Two Bags of Chips

By Linda Welker

             “Private First Class Murphy reporting.” I said in a voice laced with excitement, to the corporal sitting behind the counter of the Woman’s Army Corps barracks. This was my first duty station after four months of training and the Army sent me to Fort MacArthur, on the beach in sunny San Pedro. Nineteen sixty-two was my lucky year.

The Corporal directed me to my room on the second floor. I pulled my heavy duffle bag and suitcase inside and collapsed on the end bed. The middle cot was empty. A short girl with dark hair sat on the edge of the other bed next to the window, sewing. The tip of her tongue stuck out of her mouth as she concentrated on her work.

            “Hi.” I said.

            “Hi, yourself. Do you know anything about sewing?”

            “Some. What are you sewing?”

            “The letters keep coming off my jacket. I’ve sewed them back on a hundred times.”
            She struggled to push a needle through the thick material of what looked like a baseball jacket. The front and back were blue and the sleeves were white. Five-inch tall gold letters F M B W spread across the back.

            “What does F M B W stand for?” I asked.

            She glared at me with her brown eyes in angry slits.

Her look made me feel embarrassed, as if I opened the door on some forbidden act.

            “It’s none of your business.” She broke the thread with her teeth. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you.” 

            “My name is Murph. What’s yours?” I asked, trying to start the conversation over.

            “Alice. This is southern California and we wear summer uniforms here. You’d better get out of that winter class A.”

            “Gladly, I just got here from Indiana. How long have you been here?”

            “About six months. It’s almost chow time. On the weekends, you can wear your civvies to chow. I’ll show you where the mess hall is if you like.”

            “Okay,” This girl puzzled me. She sounded hostile at first, and then offered to show me around. She had a muscular figure like an athlete. I was five inches taller, yet I felt as if we ever got into a hassle, she’d win.

            I pulled a wrinkled pair of slacks and blouse out of my suitcase and changed clothes. Alice gave me an excellent tour. We started in the basement with the laundry room and the TV room. Alice explained the barrack rules and introduced me to other girls we came across. She mentioned the cook did a good job as she led me through the lobby to the mess hall. She said she liked the food.

            We passed by a corner in the lobby where the vending machines stood filled with all the things I liked. That corner became one of my favorite spots. I couldn’t seem to go by without fishing in my pocket for coins to feed the monsters.

The center of my social life at Fort Mac became the Enlisted Members Club. All my off duty hours were spent there; drinking beer, chatting with girlfriends about boys, flirting with the boys, dancing with the boys to the music from the jukebox, and if we got lucky, kissing the boys at the end of the evening. I dashed through the barracks only to shower and sleep.

            My middle bed roommate used the barracks to sleep five nights a week, nothing else. No civilian clothes occupied space in her locker. Everyone knew she was having an affair with an officer, who had apartment in town. Fraternizing between enlisted personnel and officers was grounds for court martial. I didn’t know who her lover was and didn’t want to know. If someone asked me, I wanted to be able to say with sweet ignorance, “I don’t know anything about it.”

            We had an eleven o’clock bed check during the week. Friday and Saturday nights, we were free. When I looked at her empty bed on the weekends, I envied her. She was in love and her boyfriend loved her enough to risk his Army career for her. Their romance was the stuff books were written about.

            Alice was a different story. She lived like a hermit, rarely venturing out of the barracks. Either she was on her bed reading or writing, on a big yellow tablet. She said she was writing her autobiography, she didn’t want anyone to read. If the tablet wasn’t in her hand, it was locked in her footlocker. Sometimes I asked her to go to the EM club with me. She always refused. On the weekends, she’d spend time in the TV room with a handful of other WACs that stayed glued to the barracks.

One Saturday morning I woke up late and missed breakfast. I dug out some coins and headed for the vending machines.

            “Alice, I’m going downstairs to buy something to eat. Do you want anything?”

            “I don’t have any money.”

            “We just got paid. How can you be broke already?”

            “Damn it! Murph. I send my money home to my folks. Not that it is any of your business.”

            “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” I said and headed out of the room. By this time, I was accustomed to the anger that lived just under Alice’s skin. She was often friendly and talkative, then without warning, her rage cracked the surface.

            Juggling two sodas and two bags of chips, I walked in and sat facing Alice on our truant roommate’s bed.

“Here.”  I handed her a soda and a bag of chips.

            “I told you I don’t have any money.”

