Sisters in Arms

by Kaia Alderson

  Grace playfully swatted her friend’s shoulder. “Can you at least try to pretend you have some home training? We’re in public for goodness’ sake.”

  Grace turned and caught the handsome Canadian soldier smiling their way. She quickly turned back to her plate. “See what you did, Dolores?”

  “What?”

  “The cute Canadian. He’s staring!”

  “Is he really now?” Dolores fluffed the imaginary hair on her shoulder. She boldly turned, caught the soldier’s eye, and smiled her killer smile. “Good. Let him look.”

  “Dee, turn your sassy self around this second. If you keep looking at him like that, he’s going to think you’re interested and come over here.”

  “Well, that was the plan.”

  “If you keep it up, I will pull rank on you—” A shadow darkened their table, abruptly ending their banter.

  “You gals look like you’re hot for some action. Is this seat taken?”

  Both Grace and Dolores looked up, expecting to see their new Canadian friend. Instead, they found themselves smiling like two fools up at the beet-red face of a red-haired American private. Grace’s smile instantly fell. But before she could shoo him away, Eliza appeared out of nowhere, elbowing him to the side.

  “Actually, it is.” Eliza glanced at his uniform. “Private.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  Grace couldn’t quite place his drawl. It was definitely Southern, though. She tensed. Whatever was happening here, it could easily go sideways.

  “I believe you meant to say, ‘Is that a fact, Captain?’ Didn’t you?”

  Grace held her breath when Eliza stepped closer to the private, who towered over her by at least a foot. His build suggested that he might have done physical labor in his civilian life. Eliza held her chin high nonetheless, challenging him.

  The spoiled little rich girl Grace had met back in that induction office was nowhere to be found.

  All the chatter and clinking utensils at their table stopped. Everyone stared at the private. His face turned even redder. He stepped back.

  “My apologies, ma’am.” He turned on his heel and walked away. Around him, his buddies snickered into their knuckles. His shoulders hunched, and his hands curled into fists. His back might have been turned to them, but they all heard him mumble, “Little bitch,” clear as day. Everyone around them went silent.

  Eliza started toward him. Grace grabbed her wrist just in time.

  “Let it go.”

  Eliza tugged her arm, but Grace’s grip held firm. “And let him get away with that?”

  “You won that battle, but you won’t win the war. Now, sit down.”

  “Grace, I am not in the mood for your goody-two-shoes bullshit—”

  “I said sit down!” Grace tugged harder. This time, she got Eliza’s attention. “So I can thank you for handling that jerk.”

  “Fine.” Eliza sat. Her eyes continued to blaze with fury. Grace wouldn’t have been surprised if smoke started coming out of her ears.

  “Here. Eat this.” Grace shoved her tray in front of Eliza. “It’s delicious.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Eliza folded her arms across her chest and pouted.

  “There’s the bratty little girl I knew at boot camp. But right now you need to cool down. What were you thinking? You looked like you wanted to fight that guy.”

  “It’s a good thing they refuse to arm us women. Otherwise, that would’ve turned out a lot differently.”

  “I hope you’re joking.” Grace waited a beat. Eliza’s expression was still serious. “Please tell me you were joking.”

  Finally, Eliza crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t that serious. But when we get to wherever we’re going, I’m going to see about all of us getting some training in hand-to-hand combat, so we have a way to defend ourselves.”

  Grace instinctively held her hands to her chest. It was a protective reflex. The fear of injuring her hands had been a daily concern in her life prior to joining the military. The idea of using them to harm someone else horrified Grace. “Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”

  “What else can we do?” Eliza grumbled. “The Army top brass is adamant in its refusal to arm female personnel. They promised America that its daughters would only be subjected to the battles of administrative work to win the war, never actual combat. Heaven forbid if the Germans attacked and boarded this ship.”

  She pointed her spoon at Grace to emphasize that last point. Grace rubbed the spot where her watch should have been. Of all the times to leave her lucky charm behind, why did it have to be now?

