I’m not like you, I thought, still flicking pieces of asphalt away from my feet, hating the joy these men found in the violence. I’ll never be like you, I swore.
I meant to mean it, too, but promises made in peace are rarely kept in war.
* * *
The moment when I discover I can kill comes and goes without much fanfare. It isn’t during a perceived attack, like the Red Cross bombing. One day, on guard, I notice a man pausing at the side of the road in oddly spaced intervals. His shoulders are rounded, hunched forward as if protecting something close to his chest. He doesn’t glance up at our tower, but his shuffling rubs me the wrong way. As he closes in on the tower, I work my rifle into my shoulder, past the ill-fitting SAPI plates. With no need for second thoughts, I thumb the safety selector switch to SEMI, forefinger held straight but ready at the side of the trigger. I even out my breaths, finding comfort in my steady, slightly elevated heartbeat. I empty my brain, as if I’m simply pouring out a cup, until there is nothing but a white buzz and a body on autopilot. I am ready.
But the man moves on, cradling his arms, continuing his odd gait down the road. Once he has retreated a safe distance, I thumb the rifle back to SAFE. I turn back to the busy intersection, looking for the next point of interest.
* * *
Still, having the ability to kill is different from wanting it. That begins with a flicker of indignation. One afternoon I stand on guard, body aching with the passing hours, until: fizzzz, pop. I blink at the strange sound. Fizzzzz, pop. Crumbling rocks hit the pavement.
“We’re being shot at,” I gasp in disbelief, ducking behind a beat-up pillar for cover. The other soldier on duty seems surprised not at the gunfire but at my amazement. Although I’ve been in Iraq for several weeks, I’m not used to being shot at yet. Before I can process it, our attacker is gone.
But some months later, careening through the clogged streets of Baghdad in the back of a Humvee, I stare up at the yellow stone buildings with their black, gaping holes where windows used to be and think, What a perfect place for a sniper. Before the thought leaves my head, I hear it. Fizzzzz, pop. I know that sound now. Fizzzz, pop!
“Goddamn it all!” I snarl, instantly shouldering my rifle. The air is filled with the coppery scent of blood but it turns out only to be a newly disemboweled goat hanging by its ankles, its intestines splashed over the mud and rock below. We drive past safely, and I never see the shooter.
“Fucker,” I hiss through clenched teeth. You can see me but I can’t see you. The rage in that thought eats at me. This feeling is familiar to me now—of being left open, raw, with a target meticulously painted across my body. That kind of helplessness breeds hate. I grind my teeth as the Humvee jostles down the road, picking up speed to avoid a firefight. Try me! Test me, let me show you what I can do.
Fuckers. They’re no longer human to me. The inability to ever see the enemy, to find a single face, makes them a conglomerate—if any one of them shoots at me then they all have and I’m not going to be their little bitch. I realize my thumb is at the safety toggle already, itching to switch to SEMI.
* * *
A few weeks later, I feel the want more clearly. I stand in the guard tower, eyes narrowed to slits as I peer across the street. I swear there’s a sniper in the building over there.
I had noticed the sun glinting off his scope, flashing between the shifting branches of the single tree that separates us. Our entire guard shack is open, with windows on all sides, so even as I try to hide my body behind the brick-and-concrete column, there I am, exposed in the wide-open, white-knuckling my M16 and staring at the spot with the flashing dot of light.
The vulnerability. It makes me want to kill someone.
* * *
I don’t say anything to the other guard. The kid stands in the corner, oblivious, almost cowering against the wall, though it’s not Baghdad he’s afraid of. It’s me.
When he had arrived to guard duty, he climbed up the ladder into the eight-by-six-foot box, poked his head up through the floor door, spotted me, and froze. He had been expecting another male, possibly even someone from his own unit, and instead he got some random MI girl. I had imagined most of the combat unit males would relish the idea of being sealed in a tower with a woman, but more often than not, as soon as they were separated from the pack, these boys grew meek and quiet, the prospect of speaking exclusively to a female for eight hours being too much to bear.
