Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (26 page)

**

The next morning Donna drops Jerry off
without telling him where she's going. She's been assuring him for
days that she's fine, just indigestion. She isn't about to let him
know it could be something more.

At the post clinic there's already a line
this early in the morning. She stands behind a young black woman
holding the hand of a little boy in a white t-shirt and blue
shorts.

A medicinal odor floats towards the line.
Donna gags. What is the matter with her?

Ahead of her the boy whimpers. The woman
gives him a piece of bread, then turns to Donna. "He’s hungry
again. We left Louisville real early this morning to get here."

"Why do you live all the way in Louisville?"
Donna asks. "Don't you live in housing around here?"

"Louisville is the closest we could afford,”
the woman says. “We just come here for the free medical care."

The stab of nausea isn't from whatever is
causing Donna to stand in this line. This woman's husband must be
an enlisted man in Vietnam. That's why she doesn't live on the post
or right near it.

"Is your ... is your husband ..."

"Dead. Killed in Vietnam when I was eight
months pregnant with him." The woman points to the little boy.

Donna steps off the high dive and falls,
falls towards the water below.

"I went berserk, out of my mind,” the woman
says. “When the baby came I didn't know what I'd do." The woman
glances at the boy. "Then I had to take care of him, feed him,
change him. I had to get in control. And most days I'm okay
..."

The boy tugs on his mother’s hand. “Mama,
more bread.”

Donna sinks onto the floor.

**

Donna opens her eyes. A man in a white coat
leans over her. She’s lying on an examining table, her skirt
bunched around her waist. His hands move over her body.

"You're going to be fine, Mrs. Lautenberg,"
the doctor says, writing on a piece of paper. "You just fainted.
Which is nothing unusual for someone in your condition. You're
pregnant. No reason you shouldn't have a normal pregnancy and
delivery."

Pregnant! What will Jerry say? He knows how
much she wants a child. He'll think she did this on purpose.

"How can that be? I've been using a diaphragm
every time. Checking carefully to make sure it's positioned
correctly."

The doctor looks up. "Diaphragms get holes,
the rubber gets old and cracks. You lose weight and it doesn't fit
anymore. There are numerous ways."

**

A few hours later Donna sits in the car
waiting to pick up Jerry after class for the day is over. She’s
trying to decide how best to tell him about the baby. For
distraction she rereads the letter received today from her brother
in Vietnam. It has been written three weeks before.

The short letter in English says: "Thanks so
much for your letters. I got six from you all at once. I'm back at
a base for supplies. Tonight I had a hot meal for the first time in
weeks. Say hello to Jerry for me."

Donna refolds the letter. Maybe her brother
is lucky that he doesn't have a wife at home waiting for his safe
return. Or a baby who might never know him.

What if Jerry never knows his child? What if
she becomes like the woman in line at the clinic? Going through the
motions with her child but not really there.

At least that woman has something of her
husband. There’s nothing of Miguel.

Donna pats her still flat stomach. There will
be something of Jerry.

She'll tell him tonight.

What she can't answer even though she's been
thinking about it for hours is this: When she fainted this morning
at the clinic, was it because of the pregnancy? Or was it the
memory of the third telegram triggered by what the woman in line
said? The first morning in the apartment here she had fainted when
the Western Union man delivered that telegram by mistake. She was
probably already pregnant then.

Telegrams and hospitals jostle in her
mind.

Miguel lived three days – or almost three
days. She can't be sure all three telegrams reached her in the same
amount of time. So the army’s medical personnel must have helped
him. They must have thought he could be saved.

She knows what the word triage means. Heard
her father explaining it one night to her mother after Miguel died
when her parents thought she was asleep. "The medical personnel in
Vietnam practice triage – giving priority to those who have the
best chance for survival," he said in Spanish.

She had crept closer to the open kitchen
door.

"When an evacuation helicopter sets down at a
field hospital, the medics run with their litters. A doctor or a
nurse or even an orderly has seconds to make these decisions."

