Gone to Soldiers (96 page)

Naomi thought how tired Uncle Morris was when he got home, how exhausted Ruthie was. “It's hard,” she said. “But I'd take it if I could get it, because it's good money.”

“Good money, my ass,” Leib said. He did not watch his language with her when they were alone together, but talked to her the way the kids talked to each other. She felt as if Leib alone of all the adults treated her as an equal. Of course they weren't really equal because he was years older and he had been to war and had a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He even told her how he had been wounded, stepping on a mine. She felt immensely proud as they strolled together through all the streets of the neighborhood and far beyond. He chose her as his friend, Leib, the best-looking man in the whole neighborhood in spite of his foot, and who cared about his foot anyhow? He was a hero, and he chose her. She wanted so passionately to please him that sometimes she felt as if she were burning up with that wish, her skin all prickling, her elbows and knees sticking out like spines with that sole desire, to please him.

When they walked together through all the green residential streets and the noisy business streets, she enjoyed his height looming over her, his size, his handsomeness. All reflected on her. It was a completely different feeling than sauntering with Alvin. Kids in the gang shuffled along, they shoved each other and the guys assumed postures to look tough. They were pretending, but Leib was real. With him, she was almost real too.

“We came into Naples like kings. Those little fuckers were starving. You never saw so many hungry people. I thought Detroit when Ruthie and me were in school was one sad place, but we would've looked like rich guys to these people. They didn't have holes to crawl into, just the dirty rags on their back. No water, no electricity, no gas, no food, not two walls standing together. Yet in three weeks, guys were minting money in the black market, hand over fist.” Leib spoke rapidly, emptying himself out. “You could buy and sell everything from cigarettes, meat, women, booze, jeeps, trucks, drugs, you name it.”

Sometimes she wished she could slow him down. She felt too young, too naive, to be as helpful to him as she wanted to be. He had suffered. He had been torn and wounded and used. Nobody but she saw what he had gone through. Trudi was too involved with plans, with little David and the house they would have. Ruthie was cold to Leib and scarcely looked at him. Naomi wanted to do nothing but look at him, his leonine head against the burning sulphur yellow sky of summer, his hair growing out to cover the scar in his scalp, for he had had a skull wound also. She wanted to look and look at him with her heart swelling in her as if it would fill up her body. She wanted to remember every word he said to repeat to herself later so that she would understand, she alone, and could help him.

“After Africa, we thought we'd be sent home. We had hard fighting. Nobody back here knows how bad Tunisia was. At first we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. They were slaughtering us, just running over us with their tanks. Then we learned or we got killed. We thought when we took Tunis finally they'd bring some other poor bastards over or call up some of those guys who had it easy way back behind the lines. We couldn't fucking believe it when they stuck us on the damned landing craft and we had to take Sicily. Now I think they'll make the same poor bastards fight all the way to Berlin. Okay, I saved my buddies when I came down on the mine, but I saved myself too. Better no foot than no body.”

She hated when it rained and they could not walk. Every morning she took care of Mrs. Entemann's children, from seven till three-thirty. She was bringing in money. Half she gave to Aunt Rose and half she kept for herself. Uncle Morris took her to the bank to open an account. She had a passbook and they stamped what she put in every week. She got a quarter an hour for minding the babies, because neither of them was toilet-trained yet and she had to be changing them all the time. Naomi took her change out of its hiding place and carried it to the bank. America seemed to be rich enough to survive. That decision made her feel less a greenhorn. She was becoming very American. Often people could not tell she was an immigrant.

When she got off work, she ran to see if Leib wanted to take a walk. If he didn't, then she went to find her friends, but if he did, that crowned her day. She worried that when she returned to high school in the fall, he wouldn't wait for her till she got home. It was July, but at least once a day, she worried about what would happen in September. She did not want their time together, their precious intimate time, to lapse.

“Italy's all one fucking mountain after another, and the blonds—that's what we called the Germans—were always above us on the next mountain picking us off. One killing obstacle after another, one more fast muddy river with the bridges blown, one more mountain so steep you know they used to send mules up to bring us food and ammo? We had a whole bunch of mule skinners attached to our battalion, and damned if those mules weren't better fed and housed than us.”

