Formation

by Ryan Leigh Dostie

  I keep my disappointment to myself and continue scheming. Finally an Italian-language teacher stops me in the hall at school, saying, “Didn’t you want to study abroad? The Rotary Club is doing interviews right now, looking for students who want to do an exchange program.” I lunge at the opportunity, and my mother manages to sneak me into a spot on the last day of interviews, where I breathlessly say that no, Haiti wasn’t better than Russia and Russia isn’t better than Haiti, they’re just different and you can’t compare them like that. Turns out that is the correct answer that earns me a scholarship to study my junior year in Japan.

  The money taken care of, my mother never asks me not to go. Among all the things she has done for me, her greatest gift is that she never tries to clip my wings. For my part, I feel no remorse about leaving. It feels like a natural progression.

  So at seventeen, I board a plane to Japan to spend my junior year abroad, attending an all-girls high school, living with host families who speak little English, whose daughters teach me to wear my sailor school uniform with the skirt rolled at the waist until the hem is just so (so short that we girls have to hold our hands against the back of our skirts, pressing the scant material over butt cheeks as we climb the train station stairs), how to glue loose socks to my calves because that is the fashion and I want to be as Japanese as possible. I join the kendo fencing club after school. I immerse myself. I have no American friends, know few English speakers, and this works for my language skill, which eventually blossoms into the stunted ability to hold a basic conversation. At times this makes for an isolating experience. I can speak enough to be friendly, to make loose connections with the girls in my school, who are all kind, but not enough to establish anything deeper. The inability to fully express oneself in language is ruthless, it fractures the confidence: I’m more than what I can’t say, I want to tell everyone, but I don’t know how. My voice fails me.

  And yet it’s also worth it, because there is the time I sit with my friends, talking about the difficulty of the Japanese language, and when I emphatically agree—“that is so true!”—one blinks at me, saying, “You just sounded so Japanese right now,” and I glow. Or there’s the time I climb Mount Fuji. Or when the local newspaper comes to the school to cover the story of an American who joined the kendo club, because seeing a foreigner do a traditional Japanese sport is exciting to them and I explain that I love the sport because it is fast and hard and completely different from anything I’ve done, and I like different. I’m slowly drawing up an internal list of all the things I’ve done that most others haven’t, and I’m struck with the compulsive need to make that list longer. I am young, and this reckless pride passes for ambition.

  In Japan I am the center of attention, all eyes on me, the white, foreign girl dressed like a local. People stop on the streets to stare, to whisper “gaijinn” when I pass. I grow used to the feeling of uniqueness, of being special, a point of interest simply by existing, until I come home to Connecticut and realize I’m not. Back on American streets, my averageness annoys me. I want to be more. I want to take up more space. I need to maintain my upward trajectory, to capitalize on the moment when someone takes notice of what I’ve done so far in my life, the places I’ve been, and says in shock, “And you’re how old?”

  I feel the need to cram more in, to keep momentum moving, so at eighteen, when I find myself staring at a handsome Army recruiter in my high school cafeteria, I’m quietly intrigued by both the promise of adventure and the unorthodoxy of it all.

  “I love a man in uniform,” groans Jojo, one of my high school friends, resting her chin on her palm as she openly ogles the recruiter. He’s standing there in all his uniformed glory.

  “Go talk to him then,” I prompt, nudging her with my elbow.

  “What, like I’m going to join the fucking Army?” she scoffs. “They already call me enough as it is. No thank you.”

  “They’ve never called me,” I say, a little put out at being excluded. “I should go over there and ask why.”

  She laughs big, like she always does. “You? You want to crawl around in the dirt and play with guns?” She gives me a crooked grin. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, I’m just going to go talk to him. He’s hot.”

  She smirks, my co-conspirator, and gestures one hand at the recruiter, like he’s a meal on a platter. “Get his number for me, then,” she says.

