Mare's War (32 page)

Staff Sergeant Hill shouts cadence in my memory as I march down the road. I don’t have a word in my head but the left-right-left steps on the packed dirt road, my hands as empty as my mouth.

Almost two years and not a word. The paymaster sent her half my check every month, faithful as clockwork. I worked hard to make sure she didn’t miss what I took in from Miss Ida’s, made sure she didn’t have cause to worry about that farm mortgage. But not a word.

The knob is in my hand before I know it. I wrench open the door and step inside the front room.

“Mama!”

The lamp is sitting in the same place, next to Mama’s old upholstered armchair, where she would sit sewing every night. The house smells like greens and fatback and vinegar and sets my stomach to growling. I stay where I am.

“Mama, where—”

“Why you come up in here hollering, Marey Lee Boylen? Women’s Army make you think didn’t nobody teach you no better?”

My heart just about jumps out my chest when Mama appears in the doorway of the kitchen. A faded flowered apron is hung over her dress, and she is holding her wooden spoon. She looks some put out, but not surprised to see me at all.

“No, Mama. I’m sorry.”

“Where Feen at? Hogs ain’t gonna slop themselves.”

I swallow, trying to wet my tongue. “Mama,” I blurt, “why didn’t you write?”

Before the words are out, I feel my face burn. Oh, why did I say that? Mama don’t have time for a girl bawling after her about, “Why didn’t you do this?” I don’t need to listen to know what she has to say.

“Why I got to write to you? You are grown. Grown enough to go off and join the Women’s Army without nobody’s say-so.” My mother turns back toward the kitchen. “See after them hogs, Marey Lee.”

“Mama—” I follow her, standing a ways behind her. “Feen says you sold the farm.”

“Mr. Peterson is kind enough to have bought me a house,” Mama says, and her lips curve into a smug smile. “That man is something else. Mm-hmm.” She laughs softly.

“You said we weren’t ever going to sell. You said Daddy built this farm with his blood and sweat.”

My mother sighs and looks over at me, crossing her arms. “That he did. And then his hardheaded girl child went off and left it all on me. I do what needs to be done. This farm ain’t nothing but a noose round my neck.”

Anger pulses in my temples. “Well, what about Josephine, Mama? You said we were always gonna have the farm. You said nobody would be able to take what was ours.”

“As long as I am on this side of the grave, Josephine Boylen has got a roof over her head. She is doing fine in Philadelphia, and what I do for your sister ain’t no business
of yours.” Mama shakes her spoon in my face. “You left out of here, Miss High and Mighty. Big old grown girl like you can take care of herself.”

“You know why I left!” The words rush out, bitter on my tongue. “You sent Feen up north, and what was I supposed to do? Work for Miss Ida the rest of my days? Sister Dials says she saw Toby coming back around—”

“Ain’t nobody talking about that no-’count man round here.” Mama holds up her spoon in warning. “Didn’t I say to see to the hogs? Or is you so grown you forgot how to mind?”

I stare my mother down, heat rising up in my skin. I am grown now. I don’t have to listen to a thing this woman says to me, not a thing. I am about to open my mouth and tell her so.

Then I think about Feen’s face looking up hopefully at me, and I bite my tongue hard.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, with military courtesy that would make Lieutenant Hundley proud. “I will see to them directly.”

I will do what I’m told this one last time. For Feen’s sake. Only for Feen’s sake.

The slop buckets are in the same place on the back porch as always, stinking to high heaven, even in the cold. The hogs stink, too. The yard looks small and cluttered and dirty, and I look around at the field, the garden, the pigpen, the henhouse, remembering. Remembering everything.

The hogs squeal and fight over their slop like no one ever feeds them. I lift the buckets to tip them, and they seem almost light. I guess in the Women’s Army Corps, I hauled
heavier loads than this, with my pack and my mask. Mama doesn’t know what I can do, but I do.

I know what I can do.

My mother hands me a rag to wipe my shoes when I bring in the buckets, but I don’t need it. She looks at me, eyes traveling up my uniform and down to my shoes.

“Well, now.” She clears her throat. “I got your money right here, Marey Lee.”

