Mare's War

by Tanita S. Davis

  We digest that in silence. “So, Mare? Where are we going?” I ask when it’s clear she’s not going to give us any hints.

  “Nowhere in particular,” Mare says, scanning the road. “See if you can find a market somewhere, will you, babe?”

  “A grocery store?”

  “I see a Central Market up there.” Tali points across the road. “Are we getting deli sandwiches?”

  “If that’s what you want,” Mare answers. “I’m in the mood for cheese straws myself.”

  “I just want salsa and chips,” I say, “unless the salsa doesn’t look right. Then I’ll just get a sandwich.”

  Mare glances across at Tali, and the two of them shake their heads.

  “What?” I exclaim. “You have to be careful about salsa. We’re in Texas.”

  “Anybody else want some melon?” Tali opens her door and stretches, suddenly energetic. “I’m going to see if there’s any in the fridge section already cut. Should we get anything special?”

  “Get what you want. Just be back in the car in”—Mare checks her watch—“’bout fifteen minutes.”

  “Why?” Tali looks surprised.

  “We’re going to keep moving,” Mare says, and closes the driver’s side door.

  “What are we doing in Texas? I thought the reunion was in Alabama—”

  “Come on.” Tali grabs my arm. “Haven’t you figured out by now she never tells you anything? Let’s just go.”

  It is hard to leave the blissfully air-conditioned store to cross the blisteringly hot parking lot to the car, but we manage it. Mare has made it there ahead of us with a big bag of cheese straws and a diet cola. Tali brings her a half sandwich, and I have a package of string cheese, grapes, a bag of lime tortilla chips, and some chipotle salsa, which I hope isn’t too hot.

  Mare drives through town looking at signs, frowning.

  “Are you looking for a freeway entrance?” I ask, worried. “I think you took a wrong turn, Mare.”

  “Not looking for that,” Mare says. “I’m looking for a sign for Emancipation Park.”

  “Oh.” I load a chip with salsa and speak around a mouthful. “It’s an actual park?”

  Mare nods. “The freed slaves all put their money together to buy a piece of land for their Juneteenth celebrations. It’s an actual place within this city somewhere.”

  “What’s the street?” Tali asks.

  “Dowling,” Mare says, and then brakes abruptly. “There it is.”

  “Are you sure this is it?” I glance around the playground in front of us. “This is the famous park?”

  “I didn’t say it was famous,” Mare objects, and takes the key out of the ignition. “I said the freed slaves put their money together and bought it.”

  “Well, shouldn’t it be more … historical?” Tali opens the car door and points to a community center across a broad green lawn from us. “This place has a pool.”

  “History happens where it happens,” Mare replies, and pops open the trunk. “Go find us a table, Tali.”

  Next to the basketball courts my sister finally finds an open table in partial shade. Accompanied by the shrieks of kids in the pool and the soft slap of tennis balls against rackets, we sit down to our feast. Mare brings a disposable table-cloth to spread out and adds her other purchases to the general buffet—a basket of raspberries, a liter of cold ginger ale and plastic champagne flutes, and a pink box from the Center Market bakery. The fresh molasses cookies are soft and chewy and perfect. We fall on the food like we haven’t eaten in days.

  “Well, here we are. Emancipation Park. It’s not like I thought it would be, either,” Mare adds, looking bemusedly around the busy city park, “but it’ll do.” She holds up her glass. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” Tali lifts her glass, downs her ginger ale in a gulp.

  Mare winces. “Tali, you’re going to make yourself sick.”

  Tali grins. “No, Octavia’s the one who sicks up ginger ale. Remember the time—”

  “Tali, jeez.”

  Mare barks out a laugh. “Girl, please. Do you think anybody wants to hear that?”

  “Well, I was just saying!”

  “Well, don’t! Nobody needs to hear any more stories about how many people I threw up on when we were little.”

  “Could we have dinner table conversation?” Mare rolls her eyes.

  “We’re on a picnic,” Tali points out.