Still, I smiled at him. “Hi. I’m Ryan.” He shuffled the rest of the way up the ladder, eyes wide, and mumbled something that might have been a greeting. I pushed on. “You know, like the guy’s name,” I added, because while standing in full battle rattle, my long, dark hair tucked into the back of my Kevlar or my breasts flattened against my flak vest, you might never know. He ducked his head, gave a brief introduction, then retired to his corner, staring out the window and down onto the Baghdad street.
Eight hours is a long time to stand in pregnant silence.
He is young. Perhaps two years younger than me but time isn’t measured in years. He’s fresh into Iraq, part of the First Cavalry Division who recently rode into Baghdad looking for a fight. He sparkles with newness. I feel ancient in comparison. A year of Iraq has bowed my spine and made an old woman of me. Now I stare at him across from me, noting the chasm between us, and how he never glances at the shard of light dancing across the street.
I wonder if he’ll ever be like me. If one day on guard he’ll suddenly realize he’s no longer quite human—as if something cold and indifferent has crawled up into the space of his skull and taken residence there. I wonder if he’ll care. I’m not sure I do.
Inside the walls of Camp Dragoon, guard duty is the most dangerous task—perhaps because it isn’t exactly inside the walls but instead on top of them. Before duty, we have to line up for a safety briefing, which mostly consists of drink water and this is how to operate the radio. The radio is a single unit and our only contact for reinforcement. As we stand in formation, the non-commissioned officer in charge strides up and down the ranks, tapping on our backs. His knuckles rap hard against my back SAPI plate, checking to make sure the ceramic is in place. Recently a few soldiers had the brilliant idea of pulling out their back SAPI plates to reduce the weight of their equipment. At the time, it seemed ingenious, until a soldier got shot in the back and died with a bullet in his spine. Now the NCOIC routinely checks our gear, along with the reminder, Don’t die for stupid reasons.
I stare out at the building across the street, aware that my spot of vulnerability is physically small—the flak vest protects my center mass and the Kevlar shields the top of my head. But my face, my face is open and wide. The bullet would probably enter through the left eye, popping the orb, blazing a trail of hot metal through to the back of my skull, and splattering bits of bone and brain against the guard tower wall. If this were a movie, the kid would get sprayed with globs of bone, flesh, and teeth, because exit wounds are just that nasty, the perfect prop for this boy’s war trauma as the opening credits roll. But this isn’t a movie and he’s not standing close enough to me for that. I probably wouldn’t even feel it. Maybe. Quick and done. Any minute now.
My neck muscles tighten with anticipation. “Fuck you,” I whisper under my breath, a silent message to my killer. I glare at that spot of light. I wish he’d step to the right or left. Just a little. Just enough for me to see a face. To see dark eyes, perhaps with a brow slick with perspiration. He’d be about my age. No, a bit older. Maybe he’ll look a little bit like the soldier who raped me. I’ve gotten better at my aim. Maybe good enough for one shot. His head would snap back, that sort of quick, ugly jerk like a cord had been attached to the back of his head and yanked hard. I’d see the pink mist then—that cloud of blood that hovers behind the body when the back of the skull is blown out. His body would linger there for a moment, not realizing it was dead or how what had once been there is now missing. I imagine things I don’t know, having been told enough times by
soldiers who actually saw, and I think the images real enough only because I’m lucky enough not to know any better.
I replay the scenario. My chest burns and my fingers dance against my rifle with pent-up energy. I rapidly tap my boots against the floor. Alive. Like I hear a really good song that makes me want to dance. I want you, I mouth to my sniper.
A bark below startles me and I turn my head just in time to see a small, reddish-brown stray dog dart out into traffic. I wonder what’s on the other side of the road that he’d risk the danger of rushing cars. He makes it halfway when an older Mercedes clips his hindquarters. The back legs collapse and his body spins with a forceful yelp. Round and round he twirls on the pavement before sliding into the opposite embankment, where he slumps against the concrete barrier.
The boy and I both silently watch the listless dog, waiting to see if he’ll move. He doesn’t.
