Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (13 page)

Kim turns her face to hide her own tears. The
child's tears splatter the floor as Patty runs out of the
kitchen.

**

As Kim pulls up to her apartment she spots
two MPs standing outside her door. Oh, no, they found her! She
stays seated in her car for a moment, then remembers Jim will be
home soon for lunch. She must get this over with.

She gets out of the car. Without saying a
word the MPs wait for her to unlock the door and follow her in.

The MPs sit on the couch and she takes the
armchair. One MP explains how they tracked her down. They are here
to “review” the shooting.

Twenty minutes later, only 10 minutes before
Jim’s expected home, they are still asking questions.

"Mrs. Benton, we still don't understand why
you left the scene of the shooting without waiting for the
MPs."

She twists her clenched hands. "My husband,"
she says.

"Yes?" the one with the nametag of Skelly
prompts.

"I can't explain."

"Jealous type, is he?" the other one,
McCauley, asks.

She looks away.

"We're from the South," she says. "We do
things differently back home."

Skelly nods. "Mind if we ask your husband a
couple of questions about that night?"

"No, you can't! I mean, please don't. He'll
be so furious."

"Why is that, Mrs. Benton?" McCauley
asks.

She hesitates. "He just will."

"I see," McCauley says.

She has to get the men out of here before Jim
gets home!

"I was wrong not to stay. I'm sorry. I really
am. And I promise to come to the MP office if you need any more
information. Please, please, don't stay here waiting for my
husband. He just wouldn't understand."

McCauley stands. "We don't want to cause any
trouble so we'll be going now. Just remember, never leave the scene
of a shooting again."

Please
God may she never again be at the scene of a shooting.

“
There are no courtesies, customs, or privileges
that apply ONLY to Regular Army officers and their wives.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

Wendy checks herself in the tiny bathroom
mirror. Her lipstick isn't smeared, her hair is combed, and – she
smiles – she looks about as good as she's going to get. There's
nothing else she can do around the trailer to put off going.
Entertainment committee meetings don't fill all the time. She can't
just sit around thinking about ... things. Things such as whether
Nelson will be sent to Vietnam and whether she’ll fit into the mold
of an officer’s wife.

She should go to this meeting. See if she can
contribute.

The notice she spotted had been posted on the
Officers Club announcement board: "Volunteers Needed to Help Out in
Post Clinic." The notice invited interested wives to come to an
introductory meeting at the post hospital at 1300 hours today.

Whenever Wendy sees time noted in military
terms she feels as if she has wandered into the pages of a
futuristic novel. The phrase 1300 hours connotes space ships
blasting off, captains synchronizing their wrist communicators.

Wendy has read ever since she was little. Her
mama encouraged her to travel through books. Once, at age 10, she
asked her mama, "Why are all the girls white in the books? Aren't
there any little black girls who have adventures?" Her mama said,
"Sure, honey, but they just don't get written about." Then her mama
added, "Just pretend the little girls are black."

Wendy still wonders why she can't read about
black women having adventures the way white women do. It's getting
harder and harder to pretend the heroines are black.

As she starts the car, she remembers there
will be black patients in the clinic because lots of black enlisted
men are stationed here at Ft. Knox. It's just in the officers'
ranks that black men are not very prevalent. There’s one other
black man in Nelson's AOB class. His wife's home having a baby and
Wendy hasn't met him.

Yesterday evening, feeling lonely for other
blacks, Wendy suggested to Nelson that, when the post pools open on
Memorial Dad, they swim at the pool where children are allowed –
the one that families of both officers and enlisted men go to – so
that she might meet some black women. Nelson said no. "I'm an
officer and I want to be with my fellow officers."

Wendy parks her car in the lot outside the
post hospital. Why hasn’t she told Nelson where she's going? He
might discourage her, perhaps say, "You think a bunch of whites
want your help?"

Determined to do something herself, she
whispers “I think I can, I think I can” from the children’s book
“The Little Engine That Could.” Then she walks into the
hospital.

