Mare's War

by Tanita S. Davis

  “Hurry up,” I hear Annie say. “We can’t miss this train!”

  Jake grabs her, and they run on ahead. I do my best to follow on, close as I can.

  We walk on through a big old crowd in front of another juke joint, and Tiny steps in front, trying to clear the way for me. I slip sideways between folks, ducking under his arm. The crowd shoves, and Tiny jostles me, then straightens up.

  “Watch it, boy!”

  It is a slow moonshine drawl, but I hear the crack of an overseer’s whip behind those three words. My stomach hits my backbone. I spin around, trying to find a face.

  He is close to us, just another khaki uniform and a pair of broad shoulders. His face is hardly visible, but I can still see his mouth all twisted up. He hawks, and a gob of spit lands right next to our feet. He looks at Tiny, spoiling for a fight.

  “There’s no ‘boy’ around here,” Tiny say, real slow, his voice real calm. “We don’t want any trouble.” Tiny puts his hand on my back, and he pushes, just a little. I know what to do. I start moving. Fast. Sister Dials always says folks who get liquored up don’t make no kind of sense. It is best not to try and reason with them. Neither of us wants trouble, especially since Bob and Jake are somewhere ahead of us and I’ve got a train to catch. I step up my pace, and Tiny does, too.

  We get another couple of feet before we know for sure that boy is following us. Him and some other folks I can’t see. I look up at Tiny, and his face has gone empty, like his mind is somewhere else. He has got his hand on my shoulder, and he doesn’t say anything.

  “Tiny,” I say.

  “Don’t talk, walk,” he says, and I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on the ground.

  Don’t know why I want to look back. I’ve seen these folks before. All of us have seen them before, don’t care where we’ve been, and hate always looks the same. It has got the same face, the same voice, the same mouth all twisted up sour, trying to say all those poison-mean things.

  I trip over something in the road, take a little hop, and walk faster. My ankle throbs.

  “You all right?” Tiny grabs my elbow.

  “Just fine,” I say, but my voice is tight. “Tiny …”

  “Can you walk faster?”

  I can.

  “Yeah, you better run, you uppity nigra.” I hear the voice again, sneering. “We strung up a big ugly nigra like you back home.”

  Now all I can think about is rope prickling raw against my skin. About colored boys who been dragged through the street and strung up for looking sideways at a white girl. About all of us who have ever been chased, been beat, been tarred. I wonder about Tiny. What is he thinking? How could he convince himself that white folks weren’t nothing to think about here? My heart is about to burst right out of my chest, it beats so hard.

  Tiny walks faster, and I try to keep up.

  “We’re going to get you to that train,” Tiny says, pretending like that is the only thing that has got me worried. “Don’t you fret, Private Boylen.”

  I keep my head down. It is supposed to be safe to walk after dark with a man, but walking with a colored man with white folks after him means I might be better off on my own. Leastways, then nobody would be chasing me about to kill me.

  “Forgot who you are, nigra—found out you can get a white girl here. Been seeing you and them other coons of yours stepping out with them English whores.”

  Tiny’s face is like polished rock. His nose is flared, like air is hard to take in.

  “What’s her name, nigra? You call that whore by your mama’s name?”

  Tiny stops cold. His hand on my back pushes, hard.

  “No!” I blurt. “Tiny, don’t—”

  “Run.”

  I run.

  Before I get two steps, I hear a solid whump, and somebody grunts, hard, like the air just got knocked right out of them. Folks on the street start screaming, and I start hollering for Jake and Bob, feet flying. Next thing I know, Ruby has got me by the arm, telling me to calm down.

  “They got Tiny.” I can’t hardly talk. “Tiny. They gonna beat him to death.”

  Bob grabs my arm. “How many?”

  “I don’t know—maybe five?” I can’t stop shaking.

  “I’ll see you, Ruby,” Bob says. He looks behind us, looks back at Ruby, trying to decide. “I’ve got to go,” he says, and he runs.

  I hear whistles, and Ruby grabs my hand. “MPs.”

  “I’ve got to go back. I can tell them what happened. I can—”

  Ruby grips my arm. “We’ve got to go. We can’t miss that train.”