  Eliza scooped the stew onto her spoon and tasted it. “Oh wow, this is good.”

  Chapter 22

  Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean

  February 1945

  A WEEK AGO, GRACE had been so eager to get on this boat. Now she wanted nothing more than to get off it.

  Their days at sea consisted of going to the mess hall three times a day, drilling on the ship’s top deck with the winter ocean winds whipping around them, and looking to see who didn’t show up for drill practice because they were seasick that day. On any given day, about a third of their unit was out of commission.

  Grace had been ill herself for a day or two initially. Luckily, she adjusted to the constant rolling waves better than most. That had been her only excitement on the trip, outside the confrontation between Eliza and that insubordinate Army private that first night on board. She and Eliza were still playing the awkward dance of not speaking to each other. Well, outside of what was necessary when you lived in cramped quarters together.

  Now it was the end of another day. Grace was getting ready for bed. Her rolled blanket had fallen off the foot of her bed and down to the floor a few feet below.

  “Again?” Grace sighed and climbed down the rope ladder in her socks. She would be so glad when they were on dry land again and things would stay put because the floor wasn’t rolling back and forth.

  “C’mon, Eliza!” Grace had once again stumbled over the handles of Eliza’s duffel bag, which had been stuffed haphazardly under the bottom bunk where Eliza slept. “How hard is it to keep your things tidy? You’ve been living like this long enough to know better.”

  Grace couldn’t believe that they both had been in the WAC for so long. Some days, she had a hard time remembering what civilian life had been like for her.

  “Sorry.” Eliza picked up the offending bag and threw it on her bed. “Had you told me you were coming down from your bunk before you climbed down, I would have moved it out of your way.”

  Grace did her best not to roll her eyes. Eliza must have caught a glimpse of that struggle because she pursed her lips and asked, “Is there something you’d like to say?”

  “Nothing that wouldn’t cause an unnecessary argument.”

  Eliza crossed her arms over her chest. “Try me.”

  “Fine. I will.” Grace took a deep breath. Here we go. “I didn’t give you a heads-up that I was coming down because the response would’ve been another round of heavy sighs and sucked teeth. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true. I’ve been getting an attitude from you whenever I open my mouth. Honestly, I’m getting tired of it. I really wish you would just let me have it. Say what’s on your mind.”

  Eliza opened her mouth but never had a chance to respond. The ship’s siren blared, making everybody jump. Before they could get over the shock, the ship lunged to the right. Everything that wasn’t bolted down when flying.

  Everything, including Grace. Her shoulder hit the wall hard. She yelped. But she was just one voice in a chorus of screams and yells. Not just in their stateroom, but from all the quarters along the hallway.

  The lights flickered, then went out altogether. Then the ship lunged again, this time to the left.

  “What the hell is going on?” The ongoing siren drowned out Grace’s question. She pushed herself to
her feet and grabbed on to the nearest bedpost. As the lights flickered back on, she saw that Eliza had done the same.

  The ship jerked violently once more. It was zigzagging back and forth at regular intervals now. Had the captain, or whoever was at the helm, gotten drunk?

  Something—maybe an engine—roared outside over the ship.

  “That sounded like an airplane,” someone yelled in the darkness.

  “Is it one of ours? Are we under attack?”

  Someone else sobbed.

  There had to have been an explosion somewhere nearby, because the ship pitched violently and then creaked. Thankfully, it remained upright. But the zigzagging continued.

  “Oh God, are we being bombed?” Grace wondered out loud.

  “Oh no,” Eliza whimpered. “Bombs can only mean the Germans are here.”

  Grace’s heart went still. Because she knew—somehow, she just knew—that there was no way Eliza was wrong. A German submarine was lurking out there, and it was looking to blow them out of the water.

  Suddenly, it became clear why Mama cut Grace off completely once she left for boot camp. Mama’s gut reactions were seldom wrong. She had known somehow that the Army was going to get her last surviving child killed.