He took her arm often, tucking it against his warm body, so that she could feel his ribs, his flesh against her. Sometimes when he was tired he leaned on her, and although he was heavy, she was proud to help him. He did not ask her if she would help. He knew she would. He needs me, she told herself, taut with pride.

Sometimes his voice seemed like an eagle beating its wings against a lid put on its world. His wanting was fierce, but so far it was stymied. He did not know yet what he wanted, although he knew well what he didn't, to live and work like the people around him. He spoke of vague schemes but she did not doubt he would do something splendid soon.

“All my real buddies are in the Army, but Fatty Windsor is 4F. I might just ask him to give me a job tending bar. A lot of guys with good connections hang out in his old man's bar.”

She listened passionately, every pore of her body absorbing his words.

“Now I'm finally of age, maybe he'll give me a job. You know, when they drafted me, I was too goddamn young to get drunk in a bar? Now I'm twenty-two, and already they took my foot and gave me this piece of metal, already I got a family like a millstone around my neck, which who needs by now, and I got no skills worth writing on a piece of toilet paper.”

Often she grew weary of feeling guilty all the time because of her nightmares, because of her secret knowledge that Maman was dead and would never return to her, would never come and take her back home, and that her twin was a prisoner under the earth toiling and growing colder and farther away. The dreams came less vividly. She felt guilty too that she wanted them to fade away. She did not want to know. She did not want to be in Rivka's body any longer.

It was the end of July and so hot that Detroit felt scorched, a pool of rancid oil. It had not rained in ten days and the air was used and thick. The grass was drying brown in Palmer Park. They had taken a bus today and walked in the park, because Leib hoped it would be cooler. He had been drinking beer, but said it just made him hotter. “Under the trees, it'll be cooler,” he said, leading the way into the woods. His limp was pronounced. “I'm sick of the heat. I can't sleep at night. Have you been sleeping?”

“Last night, Ruthie and I took off our nighties and we both slept in our panties, it was so hot.” She knew she shouldn't say that.

“That must have been a gorgeous sight. Wish I'd been there.” He led her under a spruce and let himself down. “Ah, here it's halfway to cool.”

The spruce made a dark tent under itself, as if they had entered a secret green room. She knew she should not be here with him. But why not? Nobody had said she could not walk with him. Trudi thought it was fine. When he did not walk the way he was supposed to, Trudi scolded him. Everybody felt sorry for him, crippled, but she did not think of him as a cripple. Her breath caught in her throat like the dry needles under them.

She sat stiffly beside him. He opened his eyes and looked at her and grinned. “Come here, Naomi, my Naomi. Come here.” He put his hands on her shoulders and put his mouth on hers. It was not like being kissed by Alvin, although Leib too put his tongue in her mouth. He pushed her back on the needles to kiss her and her arms came around him. She loved him, she loved him with her whole life. The world rushed through her, wanting to offer itself in love to Leib, whose name was love, whose arms were around her, whose body pressed on hers like the world itself, heavy and inevitable.

He moved slightly off her and slid his hand up under her cotton blouse, closing over her breast. “I used to be in love with your aunt Ruth, do you know that?”

“Yes,” Naomi said. She could hardly speak. Her voice sounded as if it were crushed in her throat.

“You're getting to look like her, the way she was when she was younger. You're getting prettier and prettier.”

“I don't look like Ruthie.”

“You look like you. I used to love Ruthie. Now I'm going to love you. Do you want me to love you?”

“I love you,” she said, her throat hardly letting the words twist out.

“Yes, my dove, my precious, my baby. Let's see.” He put his hand into her panties, between her legs. She cried out involuntarily. “You're a virgin, aren't you, little one? You haven't let any of the boys in yet.”

“No.” She could not stop him. She could not move. She sweated with terror. Where he thrust his finger into her, she hurt.

“Are you scared? Your heart is pounding. I'm not going to hurt you. I wouldn't take you here. But you'll love me, won't you?”

