Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (23 page)

“Jewish trainees.” Robert shook his head.
"When I was at ROTC summer camp, there was only one other Jew in my
platoon. Nobody ever said anything specific to us, but I'm sure
that we were singled out for some extra harassment. And we were
officer cadets. I can't imagine what would happen to a Jewish basic
trainee."

Sharon nodded, flipping her hair out of her
eyes. With the Fiat’s top down the humid air blew through the car.
"I really appreciate your going to lunch again at my grandparents'
apartment."

Robert laughed. "You didn't think I'd go
again after once sitting in a tiny sweltering hot kitchen at high
noon in front of the hot oven having hot chicken soup, hot brisket
and hot apple pie?"

Sharon laughed too. “That’s what I
meant.”

"Where did your grandmother learn to
cook?"

Sharon pictured her step-grandmother as she
often described herself playing with the black children in the
cotton fields of Mississippi. "She grew up poor. Maybe these big
hot meals mean she's made it, or maybe her first husband liked to
eat this way."

"It could have been what killed him."

They passed the small houses and cluttered
yards she'd seen on this back road before with Kim. At one place a
little boy clutching a rope swing with one hand waved to Sharon
with the other. She waved back.

"Do you want to see the movie 'Patton' at the
post theater?" she asked.

"Patton's nephew is an armor officer
stationed at Ft. Knox right now." Robert smiled. "It's neat that
we'll be seeing this movie about Patton while I'm training on tanks
and his nephew is also here."

Neat? Seeing a movie about tank battles in
World War II while Robert trained on tanks for the Vietnam War? Why
did the military hold such fascination for some people?

The first time she attended a military
function flashes in her mind. A few weeks after her momentous
decision at the student union, she attended the 1968 ROTC
Commissioning Parade for both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army
at Demonstration Hall Field at “four-ten o’clock” per the formal
invitation from the colonel who was the professor of military
science and the lieutenant colonel who was the professor of
aerospace studies. Robert in his dress green uniform escorted her
to the ceremony.

Sharon felt odd being alongside a man in
uniform. She had seen the old black-and-white photos of her father
in his World War II army uniform and her mother in her student
nurse’s uniform standing next to him. Yet then the U.S. fought a
just war to save the world from fascist tyranny. The Vietnam War
....

As they approached the field, another army
cadet greeted Robert, who stopped to introduce Sharon to Walter and
his girlfriend Beth, who were to be married at the end of spring
quarter. As the four of them continued walking towards the field,
Robert and Walter talked to each other about the overnight training
the following week – the rations they’d eat, the gear they’d
pack.

Sharon asked Beth, “Aren’t you worried about
marrying a man right before he goes on active duty?”

Beth smiled. “Any time we can have together
before he gets assigned an unaccompanied tour ...”

Sharon persisted. “Don’t you think this war
is wrong?”

Again Beth smiled, as if she understood
Sharon. “It’s not really important what I think about the war. I
love Walter – and I admire him for his commitment to something he
believes in, serving his country. It’s a better goal than most boys
here at college have. They seem more interested in getting
drunk.”

As if these patriotic boys could really stop
the Communist juggernaut from rolling over the Republic of South
Vietnam Sharon thought.

At the ceremony the commissioning address had
been given by Major General Alden Kingsland Sibley, but Sharon had
barely listened, her mind distracted by what Beth had said to her.
And Sharon had only glanced at the commissioning program listing
into which branch each army ROTC cadet was being commissioned, so
she had not really absorbed that Robert was one of the few being
commissioned in infantry.

Instead, by the end of the commissioning
address, Sharon had accepted that, although she was adamantly
against the Vietnam War and thus the U.S. Army by extension, she
had to admire Robert for committing to something for which he felt
passionate, something bigger than his own juvenile desires. And
Sharon realized that love isn’t controlled by political
considerations. It’s much more irrational than adding up the pros
and cons of the U.S. in Vietnam and then deciding to be
anti-war.

