“Your room is here,” the first soldier says, refusing to relinquish hold of my duffel once we reach the room. “We have formation on Monday.”
“On Monday?” I sputter, still trying to grapple with the fact that I have an actual room, personal desk and all. “But it’s Friday.”
He shrugs and drops my bag. “You have to stay on the post and around the barracks, but you’re free until then.”
“But what do we do until then?” My voice rises an octave in panic. It’s too much time, too much freedom. It’s been over three months since I had this kind of choice, although it feels a lot more like three years, or three decades, and I don’t know what to do without someone watching, pointing, ordering. I don’t know how to balance and deal with private seconds and minutes and hours.
“Whatever you want.”
The prospect crushes me and when he leaves, I stand tentatively at the threshold of the door, craning my neck to stare down the hall with its white, freshly painted walls and bright-blue carpet.
I pull back into my room and firmly close the door. After basic, freedom never quite has the same taste as before.
* * *
DLI is much like college with its small classrooms, heavy notebooks, long lectures, and native speaker professors, before you toss in the morning formations, boot shining, enforced PT at 5:30 a.m., and marching drills. We wear uniforms to class; the post is a splash of color with Navy whites, Air Force blues, Marine tan, and Army green. The Coast Guard is in here somewhere, and possibly an FBI and CIA agent; the school is a conglomerate of government effectiveness.
“So you’re going to be learning Persian-Farsi,” my advanced individual training drill sergeant announces a few days after I arrive, scanning my papers from his desk.
I stand at parade rest in his office and cock my head slightly in confusion. “Gesundheit, Drill Sergeant?”
He glances up, his hard stare saying he doesn’t appreciate the joke.
I try again. “What is…Persian—whatever it’s called, Drill Sergeant?” Persian. Isn’t that the empire Alexander the Great defeated? Why would they want me to learn a dead language?
“Persian-Farsi. It’s what they speak in Iran.” And where was that again?
“Um, Drill Sergeant, they said at my contract signing that I would probably get Japanese. I mean, I speak Japanese already.” It had been one of my main reasons for joining, the illusion of a promise dangled in front of me that very first day I met my recruiter.
“Your paperwork says you didn’t score high enough to learn Japanese,” my drill sergeant informs me. “Japanese is a Cat IV language. You placed into Cat III.” I’m convinced that’s only because the tape recorder fell off the desk in the middle of the test, and I wasn’t allowed to touch it, so I floundered about for a good few minutes trying to figure out how to get an official back in the room to fix the recorder when I couldn’t even get out of my seat. But then again, maybe not.
“Yes, but…I already speak Japanese. Can I at least get Korean or Chinese?”
“You’re not listening to me. You don’t have the aptitude to learn a Cat IV language—”
“I can have this conversation with you. In Japanese. Right now.”
But he never looks up from the shuffling of papers. “We need Persian-Farsi linguists,” he says, and it’s definitive.
I leave his office, saving my huff for when I collapse into the black leather couches in the common room. I scrub my face with my hands. “Who has ever even heard of Persian-Farsi,” I grumble. I glance at a girl studying, her books cracked open and taking up most of the space of the wood-and-glass coffee table. I read the spine and crinkle my nose in confusion. “Tagalog?” What is it with all these weird languages? “Isn’t that the name of a Girl Scout cookie?”
She breaks away from the black scribbles. “That’s Tagalongs. This is Te-ga-lick. They speak it in the Philippines.”
I try to envision a Philippine war. “When will we ever need Tagalog?”
She shrugs and pulls a book onto her lap. “When will we ever need Persian-Farsi?”
* * *
The girls live in one barracks, the boys in another. It’s the most females I’ll ever see in one place in the military. In basic the women had all been stuffed into one bay at night and then broken apart during the day as we mixed with our male-heavy platoons, but here it’s more than a bay. It’s an entire barracks, three floors filled with women. There is a sense of camaraderie; we sprawl across the common room, legs flung over couch armrests, Army-issued black-socked feet bobbing back and forth as we flip through movies.
