An American Story (26 page)

Only then did I spend time thinking about the significance of his childhood, his historical context, his personality. I grilled everyone I could to find out more about him. I began to see that though I was legitimately angry at him, I was also sad. Sad for me and sad for him.

Then, while on a military business trip to Okinawa, I found I had Eddie Mack Dickerson dogging my heels.

From the time my taxi pulled into Kadena Air Force Base, I couldn't stop thinking about him. I found myself wondering where the battles were that he'd fought in. Where was the camp? Where were the caves they had to clean out of defenders one at a time? What did they do for fun? Were there hookers? Where was that quonset hut they destroyed when the Air Corps disrespected them? I sat drinking gin and tonics at the beachfront officers' club and wondered, Is this where he waded ashore, his rifle over his head, enemy bullets sinking into the chests of all the men around him?

Embarrassed and giggly like a little girl, I found myself tearing around the island going to bookstore after bookstore. Sheepishly, some silly part of me was hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of my long-ago marine father and his Tennessee homeboys smoking cigarettes or guarding POWs in a World War II photo. Okinawa abounded with photographic history books about the famous battle waged there, yet I could find none with even one picture of a black GI. The more I searched, the more enraged I became. Not even the several base bookstores had photos with black GIs in them. He might have died, I might never have been born, yet he was not fit to capture on film or be acknowledged by the forces of history.

He'd told us about how he and his homeboys had reacted when they were shown newsreel footage of the battle once the island was secure. All the blacks had been edited out. They rioted and flattened the quonset hut where the movie was shown. Forty years later, in his honor, I tore the head off every bookstore manager whose shop failed inspection.

I felt closest to him on the beach, so that's where I spent every free moment on that trip. I'd sit there and picture him wading ashore through that hellish barrage of enemy fire, the dead floating all around. How terrified he must have been, that young teenager fresh from the Tennessee cotton fields. He must have been sure he would die. And victory—total, utter victory—what must that have felt like? He must have felt like Superman.

And his family. For the first time, I wondered what he thought of us. I'd spent most of my life analyzing my feelings for him; I'd never wondered what he was thinking. For the first time since the day we left him and I pitied him, I confronted the knowledge that we'd broken his heart.

But simultaneously, I was barraged with so many bad memories. It was physically painful, that game of mental tennis with my father as the ball, but I couldn't make it stop. First I'd have a happy remembrance of him, then a painful one.

I could see him sitting at the dinner table, laughing himself silly over a histrionic, cross-eyed choir director who visited our church. “I bet when he cry,” he'd wheezed between guffaws, “the tears run down his back!” Mama tried to stop us from indulging in such un-Christian laughter at another's frailty, but there was no resisting my father's laugh. He'd laughed so hard, all he could do was rock back and forth helplessly in his chair. I hadn't laughed at the joke, I'd laughed for joy at my father's joy.

But when a first-grade playmate took a silly little squeak toy from me, more from playfulness than spite, he'd grimly repeated that story about how the Air Corps boys wouldn't give them meat. I knew what I had to do when he hissed that punch line at me: “Marines. Don't. Lose.” I couldn't have cared less about the toy, yet I'd marched myself across the alley to oblivious little Garland Lee's house and started pummeling him the moment he opened the door. Marines and Dickersons. Don't. Lose. I cried harder than Garland did.

Daddy thought he was making me tough, and the irony is, he was. But my first use of my toughness was to squeeze him out of my life.

I cried and cried on a beach halfway around the world. I cried for my father and I cried for myself. Eddie Mack Dickerson was a hard man to love, but he was even harder to hate.

CHAPTER FIVE

———

IT ALL COMES TOGETHER

Officers' Training School, March 1985. In typical Air Force fashion, after waiting months for a slot, I had all of eight days to wrap up my Maryland life. Bobby and I'd had only a few brief months to repair our relationship; thankfully, we'd made the most of it. He returned to St. Louis and shortly thereafter moved to Las Vegas, where he's lived ever since, trouble-free and suburban.