Once I’m sure he’s dead, I turn my attention back to the shifting light across the street and spend the next six hours waiting to be shot in the face.
The Way We Break
I don’t die that day, and neither does the sniper who never existed. I take comfort in my rage, that toughness that says I’m no one’s bitch. And for a little while, life rolls on. Iraq is much the same, day after day, peppered with shocks of mortars, IEDs, and gunfire, but mostly the same. I tell myself I have put Fort Polk behind me. Everyone else has moved on, it seems, or at the very least no one talks about it anymore. I’m not over it but I’m not under it, either, just ignoring, sectioning away bits of rage for later, and it’s all going well until Sergeant Daniels finds me one day and accidentally rips the whole thing wide open again.
I sit on the sixth floor of our building, by my equipment, a book carefully perched on my lap. My body is turned just so, poised to shove the book away at a moment’s notice. I’m the first desk, positioned in front of the stairs, aware that it’s not insurgents I’m on the alert for but higher-ups. I hear the stairs creak and strain, a telltale sign, and silently slide the book out of my hands. I kick it under the desk, placing one hand on my M16 and resting the other on the desk. See, I’m a good soldier, just sitting here, staring at the wall. I fight the urge to flippantly twiddle my thumbs. I glance at the radio, ready to key the mike the second the brass head down the hall, giving a heads-up to the two soldiers in our SCIF.
Sergeant Daniels strides into the room, giving me a brief nod in greeting. No matter how many times he shaves, there still is a light shadow over his jaw. It makes him look rugged but also defiant. I expect him to move on, down the hall to the platoon members he actually likes. I remember when we first came to Iraq, I used to try to impress him, to get him to notice me, like the time I drew some pictures at Brooks’s request, shades and lines copied from magazines of bare chests and slimly curved waists, because those are the only magazines to be had and the only models to work off. Brooks liked to plaster some of the pictures on her wall, because artwork seems somehow better than magazine cutouts (“more cultured”), and the walls are otherwise depressingly bare. Sergeant Daniels stepped into the room, half turned toward the artwork, and my chest swelled. “I drew those,” I said loudly, pointing, and in the clunky pause before he eventually said “Okay,” I realized I sounded like a child, like a girl tugging at her daddy’s coat, and I wrapped an arm around myself, lips pressed together hard in humiliation.
But there is no way I can impress him because I’m still fat. Less than a month ago, I had shuffled through a PT test while Sergeant Daniels watched from the company concrete stairs. His face was professionally blank. “If you feel you can’t do this,” he said slowly, his attempt at being kind, “we can separate you.” It’s not a threat; it’s an offering.
“You mean send me home?” I asked, cheeks flushed red from the exercise, sweat molding my gray PT shirt to the folds of my body. I peeled it away, trying to hide the unnecessary curves.
“You can separate from the Army,” he said, not harshly but it still hurt.
I stared up at him and I’d never felt more useless. “Can we wait until we go back home?” I asked, not sure I’m willing to leave the military, but so very certain that leaving now would make me a coward. I’ve already seen how this plays out: Sergeant Forst seriously injured her back early in the deployment. She couldn’t bear the weight of her gear; she was in constant pain. They sent her home, after accusing her of malingering, some whispering about what a shitbag soldier she was, forgetting that she had spent years before being the best they ever had. And then, after a few weeks, they forgot about her entirely, as if she had never existed. If I left, everyone would have their fill of gossip and then forget, but I wouldn’t.
“I can’t just leave everyone here,” I said. Let me finish with honor; give me this last shred of dignity. Sergeant Daniels said nothing.
I hate being the fat soldier with the round face who cries. I nervously toe the book farther to the side and better out of sight. Instead of walking past, though, he pauses by my desk, regarding me with dark eyes, as if just noticing me there. Then he pulls up a tattered cushion chair, left over from the building’s fancier days. He looks odd in it, tan and brown and perched on plush blue.
“How are you doing, Dostie?” he asks.
I don’t expect this, feeling surprised and flushed. I’m looking for too many fathers and always finding none. “Doing well,” I lie.
