Formation

by Ryan Leigh Dostie

  “What are you talking about? I reported it that night. The MPs came right after he left.” I stare aghast, watching my narrative change, becoming rewritten, and he just raises his chin a little, as if defiant. “I did the actual interview a week later,” I stress. “Is that what you mean? Because I did report it. Right away.” My words are clipped and hard.

  He shrugs, as if he can’t be bothered to actually read the report. He says instead, with a heavy sigh, “Do you really want to ruin this guy’s life?”

  As if I have the power to do so, as if I have any ability to inflict or inspire destruction, as if I have any power at all. But instead I’m the only one being destroyed here. I’d burn it all down with me if I could, every last rank, file, and line, but I’m screaming at the top of my lungs and no one seems to notice.

  * * *

  So I retreat back to my room, sitting on my bed, one hand wrapped around a chocolate milk bottle, the other dipping into the bag of barbecue chips by the pillow, eating, eating, eating, getting wider and wider around the middle, and again feel an affinity with a number, that 19 percent. I stare blankly at the screen, at more news updates on the Air Force sex scandal, and I wonder how they broke their story, how they got people to care. Why did justice work for them but not for me? I feel an affinity and yet a wide divide. People rally and march around them, yet I’m left standing in a barren land.

  We’re getting closer to deployment and somehow I know the moment my boots leave this ground, there will be no coming back to this case. If nobody cares now, how will I convince them to meet with me after a war has been wedged here in the middle? I feel the time slipping by, a pressing expiration date, and so I try to make myself unmissable. I wait uncomfortably in the inspector general’s office, fists buried in my lap. I don’t look up at the admin officer who sits at his desk, occasionally sneaking curious glances in my direction. He flips paper rhythmically, seemingly without order or sense, until I wonder if he’s simply shifting papers back and forth to appear busy. I’m not supposed to be here. I have no appointment; I didn’t tell my platoon sergeant I was coming. There was no grand plan; I didn’t know I was going to leave until I left. I had stood before the company doors, hesitating in the sunlight, trying to gather the courage to go in and ask for permission, when suddenly I turned on one heel, a perfect about-face, and simply walked away. I crossed over the DO NOT CROSS grass, cutting a straight line to the inspector general’s office.

  The IG is the very peak of the chain of command, the highest a soldier can reach for help. It’s a definitive and purposeful jump in command to approach the IG, a rocking of the boat that no command ever appreciates. I wonder what my command will say when they find out, and then I realize I don’t care. If I get them in trouble, all the better. I’ve grown bitter.

  The IG breezes into the tiny office. Her blond hair is swept into a bun and I’m surprised she’s a woman. I’m secretly delighted. I state my name and my company, haltingly begin to state my case but she waves it off, swishing one pale hand in my direction as she turns to her desk, spreading out papers with the other hand, pinning them to the desk with long fingers. She knows who I am. She has been forewarned. I glance at the admin officer and wonder when he made the phone call.

  She turns to me, then, and tilts her head slightly, a gesture of sympathy, but she wants me to be quick. She’s short on time and patience. My story is a lot shorter than it should be. A handful of sentences and her brow pins together appropriately as I speak but there’s nothing deeper behind her eyes as she watches me. She cares, but not enough, and she pats my hand. “At this point, you just need to move on with your life,” she says.

  I withdraw my hand, sitting back in the chair to mask the reaction. “Why should I have to move on with my life? That’s not even fair. He should have to suffer, too.” The statement surprises me a lot more than it does her. I didn’t know I wanted vengeance. I don’t feel like the vengeful type. But somehow the concept of “forgive and forget” rots at the base of my stomach.

  “Nothing in this situation is fair. You’ll feel better once you’ve moved on.”

  “But he’s still out there,” I say, a little too loudly. “Yesterday he was driving a truck with another female soldier.” My heart pounds at the memory, the surge of fear I had for a girl I didn’t know, who looked out the cab window contently, unaware, and I wanted to rush forward and fling open the door, grab her by the elbow, and jerk her out of the seat, tell her to get out, run. “She could be in danger.”