Hidden by the kitchen door she was enraged by
the unfairness! Each of those soldiers had been fighting for his
country; they all deserved an equal chance!

Her mother asked the question on Donna’s
mind. "Why must they decide such things? Can't they try to help
everyone?"

"There's not enough medical personnel when so
many wounded come in at the same time," her father said. "Someone
has to decide."

She bit her lips to keep from screaming as
her father continued: "I'll tell you what an army nurse told me.
For the hopelessly wounded all they can do is hold the soldier's
hand so he doesn't die alone. Sometimes they don't have enough
personnel to do that."

Donna crashed onto the floor with a shriek
that brought her parents rushing from the kitchen and the other
children from their bedrooms. Led back to bed, she prayed, prayed
that Miguel hadn't died alone.

Please may someone have held his hand, told
him it was going to be all right. Even though it wasn't. Even
though it never would be.

Now the moment of truth has come – she’ll
tell Jerry about the baby as soon as he finishes brushing his
teeth.

"I’m coming," Jerry calls from the
bathroom.

Moments later Jerry asks "How do you feel?"
as he slides into bed.

It's the same question he asked after the
first time they made love, the night they got back from their trip
to St. Louis. She didn't ask if he meant was it "as good" as with
Miguel. All she said then was "wonderful."

Now she feels wonderful too. If only Jerry
can understand.

"I went to the clinic today."

"What did the doctor say?" Jerry strokes her
breasts.

"He said ... he said I'm pregnant."

"What?" Jerry's hands stop.

"He said we're expecting a baby."

Jerry sits upright in bed. "How can that be?"
He looks at her with eyes that say betrayed. "Didn't you use your
diaphragm?"

She sits up too. Nausea stabs her. Is the
baby reacting to Jerry's response? Or is it her own anxiety?

"The doctor says it can happen. There's a
tiny hole, or the rubber cracks, or something."

Anger sweeps through her. He's the one who
doesn't want to use the Vietnam exemption. He should realize what
this baby means to her. That no matter what happens, there'll be
something of him to love.

"Jerry," she says, taking his hands in both
of hers. "I've never talked to you about Miguel after the first
time I told you about him – I wanted only to talk about us." His
hands tighten in hers. "And I don't really want to talk about him
now." The hands don't relax. "I didn't try to get pregnant – you
must believe me. Yet I'm so happy to be having your child."

"Darling," he says, releasing his hands and
gathering her in his arms.

She says into his shoulder, "I won't try to
make you use the exemption. I just want this baby! I want a part of
you so that ... if anything ..." Tears choke her voice.

Jerry lays her back down on the bed and
kisses her.

"Is it okay to make love? We won't hurt the
baby, will we?"

**

The next morning, Saturday, Donna first
searches under the bed, then finds her purse under the kitchen
table. She isn't thinking clearly.

Last night Jerry's response to her news was
such a relief. His lovemaking so gentle, so sweet that he must be
pleased about the baby. This morning, the passion of lovemaking
over, she worried he would accuse her, demand an abortion.

He didn't. He got out of bed, bent down to
kiss her, and said, "Take good care of my baby today."

Yet something troubles her. She shakes her
head. It isn't telling her parents. They'll be thrilled. And it
will be great news to write her brother. Something hopeful,
something ... to make it home for.

What then? Telling the other women? After she
proclaimed how she and Jerry were waiting? People are entitled to
change their minds. Anyway, does she have to tell them now? Maybe
she won't begin showing until after they leave Ft. Knox. She can
just be pregnant at the next post, where only Sharon will be. Wendy
and Kim will be at other posts.

Her glance falls on the Oriental bowl.
Miguel. She's pretty sure Sharon hasn't told Kim and Wendy. They
haven't looked at her strangely, anxiously, as if silently showing
their sympathy – or horror. If she tells the other women about the
baby maybe she'll have to tell them about Miguel, too. About the
emptiness that never left her even when the tears stopped, when his
sisters packed up their own babies – the babies she would never
have with Miguel! – and went back to their own apartments, their
own lives.

