“I waited almost half an hour, standing stiff, and the MPs wouldn’t say a word. Then—bang!—the door flies open and Staff Sergeant Hill starts shouting. She says she’s going to see to it that I get a court-martial and get sent home. She says the Women’s Army has enough problems trying to keep the honor of the corps without girls like me going off and acting like floozies in Paris, making everybody look bad.”
Peaches is talking quietly, but almost everyone in the mess hall is leaning close, trying to listen. “Staff Sergeant Hill made me kind of angry, but Sergeant Scott was worse. She said she was disappointed in me. And then they took me to Major Addams,” Peaches went on, “and I thought I was done for. She just sat there and stared at me for the longest time, and then she said, ‘Explain yourself.’ So I did.” Peaches swallows and looks down for a moment.
“I said that I was fed up with all of you girls and that I wasn’t meeting up with a boy or bringing dishonor on the corps. I told the major the truth—that I checked into the hotel and stayed by myself for two days.”
I open my mouth, hurt, then close it. Peaches means she was fed up with me, too, and I remember what I said to her last time I saw her. She had every right to be fed up with me.
“The battalion commander sent an MP off in a jeep right then to check my story. It’s a good thing that mademoiselle remembered me,” Peaches adds. “She told Lieutenant Scott that I checked in and I stayed put the whole time. Major Addams let me off the hook then. She said, ‘I understand, Carter, but don’t you ever pull a stunt like this again.’”
“And that’s it!?” My eyes are wide.
“Well-l-l, not quite,” Peaches says with a wry smile. “I got punishment detail. I’m gigged and have KP for four weeks solid after my mail shift, and I have all my passes revoked for the next thirty days. But no court-martial anyway. Staff Sergeant Hill is still fit to be tied about that.”
“I wouldn’t have even known you were gone, except Gloria came and said so,” I say finally. “You still mad at me?”
Peaches shrugs. “No more than I was with anybody else. I just got fed up, you know?”
“Yeah. I get fed up with all of us sometimes.” I sigh. “I should have been a better friend to you, Peaches Carter. I do apologize for telling you off about George the other night.”
Peaches shakes her head. “This wasn’t about a thing you did, Marey Lee.”
“Wasn’t a thing I did to help you, neither.” I look over at Gloria’s table. Her head is hanging down low, and she is picking at her food. Though I have heard more poison coming out of that girl’s mouth than anything, I feel a little shamed at that pitiful sight.
“Peach. You gonna go talk to Miss Gloria?”
“I will. Later.” Peaches sighs. “I’ve got to eat and get ready to go on duty, even though they kept me up last night, then I’ve got my four hours of KP” She smiles tiredly, then lowers her voice, her expression mischievous. “It was worth it, though. You know they’ve got room service in the hotels in Rouen?”
The last weekend in August, Ruby and me go on leave, and George takes us around Rouen to meet his farmers. We ride in a car with a driver, a “chauffeur,” they call him, who has two little old kids sitting up there with him. I gave them some of the sugar cubes I carry, just like I used to give that scallywag Miss Victoria. George sees me giving the little ones sweets and asks me if I like kids. Ruby just about pokes a hole in my ribs with her elbow.
Bob has been writing Ruby and wants to know should he join back up or wait for her. Ruby says she doesn’t know what to say, but I say she does. I hope next time Bob asks her if she likes kids.
George comes to see me every week. Peas are out of season now, so he brings me carrots, which are real pretty on the top. Ruby say my eyes will get real good in the dark if I keep eating George Hoag’s carrots. Miss Ruby May Bowie had best keep her funny little comments to herself.
“Marey!” Peaches comes screaming into the mess hall while I am mopping. “Marey!”
“Hold up, Peach. Don’t you track up my floor,” I warn her. She runs through the wet and leaves footprints anyway.
“Marey Lee Boylen,” Peach say. “I don’t care two figs about your floor. Guess what?”
“What?” I say, mopping around her feet.
