The Wall Crossers

A Proposal of Marriage from Éléonore Laurent

Dinner with Clarence

Fifteen minutes later, Clarence and I have signed in at the mess hall and gone through the line to get our dinner. Well, I got dinner: roast beef, no nasty gravy, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots and a biscuit. Clarence on the other hand has somehow copped a breakfast! Scrambled eggs, two sausage patties, fried potatoes, and that Army delicacy known as SOS (shit on a shingle), which is a nasty butter-slathered piece of toast (the shingle) with nasty hot gravy (the shit) poured all over it! I look around, no other breakfasts being cooked on the large griddle, none sitting to be served. She has somehow scored her own private breakfast!

Everyone comes up to her—asking for things, offering favors, being nice and friendly. Everyone knows her and wants something... offers something... inquires about things. No one even notices me in my dress and attractive disposition. I sigh. Oh well, the boys are attracted to the gorgeous boy. Their true colors coming through.

Now we are sitting in the corner in a table eating and talking. I ask her, "What's your story?"

She squints at me in a way that expresses What do you mean?

"I mean, how did you get into the Army?"

She continues to eat and, still chewing, answers, "Got knocked up at seventeen. Had an abortion. Family kicked me out. I lived best I could, like, you know, on the street sometimes. Until I joined the Army."

I say, "Really?"

She stops eating and sits up from her plate. Regards me.

I say, "I never met anyone before who, you know, had an abortion." I have an innocent look on my face. I start to take another bite.

But she interrupts harshly, sarcastically, narrowing her eyes, says, "Yeah, really, you virgin-brained candy ass?"

My eyes flick to hers quickly. I begin to feel hurt from her words. She can tell. She melts quickly away from the anger, says, "I'm sorry," shaking her head, disapprovingly, from her own words. She puts her hands palms-up on the table, sliding my plate over, and wiggles her fingers to say Give me. I place my hands in hers. Her hands are a bit rough, but warm.

I whisper, "Do you... do you really think I'm a candy ass, Clarence?"

"All men think all women have a candy ass," she says, now with an expression that says Look, this is the way it is.

"I am a warrior girl."

"I know."

We resume eating.

Clarence decides to lighten the discussion, asks me the standard questions: What is my home, NC, like? My family? When I first noticed I was a girl? All those things. The regular interview which I execute flawlessly with polished practice. We relax again—the tension of the abortion comment and the insult cast aside.

Then, she asks about the war. I put that topic down quickly by saying, "It was nothing. I was running, you know, to hide, actually, and got knocked down by a rocket blast. I got back up and got over it and went home and that was it."

She stops eating, mouth open, studies me, shrugs. She is about to say something when suddenly, unexpectedly, a blur comes up to us quickly, kicking our table, rattling everything on it, rattling my nerves in an instant! I look up in shock to see that it is the Staff Sergeant who barged into my room this morning. Now a growing feeling of doom in the presence of dangerous power descends on me in a flash.

He puts his hands on his hips, glares at me a moment, looks at my chest, raises one corner of his closed mouth into a sneer which slightly closes the eye on that side, an expression of disgust, then shifts slightly, putting his hands down on our table, leaning forward toward Clarence, face red, eyes wide open now and burning, and jerks his right thumb at me while saying to Clarence, "Rita, dammit, that thing has my room!"