“Oh my God, you’ve never seen Labyrinth?” Jones, my new roommate, shrieks at me.
I shrug, sitting in PT shorts and shirt. I don’t know how to say that I grew up fundamentalist Christian, that all their secular entertainment was banned, that unless it was a classic musical, we weren’t allowed to watch it. People react funny when they hear words like compound, religious leader, and the curse of idle hands.
“We have to watch it, yes, we have to. Right now. You can’t go through life and not have seen Labyrinth.” She yanks the movie out of its sleeve. “It’s practically a sin.”
I never quite get the appeal of 1980s movies, having somehow missed out on the entire genre. Even after I leave the cult and substantially loosen my Christian beliefs, I never bother to go back to watch all those classics I missed, but I’m included now and that makes it almost worth watching some campy, bad music film.
Suddenly Brown appears, flipping her long pale ponytail over one shoulder. “Marines!”
“Shit, is it time already?” Jones and I scramble over the couches and the girls line up against the tall windows, hands pressed against the glass. Hot breath streaks the windows in clouds.
And here come the Marines. Galloping up the street, every day at five thirty, in rows of three, long lines of muscular thighs, sweat rolling down bare chests and trickling along the grooves of their backs, deep voices ringing out in unison as they sing, running by in tiny green shorts that haven’t changed since the 1970s. Their daily route is carefully selected to run by the women’s barracks and we wave in appreciation. I’m mindful of the glass that sections us off but I’m not sure which one of us is on display.
This is the closest we’re allowed to the Marines; interactions between trainees and Marines are strictly forbidden, even if said Marines are trainees themselves. Marines are the things that go bump in the night. Don’t worry about the mountain lion that stalks the Presidio: When a twig goes snap at night, it’s the hunched form of a Marine in the gloom that should terrify you. Of course it is all urban legends and myths, until two Marines stab a civilian jogger just to see what it’s like, and stuff her body between the rocks, and then it doesn’t seem so ridiculous anymore.
* * *
I’m not a brilliant linguist—I’m neither great nor horrible, just hovering somewhere around average. My professor often pauses in front of my desk, crinkling her delicate nose, long black hair swept back in a careful bun. “Why do you speak Farsi with a Japanese accent?” she asks with her own thick accent, to the delight of the class. I’m still clinging to my Japanese, as if it were a slowly sinking raft, cramming in reading of Japanese manga in the halls between classes when I should be studying, because I never quite fall in love with Persian. Josephine Rojas leans over me as I read, recognizing the cover even if she can’t read the Japanese, and she huddles down to exchange manga fervor secrets. She’s Air Force and pretty, as all Air Force women seem to be, and for a moment I have a connection to that old language passion, but then it’s back to class and back to carefully shelving my beloved Japanese and replacing it with alephs and mims and sins.
I can master the Arabic script and reading, but my heart isn’t into the rote memorization. Someone will tell me years later, as I am learning my sixth language in Ireland, that I don’t actually have a natural aptitude for language, I’m simply stubborn. Stubbornness keeps me in the class because I don’
t want to admit defeat and “roll” into the class behind us. Or perhaps my tenacity is due to a certain Jonathan Rossiter, an Air Force airman who sits two seats down from me.
I don’t know what to do with this crush on a far more experienced and worldly man, the likes of which I never really encountered in my sheltered, Christian past. He isn’t the most handsome man on the post but he walks with a type of cocksureness that overshadows all other men; he has an instantaneous laugh that doesn’t build but bursts straight from his chest, as if ripped from his body.
“You guys should come out and eat some time,” he is saying, blue eyes darting to me, offering a grin that tilts upward and to one side. “What kind of food do you like?” He’s asking the group, but he’s still looking at me and I’m flushing a faint red.
Marjone, a girl from our class, looks from him to me to him, then rolls her eyes. “For God’s sake.” She digs a hand into her cargo pocket to produce a pen and paper. “Write down your number.”