“Guess,” Peach says, and now she can’t hardly stand still. “We’re going to Paris!”
I just about drop my mop. “Paris? Peach, not again!”
“I told you! I told you we’d go! We’ve got our orders. The CO just posted them, and Ina told me the news. We are going to Paris, France!”
And this time, Peach has got it right—we really going to Paris. Who would have believed it! I guess just about anything in the world can happen now!
32.
now
Somewhere in my dreams, I am mopping around the Eiffel Tower when Tali’s voice finally penetrates through the fog.
“Octavia! Wake up!”
“Mmmph?”
“C’mon, Tave, get up.”
“What time is it?”
“Um … after four.”
I scrub my face on my pillow and turn onto my side, trying to hold on to my dream of Paris. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Get up.”
I blink quickly as Tali turns on the light in the bathroom. She is standing next to the door, dressed. “Where are you going?”
“Just down to the car,” Tali reassures me. “I need to do something.”
“Okay,” I say, still murky with sleep. “Why do I need to wake up?”
“Because you’re going with me.”
“Oh.”
It isn’t until I am out of bed and buttoning my jeans that my brain clears itself from the last little bits of my dream and I start to think. What I think doesn’t make me happy.
“Tali. We’re not … You’re not going to do something stupid like leave Mare, are you? Because I am so not going with you if that’s what you’re doing.”
Tali sighs heavily. “No, stupid, I don’t have a death wish. We’re not going to leave Mare. I’m trying to help you. Mare’s going to make you drive today. You need some practice.”
“What? Tali—”
“We’re not going to leave the parking lot. I swear. And she gave you the keys before she went to bed, didn’t she? She practically said to practice.”
Wide-awake now, I groan and pull on my sweatshirt. I have a feeling this is going to be a very, very long day.
Last night, Mare told Tali to phone Mom and Dad and let them know how the trip was going. Mare stood right in our room while she did it, so Tali pretty much had to tell our parents the whole story about the Kahlúa, even though she told Mare it was “not that big a deal.” Well, Tali was wrong. Dad just about had a full-grown cow when he heard, and after he got done yelling at Tali, he told Mare to put Tali and me on a plane home immediately. Then Mare took offense, and they got into this huge argument where Dad accused Mare of being a bad influence on us with her drinking and said that she should just come home and try to act like a woman her age for a change, and then Mom got on the other extension and said we all needed a time-out before unforgivable things were said in anger, and that she trusted Mare to discipline her grandchild, and that she’d see us all when we got home. Then she made Dad hang up.
I thought, from the expression on her face, that Tali figured she’d pretty well gotten off the hook, except that Mare handed me the car keys and said, “Well, since your sister won’t be needing these tomorrow, I guess I’d better give them to you. Get some rest.” And she’d gone to her room and closed the door.
It went quiet after that. I sat on the bed with my mouth open in shock. Tali locked herself in the bathroom, and I immediately tried calling Mom again, but the call went straight on to voice mail. Nothing was settled by the time I went to bed, and I was the most unsettled of all.
Mare knows I can’t drive. She knows I’m scared. Right before I finally got to sleep, I made up my mind to make Mare stop usin
g me to get back at my sister. And now it’s morning and Tali is dragging me to the elevator and shoving me inside.
“Tali …”
“The back of the parking lot is totally empty, Tave. It’ll be cool.”
“But, Tali, if I hit someone’s car—”
“I’ll say I was driving, okay? Stop worrying.”
Stop worrying. Right.
The morning air is a cold slap. Though sunrise is only a little while away, it’s still dark, and I am very aware of the dark shapes of vehicles as we weave our way to where Tali parked. I feel my muscles tense as we find the car, surrounded by trucks and vans in front of it and on either side. I’m going to have to back out.
“It’s not that hard,” Tali assures me as she opens the passenger door. “You just do it.”
“‘Just do it.’” I imitate her in a snide voice. “Is that how Dad taught you how to drive?”
