The Dance of the Doors

By Shanna Mawavise

It was two o’clock in the morning and I heard the phone ring. My mother answered it immediately, but I was nosy so I decided that I needed a drink of water. I climbed out of my bed, careful not to wake my sister and went into the kitchen. I tried to be quiet, but the footie pajamas made that impossible.
“I love you, good-bye.” My Mom was saying as I got to the kitchen.
“Can I have a glass of water?” I asked feigning a yawn.
“Yes, be careful.”
“Did the phone ring? Was that Daddy?”
To my surprise my mother’s face lit up with a smile. “Yes, Breezy, it was. He called to say how much he loves us.
It was something that happened a lot. Well, I’d noticed it. I realized that this happened when I was eight and now that I was nine I started to examine it. There were certain situations that seemed to happen regularly and all of them had to do with the phone and my daddy.
I'm a Service Brat, well let me be more specific; Air Force Brat and I think by that time I’d seen my father for a grand total of three months that I could remember. I didn’t know much about him except that he was in the Air Force and he wasn’t a pilot but a navigator bombardier, and there was a war going on in some place called Vietnam that seemed to be making a lot of people very angry at us when we went into the town. We didn’t go to town a lot.
Daddy communicated with us by way of reel-to-reel tape recordings that made him seem more like a secret agent or somebody off of “Mission Impossible”. My Mom, brothers and sister waited with anticipation for the tapes and listened to the calm, reassuring sound of his voice. We recorded messages back to him; I remember that my sister was obsessed with him growing a mustache. I am the youngest of four and only really knew what he looked like from pictures. One in particular was him standing proudly in his flight suit, helmet under his arm with one foot on the edge of the cockpit of an F-111. A heroic picture and an image that will forever be etched in my mind.
Two weeks after the phone call, I was in my room doing my homework when my mom called me to come outside. When I got to the front door I thought it was a party, everybody was out on the island in the middle of Delta Court.
Delta Court was where all of the Officer’s families lived and it had an unusual shape; almost triangular with two smaller triangle off shoots and a big diamond-shaped grass island.
All of the other kids were playing tag so I joined in not thinking much of the matter; I was happy that I wasn’t doing homework. I did, however notice that Mom had left the front door open and when I started to close it she told me “Leave it open, so I can hear the phone ring.”
Well, we kids started playing Ghost in the Graveyard. It was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky in the afternoon just after school and we played without a care in the world but I saw that everybody’s front door was open. I also noticed that all of our mothers stood in a close group speaking softly, with worried looks.
It was about half an hour later that our phone rang and my mother called us to go inside. It was my Dad and he talked to us and said he was fine and couldn’t wait to see us again. My sister asked him if he had a mustache, my brothers told him about their latest football game and then we were sent to watch TV while Mom and Dad had a “grown up” conversation.
The family two doors down moved out a month later and a new family moved in.
I didn’t think much of it then.

A month after that, give or take a few days (I didn’t care that much about time), we were watching TV, Star Trek to be exact. One of the neighbors came by and spoke with my mother at the door as we were dodging the Enterprise during the opening credits. Mom came in the living room and said: “Let’s go outside, it’s a wonderful day and you need to be outside for a while.”
Once again, everybody was out on the island and, again it was like a party. We kids played Star Trek. I noticed that the doors were open. I became suspicious because I knew that this was some plot against us kids. This time I paid attention. Mark and Mary’s mother called them when their phone rang and they had to go in. the same thing happened when Billy’s mom’s phone rang, and Terri’s mom’s phone rang, then our phone rang and we went in; it was Dad. He said that he was fine, although there was some incident with a dead snake in his tent and I was never sure what that was about. My sister asked him if he had a mustache and my brothers told him about their football game, and he couldn’t wait until he saw us again. We were sent in to watch TV because Mom and Dad had to have a “grown up” conversation.
But going back to the living room I happened to look out the front window and see that Jimmy, Bruce, Michael and their mother were still on the Island. I watched them for a long while. She was crying and hugging them and then they slowly went back to their house and closed the door.
The next thing that happened was right out of a spy show: a long, black car drove up to their house a few hours later and three men in three men in sunglasses got out. One was in uniform and the others in suits. They went up to their house, knocked on the door and went in.
Then Jimmy, Bruce and Michael moved away to be (as I was now convinced) spies.
I decided to give the matter more attention.
A week later I got stuck watching the news and there was a story about the war in Vietnam. I wasn’t paying much attention until I saw, Jimmy, Bruce, Michael and their mother on the screen. They were all dressed in black and their mother was crying. For a brief moment I thought that they were in Vietnam but then decided that it didn’t make a lot of sense; why would they be there? Why are they on TV? And why are they all so sad?
My mother stuck her head in the paper to avoid the question that I was going to ask. I went to bed wondering what was happening.
Two weeks later it happened again and we were left on the island with one other family. There was obviously no sign of the phone ringing so we went into our house and waited. Everybody but me seemed to know what was going on.
There was a knock at the door and the three men in three men in sunglasses were at the door. My mother led us all into the dining room and I could tell by the look on her face that this was going to be very bad news.
“Mrs. Mawavise, we regret to inform you that your husband’s aircraft was shot down over enemy lines at 1300 hours today.”
Shot down over enemy lines? Daddy? That wasn’t possible; he told me that he wouldn’t get shot down.
I burst into tears, ran into my room and hugged my teddy bear for all it was worth and I did not move from that position; not for dinner, not for anything. Not until the phone rang.
“Kids, get in here! Somebody wants to speak to you!” I heard my brothers and sister careening down the hallway. I didn’t move. “Shanna! Come here!”
I dragged myself off the bed and down the hallway, my feet feeling like lead weights, I had a headache from crying, teddy bear tear soaked and sucking my thumb. I looked around the kitchen, my brothers were smiling, and my sister was saying “Did you grow a mustache?” And I knew everything was alright, for us.
It was Daddy on the phone and he said that he and his pilot (the father of the other family stranded on the island) made their way safely across enemy lines and back to their base.
The next time we performed the dance of the doors I knew that it meant that someone had been shot down and that somebody’s daddy may not come home.
I also knew that we would do this dance until the war was over.
Lucky for me, my Daddy always came home. -Shanna