Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

  “And when he went up on deck with his sister we turned the basket over and we took a knife and cut the bottom off – a sailor sold us a needle for a dime and gave us a string so we could fix the hole – and we took out whiskey and some of the food and some of the cookies. We hid the food and fed that old man and we kept him all right. And we brought that man with us to Chicago."

  Now the wrong food has almost killed her grandfather. Sharon's mother flew down to Louisville Monday morning after Sharon called her. On the way to the doctor's office in the taxi her grandfather explained his symptoms to her mother. The cabbie turned around and said, "He's got sugar." Thirty minutes later her mother asked the doctor one question: "Have you tested him for maturity-onset diabetes?"

  The young, inexperienced doctor admitted, "I thought the old man's complaints were just old age." Only after the diabetes test showed her grandfather had high levels of sugar did the doctor realize the old man was truly ill.

  With a diagnosis and a medication plan, her grandfather would soon feel better.

  If only everything could be fixed so easily.

  WENDY – IV – June 10

  U.S. jets bomb anti-aircraft sites 90 miles north of demilitarized zone ... May 25, 1970

  “Courtesy and cordiality are never influenced by rank or position – you should never be reluctant to speak to a senior representative.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  The knock on the trailer’s door startles Wendy. She walks to the door but doesn't open it. "Who's there?" she asks.

  "Your mama and papa!" her papa says.

  Oh, no, they're here to take her home! They'll never let her stay when they see the inside of this trailer!

  She grabs her purse, opens the door and pulls it shut behind her. "Mama, Papa," she says as she hugs them both. "What a surprise!"

  "Honey, aren't you going to invite us in? We came all this way to see your home," her mama says.

  Wendy stands with her back pressed against the trailer's door. "I ... I was just cleaning and it's still a mess. Let's go to the post first for something to eat." She takes her mama's arm. "We can go to the Officers Country Club."

  Wendy brushes her hair out of her eyes as she climbs into the backseat of her parents' car. "Where did you come from?" she asks.

  "We came from home. Drove most of the way yesterday and stayed overnight in a small motel. Then drove the rest of the way here this morning," her papa says.

  "Why didn't you call?"

  "Wanted to surprise you."

  "Let me tell you what's new at home," her mama begins.

  Wendy doesn't ask why they've come – she knows. And all the way to the club, as her mama talks about this person and that person, Wendy imagines her parents throwing her clothes into a suitcase, forcing her to come home with them.

  "Welcome to the Officers County Club," she says, leading her parents into the snack bar. The more formal dining room would be better for impressing them, but it would mean three black people surrounded by white officers and their ladies. Easier to blend in with the fast-food crowd.

  Wendy spots an unoccupied table alongside one wall and steers her parents towards the table.

  "Here, Mama, sit down with Papa. I'll get us all hamburgers and Coke."

  Wendy takes the $10 bill her papa stuffs into her hand and goes to the counter. As she turns from ordering, she faces Sharon and Kim approaching the counter.

  "Here by yourself?" Sharon asks. "Come sit with us."

  "I'm ... I'm here with my parents."

  "Your parents? You didn't say they were coming," Sharon says.

  "They just surprised me. I've brought them here for lunch." Wendy waves in the direction of her parents.

  "Why don't we all eat together?" Sharon asks. "Can we join you?"

  Kim says, "We shouldn't intrude."

  Sharon glances at Kim, then smiles encouragement at Wendy.

  Should Wendy say yes to Sharon's offer? Kim probably won't be comfortable. Yet if Wendy can show her parents that she's accepted by these white women, maybe her parents won't drag her home.

  "That would be lovely," Wendy says.

  Wendy waits while Sharon and Kim order, then leads them back to her table. "Mama, Papa, this is Sharon Gold and this is Kim Benton. Both their husbands are officers in class with Nelson and we're all on the entertainment committee I told you about."

  "Where you all from?" her mama asks as Sharon and Kim pull up chairs from a nearby table.

  "I'm from Chicago," Sharon says.

  Kim glances down at the table, then looks up. "I'm from North Carolina," she says.

  Her mama beams. "We're from South Carolina."

  Kim nods.

  Now what are they going to talk about for the rest of lunch? Wendy wonders.

  "Is this your first time in Kentucky?” Sharon says. “I still can't get over how Kim and Wendy call it the North."

  "I went to medical school in Chicago," her papa says. "Wendy was born there."

  Sharon laughs and turns to Wendy. "You're from Chicago too. You never told me that."

  Wendy laughs too. "We came back to the South when I was just two years old."

  "I'm certainly outnumbered here," Sharon says, "with all you Southerners."

  Wendy smiles. How kind of Sharon to make her parents feel more comfortable – four Southerners to one Northerner instead of three blacks to a room full of whites. Maybe her parents will let her stay.

  "Where do you live here?" her mama asks Sharon and Kim.

  **

  "So you see, Mama and Papa, all the student officers have to make do with temporary housing. The housing office gave us a list and this was on it."

