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Frangie hears it all as if it is a distant radio play She is on a wheeled gurney, parked for thealls painted green halfway up and tan the rest of the way She has noted the paint She has noted the ceiling She has noted the dihts and the smell of alcohol swabs and ammonia

She is a package for thean address She tells herself it’s g

ood for a medic like herself to knohat it’s like for the soldiers who survive and can reach a hospital But mostly she is bored Bored and worried and depressed

She had lain offshore on the British ship for three days before being off-loaded and sent on her various bewildering journeys through converted warehouses, on and off trucks, in and out of ambulances, fed haphazardly, treated with minimal kindness and no personal attention, seldom addressed and never by name

She was an object to be handled, shunted here and there, always accu more carbon copies on her chart

Depression has taken hold It feels now as if her brain is a dull, heavy thing made of iron She see, not because of her injuries—though deep breaths do hurt—but si seems a pointless chore She starts letters she does not finish She has just enough—barely enough—energy and focus to thuazines she’s lifted and concealed beneath her sheet, solish, some American, all months out of date

One picture in a three-azine holds her for several minutes It’s an advertisement of sorts for International Harvester It’s one ofa color sketch of an ar to repair a tank It catches her eye because the tank is strangely tilted on the edge of a crater in a way that reminds her of the tank she crawled under There are a dozen orobsolete World War I helmets

All white, all men, she notices International Harvester does not seem to think their tractors are ever used by coloreds or woie has seen both

Frangie idly thuly revealing photo of actress Burnu Acquanetta, nude behind carefully positioned venetian blinds She is called the “Venezuelan Volcano,” though every black person who follows Hollywood knows she is just a colored girl with soazine would never have allowed a siie feels a littlei at the picture

Thedefense jobs Here there are women, but no black faces Then, there’s an article and photos of farmworkers All white Defense workers All white Soldiers and sailors and airmen, and all are white Here and there stands a woraphed, usually drawn as voluptuous and ie’s experience the real fe of little use on a face that hasn’t been washed in a week

There’s a feature article on eight couples where the husband is off at war In all eight pictures bothforward to it all My, won’t war be fun! And all are white

In the entire s and photos, thousands of faces, three are black: the se notes, and an illustration with a slave in the background

Not until she turns to a wo about women at war But the article is mostly nonsense while the drawn illustrations are absurd: wo uniforms, top buttons open, hair out of a shampoo ad, lips luscious and red, carbines cocked at iles

“Not sure which is worse,” Frangie mutters

After a full day of being shuttled this way and that while reading the ie lands at last in a makeshift hospital in the countryside north of Ports, narrow, hastily constructed huts, three of which have been designated with stenciled signs as a “Colored Ward”