Next to the door marked "clinic" a taped sign
announces the volunteer meeting in the multipurpose room down the
hall. Wendy hesitates outside the room, stalling before confronting
a room of strangers, white strangers. She reminds herself she went
to the coffee for new AOB wives. Yet she was rightfully there. Here
she may not be wanted.

"I think I can, I think I can."

She enters a room where six white women sit
around a long table. An older white woman standing near the tables
approaches Wendy.

"Good afternoon. I'm Mrs. Donovan." For
perhaps the first time in her life Wendy is relieved not to hear a
Southern drawl but a clipped New England accent. Aren't Northerners
less prejudiced? "Have you come about the volunteer meeting?"

"Yes, I have." She hesitates. "I'm Wendy
Johnson."

"Welcome, Mrs. Johnson. Please be seated.
We'll just wait another moment to see if anyone else comes."

Wendy sits down in a chair two away from the
nearest woman. All the women wear suits. Following the dress code
in “Mrs. Lieutenant,” Wendy has worn a navy blue cotton suit. She
puts her purse down on the table. Has she sat in the wrong
place?

Wendy has never ridden a bus. Her mama or
papa drove her anywhere she wanted to go and she walked to school.
At college everything was close enough to walk to or she would take
a taxi to shop in the nearby stores. She knows that in the South
blacks sat at the back of buses for decades. In school she learned
about Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in
Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, resulting in a black boycott of the
buses and ultimately the desegregation of those buses. Yet now
Wendy feels as uneasy as a black dropped in from Mars might feel
sitting down in the front section of any Southern segregated bus
and then noticing the white sea of hostile faces.

Mrs. Donovan takes the chair at the far end
of the tables. "Let's start." She welcomes them all again, then
asks everyone to say her own name and her husband's assignment at
Ft. Knox.

Everyone makes a point to state her husband's
rank. All the husbands are officers. Perhaps there was no notice
posted at the enlisted men’s club.

Wendy explains that her husband is here for
Armor Officers Basic.

"You'll only be here a short time, isn't that
right?" Mrs. Donovan asks. Mrs. Donovan's husband has the highest
rank of the husbands of the women here. Is that what makes Mrs.
Donovan in charge of this meeting?

Wendy nods. "I'd like to help out. I really
would."

A dark-haired woman in a lime green linen
suit asks, "How do you think you can help, Mrs. Johnson?"

"My papa is a doctor" – she feels, actually
feels, the surprise of the other women – "and I've watched him do
simple procedures. I could ..."

"Your father is a doctor?" the same woman
asks.

"He's an internist in South Carolina."

"I'll be," the woman says, turning to the
person next to her.

Tiny droplets of moisture prick Wendy’s
hands. See, Nelson would say, you asked for this, going to a
meeting where you don't belong.

Mrs. Donovan stares down the table at the
whispering woman. "Please, ladies, let's have no extraneous
talking."

She turns to Wendy. "That's wonderful, my
dear. I'm sure we can find something for you to help out with."

Relief washes over her. Mrs. Donovan has
included her, made her feel welcome.

A half hour later Mrs. Donovan ends the
meeting after explaining the workings of the clinic and the
opportunities for volunteers. Then she passes around a sign-up
sheet. Wendy records her name, address and phone number. In the
column marked "preferred assignment" she writes "whatever will help
most."

Mrs. Donovan stands at the door saying
good-bye to each woman. As Wendy comes up to her, she smiles and
says, "We very much appreciate your offer. I will call you in a few
days. I have something specific in mind for you."

In her mind’s eye Wendy sees herself on her
knees, scrubbing the clinic floors. Stop it! she tells herself.
She'll just have to wait for Mrs. Donovan's call.

If there is a call.

**

Later that day Wendy sits at the minuscule
kitchen table in the trailer and opens a letter from her best
friend in college. Assigned as roommates in their first year,
Regina and Wendy also roomed together during the following three
years. Regina remains at school, now doing graduate work in
literature.

