Mare's War (23 page)

“Aren’t you sick of films by now? Let’s go to the theater!” Annie argues.

“Oh, the theater!” Delly say. Her face gets red. “I … Won’t that be rather expensive?”

“Have they got a balcony?” Ruby asks, but Annie shake her head.

“We don’t need a balcony. We can get some fish and chips after so Mrs. Dye doesn’t have to go through any trouble, too,” Annie says.

“It’s no trouble,” Delly says, smiling.

“Don’t think of the cost; we’ll treat,” Annie says to Delly. “It’s a good idea.”

Ruby nods hard, but me and Annie know she is only trying to get out of eating boiled sausages and Brussels sprouts.

“Isn’t there a theater near that little joint where we were last night?” Ruby asks, and Annie roll her eyes.

“Girl, didn’t your mama teach you not to run after men?” she teases her.

Ruby narrows her eyes at Annie. “Do you see me running?”

“I don’t know about a playhouse,” I say, but Annie shushes me.

“This is culture, Marey. Shakespeare was from England. You’ll like it.”

In the end, we take the train and then a cab—for ten shillings—downtown. Delly’s mama shakes her head at the money we spend, but Annie says we are seeing the sights. Ten shillings is about two dollars, and we all put some in for that.

At the theater, folks are sitting in seats way up top and down in the front. We sit in the cheaper seats, but we can see enough. Everything is soft, and the curtains look like velvet way up there. We don’t have much time to spend looking around, though, because the lights get low, and then we see a man wearing black, with white makeup on his face, holding a sword.

“Who’s there?” he says, and his voice rolls all the way back up to where we sitting.

The only play I ever saw is the play we do every year at Sunday school, and that doesn’t hold a candle to this. Here folks go crazy and make speeches, and everybody wear robes and costumes and makeup and talk like the Bible folks in the King James. This girl named Ophelia flat loses her mind, and there are ghosts, all kinds of fighting and stabbing. Folks die like flies, and at the end, hardly anybody is left.
Hamlet
wasn’t nothing like this when we studied it at school.

After the show, there is no light on the street, and the shops have got drapes drawn and candles lit. There is a line for cabs, so Delly say we should take the Tube.

Annie frowns. “Are you sure?” she says. “The Underground must be pitch-black!”

Delly say we will stick together and be just fine.

The Tube is a train underground, just like it says. Delly tells us that only last year folks were sleeping down there, trying to get out from under the bombs. “Whole families lived there who had lost their homes,” she says. “Most of them were evacuated to Reading, till we were full.” She shakes her head, and I can barely see her pale skin in the dark. “Some folks still live down here.”

We link arms and walk, and Delly keeps her torch pointed at the ground so we can see. Ruby is on one side of Delly, and Annie’s on the other, and Ruby is whistling while she walks, which I know her mama says is not lady-like, but we are feeling fine.

“Hey, where you girls going so fast?” somebody call out.

“Party’s not over!” somebody else hollers. “Where ya goin’, girls?”

“Nothing like a drunk GI.” Annie sighs. We walk a little faster.

There is no light at the railway station in Reading, either, but the station man has got a torch. We walk down the road, keeping quiet. Then Delly links her arm through Ruby’s arm and she say, “So,
now
what are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?” Ruby laughs.

“I’m not tired yet,” Delly says, and we all laugh at her. “Let’s go to the pub.”

Delly is crazy, but I like her.

When we get back, Mrs. Dye is waiting for us just like
Sister Dials would have been, her hair rolled up in pipe cleaners, listening to the wireless. Annie says she should not have waited, but Mrs. Dye wants to hear about London. Delly mixes up some powdered milk on the stove, and Ruby takes out one of her chocolate bars and melts it in there. We girls talk, sipping our cocoa, and I think of Feen. Tonight feels almost like we are sisters at home.

“How long did Tiny have to stay in jail?” I ask. “It’s so unfair that he had to go at all.”

“Was a whole lot that wasn’t fair then.” Mare sighs. “I don’t remember how long they kept them—three or four days, I guess. Like Jake said, it happened all the time, so he and Bob just took it in stride.”

“It seems so weird that interracial dating was such a big deal,” Tali muses. “It’s so common now.”

“Depends on where you are,” Mare says, glancing over her shoulder to change lanes. “Some folks still aren’t that comfortable with it.”

“I guess.” We’re quiet for a moment. “Do you think Tiny married Adele?” I ask.

Mare smiles a little. “That Delly. If I recall, she married her school friend from the Royal Air Force. Tiny went on to the Pacific.”

We follow Interstate 10 all the way into Houston, and suddenly we emerge in the middle of a city. After endless highways between clusters of small towns, Houston looks
massive, full of quickly moving Texans heading in every direction, blowing their horns and driving assertively.

In the middle of the afternoon, the road is a sea of cars, and we wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the downtown area. Mare is tapping her nails against the steering wheel impatiently.

“What’s going on here?” I ask as we creep forward a car length, heading toward the business district. “How could there be so much traffic in the middle of the day?”

“It’s probably for Juneteenth,” Mare says. “Folks come in for that from all over.”

“Must be a big deal around here.” I lean over the seat. “Most people at home don’t do anything on Juneteenth, except maybe have a barbecue.”

“Oh, shut up about barbecue,” Tali moans. “I’m starving.”

“We’re going to pick up something in a little bit,” Mare says. Then she adds, “Juneteenth is more of a Texas thing, since here it’s an actual state holiday.” She brakes for a stoplight, and waves of pedestrians in shorts and flip-flops cross. “Truth is, it ought to be a holiday everywhere.”

“Why? Isn’t it just for when the slaves in Texas were freed?”

“Yes and no.” Mare pulls forward again. “It’s actually a celebration of
all
slaves being freed; it’s just that the South heard the Emancipation Proclamation only very slowly. Even though the slaves were freed on January 1 in 1863, Southerners first heard about it in Galveston in 1865—”

“Wait, what?” Tali interrupts. “It took them two and a half years to get a clue?”

“Well, it wasn’t like slave owners just
told
their slaves they were free, now was it? News didn’t travel fast back then, and it’s not like the slaves were sending letters, since most of them couldn’t read nor write. Only when the Union marched on Galveston was the truth told.”

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.

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.