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Show having affairs with junior officers, for destroying expensive military equipment, or for getting pregnant and preventing the military from performing its duty. Women could, however, be found on the forearms of soldiers where "hootchie cootchie" tattoos wiggled their breasts. Scantily clad women also dressed the walls of the military gyms and dangled from the rearview mirrors or fenders of cars. The rest of the women in my world gathered at the Officers' Wives Club to host coffees or luncheons and put together cookbooks or raffles. Women waited at home for the men to return, raising children in a community of fatherless families. When the time came for me to ask people to write letters of recommendation for college, my parents told me that only men with titles would signify worth to the admissions committee. Obediently, I chose a minister and an admiral. The only female name to appear on my application was my own. To be fast and strong, I told myself, was all that mattered, and the shine and flare of the military bases during the Cold War bore me out: the Marine guards at the Main Gate, their white gloves flashing in the tropical sun, starched covers pulled down close over their eyes, dark dress blues even in July, with hands that flew in a whirl of gold buttons and red piping as they went through the complex choreography that must be done for each and every car entering the base. Surfaces mattered, I knew, and mine should be clean, straight, shiny, and taut. Try as I might, though, my body betrayed me, not unlike the unruly body of water I had played in much of my life. At first the betrayals were small, momentary losses of control, that began with the first Halloween back in Hawaii. It rained a flood that fall. Many years later, this time in January and on our third 151 |
