There was a small fridge in one corner, and someone had built a bookcase out of old slats and filled the shelves with worn paperbacks. It was stiflingly hot and there was neither a fan nor a window. A layer of red dirt coated the floor.
Closing the door behind her, she sat down on the narrow cot and opened her overnight bag. A brand-new Polaroid camera lay on top of the carefully wrapped stack of framed photographs she’d brought from home. She reached for the top one, unwrapped it, held it on her lap. The picture had been taken at Disneyland. In it, Frankie and Finley stood in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle, holding hands. A split second before the camera lens clicked, Finley had grabbed the ticket booklet from Mom and ripped out the E tickets, saying, Me and Frankie are goin’ straight to the Rocket to the Moon. And then to the Submarine. And Mom had said quietly, I hope they serve drinks at one of those kiosks, Connor.
Frankie felt the sting of tears. There was no one here to see, or to care, so she didn’t bother dashing them away. She stared at the image of her brother, with his protruding teeth and spit-shined hair and freckled face, and thought: What have I done?
Next, she unwrapped a picture of her parents, taken at one of their famous Fourth of July parties, both of them smiling, a table draped in patriotic bunting behind them.
They had been right. She had no business being so far away from home—at war—without Finley. How would she last a year?
At that, her stomach roiled again.
She ran for the latrines.
Five
Hours later, Frankie was still lying on her cot, trying not to cry or vomit, wishing she’d never joined the Army, when the door to the hooch banged open. In walked a pair of women in blood-splattered clothes: a Black woman with closely cropped hair who wore shorts, a T-shirt, and combat boots, and a tall, Olive Oyl–thin redhead in stained fatigues. Frankie figured they were both older than she was, but not by much.
“Look at that, Babs. New blood,” Olive Oyl said, unbuttoning her olive-green blouse, tossing it aside.
There was blood on the woman’s bra. She walked forward, clomping her boots, unconcerned about her state of undress. “I’m Ethel Flint from Virginia. ER nurse.” She reached for Frankie’s hand, shook it aggressively, like cocking a rifle. “This here is Barb Johnson, surgical nurse, from some one-stoplight town in Georgia. She’s mean as a dang snake. She made the last girl cry on a regular basis.”
“That isn’t true, Ethel, and you know it,” the Black woman said, pulling the damp T-shirt away from her chest. “Good God, it’s hot.”
Frankie stared at Barb. Honestly, she didn’t know many Black people. Something about the way Barb stared back, her eyes narrowed and assessing, made Frankie feel like a kid who’d wandered into the wrong classroom.
“I’m Frankie McGrath,” she said. Her voice gave out halfway through the introduction and she had to start over.
“Well, Frankie, ditch the uniform,” Ethel said, stripping off her bra and putting on a V-necked olive-drab T-shirt that revealed the silver beaded chain of dog tags around her neck. “There’s a turtle party in your honor—”
Barb snorted. “Hardly, Ethel. Don’t give the kid a false impression.”
“Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but we have two turtles in today and one guy going home.”
“What’s a turtle?” Frankie asked.
“You are, kid,” Ethel said, sounding old and tired and worn-out. “Now move your behind. I’m thirsty as hell. It’s been a long day, and I surely could use a Coca-Cola.”
Frankie wasn’t used to stripping in front of strangers, but she didn’t want her roommates to think she was a prude, so she began to undress.
It wasn’t until she was down to her undergarments that she realized she had nothing in her duffel or overnight bag to put on except her crisply folded, new green fatigues, which she’d been told to wear for work, or her pajamas, or a pale blue summer dress that her mother had convinced her would be perfect for her days off, or her white nurse uniform.
“A girdle,” Ethel said with a sigh. She opened a drawer and rifled through it, pulling out a pair of cutoff shorts and an Army T-shirt, and tossed them to Frankie. “Don’t worry, it’s not just you. They don’t tell us the truth about what to wear over here.”
“Or anything else,” Barb said.
Frankie peeled off the girdle and rolled down her cinnamon-hued stockings. She stood there for a second, feeling her roommates’ scrutiny, then quickly put on the borrowed clothes. The T-shirt was huge and hung to the top of her thighs, almost covering the cutoff jean shorts once Frankie rolled over the waistband to make them fit.