He does with a small smile.
“Here.” She shoves the number into my hand. “Was that so hard?”
I stare at the number, uncertain because I’ve never been here before—not quite. Jonathan expresses interest that doesn’t come with the Christian weight of shame, guilt, or sin. He doesn’t see my desire as evil, my lust as something dirty that should be buried away. The openness and honesty of him dazzles me.
Not that I can do anything anyway. I still have a Christian boyfriend who sits on another Army post and we maintain our relationship mostly through phone calls and occasional letters. In truth, though, it’s been deteriorating at the seams for weeks, decay born of time or distance, so when he breaks up with me, I’m not overly surprised. The reason jars a little, as he says I tempt him too much, what physical things we’ve done so far have been too much, too sinful, as if I will knock him off his Christian path. I’m not repentant or guilty. I sit on my barracks bed, cradling the phone in one hand, and try to come up with an emotion. I feel like I should cry, because that’s what girls do when they’re dumped, but instead there is a potent sense of liberation, like the last tether snapping free from the earth.
They say that the stone statue of an eagle down by Soldier Field will wake and take flight if a virgin ever leaves DLI intact. Suddenly I’m not so sure I want to test the theory.
So I don’t. I eventually find myself in Jonathan’s small, twin-size bed, my hands braced against his chest, my knees fixed on either side of his hips, very naked.
“Are you sure?” he asks, fingers digging into my hips, holding me in place.
I shiver, gulp down one nervous breath, and nod, because this is okay. I’ve made concessions in my mind, unable to wait for marriage but surely this is okay. Surely when you’re in love, sex is still sacred and hallowed and I’m not dirty if this is how I do it, right? It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t feel the same. I prefer men whom I have to chase because if I haven’t worked for their attention, then I don’t really deserve it. He sometimes talks about other women he wants to fuck instead of me, which suits me because if he really loved me, I would’ve thought him crazy, and then I wouldn’t love him anyway. This love feels a little obsessive, a little wildly desperate, but it’s love, and that’s all that matters.
I feel no guilt afterward, as I nuzzle his neck, breathing in his scent, naked legs tangled around his. “I didn’t know it was supposed to feel that good,” I say huskily, raising my head to stare into his face. My chest constricts, as if a hand grips my heart and squeezes. I didn’t know I could feel this much. I shiver, then place my cheek back against his warm chest and smile. This is okay. This is good.
* * *
I make friends through Jonathan, mostly Air Force people, though I’m occasionally faithful to the Army and her members. I have street cred for reading manga in its original language. I’ve watched Miyazaki’s Mononoke-hime without subtitles and that’s cool. I join a D&D group and laugh because I was always told it was Satan’s game, but really it’s just a bunch of teens sitting in a circle, eating bad pizza, and pretending to be grand things we’re not. I write a (bad) fantasy novel and people read it. I celebrate my first Halloween by dressing up as a vampire in my roommate’s everyday attire—leather corset, wine-red lipstick, and fishnet tights. My platoon sergeant stumbles, literally, when he sees me at the rec room’s costume party, my skirts slit all the way to the upper thigh, and he stares. “Dostie,” he says, his tone more appreciative than reproachful. I arch my brow at him and smile with one side of my newly painted mouth. He releases a heavy breath between clenched teeth, dark gaze rolling from the top of my head to my high-heeled boots. My breasts sit somewhere just below my chin. He notices. “You’re trouble,” he notes, wagging one finger playfully at me, and I grin. I like that idea. And if you asked me then, I might have said I was raised born-again Christian, but the verb has shifted to past tense.
* * *
One morning in September, we have a rules of engagement briefing before class, which means we’re in the theater room even before the sun has risen. “It is way too early in the morning for this,” I grumble to my roommate, Jones, patting my cheeks to try to wake up. I just want to get this over with so I can scarf down breakfast and see Jonathan for a few moments before class, because we’re on one of our “off” times and I desperately want to be back “on.” Jones is nodding off, her head dangling forward and her eyes half hooded. I kick her foot as a Sergeant stalks up the aisle, searching for sleeping soldiers.
