97
]
more. He always addressed me as "Johnson" and while we liked and respected each other, we took pains never to show it. Late nights, he would call me into the drawing room and I would stand at attention, easily.
"Johnson. Tomorrow's a beaut."
"Yes, sir?"
"We go up to the city, then back to the country club, then the city, then the farm. A little hard on you, I fear."
"It's my job, sir."
"I could count on you to say that, Johnson."
"Yes, sir."
"Good night."
"Good night, sir."
Mother's gaze followed her ringed fingers up and down the page.
"You'd have to live in and it doesn't really pay enough for you to afford a full-time baby-sitter." She flipped the paper closed.
"Take anything that looks like something. You can always quit. Or there's a chance that you won't rise to the challenge and you'll be fired. But the only thing to remember is that 'you were looking for a job when you found that one.' So whoever fires you ain't getting no cherry." She got up and went into the kitchen.
"How about a Dubonnet"-ice already clucked against the sides of glasses-"with a twist of lemon? I'm going to fix myself a Scotch."
When I was around ten in Arkansas, I saw a glamorous actress play a jaunty chauffeurette in a movie. She maneu-
pf
98
vered an Oldsmobile with one hand andTwas as chic as a model. I looked at the paper again and thought about the chauffeuring job. A wisp of nostalgia floated in my heart. The uniform, the easy camaraderie with the staff, the asexuality with my boss, and peace. Just like the Army. Routine, honorable work, hail-fellows well met, good-hearted companions and fair-minded officers. The Army! Just the thing. The idea snap-saluted in my brain. The Army!
I bounded into the kitchen and nearly collided with Mother and her tray of gold and purple drinks. I had developed some grace, quite a lot when I kept my mind on being graceful, but in unguarded moments my body tended to respond giraffe-like to stimuli.
"Mother!" She had righted the threatened glasses and pushed past me for the dining room. "I'm going in the Army!"
She set down the Dubonnet. "You as a sergeant and the baby as a private?"
Her tongue was sharper than the creases in zoot pants and I knew better than to try to best her. I said nothing.
"What would be the value of becoming a WAG?" she asked.
"The Army has all those side benefits and I could learn a trade. There's the G.I. Bill, and when you get out you can go back to school and buy a home at the same time."
"Side benefits" had caused a glint in Mother's eyes.
"Now"-she pushed the wine toward me--"now you have to consider if you're serious. Because if you are, it would be like volunteering for jail. People tell you when to sleep, eat, wake up, work. Personally, I couldn't do it in a million years."
1
99
Her face frowned revulsion. "But in a way the country would be helping you get a start in life."
Behind her smooth beige forehead, deep thoughts were being turned over, examined and replaced or discarded.
"If you are serious and get in, we'll talk to Mrs. Peabody about taking care of the baby. You could sign up for a twoyear tour, save your money, and study languages and advanced typing."
She was talking my future into shape.
"Try out for Officer Candidate School or Officers' Training Corps. Nothing they could say to you but yes or no. And when you go down there, remember they need you as much as you need them." She saw my disbelief and explained. "The U.S. Army needs nice colored girls, well raised from good families. That's what I meant." She reached for her lipstick tube (never far away). "Government is going to give you an education and a start in life and you're going to give class to that uniform."
"Mother, they would examine me, physically, and find out about the baby."
"You don't have stretch marks and because you breastfed, your breasts never got out of shape." Her words nudged past indifference. "That's not what you ought to be thinking of. No. Decide if you want the Army for two years. Away from your baby and family. Taking orders, and keeping your temper under wraps. That's a decision no one can make for you nor help you make."
She got up from the table and visited one of her flashiest smiles on me.
100
"I have a date now. We can talk more whe'n you're ready. Remember if you decide for the Army, I'll support you. If you decide to be a whore, all I can say is, be the best. Don't be a funky chippie. Go with class."
She pasted a waxy kiss on my forehead and draped her Kolinsky over her shoulders.
"How do I look?"
"Beautiful."
