Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (27 page)

And it would postpone Vietnam, at least for a
year, Donna thinks as she takes his hands. He’ll get to hold the
baby – have his picture taken with his child even if ...

"Let's do it. My parents will just have to
come to Europe to see their first grandchild."

Jerry smiles. "I know you'll be happy."

Only one thing will make her happy – and no
one can guarantee that.

“
The following day it is a nice gesture to write
a brief note thanking your hostess for including you at the party
and extending a few complimentary remarks about its success.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

For a regular churchgoer, Jim hasn't shown
any interest in attending church here at Ft. Knox. "Bunch of
Northerners probably," he said when Kim suggested going their first
Sunday at Ft. Knox. Yet there wasn't much he could say when Bill
and Susanna Norris asked them to a church picnic.

"How's it going?" Bill asks now as Kim and
Jim walk across the grass behind the church building. Bill crouches
on both legs, his rear end inches from the ground, watching Billy
Jr. run around in circles. He stands to shake hands with Jim.

"Learned that little trick in Nam," Bill
says. "The Vietnamese can sit for hours like that. Came in handy
during monsoon season, not sitting on the wet ground."

Kim shudders as Susanna calls hello from the
picnic table, where she’s finishing braiding Patty's pigtails.

"Now off you go to play," Susanna says.

Patty remains where she is. Kim smiles at the
child.

"Patty!" Susanna yells. "I told you to get
goin'!"

Patty smiles at Kim, then walks towards the
swing set, where two other children have claimed the two swings.
Kim watches as Patty stands to one side, her eyes following the
other children as they swing back and forth.

Kim sits next to Susanna on the picnic table
bench. After swatting a fly off the table, Kim sets down her
bag.

"What did you brin' for lunch?" Susanna
asks.

"Cold fried chicken."

"I brought ham hocks. Want to share?"

Kim drops her eyes to her hands, then looks
up. "Jim doesn't eat pork."

"He doesn't eat pork! What kind of Southerner
is he?"

"He ... he has a food allergy to it."

Susanna lays her hand on Kim's arm. "How
terrible! What do you cook?"

"I ..."

"Honey, come over here!" Bill calls to
Susanna. "See what Billy Jr. is doing."

Kim fishes her food out of the bag and
arranges it on the table. She's not sure why she fibbed, especially
at a church picnic. She didn't want to explain Jim’s peculiarities
to Susanna.

Off to one side Kim sees a man who must be
the minister shaking hands with some of the picnic people. It would
be polite to go over and greet him – even though she'll be
embarrassed if he asks why she hasn't been at church.

She glances towards the swing set. The other
two children have left. Patty just sits on one idle swing. Doesn't
she know how to pump her legs?

"Want me to push you?" Kim says as she walks
over to the child.

Patty smiles.

Kim shoves the swing, sending the child high
up into the air.

Patty shrieks! A shriek of terror, not
enjoyment! Kim grabs the metal chains and stops the swing.

Susanna runs over. She hauls Patty off the
swing and whacks her across the face. Pain jabs above Kim's eyes as
Patty’s smacked skin springs up into a red welt.

"What do you think you're doin', Missy?
Screamin' like that? You could have scared someone real bad."

Kim looks over at the men; they’re occupied
watching Billy Jr. toddle around.

Susanna shakes Patty. "Answer me!"

Kim catches Susanna's hand as it again swings
towards Patty's face. "It was ... it was my fault. I swung her too
hard and frightened her. I'm sorry to have upset her – and you.
Please don't punish her."

Susanna snaps her hand out of Kim's hold.
"Then I'm sorry too. I want my children to behave. I don't want any
kids of mine yellin' like little niggas."

An aura of rainbow colors blinds Kim. Why
does Susanna have to say such a thing? Wendy is one of the gentlest
people Kim has ever met. Kim's sure if Wendy had children they
would be well behaved.

"Now be quiet and do what you're told,"
Susanna says to Patty. "I'm goin' to go fetch Billy Jr. and then
we'll all eat."

Kim smiles at Patty, then follows Susanna.
Ten feet away Kim turns back to wave to Patty, the slap mark bright
on the child's face.

The Christian expression "turn the other
cheek" occurs to Kim. What about "Christian charity"?

