Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis Page B

can take it, ’cause I hear tell we draw our pay today, after lunch.
    I haven’t had wages since I spent all I had to get out here. The first time the paymaster doles out my pay, my knees go weak. A private draws twenty-one dollars a month wage, men and women alike. From that they deduct my gear: my uniform skirts, blouses, jackets, and caps—winter-weight wool and summer-weight cotton khaki; my gloves, vest, hat, anklet socks; my winter all-weather utility coat; my neckties, scarves, stockings, exercise togs, tags, comb, towels. Even my slips come out of that. Even my drawers—winter-weight wool, summer-weight cotton khaki—are part of the uniform,and if Lieutenant wants to see ’em, they’d best be on me during inspection. Still, by the time they equip me and I send some money to Mama, I still got more change than I know what to do with. We hear the white girls are buyin’ bonds, and some of us buy bonds, too, to support Uncle Sam while puttin’ a little by for later on. Me, I’m aimin’ to save my money in my own purse. I want a house. A brick house, with a big kitchen and white curtains.
    But first, I’m gonna get me some lipstick, and Annie says she dying for a cherry milk shake from the lunch counter in the PX. She says we should request to go to a dance off base, but I don’t know about that. I ain’t seen many colored boys yet around here, and I know we won’t be dancing with no white U.S. Army officers. Peaches say girls dance with girls sometimes. Makes no difference to me, since I can’t dance nohow, but Annie Brown is crazy. We got to go somewhere—soon. Annie’s been sneaking out to officers’ clubs to spy, and she is going to get her behind kicked straight out of here before long. She says cleaning grease traps on punishment detail won’t bother her, but I say that girl is out of her cotton-picking mind.
    Last thing I buy at the PX is a box of stationery. I sent a letter to Aunt Shirley, care of the Philadelphia post office, and I been waiting three weeks so far, but there is no word. No telling how long it will take for them to find one Shirley Wright in all that big old city, so I been saving up and writing a little to Feen every day on the back of my letter from Miss Ida, till Peach give me some notepaper. Now I got pretty cards of my own, and all I need is a place to send ’em.
    I think about Feen so hard it seems to me that she ought to feel it all the way in Pennsylvania.
    When Lieutenant Hundley tell us one morning to fall out in our physical-training uniform, I know we’ve got a long march coming. Sure enough, we march at double-time a mile away to a little house, where we form up lines and wait for our orders.
    We have equipment to train with, and we know it from class. At school they train us how to use the gas, and they say it don’t make a noise. They say death comes at you like swamp fog if you’re not careful. We’ve already been drilling and drilling to open our packs, put on our masks, and take ’em off quick. When Lieutenant pulls out masks again, somebody gets to groaning about another drill. But then Hundley point us up the hill, says it’s time to go to the little house.
    It’s real quiet in that little brick house way up there on the hill, away from everything else. If Lieutenant Hundley let us stand around and look long enough, we would’ve seen the whole camp laid out—mess hall, chapel, reviewing stand, barracks, supply. Lieutenant Hundley marches us way up there, then lines us up to instruct us. She looks at us hard.
    “Ladies,” she shouts, “listen up! You’ll go in. You’ll put your mask on and pull it tightly against your face. We will open a tear gas canister in the chamber and you will note that it has no effect on your breathing—and you’ll know the mask is working. Then, when I give the signal, you will take a deep breath of air and pull the mask off. You will hold thatbreath of air! The gas will fill your mask. Now listen up! You will put the