She tugged the furs into a more casual drape and laughed. "You only say it 'cause it's true."
Her high heels tapped toward the door in drumming rhythm.
^
'?'&
79
The U.S. Recruitment Center hadn't tried hard. The offices were at the foot of San Francisco's Market Street, near the glamorous Ferry Building, but none of the latter's exotica strayed to the prefab whitewash walls of the Center.
A uniformed woman offered me a Dagwood sandwich of brochures and applications and I sat down to read.
Indeed, it sounded like what I needed. Food, shelter, training and comradeship. Two years and I could buy a house for myself and my son. Might find a man, too. After all, there was a conglomeration of men in the Army. All I had to do now was maneuver between outrageous lies and delicate untruths to pass the various tests. (I wasn't concerned about
101
the I.Q., but about the Rorschach.) Had I just wanted to join the regular Women's Army it would have taxed my creative lying skills, but I had gone one further. Mother had said, "Start at the top," so I decided to try out for Officer Candidate School. I thought daily trips to the Center would help my case.
The war's end had left the skeletal WAG staff with little to do except file papers in triplicate and dress up in privilege. For nearly a month I provided diversion. Naturally, the clerks couldn't enjoy my artful dodging as much as I, because they weren't privy to my secrets.
I sidled over the questionnaires and applications, doublechecking, doubly-lying. Married . . . check one. No. Children . . . check one. No.
My cavorting brain was of no use to me at the medical examination, though. There the doctors opened my mouth wide (I needed dental work; the Army would pay), thudded and tapped and listened to my strong lungs and courageous heart. All was well.
The gynecologist's table was my Armageddon. There on the cold table, gray steel instruments would probe between my legs and into the unknown territory where my deepest guilts had lodged. I had no more idea of the construction of a woman's regenerative organs than I had of the structure of the moon. Surely, I thought, there would be some scars visible from my son's birth. Some leftover tube hanging down which would signal to the knowledgeable that I was a mother and therefore unfit to serve my country (which by this time I had come to love with a maudlin sentimentality).
[ 102 }
"We'll take a few slides." The nurse's $ice was stony, and the doctor ignored my face, acting as if I was nothing but a thin chest, flat belly and long black legs.
I asked why.
"These are venereal-disease tests." She spoke as if she were weather-watching. I'd gladly have settled for syphilis and gonorrhea. If the Army could take care of my teeth, a couple of injections would cure the diseases.
"The tests will be back in a few days."
I tried to scrape from their faces any information they had gathered. But those faces were trained in suppression. I wanted to shout at their closed ears, "I'll wait. I'll sit in the outer office and wait for the results." But I too had some training-that is, "Never let white folks know what you really think. If you're sad, laugh. If you're bleeding inside, dance."
"I'll be away for a few days," I
lied, "but I'll phone as soon as I return." I tried to make it sound as if I would be doing them a favor.
Three or four days jittered by with no pretense at flowing, and then the phone call came.
"Miss Johnson?" I recognized the voice with echoes of starched uniforms and drill squadrons.
"Yes, I'm Miss Johnson." I tried to put "I'm Miss Johnson, so what?" into my own response and failed.
"Sergeant Matthews at the Induction Center."
I know. I know. Go on, dammit.
"I'm calling to tell you you've passed all your tests and have been included in the March-April quota of personnel to enter Officer Candidate School. Is that all right with you?"
[
103
I suddenly had dirigible-sized air pockets in my cheeks which prevented me from making any sound except a loud explosion. I nodded into the telephone.
"Will you be prepared to leave the San Francisco area at the beginning of May for Fort Lee, Virginia?"
The air plopped out of my mouth and I jerked the phone away. God knows I didn't want to frighten the sergeant and give her a reason to re-examine my dossier of lies. I turned the sound into a fake cough and brought the mouthpiece back.
"Excuse me. A little spring cough. Oh yes, I can certainly be ready for May first." I was in a little more control, so I added, "I'm most happy to have this opportunity to serve my country and I shall-"
She interrupted, "Yes, well, come down in the next few days and sign the loyalty oath. Good-bye." And hung up.
