The women nodded.
Frankie looked at the women, recognized their emotional wounds, and felt their pain. “I used to wonder if I would do it again, join up. Was there still a believer inside me, a last shred of the girl who wanted to make a difference?” She looked around. “And I would. In some ways, the war years were the best of my life.”
“And the worst,” Gwyn said.
Frankie looked at Gwyn, saw the woman’s anger, remembered it. “And the worst,” she agreed. “You’re right, Gwyn, I don’t think disappointing people is a reason to go to the memorial. Most of us have made too many decisions based on other people. We need to do what we need to do. But we’ve been silenced for too long, invisible for too many years.”
“It’s all about the men,” Gwyn said. “Did I tell you I tried to join a Vietnam vets talk therapy session in Dallas? It’s always the same thing. ‘You don’t belong. You’re a woman. There were no women in Vietnam.’”
The women in the circle nodded at that.
“We don’t have a memorial,” Gwyn added.
“We share that pain, don’t we?” Frankie said. “We’ve been dealing with the war for a decade, most of us, some even longer. Pushing through. I know how the Agent Orange news has brought it all back up,” Frankie said. It was a topic that came up consistently in the circle.
“I had four miscarriages,” Liz said, tears bright in her eyes. “A baby might have saved me, us, you know. And all that time, they were spraying that shit, killing us all slowly.”
“Sometimes I think dying would be easier than living this way,” Gwyn said. “We’ll probably all get cancer.”
Frankie looked at each woman in turn, saw the variations on pain. “Who here has considered suicide?” she asked.
A taboo question that she asked in each new group of women.
Gwyn said, “I’ve thought it might be a relief to … disappear.”
“That’s a brave thing to say, but we know you’re brave, Gwyn. All of you are. And you’re tough.”
“I used to be,” Liz said.
“You’re here,” Frankie said. “In the wilds of Montana, sitting in a barn that smells like manure, and saying the most frightening, intimate things out loud to strangers.” She took a beat. “But we aren’t strangers, are we? We are the women who went to war—the nurses of Vietnam—and many of us felt silenced at home. We lost who we were, who we wanted to be. But I’m living proof that it can get better. You can get better. It starts here. In these chairs, reminding ourselves and each other that we are not alone.”
* * *
In Washington, D.C., on the morning of November 13, 1982, Frankie woke well before dawn.
She’d hardly slept last night. If she’d still been a drinking woman, she would have poured herself something strong. She almost wished she was still a smoker; she needed something to do with her hands. As it was, she got up at five A.M. and pulled her old black overnight bag out of the closet of her cheap motel room. She could have brought a new suitcase on this trip, but the travel bag just felt right. It had been with her in the beginning, in Vietnam. It should be with her now at the end.
It landed on the cheap shag carpet floor with a thunk. She clicked on the bedside lamp, knelt in the pool of light, and unzipped the bag.
The smells assailed her: sweat and mud and blood and smoke and fish. Vietnam.
Don’t drink the water.
I’m new in-country.
No shit.
That’s us, giving it back to them.
On top of her belongings was a Polaroid picture taken at the O Club. In it, Ethel, Barb, and Frankie all wore shorts and T-shirts and combat boots. Jamie had an arm around Frankie’s waist and held up a beer in a toast. There was a picture of her dancing with Jamie, both of them sweaty and laughing, and another one of the guys playing volleyball in the sunlight while the women watched, and one of Hap playing his guitar.
Look at those smiles.
Good times. They’d had those, too.
Frankie pulled out her battered old boonie hat and felt a wave of nostalgia thinking of all the places where she’d worn this hat, all the times she’d had to hold it down so rotor wash didn’t whip it off her head. A dozen pins and patches decorated it, mementos her patients had given her, both from platoons and squadrons, even a happy-face pin and a peace symbol. When had she written MAKE LOVE NOT WAR across the brim in magic marker? She didn’t remember.
She’d worn this hat on her MEDCAP trips into the villages and on her supply flights to Long Binh, on the beach, and even on her R and R to Kauai. She’d worn it handing out candy to kids at the orphanages and sitting in the back of a deuce and a half, bumping over red dirt roads and splashing through rivers of mud.