“You mean . . . that’s expected?”
“Expected? Yes, you could say it’s expected. Just like it’s expected that I will sit in the colored section at a movie theater, or never drink from a ‘whites only’ drinking fountain, or—”
“But how do people know which is a white drinking fountain?”
“There’s a sign.”
“A sign.”
“Yes, a sign that says ‘Colored Only,’ or ‘Whites Only,’ or ‘No Dogs or Negroes.’ And it’s not like a suggestion; if you don’t go along you wake up to find a cross burning on your lawn. And sometimes, if the white folks get drunk enough, there’s a lynching.”
“But that’s crazy.”
Frangie smiles at her friend. “You want to know the funny thing, Rainy?”
“Funny would be good.”
“The funny thing,” Frangie says, leaning forward and lowering her voice in volume if not intensity, “is that all my life I thought it was normal. I thought it’s just the way things are. I thought, well . . . yes, it’s a white person’s world and . . . and I never even thought about it being wrong. I read a story in . . . I don’t know, one of the colored papers . . . anyway, about this colored vet, wounded, heading home to see his folks. And he was made to move out of the white seats to make room for German prisoners being sent to a POW camp in Kansas. See, Germans are white. Doesn’t matter that they’re the enemy, they’re white.”
Rainy takes this in. How had she not known this? How had she never asked herself what life was like for Negroes? She feels obscurely guilty, despite the fact that Jews are themselves treated as second-class citizens. Yet she is white, and while she can’t join a country club or attend some universities because of her ethnic background, she is still undeniably white and has never confronted such a thing as a “Jews Only” section.
She comes close to telling Frangie some of what she has learned and come to suspect about what Germans are doing to Jews. But her innate reserve stops her. Anyway, how would it help? She sees more than enough rage in Frangie’s eyes, she doesn’t need more.
“I don’t think I ever understood that,” Rainy admits.
Frangie slumps in her seat. Already small, she becomes smaller still. “In 1921 white folks burned down Greenwood. That’s a neighborhood in Tulsa. Used to be called the Colored Wall
Street. White folks burned it down. They actually got hold of planes and threw gas bombs down on colored homes.”
“That really happened?” Rainy asks skeptically.
“My mother . . .” Frangie stops, but only long enough to master her voice, which still comes out as a low, grating sound unlike anything Rainy has ever heard from Frangie. “Some white men took her. And they used her.”
Silence stretches again. Rainy feels something inside her resist. Deny. But that’s madness, obviously Frangie is telling the truth. Yet at the same time, Rainy can’t believe it, doesn’t want to believe it. She wants her moral lines neat and clean and clear. She doesn’t want to know that in her own country there are men and women every inch the moral equivalent of the Nazis.
If there is one true thing that can be said about Rainy Schulterman, it is that she keeps her own counsel and shares only the minimum. If there is a second true thing about Rainy Schulterman, it is that she goes where the facts lead her.
“I didn’t know,” Rainy says. She drums her fingers on the desk and says again, “I didn’t know. I never knew. I never really . . .” Her head shakes, slightly at first, but more vigorously, more angrily. “I didn’t know. How? How do I not know that? How do I not know?”
Rainy gets to her feet and paces, followed by Frangie’s eyes. Despite herself Frangie is almost amused by Rainy’s reaction. When the four of them—Rio, Jenou, Frangie, and Rainy—had been together in Britain it had immediately become clear that Rainy was the clever, informed one, the one who understood the war and the history and the politics and so on. Rainy was undeniably very smart, but there were some very big holes in what she knew of the world, especially the world closer to home.
“How do you people fight for us? For our country?” Rainy demands suddenly.
“We don’t,” Frangie says. “We fight for our country. And mostly we just do the same as all the white GIs, we fight to stay alive and keep our brothers and sisters alive.”
Rainy sits. This time she pours herself a schnapps as well as one for Frangie.
Frangie raises her glass and says, “There’s a special Jewish toast, isn’t there? I heard it once.”
“Did it sound like someone clearing their throat? Was it l’chaim?”
“Why yes, that is it. What does it mean?”
“To life,” Rainy says and clinks her mug against Frangie’s.
“L’chaim,” Frangie says. Then, “I pronounced that wrong, didn’t I?”
“Oh absolutely,” Rainy says, laughing. Then falling serious again, she says, “This can’t go on.”