Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [36]
The records would stay in the house. Mother enjoyed Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Louis Jordan, Buddy Johnson and Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup as much as I. She'd play them at her parties and think of me.
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?
The benevolent act of giving away my clothes, however, spilled over into that decision making. Hospitals were the answer. I was certain that lean and lonely tubercular patients would have their spirits lifted reading the Topper stories of Thorne Smith, and I had proved it possible to read Robert Benchley's essays and short stories over a hundred times and still laugh. Ann Petry's The Street, all Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright and Hemingway would be given to an old-folks home. But the Russian writers would be packed away in mothballs and stored in our basement. I would savor the idea of Dostoevsky's, Tolstoy's and Gorki's volumes molding in the dank cellar, wisps of camphor and odors of wet earth floating above them.
I quit my job to spend more time with Guy, to record his cherubic smile and be amazed at the beauty of his coordination. He seldom cried and seemed a budding introvert, for although he never thrust himself from company, he appeared to be equally amused alone. A baby's love for his mother is probably the sweetest emotion we can savor. When my son heard my voice at the downstairs door he'd begin to sing, and when I arrived in his view he'd fall back on his fat legs, his behind would thud to the floor and he'd laugh, his big head rocking up and down.
I knew it would be hard to leave him. Hard on me, but harder on him, for he had no way of understanding that I was gone to prepare a place for us. I hugged his sweetness to me and squeezed my love into his pores. If we were to have a decent life, a small but neat house, good neighborhood and schools, bulky knit sweaters and the expensive tennis shoes I saw large boys wearing, I'd have to get some kind of training and I needed help. Uncle Sam was going to be more a friend to me than any of my bad blood uncles.
With my clothes gone to the Salvation Army and my books packed in wooden boxes downstairs, I spent my remaining time gazing at the training manual and familiarizing myself with creases and salutes and drill formations, how a bunk should be made and how officers were to be addressed.
A week before I was to be inducted, a military voice over the telephone ordered me down to the Recruitment Center.
“I can come this morning or this afternoon.”
“This morning! And that's an order, soldier.”
“It sounds urgent.” Maybe our departure date had been moved up.
“It's more urgent than that. It's about some discrepancy on your documents. We'll see you this morning.” Click.
Dammit, dammit and double damn. Probably some ruthless, relentless doctor had re-examined my charts and found that I'd had a baby. And I had sworn that everything I had written was God's own truth. There were laws to punish criminals who lied (“perjury” it was called) on oath. And it must have been worse to lie on oath and the flag.
Mother had taken Guy out for the morning, to leave me alone with my army books. I had no one to accompany me. I dressed as I wondered. I shook as I planned. It was pretty certain I wasn't going into the Army, but I might go to jail if the Army wanted to press charges. I should have known better than to lie to the government. People always said Uncle Sam would spend a thousand dollars to get you if you stole a three-cent stamp from him. He was more revengful than God.
I couldn't run. I couldn't hide. I went to the government building.
On the bus I soft-conned myself. I had done so well on the examinations that if I came clean and explained that I had made solid arrangements for my son's care for two years, they might make an exception. It could be simple, if only I got a kind interviewer and could stop shaking.
“Marguerite Johnson?”
The woman's long thin neck