**

"Food for us," Sharon says as she arrives at
Kim's apartment the next evening and hands Kim the Coke and potato
chips. "And speaking of food, I packed so much for Robert! He could
go on a three-day trip instead of this one night training
exercise."

"I did the same for Jim."

Sharon points to Jim's military figures
marching across the floor. "How's the game coming?"

Kim can feel her face flush. Just because Jim
is hooked on these games doesn't mean he's gung ho army, does
it?

Not waiting for an answer, Sharon goes on to
her next question. "When do you think the fireworks will
start?"

Fireworks! Doesn't Sharon realize it can be
dangerous?

Sharon plops down on the couch. "Robert said
it would be loud and not to worry. Tank firing sounds worse than it
actually is."

Surely Sharon has to know what happens if a
tank takes a direct hit – the explosion, the burning ... the
deaths. Maybe Sharon is purposely pretending it’s no big thing.

"Do you want the Coke now?" Kim says.

Sharon nods and opens the bag of potato
chips. "What have you and Jim decided about going voluntary
indefinite?"

Kim pours the Coke into two glasses. "Jim
hasn't told me what he wants."

"We're leaning towards doing it," Sharon
says. "Nixon will have to end the war to be reelected. There's too
much anti-war feeling not to."

"What does that mean?"

"The primaries are in spring of 1972. By fall
of 1971 Nixon will have to announce he's ending the war. That's why
we figure going vol indef – buying a year to 18 months in Europe –
will improve Robert's chances of not going to Vietnam."

Isn't Sharon embarrassed to say Robert
doesn't want to go to Vietnam? Even if Jim didn't want to go, he
would never say it to anyone – that's unpatriotic. And he certainly
wouldn't want her to tell anyone if he said it to her. If he had.
Which he hadn't

"If Jim goes to Vietnam I want him to make
out a will," Kim says.

"Why?" Sharon asks. "Everything you have
together would be yours, wouldn't it?"

Kim shakes her head. "Without a will Jim's
parents might take everything, leave me nothing."

"Why would they do that?"

"He's been theirs for a lot longer than he's
been mine. They might say I don't deserve anything."

Kim can see from Sharon’s puzzled expression
that she doesn’t understand. Since Kim can’t explain any better,
she holds up a crocheted square of light green wool. "I'm making a
quilt for my sister for Christmas. What do you give your family for
Christmas?"

Sharon brushes hair off her face. "We don't
celebrate Christmas."

"Everyone celebrates Christmas."

"Christmas is a Christian holiday; Jews don't
celebrate it. We have our own holidays."

"Jews don't celebrate Christmas?" Kim
says.

"It's not a Jewish holiday."

"It's an American holiday," Kim says. She
drops the crocheted square onto the table.

"It's not an American holiday like the Fourth
of July or Thanksgiving,” Sharon says. “It just seems like an
American holiday because everything is closed on Christmas Day and
all the stores are decorated and there are Christmas carols
everywhere. It’s really a religious Christian holiday."

Kim pictures herself on Christmas Day in the
church choir, singing about the birth of the little baby Jesus in
the manger.

"Jesus Christ was Jewish," Sharon says.

"He was not!"

Kim learned in Sunday School class that Jesus
lived in the land of the Jews. If he were Jewish surely she would
have learned that too.

"His name was Yehoshuah in Hebrew, or Joshua
in English." Sharon says.

"I would have known if he had a different
name."

"Jesus is the Greek translation of Yehoshuah.
Jesus, Yehoshuah, Joshua are all the same name, only in different
languages."

The BOOM makes them jump, the first thunder
followed by another and another.

Sharon says, "Are those the tanks
firing?"

Kim’s head throbs.
The pool of blood grows
larger and larger. The clerk slumps against the counter.

"Put on the radio,” Sharon says. “Let's try
to drown those sounds out."

Kim yanks at the radio knob. "People Got to
Be Free" by the Rascals blares out of the box.

"What an appropriate song," Sharon says.

"What do you mean?"

"Our husbands are training to go off to war
to free the Vietnamese from Communism."

If only Jim didn't have to be one of the
Crusaders!

