Gone to Soldiers (36 page)

“Seeing him is the only party I care about. What's more important than to look good to him before he goes?”

She stared at him as he came through the door, a little dismayed, for he looked different in the uniform. His fine light brown hair was cut so short he looked bald, his ears sticking out like handles on a sugar bowl. His eyes were the same rich warm brown with flecks of sun in them; that reassured her. She did not know how she got him out of the house, but she did. Tata wanted to talk with him, Arty was waiting around, Sharon and Rose were avid with curiosity.

What got them out was that they both wanted desperately to be alone together, and politeness simply failed and the urge to bolt into the night won out.

“Where are we going?” she asked, in his car.

“How about Belle Isle? At least it will be cooler there.”

Rose had been right; the pink chiffon dress was silly. But he was saying, “You look so beautiful, I can't believe it. I can't believe we're together and I can't believe I have to leave you in less than twenty-four hours.… Don't you ever wish we'd gotten married before I joined up?”

“Sometimes. But it doesn't make sense. At least, maybe by the time you get out, we can do it without losing everything we want.”

“Right now all I want is the right to walk into a room with you and close the door on everybody else in the world.”

“You sound like you wish we'd got married?”

“We were stupid not to. At least you'd get the allotment checks.”

In the pavilion on Belle Isle, a band was playing. Murray was not the world's best dancer and neither was she. The female singer was belting out, “One Dozen Roses.” The dance floor was so crowded that they could do no more than embrace where they stood and sway back and forth with little steps. Half of Detroit seemed crowded into the river park tonight.

He held her very close. She kept having trouble catching her breath, not because he was hurting her but because of their bodies pressed thigh to thigh and belly to belly. She could feel his erection against her. Through the flimsy chiffon, her skin burned. The dance floor was hot, reeking of beer, sweat, perfume, hair tonic. Fights kept breaking out on the fringes. They simply stood in place swaying, taking mincing little steps and holding each other.

When the band started a fast jitterbug, “Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand,” they sat down. The floor cleared out some. They drank soda and looked at each other. She kept feeling as if she were on the edge of bursting into tears. “It was hard for you at Parris Island, wasn't it?”

“The Marines must recruit the worst bullies and the most prejudiced foul-mouthed goys in the whole country.”

That was a word he had used to object to, a ghetto word, he had said. Now it came to his lips with feeling. What you send away, you don't get back the same, she thought, but felt no less close to him.

He handed her a check for one hundred ten dollars made out to her. “I've been saving. You open a new account for us. I have to feel we're getting someplace. This'll start us off, when the war's over. We'll both save what we can. I don't want to live with your parents or move in with mine. I have to know if I come back, and I'm going to come back, I swear it, that I'm coming back to you. That you're waiting for me—”

“Murray, you must know that. I haven't looked at another man since the first time we went out together. I don't want anybody else.”

“But it's hard on you too. I want you to know we're homing in on what we want together. That we will make it happen. I won't give up any part of it. I won't let go of you, and that's going to bring me back.”

“You're going overseas?”

“I'm sure of it. The guys are guessing New Zealand.”

How could they be together at this table tonight and tomorrow separated, perhaps for years? “We could make a code to get by the censors, for all the places we can think of.” They made up phrases for New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, Samoa.

“It's like a shvitz bath in here, let's get a breeze,” he said, leading her out to the old Dodge. He drove toward the downriver end of the island and parked on a loop with several other cars, dark and occupied. As soon as he shut off the engine, he reached for her.

She knew almost as soon as he touched her that he was not going to hold back. He was not trying to restrain himself, as he always had, as she had always trusted him to. He wanted. “Murray, I'm afraid. Don't!”

“Ruthie, if not now, when? When will we have a chance together? I have a rubber, I'll take care. Don't be frightened of me.”

“You are so sure of me, you bring one of those things?”

