Mare's War (11 page)

That is enough to get me right up on my feet. I might be so scared I can’t even run, but I put my hand to the plow, and I don’t aim to look back. My swollen, watery eyes find Dovey’s.

“Let’s go,” I say. She puts her arm around me and leads the way.

Gas. Gas! Looks like fog, but it kills you dead. For the first time, I wonder ’bout those soldiers we studied back in school. They must have been scared to death out there in France.

“Fall in!” Lieutenant Hundley holler, and our platoon get into place. Then Lieutenant say, “All right, ladies. Let’s do it again!” and we do. We march in there with our legs shaking, and I can hear Annie praying behind me. Underneath my mask my lips move as I do the same.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want
.

“Gas!” Hundley holler, and we see that fog coming till we can’t hardly see.

“Masks!” Hundley holler louder, and I fight myself and make myself take it off. I stop my sobbing and drag in a breath and hold it … hold it … hold it…. My head is getting light. I can feel my heart beating.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…
.

“Masks on!”

My fingers are fumbling. I get that mask sealed, but I blow too soon. I got no more air, but I keep that mask on my face and blow even though I got no air. Then I take in a big breath and start coughing. It is not so bad this time. The air is still stinging my eyes and nose, and I can’t see, but it is not as bad as last time. Pretty soon somebody will open the door.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…
.

“Fall out! Wipe your masks and fall in! We are going to do it again!” Lieutenant Hundley hollers out as she open the door. With our legs shaking, we march out.

Much later, we march half-time back to camp. My eyes are swollen, my nose is snotting, my throat is sore, and I still got vomit on my shoes, but I went through my gas drill over and over and over, and I made it. When I pass her on my way to barracks, Hundley say, “Well done, Private,” and gives me a nod. I can barely open my eyes, but I know she means it.

We got to do it again tomorrow.

But I am not scared. I am not scared of nothin’ now. I got blisters on my heels, my hands is cut up, my shoulders are sore from marching with a pack, and I can’t never get enough sleep, but I wouldn’t trade nothin’ for this. Not a thing.

Didn’t nobody ever tell me I was this tough. Didn’t no-body ever tell me no girl could work this hard, and nobody
never said that work this hard could give you pride. My nails might not be nice enough for polite folk, and my face might not be clean, but I earned my place in this man’s army. I earned it.

And ain’t
nobody
gonna make Marey Lee Boylen go home.

We finished up with basic and were awarded our first leave. Annie hears the news and grabs me and screams.

“Third Platoon is steppin’ out on the town,” she sings. I put on my garrison cap with a tilt, and I step out with the others in our off-duty summer uniform, holding my clutch purse and wearing my white gloves.

After a bumpy, jumpy ride on the trolley, we find a colored soda fountain, and Annie finally has herself a milk shake. When we find a dance joint, it’s just colored Women’s Army Corps there, and we’re all from Third Platoon. Do we dance anyway? Do we ever! Somebody puts on some Cab Calloway, and everybody get to actin’ crazy then. Annie say it ain’t—isn’t—so much fun without some handsome boys to walk us home. Still, it is nice to watch Peaches and them cut loose out there on the dance floor.

“Marey Lee, get out here!” Peaches hollers to me, holding up her arms and doing some fast steps to the music.

“I can’t dance,” I say, crossing my arms. “You look real good, though.”

“Oh, go on.” Annie plants her hands on my back and gives me a shove. “Girl, if this music doesn’t make you want to move, I don’t know what’s wrong with you!”

“But I don’t know how!” I whine, and try to sit back down.

“Come here.” Peaches drags me by the hand. “Look. Just hold my hands and do the opposite of what I do, all right? Listen to the music. That beat goes one-two-three-four, right? So just step from one side to the other, left-right-left, one.” As she says “one,” she pauses on her right foot. “Now right-left-right, one,” she says, and pauses on the left.

I try to copy her.

“No, just little steps, Marey Lee. Now try again.”

Clumsy and ashamed of it, I follow her movements, but it’s hard to be embarrassed for too long with everyone else stepping and shimmying around me and the music on nice and loud. Next to me, Annie does the same thing I’m doing, but she throws her hips into it and gets a real shuffle going on. I imagine what this dance might look like if we weren’t in our uniform skirts. Boy, we could really twirl!

I get so good at my simple step I try to throw in a twist, too, but I do it too hard and almost land on my behind. Peaches just about falls on hers, laughing.

“Not so hard,” she giggles. “Take it easy, hepcat!”

We have so much fun that Annie says she almost didn’t miss walking home with some boy. I can hardly stop boogying all the way home, but Peach says I’d better stop.

“Girl, you’re going to be beat in the morning!”

I am, but I just don’t care.

The paymaster has been helping me send money home, but I still ain’t heard nothing from Mama. Sometimes, after lights out at 2100, I lay down still and think about that.

I wish I knew what lies Toby done told Mama about me. I got a feeling that once Feen left for Philadelphia, Mama didn’t want to be nobody’s mother anymore. Maybe the next man that comes along she’ll tell she don’t have kids, and if she don’t let Feen come home, it will seem like it’s true.

I wish Daddy hadn’t died and left us. I am afraid Mama wishes she hadn’t had Feen and me at all. She could be happy with her man Mr. Toby if it weren’t for Feen and me.

I can’t think about that too long. If I start cryin’ about home, I might not stop.

We still don’t have all of our uniforms yet, but finally, they send Third Platoon down to the warehouse for a clothing fit. Don’t nothing fit nobody—anybody—quite right. Skirts that fit across Peaches’s broad behind are too big for her tiny waist. I don’t have hips to speak of, so most things fit my hips just cut into my waist. Poor Dovey’s got such long arms that her jackets have to be taken out, and it’s
getting too hot to wear her winter jacket anymore. Girdles are regulation, but mine bunches up when I sit. We all are a sorry sight and have a lot of work to do with the seam-stress to get things right.

At least our summer fatigues fit. There just isn’t too much wrong you can do with seersucker, and the little hats we wear with them are not too bad. As usual, Annie has to wear hers tipped back on her head so she can be cute.

All we hear about for weeks is Play Day. They say maybe Mrs. Roosevelt’s gonna come out to see all of us WACs, but I doubt it. Mrs. Roosevelt’s busy with them poor kids with polio, and anyway, colored girls in the middle of nowhere know better than to think the wife of the president of the United States is gonna come see them. Somebody’s always startin’ some kind of rumor around here. These army folks gossip worse than Sister Dials!

Every Saturday, we got inspection, and every week, some new brass comes in on the train. We got folks from D.C. tryin’ to look at the Women’s Army, and everybody, coloreds and whites, got to march, drill, and post the colors for ’em. Some of them generals stare at us like they’ve never seen colored girls before. Some of them don’t look at us at all. Sometimes they got whole families at the reviewing stand—old generals and their wives, grandkids, the works—and the USO, the United Service Organization, which brings recreation for troop morale, gives dinner dances for the brass. They get up to some big doings, too, and there ain’t nothing like doing KP for a fancy dinner.
It takes hours. We got to chop vegetables, peel eggs, and make ninety-nine platters of this and that. (Only the fancy dinners get real eggs—we got powdered ones for our breakfast most of the time.) Somebody got a song about it, too:

We end up with greasy skillets, pots, and pans that look worse than Young’s on a Saturday night. The army don’t waste a thing, either, so we got to be draining grease, cutting up fat, and chopping up those vegetables mighty fine. We’ll be on our feet all day with it, a full eight
hours
, and after all that, we don’t want to do nothing but fall and fall down out when we get some “rest and recreation” time.

Saturday afternoon, just after we get off, Lieutenant Hundley come by, her face lookin’ hard. She holler out, like we doing drill, “Peaches Carter!”

“Ma’am!” Peaches says. Peach has been workin’ in one of the offices ’cause she went to commercial high school and took up shorthand typing. She says she doesn’t want to be no army grunt, but Lieutenant Hundley has always got another job for her.

“Carter, front and center,” she say. “We had a request for you.”

“A request, ma’am?” Peaches put her hands on her hips.
Our company just got showered, and Peach is in her WAC-issue maroon bathrobe, getting ready to paint her toenails. “I’m off duty, ma’am.”

“I am aware of that, Carter,” Lieutenant says, and she act like her face got frozen. Peaches straighten up fast. “Yes, ma’am,” she say. Hundley does not play around when she’s got that look.

“Captain Jennings is in need of a sitter for General Craig’s twins tonight. Their regular housekeeper is ill. He knows your work and considers you conscientious and feels you would like to earn the pocket money.”

Peaches looks like her jaw just broke. Her mouth hangs open, and every girl in our company looks like she’s just been slapped. Now we know why Hundley looks like she’s about to spit. Nobody in their right mind is gonna ask any of the white girls to watch after some general’s babies after eight hours on their feet, but they’re after the colored girls all the time to fetch and carry and “help out.”

“Get a load of that,” Annie Brown mutters under her breath. I shake my head. Peaches works hard in that kitchen, harder than anybody, and since she doesn’t like to cook nohow, she’s got to try twice as hard. She says Cook hollered at her all day and she about cut her fingers off, with all the chopping she did. She’s tired like we all are.

Peaches lets out her breath like a popped tire. She looks like someone kicked her in the stomach. Her shoulders slump, and she puts down her polish and picks up her shoes.

“I’ll go, Lieutenant Hundley,” I say. I can’t stand Peaches’s broken-down look.

Peaches cuts her eyes at me, and I ignore her. “Peaches hurt herself doing KP I’ll go see to those twins.”

Hundley looks at me like she’s trying to drill nails in my head. “They are babies, Boylen. Children. Do you know any-thing about children?”

“Yes, ma’am. I helped to raise my sister. I will take good care of them. Ma’am.”

“Boylen …”

“I like children, Lieutenant Hundley,” I say, standing tall, daring her to shut my mouth for speaking up. “Peach is whipped; we all see that. I’ll go.”

Peaches mutters, “They asked for me, Boylen,” but we both know it don’t make no never mind who goes to see to those twins. The brass aren’t be too picky when they’re asking for a colored girl to work in the house.

“I got it, Peaches,” is all I say.

Hundley stares at me for a moment, then looks around the barracks. We all stand there in complete silence. There is something in her face that says she’s got a lot to say, but she doesn’t say it to us. I roll my stockings up over my knees and lace up my shoes while she watches me. Annie hands me my jacket.

“This isn’t right,” Lieutenant Hundley says finally, and her voice is quiet. “You girls … You women are in the army. Someone will hear about this….” Hundley looks at the floor, clears her throat. She straightens her shoulders and nods to me. “Let’s go, Boylen.”