  The side of the IG’s mouth twitches, like she’s suppressing something. “I think he’s more of an opportunist,” she says slowly, as if she’s speaking to someone very dim. “I don’t think he’s the type to do anything violent at work.” This is said to appease me but it doesn’t.

  “At this point, you just need to put this behind you and move forward,” she reiterates. I hear the unspoken order. Move on, that’s easier. Easier for you, easier for me, easier for everyone involved. Less paperwork, less headache. She doesn’t speak the words Drop it, but the message comes through loud enough. I despise how easy she makes it sound. Like I should simply unburden myself, the dropping of an old rucksack from my shoulders, then simply walk away. Because a strong soldier could do that. A real soldier moves on with his life. I hear her dismissal as a testament to my weakness. Real soldiers don’t dwell. I’m not that strong and I’m not that real.

  At last I do the unthinkable. I call in my mom. She flies down, along with my brother, aunt, and two cousins. I tell them they’re just here to help pack me up, which they do, folding uniforms and stuffing duffel bags as we watch CNN, tanks rolling over sand dunes where I’ll soon be, Geraldo Rivera getting kicked out of Iraq. I regale them with tales of Fort Polk and Leesville, like the exotic pet tiger that someone released into the wild onto the north side of the post who still lives in the swamps, or the movie theater that periodically catches fire, ruining movie date nights. They learn that in fact Super Walmart is the only non-X-rated thing to do in town. And between that, my mother carries out her own agenda, which I knew she would, which was why I called her, as a last resort. She storms CID, demanding to speak with the head investigator, and I watch, standing a little behind her, as my adulthood gets ripped from my hands. Captain Wells won’t meet with her, he’s far too busy for something like that, but she manages to book an appointment with the Sergeant Major. I pace and worry and agonize for hours before the appointment, wondering what he’ll say, if he even knows, if I’ll be an unpleasant surprise, and I pretend he doesn’t know, that’s why this has gone on for so long, surely someone up there would change things if they simply knew, but when I walk in for the appointment, my mother one step in front, it’s not the Sergeant Major but First Sergeant Bell sitting there behind the desk, who first says he’s sorry, the Sergeant Major had a sudden schedule shift, and “what can I do for you,” only to finish with “is she sure she really wants to ruin this guy’s life?”

  My mother returns home baffled, astounded by their lack of urgency or care. I feel for her. I’m pretty used this all by now.

  * * *

  But I still go back to Sergeant Bell for one last meeting, this time alone. “I can’t take it anymore,” I say to First Sergeant Bell. It’s days before our deployment, just over three months since my rape. I’m still dwelling. The unit is still in chaos, labels put on Humvees, scraped off, then reapplied. Inventory sheets are written, typed, lost, and inventoried again. The Army at the height of its administrative effectiveness.

  I don’t want to go to Iraq. When I joined the Army on something of a whim, pre-9/11, I never imagined myself in war. The thought is still abstract. I try to grasp it but it slips out of my hands and flounders about, like a bar of wet soap. I’m not Rambo. I’m neither brave nor fearless; I joined at a time when war was far from the American consciousness—an impossibility because “who would ever want to go to war with America,” as my recruiter had promised so confidently. But neither am I a coward. I’m strapped
to my unit; I can’t cut free because that’s desertion, and that’s something I won’t do. So I don’t say to First Sergeant Bell, I won’t go. I say instead, “I can’t take it anymore,” and let him decide what to do with me. My brain is scrambled and even I know someone shouldn’t put a loaded rifle in my hands. I bear this awareness with both fear and shame.

  First Sergeant Bell sits at his desk, elbows propped onto the wood, long fingers intertwined. He rests his fleshy chin on his hands and regards me dully. I wonder how I look to him. I know what he doesn’t see: my left arm, hidden by the long sleeve of my BDU top, where the skin has been split, the edge of a blade pressed against the flesh until it parts, slicing a long, slender cut across the underside of a forearm. My arm is decorated with such lines, a judiciously hidden canvas for a very precise self-medication. It’s a careful, therapeutic process—every step of the meticulous ritual soothing, from the sterilizing of the blade, to the slicing of the skin, to the keen interest of watching blood bead, dribble, and finally the deliberate bandaging. The anxiety, panic, rage seeps out with the blood, rolls out in thick, red beads, until I’m sweetly empty and tranquil in the stillness.

