“I know,” he said. “You’re a teacher at a local boarding school and a graduate of Mount Holyoke. Your specialties are high math and language. You graduated in two and a half years from one of the most difficult schools in the nation with perfect marks. You never really had friends in school, besides a Ms. Helen Brigance, but you are as loyal as they come. Am I correct with all of this?”
I shook my head no. That was weird and shocking, and I needed to leave, immediately.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, thank you,” I said. “I think it’s time for me to head to my next stop.”
I placed my small purse around my shoulder and dropped down from the bar stool, moving the man out of my way with movement directly toward him.
“You’re Della Chavez, born in Trinidad, Colorado, and savior of your father’s farm during the Dust Bowl. If I am correct in these statements, I just ask for an hour of your time,” the Navy officer said.
I froze. I placed my hands on my hips and stared up at him.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m intelligence officer William Steadman, and the Navy would like to talk to you about a job. It will pay twice the money you earn as a teacher, and you will be able to live for free in Washington, DC, until the job is complete, if you’re interested and if you pass the interview process, which is not a guarantee. Many very smart girls have not been able to complete the prerequisite tests, classes, and personality observations. Many just as smart or smarter than you.”
I did not like the last comment he made. I did not like how he called us “girls,” as if we were pig-tailed babies taking his test. I did not like the idea that he said that I could not pass the test. That was bullshit. I could pass the test. I’d never failed a test. I was not a little girl.
I did like the idea of more money and moving to DC, so I dropped my guard and changed my tone.
“Well, I do have an hour,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. He handed me the address to a downtown hotel. “And tell Ms. Brigance that I look forward to meeting with her too.”
I flung the door open to our apartment. My hands pushed it open so hard that it cut a little divet in the wall. My legs shook, and my heart raced. Nervous sweat, the kind that smells worse than movement sweat, rung around the pits of my silk shirt, and beads of sweat ran over the top of my lip. And then I saw Helen, waiting for me like a dog waits for its owner to return.
She stood there with her eyes wide open. She was sick. I could see the swelling at the edges of her nose and the dry, crusty remnants of watering eyes on her cheeks, but she smiled so wide.
“Teaching? Who needs teaching?” she said. “When we can work for the Army!”
“Did he come here too? We don’t even know what we would be doing. They probably just want smart secretaries. I’m not getting my hopes up too much for this. But it would be fun to go to DC for the summer,” I said. I was excited too, but goddamnit, someone had to keep all four of our feet on the ground.
“They need us to take tests? We need to have degrees? We need to know more than one language? This is not for secretarial work, Della,” she said. “Come on, now, you know this is more than that.”
“Languages?” I asked. The officer was so brief with me that I didn’t get any hints about what they actually needed from us. Obviously, Helen with her big smile, even covered in drying snot, was able to get the officer to open up a bit more than he did with me. I didn’t doubt that for one damned minute. She could charm the panties off a nun.
“Yes, languages, sciences, calculus. Didn’t he tell you all of this?” she asked.
“Well, we were in public, so he was pretty tight lipped,” I said, hoping that was the reason he seemed to have tried to persuade Helen more than he did me.
“Of course, of course that’s why,” she said. She could read the worry on my face.
“Now, let’s go shopping,” she said. “We need dress suits.”
I tried to say no. The ‘nnnn’ even made it to my lips, but she stopped me with a big tug on my arm, and we were out the door and heading to downtown Boston to find something professional and that “showed a little bit of curve too,” according to Helen.
Chapter Forty
John
1943
THE SNOOK, JUST LIKE ITS NAME, MOVED SMOOTHLY OUT INTO open waters of the Atlantic. We sailed down the eastern seaboard. Sometimes we would surface, and we could see the skylines of the major cities that lined the edge of our country. Then we dove down into the dark of the Atlantic for days at a time before we resurfaced in the blue waters of the Caribbean. We got to take turns climbing up and out of the submarine and watching the land pass by. These moments were rare, but it was worth it to escape the stench of the hull below.
We headed toward the Pacific Ocean. I could feel the power of the engines, the push through the water, like we were in the middle of a bullet as it left the barrel of a gun. We stayed above water for the first three days. The entirety of the crew ran through drills and procedures and check offs to make sure the pollywogs, including Noakes and me, knew what they were doing. The engineers tested and tested and tested, carrying their clipboards around as if they were attached to their arms.
We found our bunks right away. They were placed right next to the kitchen. The anger in us had subsided a bit because once we got on the ship, we felt how important we were, not only to our fellow sailors but also to the captain and his officers. Food, on a submarine, was at the heart of keeping sailors happy, and we found out quickly that the Navy knew that being sent under water in a giant moving piece of metal with no fresh air for seventy-five days at a time was no trip to the brothel. They gave us the best food they could, the best food in the military.
That first trip of twenty-seven days from New London to Pearl Harbor was easy. We got to get out and walk along the edges of the Panama Canal. We were only underwater for a few days at a time. The time in the ship was almost cheerful. As cooks, we got nicer bunks than everyone else and everyone treated us good as we made our way through potato dish after potato dish, the order from our CO because potatoes took up so much room in our bunks, in the bathroom, and everywhere else.