            “Screw the money. Tell me about your family.” I was tired of Alice’s locked up life. For weeks, she had been my listening net, catching my dialogue concerning problems with work, with boys, with my family back home. She listened, smiled, gave me encouragement, and kept silent about herself.  I wanted her to bring the yellow pad out and tell me what kept the anger sizzling inside her.

            “Leave me alone.” She said as she turned on her side, her back to me.

            “No, I’m not going away. It’s your turn to talk.”

            She sat up on her bed and looked at me with moist eyes. “Why do you want to know?’

            “Because we’re friends. Aren’t we?”

She took a deep breath. “My parents are migrant farm workers. They travel around California and Oregon picking fruits and vegetables. I’m one of five kids. I have a twin brother, I haven’t seen in years. Actually, I haven’t seen any of them in years. I got one letter from my sister since I’ve been in the service.”

“Did you write back?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Murph, isn’t it time for you to go to the E M club, or something? I’ve got to go do my laundry.”

            After that, every time I heard the vending machines calling my name, I bought double. A candy bar for me, a candy bar for Alice, a soda for me, a soda for Alice.

            One evening I wasn’t feeling well and decided, not go to the E M club with my friends. By about eight o’clock, I was bored and went downstairs to join Alice in the TV room. When I walked in all conversation stopped. The six girls in there gave me a strange look like I was a two-headed purple alien landing on their planet. I was grateful to Alice for moving over and making room for me to sit beside her on the couch.

The next day I mentioned to a friend where I’d spent the evening.

            “The TV room! With all the gays?” she asked.

            I was eighteen years old and had grown up in rural delivery Pennsylvania. All I knew about homosexuals was that they were weird people like the ones who live in a carnival sideshow. I never expected to meet any.  

            After buying two candy bars I marched into the room and sprawled out on our absent roommate’s bed. “Alice, are you gay?”

            At first, she giggled, and then noticing my serious expression, she exploded into hysterics.  She laughed until big tears streamed down her cheeks and she choked on a bite of chocolate.

             “Murph, did you just figure that out?”

            “Why are you gay?” She was laughing at me, but I didn’t care. I wanted answers.

Being gay in the Army was another cause for dishonorable discharge. Why not go straight? I thought a lesbian could make a switch, like exchanging boxer underwear for panties. I knew Alice was troubled, but she was not weird. She was kind to people and she loved her parents. I’d known her for months, how could I be so stupid.

            Alice put her finger to her lips to hush me up. “The walls around here have ears. Let’s take a walk.”

            It was a chilly night. Alice put on her baseball jacket and I put on a sweater. We walked around in circles on the dewy grass in the parade field. She told me the sad story of her life.

            She and her siblings all slept in the same bed. When her oldest brother was about thirteen or fourteen, he wanted to experiment with sex. Alice’s sister wouldn’t let him touch her. That left Alice. She was five years old. A couple of years later the middle brother wanted his turn and finally her twin brother. When most teenage girls are learning about sex, Alice was already an expert with more sexual experience than most married women. The boys her age seemed like fumbling idiots to her.

            “Don’t you hate your brothers?”

            “No, I don’t blame them. They were just kids and no one ever told them it was wrong.”

            “Didn’t your parents do anything?” I felt sick as Alice shrugged. Long ago, she accepted this horror story as her life. It was her truth and nothing could change it.  At that moment, I hated her parents, I hated her brothers, I hated her entire family.

Alice wiped her eye with the back of her hand. “My parents are stupid people. Neither one went to school much. Mom was fourteen when she married and started having babies. I don’t think they knew what to do with us kids.”

“Why did you join the Army?”

            “I was homeless. In my sophomore year in high school, my English teacher came on to me. I moved into her apartment. She supported me, even bought me a car. She helped me get through high school and was willing to pay for college. But, I blew it. I had an affair with another woman. Twenty years old, never had a job, and I was kicked out on the street.”

            The B on the back of Alice’s jacket was hanging upside down by two threads. I gave it a tug and it broke loose in my hand.

            “What does FMBW stand for?”

            “Fort Mac Bad Wac.  All the gays here have letters like this. Most of them are too chicken-shit to wear them. I don’t give a damn.”

            “Let’s go back to the barracks. I’m going to sew the letters on your jacket, so they never come off. You and I are friends and I don't give a damn what the Army thinks either."

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Linda Welker has been a Brooksville resident for seventeen years. Six grandchildren and the creative activities of painting and writing fill her days with wonderment. She never knows what a grandchild is going to say or what a character in a story will do until the words are spoken or put down on paper. Linda is an active member of The Pasco/Hernando chapter of The Florida Writers Association.