  I’ve only stopped, just recently, after a small mishap, the twist of the blade that went a bit too deep and blood splashed onto the floor. I had progressed to the inside of my ankle because my left arm was packed with red, angry stripes, and the slice was too quick and deep. Surprised, I wrapped the ankle with a towel, trying to enjoy the numbness, trying to make the most of the moment, but the blood seeped through, staining the fabric, and I had to switch it out for a larger one. I realized I might have to go the hospital. I pressed down on the towel, trying to think of an excuse, a reason to tell the medics, but nothing came to mind. The bleeding slowed, though, and I wrapped it with gauze and tape.

  But First Sergeant Bell simply watches me from under the heavy, white pelt of his eyebrows. “Hale’s not going,” he informs me.

  Which infuriates me. He gets away with rape and now he doesn’t have to go to war, either? A tiny, less civil part of me grumbles in frustration. A quick image of him facedown in the sand with an angry hole in the back of his head rises and then fades from possibility. Probably for the better. I probably wouldn’t have gotten away with it.

  “His enlistment is almost up,” First Sergeant Bell is saying, refusing to read all the signs of rage I’m projecting. But he makes eye contact, a kind of slow, purposeful stare, and I wonder if he’s smart enough to bait me. Is there a flash of genius in those flat, watery eyes? “You can stay here with him in rear deployment until he leaves. Or you can come with us.” To war, to war.

  It is a surprisingly easy decision.

  * * *

  And so then there is Iraq.

  Conception

  In the Beginning

  The first eleven years of my life, I’m raised in a cult. As far as cults go, it is a fairly good one. It’s run by a Christian matriarch, her silver hair perpetually coiffed, a slightly overweight woman who appears huggable and soft, but isn’t. Her eyes are black and sharp; she catches every detail when she surveys the room. She is prophetic, or at least she says she is, and speaks with a slight accent, clipping her words so that they are perfectly enunciated. She is intelligent and wise and educated, but mostly she is undisputed. When she says she knows if we children are lying, I believe her. I believe she can read minds. When I’m in a room with her, I stare at the floor, trying to think nothing, just keep my mind blank and white. She has a manner of questioning your beliefs, of forcing you to undermine your own certainty until you’re standing on shifting sand and she is the only rock on which to build a foundation. She is Mother, and most call her “Mom,” something that wounds my mother’s mother for years.

  Her right-hand man is a woman, a sweet, soft-spoken older woman who folds in over herself, slender and fragile, and never strays far from the matriarch. Her role or what she actually does I never know. She is quiet and gentle, dark-haired, and was perhaps beautiful once.

  The matriarch’s enforcer is a young woman with loose black hair, pale skin, and bright eyes. Her job is to report back to the matriarch, and I clip my teeth shut when she’s around.

  These women of my childhood are intimidating, but strong, walking the compound with a sort of undeniable elegance, a confidence that can’t be slapped down or away. Backs straight, shoulders back. Whatever their past was, they are now remade through power and poise.

  This church is small, nothing more than an old colonial house on a flat piece of land located at the heart of the small New England town. A rock wall lines the periphery; an herb and vegetable garden stretches across the entire front yard. There are no more than twenty members at any given time. The house grows as the members work tirelessly on building, expanding, adding rooms and space for families to live on the compound. It’s transformed into something larger, beautiful but secretive. We do not speak to outsiders about this church, though the small town is curious to know, leaning in, trying to see into the yard and windows and spreading whispers and rumors, all of which are untrue. They want to believe this is a sex cult, that the women have lovers and trysts and affairs, because clearly anything with women in power must be reduced to a sexual nature. Their rumors are all a lot more dramatic and interesting than the actual truth.

  I’m not aware of most of this as a child. I understand that some secrecy must be maintained, that I am not to answer odd questions that may come from outsiders, but beyond that it seems a normal enough life. My mother, brother, and I don’t live on the compound, though we spend most of our free time there. I remember long summers of weeding the garden, we children set to work because idle hands are the devil’s workshop. The hard roots cling to the earth and the plants rip at my hands, smearing them green. It’s an endless task, and I resent it. We’re bowed at the waist, the sun scorching our shoulders and the backs of our necks. This task has ruined gardening for me forever. Once we leave this place, I will never pick another weed again.

