Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

up, Octavia. For your information—”
    “Hush.”
Mare’s voice is flint.
    I sit, seething, while Tali leans back and looks out the window.
    “So, whatever happened to Claudette Colvin?” I blurt. “If she was so great, why hasn’t everybody heard of her?”
    Mare sighs. “Well … the civil rights movement had a minister as one of its foremost leaders. Claudette got pregnant by a married man just about the time her case came to trial, and they decided she wasn’t such a good poster child for equal rights.”
    Tali clicks her tongue in disgust. “That is
so
completely wrong.”
    Mare sighs again. “Well, things were different back then.”
    The sun continues to climb in a cloudless blue sky. The CD ends, and Mare turns on the radio again to NPR and is listening to an author interview. Tali is staring out the window, looking glazed.
    Just before Mare says it’s time for a bathroom stop, we pass an old truck with Tennessee license plates, a gun rack, and a Confederate flag in the rear window. The truck is dusty and brown; the driver, old and leather-skinned. Unable to stop myself, I risk a look into his face, feeling my stomach clench as our gazes meet.
    He gives me a brief, impersonal glance, then his eyes return to the road.
    In a moment, he’s a receding speck in the mirror, just one brown truck out of many on an endless road.
     

12.
then
    All week long, the lieutenant has us marching our close drills. It is hot on that parade ground, and we stand and sweat till our clothes stick to us, but we do the best we can. When it is too hot, some people faint. First time that happened, folks start to break ranks and carry on, and Lieutenant says we can’t be doing that—we have got to keep our eyes
forward
, no matter what. She calls it “military discipline.” I call it crazy. If I drop dead out there, somebody better be coming to pick me up!
    Sometimes I don’t know what Uncle Sam needs with women in this man’s army. They tell us we here to “free a man to fight,” but I don’t see no men being freed up by all this marching back and forth in this hot sun. They got a song they sing, the WAC song, which is all about duty and defending our country’s honor. Well, I don’t know about
that
. All I can say is, “Better the devil we know.” And I know we sure don’t need no Japs coming all the way from across the water trying to boss folks around.
    Some of these girls would like to have died when we had to clean the latrine—but Lieutenant said, “Ladies, make us proud,” and we did. That commode at Miss Ida’s gave me all kinds of practice, and I make sure everyone sees I don’t mind getting
my
hands dirty. We clean it once, then we study at class, then we polish it again—on our knees. Lieutenant said she wanted to eat off that latrine floor, and she could. I can’t wait to write Feen and tell her we
all
get to use the flush commodes here. Won’t hardly know how to act when I get home.
    Not that I’m putting home in the front of my mind.
    For inspection, we need to lay open our footlockers and have our gear on display. We have to hide things we ain’t supposed to have or we get on the hot seat. Can’t nobody stop Annie from bringing in fruit from the kitchen, so we eat it quick before the captain comes. Then we drill and march and drill. The lieutenant says she’s gonna put rocks in Phillipa’s shoe so she can tell her left from her right, but I have got the hang of it now; I have a corn on my left toe, so I know my left from my right. We got more shots, and they make me sick, but the army don’t let nobody die unless they get on sick call first. We all of us have got stiff arms the next day, but we still have got to salute.
    Lieutenant Hundley posts a paper on the duty roster that shows us how to lay out our bunks, our shelves, and our clothes rack. Gloria Madden come into our barracks to see Phillipa about some trifle or another, but then she stays, leaning against our bunks like she ain’t