Mare's War (16 page)

Being that squashed up next to so many people doesn’t always set well, though. Sometimes I walk out of my bunk just to be walking. We are supposed to be in quarters after lights-out, but can’t nobody stop me from visiting the “head,” or the “necessary,” as Staff Sergeant Hill calls it. I’m not surprised to see Peaches one night standing at a sink, patting on cold cream.

“What’s cooking, Peaches Carter?”

“Marey Lee, you ever wonder if this is where you’re supposed to be?”

Peaches sounds riled up and worried. “Well, I don’t usually wonder if
this
is where I’m supposed to be,” I tell her, motioning to the toilet, and she lets out her big old laugh.

“Be serious, Mare. You ever wonder if we’re doing right being in this army?”

I splash some water on my face. “I don’t know.” No wonder Peach can’t sleep. I straighten up. “I don’t wonder if this is where I’m supposed to be ’cause I have no place else to be. Everywhere I am, I’ve got to do the best I can do right while I’m there, you know?”

Peaches nods slowly. “I guess so.”

I perch on the sink next to her. “What are you worrying about anyway, all serious in the middle of the night?”

Peaches shrugs. “Just … things.” She sighs and smooths the surface of the pink cold cream with her fingertip. “I got a letter from home, and it got me thinking.”

“Aw, Peach, you homesick already?”

“No.” Peaches shakes her head. “It’s not that. Almost all my girlfriends from school are engaged, my friend Adelaide just got married … Cousin Julia’s about to have her first baby, and … well, here I am.”

“Well, you won’t always be here. Soon as this war’s over—” I begin, but Peaches interrupts, her eyes wide.

“No. Marey, I’m here … and I’m glad. This is where I
want
to be. I can’t imagine me having anybody’s baby nor wearing anybody’s ring. This army thing, this is the best thing I’ve ever done, Marey Lee. I’m good at this stuff—at working for the communications officer. I’m good at Morse code, cryptography is fun, I can do the teletype and switchboard in my sleep—I’m good at everything. I don’t miss home much anymore, and I don’t ever think about getting hitched. I’m … starting to think something is wrong with me.” Peaches glances at me, then looks down.

“Wrong with you? ’Cause you’re happy?”

“No … well, not exactly. There might be something wrong, Mare. Something serious.”

“Like what?”

Peaches flicks a glance at my face. “You
know.”

I open my mouth to say, “No, I don’t know,” but then I do. I know exactly what Peach is telling me, and my tongue just freezes up. I can’t think of a word to say.

“Skip it.” Peaches puts the lid back on her cold cream, keeping her eyes down. “I think I’m sleepy after all.”

I can’t force myself to move as Peaches cleans up and tightens the belt on her robe. She’s halfway into the hall when I close my mouth and grab her sleeve.

“That’s not right,” I blurt, yanking her back into the bathroom.

Peaches looks at me, wary, but I am sure of what to say. “You’ve been on this boat too long, Peaches Carter, ’cause, girl, you have
lost
your mind. Now you
know
that just because you are
good
at something a man might do, that doesn’t make you a
man
. Girl, my mama butchered hogs and picked cotton and kept a roof over me and Feen’s head, and she is definitely not a man. I chopped wood and about near killed myself hauling grease and scrubbing floors out at Young’s Diner, but I’d sure rather do that than have a baby, thank you all the same. You tell your cousin Julia she’d best leave you be.” I tap Peaches’s arm emphatically, then hurry out the rest of the thought before I lose my nerve. “But even if you are like
that,”
I add softly, “even if you are one of those girls, you are still my friend, Peaches Carter.”

Peaches look up at me, her dark eyes intent. “You sure?”

“Didn’t I just say so?”

Peaches lowers her voice to a thread. “You be real sure, Marey Lee. Mama’s friend Lydia is … a woman like that,
and Lydia won’t see us anymore. She’s afraid we’ll get her reputation.”

“Peaches, just about all of us on this boat are gonna have a reputation. Folks back home in Bay Slough have already been telling me about how some girls around here ain’t no better than they should be, telling me to watch myself. But you know what? We don’t have time to worry about all of that. For one thing, we know what is and isn’t true. For another thing? Cap Ferguson has us do too much work to worry with carrying on about that.”

“You know,
that’s
right,” Peaches sighs, slumping against the sink again. “Sometimes I think Staff Sergeant Hill thinks of stuff for us to do just because she can.”

“It will all be different when we get to Paris, though, huh?” I grin, knowing I will set Peaches off.

“We are going to Paris,” she says, frowning at me. “I know you don’t believe me….”

“Last time you said Paris, France, we went to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, is all I’m sayin’.”

“Girl, don’t you start. We are on a boat, crossing the ocean….”

“Ina White say she hear we going to Scotland.”

“Scotland?!”
Peaches forgets to whisper. “Scotland’s not—”

The door opens, and Lieutenant Hundley pokes her head inside. We both snap to attention, arms at stiff angles while we salute in our bathrobes.

“You ladies were just leaving?” Lieutenant Hundley looks sleepy, but her eyes are sharp.

“Yes, ma’am,” Peaches and I say in unison.

“Good night, then.” Lieutenant Hundley returns our salutes crisply.

“Good night, ma’am,” we say, and march meekly back to bed.

Lying in my bunk, I think about what Peaches said. Peaches Carter is close like kin, and I could no more not be her friend than I could make Feen not be my baby sister. All of the girls—Ruby, Annie, Dovey, and Phillipa—are like kin, too. No matter what Peach is or what she says—nobody and nothing nobody could say about her would ever turn me against her or any of them.

I make up my mind to keep an eye on Peaches. Kin takes care of each other; that’s what Mama always taught me. The Third Platoon takes care of its own, even the likes of that mealymouthed Gloria Madden. Nobody deserves to feel sad and low out here on the ocean. We are too far from home to not lean on each other.

Those of us who don’t have the heaves the next morning have a good time playing cards and talking about what we think we going to do. Dovey Borland’s mama is a hairdresser, and she puts up our hair, even though the sea air makes it crimp up again in no time. Every time we go outside for drill, our hair gets sticky and stiff from the salt, but it doesn’t matter ’cause we got our helmets on and we sweat under them, while the fog drips off their tops. When we have free time, we go to each other’s bunks, paint our nails, and read each
other’s mail and
Life
magazines. We have to lie in the bunks to read and then lean out ’cause there isn’t ever enough light. Most girls write letters all day long, they are so bored. Dorothy Rogers is going to write herself a book one of these days.

“Your deal, Phil,” Ruby say, and Phillipa grabs the cards and deals out ten to each of us.

“Which one’s the knock pile again?” I ask. Mama always said that cards are the devil’s business, but Phillipa’s granddaddy is a preacher, and she plays gin rummy all the time. Phillipa’s teaching me, and what Mama doesn’t know can hardly make her mad, can it?

“This one.” Peaches points and leans forward. Since I’m sitting on the edge of the top bunk, I sneak a look at her hand.

“Girl, don’t you try to—”

And just like that, the whole room rolls over.

Probably just about everybody on the whole ship sucks in a breath, and then the screaming starts.

I fly off the bed, screaming in pain as my knee slams against the iron frame of the bunk across from me. I fall hard, and Peaches lands on top of my head and raps her elbow on a footlocker. My teeth come down on my tongue, and I can taste the metal in my blood. We hear crashes and screams from all over the ship as perfume bottles, duffles, shoes, books, pillows, and soldiers go sliding across the decks. Playing cards fall all around us like rain.

“What’s happening? Oh, my ribs, my ribs!” Dorothy, who was in her bunk, is on the floor, wailing.

“Ruby!” Peaches is screaming, and I can’t turn my head. “Get Ruby!”

Fear chokes me up, and I got a pain in my head and a pain in my neck, and my shoulder that Mama popped back is killing me. I finally get my head turned. Ruby’s got blood all down her face, and Phillipa is trying to crawl across the floor to get to her.

The ship groans, sounding like a cow about to calf. Outside, men are hollering orders and we can hear folks running. Peaches look at me with her eyes bugged out, and Phillipa starts to cry. I look at all that blood on Ruby’s face. She don’t look like she’s breathing.

“Lord Jesus,” Peach whispers as the ship lurches again, and I know right then and there I might not get back to Feen like I promised. I might not ever be anywhere but on this old ship ever again. Sorrow knots up my chest, and my heart pounds so loud I can feel it in my head. What if I die? What if I didn’t do right and Mama can’t never forgive me? Who’s gonna take care of Feen without me?

“P-Peaches, come h-help me,” Phillipa stutters, finally up on her knees, trying to mop the river of blood from Ruby’s face. Peaches gets a blanket and starts tucking it around Ruby using only one of her hands, which is shaking. She keeps the other one tucked up against her body. Her elbow is all swollen up and turning purple. Phillipa’s teeth are chattering, she’s so scared, but she and Peach, they’re trying to treat Ruby for shock like they taught us.

We are all shocked. Peach has got a shiner already started from where something smacked her in the eye. Phillipa can’t
talk straight without stuttering. Dorothy is spitting up, but I can’t get to her; there are too many trunks, and the ship keeps on rolling. Peach is just crying and holding on to me and crying some more till I can’t sit still. I have got to get out and see what happened.

My knee is swollen from hitting the bunk, but it takes my weight when I get up slow. I wipe blood off my chin. My ears is ringing.

“Marey Lee, what are you doing?” Peaches ask, but I open the door anyway. Girls are talking loud and shouting. Some are just crying. “What happened?” somebody hollers. The white girls down the way don’t know any more than we do, and for a while, everybody just cries and looks around, trying to find out what we hit. One of the girls say she sure we hit an iceberg, and everybody starts crying then. Finally, we see some officer or other coming down the hall to make an announcement, and we snap to attention.

“As you were,” the sergeant calls, and we wait, trying to hear.

“It’s Germans,” somebody hiss, and we all shut up for real then. The sergeant says we are being followed by a German U-boat. They issue a “general quarters,” which mean all hands have to stay belowdecks, in our bunks, and strap our stuff down. But Ruby can’t wait for any all clear. Medics come and wheel her out while we try and pick up. Dorothy limps to sick bay to tape up her ribs, and Peaches gets a sling for her arm. Annie comes in crying and balls up with her Bible. I hunch up over my sore legs and listen to her pray.

Mama used to say the devil would catch us up short when we forgot ourselves. Today, I see that’s the plain truth. We forgot ourselves. This wasn’t ever a pleasure cruise. This company is on a ship to go to war. We got to painting nails and we forgot what we were doing.

From now on, we keep our life vests out where we can see them. We march to mess twice a day and stand and eat from trays on them counters, bracing ourselves with one hand and trying to keep our mess kits and our forks and our food in front of us with the other. We march right back to our bunks, wearin’ our helmets strapped to our heads. Staying in quarters, Peaches gets seasick, and then Annie, lyin’ in her bunk, moans like she is dying. Once Annie starts to retch, we are
all
sick.

Then, in the dead of night, a storm blows up. All we can hear is the wind howling and the chains of our bunks rattling as we go up and down. Pretty soon the air gets foul as more folks start vomiting, and there is no way the few of us who are well enough can keep up. In the latrine, the floors are slick with more than just water.