Now I was ready. Things had arranged themselves in my favor at last. For the next two years I would have the security of purpose and the dignity of being a soldier in good standing in the Army of the United States of America.
Natural restraint and the conceit of sophistication kept me from rushing down immediately to sign the loyalty oath. I was able to keep myself away for two days before I surrendered.
I stood in front of the flag, one hand on the Bible, the other clasped to my breast, and swore I would defend this land from her enemies, etc., etc. The deep motives, the noble intent so moved me that with the least encouragement I would have dissolved in a flood of patriotic tears.
Mother was happy but not surprised at my success story.
[ 104 ]
w
When I told Bailey that I would soon 'be going into the Army, he turned a cold stare on me and asked without relishing curiosity, "What the shit for? Men are trying like hell to get out and my sister is dying to get in. You dumb bunny." The air between Bailey and me had coarsened with our growing up and thickened with his cynicism. He could no longer see me clearly and I could not distinguish his black male disappointment in life.
It could not be said that Bailey was living at home, but more accurately that he was based there. He worked as a waiter on the Southern Pacific trains running from San Francisco to Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston.
Few black families are without ties to the U.S. railroads. The early-twentieth-century Negro aristocrats were the families of ministers, morticians, teachers and railroad men. Passes to ride the trains were traded in Southern black areas as easily as legitimate money. And many poor black families ate their beans and greens from good china and used heavy silver from the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and New York Central.
Bailey was still the plum pretty black color and his teeth shone white like promises. His hair was glossy and his small hands delicate and graceful. But all the gentle reminders of his love for me through our childhood stopped at his eyes. It seemed some confrontation, which he had kept secret, dulled their shine and left them flat and unseeing.
His fast speech, which used to stumble into a stutter with excitement, had slowed, and a songless monotone rasped out his meanings. When he was home from a trip, he never sat around with Mother and me, playing pinochle or coon can,
105
as we used to do, but hurriedly put down his gear and left the house for some mysterious destination. He successfully blocked my prying by saying, "Take care of yourself and your baby and your own business and that'll take all your time."
When I tried to involve Mother in discussion of his whereabouts and how abouts, she said nearly the same thing but generally added, "He's a man. He's got a job and his health and strength. Some people have to make it through life with less." And that was that.
Papa Ford, who had been brought to the new house, sat bowed over his coffee in the warm kitchen.
I asked him, "Papa, what's Bailey doing? Why is he changing so?"
He lifted his head and relished a toothless mouth. Smack. Smack.
"Uh. Uh, girl. Uh, uh." He lowered his head, loving the doom he hinted.
"Papa, what does that mean? Say something."
The passage of years had ground away his emotionaltransition apparatus. He would often shift in a moment from a dozing indifference to a fighting fury. He did so then.
"Don't ask so many goddam questions. Keep your goddam big eyes open. You're no shitty-ass baby." A slurp from his mug and he was nearly asleep again.
20
H*
I had to make arrangements for my personal belongings. I told mother that when I got out of the Army. I would dress in suits, and my cashmere-sweater sets would match kickpleated Scotch-plaid skirts. I wouldn't be needing the old clothes. Mother had decided they were good enough to be given to charity. I remembered the large St. Vincent de Paul's trucks, backing down our driveway once a year during my teens, collecting Mother's unwanted items. After a brief but pointed sermon when Mother spoke of "those less fortunate than you," I chose the Salvation Army as my beneficiary. Those fresh clean faces in their absurd regalia playing their uninspired music, unheeded, had always depressed me. They had to be the most deserving.
The records would stay in the house. Mother enjoyed Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Louis Jordan, Buddy Johnson and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup as much as I. She'd play them at her parties and think of me.
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?
