Mare's War (24 page)

Skinny little Miss Victoria has got dirty knees all the time now. Her mama sets her to weeding, but every time she sees me, she’s up and running, asking where I am going and what I am doing and don’t I want to see her doll baby. Lord, that girl can
talk
.

“Didn’t your mama send you to work in the garden?” “I am,” Victoria says. “I just want to see …” “Gotta get to work, missy,” I tell her. “See ya tomorrow, okay?”

“All right,” she grumbles, and she stomps back to her dirt. But she is not grumbling too hard. I just happen to have a couple of sugar cubes in the pocket of my coveralls, and she already has got one in her mouth. She didn’t want nothing else anyway.

Latrine gossip says we are fixing to move on from England. Doris Smith says the brass took a train to London to get our orders, and we are going back to Scotland. Peach say we are still going to Paris, but nowadays, she doesn’t say it so loud as before. Mostly, she doesn’t say much, at least not to me. She sure has got a lot of time on her hands to be with Miss Gloria Madden, though. She’s met Gloria’s captain in London, and would you believe that floozy set up Peaches with one of his friends? He’s some boy who comes all the way from France on his leave to see her. All that way! No wonder she hopes we are going to Paris.

I sign in for the night shift at the Postal Directory Battalion, thinking I’ll find Dovey and Phillipa later on. Phillipa has been trying to teach me how to shoot pool, and I just about got those angles worked out right. Phillipa says if we get good enough, we can play for money. Dovey’s on operator shift; we all have to take our turn for two nights. Operators aren’t supposed to listen in on a call, but that duty is dull, dull, dull, and we all listen in to keep awake. What I want to know from her is if HQ got our orders for sure. I don’t suspect we going to Paris, France, ever.

Somebody has got a radio playing, and they’re singing “I’m Beginning to See the Light.” The CO, Captain Robinson, sitting at the desk, is yawning, going over the outgoing mail with her little razor blade. All of us have to make sure we tell no military secrets in our letters home, or the censor will cut it right out. “Loose lips sink ships,” is what they say, like any of us know military secrets. What we know, we read in the paper.

The big news is that the infantry marched on the Germans and set free some prisoners of war. The Allies also freed about twenty thousand Jews and other folks the Germans have been starving to death in a camp called Buchenwald. The newsreel shows the folks have got arms look like sticks, and so many of them they found dead, they are calling it a Nazi death camp.

Seeing how the Nazis been treating folks, I am almost certain I was right to leave home. Somebody has got to fight for the folks who don’t get help. No matter what, there’s no call to starve folks like that. We have just
got
to beat the Nazis. If Hitler make it past our boys, there won’t be no use for colored folks or
nobody
to go back to the States. The strong are supposed to help the weak and not to please ourselves, isn’t that what the Book says? Right now we are the strong ones, and we have to win. We have to.

Somebody brings me another bag of post, and I have got my hands full of mail, looking at names, slipping ’em in the slots, checking the station number in that dim light, and squinting. I get to humming, and the work pass on in no time at all.

While I hear Duke Ellington on the radio, I think about Feen. Her neighborhood club is still collecting scrap metal, and Feen won a prize for collecting the most scrap of any colored girl in her neighborhood. She says Mama is real proud—and I am glad that she hears from Mama, even though it makes my gut knot up that she still don’t have a word to say to me.

Feen say there is a Jap boy in her class. His name is
Tamekichi Takagi, but they call him Tommy. He is the boy who collected the most scrap in his neighborhood, but no neighborhood association is going to give no Jap a prize, not nowadays. Feen say he is as patriotic as anybody, but that don’t make a difference.

Feen say Aunt Shirley says not to speak to him on the street in public. Folks say it is bad enough that she is colored, but no patriotic American should be seen talking to a Jap. Feen says it don’t make her no difference whatsoever what kind of boy Tommy is. She says next time she sees him, she will buy him a Coke.

I have not been gone but a year, and already Feen seems like she’s gotten busy and grew up. When did she get opinionated? I am proud of her. Aunt Shirley must be all right.

