Mare's War (15 page)

In the dead of night, we fall in at the signal, our coats pulled on over our pajamas. They give us orders, tell us to pack up to ship out. They been doing this to us too many nights, so it is like habit by now to roll out of bed, pack my footlocker and duffle up tight, and fall in. We don’t leave a thing in our barracks, not one toothbrush nor one tube of hand cream. We lock our footlockers, shoulder our packs, and then we march, fast.

But this time, it is not too long before we realize this is not no drill.

“Double-time!” Staff Sergeant Hill say, and we all but flat out run, our packs jouncing up and down on our backs. Down the road, through the big gates, in six lines of six across, an arm-long space apart. The sound of our feet is like rifle shots in the ice-cold air. We might be half asleep, but at least when we’re marching, we get warm.

I wake up hours later when the train stops. We are in Virginia and heading further north. There is not much time to rest or stretch out; the train only stops for a minute, and after this, they say it won’t stop anymore. Lieutenant Hundley passes out box kits, and we eat where we sit. It is long hours until we reach Camp Shanks, New York, and by then it is almost morning. The train is full of our smells from hours of riding, but it is still a shock to get off into the cold wind again.

We fall into formation and march in our wrinkled field uniforms to a ferry and onto a loading pier. The icy air off of that water cuts us sharp, and I stomp my feet down real good
in that cold till my breath billows out like white clouds. I’m moving by habit, but I’m scared out my mind. I could be still in my bunk back at Oglethorpe, working in the kitchen or doing specialist training at motor transport school to drive around the commanders, generals, and all the other folks wearing brass medals. Why didn’t I stay?

My teeth chatter. I am cold and scared, but isn’t nothing I can do about it now. I take a deep breath, square up my shoulders, pray a little prayer that God bless Feen and Mama. Then I get on the boat. After all this time, I don’t aim to be left behind.

The best blackberry pie I have ever had can be found at a truck stop somewhere in the back of beyond in southern Arizona off of Interstate 10. What’s even better than blackberry pie is having it for breakfast.

Mare is nursing black coffee and buttered toast, as if her stomach is still bothering her. She is buried in the newspaper, catching up on world news and probably reading “Dear Abby” like she’s done every morning of the trip so far.

“So, where were they sending you?” I ask when she emerges from her reading for a moment.

Mare sighs. “Girl, let me read my paper and eat your … pie,” she says, shaking her head and giving my breakfast an amused look.

I shrug and fork up another mouthful.

Mare doesn’t bother to make us eat anything in particular, and especially after the incident with the plums, she really has no room at all to complain about what we eat, which is why for breakfast this morning I opted for pie and
ice cream. Tali is eating hash browns and slurping down a milk shake. If Mom were here, she’d say that someday eating like this is going to catch up to us, but today, I don’t care.

“More coffee?” The waitress hovers.

“Thank you.” Mare glances up as she turns the page. Her glasses make her eyes look huge and watery.

“Another milk shake for you, hon?” The waitress looks dubiously at my sister.

“No. I think I’d like a biscuit now. With honey butter.”

“All righty. And for you, miss? More pie?”

“Yes, please,” I say, blissfully licking my spoon. This is the best breakfast ever.

Last night, we got to the hotel early enough to have time for a nice shower and a decent meal. We drove away from the interstate to eat at a place with tablecloths and then walked through the town for a while as the cooling desert encouraged us to stretch our legs.

Ms. Crase would have loved observing someone else’s town. We saw flyers for the June Jamboree Play Day Tractor Pull and Car Show and a school with a big marquee in front that said Congratulations, Graduates and had Seniors! singed into the front lawn. We saw little kids trying to roller-skate on the sidewalk and whole families lined up at a hamburger joint, getting soft-serve ice cream, the little ones whining when their cones dripped. On a lawn in the middle of a sprinkler spray, a terrier lunged and barked at the bubbles in his wading pool.

It was kind of a surprise, but people looked the same to me as they do back home on a warm summer night—glad to be out and about, ready to say hello to their neighbors and enjoy a cool breeze. Most of the people we saw were even friendly enough to smile and nod at us as we walked by.

When we reached the town square, Mare was the first one to notice the tiny theater.

“Look at this,” she said, and dragged us toward a small building with a lit marquee. “A movie house.”

“That can’t have more than two screens,” Tali said, wiping her forehead. “Do you think they have AC?”

“Let’s go see.” Mare sounded like a little kid, and Tali looked at me and sighed.

“Mare, do we have to?” she groaned, but Mare bustled off ahead of us and peered through the tinted glass.

“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.

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.