  I look back. “Ruby! The MPs will haul them all in, and—”

  Ruby shakes her head, but she won’t say nothing, not about Bob, not about nobody. We run to the station, and our train is already there. We climb on, wrap up tight in our coats, and walk through the cars, looking for Annie.

  “Are you girls all right?” she says when we find her. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  Ruby just flops down on a seat like her strings have been cut. She rubs her face while I tell Annie what went on.

  Annie nods her head. “Jake said it, all right. Colored soldiers are fighting two wars over here.” She sighs and looks out at the dark as the whistle sounds and the train jerks and starts to move. “One of these wars it doesn’t look like they’ve got any chance to win.”

  “It’s their own fault this time,” Ruby say, suddenly hot. “Why are they stepping out with English girls? They’re bringing trouble on themselves.”

  Annie shakes her head. “No. We’re all American soldiers. We’re here fighting for democracy; isn’t that what they tell us? They’ve got the right to step out with anyone. And the English don’t take kindly to anyone telling them what to do, so they won’t stop seeing them.”

  “Specially not that Delly.” Ruby smiles a little. “She is something, the way she just spoke right up, cool as anything, and invited us over. She doesn’t know us from a hole in the ground!”

  “I’m going to stay with her tomorrow night,” Annie says, then she looks at Ruby and me. “You girls should come, too.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I am not sure about Delly at all. Tiny sure likes her, though. It don’t bother me who Tiny steps out with, but it seems to me he’d better be real sure she’s worth all the aggravation before he starts beating folks over her.

  “It’s just one night,” Annie says. “Come on, girls.”

  Seems the English have they own ideas about us “blacks,” about our colored soldiers, and about us. All I know of the English is that they talk fast and pretend that don’t nothing bother them, not war, not bombs, not nothing. It might be all right to stay with this Delly, to get a look at what Tiny sees in her. And anyway, it is only one night.

  Back at base, we all hold out our passes, and the MP checks us in. Ruby starts humming a song, and I remember James singing in my ear. Seems like so much has happened since then. Too much.

  Well, my first time in London, and I have drunk alcohol, danced with men, and run away from a fight. This has been some kind of birthday.

  25.

  then

  Delly’s house looks like all the other ones in Reading—brick and brown. In the front room at Delly’s house, they’ve got a “sixpenny fireplace,” like the gas stoves Ruby says they have got in the Red Cross hotel. They also have a picture of the old English king. Delly’s mama, Mrs. Georgina Dye, sits in that front room and sews up something with a lamp on her, keeping her eye on the street, where Delly’s little brothers play. She has got blackout curtains pinned up at the side, too.

  If she was but taller and a little broader in the beam, she would look just like Sister Dials, sitting up there, talking about, “Adele! Introduce your friends,” like we are somebody special.

  In our shoulder bags we have brought gifts. Doris got us some C rations—beef stew in cans and such—and Mrs. Dye is glad like we brought her diamonds and gold. Ruby brings a stash of chocolate bars from back home, and I bring three oranges
and K rations. K rations have got a can of Spam or cheese, a few crackers, cookies or candy, a few cigarettes, and powdered coffee. Mrs. Dye want to open up that powdered coffee for us ’cause she say Americans like their coffee, but we told her we would have tea just fine.

  We eat “tea,” like a late lunch, I guess, and sit down to what Delly and her mama and her little brothers eat. The house stinks like cabbage; Mrs. Dye seems to like her Brussels sprouts. Ruby scrunches up her face at the smell, but I have smelled worse when Mama butchered a hog.

  Tea is thin sandwiches with margarine and peppery “cress,” which don’t taste like nothing different from creasy greens back home. Course, at home, nobody puts greens in a sandwich. They have also got carrot, cabbage, and sweet pickle grated up on white bread for a treat, which is all right, I guess.

  Mrs. Dye says we have “bangers and mash” for later on. Haven’t never had anything like that, but Annie say it is only mashed potatoes and sausages that pop open when you cook them. Annie says the sausages are made out of pork, but Ruby says they taste like sawdust and cotton to her. I am sure glad we brought a little something. Folks here don’t have no kind of good food in this war.