Tali sighs. “Actually, yeah. That’s what he said. I ended up driving with Mom before I actually learned.”
“Oh.” I scootch up the seat and adjust the tilt of the steering wheel. “I guess he gets it from Mare. I don’t know why she thinks I can just do this.”
“Because she does.” Tali shrugs, a blurry shape in the dimness. “Adjust your mirrors.”
The car is ready before I am. “Tali …,” I begin.
“Turn on the engine, turn on your headlights, check behind you, put the car in reverse, keep your foot on the brake, and take off the emergency brake,” Tali instructs in a bored monotone.
“Tali, I can’t!” I say. “I flunked the written test already.”
“That’s only because you didn’t write anything down. Just move, Octavia. Do something, even if it’s wrong.”
I bite down on my bottom lip and turn the key. The car responds to me, and Tali only has to remind me to turn on my headlights twice as I inch my foot off the brake. The car rolls an inch, and I slam on the brakes.
“Tali!”
“Octavia, you’re fine.”
“I know I’m fine,” I say tightly, glaring into the mirror and inching out another few feet. That wasn’t why I hit the brakes. How did she know why I failed my test? How could Mom tell her?
“You can start turning now,” my sister says five minutes later when the car is well free of the ones next to it. “If you don’t, you’re going to hit that light pole.”
“Fine,” I say shortly.
“You’re doing really well, you know.”
I feel a surge of anger at Tali’s condescending words. “It’s not that hard,” I tell her, and press the accelerator. And then the car touches against something solid. I hit the brakes again. “What was that?!”
“Turn the wheel,” Tali says quickly. “Don’t worry about it. Just turn the wheel and put the car in drive. Slowly—really slowly—pull forward.”
I flick a glance in the mirror and see the light post right behind us. “How could you let me hit it?” I wail, my eyes filling with tears. “Tali, Mare’s going to—”
“Don’t worry about it. There’s a rubber strip on her bumper; you probably just bounced. Don’t worry about it. Put the car in drive.”
Sniffling, I carefully pull forward, feeling a distant surprise at how the car swings straight in the little lane between the lines of vehicles. I glance in the mirror again and frown at the light pole. “Should I get out? Do you want to see how bad it is?”
“In a little bit,” Tali says. “Drive to the end of this row and head for the back of the lot. You need to practice backing out again.”
My muscles are zinging with tension, but I turn left, signaling carefully despite the emptiness of the lot, and drive to the open space furthest away from the hotel. Tali tells me how to back in, to back out, to get out of a space using three turns, and to park straight against a line. Almost two hours go by before she says we should probably go back inside.
“Now don’t tell Mare you practiced,” Tali reminds me as we wait for the elevator.
“She’s going to see the scratch,” I argue. Though the rubber caught most of the impact of the light pole, the cement base made a small scratch beneath the license plate.
“No, she won’t,” Tali assures me. “She has nail polish that matches the color of the car almost exactly. I’ll just patch it up, and if she notices, we’ll make it up to her when we get home. Okay?”
“Okay.” I can’t keep a little smile off my face. I drove. I drove! I didn’t totally wreck the car, and I drove!
“But, Tali?” I say, suddenly feeling a stab of unhappiness.
“Yeah?”
“When did Mom tell you about my test?”
Tali turns to face me. “What test? Oh. Octavia, Mom didn’t tell me you flunked. You did. Just now.”
“But—”
“I didn’t even know you had taken a driving test. But I’m right, huh? You didn’t write anything down on the paper, did you?”
“Well … no, but—”
“See, that’s why I wanted you to get some practice. Mare doesn’t know you like I do. I knew once we got to the car, you would freeze like a deer in headlights. At least now you got the first time out of the way, right?”
“Tali,” I say as we walk down the hall. “Thanks a lot. I really owe you one, big-time.”
My sister yawns as she slides her key card into the slot on our door, effectively shrugging away the moment. She peels off her sweatshirt. “I’m going back to bed. Don’t bother me until sixty seconds before we go.”