  “Oh, Mama, I’m so sorry I never gave a thought about how this would affect you.” Grace closed her eyes. A chill settled deep in her bones. She began to shiver.

  Grace had no idea how long the Germans chased them. The lights blinked on and off. A lump had formed in Grace’s throat. Despite the crash of items being thrown around her and the whimpering of other women nearby, all Grace could hear was her heartbeat and the rush of blood against her eardrums. Was this how it had been for Tony in the end? Did he know the moment death had come for him? Or had it made him suffer, alone in the dark, before it stole his life? Every muscle in Grace’s body froze, waiting for the inevitable explosion of fire, water, and metal to snatch her away. Only heaven knew if her final moment would be engulfed in a ball of heat or pressed down by the weight of the ocean as she sunk to her watery grave.

  As officers, it was Grace and Eliza’s responsibility to keep the troops under their command calm. However, they were barely keeping it together themselves. Grace could feel her anxiety flaring as the sirens blared on and on with no indication from the crew of letting up or even giving some kind of update. Normally, tapping her fingers in a soothing rhythm, no matter how tense the situation, would calm her some if not all the way down. But there had been no opportunity to do so with the boat jerking back and forth.

  The sirens stopped finally. Grace let herself enjoy one full second of relief before she forced her head back into the game.

  “C’mon.” She grabbed Eliza by the arm. “We have to check on the others.”

  Eliza didn’t move. Grace didn’t have time to waste, so she left her friend behind. When she reached the enlisted women’s quarters, Grace’s eyes darted around to assess everyone’s condition. One girl was grabbing up a handful of hair rollers that had fallen to the floor. Beside her, another private, Mary Bankston, if Grace recalled correctly, appeared to have stumbled to her knees but was in the process of pushing herself back onto her feet. Grace reached out her hand to help Mary up.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I will be.” Mary held her arm and made circles with her wrist. Satisfied that it was still in working order, she nodded. “Luckily, I don’t have to type anything in the near future.”

  Another private, Lydia Thornton, had her arm around a woman, whispering what sounded like a prayer in Spanish. “No temeré mal alguno; porque tú estarás conmigo . . .”

  Grace remembered when Lydia had first arrived at Fort Des Moines as a newly enlisted recruit. The young woman barely spoke English. She had come from way down in southern Arizona, right on the Mexican border, the product of a union between a Negro soldier stationed at nearby Fort Huachuca and a local woman of Mexican American origins. Lydia could understand the English spoken to her for the most part, but speaking it herself to others had been a challenge. Both officers and trainees alike had rallied around her to help get her language skills up to speed.

  Grace sighed with relief that the enlisted women seemed to have survived the ordeal in one piece. But once she made it back to her quarters, she realized that Eliza, on the other hand, was in bad shape.

  Whether or not they were still friends anymore, Grace had been around Eliza enough in the last two and a half years to know that the woman’s armor had cracked. Grace could not recall a time when she had ever seen Eliza not smiling or rallying back with her determined chin leading the way and her eyes with a “don’t mess with me” squint to them. But now, Grace was at a loss. The change had happened in what seemed to be the blink of an eye.

  Grace found Eliza curled on the floor in the fetal position, with her hands covering her head. Her eyes were shut tight to the point of straining. She was shaking. But what really struck the fear of God in Grace was that Eliza’s mouth hung open like she was screaming, but there was no sound. Grace rushed over to her. Now standing over her, Grace could hear that Eliza was making a sound: a low, screeching moan, similar to the dying dog she had come across with her cousins the one summer she had gone to visit her mother’s relatives down in South Carolina.

  The boat cut hard to the right. Eliza yelped from the jolt. They weren’t out of danger yet it appeared.

  Grace, who had stumbled but had managed to catch herself before falling on her face, got on her hands and knees and crawled toward her fellow officer. Eliza was moaning again, the same word over and over. “No!”