Hours later Sharon and Robert parked in his
Corvair on a back road near the sorority house. Since the start of
the fall quarter of 1967 the university curfew for women of 11:30
p.m. on weekdays and 1:00 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays had been
abolished, so Sharon did not have to fear breaking curfew.

Sharon and Robert kissed – long kisses that
excited the blood.

Robert reached under the Corvair’s front seat
and removed a small gift-wrapped box. “This is for you,” he
said.

Sharon slipped off the wrapping paper. The
box from the student bookstore held a tiny American flag pin lying
on top of a note.

Can you understand my commitment to serving
our country? Robert.

She stared at the flag pin, then reached
towards Robert’s formal bowtie.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tie it again. Had to have someone
tie it for me.”

“Why don’t you get a clip-on?”

“Not authentic.”

Sharon placed her hand on the bowtie. “What
if it’s not tied?”

“It won’t look right when I go back to the
dorm. I’m in uniform.”

Sharon dropped her hand to the top button
underneath the tie. “I can start lower.”

Robert’s honking at a stray dog alongside the
winding road brought Sharon back to the rural Kentucky scenery. And
30 minutes later they pulled up to the two-storey red-brick
apartment building where her grandparents had a first-floor
apartment. Goldenrod, Kentucky's state flower, scented the air.

Her grandparents met them at the door, her
grandfather clasping a brass-headed cane in his right hand. The hot
air from inside pushed against the drenching humidity from
outside.

"Dinner's not quite ready," her
step-grandmother said.

"Maybe we could take Grandpa for a walk,"
Sharon said. The heat outside had to be better than the heat
inside. Outside there might be a faint breeze.

The old man shook his head. "I can’t walk
that far."

"Of course you can, Grandpa. We'll just go
around the block."

She held his left arm. In slow motion he
moved first one foot, then the other foot, his cane tapping out his
snail-pace progress from the building’s front door to the street
sidewalk.

"What's new, Grandpa?" Sharon asked.

The old man didn't answer. He concentrated on
shuffling his feet.

Sharon glanced at Robert, his short haircut a
constant reminder – even when not in uniform – of his army
status.

She looked back at her grandfather.

He was born in a different century, didn't
have indoor plumbing as a child or any of the other conveniences
she considered necessities. Two things were still the same: 1) the
need for a country to have an army and 2) residents of that country
who refuse to fight. Her grandfather had told her about this in his
Yiddish-accented English.

"My father – his name was Velvel – was
drafted and served six years in the czar's army on the Turkish
border. He came one time for a furlough in six years. My mother
Chaye Shifra had to go out and peddle dress goods among the rich
people, the ones who had money, and my Aunt Rivka – she was
divorced – was a dressmaker. She took care of the babies, her
daughter and my oldest brother, while my mother sold the
goods."

Although Velvel was rewarded for his six
years of baking for the czar's army – granted the rare privilege of
a Jew in Russia being allowed to own land, he did not let his sons
serve. As each son came of military age, Velvel sent that son to
America. No son of his would fall into the czar's clutches!

Ship after ship at the turn of the century
brought escaping immigrants to America – "Give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free." The immigrants fled
harsh governments and years of required military service. Was this
so different today when long-haired draft protesters waved their
"Make love, not war" placards and burned their draft cards in
demonstrations across the country? They protested what to them
seemed a harsh government and they yearned to be free of the
quagmire of the Vietnam War.

Sharon shifted her hold on her grandfather's
arm. "Did you go over to the Jewish Community Center this week?"
she said.

"It's too far."

"Grandpa, it's a block away! How could it be
too far?"

The man stopped. "I'm sick," he said. "Real
sick. My doctor, he doesn't believe me." Tears rolled down his
cheeks.

"Grandpa!" She'd never seen him cry.

Sharon put her arm around his shoulders.
Robert supported him on the other side. "Let's go back to the
house. We'll take care of it."

