“I’m not sure,” Stepmother answered. “Maybe. We’ll see. But we won’t tie ourselves to the fence, even if some of them do. We are just going to sing songs. Do you remember the words to ‘We Shall Overcome’?”
“Yeah,” Girl said, and went back to looking out the window while her parents started singing. Girl was in fourth grade, and dreaming about boys and what dog she might get someday was way more interesting than protests, unless people were going to tie themselves to fences, of course, but there was no guarantee of that this evening.
“Lock your door,” Stepmother said. “This is a town full of rednecks. Look at all the American flags.” They had exited the freeway and were driving through the town outside the base. Stepmother didn’t trust people who flew American flags. She said that they were racists and homophobes. Girl wanted to defend the flag—they made her recite the pledge at school, after all, so she didn’t see how flying it made you a redneck—but she didn’t want to risk being wrong about it. She also didn’t want to be beaten up for having gay parents.
Dark was just creeping into the sky when the family pulled into the grass field next to the peace encampment and parked. Kitsy was there, a woman from church Girl really liked. Kitsy had shoulder-length, chestnut-colored hair and an impish look to her face. She was overweight, like Girl’s parents, but feminine and stylish, wearing long skirts and tall boots and many colored scarves. Kitsy liked children, and they gravitated to her. Kitsy had been to the peace encampment before, so she led the family over to the gathering and introduced them around.
There was a white line painted across the road to the base, as promised, and on the other side were soldiers wearing green fatigues and helmets, just like on M*A*S*H or Hogan’s Heroes, two of Girl’s favorite shows. No one was tied to the fence, but there were a few tattered ribbons from previous protests still waving in the evening breeze. Some of the women from the peace encampment had started a small campfire, and people were gathering around it. As night fell, the protesters became dark shapes with firelit faces, even their hair melting into obscurity, no longer people but only floating, glowing faces—a congregation of bald, singing ovals in smoldering hues of yellow and orange. Mother’s glasses reflected the dancing tongues of fire, and Girl could no longer see her eyes. The air was cool and the grass was wet, and the sky so black, with lots of stars shining cold and distant on Girl. The voices, mostly female, sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Give Peace a Chance.”
Stepmother sang protest and activist songs at coffeehouses and folk festivals, so Girl knew all of the songs already from listening to her practice over and over at home. Everyone said that Stepmother had a great voice. Girl recognized that her stepmother’s singing was on key but thought that her inflection was hoity-toity and pretentious. It didn’t seem natural, like when Mother sang. Girl was glad she was standing next to Mother, who had a deep voice for a woman—she was loud and strong and could find the lower octave all by herself. Girl could only sing on key if she stood close to someone else who could find the notes for her.
After a while Kitsy came up to talk to Girl. At nine years old, Girl was the youngest person there. Girl had hoped there would be more kids, but it was all various sizes and shapes of grown-ups, women outnumbering men thirty to one. A man would have to be very sure of himself to come here, Girl thought. She didn’t wonder how Brother felt, though—it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter.
“Do you want to take a rose with me across the line to the MPs?” Kitsy asked.
Girl didn’t know that MP stood for Military Police, to her it was a word that just meant army guy. Emmpee. It sounded like a rank, like corporal or private or something, but Girl didn’t know what, and she didn’t want to admit her ignorance by asking.
“Let me ask my mother,” Girl told her. Kitsy followed her over to where Mother and Stepmother were standing. Kitsy explained her plan to cross the line, and how as the youngest child there, Girl could make the largest impact on the soldiers.
“Girl, do you want to go with Kitsy?” Mother asked. Girl nodded. “Okay, but when they tell you to cross the line, you have to do it right away. Just walk up, give them the flower, and come right back. They can shoot you if you don’t cross the line when they tell you to.”
Did Mother really warn her daughter that the soldiers might shoot her? Or did she say arrest and instead Girl remembered it as shoot? Was Mother merely trying to ensure that her daughter came right back? If she thought Girl might get shot, why did she let her cross the line? Mother was alive during the Kent State massacre and an active protester in the sixties and seventies. She knew sometimes things went wrong at peace rallies.
Kitsy held Girl’s hand and they stepped across the white stripe on the pavement. It was only as wide as the yellow stripe down the middle of Girl’s street back at home. They passed a tall fence topped with barbed wire. Behind it lay coils of razor wire almost as tall as Girl was. There were four men standing at the gate holding their rifles across their chests, one hand on the stock, the other hand on the barrel. They were tall, clean-shaven, and mean-looking. Girl didn’t realize that they were young, too, not much older than teenagers, and likely as scared as she was. Her hands shook.
“Don’t worry,” Kitsy whispered. “I’ll do all the talking. All you do is hand them