  “Here—eat some of this salsa,” I say, shoving a chip in Tali’s face.

  We are insulting each other’s taste when I hear a guitar. I don’t really pay any attention until Mare sort of stills, and Tali starts looking around. A few tables away from ours, a graying African American man is sitting on a table, strumming his guitar with a couple of little kids seated on the bench next to him leaning against his legs, eating sandwiches. All around the park it seems like conversations are quieter as the guitarist plays. Even the kids screaming in the pool aren’t as loud.

  The guitar player sings quietly to himself.

  Deep river. My home is over Jordan.

  Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over

  Into campground.

  I glance over at Mare, and she’s rubbing her arms like she’s got goose bumps. She sighs, a nostalgic expression in her eyes. “Folks back home used to sing this one all the time.”

  I imagine Sister Dials and all of Mare’s home folk singing a song about peace and safety after traveling, of getting to a “campground,” and then going back to work, riding on the back of a bus, keeping their heads down. I wonder how many of the WACs like Mare felt like just getting out of the United States was going to “campground.” The thought makes me a little sad.

  The guitar player keeps strumming as one of the little kids uses his pant leg as a napkin, rubbing his face until it is clean to his satisfaction. His grandfather or uncle or father doesn’t seem to notice but keeps on singing, eyes closed, thick fingers picking slowly at the taut guitar strings.

  Tali nudges my arm. “Here.”

  I take the plastic champagne glass, and Mare pours more ginger ale in hers.

  We sip and savor the liquid trail of notes while the city bustles around us and little kids run and squeal. It’s a perfect afternoon in the park, which we are free to enjoy.

  27.

  then

  It is cold and no kind of spring, but since Easter, folks in Birmingham have got to turning over the ground. There are big galvanized cans on just about every other street, and folks toss their kitchen waste in there to slop the hogs and build up the fields for planting.

  Skinny little Miss Victoria has got dirty knees all the time now. Her mama sets her to weeding, but every time she sees me, she’s up and running, asking where I am going and what I am doing and don’t I want to see her doll baby. Lord, that girl can talk.

  “Didn’t your mama send you to work in the garden?” “I am,” Victoria says. “I just want to see …” “Gotta get to work, missy,” I tell her. “See ya tomorrow, okay?”

  “All right,” she grumbles, and she stomps back to her dirt. But she is not grumbling too hard. I just happen to have a couple of sugar cubes in the pocket of my coveralls, and she already has got one in her mouth. She didn’t want nothing else anyway.

  Latrine gossip says we are fixing to move on from England. Doris Smith says the brass took a train to London to get our orders, and we are going back to Scotland. Peach say we are still going to Paris, but nowadays, she doesn’t say it so loud as before. Mostly, she doesn’t say much, at least not to me. She sure has got a lot of time on her hands to be with Miss Gloria Madden, though. She’s met Gloria’s captain in London, and would you believe that floozy set up Peaches with one of his friends? He’s some boy who comes all the way from France on his leave to see her. All that way! No wonder she hopes we are going to Paris.

  I sign in for the night shift at the Postal Directory Battalion, thinking I’ll find Dovey and Phillipa later on. Phillipa has been trying to teach me how to shoot poo
l, and I just about got those angles worked out right. Phillipa says if we get good enough, we can play for money. Dovey’s on operator shift; we all have to take our turn for two nights. Operators aren’t supposed to listen in on a call, but that duty is dull, dull, dull, and we all listen in to keep awake. What I want to know from her is if HQ got our orders for sure. I don’t suspect we going to Paris, France, ever.

  Somebody has got a radio playing, and they’re singing “I’m Beginning to See the Light.” The CO, Captain Robinson, sitting at the desk, is yawning, going over the outgoing mail with her little razor blade. All of us have to make sure we tell no military secrets in our letters home, or the censor will cut it right out. “Loose lips sink ships,” is what they say, like any of us know military secrets. What we know, we read in the paper.