  All the way back from the post Wendy tries to prepare her parents. "It's just like Sharon said at lunch. The wives being here makes all the difference to our husbands." Her parents don't respond, just listen to her chatter about the wives' tour – "The tank was so big from the outside, although inside it seemed so small." – and the upcoming graduation luncheon.

  Now they stand in front of the trailer and she can't stall any longer. She unlocks the door and leads the way. Her parents come in behind her and say nothing.

  Then, "You said it needed cleaning, honey. It looks clean to me," her mama says, sitting down on the couch. "And it's certainly passable."

  Wendy sinks into a kitchen chair, lightheaded with relief.

  Her papa sits down next to her mama and laughs. "You should have seen the one-room apartment – and I don't mean one-bedroom apartment – we all three lived in when I was in medical school. We were thrilled to have the one-room with a tiny kitchen and bathroom."

  "Yes, dear," her mama says. "Before we got that apartment we had a room above a laundry with kitchen privileges and a bathroom down the hall. With expecting you we thought we should at least have our own kitchen."

  Wendy hesitates. Her parents always avoid talking about the “problem." She has to show them she's an adult now, capable of facing anything on her own – or at least with Nelson.

  "Did you live like that because that's all blacks could get then?"

  "It's all there was after the war," her mama says. "Whites lived the same way too. All the young men were just back from the war like your papa and trying to go to school on the GI Bill and support a family. There wasn't much housing available with everyone coming home, and nobody had much money."

  Wendy mashes her hands together. Has she been so insensitive that she thinks her parents care only about material things? Just because her father has done well doesn't mean her parents expect the same from her and Nelson immediately.

  She kisses both her parents. "Thanks for coming," she says.

  **

  Three hours later her mama's frying her special chicken recipe. The sizzling oil permeates the small trailer. Wendy and her papa sit on the couch waiting for Nelson to come home.

  Her papa says, "We've been talking all afternoon, yet you still haven't told us what your plans are for after the army. If Nelson wants to go
to graduate school, I'll be glad to pay for it – and your living expenses too. And, of course, Nelson will have the GI Bill."

  Her mama waves the spatula at Wendy. "And maybe you could even choose a graduate school close to home,” her mama says from the stove. “We'd like you to be nearer, especially if any children come along."

  Wendy nods, then rolls her hands across the waistband of her cotton skirt. She wants children, she does, although she isn't sure she's ready for all the responsibility. And what if she and Nelson don’t come home in two years? What if Nelson goes Regular Army?

  "Papa, how come when I was growing up you never talked about the hardships blacks had in the South? Nelson's always on me about how naive I am. You didn't tell me anything."

  Her papa looks up at her mama behind her, then reaches out and takes hold of one of her hands. "Sugar," her father says to Wendy, "how come you're asking about this now when you've never asked before? Have white folks been saying things to you?"

  Wendy thinks of her experience at the volunteers meeting for the hospital. Maybe the initial reception from the women was just a natural reluctance to accept newcomers – whether they're white or black – and Mrs. Donovan did include her. "Everyone's been very nice to us."

  Her papa stands up. "I knew it. Wendy marrying someone going into the army was a mistake."

  Before Wendy can protest, her mama comes around the couch and pulls her papa back down. "Nothing's going to happen to Wendy," she says.

  "To me?" Wendy asks. "Don't you mean Nelson? What are you talking about?"

  Her mama looks at her papa. He nods his head slowly. Her mama releases him and goes back to the stove.

  "Wendy," she says, "why don't you and your papa go for a walk? It's real hot in here with all this frying going on. You all might as well be cool."

  Outside the hot air billows in their faces. It isn't any cooler out here. Is this the equivalent of going into her father's office for one of their talks?

  She waits for him to begin as they walk towards the road.

  "Wendy," he says, "we've always told you that you were our only child. And while that was true for your entire lifetime, it wasn't true before you were born."

  Before she was born?

  "We had another child before you, a boy we called Arthur Henry. We were so proud of him. It was as if we were the first people ever to have a baby."

  A brother. She had an older brother.

  "It was a hot day ..."

  Her papa pauses. They reach the road and she follows him to the left.

  He begins again: "It was a hot day. There was a swimming hole outside of town that few people went to because there was a bigger one closer to town. Even at this smaller one, where there weren't any signs that said 'no coloreds,' we knew we weren't welcome."

  The "no coloreds" signs. The ones her parents had kept her from seeing.

  "I ... I wanted to take the baby there, thought the baby would like to play in the cool water. I told your mama there was no reason we couldn't go. She begged me not to – "it isn't our place" – so I said I wouldn't. I'd just take Arthur Henry for a ride."

  He increases his stride as if trying to escape from his own story. "I drove out to the swimming hole anyway. Wanted to show your mama she was wrong, that we didn't have to put up with the white folks' rules. I had just gotten out of the army and I was feeling very good about myself.

  "At the swimming hole I undressed down to my boxer shorts and took the clothes off the baby. Then I sat in the shallow water splashing him."

  Wendy is having a hard time keeping up with her papa and hearing his words. He's slightly ahead of her at the moment so she can't see his face.