“Ma’am?”

Mama pats her apron and pulls out an envelope. “This your money. I kept it for you.”

“Mama, that money was for you and Feen! I—”

“I know what it was for, and I didn’t have no need of it. You going to need it now. Here.” Mama pushes the envelope into my hands and steps back, and for a minute, the ground doesn’t feel too solid under me. I left without her say-so, and my mother doesn’t want me back.

“Mama.” My voice cracks under the weight of the words I don’t speak. “I’m sorry.”

Mama looks back toward the stove a moment, her shoulders stiff.

“Feen over at Sister Dials’s, ain’t she? Girl don’t hardly ever set foot in this house if she can help it. Well, I’m just about to eat without her. You hungry?”

I take a deep breath. “I’m going west, Mama. To San Francisco. I’ve had some schooling in the army. I can type and use a stenographer machine. I plan to get a job, use my GI Bill of Rights, and go to college. And I plan to take Josephine with me.”

My mother raises her brows, her chin going down as she eyes me. “Is that so? That fool girl’s talking about staying on here, gonna call herself paying me rent.”

“I’ll see to it she stays in school, Mama. She’s going to graduate. You’ll be proud.”

“That Miss Feen gonna do whatever pleases her,” Mama says dismissively. “That girl thinks she grown.”

“I’ll take care of her.” I hear myself almost begging. “It’ll be good for her to get out of here. You know that Miss Ida is already talking about Feen going to work for her? Like she already has her life planned, like Feen has no plans of her own. Like she bought and paid for us and Feen, too? There’s opportunity for coloreds in the West, Mama. I’m taking her with me.”

My mother turns away, her mouth tight. “Go tell your sister stop pestering Sister Dials and get on home. I’m about to make the biscuits, and we best eat ’em hot.”

“Yes, ma’am.” My heart twists, but I know better than to keep talking.

“Marey Lee.” Mama’s voice stops me as my hand touches the door.

“Ma’am?”

“It’s dark out. You watch yourself.”

I pause, midstep. “Watch yourself,” is what Mama has said every night, like I am a little old kid who doesn’t know how to watch out for myself. “Watch yourself,” she says, even though I am grown now, grown enough to have gone to war, heard bombs dropping all around me, and come home in one piece. “Watch yourself,” Mama says, and in her own way, she
is maybe saying watch out or telling me the world’s a cold, hard place for a colored girl like me.

“Watch yourself,” Mama says, even though she knows I do.

She taught me how to watch.

I don’t tell her any of that. Everybody knows better than to argue with Edna Mae Boylen.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, tugging on my gloves. I grab my handbag and close the door.

“So, you and Great-aunt Feen ended up in San Francisco?” I ask, wiping my mouth and wondering if Mare’s going to finish her Mississippi mud pie. We are at a chic restaurant and casino in Gulfport, Mississippi, and we are all enjoying the air-conditioned dining room.

“Mm-hmm,” Mare says, sipping her coffee. “They had military jobs all over. We moved on into the Fillmore District.”

“The Fillmore?” Tali’s voice is disbelieving.

“Oh, it was different back then, back before the city tore it all apart, trying to make it fit for rich folks and to give something back to the Japanese. The Fillmore was the spot back in the forties. The Harlem of the West, they called it.” Mare gestures with her lighter.

“There was a jazz or a bebop band on every street—on a couple of streets it was two or three of them. You know I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing at the Long Bar between Post
and Geary? There was Club Alabam, and the Blue Mirror, and across from the Blue Mirror, there was the Ebony Plaza Hotel, and in the basement, they had another club. There was all kinds of folks listening to swing and bebop and jazz. Oh, we had a good time.”

“Did George Hoag ever find you?”

Mare grins across the table at me, looking suddenly sly. “What do
you
think?”

“I think you found him, but you blew him off and found somebody more exciting,” Tali says, licking Key lime sauce off of her finger.

“Exciting? Girl, please. I had all the excitement I needed, living in the city and trying to make sure Peach didn’t totally ruin my sister for decent living. No, ma’am, when George Hoag showed up again, I let him visit all he wanted. He had a good-paying job, and he had a car. That was what we needed right then. He was your aunt Feen’s first husband.”

