“Nothing really. How did this guy hit a building?” I glance over to where a sea of green fatigues is milling about the doors of the classroom building.
“They’re saying something about terrorism.” Her voice has the fine edge of panic and again I feel like I’m missing some dramatic piece of the puzzle.
“Terrorism?” The word is unfamiliar in my mouth and I spit it out with bewilderment. “I gotta go.” I hang up, but that doesn’t stop the ugly word from swelling and reverberating in a fine hush.
“A second plane hit the other tower,” someone hisses and I whip around, hearing the statement bounce back and forth across the halls.
“That can’t be a coincidence.” Someone rips the words from my mouth. “That can’t be an accident.”
Our entire class huddles into one room, some Persian linguists perched on desks, others, like me, squatting on the hard tile. A television on a black metal cart is rolled into the room and the fluorescent light washes us in white, red, and black.
Dr. Dariush, the head of the Persian-language department, demands we watch the news in Persian—“You’re still in class, you have to practice, we’re not taking a break”—and I squint, scratch, squirm as I try to string together the words but they all sound like buzzing wasp wings.
“Fuck this,” Jonathan snaps and he jumps to his feet, switching the television to CNN. Dr. Dariush stands quietly against the wall. He doesn’t protest.
The Pentagon is on fire.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, grasping Jonathan’s hand, intertwining my fingers with his stiff ones, but he’s rigid, uncompromising even as I press up against him, and I’m alone.
The towers fall as we watch, a shroud of white blanketing the city until it’s unrecognizable. The skyline is distorted.
A plane tumbles and crashes in a Pennsylvania field.
Jonathan casts off my hand and rushes out into the hall to fight the clogged airwaves, trying to get a call in to his Pennsylvania home.
Our Persian professors huddle in the back, hands clasping each other, their lips moving in a pattern of prayer, their dark eyes wide, petrified, and I lean forward, straining to hear their desperate mantra.
“Please, don’t let it be Iran. Please, don’t let it be Iran. Please, don’t let it be Iran.”
They get it before we do. We’re still gangly kids, still waiting to fill out the wingspan of our uniforms and angrily scrubbing the youthful roundness from our faces.
I swivel, turning back to the television, oily clouds of black filling the screen.
“Oh my God,” I whisper as finally it all clicks into place. “We’re going to war.”
Redacted
Fall 2001 rolls into winter 2002, onward toward the end of my yearlong training at DLI. War blooms in Afghanistan and just like that my classmates and I become linguistically relevant. Our next duty-station assignments are handed out seemingly at random, as if higher-ups had stood in some room, bent over an elaborate table with dice in hands, guffawing fiercely with each arbitrary cast. We stand in an auditorium after class, milling about as we wait for our orders, names called one by one, reading us our future. The world is an open map and the possibilities are invigorating. Join the Army; see the world. I hope for Fort Gordon, Georgia, but only because Jonathan will be stationed there. It’s a young, love-induced desire, but it’s also the safe choice because Fort Gordon is a strategic unit and no one deploys to war from there.
My platoon sergeant calls my name and I climb the stairs to the stage at the front of the auditorium. He hands over our orders with very little fanfare. Perhaps he wants to be spared everyone’s drama. I flip through the pages, trying to make sense of the military nonsensical jargon, finally noticing the highlighted duty station. Fort Polk, Louisiana.
“Fort Polk?” I crinkle my nose instinctively, even though I’ve never heard of the place.
My platoon sergeant lifts his head, green eyes bright under the cover of his ruddy hair and complexion. “No luck there, huh,” he says with a half laugh that is either apologetic or sardonic.
I stumble numbly off the stage, staring down at the orders, trying to dredge up any memory of Polk. “Does anyone else have Fort Polk?” I ask my peers.
None does. Fort Gordon, Fort Gordon, Fort Gordon around the room, except for me, holding orders to some mysterious post a few states away from everyone else.
“That sucks,” says one Specialist. He reclines in his chair, boot crossed over one knee. “That’s a tactical unit.”
