WE HEARD MOTHERS scream at their sons, we saw four-year-old boys walk out into the street and we saw fathers throw them against the house as punishment. We watched the windows shake. We saw children sobbing in front yards and hated what we saw, but we did nothing except talk about it. Our children watched this too and said, Poor Michael, and cried. Our children picked up new phrases from these violent observations, or from these children, such as What’s eating you? Those parents worked with their hands, and we felt safer knowing they were not one of us. Or we thought they were like us and we felt cowardly for not doing anything.
THEIR CHILDREN GOT in lots of fights. Their children were picked on, their children made wooden guns and wanted to be just like the soldiers. We did not know our children called their children Okie and hillbilly, or we did notice because, when we were angry that the garbage truck did not come all week, or that they let their children run wild, some of us said these names, too.
THE OLDER CHILDREN were children of machinists, construction workers, and secretaries. We sensed that they missed the activities found in other towns—team sports, cheerleading, band—and we feared them and their boredom. We were anxious about the boys’ fascination with all things Army; we let the girls babysit our children, hoping they would read the New Yorkers left lying around or explore our classical record collection. The carpenters’ daughters were just as smart as our daughters, and they got scholarships to college, and they went. Or they were afraid of leaving their family, what was familiar to them, and they married GIs instead.
AND WHEN OTHER men spanked our children for climbing on their swing sets we fumed and related the story to our husbands, who said we needed to relax. We were angry about the lack of social services, especially when our children reported dreams of that bad man who spanked them, because particularly then we felt helpless. The military police had been called on these men several times, but these fathers said, No, I didn’t do that, and the MPs just went away.
WE LOOKED CLOSER when we walked by the officers’ hall in midday and saw Army men and WACs, men and women enjoying the day dancing, and part of us wanted to join them in the fun, but we could not. We worried about what our husbands would say, and we had children to take care of, and come to think of it, who was watching these women’s children?