“Aunt Feen?” I gasp. “Oh, Mare, no! Did it break your heart?”

Mare smiles and looks at my troubled face with pity. “Lord, no, girl! I finally got somebody to take care of my baby sister, like Mama always said. Once Feen got married, boy, Peach and I tore up that town. We had the time of our lives.” She laughs at the expression on my face, at life in general, a deep, chortling belly laugh that has others in the restaurant looking up at us, smiles interrupting their meals and their conversations.

“So, whatever happened to your unit? To Peach and Ruby? To Bob?”

“What happened to your buddy Gloria?” Tali adds slyly.

“Well, Ruby and Bob still live in Seattle; they got kids and grandkids. Haven’t seen them in years, but we write. That Gloria—she was Mrs. Frederick Hughes—divorced Mr. Hughes the next year after she married him and shacked up with a French count. Far as I know, she is still in Paris somewhere. Peach moved on to L.A.” Now Mare grins. “Peach was an extra in one of those action flicks, calls herself a movie star now. That girl just tickles me. Old as she is, she’s still trying to get in front of the camera.”

“She didn’t get married?”

Mare shakes her head. “Nah, not Peaches. Even when they made it legal that first time, she said she didn’t feel the need. Peach has a houseful of friends, she has a job she loves in a city she loves, and she has her movies. She hasn’t ever needed much else.”

“Well, what about you?” I ask, then bite my tongue. The look Mare gives me makes my toes curl.

“What do you mean, ‘what about you?’ I’m sitting right here in your face, Octavia!”

“I mean, what did you do?” I ask, braving Mare’s focused attention. “When you got to San Francisco, I mean. Afterward.”

Mare looks slightly less ferocious now. “Well, I took
the civil service examination for the San Francisco County Welfare Department and I went back to school, of course. Wasn’t nothing else I
could
do. Peach said I was setting Feen a bad example, not finishing school.” Mare smiles at the memory.

“I worked nights at a club when I went to class in the day. I was a clerk and a secretary when I went to night school. They let me be a welfare officer when I was halfway through. Had to go up in that so-called temporary military housing and make sure folks were treating their kids right. Lord knows I had enough taking care of your daddy by then to know what to look for.

“I had summer school every summer till I finished my bachelor’s degree, and by then I was a social worker, and worked my way to caseworker, and stayed on till they made me quit.”

We sit in silence for a moment, listening to the far-off sounds of the slot machines and the roar of voices in the casino. Mare fiddles with her water glass, then breaks the silence.

“I stayed on in San Francisco, even when Mama passed. Your great-aunt Feen went to the service, saw all the folks, but I didn’t go. Your daddy went back year after he graduated from college. I never did get back down to Bay Slough.”

“So that’s why we’re going.” Tali’s voice seems loud, even though her words are soft.

Mare nods slowly. “This is the reunion, girls.”

Shocked, I glance at Tali, but she’s looking at Mare, nodding like she already knew.

A waitress bustles in and collects our plates, looking pointedly at the check, which Mare has left sitting. Mare tightens her lips and puts her lighter back into her bag, nostrils flaring in irritation.

“I s’pose we ought to get on,” she says finally, and slides her oversized sunglasses over her narrow face, hiding her expression. “Do this one last thing so we can get up out of here.”

The first thing that catches me is the trees. They are live oaks, tall and black, draped with the green-gray Spanish moss that has become familiar since we’ve been in this part of the country.

The little cemetery is hidden on the back side of a neighborhood. The road is packed red dirt, and there isn’t a manicured green lawn like in the cemeteries back home. Instead, there are little cement walls and plots bordered with little fences and overrun with vines.

Mare says we don’t have to get out, but Tali and I climb out into the cloying heat after her. We each hold an arrangement of creamy white roses as she slips on a pair of flat shoes so she can walk safely in the uneven grass. Tali looks around nervously for snakes, but I look around at the number of flags on some of the larger tombstones. Confederate flags. I feel like I am in a place beyond time.