  I flash a dorky thumbs-up sign, pretending not to be intimidated, pretending I’m worldlier than I am and that after studying abroad, talking to a grown man is no big deal. That fake confidence carries me all the way to the recruiter, who reminds me of a young John Travolta. Fists on my hips and chin angled upward, I confront him flirtatiously. “You guys never call me,” I accuse.

  The recruiter flashes a dimpled grin, eyes bright and brilliant blue. “Give me your number now and I’ll call you all the time. What are you going to be doing after high school?”

  I’m not sure if we’re flirting or if this has suddenly veered professional so I laugh clumsily. “It’s not like I’m going to actually join the Army or anything.” It has never even crossed my mind. “I was just saying, you guys have been calling everyone but me. I think it’s because I was gone my junior year.” I’m talking fast because I’m nervous, trying to fill the space with my voice. “That’s when you guys get everyone’s number, right? Junior year? I was studying abroad in Japan then.” I am still a little overly pleased at my own accomplishments.

  His blue eyes widen and he freezes, as if he’s just discovered something terribly extraordinary. “Wait, you studied in Japan?” I’ve suddenly become the most interesting thing in the room.

  “Yeah, for a year.” I cross my arms over my chest, pretending to be older than I am, like we’re equal adults in this conversation, even though he has a decade and some years on me.

  “Do you speak Japanese?” he asks.

  I shrug, pretending to be humble, but I’m not. “Yeah. I’m going to go to college to major in Japanese to get better. You know, like really fluent.”

  “Wait!” He throws both hands up. “We! Need! You!” he says in a dramatic rush, enunciating each word with violent gusto, and despite myself I believe him. It’s hard not to. He’s leaning in, vibrating with excitement. I am swept up in my sudden importance.

  “We have the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, which teaches almost two dozen different languages.” He pauses for effect. “Including Japanese.” He spreads both hands wide in a why-the-hell-not gesture. “If you’re going to study Japanese, why not do it at the top language institute in the world? And for free?”

  He’s got my attention now. I didn’t make it into Bates College in Maine, where I wanted to major in Japanese, but it wasn’t like we could have afforded that college anyway so maybe it had always been a pipe dream. I then contemplated going to a local college to study forensic anthropology, simply so I could one day write really accurate crime fiction, but that seemed impractical as well. And I had recently left my church’s youth group, who didn’t like that I was so focused on college, who felt I was spending too much time away from the group and the band, that I was “not dedicated enough.” So I have nothing holding me here, not that I ever did anyway.

  He sees my hesitation, sees me running the possibility through my head, and he quickly places a pad in my hand. A good recruiter knows when to strike, and he’s a very good recruiter. “Here, write down your number. I’ll give you a call and we can talk about it. We’ll sit down with your parents and I’ll bring all the information about the school.” The school sounds nice, like I’m going to college, not really joining the Army. So I scribble down my number, my event horizon in a single flourish of the hand, and he hands me a card with his name and number, “In case you have any questions.”

  I slowly walk back to Jojo, a little dumbfounded, the card burning in my palm. She’s wide-eyed. I flash her the card, holding it up between two fingers. “Got his number,” I grin and she laughs,
because she still thinks we’re being outrageous, except I’m being a little serious. The truth is, I have no strong grasp of gender expectations and norms. If a woman wants to be a mechanic, she can. If a woman wants to lead a community of followers, she can. And if a woman wants to join the Army, she can do that, too. This doesn’t seem that impossible, and better yet, it’s unusual, a path less followed. This is my continual incline, my rise out of mediocrity, and nothing in my history tells me that I can’t or, more important, that maybe I shouldn’t.

  Suck It the Fuck Up, Buttercup

  My hands sink into the dust pit, fingers splayed open, arms shaking as I press out another push-up. I cough, choking on the dirt, teeth grinding as I move up, down, up, in counts of three. The grumble of artillery rolls in the distance, echoing across the cold Oklahoma sky, a sky so vast that it domes at the edges, the land a single dry, flat plain beneath it. Steam rolls off our bodies, curls into clouds and hovers over the platoon, a tangible mark of our torture.

