Mare says complacently. “Get a move on, girl. I want to get to Las Cruces before it gets dark.”
“Ooh, so we’re going to New Mexico!” I exclaim, imagining keepsake stops for turquoise jewelry and incense.
“For tonight,” Mare replies, flicking my nose with one of her long fingers. “With as much iced tea as you had, you’d better get on to the bathroom, too.”
I drag myself toward the line for the single small bathroom and wait almost forever. Inside, Tali is singing in that off-key way she does when she has her earbuds in and can’t hear herself. And when we finally get outside, Mare has put on perfume and ducks around us into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Tali and Mare both decide not to notice that each of them has broken their promise. I ignore them both and gallop out to the car, remembering the dancer, Katherine Dunham, from the movie Mare and I watched. I slide into the front seat, and Tali looks at me like I’m crazy.
“You’d better not have so much sugar at lunch,” she says, and puts on her seat belt.
“I’m in a good mood,” I snarl, immediately offended. “What’s wrong with that?”
Mare takes the car out of park and lets out one of her rattling machine-gun laughs. “You girls,” she chuckles, then glances in the rearview mirror. “All belted in?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then let’s hit the road, Jack.”
It’s morning on I-10, and we’re headed for the horizon.
18.
then
At first, all I know is that I feel boxed in, and I can feel the engines thrum right up under my feet. Once we get used to the boat moving, it is better. We are bunched up tight, with twenty-four of us to a room—three triple-deck bunks on each side, and the bunks are hung with chains. Ruby say the men pack up closer in these things than we do, though I don’t see how. She says they go down underneath the deep water in those submarines, where they stay for months, and they get less space than we do. Once again, I thank God I am not a man!
These bunks are tight and the latrines—or the “heads”—are tight as well, because we’re all jammed in there, trying to clean up in the morning. We do almost everything in shifts, and there are more women on this ship than it’s probably ever seen. Captain Ferguson and Staff Sergeant Hill keep us busy, marching up and down, doing lifeboat drills twice a day, KP, marching, inspection, and all, but sometimes we’ve got nothing but time—time to be sick, time to kick off our boots and crawl over other folks’ bunks to get to ours, and time to miss the fresh air, since they only let us topside about an hour a day. Mostly we stay confined to bunks, and the ship feels like a swing you lay down in that goes up—then right down.
Outside, it’s foggy—isn’t anything much out there but cold, cold water—but most of us look out any porthole we can. We have never been on a ship and might never be again.
>
Being that squashed up next to so many people doesn’t always set well, though. Sometimes I walk out of my bunk just to be walking. We are supposed to be in quarters after lights-out, but can’t nobody stop me from visiting the “head,” or the “necessary,” as Staff Sergeant Hill calls it. I’m not surprised to see Peaches one night standing at a sink, patting on cold cream.
“What’s cooking, Peaches Carter?”
“Marey Lee, you ever wonder if this is where you’re supposed to be?”
Peaches sounds riled up and worried. “Well, I don’t usually wonder if this is where I’m supposed to be,” I tell her, motioning to the toilet, and she lets out her big old laugh.
“Be serious, Mare. You ever wonder if we’re doing right being in this army?”
I splash some water on my face. “I don’t know.” No wonder Peach can’t sleep. I straighten up. “I don’t wonder if this is where I’m supposed to be ’cause I have no place else to be. Everywhere I am, I’ve got to do the best I can do right while I’m there, you know?”
Peaches nods slowly. “I guess so.”
I perch on the sink next to her. “What are you worrying about anyway, all serious in the middle of the night?”
Peaches shrugs. “Just … things.” She sighs and smooths the surface of the pink cold cream with her fingertip. “I got a letter from home, and it got me thinking.”
“Aw, Peach, you homesick already?”
“No.” Peaches shakes her head. “It’s not that. Almost all my girlfriends from school are engaged, my friend Adelaide just got married … Cousin Julia’s about to have her first baby, and … well, here I am.”