Tactical, those units that focus on the combat aspect of war, the nitty-gritty, sand-in-your-boots, rifle-in-your-hands kind of training. Linguists typically aren’t destined for such places. We’re better served in strategic units, behind computers, accompanied by the soothing whirl and hum of top-secret machinery.
“Are you sure?” I ask. “Why would they send linguists to a tactical unit?”
He shrugs. “Knew a guy who got sent there. I heard it sucks ass. Good luck,” he offers and I walk away, holding my orders limply in front of me, wondering if I lost them, what would happen then? Would I maybe slip through the cracks, show up anywhere I want, make my own orders? Because I know I don’t want to go to a tactical unit. In this newly christened “post-9/11” world, I know what tactical means. I look around the room, to those designated for Fort Gordon, whose labels now read SAFE, SAFE, SAFE, while mine says PROBABLY NOT.
But before Polk comes Goodfellow Air Force Base, the last six-month leg of my almost two-year training. If DLI is about the language, Goodfellow is about what to do with said language—how to use words, verbs, and syntax for the military. I sit in the polygraph chair before training can start, heart pounding as I’m strapped, fingers and heart, to a machine that reads my every flutter and gasp. Top-secret starts here, with these last few tests, to make sure I’m not a traitor or a liar. And when I pass, when this next level of training starts, I learn there is a sequester of knowledge. I now exist in places carefully monitored and structured for security, enclosed rooms with no windows, no cell phones or internet, these Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities where anything can be said and everywhere else outside these doors is profane.
“You’re one of those spooks,” a guy accuses me at a club, and that sounds so terribly intriguing. I shrug, I smile, “I work with computers,” I say in my defense, the carefully crafted deflection from what I really do. And I do work with computers, but I also _____ and _____ and possibly _____. It’s all so exciting, but also not. I never envisioned myself as a spy, and even if I had, this isn’t James Bond. It’s a lot of _____ and _____ and never _____. Spy is a glamorous title for not-so-glamorous work.
Then there is the silence, the things that can never be said, the nondisclosure oath, the sworn secrecy for fifty years, the perpetual fear of saying too much or letting the wrong thing slip. Never let loose or let go; never ever be out of control. This is my life in redaction, sections blacked out and sliced away. And it’s okay. It’s not really that big a deal; it’s just a job, like everyone else’s job. Except that every once in a while, I _____ something that sinks to the base of my stomach, makes my hands a little cold and clammy, and I want to tell someone, to ruminate over a beer and say, “This is disturbing. This…this really bothers me,” except I can’t. No one can. If anyone else feels a little off, a little unsettled, I have no way of knowing.
But when I leave Goodfellow Air Force Base for Fort Polk in July 2002, traveling the miles alone in my little green Subaru, because it’s not like anyone else got stationed there with me, I still feel a sense of hope, a tingling of excitement as the road expands and unfolds before me. For once, I’m no longer in training, for the first time I’m out there, ready to be utilized, to put my full potential to the test. War dances in the static of my radio and I change the channel, looking for a better station.
Perhaps I should have been a bit more aware. Perhaps I should have noticed the red flags, like when the in-processing unit places me late into an empty room,
checking off my name in their database, and then sends me a male roommate, who stumbles in later in the night, dropping his bags heavily by his bed before standing, perplexed, in the tiny bathroom, no doubt staring at scattered jars of makeup and women’s deodorant sticks. I wake the next morning, pressing my glasses to my face, and stare back at the young man in the next bed, who leans back against the wooden headrest, chest bare, one hand hooked behind his head.
“You’re not a girl!” I stammer.
“You are!” he says back, seemingly just as surprised, but surely he had to have known before that moment. How long had he sat there, staring at the black wash of long hair on my pillow?
I tuck one bare leg under the green blanket, acutely aware of my missing bra, of my PT shorts flung over the back of a chair, of the ticking clock as formation time looms, and of the fact that I’m going to have to flash him one pair of white panties as I climb out of bed. He doesn’t seem as uncomfortable as I am. We both laugh, but mine sounds a lot less genuine than his.