  "After a while two white men came swimming. Started saying nasty things. Said they didn't want 'no niggers stinking up' the swimming hole.

  "I started yelling back at the men. I became so caught up in the name calling that I ... I forgot about the baby. When the other two men finally left rather than swim with a 'nigger,' I remembered the baby.

  “It was too late."

  Wendy wants to shout to her papa to stop – she doesn't want to hear this story! Her mouth doesn't open and her papa's does.

  "Arthur Henry had drowned."

  No breath. She collapses on the ground. Her papa, still ahead, doesn't notice.

  His words come from over his shoulder. "Somehow he got turned upside down in the sand in the shallow water and couldn't right himself."

  Then her papa stops, sees she's not with him, and in two long steps his arms encircle her.

  "Sugar, sugar," he says as he brushes hair out of her eyes. "I didn't tell you this now to upset you. I just wanted to explain why we kept you so protected all these years, why we're so worried about you in the white world of the army."

  She says nothing as her tears dribble into her open mouth.

  "I had been punished for the sin of hubris – for thinking I could ignore the rules of the white world. My arrogance had cost our baby's life." He rubs one hand over his eyes.

  "It was a terrible time. I thought your mama could never forgive me and that I could never forgive myself. Our friends at church helped us to understand God's belief in forgiveness. And your mama and I resolved we would never, ever again forget who we were."

  Her papa takes a deep breath, then goes on: "I was left with a burning need to do something, to make a difference with my life, to prove to myself and your mama I wasn't the lowest person on earth. I decided to go to medical school on the GI Bill. To learn to save other people even though I hadn't been able to save my own son."

  Off in the distance a bird warbles, the notes floating towards them on the waves of humidity. Her father glances in the direction of the sounds.

  "When I went to medical school in Chicago we knew things would be better in the North. Even there we kept to ourselves, not wanting to get used to any kind of white acceptance. Because no matter what we thought about our treatment in the South, your mama and I both wanted to return home. And when you came along, it was even more of a miracle than the first time. We were being given a second chance."

  "And that's why," she snuffles, "you never let me go places where you thought I might not be accepted?" And why her parents had shown no interest in the civil rights movement. Even without Nelson's "educating" her she had thought that strange. "You were afraid of what might happen if you dared to question the white world's rules?"

  Once again she recalls the little girl standing in front of the Ferris wheel with her parents, the little girl bribed with an ice cream cone so she won't make a scene. In her childish mind she's angry at her parents for leaving the line without protesting. Now she knows why they complied so quickly. Out of fear for her safety.

  "We'd been given a second chance,” he says again. “We weren't going to blow that."

  She stares into his face. "And now I'm grown up and married and you can't protect me all the time anymore. It must be terribly hard on you."

  Her papa buries his head on her shoulder. A patch of moisture spreads across her blouse.

  She won't tell him now that Nelson has talked about going Regular Army.

  SHARON – X – June 12

  White House announces U.S. prepared to continue air cover if needed for South Vietnamese forces expected to remain in Cambodia after U.S. troops withdrawn ... May 22, 1970

  “Junior officers and theirs wives are not expected, nor encouraged, to extend themselves beyond their financial capabilities.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  Robert breezes in the front door. "What's for lunch?"

  "Tuna fish."

  He grabs her around the waist. "I've got a better idea," he says as he pulls her towards the bedroom.

  He leans her against the bed so her back and head lie on the bed and her legs dangle over the edge. He pulls his starched green fatigue pants and jockey shorts down to his ankles – "I can't take my boots off, they take too long to re-lace" – yanks her undies off, and stands next to the bed thrusting into her.

>   She wipes herself off in the bathroom and puts on her undies. Do the men in Robert's AOB class talk about sex? Do they brag to each other how often and how good? She would never consider talking to Kim or Wendy or Donna about sex with Robert. It's too private.

  She walks into the kitchen and puts their tuna fish sandwiches on the table. Robert eats his in large bites.

  The sex reminds her of Mark Williamson and what she and he did and didn’t do in high school when their paths converged for a second time. She pictures the two of them dancing at the Officers Club. He’d held her close but not close enough that her husband could have objected.

  She wonders whether Mark had a lot of experience dancing quite close to those Vietnamese women she's heard about, their thick black hair hanging straight down their backs, their native costumes – Sharon isn't quite sure what these look like so she pictures the revealing garment worn by the young lieutenant's Polynesian girlfriend in the film version of "South Pacific" – leaving bare shoulders exposed and no undergarments underneath.

  Will Robert be dancing with those sexy Vietnamese women soon?

  "Have you decided about vol indef?" she asks. "Are you going to sign up for the third year?"

  "That year buys us valuable time.”

  It's time to tell him. "Robert?"

  He looks up in mid-bite.

  "Donna told me that Jerry could probably get an exemption from going to Vietnam."

  "I didn't know he had a medical problem."

  "He doesn't."

  "Then what does he have?"

  She stares down at her plate. "Donna ... Donna was married before. Her first husband ... was killed in Vietnam."