  Between weeding, and moving this wood from here to there, and helping adults with this or that, as new walls and roofs are built, there is the biblical learning and education. I don’t mind this as much. Bible study is inside, and the house is usually cool, primarily lit by large windows and skylights. It’s much bigger than my house at home, expansive, with newly laid hardwood floors and carefully crafted crown molding. As a child, it never occurs to me to ask where the money came from to build such a house. I assume the Matriarch had funded it herself. (She didn’t.) In Bible study, we children are sectioned off by age, a few kids to each adult, and we engage in rigorous study of verse and meaning. I read the Bible from front to back, then back to front, learning my favorite stories. I’m drawn to the excitement of the Old Testament, to First and Second Samuel, to books filled with war, the rise and fall of monarchs, the heroic warrior king David and his tragic love affair with the beautiful Bathsheba. I’m fascinated by the ancient cities of Babylon and Egypt, by pharaohs and Babylonian kings. Even as a child I was drawn to war and ancient lands, although age has tarnished these books a little for me, as I notice that King David’s love affair with Bathsheba sounds a lot more like rape and the true villain in the Book of Job is God himself.

  We’re not allowed to watch TV or most movies, something that ostracizes me slightly from my secular, elementary school peers. I pretend to know who New Kids on the Block are, learning tune and verse from hearing everyone else sing it. But we do watch old musicals, like My Fair Lady or, my favorite, Calamity Jane, a 1950s musical about a woman sharpshooter on the frontier, a woman who so bucks the expectations of femininity that she’s often mistaken for a man.

  During all this, I never question that I am loved tremendously. I feel the love daily from my own mother and father, but even better I have multiple mothers, a village of women I can go to for any problem, each of whom has the voice and place and power within this community to address any issue herself. These are strong women: businesswomen, mechanics, lawyers, ca
rpenters. They take care of their own. There is no subservience here. The concept of bowing head to husband is utterly absent from my youth. Our church is woman-heavy, home to single women, single mothers, divorced women, women in strained marriages, women in healthy marriages. There are men, too, but it’s the women who shape our world. I suspect that being raised by so many women has an influence on my older brother, who is soft-spoken and kind. He has the patience of a man many times his age, slow to anger, enduring everything with a calm stillness. He’s the oldest boy of the children, but he has no interest in seizing the power that could come with that role. Whether he is with the youngest children or the adults, he is always eager to please.

  If being surrounded by so many women made my big brother more feminine—if such traits are to be called feminine at all—it creates the opposite in me. I’m loud and brash, opinionated and selfish. I enjoy being contrary and am invigorated by debate. Stillness bores me. Adults tell my mom that I will go on to do great things because I am wild, and I enjoy this assessment. The expectations don’t stifle me but instead fill me with wonder. No one warns me away from my ambition.

  You could call me a tomboy, I suppose, but I never would have. I see nothing wrong with femininity. Dresses have their place, and I enjoy them within the narrow confines of the space in which they can be enjoyed. But I also enjoy jean shorts, sneakers, and swinging my legs up into tree branches, low-crawling through dense bushes, scrambling through thorn thickets as we explore the world behind our houses. I don’t mind the dirt or the mud or trekking through rivers in search of the perfect adventure, the next most outrageous story. I want to be wild. I always think this is my father’s inheritance, my father who started his own white-water rafting business, who skis down double-black-diamond slopes and climbs mountain faces with only chalk on his hands. It is he who teaches me how to rappel off rocky cliffs and how to handle moguls on a snowmobile at high speeds. To my surprise, I’ll learn later it was actually my mother who was the rodeo barrel racer, who rode a quarter horse who knew only two speeds: stand and gallop. She was the one who met him at age fifteen while hitchhiking on the side of the road, who encouraged my father to take that very first white-water rafting trip, the one that made him fall in love with white-capped waves, the one who inspired him to start his business. So maybe wild is my legacy from both sides.