The benevolent act of giving away my clothes, however, spilled over into that decision making. Hospitals were the answer. I was certain that lean and lonely tubercular patients would have their spirits lifted reading the Topper stories of Thorne Smith, and I had proved it possible to read Robert
107
Benchley's essays and short stories over a hundred times and still laugh. Ann Petry's The Street, all Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright and Hemingway would be given to an oldfolks home. But the Russian writers would be packed away in mothballs and stored in our basement. I would savor the idea of Dostoevsky's Tolstoy's and Gorki's volumes molding in the dank cellar, wisps of camphor and odors of wet earth floating above them.
I quit my job to spend more time with Guy, to record his cherubic smile and be amazed at the beauty of his coordination. He seldom cried and seemed a budding introvert, for although he never thrust himself from company, he appeared to be equally amused alone. A baby's love for his mother is probably the sweetest emotion we can savor. When my son heard my voice at the downstairs door he'd begin to sing, and when I arrived in his view he'd fall back on his fat legs, his behind would thud to the floor and he'd laugh, his big head rocking up and down.
I knew it would be hard to leave him. Hard on me, but harder on him, for he had no way of understanding that I was gone to prepare a place for us. I hugged his sweetness to me and squeezed my love into his pores. If we were to have a decent life, a small but neat house, good neighborhood and schools, bulky knit sweaters and the expensive tennis shoes I saw large boys wearing, I'd have to get some kind of training and I needed help. Uncle Sam was going to be more a friend to me than any of my bad blood uncles.
With my clothes gone to the Salvation Army and my books packed in wooden boxes downstairs, I spent my remain-
[.
108
ing time gazing at the training manual and f
amiliarizing myself with creases and salutes and drill formations, how a bunk should be made and how officers were to be addressed.
A week before I was to be inducted, a military voice over the telephone ordered me down to the Recruitment Center.
"I can come this morning or this afternoon."
"This morning! And that's an order, soldier."
"It sounds urgent." Maybe our departure date had been moved up.
"It's more urgent than that. It's about some discrepancy on your documents. We'll see you this morning." Click.
Dammit, dammit and double damn. Probably some ruthless, relentless doctor had re-examined my charts and found that I'd had a baby. And I had sworn that everything I had written was God's own truth. There were laws to punish'* criminals who lied ("perjury" it was called) on oath. And it must have been worse to lie on oath and the flag.
Mother had taken Guy out for the morning, to leave me alone with my army books. I had no one to accompany me. I dressed as I wondered. I shook as I planned. It was pretty certain I wasn't going into the Army, but I might go to jail if the Army wanted to press charges. I should have known better than to lie to the government. People always said Uncle Sam would spend a thousand dollars to get you if you stole a three-cent stamp from him. He was more revengeful than God.
I couldn't run, I couldn't hide. I went to the government building.
On the bus I soft-conned myself. I had done so well on the
109
examinations that if I came clean and explained that I had made solid arrangements for my son's care for two years, they might make an exception. It could be simple, if only I got a kind interviewer and could stop shaking.
"Marguerite Johnson?"
The woman's long thin neck rose out of wide sloping shoulders and her voice skidded like a fire alarm. I would have liked her face softer.
"Yes." Er . . . "Yes, ma'am." She was an officer. Oh hell, I mean . . . "Yes, sir."
"Did you or did you not sign the loyalty oath?"
"I did." Did I? I had gone down a few weeks before and sworn to uphold the flag, defend the country and protect my fellow Americans with my life, if need be. I had been so moved by my sincerity that I added to myself, "My country may she always be right but right or wrong, my country." Off we go into the wild blue yonder and the caissons go rolling along.
"Were you or were you not asked if you had ever been a member of the Communist party?"
"I was asked, and I said no." Well, if that was all it was! I felt the blood pushing to open up its old passages and start to flow again.
"You lied, Johnson." The voice sirened up to a screech.
"Lied, sir? No, sir. I've never-"
"This is your signature, Johnson?" She produced the loyalty oath by slight of hand. I didn't need to peer to see the large curving Marguerite Johnson.
"Yes, sir. That is my signature."
I
110
She flipped the paper over and grinned her pleasure. "The California Labor School is on the House Un-American Activities list, Johnson. Do you know why?"