Wanted

AT THE MAIL counter, where we stood asking if our mail had arrived, depositing new letters addressed to our mothers, there was a poster. What caught our eye was the word wanted! We looked closer. We saw a dark-haired, pale-faced woman, her hair in a victory roll, like ours. She appeared menacing with the dark background and the direct eye contact, except her face seemed gentle, too. Was there a killer in our midst? She looked like one of us, but no one we exactly recognized. We studied the poster more closely and saw the writing above her head: wanted! for murder. And below her neck: her careless talk costs lives.

 

SOME OF US shivered, some of us got paranoid about what we told Judy the day before, some of us laughed on the inside but not the outside, for we had made the mistake of laughing at this kind of thing in front of WACs before. It did not ingratiate ourselves to them, and we needed them to obtain passes to Santa Fe and to find out how our children were doing in gym class. So we looked back, kept quiet, took our mail, said, Thank you, and walked home.