Mama still don’t have nothing to say to me, but I am through waiting for Mama. The Dials girls sent me a little stationery for Easter, and I hear from Mrs. Ida Payne that Beatrice finally got on with the Red Cross. They sent her to work on one of them Clubmobiles somewhere in Belgium. Miss Ida say her girl, Bébé, has been seeing a major and had her picture in
Stars and Stripes
. Miss Ida says Beatrice calls herself a “Doughnut Dolly.” Good ol’ Beatrice finally got away from her mama.

Near midnight, I am tired out. My eyes are watering from keeping the blackout shades drawn and the lights down low. We all of us look up, startled, when we hear somebody running.

“Hey, Dovey!”

“What’s up, Dovey?”

I crane my neck. “Girl? What’s the matter? Who’s minding the switchboard?”

Dovey’s got her hands over her mouth, her eyes stretched wide.

“Dove!” I shove my stack of mail in the pocket of my utility and grab her arm. “What happened?”

On the late shift, it is just Women’s Army Corps, no civilians and no Red Cross personnel. Dovey looks around the room making sure before she says it.

“I heard it on the switchboard. President Roosevelt is …”

I do not hear her say the word. Folks suck in air like there isn’t going to be none left to breathe.

“You sure, Dovey?” I ask her, shaking her arm. “Girl, are you sure?”

Dovey starts crying. “I passed a call through to the major,” she chokes.

And then folks start crying all over the place. I walk Dovey back and get her some water. We can’t desert our posts, but nobody will know unless she don’t stay put.

We stay at work but hardly get another thing done. Folks turn the radio up, but there is no news. What now? is the question we all ask.

President Roosevelt pulled us out of the Depression, made up jobs, and let folks get back some dignity. His wife has got more than respect for colored folks; she is known to be a friend in government. Harry Truman, the vice president,
will be sworn in right quick, but hardly anybody around here really know a thing about him.

In the morning, while we stand in formation, HQ give us the official word: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is dead.

It is April 12, 1945.

HQ gives out orders for the flag to be flown at half-mast for thirty days out of respect. The MPs wear black armbands, and we muster out in dress uniforms and caps, shoes shiny, to first one, then another memorial service. The major assigns some of us to attend services in Birmingham, so the U.S. Army is represented. We go on working, keeping our voices down.

Friday, I see Victoria hanging around the gate. I pat my pockets. Don’t have no sugar for her; seems in all this I forget her little sweet tooth. I get ready to watch her poke out her mouth, but instead, she comes up to me, all solemn.

“This is for you,” she says, and shoves something in my hand.

It is a wilted piece of tree, blue flowers all crushed, but it has a powerful smell.

“My mum said it’s rosemary. For remembrance,” Victoria say, still sober. “Mum says it’s just terrible about your president.”

For the first time, my eyes water. “Yeah. It is,” I tell her.

Victoria makes to walk off, then she turns around. “Have you anyone else to be president over there?”

“We got somebody,” I say, blinking hard.

“Good.” Victoria nods her little head like she’s made up her mind. “See you tomorrow, okay?”

I nod back.

Back home, it is still yesterday, yesterday before the president died.

Today, Doris says we got orders to go to France for sure.

The world has gone right on.

The news is that old devil Hitler done sent himself to hell, but none of us get too excited till we receive the official word from headquarters almost a week later. Then the whole base requests passes to cut loose in Birmingham, except those on necessary tasks.

Me, Ruby, Peaches, and Phillipa run up and down the streets in Birmingham. We take a number 7 bus to Victoria Square, where they have built up a big old fire, and we dance and sing. They have got a piano outside, and folks break out the whiskey they have been saving since rations started. For this party, nobody cares what color you are; everyone is happy. Folks are just kissing everybody they can reach. One of the real old men kisses me on my cheek with all his hairy whiskers. He says I am a “good gel.”

Some of the men are just drunk, but it is a happy kind of drunk; nobody gets disorderly, and the MPs don’t have to put nobody in jail. Folks just wave flags, singing “God Save the Queen,” laughing and crying all at once.

We dance till our feet start aching, then we hobble on back. The double summer hours mean we got plenty of light, so we get to see every fire and every party and dance with pretty near just about everybody in the whole city of Birmingham. Nobody has got to use blackout curtains, and nobody puts those blinders over their headlights. The street is lit up as bright as day, since they got the old streetlights on. Folks are shining torches and lighting candles inside just about every window. Won’t be no Germans and their planes dropping down the V-bombs anymore. I don’t know how folks sleep with all this light, but on base, we are so tired we do all right.