“Well, you won’t always be here. Soon as this war’s over—” I begin, but Peaches interrupts, her eyes wide.
“No. Marey, I’m here … and I’m glad. This is where I want to be. I can’t imagine me having anybody’s baby nor wearing anybody’s ring. This army thing, this is the best thing I’ve ever done, Marey Lee. I’m good at this stuff—at working for the communications officer. I’m good at Morse code, cryptography is fun, I can do the teletype and switchboard in my sleep—I’m good at everything. I don’t miss home much anymore, and I don’t ever think about getting hitched. I’m … starting to think something is wrong with me.” Peaches glances at me, then looks down.
“Wrong with you? ’Cause you’re happy?”
“No … well, not exactly. There might be something wrong, Mare. Something serious.”
“Like what?”
Peaches flicks a glance at my face. “You know.”
I open my mouth to say, “No, I don’t know,” but then I do. I know exactly what Peach is telling me, and my tongue just freezes up. I can’t think of a word to say.
“Skip it.” Peaches puts the lid back on her cold cream, keeping her eyes down. “I think I’m sleepy after all.”
I can’t force myself to move as Peaches cleans up and tightens the belt on her robe. She’s halfway into the hall when I close my mouth and grab her sleeve.
“That’s not right,” I blurt, yanking her back into the bathroom.
Peaches looks at me, wary, but I am sure of what to say. “You’ve been on this boat too long, Peaches Carter, ’cause, girl, you have lost your mind. Now you know that just because you are good at something a man might do, that doesn’t make you a man. Girl, my mama butchered hogs and picked cotton and kept a roof over me and Feen’s head, and she is definitely not a man. I chopped wood and about near killed myself hauling grease and scrubbing floors out at Young’s Diner, but I’d sure rather do that than have a baby, thank you all the same. You tell your cousin Julia she’d best leave you be.” I tap Peaches’s arm emphatically, then hurry out the rest of the thought before I lose my nerve. “But even if you are like that,” I add softly, “even if you are one of those girls, you are still my friend, Peaches Carter.”
Peaches look up at me, her dark eyes intent. “You sure?”
“Didn’t I just say so?”
Peaches lowers her voice to a thread. “You be real sure, Marey Lee. Mama’s friend Lydia is … a woman like that, and Lydia won’t see us anymore. She’s afraid we’ll get her reputation.”
“Peaches, just about all of us on this boat are gonna have a reputation. Folks back home in Bay Slough have already been telling me about how some girls around here ain’t no better than they should be, telling me to watch myself. But you know what? We don’t have time to worry about all of that. For one thing, we know what is and isn’t true. For another thing? Cap Ferguson has us do too much work to worry with carrying on about that.”
“You know, that’s right,” Peaches sighs, slumping against the sink again. “Sometimes I think Staff Sergeant Hill thinks of stuff for us to do just because she can.”
“It will all be different when we get to Paris, though, huh?” I grin, knowing I will set Peaches off.
“We are going to Paris,” she says, frowning at me. “I know you don’t believe me….”
“Last time you said Paris, France, we went to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, is all I’m sayin’.”
“Girl, don’t you start. We are on a boat, crossing the ocean….”
“Ina White say she hear we going to Scotland.”
“Scotland?!” Peaches forgets to whisper. “Scotland’s not—”
The door opens, and Lieutenant Hundley pokes her head inside. We both snap to attention, arms at stiff angles while we salute in our bathrobes.
“You ladies were just leaving?” Lieutenant Hundley looks sleepy, but her eyes are sharp.
“Yes, ma’am,” Peaches and I say in unison.
“Good night, then.” Lieutenant Hundley returns our salutes crisply.
“Good night, ma’am,” we say, and march meekly back to bed.
Lying in my bunk, I think about what Peaches said. Peaches Carter is close like kin, and I could no more not be her friend than I could make Feen not be my baby sister. All of the girls—Ruby, Annie, Dovey, and Phillipa—are like kin, too. No matter what Peach is or what she says—nobody and nothing nobody could say about her would ever turn me against her or any of them.