  “I’m going to smoke your lazy bitch asses until snot bubbles come out your nose!” Drill Sergeant B promises, strolling between the lines of Privates, hands clasped behind his back. “Up!” he orders and we’re up, running in place. Sweat soaks my undershirt; my knees tremble. “Down!” And we’re back in the push-up position, beads of sweat dangling off my nose and dropping with soft splatters into the dust. “Go!” We flip onto our backs, kicking up dust clouds, boots waving in flutter kicks. “Up!” Again, repeat, up, down, go, until my stomach clenches, grows rigid, and I’m going to vomit.

  I’m not supposed to be here, I’m not supposed to be here: The thought runs through my head on an endless loop as muscle fatigue sets in. I drop to my knees for the push-ups.

  “What in God’s name are you doing, Private?” Drill Sergeant B turns like a bloodhound on a scent, pivoting on his heel, instantly right there, crouching, leaning in so that his face is inches from mine. “Are you having a hard time, Private? Is this a little too much for you?”

  “Drill Sergeant, no, Drill Sergeant,” I gasp.

  “Are you sure, Private? Because if this is a little too much I can get you a nice cup of SUCK IT THE FUCK UP, BUTTERCUP! This ain’t like your job back at home, Private. Get off your fucking knees!”

  I’m not supposed to be here.

  * * *

  I was frightened of basic training. Somehow, I managed to hold up my right hand, swear an oath, and sign a contract all while not really considering basic training.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” said my recruiter, breathing easy as we jogged up and down the Yale campus, training for the upcoming training. I labored and coughed beside him, face blood red. “You’re going to Relaxin’ Jackson.”

  As the sidewalk inclined, I fumbled a few steps, head down, ignoring the sweeping stone towers of Yale. I didn’t have the breath to respond.

  “It’ll be too easy,” he promised, waving off my fear with one large hand. He’s not lying. North Carolina’s Fort Jackson is famously the easiest basic training assignment. Cushy, as they say: meant for the intel world, like me, but also the paper pushers, the supply lines, nicknamed Relaxin’ Jackson for its less-than-severe reputation. Basic is only ten weeks, then I’ll finally be shipped off to the Defense Language Institute, which is the whole reason I’m here. I try to keep my eye on the prize, on the promise of the language school perched on the California coast where I’ll finally get to study more Japanese, but those ten weeks in between now loom large, obscuring my vision, and I can’t see around them.

  I chose the Army after some debate. I came home from school that day, still holding my recruiter’s card, and said to my mother, “The Army has this language school that can teach me Japanese. And it’s free! And they’ll pay for college afterward!”

  She spun to face me. There was a flash of wild panic in her eyes. “You didn’t sign anything, did you?” she asked, but it was more of a terrified yell.

  I snorted. “Of course not. I just gave him my info. He said he’ll come here and meet with you.” After he did, and my mom realized I was serious about the opportunity for free college, she decided that if I was going to do something like this, I had to shop around. She was convinced it would be safer for me to join the Air Force. She was probably right. But there was something lacking in the Air Force recruiter, in his presentation, as if he were trying to impress upon me how much easier it would be. Easier and nicer, not so much PT, not so rough or tough, and somehow the idea of that safety bored me. I wanted to get thin and muscular and hard, made strong by gritty training. And I never quite made it into the Marine recruiter’s office, pausing at the office door, staring at those stacked men with their near-skintight uniforms, precise movements, steel spines, and was a little scared. I settled for the Army, not too badass, but badass enough. I’m the Goldilocks soldier.

  My brother saw me join and liked the idea. He took their tests and scored in the top 1 percent. I was envious. I wished for intelligence like his—I’d be at Yale or Harvard. I’d be out of here already. The recruiters grew excited, dropping pamphlets into his lap, promising West Point, officer schools, only the crème de la crème for their most intelligent recruit, but then he came up red-green deficient in the vision test and his job options were narrowed down to combat arms, which he did, though he’d get sick in basic, unable to finish, and they’d discharge him before they even bothered diagnosing him. I also got my ex-boyfriend, the Will Smith look-alike, to join, as well as my current boyfriend, a nice Christian boy who quit my youth group around the same time I did, so we had that to bond over. The Army gave me an extra rank for bringing in these new recruits.

