Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (24 page)

“
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.