“I'm sure what I want, and that it's you I want. Aren't you sure yet?” He did not wait for her answer but started kissing her again, slipping his hand down inside the V neck of the dress and into her brassiere. His hand felt hot against her breast, engulfing. No one had ever touched her naked breast before and she felt as if she were turning to warm jelly, the calves' foot jelly Bubeh made for invalids.

She tried to twist away from him but he held her. “Ruthie, you want me too. Don't make us both suffer any longer. You are mine. Or aren't you?”

She felt the slither of despair cold and dry on her back. Fighting off Leib had been one thing, discouraging Murray another. She had let him too far in. She loved him. She could find no words to raise between them that would refuse him without pain. She thought of her mother. Rose would be furious. She was caught between them, pulled to each. But Rose had her husband and she must have hers, the only man she had ever found herself wanting all through her body and her mind.

She could not wrestle with him or strike him as she had more than once given Leib a smart slap across the face. She was going to give in. Rose would have many names for a girl who was that foolish, but Rose had never had to send Morris off to be shot at. The worst danger he had ever faced had been beatings on a picket line, and at least they had been married then.

Murray could read her body language, her sighs, her sudden passivity in his arms. “You will. Come on, take off your dress. We can get that undressed.”

“Suppose the police come.”

“They won't. They're scared to come in here when so many servicemen are parked. They know they'd start a riot.”

They got into the backseat. Ruthie was shaking slightly as he slipped the dress off. She insisted on keeping on her bra and her slip. She was not wearing stockings. She was rigid with fear.

“Ruthie, my love, my baby, you're so stiff I'll hurt you. Relax to me. When we were dancing, you wanted me. Can't you want me now?”

“I'm so scared I can't stop shaking. You should just go ahead and do it anyhow.”

“Put your hand on me. There. Is that so frightening? It's just flesh like your flesh. It stands up, it lies down. You can make it do anything you want just by touching it. It's not as big as your foot or as hard as your elbow, right?”

She laughed. “I'm touching it. Don't think I'm an idiot. I've seen my brother Duvey's, when he was asleep on top of the covers and I was sent in to wake him, but it was just hanging there, little.”

“Haven't you ever touched yourself, kitten?”

“You shouldn't ask me that.” She felt herself blushing. Her hand tightened around his thing.

“Haven't you? Of course you have.”

“Just since I met you! Before that, I didn't have to!”

“The fire I lit, I will put out,” he said softly in her ear, her hair, and put his hand between her legs. “That's better. That's good. Tell me you like me to do that.”

“Murray!”

“Ruthie!” He kissed her. His finger slid up into her. “It doesn't have to be grim. We'll do this thousands of times before we die, thousands and thousands and thousands. We'll do it till we're ninety. Does that hurt?” He slowly slid another finger and then another into her.

“Yes, it hurts.” She had her hand on his penis, so she knew it was only fingers. Still, “Hadn't we better put that cover on you?”

“Okay. Now.” He took his hand away from her. Her body still ached where he had touched her, the sting of the stretching but also an ache that was wanting. He tore open the foil and fitted the rubber over himself. “You put him in.” He drew her slip up away from her hips and put his handkerchief under her buttocks.

“Me?”

“If it hurts too much, stop.” He lay down half on her and pressed his penis against her. Slowly he moved it back and forth, back and forth, until suddenly he slid in, as his finger had done, just a little. It did hurt but she thought, I must do this, I must, and she lunged forward, with a sharp tearing pain that brought tears to her eyes. Slowly the tears trickled over his shoulder.

“There,” she said.

“We did it.” He moved slowly in her at first and then suddenly faster. “Am I hurting you?” he gasped, as if he too was in pain.

She did not answer, not wanting to lie. Then he groaned and stopped. After a few minutes, he slowly drew out of her. The condom hung heavy on him with fluid, and his penis was smaller again.

They had to go back soon after that. “I'm going to say we went out and drank coffee down by Wayne and then went to a movie,” Ruthie said.