She'll write the sisters. They'll be happy
for her, as they were when she remarried. They will also be sad for
themselves, for their only brother Miguel, whose children would
never play with their children, who would never again return to the
streets of San Juan.

Enough! She doesn't want to see Miguel in his
white wedding suit beckoning to her every time she thinks of the
baby. This is Jerry's child she's carrying. Miguel was her past;
Jerry and the baby are her future.

Jerry comes into the apartment – he’s been
out getting gas for the car. "I feel like a drive," Jerry says.

"Where to?"

"Let's see where the road takes us."

The air breezing into the open car windows
blows hot, although not as sticky as the standing air. The road
offers a menu of smells as they pass from the countryside into more
built-up areas around Louisville. At a stoplight the escaping steam
from a laundrymat mingles with whiffs of frying hamburgers from a
roadside shack.

Then they are in downtown Louisville and
Jerry turns the car into a parking lot next to a building whose
sign announces HOLLY’S BABY STORE. "Surprise!" he says. "We can do
a little sightseeing."

"You're wonderful!" she says, kissing him
before unbuckling her seat belt.

The store brims with cribs, highchairs, and
strollers. Other expecting couples and couples with babies walk up
and down the aisles admiring or disregarding the available
merchandise.

"It doesn't make sense to get anything now
and have it shipped," Jerry says. "We can just have a good time
looking."

She squeezes his hand as they wander among
the baby equipment. "There's so much to get," Jerry says. "Babies
need a lot of things."

She's too happy to answer, just keeps holding
his hand as they walk, eyeing all the combinations of changing
tables and dressers and rocking chairs. "I like white painted
furniture. It's good for both boys and girls," she says.

After 30 minutes she has seen enough. "Can we
go have something to eat?" she says.

Two blocks away they find a diner. As she
enters, greeted by fat-frying smells, an older black man comes
towards her with a take-out order. Jerry holds the door open for
him, then follows her inside.

The counter man leans towards them. "Hey,
fella, ya always hold doors open far niggers? Mebbe it's 'coz ya
girl is a Spic."

Jerry jumps the counter and pulls the man's
arm tight behind his back. "Say you're sorry to the lady. Or you
won't be cooking for a long time."

The man remains silent. Jerry yanks the man's
arm higher and the man squeaks out "Sorry, mam."

Jerry jumps back over the counter and leads
her back through the door. "Come on, honey," he says. "We don't
want to eat with white trash."

Jerry drives in silence for 20 minutes. Then
he speaks. "You know we discussed going vol indef?"

Donna says nothing.

"Would you mind living in Europe when the
baby comes? We'd be pretty far from your parents."

She would like to be close to her parents
after the baby's born. And her father won't be eligible for a
transfer from Ft. Riley until the end of their year in Europe, so
she can't even hope that he'll be stationed in Europe at the same
time.

As a young child stationed with her family in
Germany, she hadn't lived in army housing on the
kaserne
.
At that time her father's rank wasn't high
enough to entitle him to army housing, so they had lived "on the
economy." Yet her family shopped only in the army commissary –
grocery store – and the PX, which carried gift items from all the
countries in Europe. "Look at these lovely teak salad bowls from
Denmark and the miniature wooden shoes from Holland," her mother
would say as they chose gifts representing countries they hadn’t
visited.

The Germans seemed so different, their
language incomprehensible, that her parents didn't attempt to
travel anywhere else in Europe. They weren't even willing to go to
Spain – "Perhaps our Puerto Rican Spanish won't be understood." Now
with Jerry she could experience another culture. Maybe even study
German.

The baby complicates this decision. "What do
you think?" she asks.

"I'd like to go to Europe. See the museums
and churches, the famous sights like the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben.
And the opportunities in MI are pretty good in Europe. Here in the
U.S. I'd probably just do document research and analysis. In Europe
you can interview real people, people who sometimes risk their
lives to bring out information from behind the Iron Curtain. I'd be
doing something meaningful."