Perhaps I should have noticed something was off when I find him again at the end of the workday and he grins at me. “Got myself a pillow,” he says, holding it up to show me. “So we won’t have to fight over the other one.” The room had only one pillow for its two beds.
“Did you tell your Sergeant about this?” I point from him to me.
He shrugs and looks a little deflated, like he doesn’t see a problem with having a female roommate. Like he’s disappointed I’m going to report it. I’m spoiling the fun.
Perhaps warning bells should have rung when the in-processing Sergeant growls at me when I report the mix-up. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” he snaps, blaming me for the mess, tapping my first name with the end of his pen. “You have to wait till the end of the day to bring up this shit?” He’s angry at the inconvenience, at the extra paperwork, not the fact that I woke up with a strange man in the bed next to mine.
But I don’t see it. I scrub myself clean, ready myself to meet my new unit, shiny and new and hopeful.
Welcome
One road leads into Fort Polk, and another road leads out. They sit side by side, fat lanes divided by a trail of sun-worn grass. The roads are decorated with dull-yellow buildings; the barracks are tall, stacked bricks with black windows.
It’s a new unit with all new faces and all I can do is pant against the midsummer Louisiana heat. It presses against the mouth and drowns the lungs, my brown undershirt molding to the small of my back and across my chest. I crinkle my nose; I hate sweating. I’d rather freeze than sweat. I reach under my BDU coat and pinch at the wet shirt, trying to buy some brief relief, but even the breeze is soggy.
“The motor pool is down here,” my new acting platoon sergeant, Pelton, is saying. I nod, trying to appear attentive and eager. I can already tell Sergeant Pelton likes to laugh. He wears his smile like a permanent patch, a part of his uniform, and it scatters some of my fears. I’m new here in this terribly dull land of dead grass and monstrous mosquitoes. No familiar faces, no one to sidle up to before formation; I’m standing awkwardly at the edge of the group, wondering how I’m going to crack open this already well-established and tight community.
But two years in the Army have taught me how to play the game, at least in part, and I laugh when Sergeant Pelton laughs. I don’t question what I’ll be doing in the motor pool, which is a black slab of concrete cluttered with old Humvees from the 1980s, some held tenderly together with military-grade duct tape and 5-50 cord. Two languages under my belt, a top-secret security clearance, and well over a hundred thousand dollars in training and I’m handed a pad on how to keep these old beasts alive. I arch one eyebrow at the maintenance standard operating procedure form. I can decline variant verbs in Farsi, but now I’ll be checking for grades of fluid leaks beneath vehicles.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to all this,” Sergeant Pelton assures. “Motor Pool Monday! Gotta love it.” He grins and I can’t tell if he’s being flippant or not.
I smile, noticing that the motor pool sucks in all the heat, trapping it between metal Humvee bodies and radiating it off the tar. Sweat trickles down my spine.
Two soldiers escort us around the motor pool, glancing back at me with inquisitive eyes. I shift uncomfortably under their gaze, suddenly feeling on display. One bumps the other with his elbow, and he breathes, in a low voice loud enough for me to hear, “Why is the space between a woman’s breast and her hips called a waist?”
The other shrugs, lips upturned uncertainly. They’re testing the waters.
“Because you can easily fit another pair of tits in there,” the first finishes, gesturing his hands to hold two imaginary breasts and they laugh, glancing backward at me, reading, gauging.
Sergeant Pelton is silent, still wearing that grin, waiting to see if he needs to intervene.
I know this game, the sport every female soldier learns how to play. The better the player, the better the female soldier. I don’t narrow my eyes, I can’t grit my teeth, although the joke is a poor attempt if they’re aiming to offend. Still, I yank up the edges of my mouth, baring my teeth in a smile. I give a little laugh. “Oh, don’t worry,” I say to ease the wariness in their grins. “You can’t offend me.” A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.
Sergeant Pelton is delighted. He half turns and raises a blond brow. “You mean if I pull my dick out right now, slap you across the face, and leave a mushroom mark on your cheek, you won’t be offended?”