33.
then
George Hoag takes the train to visit me in Paris and says he thinks he needs to get on back home to the United States soon. He’s been saying that just about every week since the Japs surrendered. Now that the war is over, most folks have stopped worrying, but George, he never does do anything like everybody else. He is all kinds of uptight, fretting that he won’t have a job back home unless he gets there, fast.
“They told us about the GI Bill of Rights and that the folks from U.S. Employment Service are supposed to help us find work,” George says. We are sitting in Service Club No. 2, the club for colored soldiers, watching folks play Ping-Pong. I am holding my paddle, waiting my turn.
“You want to go back to school?”
“Maybe.” George is quiet. “Plenty of jobs in Illinois, though. I could teach chemistry until I figure out what to do.”
“You could.” George even looks like a teacher with those specs.
“Could go back to the University of Chicago and get a master’s degree. Not too many colored research scientists, but the future’s in science, that’s what folks say.”
“Mm-hmm.” I watch the ball blur as it is hit back and forth.
“I’ll find out soon enough, I guess. We’re shipping out beginning of November.”
“Mm-hmm … November?” I turn around with my mouth open. I hadn’t thought that George would leave before me. “Guess you’ll be glad to get home so you can stop worrying.”
“Guess I will.” George polishes his glasses on his handkerchief.
“Not me,” I say. “I’m gonna be on the last ship out of here. I don’t aim to leave Paris till they drag me home, kicking. You ever stayed someplace as fancy as the Hotel Bohy-Lafayette? Not me, and I don’t expect I ever will again. I have got to live it up as much as I can before I go.”
George frowns, his forehead wrinkling. “You might come back someday.”
I shake my head. “Nah. When I go home, I … I won’t ever get back someplace nice as this again.” After Paris, Bay Slough isn’t a place I can go back to. Even though sometimes I dream about that red Alabama dirt and can almost hear Feen’s voice talking in her letters, I know Mama hasn’t forgiven me, and Marey Lee Boylen is going to have to just carry on by her own self once the U.S. Army gets through with her. I am in a nice hotel, and right now I am making good money and saving it, though what I will buy with it, after Paris, I do not know. I do know this: I will never feel right working for Miss Ida again, and B
ay Slough is not my home. Where is home, then? And how will I find it?
George nods toward the Ping-Pong table, his expression thoughtful. “Your turn, Marey.”
“Oh.” I push back my thoughts and turn toward the table. Ina White is waiting for me, grinning. Just because last week she beat me three games out of five, she thinks she is going to take me again. “Pride goeth before destruction, Ina White, just you remember that. George, you want to play winner?”
George clears his throat. “I’ll take a rain check. Got to get back to base.” He puts down his Ping-Pong paddle and stands abruptly, his lanky tall back stiff and straight. “I’ll be seeing ya, Marey Lee.”
“Oh.” Confused, I hold out my hand, and George shakes it briefly, almost hurriedly, as if he has somewhere else to be. “Well, sure. I guess you’ve got things to do. See you, George.”
I don’t get time to think too long about why George just up and left. Ina waves her paddle from across the table, and I get ready for her serve. Ina puts a mean spin on that ball, but she can’t get past me. We play five games, and this time, I win 4–1. Ina wants to play again.
“You can’t win ’em all,” I tease. “I’ll play you tomorrow. Some of us have work to do.”
I head for the mess hall—which is a dining room, since we’re staying in a hotel. So far, Paris, France, is all right with me. I am learning me a little more of the language. I can say the word “hotel”—it’s “o-tell,” since the French don’t use the sound of h. I can say “good day” and “good night.” Peach can say just about anything. She can even call a taxicab and tell the driver where she want to go, though nobody with sense uses a taxicab if they can help it. The cabdrivers in Paris have no understanding of “slow” and “stop.” Every time I get in a cab, I have to commend my soul to the Lord, but Peach is taking to France like water takes to ducks. She says she might stay for good.
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