Gone to Soldiers

by Marge Piercy

  But those dress-up games were only for the days when Sandy did not have to drag Roy with her. Fortunately he was finally beginning to hang out with other kids his age and could not spy on them all the time. “I’m never going to have babies. I hate babies,” Naomi said. “If I was ever that loud and that dirty, I don’t want to know it.”

  “I intend to have four children, two boys and two girls,” Sandy said. “Blond like me and darling, in little suits and pretty little dresses. But I’ll be rich, so I’ll have a nursemaid for them.” Sandy extended her head on its long neck, as if she were practicing to be a giraffe. “If they do it in their pants, it will be her problem.”

  Sandy insisted that Naomi had to have a movie star to be in love with, so she picked Errol Flynn. She did think he was handsome and he seemed as if he could save you, if you needed that. Then Errol Flynn in real life was all over the papers because he was accused of statutory rape. Sandy and Naomi spent a whole afternoon in the branch library with the Encyclopaedia Britannica trying to figure out what was statutory rape. It made Naomi nervous. She switched her affection to John Garfield. At least he was Jewish, while seeming to be someone who could fight if he had to.

  Every day they walked to school together; every afternoon they came home together. It was not like walking with Rivka, who shared all thoughts, reactions and wishes; who fed on hers and built on them and turned them about so that they gleamed with polish; but it was better than being alone. People who had had a twin knew what love was and everybody else made do, she decided. They were best friends, Sandy said, and Naomi quickly agreed, because Sandy was popular and protected her in her spiky strangeness that still remained, no matter how she tried to keep her elbows in and appear like everybody else.

  When she had a chance to talk with Clotilde at school, they spoke often of their favorite fantasies, When I go back to Martinique, When I go home to my family in Paris. Lately she did not want to talk about that fantasy, because instead of making her feel better, she felt more abandoned. Instead she asked Clotilde about Martinique, about her grandma, who remembered a volcano erupting, and her big family back there on the beautiful island. Clotilde came from Trois-Îlets, “comme la belle Joséphine, l’empresse.” Twice Naomi dreamed she was on a tropical island with Clotilde. Each time it was peaceful and then something terrifying would happen. Once it was a blue jellyfish that exploded, stinging them. Another night it was a mob of people chasing them down the beach, armed with clubs and torches.

  She loved Ruthie, but Ruthie hung out with Trudi when she had time off or with Vivian from the factory. Naomi knew now that Ruthie did not always tell her the truth. Ruthie had a period that came two weeks late. Naomi knew because her period always came the same day as Ruthie’s. It had become that way slowly and now they were synchronized. When Ruthie’s period was two weeks late, so was Naomi’s. When she mentioned that to Ruthie, Ruthie became agitated and pretended that she had already had her period. Naomi did not say anything to Sandy or Aunt Rose, but she decided that Ruthie had done it with Murray and was going to have a baby.

  Finally both their periods did start and Ruthie was cheerful and sang “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo” in the bathroom. That had been five months ago, but Naomi did not forget. She was becoming sly and secretive. She had always told everything to Rivka, whatever she thought and felt. Now she was twisting round inside like a corkscrew.

  Trudi and Ruthie shared secrets. Naomi felt jealous, but sometimes Ruthie took her over to Trudi’s. Then she felt as if she had leaped over her awkward sticky painful growing and emerged into adulthood. Trudi was living in her parents’ house, but at least she had a room all to herself, a big sunny room that faced the backyard. Trudi’s mother threw stale bread, leftover noodles and oatmeal out on the snow for the birds. Naomi had not realized how many birds lived in Detroit. Looking at them made her feel good. At first she wished she could have a bird, but then she looked at the canary Alvin’s mother had, and it did not make her feel nearly as glad. A cage was a cage. It made her remember the bad dreams she had been having, about Maman and Rivka. Better to go over to Trudi’s and ask her mother if she could help feed the birds. Trudi had learned to knit and was teaching Ruthie and Naomi.