I make up my mind to keep an eye on Peaches. Kin takes care of each other; that’s what Mama always taught me. The Third Platoon takes care of its own, even the likes of that mealymouthed Gloria Madden. Nobody deserves to feel sad and low out here on the ocean. We are too far from home to not lean on each other.
Those of us who don’t have the heaves the next morning have a good time playing cards and talking about what we think we going to do. Dovey Borland’s mama is a hairdresser, and she puts up our hair, even though the sea air makes it crimp up again in no time. Every time we go outside for drill, our hair gets sticky and stiff from the salt, but it doesn’t matter ’cause we got our helmets on and we sweat under them, while the fog drips off their tops. When we have free time, we go to each other’s bunks, paint our nails, and read each other’s mail and Life magazines. We have to lie in the bunks to read and then lean out ’cause there isn’t ever enough light. Most girls write letters all day long, they are so bored. Dorothy Rogers is going to write herself a book one of these days.
“Your deal, Phil,” Ruby say, and Phillipa grabs the cards and deals out ten to each of us.
“Which one’s the knock pile again?” I ask. Mama always said that cards are the devil’s business, but Phillipa’s granddaddy is a preacher, and she plays gin rummy all the time. Phillipa’s teaching me, and what Mama doesn’t know can hardly make her mad, can it?
“This one.” Peaches points and leans forward. Since I’m sitting on the edge of the top bunk, I sneak a look at her hand.
“Girl, don’t you try to—”
And just like that, the whole room rolls over.
Probably just about everybody on the whole ship sucks in a breath, and then the screaming starts.
I fly off the bed, screaming in pain as my knee slams against the iron frame of the bunk across from me. I fall hard, and Peaches lands on top of my head and raps
her elbow on a footlocker. My teeth come down on my tongue, and I can taste the metal in my blood. We hear crashes and screams from all over the ship as perfume bottles, duffles, shoes, books, pillows, and soldiers go sliding across the decks. Playing cards fall all around us like rain.
“What’s happening? Oh, my ribs, my ribs!” Dorothy, who was in her bunk, is on the floor, wailing.
“Ruby!” Peaches is screaming, and I can’t turn my head. “Get Ruby!”
Fear chokes me up, and I got a pain in my head and a pain in my neck, and my shoulder that Mama popped back is killing me. I finally get my head turned. Ruby’s got blood all down her face, and Phillipa is trying to crawl across the floor to get to her.
The ship groans, sounding like a cow about to calf. Outside, men are hollering orders and we can hear folks running. Peaches look at me with her eyes bugged out, and Phillipa starts to cry. I look at all that blood on Ruby’s face. She don’t look like she’s breathing.
“Lord Jesus,” Peach whispers as the ship lurches again, and I know right then and there I might not get back to Feen like I promised. I might not ever be anywhere but on this old ship ever again. Sorrow knots up my chest, and my heart pounds so loud I can feel it in my head. What if I die? What if I didn’t do right and Mama can’t never forgive me? Who’s gonna take care of Feen without me?
“P-Peaches, come h-help me,” Phillipa stutters, finally up on her knees, trying to mop the river of blood from Ruby’s face. Peaches gets a blanket and starts tucking it around Ruby using only one of her hands, which is shaking. She keeps the other one tucked up against her body. Her elbow is all swollen up and turning purple. Phillipa’s teeth are chattering, she’s so scared, but she and Peach, they’re trying to treat Ruby for shock like they taught us.
We are all shocked. Peach has got a shiner already started from where something smacked her in the eye. Phillipa can’t talk straight without stuttering. Dorothy is spitting up, but I can’t get to her; there are too many trunks, and the ship keeps on rolling. Peach is just crying and holding on to me and crying some more till I can’t sit still. I have got to get out and see what happened.
Mare's War Page 11