“I love you,” she said in that throttled voice. She was glad when he took his hand away. He put it back on her breast, where it felt better.

“How old are you exactly?”

“Almost fifteen.”

“Too bad,” Leib said. “You're too young, Naomi, but you'll grow up and by then, it'll be even better. You're going to grow up for me, just for me, aren't you?”

She did not know what he meant but she said, “I am growing up. I'm old for my age.”

“You're going to grow into my woman. You're going to be just what I want, aren't you?”

“You're married to Trudi.”

“I had to marry somebody. I knew something would happen to me. I lost my foot, but I could have lost my life. I had to make a son. That's all right, Naomi, I'll make others with you. Trudi is a fucking bore. If she was home all the time, I'd strangle her.”

She did not like what he was saying, for it frightened her. It opened a pit into which she was falling. She could not argue with his hand on her breast that was burning, his leg over hers, his mouth covering hers and kissing her. Surely that she had dreamed this so often had made it happen and she was the guilty one. She had made this wicked and dangerous thing happen by the magic of wishing it too many times.

“Take off your panties,” he said, pulling back from her.

She did not move. “You said you wouldn't,” she pleaded.

“Honey dove, I'm not going to fuck you. The last thing I need is to get you pregnant at fifteen. I had kids your age in Naples, you know that? I'm keeping you for the right time, because you're going to ripen just for me.” He put her hand against something stumpy and she knew immediately it was what Sandy had called the man's thing. He pulled the panties off her and then he climbed on her and she found herself crying with fear, the tears rolling down her face. “Now put your legs tight together, that's right.” He began thrusting back and forth between her thighs, rubbing against her hard, but he did not tear her, he did not come in. “Here, get your skirt up out of the way.”

She stopped crying. “Trust me,” he muttered in her ear, and she held him and waited. He was not going to tear her open. He was just rubbing against her. After a while, it began to feel good in a scary breathless way. Leib loved her. She was a bad girl who would be a bad woman, but he loved her. After he had finished all sticky between her thighs, he made her spread her legs wide and wiped her with his handkerchief. “When you go home, wash yourself carefully, always.” He was smiling. “I thought you'd do anything I wanted, but I wasn't sure.”

She put her panties back on and smoothed down her skirt. She did not know where to look, but finally, she could not help turning to him again, the dark beautiful sun that rose on her world.

“Don't say anything, not to Ruthie or to Rose. It's Ruthie you confide in, isn't it? If you say anything to her, everybody will blame you and call you a bad girl, and I'll have to move out. No more walks. You'll never again be my dove.”

“I won't say anything. I promise.”

“Not to your best girlfriend. Who's your best friend?”

“Sandy, but Aunt Rose and Mrs. Rosenthal don't speak to each other.”

“You don't say anything to her. Nothing about how you know about men now, nothing. Promise?”

“Nothing,” Naomi repeated solemnly. “I promise.” It was like a ceremony, a vow with the dark tree bending with its green wings spread down to the ground, brooding over them.

DANIEL 7

Flutterings

It was a quiet shock Daniel felt, yet it reverberated through his life for weeks. A chill of depression lay on him in the sweltering August, as green leggy flies with iridescent wings and black flies and flies with the heads like jewels that drew blood when they bit, when mosquitoes and yellow moths and moths like scraps of paper bag all swirled in through the open windows and flittered around him as he worked. He wanted to exhaust himself at OP-20-G. He wanted to go out with the boys afterwards. What he didn't want was to go home.

Never had he lived with a woman before and therefore, he concluded, never had he missed anyone as he did Louise. He had a physical sense of severance. Furthermore every object released memories like static shocks. She had left in such a hurry that he was always finding her hairpins, her books, her lace-edged handkerchiefs, her fragrance for a time clinging to chairs, to pillowcases, to dresser drawers. He should not have moved down there, he knew it, but he could not endure Rodney any longer. He simply could not go from being with Louise, living with a daily sensual elegance, to sleeping in the living room on his mattress among Rodney's abandoned boxer shorts, beer bottles and chili cans.