"Dear Wendy," the letter reads. "I miss you
terribly and hope that you are having a good time in Kentucky.
Ginny and I have been getting along rather well this year in our
graduate dorm suite. Tim sends his best and hopes that you'll be
able to come to our wedding in December in Chicago."

Wendy rereads the words "our wedding," then
peers at her formal wedding photo in its silver frame propped on
the coffee table. She purposely placed the photo in the middle of
the small trailer to remind her of better times.

Her parents saw to it that her wedding day
was truly magnificent. Chantilly lace completely covered her dress
of ivory satin, and she had a matching Chantilly lace mantilla. The
dress' train stretched for several yards behind her, and two little
girls in ivory satin dresses held it up.

The ceremony took place in her family's
neighborhood church with the reception in the church hall. Huge
flower bouquets transformed a drab chapel and reception hall into a
tropical paradise.

Only blacks attended the wedding. Her papa
had white patients, and her parents knew many of the whites in the
town, but her parents didn’t want to chance any trouble at their
only child's wedding. Peace and serenity were the reigning
attributes of the day. And much joy.

Afterwards she and Nelson drove to a hunting
lodge loaned to them by a white friend of her papa's. They were
welcome to the place for two weeks, with one condition: they
couldn't tell anyone except her parents whose place they used.

In the bathroom Wendy took off her going-away
outfit – a checked sleeveless dress with matching coat – and slid
her new silk nightgown over her excited body.

She could feel Nelson's tension as she
slipped into the double bed. Wendy had been brought up that
respectable women didn't sleep with men before marriage. So here
she and Nelson were – about to make love for the first time. A wave
of nervousness rocked her stomach. Then Nelson put his arms around
her and kissed her.

The knock on the trailer door startles
Wendy.

At the door stands a thin woman perhaps in
her late forties holding a plastic tumbler. "Hi, I wondered if I
could borrow a cup of ..." The woman stops in mid-sentence.

She's realizing that I'm black Wendy thinks.
She'll probably decide she doesn't need to borrow anything.

"... sugar." The woman holds up the tumbler.
"I ... I brought my own container.”

Wendy lets out her breath and smiles. Maybe
the woman's hesitancy came from nervousness over asking a favor of
a stranger. "Come on in," Wendy says. She opens the trailer's
screen door and motions the woman inside.

A white neighbor has entered her home for the
first time. Wait till she tells Nelson.

**

Two days later Wendy sits in the passenger
seat as Nelson drives their blue Ford Mustang. It's at graduation
gift from her parents, a gift they made plain they hope her husband
Nelson will live to enjoy.

Every time she thinks of her parents and
their adamant views against the Vietnam War she shivers.

"We shouldn't be fighting that war for those
people who don't even appreciate our sacrifices," her mother would
say if a friend happened to mention Vietnam. "We should be spending
our money and efforts here at home. There's plenty to fix in the
United States."

And her father would add, "It's not the same
as World War II. We're not fighting to save the world from
fascism."

Neither one understands why Nelson would want
to serve in the U.S. Army. They seem to have forgotten knowing that
all male students at Wendy and Nelson’s college were required to
take two years of ROTC. And once in ROTC Nelson became convinced
that he should serve.

Wendy watches Nelson drive, seeing him as she
did the first time, singing a solo in the college glee club, his
round face glowing, his voice echoing throughout the practice hall.
She joined the glee club her second semester at college; she didn't
have the confidence to join first semester. As her homesickness
intensified, she wanted to recreate the joy that filled her
whenever she sang in her church choir. As she watched Nelson
perform, a thrill ran through her.

She didn't have the courage to introduce
herself. He came up to her.

At this moment Nelson signals for a
right-hand turn, and they pull into a parking lot in front of an
industrial building.

They need to get the most out of Nelson’s
one-time $300 uniform allowance. Obviously the lower the price paid
for each uniform, the further the allowance will stretch. So here
they are, at a warehouse in Louisville reputed to sell officer
uniforms for better prices than on the army post.