I, on the other hand, got to reenter basic training. A more genteel, white-glove, twelve-week version, but basic nonetheless. Room and uniform inspections. Marauding flight commanders instead of TIs. Shoe polish and marching in the hot Texas sun. Memorizing convoluted regulations. Constant testing. Demerits for using a blue pen when the fine print said black. We were “Miss,” “Mister,” or “OT” and no one ever raised his or her voice, but then you don't need to in such a situation.

Just like in basic training, I threw myself into it body and soul. My feeling of anticlimax upon my selection for OTS notwithstanding, I wanted to be an officer with everything in me, sure I would be wearing Air Force blue till I was forced into retirement. After that, who knew, but till then—my Air Force, do or die.

I turned twenty-one in basic and twenty-six in OTS. Being older, prior-service, and a Dickerson, I did well. Where five years before I had excelled at basic fueled by a hysterical determination, this time it was a cold one, focused like a spotlight on the “butter bars” of a second lieutenant; nothing and no one could come between me and them. I would endure a
twelve-
month OTS to become the first Officer Dickerson. I was no more ambitious than that. For all my newfound sense of possibility and confidence, I was still thinking small.

I had no plans to end up with an exalted student rank—flight “fire safety OT” or “mail honcho” would have sufficed. I would have been happy, dutiful even, handing out care packages from home to my flight mates. All I wanted was a commission on my personal terms—doing the best job I could, causing no trouble but taking no guff.

It quickly became apparent that to survive OTS, the most difficult task would be simply remaining calm. The key to basic training was following orders thoroughly and with alacrity; those with leadership potential naturally ended up coordinating and directing others in accomplishing those tasks. The key to OTS, however, was time management and leadership. Prevailing as a group was as important as it had been in basic; but we potential officers also had to show ourselves to be capable of functioning without constant oversight.

The school tossed us into a high-stress, fast-paced, highly structured environment and told us how to survive it: prioritize. Again and again, we were lectured about time management. After the first two weeks, a great deal of our time was our own to organize. We had to create a path of order through the overwhelming number of tasks we were given to complete, none of which, standing alone, was very difficult. It's just that none of them stood alone. Our flight commanders tossed us piles of regulations and study guides that first day—wearing of the uniform, flight regs, squadron regs, group regs, wing regs, physical fitness requirements, the demerit system, academics, professional development, Air Force history, the honor code . . . it went on and on. We would regularly be tested on our knowledge of these documents as well as held responsible for the least violation of a reg, no matter how obscure.

Unlike the huge, open bays of my basic flight, at OTS we were two to a comfortable room on coed floors. The bathrooms were single-sex but otherwise there were men all around. No attempt was made to put all the women together on a floor, and they only told us once that no “fraternizing” would be allowed. OTS was the most gender-neutral place I've ever been. Our unisex barracks uniform was squadron shorts, white T-shirt, flip-flops. Underwear not optional. We saw each other at our worst every day during the first two degrading “chicken stripes” weeks; it was hard to see each other as sexual beings after that. When we ran the confidence course (again), I had trouble getting over a high wall we had to rope-climb. The people behind me couldn't get over until I did, so I was heaving and straining and getting nowhere. Suddenly, a big, strong, and undoubtedly male hand landed on my butt and pushed. I scrambled over the wall, utterly unconcerned with whose hand it was or what its owner might have been thinking at the time. I didn't even look back.

Lights-out was at eleven. Unlike in basic, you could go to bed before that, but given the near impossibility of completing all our tasks, more than a few minutes early was a forlorn hope. Focused on the big tasks like reg memorization and mastering the push-ups which would bedevil me the entire twelve weeks, I usually managed fifteen minutes or so early on the theory that nothing could be accomplished in so little time. But I watched my roommate one night methodically folding socks, organizing her briefcase, and making lists right until the clock struck eleven. Fifteen minutes seemed a lot longer to me after that, and I accepted that OTS was really, truly a full-time job. About halfway through, after we'd proved ourselves, things lightened up and I sometimes got as much as an extra hour's sleep. But until then, I never wasted another moment.

