In the distance, she heard a mortar thud and explode, and then nothing.
She was so tired of watching young men die. Instead of turning toward her hooch, she went to the Park, where people sat in chairs, watching a movie. The rat-a-tat-tat of the noisy projector garbled the dialogue.
Frankie knew that no movie would ease her loneliness or dim this new and acute sense of impending doom that had attached to her, but it was worse to be alone than to be among people. She sat down in the chair beside Barb, who handed her a drink.
“What are we watching?”
“The Great Escape.”
“Again?”
One drink, Frankie thought. Just one.
* * *
On their first day off in two weeks, Frankie and Barb sat in chairs in the Park, a cooler beside them, drinking lukewarm TaBs. Barb was reading a letter from home aloud.
November 17, 1967
Dear Barbara Sue,
Lord, I don’t know who to worry more about these days, you in harm’s way, or your brother in California. The letters coming from Will are worrisome, that’s for sure. I sent you clippings about the riot in Detroit this summer, remember, when the Guard was called in? There were other riots, too. In Buffalo, Flint, New York City, Houston. Lots of cities. Cops clobbering on us negroes. Looting. I just found out that Will was in Detroit that day, rioting. 33 Black folks died.
I’m afraid. Ever since your brother got back from Vietnam, he’s been angry in a way that will get him killed. Those college white boys might get away with violence at their protests, but it won’t fly for Will and his Black Panther friends. I know you’re busy, but maybe you could call him? He might listen to his big sister. Lord knows he won’t listen to his mama. Thinks I oughta be mad as a hornet, but what good will that do? Me breaking a window or marching across a bridge won’t change a thing. He forgets I saw your uncle Joey get lynched for looking wrong at a white lady. That wasn’t all that long ago.
Anyway, we miss you plenty back here. Counting the days till you’re home.
Love, Mama
“Lieutenant Johnson?”
Barb looked up.
Talkback, the camp’s radio operator, stood beside them. He was a skinny kid from Nebraska with apple cheeks and a swizzle-stick neck. “Lieutenants Johnson and McGrath, I have a message for you both from Lieutenant Melvin Turner.”
“Who’s that?” Barb asked.
“Coyote, ma’am, of the Seawolves.”
“Your water-ski buddy,” Barb said to Frankie.
“He said to tell you there’s gonna be a shit-kicking-good—his words, ma’ams—bon voyage party at a club in Saigon tonight and it sure would be sad to see the two purtiest nurses in ’Nam miss it. There’s a C-7 at the airfield right now.”
“That sounds like an order, Talkback. I usually prefer a printed party invitation,” Frankie said.
“Engraved,” Barb added.
Talkback looked nervous. “Coyote didn’t make it sound like much of a question, ma’am. I reckon he figured you’d love to get off the compound for a while. That plane won’t stick around for long. It’s on a supply run.”
Barb folded up her letter. “Thanks, Talkback.”
“I do hate being told what to do,” Frankie said.
“And being taken for granted,” Barb added.
Then they both smiled and said, “Outta here!” at the same time.
The two women ran to the hooch and packed for an overnight trip.
Less than fifteen minutes later, packed and dressed in civilian clothes, with their military scrip converted into Vietnamese money, Frankie and Barb boarded the fixed-wing cargo plane and sat down.
At Tan Son Nhut, an MP escorted Frankie and Barb to a waiting jeep; they jumped in the backseat.
Amazingly, this was Frankie’s first close-up view of Saigon in daylight. The city was a chaotic mess: Streets teeming with Army tanks and armed military men and MPs. Bicycles and pedestrians fighting to make their way around them. Whole families sat crowded on scooters that zipped in and out of traffic. They passed a skinny Vietnamese woman squatting on a corner, cutting vegetables on a wooden board.
Military vehicles jockeyed for position with motorbikes and bicycles. Horns honked. Bike bells clanged. People yelled at one another. Three-wheeled vehicles threaded aggressively in and around the motorbikes, belched out great plumes of black smoke. The Saigon police—called the White Mice by Americans because of their white uniforms—managed traffic where the lights didn’t work or weren’t being obeyed.
Barbed wire and oil drums and sandbags protected the government buildings. On one corner there was a floral memorial for one of the Buddhist monks who’d self-immolated to protest the South Vietnamese government’s treatment of them. No doubt the police would take it all away, and the flowers would appear again tomorrow.
The jeep pulled up in front of the Caravelle Hotel, which dominated an entire street corner.
Frankie jumped out, slung her worn, faded overnight bag over her shoulder, and thanked the driver.
Barb came up beside her. “Damn, those flights make me thirsty.”
Smiling, they headed for the hotel’s glass double-door entrance.
* * *
They spent the day in the old French Quarter of Saigon, with its gorgeous, ornate buildings and tree-lined streets. It was like seeing a beautiful corner of Paris through a dirty window. You could sense what it once had been, this city, picture the French occupiers dining on foie gras and drinking fine wine, while the Vietnamese cooks and waiters struggled to feed their families on paltry pay.
At 1200 hours, they went to a small French-style bistro, with white tablecloths and uniformed waiters and fresh flowers; Frankie was struck by the incongruity of this place existing in a land torn apart by war. It was as if they’d crossed some magical portal that led back in time.
“Just go with it,” Barb said, touching her arm. “We’ll be back in the shit soon enough.”
Trust Barb to know exactly what Frankie was feeling. She slipped her arm through Barb’s and they followed the host to a table by a window, where they sat down and ordered lunch.
Inside, the roar and clatter of the city faded and the sweet fragrance of fish and broth replaced the outside odors of exhaust and diesel fuel. After lunch, they walked from shop to shop, buying new clothes and sneakers and candles and scented body lotion. Frankie bought a T-shirt that read SKI VIETNAM. They each ordered an ao dai to be made in soft, diaphanous silk, and Frankie bought a bolt of silver silk shantung for her mother and an ornate brass cigar cutter for her father.
At 1615 hours, they returned to their hotel and readied for the party at the club.
What a treat. Hot, hot water, and lots of it. Scented soaps and lotions.
Frankie put on a new purple dress with a white plastic hip belt and a pair of sandals. When she looked in the mirror, she saw herself for the first time in eight months. Eyes still a vibrant blue, pale skin freckled by the sun, lips so chapped lipstick didn’t work, hair shaggy and grown out at different lengths.
Her face was thin; she’d lost so much weight that her upper arms were like pencils.
Barb came up beside her, put an arm around her. They stared at their reflections. Barb wore navy blue knit bell-bottom pants and a white shirt with a bold geometric silk tie around her neck. A headband accentuated how big her Afro was getting.
“I didn’t know I’d lost so much weight,” Frankie said. “And why did I buy this ridiculous dress today? Did I want to be Grace Kelly at war?”
“It made you think of home. Cookies coming out of the oven. Dad’s martini. Or, in your case, your mother’s.”
Frankie smiled. Barb was right. Frankie had bought this dress because it made her think of home, of her mother, of the life that girls like her had been taught to want in the 1950s, when conformity was all important. No more.