  But all my excitement, that foolhardy grit, was missing the day I boarded my plane for basic. I hugged my mother for a few extra seconds, clinging tight for just a moment too long, very much still only nineteen in that moment. She stood at the gate, watching me sling my bag over my shoulder, and as promised I paused in the long hallway before the plane door, waving one hand back at her, because you could do that then, pre-9/11.

  And then I was standing in Columbia Metropolitan Airport, heart pounding, wiping my hot, sweaty palms on my jeans as a Sergeant from the USO pointed me toward a white, idling bus. He didn’t smile; no one was friendly. But then again, no one was outright mean, either. The ride to the base was uneventful. As was getting off the bus and lining up.

  “I thought they’d yell at us,” I said to the girl standing next to me.

  We stood at a pathetic attempt of attention and she turned her head slightly in my direction. “You’re complaining about them not yelling at us?”

  “No.” I shrugged, watching as Army-green people bustled to and fro in front of our line of recruits. No one was really paying attention to us. “I just mean in the movies, they yell a lot more.”

  She shrugged back. “Relaxin’ Jackson.” The camp’s reputation preceded it.

  * * *

  We were segregated by sex, but not by military occupational specialty, a conglomerate of various jobs and futures, placed in reception, a sort of holding tank as we waited to in-process, a waiting period before the waiting period before actual training. “Hurry up and wait,” I heard for the first time, and that’s exactly what we did. Hurry from one place to another to simply wait, hours crawling into days, then weeks. Almost three weeks passed as they pushed our all-female platoon around, squeezing us into ill-fitted PT uniforms of black shorts and gray T-shirts. North Carolina was hot even for September and we sat in our bays most of the day to avoid the heat, reading fat books that had been left behind by past troops.

  And then came the night when we were ordered from our beds and out into the hot, sticky night, dragging our bags behind us. Thunder rumbled through the heavy clouds; a late-summer electrical storm was brewing. Floodlights brightened a stage, and our reception drill sergeant climbed on top as we fell into formation. She stared down at us, oddly quiet, mouth turned down in a grimace. “We’re at capacity,” she said out over us, projecting h
er voice as only a drill sergeant can. “Fort Jackson has no more space for recruits.”

  I blinked, tugging at the sweaty collar of my PT shirt. Girls around me turned their heads, glancing at each other in confusion. There was no murmur of questions because we already knew better.

  “So…” Drill Sergeant hesitated. “So we’re going to have to send you to another base.”

  Fear instantly clutched my stomach. Somewhere other than Relaxin’ Jackson? We were going somewhere other than here?

  “You’re flying out tonight,” she continued. “And going to Fort Sill.” Lightning ripped through the night sky, followed by a loud clack of thunder, a perfectly timed premonition. “I’m sorry,” she finished softly, softer than I had ever heard her voice before, and she sounded terribly human.

  It was so clichéd, the lightning, the thunder, the impending rainstorm, the regret in her voice, and I seared it into my memory because it was too surreal, reading like fiction. This couldn’t actually be happening. Not Fort Sill. But we had already signed away our self-agency and our platoon was moved along, thrust onto waiting buses, as we twisted and turned about in helpless protest. We vanished into the night, suddenly, becoming the urban myth that later haunted the bays, the whispered story of the all-female platoon that simply up and disappeared one night.

  * * *

  Fort Sill is not Relaxin’ Jackson. Fort Sill is Fort Kill and it loves its reputation. An all-male post for decades, it doesn’t know what to do with us females. We’re shiny and new and very much disliked. They slap paper over the MEN bathroom signs, WOMEN hastily scrawled in black marker, and we ignore the urinals in our bathroom space.