THE MOANERS BENCH

Our flight commander, Captain Lowery, called me in to give me my evaluation. Beaming, he told me he wanted me to compete for a squadron position.

It was basic training all over again. I begged to be passed over.

I wanted a commission, not a command. When I told myself I could do anything in the Air Force, I didn't mean all at once. I wanted to become an officer, then cast around for ways to the top. I had no intention of shooting for the moon at OTS, failing, and being shown the door. In basic, they'd been desperate to rebuild after the Viet Nam drawdown: you had to impregnate the base commander's daughter or smoke a joint in his office to get shipped back home. At OTS, if you wanted to leave, you could SIE (self-initiated elimination) as quickly as they could complete the paperwork. Not only that, if you appeared not to have the right stuff, they'd ask for your SIE, then force you out themselves if you demurred. I was frantic to remain unnoticed.

Just like Technical Sergeant Harris's had, Captain Lowery's proud smile turned to disgust. Maybe it was disappointment.

“So, you want to be a ‘low-key OT,' huh?” he sneered.

Hell, yes! I thought.

Among ourselves, we lavished praise on the OTs who managed to keep their heads low and graduate with the same butter bars the most “strack” OT did. I had to mount a convincing argument that I wasn't trying to evade responsibility but rather was trying to focus as seriously as possible on the basics, unworthy as I was, to be sure I'd make a fitting officer. I tried to convince him that I was barely keeping up and had to stay focused on just that, graduating.

Lowery pulled a pad to him and began to write, narrating aloud ominously: “OT Dickerson, despite her demonstrated excellence and natural leadership, refuses to assist her flight in accomplishing its mission. Preferring her own leisure time and . . .”

I drew myself to my full height, stood at my tallest “attention.”

“Sir, I'd be honored to compete for a squadron position.”

We exchanged salutes and I marched away. At least this time, I didn't cry in the hallway.

——

I had to be an officer. I had to. I was mad as hell about being forced into this competition—which, as Eddie's daughter, I saw as the world trying to keep me from becoming an officer—but there was nothing I could do but try my absolute best. Captain Lowery backed me up every step of the way. The Air Force didn't just tell me I could achieve if I wanted to, it showed me how.

Captain Lowery gave me the applicable regs so I could prepare for the boards; in the meantime, I redoubled my efforts in everything else—academics, athletics, room inspections, personal hygiene and posture, bone density. Whatever.

Flight commanders assign flight jobs based on their assessment of their OTs' aptitudes, then nominate some, like me, to compete at the squadron level. That board sends the cream of the crop on to compete at the group level. The group selects for its level, then sends the three remaining OTs on to compete for the top three wing jobs; these are announced in front of the entire wing at the graduating class's last commander's call. Each level had its own process, which I had to master to win. In the end, it all came down to meeting the board of current leaders; each picked its own successors based on flight commander recommendations, our OT records, but most of all on their personal assessment after “eyeballing” us. There were probably eight board members and perhaps fifteen of us being evaluated. The board would pose essay-type questions and we each had to answer one of our choice. The questions would range in subject from current events to the significance of different aspects of OTS's training philosophy.

The afternoon we met the board, I met my competition for the first time. All white, all male, all oozing confidence and bonhomie. Perversely, it relaxed me. There was no way little old black Debbie from north St. Louis was going to be chosen over these white boys, not by a board full of white boys just like them. Never gonna happen. All I wanted was to acquit myself honorably and show Captain Lowery that I'd given it my all.

In the anteroom where we waited, some protocol OT came out and briefed us on the procedures for reporting in to the board and for answering the questions. It was meant to fluster us (otherwise it would have been spelled out in the regs for us to study): something like, march in, about-face, salute the flag, about-face and say “Sir, OT Dickerson reports as ordered, sir,” assume parade rest between questions, salute before speaking . . . on and on. They wanted to see how we responded to pressure.

