CHAPTER EIGHT UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU?
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Uncle Sam Wants You?
Standing in her kitchen, Cora boiled glass jars and lids to sterilize them.
Loretta’s tree had too many oranges to eat all at once, and since food rationing had started, no one wanted to waste the fruit that most years fell to the ground to rot.
Loretta didn’t have the patience for canning, so Cora did it and they split the preserved fruit.
As the boiling jars knocked gently against the sides of Cora’s large pot, she prepared the oranges, peeling and sectioning them, adding the wedges to her growing pile.
She heard the front door open and looked up to see Patsy bustling in, agitated. ‘You know how they turned me down for the Nurse Corps?’ she said, without so much as a hello.
‘Hello, Patsy,’ Cora said, raising her eyebrows at her cousin. ‘Come and sit down, why don’t you?’ she added when Patsy flopped into a kitchen chair.
‘Have you seen this?’ She waved a newspaper at Cora, ignoring her sass. ‘The army has started a Nurse Cadet Corps to train new nurses because of the so-called nursing shortage. They’re paying for nursing school, and they accelerate you through the program.’
‘After they turned you down?’ Cora took the paper and read, The army has taken this bold step due to the continuing need for
trained nurses. She looked at Patsy with a sick, familiar feeling climbing into her gut.
‘It’s not just me. There are nine thousand nurses they decided they didn’t want, all qualified and ready to go.’
‘This is insane. They’re begging for nurse trainees and turning away seasoned nurses at the same time.’
Patsy hopped up to stand beside her. ‘Read this.’ She pointed at a paragraph and then, without waiting for Cora to read, said, ‘It says they won’t discriminate for the Cadet Nurse Corps. So why have quotas for the regular Nurse Corps? It makes no sense.’
Cora sat down and slowly read the article. It was a glowing piece in the The Florida Times-Union that praised the ingenuity of the army to meet the wartime need and spoke of what a great opportunity it would be for young women. It didn’t say a word about all the nurses they’d turned down.
Patsy crossed and uncrossed her arms as Cora read. Tapped her foot. Jiggled her leg. When Cora looked up from the paper Patsy raised her eyebrows as if she expected Cora to have some kind of answer.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sickened, but not surprised.
‘I think I want to apply again,’ Patsy said. She bit her lip and looked at Cora. ‘But also I don’t.’
Cora understood. There were only so many times a person could be degraded and humiliated and told they weren’t wanted before giving up.
‘The last thing I want is for you to put yourself in harm’s way,’ she said. ‘But it’s wrong to stop you from being a part of this. You’re a good nurse and they’d be lucky to have you. You should be allowed to join if you want to.’
Patsy slid into a seat and leaned back, slouching. ‘I keep thinking of Benny and Lee and Roscoe out there hurt or injured with not enough nurses to help them.’ She exhaled a heavy breath. ‘And Lord knows this army would never have a white woman bandaging a colored man.’ They both chuckled.
‘Imagine a white woman giving a colored man a sponge bath,’ Cora said. They laughed outright at that.
‘Or changing his bedpan.’ They sniggered and hooted until their eyes teared.
When they settled down, Cora took Patsy’s hands and looked her right in the eyes. ‘Apply again,’ she said. ‘For Benny and Lee and Roscoe and all the others fighting for a country that doesn’t deserve them. We’ve got to look out for our own.’
‘I’m so mad, Cora.’ Her eyes welled up and she blinked fiercely. ‘And I’m tired.’
‘You’ve got every right to be both those things,’ Cora said squeezing her cousin’s hands.
‘When are they going to stop?’
Cora pulled her into a hug and rubbed her back. ‘America’s like a mother who beats her kids,’ she said, over Patsy’s shoulder. ‘She won’t stop. We love her because she’s ours, but she won’t stop until we make her.’
Patsy pulled back and swiped at her eyes. ‘So, how do we do that?’
‘We have to force her to change,’ Cora said. She picked up the newspaper and tapped the article. ‘We’re getting you into that Nurse Corps.’
Cora got a pen and her writing pad with yet another abandoned letter to Lee sitting on top. She tore it out and folded it, slipping it into her pocket, ignoring the guilt and shame she felt every time she thought of writing to him, and the self-loathing every time she chickened out.
She sat with Patsy at the kitchen table making a list of people who might be able to help. As they hunched over the paper, she heard Jasper holler, ‘Cora? You there?’ He followed that up with some pounding on the doorframe.
‘Just come in, Jasper,’ she called. ‘Stop making all that noise.’
He pushed inside with tense shoulders and a drawn face. One look and Cora knew it was bad news. ‘What happened?’
Jasper held up a letter with an army seal. He looked shocked and angry, incredulous and afraid.
It had to be about Lee. If it were Benny or Roscoe, she would be the one with the letter. Her hands and feet pinpricked. She couldn’t catch her breath.
Jasper sank heavily into a chair and shook his head.
A weight on her chest robbed her of breath. ‘Tell me.’
He put the letter on the table and pushed it across to her. Tears blurred her vision as she scanned the page in a rushed panic, too quickly to make sense of it. She read it again. And then again. Lee wasn’t dead. This was something else.
‘Well, what is it?’ Patsy said. ‘Are they okay? Are they hurt?’
Cora looked up at her, blinking through her disbelief. ‘Jasper’s being drafted.’