My jaw works as I struggle for a response. I blink in dumb shock. My acting platoon sergeant. Soon to be my leader. He’s not supposed to be a part of these power games. But the precedent has been set, the game already in play. Laugh. Laugh. I titter. “No,” I say in a pale voice.
They like this, all three men, snickering to each other. I’ve been tested and the smile plastered on my face says I pass.
Welcome to Fort Polk.
* * *
I sit stiffly at the edge of the couch, red cup of some horrid-tasting drink in my hand. I’m newly twenty-one and haven’t had much opportunity to acquaint myself with the heavy drinking culture that sustains Army life, so I pretend to sip it and it burns the edges of my lips. I pull at the hem of my jean skirt with my other hand, watching the come and go of others from our platoon. I have never been invited to a platoon sergeant’s party before. It simply isn’t done in training. But here we all are, at the house of my new platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class James. He’s leaving Fort Polk soon, throwing party after party as he exits, and I accept the invite because I’m stumbling to make a place in the platoon. Everyone has been here longer, elbows locked together in friendship, or, if not that exactly, at least in shared misery. I’m used to starting training in groups of recruits, where we’re all glancing around desperately for a new friend or point of contact. But training is over, this is the real Army and I’m alone. I’ve managed one friend, Andres, the analyst who lives on the same floor as me, but he refuses to engage in anything even remotely work-related unless it’s mandatory, so if I’m going to endear myself to anyone else, an after-hours party seems the best way to do it.
When I first walk in I catch a glimpse of the poker game; Sergeant First Class James, First Lieutenant Patron, Staff Sergeant Daniels, Specialist (soon to be Sergeant) Rivera, and Sergeant Forst sit, cards in hand, crammed around a small, circular table. A haze of smoke lingers above them, filling the tiny kitchen. Random bottles of alcohol cram any extra space on the yellow countertops.
Sergeant First Class James leans back in his metal folding chair. He chomps on the end of a cigar, leaning into the stereotype. “Have something to drink,” he says to me with a wave when I enter, and someone is quick to throw a series of different-colored liquids into a cup. Its scent is potent, and one gulp burns my esophagus.
“Thanks,” I croak. Sergeant Forst glances up from her cards and grins at my ineptitude. She reminds me of a fairy—small in height and with wild blond curls snipped in a careless pixi
e. Yet there is power in the way she lounges in her chair, and she curls her tongue around the edge of her cigar, swiveling it to the other side of her mouth and clamping it in place with trim, white teeth.
I leave the kitchen for the couch, and Stuart, a Specialist from Supply, plops onto the plaid couch beside me. His knee bumps mine and he pauses, sipping his drink. “So,” he says, sinking into the soft cushions and grinning over his cup. “Tell me about yourself, Dostie.”
I’m suddenly glad for someone to speak to and I turn toward him, yanking down my skirt again. When his eyes linger at the edge of my shirt, I wonder if I wore something too low-cut. His knee bumps mine again and he leaves it there. I shrug. “Not much to tell. From Connecticut. Joined the Army after high school. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“How’d you get Farsi?” he asks.
I snort. “You got me. I was told I was going to be a Japanese interrogator.”
His smile is slow and he shifts slightly so that his leg is resting against mine. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Well, considering I have no idea what we do here besides stare at Humvees all day, I’d say it sucks.”
He laughs and I press my knees firmly together but his leg follows mine, as if glued. “Yeah, this place sucks ass.” He downs the rest of his cup.
I glance around the room and immediately feel like I’m the center of attention. I wonder if I’m imagining the half-turned heads, sideways glances, if they’re all really watching my reaction, watching to see how receptive I am. What kind of female will I be? The whore, the bitch, or the lesbian? I’m about to be labeled and I chafe at the rigidity of the situation.
But I’m saved. “All right!” James materializes in the living room, as if summoned and about to make an uncomfortable situation all that much more uncomfortable. “Bored as shit.”
“You just hate losing,” Lieutenant Patron quips, stuffing what looks like bills into his back pocket, and James ignores him.
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