“If they believe that, they'll believe anything.”

“You better hope they believe it. I'm praying.”

When she got in, Sharon was crying because she had just had a fight with Arty as he was leaving for work, and Rose was holding her and saying, he didn't mean it, he didn't mean it. Arty had lost his temper because Sharon always fell asleep before he left. He said his mother would sit up to see him out of the house, but his own wife was too lazy.

Ruthie felt profoundly relieved. She was safe from Rose's attention. In the bathroom she carefully sponged dried blood from her thighs and washed the stained panty. She could not sleep, because she had slept during the day. This was the time of night she usually worked and she was wide awake. However, she played at going to bed until the house was dark and quiet and she could be sure everyone else was sleeping.

Then she sat at the kitchen table trying to make peace with herself over what she had done. Now she had to marry him. But she wanted to anyhow. At least they had had that much. Finally she took out her schoolbooks and studied, making notes for a paper she had to write. Homework was something that took up any spare moments she had. Was she a fool or had she done the right thing? There was no one to ask. She had put Murray's desire in between herself and her mother.

Tomorrow they had only the hours until noon, so Murray would be coming over at nine. That would be their last three hours for nobody knew how long. Then she would eat a quick lunch with his parents and Murray and then they would take him to the station. She would try even harder than before to make them like her, for it counted more now.

She would say they were going on a picnic and take a blanket. They could go to a park and walk into the woods. Back to Belle Isle or to Rouge Park, which was farther but much bigger. She was a bad woman to plan so, but she did not care. He must carry off with him the knowledge of her love, even if she couldn't give him anything else to take away. The check meant he was serious about their future. They would have a joint account like married people, long before they could have a house or a bed or a name in common. Every week she would put some of her paycheck in, toward that future that might never come.

BERNICE 3

Bird on a Wire

Bernice was using her electric cake mixer to beat the spot of orange dye into the viscid white oleo. Butter was not only rationed, it had virtually disappeared. At least The Professor was busy again. After a period in which everyone had been afraid the college was about to be closed down, St. Thomas had let women in and secured government contracts to train Army and Navy personnel. The Professor was teaching German, but he also had to fill in with French, Spanish and an algebra course, as the school had lost over half its faculty.

Propped against the tiles of the kitchen wall just behind the mixer was a letter addressed to Bernice. It was back in its envelope, already limp with handling, but she knew by heart what it said. It advised her that she had an appointment with Jacqueline Cochran in Boston at the Ritz Carlton next Monday at 1:00
P
.
M
.

Pinned to the wall of her room was the first news item, that Nancy Love was organizing a service of women pilots to ferry planes. Bernice had not qualified for that; Love was taking only the most experienced women pilots in the country, women with four, five, six hundred hours, women who had been flying professionally for years. Her hope had been humbled, and then she had been grounded. The coastal strip for one hundred fifty miles inland had been closed to civilian patrols. Now she could not fly at all, and her life pressed in on her, narrow as a typewriter ribbon.

Then an article had appeared saying that Jacqueline Cochran was organizing another ferrying service. She had written at once, but she had not heard for two months. Down in Houston, Texas, the first class of WFTDs were training. Bernice had her chance at the interview Monday to persuade Cochran to let her fly for the Women's Flying Training Detachment. Enough literature had come for her to know she was well within the weight requirements, high for women's bodies, and thus suitable for her big-boned frame.

Since that initial response she had been walking miles every day. She had joined a calisthenics class at the college; she studied her old manuals and read library books on aeronautics. What she had not done was tell The Professor about the interview. He had already dismissed the idea of her going anyplace. She only wished that the WFTD had the power to draft her.

Monday morning she got up before her father, made his breakfast, wrote a note about the interview and fled, running through the lightly falling snow to the little bus station behind the post office. She was in time for the 6:45 bus, crowded already by the time it reached Bentham Center. She stood near the back, all the way to Boston, arriving there two hours early.