Now at the Country Club pool as the sun
shines on Sharon’s suntanned back she reaches into her straw bag
and pulls out the book she started last night.

Opening a magazine, Kim asks, "What are you
reading?"

"’While 6 Million Died’ by Arthur D. Morse
about the Holocaust."

"What's the Holocaust?"

Sharon hesitates. Does Kim not know about
it?

"When the Nazis – the Germans – during World
War II killed six million Jews."

Kim sits up. "What do you mean the Germans
killed six million Jews?"

Sharon sits up too. "Did you have American
history in high school?"

"Senior year."

"Did you study World War II?"

Kim looks at the magazine in her lap, then up
at Sharon. "We didn't get that far in the book. We spent most of
our time on the Civil War. We just got up to World War I when
school ended."

Sharon will have to explain.

"You've heard about Hitler, right?"

"Yeees."

"Hitler, the leader of the Nazis during World
War II, was obsessed with getting rid of people whom he considered
untermenschen – subhumans. He set up concentration camps to
exterminate – kill – all these people.” Sharon pauses to take a
breath, keep her voice even. “Besides the six million Jewish men,
women and children killed solely because they were Jews – the Nazis
also killed millions of others, including Gypsies, religious
dissenters, political prisoners, mentally and physically deficient
people, and homosexuals. The book is about how the U.S. did nothing
to stop the killing."

Kim's face flushes. "What could the U.S. have
done?"

"For one thing, bomb the train lines used to
bring the Jews and others to the death camps. For another, make it
clear that there would be severe retribution against people who
were involved in the killings after the war was won by the
Americans and our allies. What's more, right-wing groups in the
U.S. prevented Jews trying to escape Hitler from entering the U.S.
Even children were turned away."

Kim peers down at her magazine. "I want to
read this article. I'll ask Jim about the Germans tonight."

Sharon lies back down. There's no purpose in
continuing a conversation that makes Kim uncomfortable. You can
only change people's thinking if they’re open to change. If you
push too hard, their minds close, perhaps permanently.

Sharon stares at the book’s open pages. All
her known relatives and all Robert’s known relatives left Russia at
the turn of the century. Years before Hitler they had sailed
steerage across the Atlantic to not only escape service in the
czar’s army but to escape the pogroms – murderous attacks on Jews
by mobs led by Cossacks or incensed by rabble-rousers.

One day, after her grandfather bought her
cherry strudel at a Jewish bakery in Chicago, he told her about his
trip to America in the bowels of a ship: "On the boat they gave us
herring, black bread and beer. We were eating the herring and black
bread and drinking beer like all the rest of them were doing. There
was a real religious man there and he was about to die – he
wouldn't eat any of the food because it wasn’t kosher. There was
also a sister and brother – their mother packed them all kinds of
kosher food with whiskey and wine in a big basket. We begged them
to sell us some food so we could give it to this real religious man
but the brother wouldn't do it.

“And when he went up on deck with his sister
we turned the basket over and we took a knife and cut the bottom
off – a sailor sold us a needle for a dime and gave us a string so
we could fix the hole – and we took out whiskey and some of the
food and some of the cookies. We hid the food and fed that old man
and we kept him all right. And we brought that man with us to
Chicago."

Now the wrong food has almost killed her
grandfather. Sharon's mother flew down to Louisville Monday morning
after Sharon called her. On the way to the doctor's office in the
taxi her grandfather explained his symptoms to her mother. The
cabbie turned around and said, "He's got sugar." Thirty minutes
later her mother asked the doctor one question: "Have you tested
him for maturity-onset diabetes?"

The young, inexperienced doctor admitted, "I
thought the old man's complaints were just old age." Only after the
diabetes test showed her grandfather had high levels of sugar did
the doctor realize the old man was truly ill.

With a diagnosis and a medication plan, her
grandfather would soon feel better.

If only
everything could be fixed so easily.