  Delly asks where we want to go tonight. Ruby looks at me and says she wants to go see Piccadilly Circus.

  “Let’s go to Rainbow Corner, then,” Delly says. Rainbow Corner is a big old Red Cross club right down-town so popular that even the movie stars go, like Irving Berlin and James Stewart. Ruby looks up at Delly like she’s crazy. We know we have got no business there.

  “Better not,” Annie finally tells her, smiling a little. “The club for the colored servicemen is in Winchester.”

  “But that’s so far!” Delly says, frowning. “We can’t go all that way!”

  Annie shrugs and straightens up her collar. We none of us say nothing for a minute, thinking about last night and Tiny and Bob. “We could go back to that little joint we were at last night,” Ruby says, like she don’t care, but Annie is already shaking her head.

  “Bob won’t be there,” Annie says, real quiet. “Likely the MPs took the whole lot of them in for disorderly conduct, and we won’t see them for days.”

  Delly sighs. Some boys from Tiny’s unit already have let her in on the news. “Well,” she says finally, “mustn’t sit here and sigh all night.” She smiles and asks Ruby something about growing up in Texas.

  Ruby still looks at Delly like she don’t know about her, but Delly doesn’t bother me none. English girls are not like regular white girls, and Delly is not like anyone. She talks and talks about how she went to “university” before the war; she asks me about folks back home, about Mama and Feen. She asks if any of us got a young man back home, and she tells us about her school friend who went off to the Royal Air Force. She hasn’t heard what happened to him, and there’s been no letter from him in a long while. That’s why she volunteers with the Red Cross after she gets off from the factory. Delly works on Station Road, making Spitfire planes.

  Delly pins up her hair while we are getting ready to go out. “Marey,” she says. “You’re too quiet. Where do you want to go?”

  Ruby looks at me, trying to say something without talking. I am in the hot seat. “Well … we could see a film.”

  “Aren’t you sick of films by now? Let’s go to the theater!” Annie argues.

  “Oh, the theater!” Delly say. Her face gets red. “I … Won’t that be rather expensive?”

  “Have they got a balcony?” Ruby asks, but Annie shake her head.

  “We don’t need a balcony. We can get some fish and chips after so Mrs. Dye doesn’t have to go through any trouble, too,” Annie says.

  “It’s no trouble,” Delly says, smiling.

  “Don’t think of the cost; we’ll treat,” Annie says to Delly. “It’s a good idea.”

  Ruby nods hard, but me and Annie know she is only trying to get out of eating boiled sausages and Brussels sprouts.

  “Isn’t there a theater near that little joint where we were last night?” Ruby asks, and Annie roll her eyes.

  “Girl, didn’t your mama teach you not to run after men?” she teases her.

  Ruby narrows her eyes at Annie. “Do you see me running?”

  “I don’t know about a playhouse,” I say, but Annie shushes me.

  “This is culture, Marey. Shakespeare was from England. You’ll like it.”

  In the end, we take the train and then a cab—for ten shillings—downtown. Delly’s mama shakes her head at the money we spend, but Annie says we are seeing the sights. Ten shillings is about two dollars, and we all put some in for that.

  At the theater, folks are sitting in seats way up top and down in the front. We sit in the cheaper seats, but we can see enough. Everything is soft, and the curtains look like velvet way up there. We don’t have much time to spend looking around, though, because the lights get low, and then we see a man wearing black, with white makeup on his face, holding a sword.

  “Who’s there?” he says, and his voice rolls all the way back up to where we sitting.

  The only play I ever saw is the play we do every year at Sunday school, and that doesn’t hold a candle to this. Here folks go crazy and make speeches, and everybody wear robes and costumes and makeup and talk like the Bible folks in the King James. This girl named Ophelia flat loses her mind, and there are ghosts, all kinds of fighting and stabbing. Folks die like flies, and at the end, hardly anybody is left. Hamlet wasn’t nothing like this when we studied it at school.

  After the show, there is no light on the street, and the shops have got drapes drawn and candles lit. There is a line for cabs, so Delly say we should take the Tube.

  Annie frowns. “Are you sure?” she says. “The Underground must be pitch-black!”

