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Maria, Diana and Me [1]

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Date: 2023-04-20  

A corpsman in the mud. Operation Meade River, Nov 20 1968 Photo by USMC combat photographer called Sandy

Maria was 15 when she'd left a wretchedly unhappy and impoverished life in Guatemala to marry a handsome young US soldier some years older than she. She bore a child and their life was a happy one for a few years, until he went to Vietnam, and returned a different being, haunted soul, abuser and, eventually, monster. Now she was a 40-year-old woman who'd long ago escaped his wrath with her young son, and made her life on her own. She'd obviously been a very beautiful and petit young girl, but the heartache and the years had drawn deep lines of pain into the tight features of her face, and though she could chitchat, and laugh, her face when relaxed fell into a natural frown and her bitterness at her life was not usually far from the surface. To be fair, she’d met a man, an hispanic who brought to her life something she’d not known, a quiet countenance and gentlest of lovemaking. They were happy, so happy for a year until one day he went to the doctor feeling unwell and was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas and given 5 weeks to live, which he’d barely managed. I met her only weeks later.

Diana was 26 years old. She grew up in Boston's north end. Little Italy. She ate her pasta al dente, and her spaghetti sauce was not spaghetti sauce, but gravy. Gravy was homemade tomato sauce and spaghetti was a course, not an entré. And gravy, she'd scolded me, did not have bits, of any size, of hamburg, sausage, pepperoni, green pepper onion celery black olives OR zucchini. Her older brother John was a Marine at the siege of Khe Sahn, and wrote his little sister once that he had gone two months without a shower. He was killed on May 6, 1966, and the dominant memory that the 8-year-old little girl had of her brother's life after he left home was that letter and that shower and the fact that he was killed at a far away place called Khe Sahn. She'd grown up without her big brother, become a teenager, graduated high school and lived her life as a Boston native in a very Boston neighborhood where "Aan-thony" was not a farfetched romanticist's tv ad, as names were yelled from balconies often at suppertime, baseballbats dropped and promises made to continue the game after eating, all-the-while racing home through narrow streets to join the family at the supper table and escape a mother's wrath. She'd also spent some years as a fag hag, she'd said, hanging out at a not-far-away gay bar. Now she was an IRS tax examiner like the rest of us, a glorified clerk, semi-engaged to a guy who liked the loving but not the relationship. I'd known Diana for about a year and liked her immensely. She was street-smart and city-life-weathered in a stable and quiet way. She liked light jazz and introduced me to Coltrane, Blakely and Miles. We often bitched together at the cheap routine of our life there, and just-as-often I'd said there has to be way out, "all we need is a schtick," I'd said once, "like the Pet Rock." It only dated us and showed the absurdity of our chances of escape.

And me. The token Vietnam vet of the story. Thirty five years old. Single. Civil servant by day, ass-kicking poolplayer at my own favorite gay bar by night.

It was an all-too-average day in a much-too-regular workweek, and the three of us were beginning the long descent of the cement Government Center stairs to the sidewalk. The unlikely trio, heading for a lunch of pizza slices at nearby Quincy Market, and Maria had just told us in spiteful tone a particularly abusive snippet of the story I recounted above. I told her I was sorry. "All Vietnam vets are losers," she snapped suddenly and bitterly. "They all should've died in Vietnam."

Well, I'd spent ten painful years between leaving the military and reaching 30, hoping only that the third ten years of my life would pass quickly. Somehow I thought that my sacrificing that particular time period would ease my own anger at my government and my society, my disheartenment at the knowledge not just that people could be evil, but that an American could be, such had been the depth of my teenage innocence. I had some strong feelings about some things I was pretty sure of, and some very iffy feelings about the uncharted things I wanted to know about life and the nature of the human soul. And even fifteen years had not accomplished what I'd wanted from that first ten. In my heart I knew the only thing that separated me from homeless vets was the fact that I had a job waiting for me to go back to when I came home, and my life's accomplishment so far was that I could get myself to work each day and trudge through the dreariness for all of these years. And now I was utterly stunned, and my chest achingly tight. I was suddenly so very angry and so very wounded, but all that could come out was a snide but impotent, "Thanks, Maria, I needed that."

It seemed we trotted down endless steps and moments of silence after that, and I was still wondering when and what words could possibly follow when Diana said so softly and matter-of-factly, "I don't think you understand, Maria. They all did die in Vietnam." Shocked again and beyond words I knew it was the very first time I realized there was a human being who understood the pain that I'd carried in my heart these 15 years, and also just why I liked her so much.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/20/2165053/-Maria-Diana-and-Me

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