Mare's War (33 page)
Authors: Tanita S. Davis
We walk, and Mare seems, for the first few moments, aimless. Her stride is short and tentative, little bird steps heading first one direction, then another. I match pace with her, realizing that we are the same height, but without these trees looming over us, she has always seemed so much taller. In the dappled light, her skin appears seamed and wrinkled. For the first time this trip, Mare seems to me fragile and frail and old.
“Did Aunt Feen give you a map?” I ask after we have walked in silence for at least ten minutes. The air itself seems to be burning silence, and we hear nothing else but our own footfalls, the calls of birds, and the lazy buzzing of bees.
“No,” Mare says, but she says it with some of her usual tartness, and I feel a little reassured. “Don’t need a map. Just head for a back corner—that’s all you have to do. That’s where they bury all the poor folks.”
Tali flashes a look at me. “There’s no stone?”
Mare shakes her head. “No headstone. Might not even be a body there after all this time. Gulf states flood every so often, you know.”
My toes curl in my shoes. How can she just be so matter-of-fact? No bones? No stone? How can she stand not knowing?
We reach a fence. On the other side are what appear to be older graves, most of them covered over with leaves and grass. Mare stops and nods. “This is far enough.” She takes my arrangement of roses and leans over the fence,
setting the flowers near the closest grave site. Tali sets hers down next to it, and we stand for a moment.
Why did Mare wait so long to come? Was she scared, as scared as she must have been when she left home, or when the Germans chased her ship, or when the first bombs burst over her head in England? Could someone that incredibly brave really need Tali and me? For this?
Mare lets out a sigh. “Mama had a hard road without Daddy. She did the best she could. We all did.” Mare looks at my sister and me, her face tight and crumpled with sadness. “Not everybody is cut out to be a mama, you know.”
“No, ma’am,” I say respectfully. I brush my hand across my damp forehead.
Tali squints at her through the gloom. “But you were great, Mare,” she says. “Maybe she wasn’t the best mother, but she had to be proud of you, Mare. She had to be. We are.”
Mare turns away, her voice low. “I was so scared I’d turn out just like her. The war saved me from that, I guess.” She stands a moment longer, her long nails tapping against the old wrought iron fence. “They thought I would come to a bad end, joining the Women’s Army, but I guess I did all right. I finished raising Feen to be a nurse, raised your father, and got two hardheaded grandbabies in the bargain.” Mare straightens and puts her arms around Tali and me in a rare show of affection. “It all
turned out all right. Marey Lee Boylen didn’t do half bad.”
We bump heads and do a group hug, the sort that other people and their grandmothers probably do all the time. My grandmother’s wiry arms are surprisingly strong, crushing us both in a loving grip. After a long moment, Mare steps away from us and tosses Tali the keys.
“I need to get
out
of this heat. Octavia, get out the map and find where 75 breaks off from Interstate 10. We need to keep going east,” she says, walking briskly back toward where we parked. “I made hotel reservations in Tallahassee, and I want us to get settled in before it gets dark.”
“Tallahassee? Where are we—” I bite my tongue as Mare looks back, her brows raised.
“This close to Florida and we can’t hit a couple of amusement parks?” She grins. “Girl, when you get as old as I am, you and everybody else know where you’re going next. I don’t know about you, but before I get there, I mean to have a
good
time!”
“As long as your idea of a good time doesn’t include taking pictures of me with mice,” Tali mutters, shoving the keys in her pocket. “I’m not going to be seen with some oversized rodent.”
“I think a set of those Mickey ears is the price of admission.” Mare smiles evilly, and Tali groans.
“Ma-
re
! What if I see somebody cute?”
“Now, Mr. Mickey is cute!”
“Oh, please!”
My grandmother laughs, the throaty machine-gun rattle comforting in its familiarity. Somehow as she walks away from the graveyard, putting the past and the darkness behind her, she seems taller.
Not one American woman stands tall without standing upon the shoulders of those who have gone before her. I’d like to gratefully acknowledge the writing of Charity Adams Earley, whose book,
One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC
(1989), first informed me of the work of the 6888th in the European theater. Brenda L. Moore’s
To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas During World War II
(1997) also added to and shaped the details of this novel. Without these factual bones, I could not have begun to knit this body of fiction.
I further acknowledge the contribution of Mattie E. Treadwell’s
The Women’s Army Corps
(1954) and Bettie J. Morden’s
The Women’s Army Corps, 1945-1978
(1990), which has an introductory chapter on army women in World War II and provided me with color photographs of all the uniforms; Judith A. Bellafaire’s
The Women’s Army Corps
(1993), which has details of rank and regulations; and the Women’s Army Corps Veterans’ Association, whose Web site includes pages of WAC songs from World War II.
You’ll find more about African Americans in World War II, like I did, through the contribution of the National Archives, which provides pictures of African Americans during the war. These were amazing to look through when I was needing inspiration and should make any American thoughtful—and grateful—for the work that African Americans did, even though it didn’t seem to be appreciated by a segregated world.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical and public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are largely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the largely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Tanita S. Davis
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis, Tanita.
Mare’s war / Tanita Davis. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Teens Octavia and Tali learn about strength, independence, and courage when they are forced to take a car trip with their grandmother, who tells about growing up black in 1940s Alabama and serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the Women’s Army Corps.
eISBN: 978-0-375-85359-3
[1. Automobile travel—Fiction. 2. Grandmothers—Fiction. 3. African Americans—Fiction. 4. United States. Army. Women’s Army Corps—Fiction. 5. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 6. Sisters—Fiction. 7. Family life—Alabama—Fiction. 8. Alabama—History—1819–1950—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.D3174Mar 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008033744
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