Page 74 - Exile-ebook

74 AN EXILE OF THE MIND BOMBED BUT NOT BOWED 75

these dauntless women raised fam- called, was diagnosed and required
ilies single-handedly, ran factories, surgery when I was older.
drove ambulances and built vehicles I tottered on purple-cold legs my
while their men were away at war. nose-dribble rounds to visit band-
My mother’s equal mix of reck- aged warriors in my long white
lessness and fearlessness was in gown. Derriere to the elements. I
some way to blame for my hospital must have symbolized a shivering
sojourn. My earliest memory cherub with broken wings to heart-
was, at two and half, nestled en the wounded.
in stiff-starched sheets of a Adopted by these war-damaged
hospital bed. With my head soldiers I would await eagerly
wedged immobile between these excursions. To observe
beanbags, I sucked in with morbid curiosity an art
the convalescence of this exhibit displayed by the
bleach-scrubbed ward to Ink Brigade. Mothers, girl-
gaze ceilingwards at the friends, crucifixes and
play of light and shadow dragons, rippled to life An Anderson air raid shelter under construction.
projected by tall hospital on pink canvases of skin.
windows. A magnificent tapes- My mother, a beautiful, fun lov- and dollymops fluttered around
Columns of ants, imported try unscathed by battle, ing woman, lived wartime to the the flame of these flamboyant,
by the thousands from sand- inked shoulder to thigh on full. With no guarantee that the sun well meaning Americans, lured by
bagged defences in the streets a soldier’s back portrayed tally would shed its light on another day. cigarettes and nylons in a nation
below, crisscrossed green walls ho huntsmen and their hounds In the murky gattering of a pub, heavily rationed. And in their wake,
to knit a motion picture of their chasing a fox which scur- fuddled with booze and cigarette a trail of broken hearts and a sharp
miniature expeditions. A singular en- ried to safety betwixt butt cheeks. fumes, an off-tune piano moaned spike in the population growth.
tertainment for bedridden weeks of And made to tail-wag in triumph tearful tunes of better days. Lone- ‘Overpaid, oversexed and over
numbing boredom. at blushing nurses. A superstitious some airmen, wide smiling, from the ‘ere’, was a popular catch cry about
And I, damaged in a pregnant sailor sported twin propellers, one American airbase nearby, looked for the Yankee presence. ‘Underpaid,
tumble caused by the blast of a for each buttock, to propel him desperate friendships spiked with undersexed and under Eisenhower’
bomb. My mother had called on rel- to shore from a ship in danger. A carnal longing in this watering hole was the quick response.
atives in a nearby town that tempted drunken brawl had propelled him to far from home. I watched in wide blue-eyed
the Luftwaffe to drop its bombs on this hospital, propellers intact. The soldiers’ odd ways and wonder my mother in full singsong
its munitions factories. At my birth, What better preparation could smart uniforms appealed to the to Yankee applause. My father,
a twisted neck, or torticollis as it was there be for my appreciation of art. local girls. Wives of absent soldiers a Pay Corps NCO far away in a