  The big news is that the infantry marched on the Germans and set free some prisoners of war. The Allies also freed about twenty thousand Jews and other folks the Germans have been starving to death in a camp called Buchenwald. The newsreel shows the folks have got arms look like sticks, and so many of them they found dead, they are calling it a Nazi death camp.

  Seeing how the Nazis been treating folks, I am almost certain I was right to leave home. Somebody has got to fight for the folks who don’t get help. No matter what, there’s no call to starve folks like that. We have just got to beat the Nazis. If Hitler make it past our boys, there won’t be no use for colored folks or nobody to go back to the States. The strong are supposed to help the weak and not to please ourselves, isn’t that what the Book says? Right now we are the strong ones, and we have to win. We have to.

  Somebody brings me another bag of post, and I have got my hands full of mail, looking at names, slipping ’em in the slots, checking the station number in that dim light, and squinting. I get to humming, and the work pass on in no time at all.

  While I hear Duke Ellington on the radio, I think about Feen. Her neighborhood club is still collecting scrap metal, and Feen won a prize for collecting the most scrap of any colored girl in her neighborhood. She says Mama is real proud—and I am glad that she hears from Mama, even though it makes my gut knot up that she still don’t have a word to say to me.

  Feen say there is a Jap boy in her class. His name is Tamekichi Takagi, but they call him Tommy. He is the boy who collected the most scrap in his neighborhood, but no neighborhood association is going to give no Jap a prize, not nowadays. Feen say he is as patriotic as anybody, but that don’t make a difference.

  Feen say Aunt Shirley says not to speak to him on the street in public. Folks say it is bad enough that she is colored, but no patriotic American should be seen talking to a Jap. Feen says it don’t make her no difference whatsoever what kind of boy Tommy is. She says next time she sees him, she will buy him a Coke.

  I have not been gone but a year, and already Feen seems like she’s gotten busy and grew up. When did she get opinionated? I am proud of her. Aunt Shirley must be all right.

  Mama still don’t have nothing to say to me, but I am through waiting for Mama. The Dials girls sent me a little stationery for Easter, and I hear from Mrs. Ida Payne that Beatrice finally got on with the Red Cross. They sent her to work on one of them Clubmobiles somewhere in Belgium. Miss Ida say her girl, Bébé, has been seeing a major and had her picture in Stars and Stripes. Miss Ida says Beatrice calls herself a “Doughnut Dolly.” Good ol’ Beatrice finally got away from her mama.

  Near midnight, I am tired out. My eyes are watering from keeping the blackout shades drawn and the lights down low. We all of us look up, startled, when we hear somebody running.

  “Hey, Dovey!”

  “What’s up, Dovey?”

  I crane my neck. “Girl? What’s the matter? Who’s minding the switchboard?”

  Dovey’s got her hands over her mouth, her eyes stretched wide.

  “Dove!” I shove my stack of mail in the pocket of my utility and grab her arm. “What happened?”

  On the late shift, it is just Women’s Army Corps, no civilians and no Red Cross personnel. Dovey looks around the room making sure before she says it.

  “I heard it on the switchboard. President Roosevelt is …”

  I do not hear her say the word. Folks suck in air like there isn’t going to be none left to breathe.

  “You sure, Dovey?” I ask her, shaking her arm. “Girl, are you sure?”

  Dovey starts crying. “I passed a call through to the major,” she chokes.

  And then folks start crying all over the place. I walk Dovey back and get her some water. We can’t desert our posts, but nobody will know unless she don’t stay put.

  We stay at work but hardly get another thing done. Folks turn the radio up, but there is no news. What now? is the question we all ask.

  President Roosevelt pulled us out of the Depression, made up jobs, and let folks get back some dignity. His wife has got more than respect for colored folks; she is known to be a friend in government. Harry Truman, the vice president, will be sworn in right quick, but hardly anybody around here really know a thing about him.

  In the morning, while we stand in formation, HQ give us the official word: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is dead.

  It is April 12, 1945.