  As the winter deepened, sometimes Naomi went over to Trudi’s alone. She brought with her the mittens she was knitting. Then she tried a scarf. She did not take Sandy. If she took Sandy, she would feel like two little girls hanging around an adult. No, she went over as a friend visiting a friend. She could go to Trudi’s oftener than Ruthie, because Ruthie could only go on weekends. When only Naomi was there with her, Trudi would put sad romantic ballads on the phonograph, like “As Time Goes By,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “I’ll Never Smile Again.”

  Trudi worked four evenings a week at a local clinic, as a receptionist; but then she quit. Naomi thought it was funny for an adult not to work unless he or she were going to school; then she finally noticed what was happening to Trudi. She was getting fat in the middle.

  “Trudi’s going to have a baby in May,” Ruthie said.

  “Does she want to?”

  Ruthie nodded. “I think she hopes it will tie Leib to her more firmly. Me, I don’t say anything. It’s too late to say anything. She knows him better than I do. Maybe she’s right.” Ruthie shrugged.

  Naomi liked the way Ruthie shrugged; it was a fast motion, as if she were flipping something away into limbo. She practiced it, but when she tried it out, Sandy asked if she were itchy and offered to scratch her back.

  Children were running all over the frozen rutted soil of the yard. It was a dismal yard, the buildings around it unfinished but jammed full of people who were yelling and lamenting. Looking down from a window without glass, Rivka could see what was going on, if she clung to the sash. She was locked into the building with the other adults and the big kids. The little children were crying loudly. They were being called by name, but most of them didn’t know their names. They knew what their Mamans called them, but they were too little to have learned their last names or their formal first names. Many were called a Hebrew name at home, not the French names on their papers.

  Finally the officials just numbered them. They had to have a thousand children. Little ones were running all about and some officials began to beat them. But that did not help. The children would just lie down and weep. They did not march in neat lines the way the guards wanted them to, into the buses to take them to the train station where the cars were waiting. French policemen were lined up along the way to make sure they did not escape. Children would run up to guards and beg them to take them to the bathroom so they would not wet themselves, ask them to tie their shoes.

  Rivka was watching from above, locked in with the adults. She was watching so that she would remember and tell. The little ones were being shipped east. The French officials had decided the Jewish children must go. What else could they do, they asked, with all those little Jewish children? Someday there would be a chance to remember and tell how the little children had been beaten and marched to buses to go to the railway cars and then the buses were shut up and went off with the hands still reaching out to wave, little fluttering hands still trying to please, to entreat, all she could see as the children were taken away.

  In late January Duvey arrived on two weeks’ leave. He liked to lie late in bed. One day he wasn’t even awake when Naomi came home from school. Rose said he was run down and needed building up again.

  Then Naomi was home on break between semesters, when she would go from 8B to 8A and finally graduate. The American system was confusing, but she had learned not to comment on how differently things were done in France. Nobody here cared and they would just make fun of her. She grew used to silently commenting on the absurdities she saw about her, as if to the twin from whom she had been taken.

  Duvey gave her a nickel every morning, if when he woke up around eleven, she would bring him a big cup of café au lait made the right way, the French way, with the milk heated. They had li
ttle coffee, but everybody agreed that Duvey should have his big morning cup. He would lie in bed and wait for her to bring it to him on a tray. Then he would tell her to hand him his pants and he would give her a nickel and a big kiss. She did not like being kissed that way, but she liked making the coffee—it was one thing she knew how to do right—and she liked being given the nickels.

  By the fifth day, he began putting his tongue in her mouth, the way Alvin tried to do. She told Duvey she didn’t like that. He said she would like it soon, and gave her a dime instead. She felt funny about what went on in Duvey’s room, because every day he held her a little tighter. He told her to shut the door, but she wouldn’t. On the other hand, Rose beamed at her and told her she was a good girl to take care of Duvey’s breakfast.

  Saturday morning they were going through their daily push and shove when Ruthie said, “What do you think you’re doing, Duvey?” She stood in the doorway in her old plaid bathrobe, holding the doorjamb in one hand.