Several of my competitors panicked, begging the OT to repeat the sequence and frantically pacing about, working out their choreography. Watching them, I realized it would be best to just do whatever I did confidently, without hesitation. It would matter less that I forgot to about-face than that I was sweat-drenched and tentative. My father taught me that. “If you gon be wrong,” he'd say, “be wrong the right way.” Once when I was small, without a hint to us that anything was amiss, my mother calmly called a cousin to come baby-sit, waited for her to arrive, then drove herself to the hospital in crippling pain from internal hemorrhaging after major surgery. This bunch of college boys was not going to see me sweat.

We marched in and took our seats. While the current OT wing commander explained procedure, I had another of those moments.

I could see everything and everyone in the room all at once, like through a fish-eye lens. I never moved, yet as I “sat at attention,” I could see up and down that row of scrubbed, white, male faces. I could look across the room and see
that
row of scrubbed, white, male faces. And I could see my own glaringly brown hands on my womanly brown thighs, as ordered. My brown heels locked at a forty-five-degree angle, brown spine ramrod, brown breasts jutting as proudly as 34B's can. Dignified surroundings. Comfortable conditions. Respectful treatment. The flag symbolizing America's acknowledgment that she needed me and what I had to offer. Open-ended possibilities.

I belong here. I earned this.

I had clarity. I had confidence. Not based on besting others, just a confidence based on knowing that I could do this. I could do anything I needed to. I could handle myself with dignity and these white men could do whatever they were going to do about it—judge me fairly or not. I wasn't scared. I wasn't intimidated. I wasn't invested in their external validation. I could do this, but I didn't need this. They could select me or not. Either way, I was going to feel just fine about myself. I was going to work hard regardless of the outcome and the world could reward me or not.

Tension crackled from everyone on my side of the room but me. Uncertainty about what questions we'd be asked was beginning to take a toll on me, though. What if I waited too long and let a question I had covered go by?

Hyperaware, I remembered something from my childhood. I had to be baptized before I could become an actual member of the church I'd been attending from birth. When I was ten or so, at Emmanuel's yearly revival, my parents decided it was time we all got baptized and “join church.”

Starting one Sunday night and continuing every night that week until the following Sunday, revivals were frightening, nightmarish events. The adults screamed and moaned with even greater vehemence than usual; the ministers ratcheted up their fire and brimstone to horror-movie proportions. It was weird being at church on a Tuesday night at midnight. Worse, the unbaptized had to sit up front all alone without our parents on “the moaners' bench.” Everybody stared and pointed at us and we were viewed as if demons rode on our shoulders. Adults exhorted us to repent our evil ways and preached at us nonstop. What if we died unbaptized? Straight to hell, young lady! Die? Me? What fiends I thought them.

Each night, after terrorizing us for hours, they'd set up chairs at the altar while the donation plates went around and “open up de arms a de choich.” You had to get an adult to pray with you at the altar before you could sit in the chair and ask to be baptized, pretty please. That was the only way to get off the moaners' bench. It was such a nightmare, I just sat there night after night while all the other kids dragged one of their parents up to the altar and ended the torture. But I was frozen. I couldn't move. Every night at home, Mama begged me to ask for her like everybody else already had on the first night, but I couldn't open my mouth, I couldn't move my legs. I just hoped it would eventually end without me having to exercise any volition.

The last three nights, I was all alone on the moaners' bench. I had nightmares for years about it. The longer I put it off, “the deeper the sin sunk down” in me, old-timers cautioned. If we'd been eastern European peasants, they'd have made the sign of the evil eye and thrown garlic at me. Only Mama showed me compassion; the other adults thought it was the “debil” in me. The other kids thought me a moron. Finally, on the last possible night, after all the sermons had been aimed directly at me by name, I finally forced myself, sobbing with terror and humiliation, to go get Mama to pray for me.