She jerks up, spine straight, eyes forward like a good soldier. Then she yawns and settles back into the hard wooden seats. “What is this about again?”
“ROE.” Her yawn is contagious.
We pause as we listen to a spew of directives and I’m shocked to learn that you can’t, in fact, shoot the downed enemy in the head as you walk past them when you’re clearing an area. Life isn’t like the movies. Go figure.
“This is so stupid.” I lean toward Jones, voice low so that I won’t end up doing push-ups in the back of the room. “It’s not like anyone’s going to go to war with America anyway.” My recruiter told me so.
She yawns again, head craned back, and offers me a bored nod in agreement. Standing a few rows behind us, Captain Wasem surveys the room. I nudge Jones to peek, because Captain Wasem is our unit commander and a very sexy one at that. He looks too good to be in the Army, as if he’s wasting those sharp cheekbones and warm, russet skin on such menial work. His cell phone suddenly comes alive and he jerks at the sound, as shocked as we are. Slinking to the back of the room, he answers in a hushed voice.
And then a series of chirps fills the theater and officers duck and skulk to join him, phones pressed against ears, hands raised up against mouths.
The speaker continues but Jones and I are distracted, twisting in our seats to see the officers huddle together, pecking like hens, hands gesturing sharply at each other.
“Hey. What is wrong with you?” A Sergeant has spotted us. “Turn around and pay attention,” he orders, planting himself behind us, arms crossed over wide chest, a wall between us and the squabbling officers.
More cell phones, more bodies rush down to the aisle to the back.
“What do you think is going on?” Jones whispers, lips barely moving because Wall-Sergeant is still glaring.
“Underage drinker got caught?” Great. That means we might be locked down for the weekend as punishment. I can never understand my peers who so recklessly break the rules. Caught in underage drinking or narcotics use will cost you your security clearance, booting you out of MI and down to the dirty trenches of the Army ranks. The threat of becoming a truck driver is enough to keep me scared straight. And then the projector is sputtering silent, the speaker pauses hesitantly in his presentation, and pretty Captain Wasem is back behind us, cheeks drooping, a sheen of sweat over the brow of his abruptly pallid skin. He glistens sickly in the low light, scanning the crowd, pink tongue jetting out and licking dry lips. “We just received new
s,” he starts, looking a little stunned even as he says it, “that a plane flew into the World Trade Center.”
I feel my face scrunch in confusion. “The what?”
A rumble of whispers sweeps across the room but I’m sitting close enough that he glances at me. “The World Trade Center. Those two tall towers in New York City?”
“You mean the Twin Towers?” I’ve never heard them called anything else, though I know them well, having stood at the top of one, clinging to the cold, chain-link metal fence, dumbstruck by the grand, sprawling landscape of gray New York while I shifted, wind-blasted, in the building’s natural sway. “What do you mean, he landed in between them?”
All eyes are on Captain Wasem, and the other officers shift uncomfortably in the background, heads turned away. “No, he hit the tower.”
“He hit a building? Like the tallest building in New York?” Jones exclaims. I’m shaking my head.
“How do you hit a freaking tower? It’s not like it jumped in the way and yelled, Surprise!” someone else says.
But Captain Wasem isn’t looking at us now; he’s blinking too much. “We’re ending early. Get ready for class.” Before he turns away, almost as if an afterthought, he adds over his shoulder, “And call your parents.”
Call your parents? Jones and I exchange a tense glance. We file quickly out of the theater and into the Monterey morning fog; there is a heaviness in the air that mutes sound. A type of dumb confusion is scrawled across our faces.
I thumb my mom’s number on my cell phone, a stab of worry tightening my chest. Connecticut is too close to the city and something isn’t right.
“What are they telling you?” my mother rushes once I have her on the phone.
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