  Naomi jumped off the bed’s edge and went to stand by Ruthie. She did not know if she should be ashamed. It was confusing, because uncles had a right to kiss her, even if she did not want to, but not with the tongue the way Alvin and Four Eyes tried to. They called it French kissing but nobody in Paris had kissed her that way.

  “Aw, go on, Ruthie. What are you doing up? I was just fooling around with her.”

  “You’re damned right you were.” Ruthie was vibrating with anger. Her fists clenched and unclenched.

  “I wasn’t doing anything. I just kissed her.”

  “She’s a little girl, you pig!”

  “She is not. She’s pretty now. She’s growing up. She knows what she’s doing. She’s a little flirt.”

  “Duvey, you’re crazy.” Ruthie put her hand on Naomi’s shoulder and propelled her out of the room. “I’ll see you in a moment.”

  “Are you going to drive Mama wild with this nonsense?” Duvey said, sitting up in bed.

  “You leave Naomi alone and I won’t tell Mama. But I mean what I’m saying: Leave Naomi alone. She’ll tell me if I ask her, Duvey.” Ruthie shut the door.

  Naomi stood outside trying to listen. She could hear their voices, but with a Saturday baby bawling in the next room, she could only make out the anger in their voices.

  When Ruthie came into their room, she asked Naomi to tell her exactly what Duvey had done. Naomi answered all her questions, still trying to tell if Ruthie was mad at her. “You were only trying to help Mama and make a little money,” Ruthie said sadly. “When an older person tells you to do something, it’s hard not to. You feel in the wrong. But Duvey was taking advantage of you. If Duvey or any other man does anything like that to you again, you tell me. I’ll break their neck for you.” Ruthie stood at the bureau brushing her hair with smart savage strokes. “Now I’m too mad to sleep. I don’t think he’ll bother you again. Monday you go back to school, right? Good. I will take him his damned coffee tomorrow morning. And I’ll spit in it.”

  Still the whole thing made Naomi feel as if she had done something bad. The only thing she liked was that she had fifty cents to spend on makeup at the dimestore with Sandy. She could pick out a Cutex lipstick and a matching fingernail polish and polish remover—to take off the polish before she went home. Then she wouldn’t have to borrow Sandy’s stupid Passionate Pink lipstick all the time. She could get a red one.

  Maybe she was not alone. Maybe she did belong to Ruthie, because Ruthie worried about her. In the house crammed with squalling babies and sleeping men, only Ruthie thought about her. She loved Ruthie more than anybody except Maman and Papa and Rivka. More than Jacqueline, maybe.

  Ruthie suggested that Naomi go over to Trudi’s for the day. Rose objected. “I need her to help me today. What are you doing out of bed?”

  “Let her have a little fun. She deserves to get out of the house. It’s not fair to demand too much of her.”

  Indeed the next morning Ruthie set her alarm and got up only two hours after she went to bed, grimly made Duvey’s breakfast, took it in to him and then went back to sleep. Naomi still felt what happened must be partly her fault, but mostly she felt that Ruthie loved her and would take care of her. She suspected that Ruthie had said something to Trudi, because Trudi insisted she stay to dinner there Sunday night. Monday morning Naomi went back to school. When she got home, she worried that Duvey would be angry with her.

  He didn’t seem angry. Instead he kept saying she was his favorite. He winked at her and cuffed her lightly. He told her all about Iceland, with volcanoes, and Malta, with cliffs and ruins and strange deep ruts in the rock so old nobody knew who had made them, and Scotland where men wore skirts when they got dressed up. He gave her a handful of foreign coins.

  Naomi was careful not to go into his room. That was easy, because he was still asleep when she went to school in the morning, and when she came home in the late afternoon, he was sitting around the living room with the Detroit Free Press or out, if the kiddies had got on his nerves. He came home for supper, then went out and stayed out late.

  “That Ruthie,” Duvey said to her. “She sticks her nose in where she isn’t wanted. She’s a ballbuster.”

  Naomi turned her face away. She would not say a word against Ruthie. Ruthie was the one who cared about her.

