THE BOXER'S LAMENT
A short story
I was two years into college, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. I remember the horror of the dramatic scenes as they unfolded on the movie screen in front of me. I remember like everyone else, how I howled at the billowing clouds of dark smoke; I screamed at the sailors scurrying out of the way of airplanes spilling across the tarmac. Everything seemed so unreal, and otherworldly to me that it invoked a deep sense of loathing in me, and an instant hatred for all things Japanese.
At that moment I was as American as anyone else around me, with the same inviolate sense of hatred everyone else felt. The whole theatre was holding its collective breath, and there were sobs coming from behind me. I thought: Did those women lose somebody, or did they catch a final glimpse of someone they loved on screen? I felt a certain degree of disgust creeping over me because it felt like I was watching for different reasons. But I couldn't turn away. I decided to do something about it. I signed up for the Nursing Corps.
Writing home to Mamma was the hardest thing I've ever had to do; it was more stressful for me than giving birth. Mamma wrote to ask me what I was thinking. I had to get on with my education, she said. That was all that mattered. I was a Black woman, she went on, and I'd never be accepted into that world—the war was something for White people only—and people like us weren't wanted, or needed, overseas. I wrote telling Mamma she was wrong. This war, more than any other war in history, was the most important thing ever committed to by a nation—and it was as much a commitment of the individual, as it was of the nation.
Mamma tried to belittle the whole affair. She wrote telling me every generation faces a war by which all other standards are measured. Daddy fought in "THE WAR TO END ALL WARS", and where did that lead us if not straight into this one? There was the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Revolution, and Civil Wars worldwide. What about Manchuria? Nanking? Ethiopia? Nobody tried to prevent those things from happening. She tried explaining that there was no cause good enough for any war, that the next generation always forgets the sacrifices of the generation before, which is why we're all caught up in this deadly loop, unable to stop.
I wrote Mamma telling her she was wrong, but I was never able to convince her. She was as set in her ways as I was in mine. I was shipped out to a tiny island near Fiji, in the middle of the South Pacific. We never expected to see action sitting out there. But we wanted to do something for the Cause, and kept telling ourselves The Big Picture was more important. The island was overrun by Japanese within the first months of my arrival, and we were forced to flee. We hid—bouncing from one tiny island group to the next—until we thought we outran them, or we'd just run out of war. We never did know which came first. We were captured.
I was a prisoner of war. I live with endless nightmares of those days. I've never spoken to anyone about it—not even my late husband. I keep my memories separate from my real life. It's like stepping out of the loop, as Mamma would say. I was forced to undergo so many indignities that sometimes I find myself overcome with emotion walking along a beach, or staring out at the sea—and all because of something I saw, or a scent I smelled. It’s gotten so that I have to gather my breath as I weep silent, dusty tears no one understands.
When I finally arrived Stateside, I discovered a lot of us lost more than we bargained for. There were husbands, brothers, and parents gone; sons lost; and children born. Coming home was something of a two sided concern: on the one hand, I was grateful to be back, while on the other, I was devastated by my losses. A lot can happen to disrupt your life in three and a half years. My loss was no different than anyone else's; Daddy disappeared, Mamma was dead; and Uncle Sam was gone. I was alone for the first time in my life, with no family, no friends, and no place I could call my own.
* * *
After the war, there was a feeling of displacement I knew I’d gradually overcome as the years went by. But I harboured feelings of despondency that swept everything aside; there was a general malaise that seemed debilitating at times, like it was sucking the energy right out of my darkened soul—and whose soul was not blackened by the sins we committed in the name of humanity? I was haunted by images echoing in my dreams like the dark uncertainty of a foggy shore; an uncertainty compounded by a sense of loss it was impossible to hide from. It haunted my sleep; it overwhelmed my judgment; it kept me in a state of anxiety that left me sweating, and breathless. I felt exposed. It left me questioning my sanity.
Not even the turn of fresh autumn leaves could shake the feelings of melancholy that held me. A potpourri of beautiful colours rained across the city in a sublime cascade of leaves drifting underfoot as I walked the streets. I didn't see them. I walked the footpaths of Central Park, and Washington Square, studying the faces of the men and women like I was looking for a sign. Maybe I was looking for someone who understood what I'd been through? I saw too many faces of people who did.
I took a job in a used bookstore somewhere in the Village. I lived on the third floor of a small, five story, brick walk-up, not too far from where I worked. It was a nice building, old, but not too antiquated; the hardwood floors were recently refinished. The pipes were in good shape, and there was new insulation to guard against the cold New York winters. There was a common bathroom with a flush toilet, and a combination shower-bathtub I could soak myself clean in on lonely Saturday nights with the shower curtain wrapped around me like a cocoon.
I'd sit out on the fire escape after, looking out over a back alley where stray dogs, wary cats and homeless vets picked through kicked over garbage cans. Watching them, I thought they looked just as lonely and displaced as I felt. I'd watch the sun set in dark, bloody, colours, telling myself it was that way to the Brooklyn Bridge, that way to the Empire State building, and that way to the Statue of Liberty. I'd listen to the soul of the city, telling myself those were children I heard in the distance and not soldiers looking for me.