When we pulled into Pearl Harbor, we were set free to shower and given the weekend to take busses into Waikiki. Since we had twelve days before we would have to venture out into the Pacific, we ended up getting two weekends in Hawaii. The first weekend was a blur. We quickly found a bunch of sailors who looked like us. It’s crazy how easily that happened. And we joined a quick moving caravan toward Waikiki Beach and the ocean. I don’t really remember that first weekend. Of the things that do come back to me, the crack of the first beer at the ocean’s edge and the crack of the waves crashing next to us and a cheer. Borrachos, we jumped on a tour bus to the pineapple fields, plucked ripened pineapples and poured rum into them and chugged from the edges of the spikey skin, the blur coming on stronger with each drink and cheers. There’s a glimpse of me dancing with a hula girl on a stage, and a few of our friends disappearing into Chinatown, one whipping out his dick and yelling, “They don’t know what’s going to hit them.”
“Della,” I remember saying to Noakes.
“My mom,” Noakes said.
And we waved to our friends as they disappeared into the lights of Oahu’s Chinatown. We wouldn’t see them again until the next day on the beach, battered by drunkenness.
The next morning, Noakes and I woke up in a dingy hotel in the center of town.
“How’d we get here?” he asked me.
My face had become one with the pillow, and I could barely breath from the thick, humid air of the Pacific island, something I had never breathed before.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Pain pounded between our eyes.
The place was small, made up of two twin beds lining the wall and a sink at the end of them. It wasn’t much different than our barracks back in New London.
“Let’s get some food,
” I said.
“Shower first,” Noakes said. “Once we get on that sub…”
I knew what he meant.
“Yes, shower first, and coffee,” I said.
We both showered and threw our dirty clothes back on.
“And clothes,” he said.
“And food,” I said.
“Yes, food and then clothes,” he said.
I loved him. If it weren’t for Noakes, I don’t think I would have made it through. He had become my Manuel.
We walked down a small hallway and then down a small stairway and into the lobby of the hotel.
“Good morning, John and Edward,” a small man with a thick waist and small shoulders said, “Did you sleep well?”
We both swayed our heads back and forth and closed our eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “You were a bit under the weather when you came in last night.”
“Were we kind?” Noakes asked.
Like me, he had no memory, but like me, he worried about the same thing I did. Were we assholes? I could handle getting drunk and blacking out, but I couldn’t handle being unkind like so many men got when they got too drunk.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Even though you could barely stand up, you did your best to ask about my family, how I got started in the hotel business, and if I needed anything carried for me.”
The old, tiny man smiled at us.
“Oh good,” I said. “Did we already pay?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “You actually paid double. You paid for two rooms, but I only needed to charge you for one. I tried to explain to you that you only need to pay a double occupancy for one room instead of for two rooms, but, you know, your logic wasn’t completely with you.”
“Did we, did we, umm, have girls with us?” Noakes asked.
“No, no. This one,” he pointed to me, “wouldn’t shut up about Della, and you, sir, wouldn’t shut up about how you promised your mother that you would keep your dick clean. You said that she didn’t say ‘dick clean’ and that you were translating for me.”
He giggled a bit at the last part.
Noakes put his hands together in prayer and smiled.
“We need food. We need food bad,” I said. “I would like something so spicy that I will sweat all of this out.”
Noakes nodded.
“And a beer,” he said.
“Yes, and a beer,” I said. “Do you know a place that is open in the morning like this. We’re cooks, remember, so we won’t go for sideshow bacon and eggs.”
“Oh, it’s not morning, John. It’s afternoon,” he said. He smiled again and then pulled out a piece of paper and began to draw. His map wound us through streets away from the beach—that he drew by adding waves along a long thin line—and deep into the city. “Stay away from anything near the beach. I want to share a place I love with you.”
He handed us the piece of paper. Then he traced the path with his finger.
“Follow this to a little home that sits between two buildings. You will see a tiny sign that reads Tim’s Lo Mein. Tim is my brother-in-law. He’s a real asshole, but he is an amazing cook. Ask for extra spicy with your Lo Mein, and you will feel better after. I promise. Will you be staying with me again tonight?”
“Yes, of course we will,” I said. “Hopefully we won’t be so borracho when we come in tonight.”
“It’s okay if you are, John, it’s okay if you are. Two young men like you who love a woman and love their mother are always welcome here.”
We took the map and walked out the front door of the hotel into a bustling side street of Waikiki. We had no idea where we were or how we found the hotel the night before, but we had a map, and we followed it through the streets to a little shack in the middle of two four-story buildings.
When we walked in, we said, “Nam sent us.”
A tall Asian man greeted us and sat us at one of three tables next to a large, open interior window that looked into the kitchen.
“Nam’s an asshole, but he’s my sister’s brother, and he only sends me respectable sailors like you. Spicy or not spicy? Chicken leg or chicken thigh or mixed?” he asked.
“Spicy with mixed,” I said.
“Spicy with only leg,” Noakes said.