  Grace reached out hesitantly, gently pressing her fingertips into Eliza’s shoulder. “Hey, are you hurt?”

  Eliza responded with the windmill-like fury of her arms. “No! No! No! No! No! No! No!”

  All Grace could do was cover her face with her forearms as she slid herself just out of Eliza’s reach. “Hey! I’m a friendly. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

  Well, they were okay for now. But Grace wasn’t going to be the one to remind anyone that they were still in very real danger of being blown out of existence.

  “No!” Eliza moaned again. By this time, the woman’s arms had gone back to protecting herself, cradling her sides and the rib cage Grace knew to have been broken when Eliza had been attacked in that train station. The attack Grace had been helpless to stop from happening. No, the attack that had been her fault.

  Dammit. That was why Eliza had been such a bitch to her in recent weeks, wasn’t it? Guilt ate at her insides. Just as it had when Grace had arrived in Washington, D.C., and found out the extent of Eliza’s injuries. Just as it had when she had reached out to Eliza by letter and telephone and received no response.

  Grace took a deep breath. Back then, she had been unable to help this woman who, despite everything, she would call her friend. But dammit, she was in a position to do so now. She reached out again, wrapping her arm around Eliza’s shoulders.

  “Shh,” Grace soothed. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

  For all she knew, they might die tonight. If that was what fate had in store for them, then they would spend their last moments together.

  As friends. Whether Eliza liked it or not.

  “No, it’s not okay,” Eliza whimpered. “He beat me. I couldn’t do anything about it then. And I . . . can’t do anything about it now.”

  “Yes, we can,” Grace countered. “As long as we have breath, we can pray. And if those Germans board this ship, we’ll be ready.”

  “How? They wouldn’t give us guns. Wouldn’t even train us on them.” Eliza snorted. Grace noted that the tension in Eliza’s arms had slackened and that she had begun to let herself lean against Grace.

  “We will fight with whatever we can get our hands on then. This ship is loaded to the brim with munitions. They might not have taught us how to use those guns, but we’ll figure it out if need be.”

  Eliza leaned back and stared at Grace. “Why are you here anyway, h
elping me?”

  “Because you need it.”

  “What’s your angle? You don’t help anybody unless something’s in it for you.”

  “Like I said, because you need it.”

  “You’ve never gone out of your way to help me before. You let him . . . you let me walk right into an ambush.”

  Grace stilled. “That’s not true. I mean, I . . . It was late. I didn’t mean to fall back asleep. As soon as I realized that you were in danger, I tried to get you help. We all tried . . .”

  The ship jerked again. Eliza yelped. Grace tightened her grip around the woman’s shoulders. The hold she had on her, in turn, comforted Grace.

  “What matters is that I’m here for you now. I won’t leave you now. I know you think I abandoned you in Kentucky. Yes, I messed up. But I did try to make it right. I got the porters to go on the radio for help. We did our best. I screwed up. I am so sorry. So, so sorry.”

  “In my head, I know that there was nothing you could have done that night. But I’ve seen how you can be persistent and clever when you want to. So I can’t make those two facts jibe in my head to make it okay.”

  “I understand.”

  The ship jerked again before Grace could say more. Both of the women tensed. Grace held her breath, bracing herself for whatever happened next. But neither made a sound this time. It was funny how the two of them kept finding themselves thrown together—in this case, literally—when Army life as a Colored woman got tough.

  Another moment passed. And then another. But the ship seemed to be staying its course. What in the world could be happening out there?

  “I know I come off as a bitch. But I’d like to think that when the moment requires it, I’ll always do the right thing. At least, I try to anyway.” Grace paused a beat. “When I’m not too busy being a coward,” she finished.

  “Being a coward might have its place.” Eliza pushed herself into a sitting position. She sniffed, then wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. Grace raised an eyebrow.

  “That wasn’t very ladylike.”

  “Whoever said my aim was to be a lady?”