I’m going to preface this short story with a word about a word. If you are offended by the N-bomb then you’ll want to either stop reading or know that it’s coming. I don’t use that word, but I won’t ever fail to quote someone accurately, especially because someone else tells me that I can’t. And Ma Bell used that word often and not with an “ah” at the end, but a hard “r”. And not behind anyone’s back, but mostly in the face and usually loudly and forcefully, when used. Obviously she was just the epitome of the demure southern belle. In fact her last name was “Bell” but I don’t know who knew her first name. I know I never did. Everyone just called her “Ma’”.

The company had maybe 30 women in it and those who were housed in the barracks took up half of the first floor of a four story building. Men were strictly forbidden down that hallway. Ma Bell was by far the best looking woman in the barracks. Maybe 5 ft 4, great build, beautiful face, early 20’s, she was indeed from the south, but certainly not of the southern belle variety. She had a very bad attitude and moved in the world without the slightest hint of femininity, other than her good looks.

Of course that didn’t detract from the desire that she elicited from most of the men, because, well, we’re men. And guess which lucky little fool was climbing through her window most nights? She would invite her roommate, which was her subordinate in all ways, to leave the room while we got busy. Sometimes if her roommate was asleep, or feigned sleep, we’d have sex while she was in the room. None of us cared as far as I could tell. I mean, we tried to be a bit quitter, but it isn’t like anyone was kidding anyone else.

I don’t know if I ever knew her real first name. Her last name was Bell and everyone called her “Ma Bell”. Whatever misery had brought her to that point in her life had attached to it a hatred of African Americans. The race relations back then were very tense to begin with and about 40% of the military was African American, according to my Google search. The result of the tension was mostly just a matter of voluntary segregation into clicks during off duty hours and pleasant professionalism during work hours. Being with Ma Bell brought with it a whole other dimension to the tension.

So here’s where we get to the fact that she just loved to unload the words “Nigger Please” whenever she had the chance. This would usually occur when a “brother” was ogling her, or just brushed up against her. The first time it happened and the man turned to me to say something she interjected to say something along the lines of “This isn’t about him, it’s about me. You want to deal with me then deal with me.” And that was the gist of how she wanted those little episodes to go. She told me that if she was receiving a serious beat-down that she would like for me to get involved, but other than that stay out of it. And so I did and she never got her ass kicked and I never got my ass kicked because of her but it did lend itself to some tense situations.

We were  both walking, talking, bitter balls of hate and anger. We both liked to get loaded on whatever was available and had plenty of attraction to each other. But she was operating on a scale of hatred toward the world that I didn’t have in me and it was maybe a couple of months before my nightly forays in the first floor window came to an end. But during those months with her there were intense times that go beyond her baiting of the African American men who dared to look at her.