**

The night training exercise is successfully
over. Thank heavens! Sharon and Kim are relaxing at the Officers
County Club pool the next day. Sharon reads that book again.

"I told Jim about your book,” Kim says to
Sharon. “He says I don't have to believe it."

“You don't have to believe the Germans killed
six million Jews?" Sharon asks.

Kim stares down at the blanket they share.
"He said I didn't have to believe any of those things."

Sharon opens her mouth, shuts it, stands up.
"I'm going in the water," she says.

Why is Sharon so angry? Jim said Kim didn't
have to believe the book and he's educated. Why would he lie?

Sharon stands at the edge of the pool, her
arms positioned for a racing dive. Then she turns back to Kim.

"You're just repeating what Jim told you – I
shouldn't be angry at you." Sharon drops back onto the blanket and
shades her eyes with a hand. "Let me tell you a story that
illustrates what I think about the South.

"At the beginning of World War II Robert's
father, an enlisted man, trained at an army post in Alabama.
Robert's mother, a schoolteacher in New York, came down for summer
vacation to be close to her husband. At the end of the summer she
went into a general store for wrapping paper to protect a glass
coffee pot."

Kim draws her knees up and clasps her arms
around them, squishing herself into a protective shell. Something
is about to happen in a store!

"The store owner came on to her, backing her
into a corner. She cried out, 'Why are you doing this?' He replied,
'Cause ya teach niggas up there, don't ya, so I figure ya're
easy.'"

Heat flushes through Kim's body.

"Robert's mother ran from the store."

"That was a long time ago," Kim says, trying
to think of that Alabama incident and not the one up the road from
her apartment here in Kentucky.

“Are things any different now?” Sharon asks,
then without waiting for an answer she strides to the edge of the
pool and this time does dive in.

At least no one got killed in the Alabama
store Kim thinks. Although that started out the same – a man coming
on to a married woman.

Sex – the root of so much. Growing up Kim
didn't know anything about sex. Certainly the foster parents never
said anything to her and school health class didn’t discuss the
topic.

One day at age 16 she cleaned the living room
of a foster home, taking out and dusting each book in the bookcase.
A thin book hid behind larger books. The book's title – something
like "The Facts of Life" – meant nothing to her. She opened the
cover. The things explained inside shocked her, and her innocence
vanished. She knew about sex.

If Jim went to Vietnam would he sleep with
any of the women there? An AOB warrant officer classmate had
announced to the table one night at the Officers Club: "A guy feels
horny after killing!" Would Jim feel it his right to find release
wherever he could?

Sharon had told Kim about finding letters
from Robert's father fighting in Europe during World War II. "He
wrote his wife about his sexual tension as well as his decision not
to sleep with any other women." Then Sharon laughed. "Robert was
born nine months and three days after his father returned from
Europe."

Now Kim watches Sharon breaststroke the
length of the pool.

Here at Ft. Knox sex isn’t the only thing Kim
has to worry about. Although Kim wouldn't admit it to Sharon, she
had been a little nervous about going over to Wendy's for the
committee meeting – the first time she'd ever been inside a black's
home. Kim still remembers what one foster mother yelled when Kim's
cleaning hadn't met the woman's perfection standard: "Ya clean just
like a nigga!"

Now perhaps for the first time Kim thinks
about Wendy, about a black person, growing up in the South, being
treated like scum, the way many of the foster parents treated Kim.
It was terrible, just terrible, to be treated like that – no matter
what your skin color.

Kim couldn’t credit herself for helping
others less fortunate than herself. Growing up she didn’t know
anyone less fortunate than herself and her sister. Only once had
Kim been able to help someone else feel better about herself.

In third grade Kim’s reading partner had been
a girl named Linda, an exceedingly lucky girl in Kim’s eyes as she
lived with her parents and younger brother. Yet one day the teacher
had asked to speak to Kim after school. The teacher said that
Linda’s brother had “mental problems” and that Linda wanted to make
up to her parents for this by being called Tom. When Kim hadn’t
understood what this meant, the teacher had explained that Linda
wished to be the boy her parents wanted. The teacher said that the
principal felt Linda’s request couldn’t be granted, but perhaps
Linda could be called Lynn, a name that could be either for a girl
or a boy.