  Delly say we will stick together and be just fine.

  The Tube is a train underground, just like it says. Delly tells us that only last year folks were sleeping down there, trying to get out from under the bombs. “Whole families lived there who had lost their homes,” she says. “Most of them were evacuated to Reading, till we were full.” She shakes her head, and I can barely see her pale skin in the dark. “Some folks still live down here.”

  We link arms and walk, and Delly keeps her torch pointed at the ground so we can see. Ruby is on one side of Delly, and Annie’s on the other, and Ruby is whistling while she walks, which I know her mama says is not lady-like, but we are feeling fine.

  “Hey, where you girls going so fast?” somebody call out.

  “Party’s not over!” somebody else hollers. “Where ya goin’, girls?”

  “Nothing like a drunk GI.” Annie sighs. We walk a little faster.

  There is no light at the railway station in Reading, either, but the station man has got a torch. We walk down the road, keeping quiet. Then Delly links her arm through Ruby’s arm and she say, “So, now what are we going to do?”

  “What do you mean?” Ruby laughs.

  “I’m not tired yet,” Delly says, and we all laugh at her. “Let’s go to the pub.”

  Delly is crazy, but I like her.

  When we get back, Mrs. Dye is waiting for us just like Sister Dials would have been, her hair rolled up in pipe cleaners, listening to the wireless. Annie says she should not have waited, but Mrs. Dye wants to hear about London. Delly mixes up some powdered milk on the stove, and Ruby takes out one of her chocolate bars and melts it in there. We girls talk, sipping our cocoa, and I think of Feen. Tonight feels almost like we are sisters at home.

  26.

  now

  “How long did Tiny have to stay in jail?” I ask. “It’s so unfair that he had to go at all.”

  “Was a whole lot that wasn’t fair then.” Mare sighs. “I don’t remember how long they kept them—three or four days, I guess. Like Jake said, it happened all the time, so he and Bob just took it in stride.”

  “It seems so weird that interracial dating was such a big deal,” Tali muses. “It’s so common now.”

  �
��Depends on where you are,” Mare says, glancing over her shoulder to change lanes. “Some folks still aren’t that comfortable with it.”

  “I guess.” We’re quiet for a moment. “Do you think Tiny married Adele?” I ask.

  Mare smiles a little. “That Delly. If I recall, she married her school friend from the Royal Air Force. Tiny went on to the Pacific.”

  We follow Interstate 10 all the way into Houston, and suddenly we emerge in the middle of a city. After endless highways between clusters of small towns, Houston looks massive, full of quickly moving Texans heading in every direction, blowing their horns and driving assertively.

  In the middle of the afternoon, the road is a sea of cars, and we wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the downtown area. Mare is tapping her nails against the steering wheel impatiently.

  “What’s going on here?” I ask as we creep forward a car length, heading toward the business district. “How could there be so much traffic in the middle of the day?”

  “It’s probably for Juneteenth,” Mare says. “Folks come in for that from all over.”

  “Must be a big deal around here.” I lean over the seat. “Most people at home don’t do anything on Juneteenth, except maybe have a barbecue.”

  “Oh, shut up about barbecue,” Tali moans. “I’m starving.”

  “We’re going to pick up something in a little bit,” Mare says. Then she adds, “Juneteenth is more of a Texas thing, since here it’s an actual state holiday.” She brakes for a stoplight, and waves of pedestrians in shorts and flip-flops cross. “Truth is, it ought to be a holiday everywhere.”

  “Why? Isn’t it just for when the slaves in Texas were freed?”

  “Yes and no.” Mare pulls forward again. “It’s actually a celebration of all slaves being freed; it’s just that the South heard the Emancipation Proclamation only very slowly. Even though the slaves were freed on January 1 in 1863, Southerners first heard about it in Galveston in 1865—”

  “Wait, what?” Tali interrupts. “It took them two and a half years to get a clue?”

  “Well, it wasn’t like slave owners just told their slaves they were free, now was it? News didn’t travel fast back then, and it’s not like the slaves were sending letters, since most of them couldn’t read nor write. Only when the Union marched on Galveston was the truth told.”