Mare's War (28 page)

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 using 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.”

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 Bay 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.

“Hey, I saw your friend George walking around down-town like a lost soul.” Phillipa Barnes gets in the chow line behind me. “I hear his unit’s shipping out.”

“That’s what he said,” I say, and hold out my plate so our French cook can fill it up. Since our barracks is a hotel, we have hotel cooks making up our rations. Don’t know anybody else who can make plain old potatoes and meat loaf taste so fine. The only thing the French cooks can’t make sense of is corn bread. They mix up cornmeal into these little yellow cakes. It tastes pretty good, but it is not hardly real corn bread.

I sit down next to Phillipa at a table. “Guess the Six-triple-eight will be just about the last ones out here, huh? They’re even sending some of the Red Cross girls home.”

“Get a load of that,” Phillipa says. She grins and points at Gloria Madden, who has just come in and is waving her
hand at anyone who will look. “At the rate girls are getting hitched to the boys shipping out, there won’t be enough work for anybody to stay much longer.”

Gloria sees us and comes over, smiling all over her face. “Look! I’m getting married!”

“Well, what do you know. Gloria Madden finally got her captain.”

Gloria holds out her ring, turning it so it sparkles. “He’s not a captain, Marey Lee. I gave up that creep a long time ago. My Freddy’s a first lieutenant stationed right here in Paris. We’re going to say our vows at Sacred Heart and stay here in the city. Can you believe it?”

I can believe it, all right. Gloria Madden was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

“Don’t know anybody who doesn’t want to live in Paris!” I say.

“Hey, what about George?” Gloria says.

I tilt my head. “What about him?”

“Well, has he said anything to you?”

“Anything about what?” My face feels warm.

“Well, you-all have been seeing each other for two months! Is he a man or a mouse?”

Phillipa rolls her eyes. “Now, Gloria, don’t you start. You girls with rings think everybody wants one!”

I shed Gloria and her big diamond just as soon as I can, saying I have to go on shift. We’ve got a motor pool that takes us on to the post exchange, and so I pick up my jacket and straighten my hat and make sure I am on time for my
driver. Downstairs in the lobby, I check my mail slot and give a whoop. A letter!

It’s not from Feen. The writing is sloped and loopy, and then I look at the address: Bay Slough.

Could Mama—

My hands are sweaty, and I can barely make myself open the letter. A little slip of newspaper is on top. I fish it out and look it over. It says: