Mare's War (6 page)

It is cold gray dawn when we board that bus from Bay Slough to take us to the army place. Some girls look real cute, with new shoes and hats settin’ off to the side of their heads like they are going on vacation. I don’t have no new clothes; I wear my Sunday hat and hold on to Mama’s coat. I feel bad taking Mama’s coat, but she don’t hardly use it none anyway; when it gets cold, Mama holes up with her whiskey, and that’s all the warm she needs.

I am the only colored girl on this bus, and I sit in the back, my hands sweatin’. I sure hope Beatrice Payne ain’t nowhere near here. I don’t need nobody trying to talk about home folks with me. Some of the girls are quiet; some are singing and rowdy till they fall to looking out at the dry, hilly land. Then there ain’t nothing to hear but the rattle of that old bus stretchin’ out those miles and miles and miles. Some girls cry a little, but I do not. I got to hold on.

It is dusty when they put us out in Tennessee. We climb onto a passenger train, onto a coach just behind the engine,
where they pack us in like sardines. White girls ride in a car further back, away from the soot and the noise. That train rattles and shimmies something awful. It is too loud to even talk, and we ride for hours: Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, then Iowa. We eat dry sandwiches from the porters when they pass through. It is a long, long time.

Can’t see nothin’ of Des Moines, ’cause it is pitch-dark and raining when we arrive. We stand around in the cold, waitin’. After a while, they send trucks for us. The colored girls ride out with the white girls, and the white girls don’t complain. Everyone is too tired to care about anything, and at every bump we bump each other and some girls try to grab on to others. Some girls don’t know nothing about riding in a truck.

“Jump down!” somebody holler when the trucks stop. My legs is stiff. I jump down fast as I can, but then somebody shout, “Fall in,” and folks looking around them like they crazy. Fall? On this wet dirt? Some of the girls get in line, and nobody gets on the ground, so I follow them other girls. They send us to a different line than the white girls, then line us up on our own side, two by two, and say, “March.” We all stomp real good over to a little metal house. I got my bag in my hand, bumpin’ up on my legs. “March,” they say, and my chest is bumping up into my throat. Lord Jesus, what am I doing here?

In the little metal house, it is noisy with voices, bellowing loud. Girls in there hardly can make a sound for the women in uniforms hollerin’ out orders. The sign says Women’s
Army Corps, and we are in receiving, and they say we got to get to processing. They give me two sheets, a pillowcase, and two blankets. I got to sign my name for everything. Then we got to stomp back in line and stomp some more over to our house, carrying all that stuff. I got a pillow in my face, and I can’t see nothing but the top of the head of the girl in front of me. They can’t let me put my bag down fast enough.

“This is a barracks,” they tell me. “You in Company Twelve. This the Third Platoon.”

Now, that don’t mean nothing to me ’cept that I finally got somewhere to sit down. I sit myself down and take a breath, but the next second, somebody’s hollering again.

“Fall in! Line up!” We march right back outside. We stomp back to the metal house, and they give me a coat! A coat—heavy sheep wool, double-breasted, better than any coat I ever had. Soon as I get me some time and make my wages, I can send Mama hers back so she won’t have no rea-son to complain.

I look around and see some girls turning up their noses. “It’s too big,” I hear somebody say. Mine looks to be too big, too, but I am gonna
take
this coat. Ain’t nobody got to ask
me
twice.

Then they give me some wool underwear, some leather gloves, and a knit cap to pull down over my head. It must get some cold around here. All I can think about is my coat. It is mine, and I ain’t got to share it with anybody.

They make us sign up for three towels, a toothbrush, and a comb. That little comb make me think of Feen, who
is tender-headed and always had her mouth poked out when I combed her hair. That makes my eyes sting, and before I can stop it, I got some water in my eyes.

Poor Feen. I have been gone two days. She has probably wrote to me, but I am not there to get her letter, nor her address. No way to let her know where I am, nor why I don’t write. But it is best that I left. It is best for everyone, especially me.

By the time we stomp back to the barracks, I got my eyes dry, and they tell us to go to bed.

“Lights-out in fifteen minutes!”

