Free Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

our toothbrushes, and they got a measuring stick to tell for sure. I hate them tight sheets, but when we have inspection, Lieutenant Hundley tears it up if it is not “right and tight.” First time I actually saw a quarter dollar bounce on just some sheets, I knew I had to learn that trick.
    “Tuck it tighter than that,” Peaches say. “You make it loose, and nothing’s gonna bounce off it but the covers when Hundley pulls it apart. Do it again.”
    “Don’t know why anybody wants to make a bed like that anyway,” I mutter. “Can’t breathe in there.”
    “You’ll be glad you can’t breathe later on. It’ll be down-right cold in here come winter.”
    I learn how to make that bed just right, but it does notstop me from tryin’ to get into it without messing it up and slide out in the morning to pull it straight. Peaches just looks at me like I’m pitiful and shakes her head.

    Monday we get back to the everyday work—rising at 0530, making beds, washing up, and picking up cigarette butts the folk drop down, then sweepin’ the walks the officers walk on. We march to breakfast, stand cleaned and starched and shined and ironed for inspection; we march to classes by 0800; we march to a meal break at lunch, 1200. We eat, and study till 1600, and march some more. We march to the parade grounds and practice raising and lowering “the colors,” which we call the flag.
    Every day, we study worse than we ever did in school. We learn sanitation and first aid, military customs and who to salute; we read maps; we study German chemicals and gas and how to watch out from the air and defend from Japanese planes. We do supply runs and keep tabs on all the food, all the weapons, and all the uniforms and gear. We learn how to run a clean camp ’cause they say tiny little germs will kill us all if we let them.
    I learn my keyboard and type drills every day. We learn signal corps duty, about how they look for patterns in words and numbers to make or break a code. We learn our telegraph keys and listen to the little
dit-dah-dit
for the messages they be sending. After the first day, we can all tap out an emergency signal—three short, three long, and three short:
SOS
. I got to teach that one to Feen.
    When they call out my name at roll call, my legs start shaking, and I know it is a letter. I am not too disappointed that it is from Miss Ida. Bet she never wrote a colored girl a letter before that didn’t have nothing to do with cleaning her house!
    May 1944
    Miss Marey Lee Boylen
,
    Though she won’t say, your mama is upset something awful about you going away, and I told her you thought you were grown, just like my Beatrice. Young girls today don’t have the good sense the Lord God gave you, leaving your homes to work with all of those men. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Marey Lee Boylen. I have half a mind to tell those officers that you are not as old as you have said and haul you back home for your own good
.
    Marey Lee, make sure you’re still a clean Christian girl when you get back. We hear how some of those girls are over there, sliding down to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah
.
    Your mama comes to help me now, and I am glad. They marched Italian prisoners of war into this town, Marey Lee, and I can’t sleep at night, just knowing that something terrible is going to happen
.
    Gasoline is scarce as hen’s teeth, and we
haven’t had butter in weeks. We make do on fish, and we save our meat rations for special occasions. I will be so glad when this terrible war is over
.
    I remain
,
    Mrs. Ida Barrows Payne
    Ooh, Miss Ida makes me mad. What is she talking about, hauling me back for my own good, and about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah? She had better
not
tell nobody how old I am, and if I hear somebody is coming for me, I’ll run. Ain’t nobody going to make me go home before I am
good
and ready.
    I got a good mind to write Miss Ida and tell her a thing or two. She don’t—doesn’t—think I know how to