I watched the traffic snaking its way through the streets, marvelling how there was always music that seemed to float up out of nowhere, drifting through the noise like a scent. Once in a while I'd hear a song that reminded me of a different island, or a different friend, and I'd slip into that melancholy state, but for the most part, I managed to control myself.
I think I came out of my post war depression because people in the city were different from people I remembered in Vermont Falls. I found people treated me with respect; they treated me like a person. They didn't judge me by the colour of my skin, the kinkiness of my hair, or the fleshy roundness of my lips. There was still a dividing line that was unspoken and unseen by people like me. I was still my father's daughter after all, and have his strange sense of values. I'm matched by the same degree of sophistication he had--which was none. Like any other person, I learned about people and city life by looking through the emerald coloured glasses of a Dorothy lost in Oz.
I've sometimes wondered if it was a conscious effort on my father's part to remain anonymous within the confines of his own life. He served in the Great War. He'd been to New York before he left for Europe. I've met Black men since who say they were treated better in Europe than they ever were at home, and I've since wondered if my father didn't look at his move to Vermont Falls as a self-imposed exile.
For my father, coming home from the war was a matter of trying to hide from life; sitting with Uncle Sam and his cronies would have been a welcome relief. I suppose he could forget all about his past once he chose to live in Uncle Sam's world.
It may be that my father had his own ghosts and demons to contend with, and in trying to escape he was looking for the surroundings of a different world. Did he go to Vermont Falls to escape from life, or find it? I've often wondered what nightmare he was trying to hide from that would make him want to bury himself in a place like Vermont Falls.
* * *
I came across a magazine in the bookstore I was working at, and there he was, staring out at me from the cover: Uncle Sam. He was looking youthful, and strangely familiar—looking out at me from an old photograph taken near the turn of the century. I remembered the photograph; it was one of the pictures Uncle Sam had in his cigar box.
I bought the magazine, stuffing it inside my purse, walking through the streets later that day with a sense of excitement. There was a light rain like mist falling, the streets glistening with a sheen reflecting the dull lights around me. I could smell the wet asphalt tickling my nose, tasting its sweetness in the back of my throat.
I lay in the bathtub reading the article again, looking for a clue that might lead me to Uncle Sam, and hoping there was some way for me to find him. I decided to call the magazine in the morning and ask for the writer—a man named Lahey—thinking maybe he could tell me where I might find Uncle Sam.
Lahey answered the phone on the first ring, and I found myself choking on my words, wondering if this was how I was going to react once I stood face to face with Uncle Sam. I was nervous. My hands were cold, and clammy; my voice sounding far away. Lahey kept asking me to speak up because he couldn't hear me. I told him who I was, and he sounded happy to hear from me. He said it was a shame about what happened to Uncle Sam, and I agreed, although in the back of my mind, I was wondering what he was talking about. I didn't want to ask him—I didn't want to sound ignorant, or uninformed—so I let him talk, thinking I could pick up a hint from what he was saying.
I told him I'd just returned Stateside last year, and though I wasn't injured—I did tell him I was having problems trying to readjust. I didn't tell him I'd been locked up in a prison camp for three years. He sounded kind, and considerate, even obliging. There was a short pause—the kind that leaves you hanging, and makes you feel uncomfortable because you don't know what to say—when he suggested we meet somewhere over drinks. I agreed, and wrote down the address of a small bar on Seventh Avenue he said he frequented. I asked him if six o'clock was a good time, and he said yes.
* * *
Lahey was a short, squat, white man not much older than me. He was polite, taking my raincoat and umbrella from me, and hanging them on a chair nearby. He had a shock of white hair that looked like someone had doused him with hair dye, and it was poking out from under the black felt hat he wore. His eyebrows were light, his eyes a startling blue. He wore a rumpled suit that may have seen better days and was water spotted, while his tie was pulled loose, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He ordered drinks for us and sat back, complaining about the weather before finally asking me how he could help.
I told him about myself briefly as he asked questions about Uncle Sam—taking notes in case he wanted to do a follow-up story, he said. I said his story led me to believe Uncle Sam was living in New York, and when I asked him if he still was, he nodded slowly. He told me he was starting a trust fund for Uncle Sam—the man had nothing, he said, shaking his head sadly. Uncle Sam wanted to move back to Boston. I asked him if he needed any help, but he shook his head, saying it was amazing the amount of people who still remembered Uncle Sam and wanted to help. After Jack Johnson, he said, Uncle Sam was probably the most famous, and well liked, black fighter in the country. I laughed, remembering how Uncle Sam told me no one liked Little Artha—black fighter, or white.
I asked him where Uncle Sam was living, and he said Harlem, adding that I probably wouldn't like to see the condition he was living in. I remembered Vermont Falls, and wondered how it could be worse. He wrote the address down on the back of a small business card he had inside his jacket—it was a gym on 132nd Street—then said he had to leave. It was fight night at the Gardens, he explained, and he had to do a write up on a new, up and coming fighter named Marciano.
If you liked it, leave a comment, or maybe give me a “like.”
I enjoyed the way you developed these characters.