  Sometimes she remembered that Duvey had said she was pretty now. She stared into the little mirror in their bedroom to see if she had changed, but the same Naomi looked back. If she wore her new red lipstick, Satan, she would look better. Still she did not want Duvey to push himself against her again or to make his mouth hard against hers and stick his fat tongue in her mouth. She had just wanted to hear him talk about being a sailor and to tell her she made coffee just right, the way it should be—because the way she knew how to do things, everyone kept telling her was the wrong way. She could not imagine wanting to do secret dirty things with Duvey. He was just an uncle, but she could not help enjoying his stories and that he had called her pretty, even if he hadn’t meant it.

  Nonetheless although she lined up with Rose and Sharon and Ruthie to kiss him good-bye and waved and waved as he went off down the block with his duffle bag, she was glad he was gone. Now the babies would nap in his room and she would not have to worry about whether she was guilty because of what Duvey wanted to do after his coffee. She could relax and go on with her knitting. None of her projects had been a success—lumpy mittens, a shapeless scarf—but this one would be different, a warm hat for Ruthie. She had not told anyone what it was, although Trudi teased her to know. It was green like Ruthie’s eyes, and it would be beautiful.

  LOUISE 4

  Something Old and Something New

  “Mrs. Shaunessy’s youngest daughter just had a baby, and the father’s overseas, so I let her take the week off.” Louise stood on a chair to put the roasting pan away. “I still think we should have had Kay help clean up. She does as little as she can get away with.” Her images of how the evening would go after the Thanksgiving afternoon dinner had been exploded by Oscar already. She had hoped they would all three talk about Kay’s rising intrasigence and her recently discovered pregnancy, for Louise was ready to admit she needed help from Oscar.

  “Why not let her see the movie with her girlfriend? I thought we needed to talk.” Oscar let the dirty dishwater out of the sink and dried his hands. “Here’s the cover.” He passed it up to her.

  When she turned to get off the chair, he put his hands on her waist to assist her down and instead pulled her against him. As he kissed her and his familiar body engulfed hers, she felt herself turning butter-soft. It was an ongoing return of the sexuality that had been the core of her life, this man with whom she had made love for fifteen years almost every day. The solidity of his body was familiar, its heft, its heat, as if he had a natural temperature above the human. Then her anger came scalding back. She yanked away from him. “You’ve never been much of a parent, Oscar, but you might at least pretend to take an interest in Kay’s problems. I need help.�
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  “And I need you. And maybe Kay needs both of us.”

  “You can’t need me. You’ll have a live-in lover in Washington soon, if you haven’t had time to find one already.” She tossed her apron away and marched into the living room, flinging herself in an armchair.

  “Oh, come on, Louise. You always did like Washington. You’d have a ball there. OWI is after you. Why not go back to Washington together?”

  She wanted to kill him, she wanted to kick him right in the balls. All she could see in her mind were those evenings he had spent with Madeleine, Madeleine says, Madeleine believes, Madeleine interprets Freud to mean such and so. Him coming home to kiss her with that scent clinging to him, damned Parma violets. Madeleine was tall, blond, wore lavender and grey and smelled, discreetly, of violets. Her voice was low, husky. It was said Jung had been in love with her. Oscar certainly was, so besotted he could not keep from talking about her. Now that Madeleine had left him for the money-rich pastures of Hollywood, he wanted Louise back. How dare he?

  “Oscar, I thought you had taken that attractive helper of yours with you. Won’t she oblige?”

  Oscar grinned. “In about five minutes. You know that I don’t get involved with students. I have some scruples, even if you never thought I had enough.”

  “Because it might prove professionally inconvenient. Right?” Louise tossed back her hair. It made her furious that she was insulting him and he was looking at her breasts. The way he looked at her made her feel as if he were touching her. It was unfair. It had nothing to do with what she wanted from Oscar. She wanted to call him a pig bastard and break a dish on his head, but if she did that, they would end up in bed. They had had some rare fights in the old days and they always finished in bed. That was one reason her rising temper was making Oscar smile. Damn him. “If you’ve been too busy to find someone yet, someone will find you. Women always do, Oscar. You attract women like a garbage truck draws flies.”