I hurry myself to get undressed and under the scratchy wool blanket. There is ten or twelve girls and me, but I don’t know what to say to nobody. Ain’t nobody said nothin’ to me, so I lay out my bed and fall in it. I think I ain’t never going to sleep with all these girls up in here, but it has been too long since I saw a bed. I fall into sleep hard.

Next thing I know, somebody shakin’ my arm, talking about, “They said get up!”

“What?” I rub the sleep out of my eyes.

“They’re playin’ that horn,” this girl say real loud. “It’s reveille. It’s time to get up!”

“What time is it?” somebody moan. Six-thirty. I’m wide-awake, and my hands is shaking. This is it. I am in the army.

“Reveille!” somebody hollering. “Ladies, get moving!”

We dress, make up our beds, and stumble outside. This place is laid out like the Israelites in their tents—we in little bitty houses, far as the eye can see. There is some brick
buildings a ways off, and a little chapel, and more buildings, but I can’t look too long. They say we got to keep our eyes straight.

The lady—she a lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps, she say—points out that we got three barracks, and then headquarters, and the supply room, and a mess hall. The colored girls line up and, across the way, the white girls line up, but the lieutenant say we need to “fall in.” Lieutenant Hundley make us do that two or three times. Little colored woman march up and look us over; she our captain, Captain Ferguson. She reads our names from a list, tells us to answer her “ma’am.” ’Cross the way, the white girls doing the same thing.

“Baines!”

“Ma’am!”

“Barnes!”

“Yes, ma’am!” A tall, light-skinned girl to my right straightens up.

The woman looks up, frowning. She writes something on her list.

“Borland!”

“Ma’am!”

This girl who answers is shorter than I am, with real long hair all pinned up. The army woman squint at her and frown some. She don’t say nothing for a long, long time.

“Ma’am?”

The army woman scowls. “Twenty gets younger all the time,” she say.

My heart climbs up into my throat. She don’t believe
that
girl is twenty, but she look older than me.
Lord, don’t let that army lady look at me too close
. What happen if somebody told them my name, say folks in Bay Slough missing a girl who up and stole her mama’s coat and lied like a heathen to get here. Maybe they going to call out my name and take me away.

“Bowie!”

“Ma’am!” By the swing in her voice, I know that girl’s from Texas. I heard her tell she done already caught the eye of one of the enlisted men back home.

“Boylen!”

“Ma’am,” I croak, my throat all dry. I have to clear my throat and say it again. “Ma’am!”

“In the army, you’ll have to learn to speak up, Boylen.” Captain Ferguson look at me close. “You’ll learn. Brant!”

“Ma’am!”

“Brown!”

“Ma’am!”

“Carter!”

I look around. Nobody looks to be coming to take me back. Don’t no one seem to be paying me any mind at all.
Thank you, Jesus
. The sweat dries on my face as my heart settles down.

After they call the roll, Lieutenant Hundley march us to the little house they say is for “mess.” We look around, and the food ain’t nothin’ like we get at home. Here they got eggs and bacon and sausage all at the same meal. I hope Feen getting food this good in Philadelphia.

My heart hurts a little when I think that. Feen getting fed up good at Aunt Shirley’s. Feen going to be just fine, I tell myself, but my throat swells up so I can’t hardly swallow.

The girls sit about six to every table, and everyone gets my name: Peaches Carter, Ruby Bowie, Phillipa Barnes, Dovey Borland. There’s a girl all the way from New London, Connecticut, at my table, Annie Brown. I like to hear her talk.

“You from around here?” she ask me first thing.

“Nah. From down Bay Slough way, Alabama. You been to Iowa before?”

“Nope. I’ve barely even been out of New London.” Annie grins. Her big brown eyes remind me of Feen’s. Even though my throat is tight, I grin back at her. I hear her tell she got
three
brothers, all in the service, and she the youngest one in her family. She is a ball of fire, looking around and grinning like she own the place. I like her.

They line us up, march us to another little metal house for “inoculations.” We get shots for diphtheria, the typhoid, and such and learn to say, “Yes, ma’am,” to all Women’s Army Corps, or WAC, personnel and, “No, sir,” to the regular army men. Some girls squall when they see them needles, but I don’t. It don’t hurt worse than black mud-dauber wasps at home in the summer.