  HQ gives out orders for the flag to be flown at half-mast for thirty days out of respect. The MPs wear black armbands, and we muster out in dress uniforms and caps, shoes shiny, to first one, then another memorial service. The major assigns some of us to attend services in Birmingham, so the U.S. Army is represented. We go on working, keeping our voices down.

  Friday, I see Victoria hanging around the gate. I pat my pockets. Don’t have no sugar for her; seems in all this I forget her little sweet tooth. I get ready to watch her poke out her mouth, but instead, she comes up to me, all solemn.

  “This is for you,” she says, and shoves something in my hand.

  It is a wilted piece of tree, blue flowers all crushed, but it has a powerful smell.

  “My mum said it’s rosemary. For remembrance,” Victoria say, still sober. “Mum says it’s just terrible about your president.”

  For the first time, my eyes water. “Yeah. It is,” I tell her.

  Victoria makes to walk off, then she turns around. “Have you anyone else to be president over there?”

  “We got somebody,” I say, blinking hard.

  “Good.” Victoria nods her little head like she’s made up her mind. “See you tomorrow, okay?”

  I nod back.

  Back home, it is still yesterday, yesterday before the president died.

  Today, Doris says we got orders to go to France for sure.

  The world has gone right on.

  28.

  then

  The news is that old devil Hitler done sent himself to hell, but none of us get too excited till we receive the official word from headquarters almost a week later. Then the whole base requests passes to cut loose in Birmingham, except those on necessary tasks.

  Me, Ruby, Peaches, and Phillipa run up and down the streets in Birmingham. We take a number 7 bus to Victoria Square, where they have built up a big old fire, and we dance and sing. They have got a piano outside, and folks break out the whiskey they have been saving since rations started. For this party, nobody cares what color you are; everyone is happy. Folks are just kissing everybody they can reach. One of the real old men kisses me on my cheek with all his hairy whiskers. He says I am a “good gel.”

  Some of the men are just drunk, but it is a happy kind of drunk; nobody gets disorderly, and the MPs don’t have to put nobody in jail. Folks just wave flags, singing “God Save the Queen,” laughing and crying all at once.

  We dance till our feet start aching, then we hobble on back. The double summer hours mean we got plenty of light, so we get to see every fire and every party and dance with pretty near just about everybody in the whole city of Birmingham. Nobody has got to use blackout curtains, and nobody puts those blinders over their headlights. The street is lit up as bright as d
ay, since they got the old streetlights on. Folks are shining torches and lighting candles inside just about every window. Won’t be no Germans and their planes dropping down the V-bombs anymore. I don’t know how folks sleep with all this light, but on base, we are so tired we do all right.

  Next day, the headline for the London Daily News says V-E DAY! IT’S OVER IN THE WEST! Phillipa makes sure she gets herself a newspaper to send back home. She reads out loud to us and says they are rounding up the Nazis for war trial and dragging them off to jail. Then she says she wants to go to London to see the other parties. Phillipa says this is “history,” so she needs to see it. I say that girl just likes to get kissed by men with whiskers.

  “Wonder if your friend Gloria and her captain going to get together and celebrate?” I say, and Peaches rolls her eyes.

  “Let her tell it, she’s already doing enough celebrating for all of us. That girl wants to make sure she goes home with a rock on her finger.”

  “It’ll go with the rocks in her head,” Ruby mutters under her breath, and I crack up.

  “Troops are pulling out,” Phillipa says, and we all get quiet. “The Red Cross is boarding all branches of the service—they have already started sending out the wounded.”

  “I know.” Peaches frowns. “Annie is shipping out on Friday.”

  Annie tried hard, but when she heard her friend from the POW camp had been shipped home, we knew she wasn’t long for staying over here. Nobody blames her, but I will miss that Miss Connecticut something fierce. I cried almost as hard as I did when Feen left when Annie said she had to go.

  Little old Miss Victoria cried, too, when I told her we have orders to ship out to France.

  “But I want you to stay!” Victoria said, squinching up her eyes and glaring at me.

  “We got to help find the Nazis hiding in France,” I told her.