“Spicy-spicy or pussy Kansas-boy spicy?” he asked and laughed.
“Do we look like we’re from Kansas?”
“Spicy, spicy,” he said. And then he started tossing things into a giant pan. We ate lo mein and drank a very cold beer—something that was hard to find the night before—that he placed in front of us, and after we chowed down and drank a few more beers, we felt like two roosters awake for another day.
That afternoon, we found clothes, including swim trunks. We sat on the beach, we drank beers, and we watched the ocean together. Like always, we talked about Della and Trinidad and Chicago and baseball. We got so drunk, again, and we saw our friends from the night before, briefly, before they headed back to Chinatown and its women.
We woke up the next morning, no memory from the night, except for a few more dances with hula girls, the moon, and sand between our toes. We went back to Tim’s to eat again. Then we boarded our submarine for work until the next, last weekend before heading to war came.
The mood on the submarine that week was good. We worked during the day, ate dinner in the barracks at night, drank beer on base, woke up, and did it all over again. We practiced drills, learned even more of the intricacies of sea life, and went to briefings about what was happening above and below the water in the Pacific, in the theater of the ocean. We knew exactly what we had signed up for, we knew how the ocean might take us, and we knew that submarine life would be one of the hardest and trying lives on the ocean. We also learned what our job was: cut off shipping lines, wound the land-based armies by sinking the transports that carried all their necessary supplies, and torpedo their submarines and warships that aimed to sink our carriers and transports.
“I’m proud to be here,” Noakes said, one night after dinner when we sat outside the cafeteria and looked up at the stars that hung so large and bright above the Pacific Ocean, “even if we are just cooks.”
“Me too,” I told him. “Let’s cook the hell out of the food down there.”
He nodded.
We had one final weekend before our first tour. This time, however, we didn’t drink all day and all night. It seemed that we had gotten that out our systems the weekend before. Instead, we found a few hammocks on the beach where we could order beer and food and watch the girls in bikinis and easily charge to the ocean and jump in when we got too hot.
Instead of drowning out the weight of what was to come in a couple days, I sipped on a beer, took in as much sun as I could, and wrote Della a long letter. I would only write one or two sentences an hour. I would nap in the hammock and dream of her. We had tried to meet multiple times when we were only a couple hundred miles away from each other in Connecticut and Massachusetts during my training and her time at school, but it never worked out. My leave never matched her exam schedule.
I shared my fears with her, something I didn’t even share with Noakes. I wrote how I used to think about her while I slept in my chile patches at home, staying away from my grandfather. I told her that I daydreamed how it would have gone if I just walked through that schoolhouse door instead of trying to find her in the window. If I had done that, she would have known that I had come, and she might have tried to come to see me or known how bad my life was in Reno. When I lay in the barracks in New London, I had wondered if she had seen me then, if she would have seen the bruises and the hanging, broken jaw, and if she would have seen my grandfather knock me out and drag me to his car. Maybe she would have stayed with me that night while I lay drunken in the train car instead of running away. We would have had a few more nights together that week on the train and in Hartford.
I wrote about how I had played these “what if’s” over and over in my mind right before I thought about going to war and getting sunk and never s
eeing her again. I told her about how I prayed that she would still love me when this was all over. How, even though I had Noakes, I had always felt alone. The last five years since Maria left and Manuel left, I felt isolated, like the torn-apart carcass of the last of a herd—the vultures already picked away what they needed—left in the desert, with the rot and the smell consuming me. Until I found her again. Until I saw her walking through the train station. Until she smiled at me across the table and told me about all the things she was going to study. I wanted with everything in me to be her books, to be that thing that she wanted most. I felt full again. Not full in the belly. But full-bodied again. Whole. And I would be second place to books. I didn’t care.
I told her all of this. All of it in a letter that took me two days to write on the beach.
Meet me here, Della. If I make it through this war. Meet me here, in Hawaii.
And pray for the USS Snook.
I love you,
John Garcia Cordova
Chapter Forty-One
Della
1943
“I’LL SEE YOU THERE, DELLA,” HELEN SAID. “I HAVE TO PICK UP one more thing for my outfit before I go. Is that okay?”
“Yes, of course, I planned to take the bus. The time alone to think will do me well,” I said. I hadn’t really planned to take the bus. I had hoped that Helen would give me a ride in the car, but, honestly, I didn’t give a damn any way, and the bus ride did calm my nerves a bit. Helen could be a bit talkative when I just wanted the whole world to shut the hell up at times.
Thirty minutes later, I sat in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Boston along with three other young women. Each of the women looked to be about my age. One had bright white hair and wore a pant suit, something so few women wore at the time. Another was short, wore a plaid heel-length dress and a conservative blue top. In her hand, she held what looked like an invitation that had been mailed to her, the US Mail stamp on the outside of the opened envelope. The third woman, instead of sitting on the chairs like me and the other two women, paced back and forth, acting as if she were admiring the paintings on the wall, but I knew that this was just a ruse. The woman’s thumb touched her fingers in different sequences as she walked back and forth as if they were playing keys at the end of grand piano.
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