I don’t waste time thinkin’ about
home
, though.

All day long, seems like we march back and forth. We stand around and wait while some white man holler at us, “This ain’t no beauty college! What made you such-and-such women think you could be in this man’s army?” We march so
much my legs hurt, till Captain say, “You girls don’t need to stomp
that
hard.” When we do march right, it sounds good. They make the tall ones line up first. We short ones in the back got to march quick to keep up.

After lunch, they give us tests for typing, using tools, and some math. Then Captain makes us march to our barracks. She take apart our beds, tell us how to make them again, and then leave us be. All of us just want to get clean and pass out.

Peaches Carter in my barracks. I know why they call her Peaches, even though her mama named her Pamela Jane—she’s got those pretty round cheeks always pushed up in a big old smile. She got her hair all pinned up in braids round her head, say she heard that’s how all of us have to wear it. Ooh, that girl’s crazy! She makes us laugh with her imitations of the army folk. “This ain’t no beauty college!” she say, high-stepping around like she crazy. I like Peaches. She just turned twenty-one, and she went to secretarial college in Atlanta last year. She say she’ll teach me how to type.

We still giggling and laughin’ when they blow that horn at night, all sad and low, and someone hollers, “Lights-out!” I feel funny not catchin’ the bus to Young’s, but I am too tired to think of that for long. Then somebody start to sing.

My heart squeeze so hard it chokes me. I put my face in my pillow so nobody don’t hear me cry. It makes me so lonely for Feen and even for Mama that I can’t stand it. I was too tired last night to say my prayers, but tonight I whisper, “God bless Feen. God bless Sister Dials. God bless Miss Ida. God bless Beatrice … and God bless Mama.”

Even though she won’t never forgive me for this.

Tali is sleeping, but I’m watching the rain. I miss Mom. After Mare told us about the day she left home to join the army, I got homesick. If I wasn’t ever going to see Mom and Dad again, I couldn’t just leave without saying goodbye. I really don’t know how Mare did.

I guess it’s too quiet, because Mare clicks on the radio to NPR. While on I-8 through San Diego, we hear soft-voiced commentators play us upbeat world music, gently murmur about the weather, and calmly give us endless news commentary in a serious monotone. The radio is making me sleepy, but I can’t go to sleep. Mom and Dad said we’re supposed to keep an eye on Mare, and since Tali’s passed out in the backseat, I guess it’s on me now.

Earlier, when Mare pulled over to let Tali drive, those big rigs weren’t the only things going slow. Tali is scared of trucks, and every time one of them came up beside her, she panicked. Twice she made Mare and me screech, letting the car drift in the lane, rattling over the lines. She could speed
up and pass them, but she got all tense every time one came anywhere near her.

“Just relax,” Mare kept saying, and Tali started yelling.

“I am relaxed! You guys just have to stop talking. I can’t drive while you’re talking.”

She wanted to pull over pretty badly by the time she’d been driving for an hour, but Mare said no.

“The only way to get past fear is to get through it,” Mare told her. “You stick to it, Tali.”

And she did it—she drove for almost three hours, in between RVs and eighteen-wheelers and big trucks pulling trailers. When we stopped for gas, her back was all sweaty, and I could see her legs were shaking, but she was happy. She was even happier when Mare said she’d take over from there.

I’m actually kind of proud of my evil sister.

The sky is dark, and there are no stars. Every once in a while, I click on the little flashlight on my house key to check our route on the map. I wish Mare would stop. There are no buildings on the road this far away from town, and I thought I saw lightning in front of us. If it starts storming out here in the middle of nowhere, I don’t know what we’re going to do.

“Mare? Are we stopping pretty soon?”

“In a while now,” Mare says unconcernedly. “You don’t need to use it again already, do you?”

I roll my eyes. “No. Just wondered if you were going to drive all night.”

Mare turns her head, and her teeth are white blobs in the dark as she smiles. “No, Octavia, I am not going to drive all night. I just want to get across the desert while it’s cool, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

Mare checks the rearview mirror. “It’s only nine-forty-five. I know you girls stay up later than this.”

“Well, yeah …” I shrug. “I thought you said you weren’t going to drive at night.”