He leans forward so that his elbows are planted on his knees. “Look, Dostie, it’s no secret that you have an issue with Captain Wells.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” It comes out a little sharper than I intend and I quail, afraid I’ll scare him away. He levels an unflinching stare at me. I have to look down at my hands. “I can’t stand him,” I finally admit, to break the stiff silence.
“Care to share why?”
I twist my hands, a nervous habit, and bite my lip to keep from snapping, Isn’t it obvious? I squirm, wanting him to tell me I’m not wrong, that I’m not the bad soldier everyone makes me out to be, but haven’t I already learned this lesson? Rape just isn’t one of those things anyone wants you to talk about. And yet in the end, that obsessive desire to hear someone say, even once, “It’s not your fault,” wins out. It always does. The compulsive need to be heard keeps me talking, even when everyone else wishes I’d just shut up.
“When…that thing happened before we left, Captain Wells totally sided with him,” I say to the desk. Frustration burns at the corner of my eyes, and I realize with horror that I’m going to cry. I dig my nails into the heel of my palm. The sharp pain clears the fog in my head. “He’s supposed to be my commander. He’s supposed to protect me.” I spit the words, sounding bitter and childish, instantly wishing I could take them back.
Sergeant Daniels drags that ridiculous, heavy chair closer. “You know,” he begins, speaking softly, something I’ve never heard him do, and I lift my head, startled. “That’s why I wanted you in my platoon. When I heard what happened, I had you moved over to me so that Lieutenant Patron and I could fix all this.”
Liar. I remember how he hadn’t wanted me in the beginning, his startled expression when he saw me nestled there in his ranks, quickly ousting me with an impatient gesture, how I had stumbled between the two platoons, ostracized to the back of the company. Lieutenant Patron, our platoon leader, has never said a word to me about the rape. I didn’t even know he knew. I’m acutely aware of all this, but I don’t remind Sergeant Daniels. I don’t ask him why he’s waited months to even broach the subject, why all this time has gone by and he never once tried to fix anything. I never think to even ask, Why now?
I’m starved for acknowledgment, devouring scraps like a dog.
Whatever his reasons, Sergeant Daniels is astonishingly faithful to his word. I don’t know how he manages it; Captain Wells had always seemed so resolute, heels dug in, refusing to meet with me even when I threatened the command with the IG. I wonder what Sergeant Daniels must have said, how he wrangled Captain Wells into a meeting. Had he threate
ned? Demanded? Or perhaps he simply asked, because he was Sergeant Daniels, after all, and there was power in that. However he did it, a few hours later I find myself in a room with the Captain, suddenly, with very little preparation.
Captain Wells is combative the second I step into his room. He sits in a green nylon chair; his room is fixed with a plush Iraqi rug and a black air conditioner in the window. Sergeant Daniels and Lieutenant Patron flank me, offering silent support. I’m shocked by their presence, like a drowning victim surprised to suddenly find a life ring next to them. Captain Wells glares as I walk into the room, the low brow of his forehead hanging over his eyes. For a moment I entertain the image of his brain matter splattered across the drywall behind him, dribbling down in pretty crimson lines. I imagine the dumb look of shock in his slack features, the way his body would slump to one side.
The thought cheers me considerably.
But then he opens his mouth. He starts with some useless formalities as I sit down on the trunk across from him. First Sergeant Bell stands off and to the side of him, his boots off, his feet covered in thick, white, non-government-issued socks. The room is divided, the command on that side, rank and file on ours.
“There’s no evidence that anything happened,” Captain Wells is saying to Sergeant Daniels, not to me, as if convincing Sergeant Daniels will finally put an end to this.
“Just because there’s no evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” I snap, my mouth loosened by months of silent rage.
“Don’t get self-righteous with me,” Wells growls, spearing a chubby finger at me. “Don’t you get all self-righteous with me.”
“You’re my commander, you were supposed to be there for me,” I counter, my voice rising a little too high—a little too feminine.
“I was his commander, too. You want me to side with you just because?”
“You sided with him just because!” I nearly choke on my own words. “Sir.”
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