OCR Text |
Show the only clothing I wore, I realized my shame. You must like it, he said again, or maybe you wish you were a boy. I was confused, unsure of what they were implying but knowing it had to do with my bare chest, uncertain of why they called me a boy when they knew I was a girl, but solid in the knowledge that my nakedness was wrong. Rather than blame the two kids who stood in my backyard and mocked me, I thought of my mother with a wild fury. How could she have let me out of the house this way? When I ran down the bomb shelter, fleeing the boys who still jeered at me, insisting I liked being naked, my anger increased. At the age of four, the shame of body and the military's shelter forever connected, the only betrayal I felt was that by my mother. To get to our house with its bomb shelter in the back yard, we drove through the Naval shipyard on Pearl Harbor where hulking ships waited in dry docks to be repainted or repaired. Iron scaffolding and giant cranes moved cargo from one area of the base to another, often along tracks that had rusted in the salt air. Giant gray ships rested naked on oxidized frames, unmasked enlisted sailors dangling on ropes along their sides wielding enormous cans of spray paint and soldering guns. Between the Main Gate of Pearl Harbor where we entered the base, ushered through by the choreographed salutes of the marines, until the moment we drove into the shaded streets of the housing area, you saw no grass. Everything was cement, asphalt, or metal and marked by the black and white signs of the government warning against photo taking or entering a restricted area. 42 |