Next day, the headline for the
London Daily News
says
V-E DAY! IT’S OVER IN THE WEST!
Phillipa makes sure she gets herself a newspaper to send back home. She reads out loud to us and says they are rounding up the Nazis for war trial and dragging them off to jail. Then she says she wants to go to London to see the other parties. Phillipa says this is “history,” so she needs to see it. I say that girl just likes to get kissed by men with whiskers.

“Wonder if your friend Gloria and her captain going to get together and
celebrate
?” I say, and Peaches rolls her eyes.

“Let her tell it, she’s already doing enough celebrating for all of us. That girl wants to make sure she goes home with a rock on her finger.”

“It’ll go with the rocks in her head,” Ruby mutters under her breath, and I crack up.

“Troops are pulling out,” Phillipa says, and we all get
quiet. “The Red Cross is boarding all branches of the service—they have already started sending out the wounded.”

“I know.” Peaches frowns. “Annie is shipping out on Friday.”

Annie tried hard, but when she heard her friend from the POW camp had been shipped home, we knew she wasn’t long for staying over here. Nobody blames her, but I will miss that Miss Connecticut something fierce. I cried almost as hard as I did when Feen left when Annie said she had to go.

Little old Miss Victoria cried, too, when I told her we have orders to ship out to France.

“But I want you to stay!” Victoria said, squinching up her eyes and glaring at me.

“We got to help find the Nazis hiding in France,” I told her.

“I
hate
the Nazis,” she said, and she stomped off home. Poor thing. I think she will miss my sugar cubes more than she will miss me, but even so, all of us are riled up with all the coming and going. Sure, the bombs have stopped, but nobody knows what comes next.

“Well, the war is over,” Phillipa says. “They’ll probably ship all of us out soon.”

Nobody says anything for a while as we think about that. My throat is tight, so I speak up just to end the silence. “Poor Peaches. She ain’t never going to get to no Paris, France.”

“Yes, I will,” Peaches says, and she throws her shoe at me. “You may laugh, Marey Lee Boylen, but I am going to Paris.”

“The war isn’t over anyway, not yet,” Ruby says, and flops
back on her bunk. “The Japs haven’t surrendered, so it’s not over till it’s over.”

“Are you thinking they’ll take colored WACs out to the Pacific?” Phillipa looks up.

“I don’t know,” Ruby says, and she shrugs. “I’m just talking.”

I look over at Ruby, then get myself busy with my ironing. I know Ruby has been worrying that they will send Bob out to the Red Cross in the Pacific, and she wants to follow him. Everybody has got homes to go to, gentlemen friends to see, families who want them to get home safe. When they ship us home, what am I going to do? I have got to make a plan.

We don’t get much time to wonder. Just after we see Annie off to the station, the lieutenant posts orders, and suddenly we are all scrambling. Been here for so long it doesn’t seem right that we have got to leave so fast, but we are marching out to get on a train to France. We don’t have any Paris in our plans, though. Orders say we going somewhere Captain Ferguson says is “Roo-ah.” Most folks say the word like “ruin.” It is spelled “Rouen,” so we don’t know what to call it.

“We better brush up on our French,” Phillipa says, and I laugh. No one in my unit speaks more than one or two words of French; at Fort Oglethorpe they taught us Spanish and French, but we didn’t have enough time to learn more than “hello” and “goodbye” and “How much?”

“Doesn’t anybody have a French dictionary?” Peaches
asks. “How are we going to be able to tell them what kind of perfume we want?”

But pretty soon none of us worry about French folks and their French words or even French perfume. We get some real news: they have got colored troops in France!

“Lord, girl, they’ve got men out there?” Doris Smith asks, patting her hair. “We won’t know how to act!”

“Sister, get me off this train!” Ina White says, and we all have a laugh.

Suddenly folks who didn’t put a stitch more effort than needed into getting into uniform are trying to powder their noses and check the way their hats tilt in every mirror. Girls act like they don’t have common sense, batting their lashes and looking all around.