Jessica Goodell & John Hearn

by Shade It Black: Death

  Hours and miles passed when I decided to take another break. I might have been in Arizona or maybe I was still in Nevada when I entered an Applebee’s, sat at the bar, and ordered a drink. I didn’t really have to use the restroom—I had learned to hold it in for days if I had to—but I went anyway. I wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t eat. My plan was to rest for a few minutes, long enough to stop the feel of the road rolling by beneath me. At a table across from the bar sat a couple in their mid-twenties, each playing intently with a phone, neither paying any attention to the other. When the waitress appeared, the man lifted his eyes to her for a moment, nodded, and returned to the plastic rectangle. The woman never looked up from hers. I was wondering how long this would go on when a television voice mentioned Iraq. I glanced up at the screen above the bar. Usually when this occurred I’d walk away from the television until I could no longer make out what was being said. This time I watched. The story was about a controversy regarding the “flag-draped coffins” that were returning to America from Iraq. Should the public be allowed to view photographs of the coffins or not? This, apparently, was a big issue. One guest argued that, of course, Americans should be shown the coffins. Otherwise, he said, they’ll have no idea of what is going on in our war over there. The second expert disagreed vehemently. He asserted that our citizens know perfectly well what’s going on in Iraq and displaying the photos would only hurt the families of the dead. Their disagreement became heated.

  I felt sick as I remembered why I don’t listen to “news” stories about the war. Like the rest of the civilian population, the pundits didn’t have a clue as to what they were talking about. But they were supposed to know! It was their job to help inform and educate the public about important issues like war! From a photograph of flag-draped coffins Americans would somehow know what was going on in Iraq? Or they already knew what was happening over there? Really? The anger again welled up in my chest. Had I wanted to, I could easily have taken out all of the idiots who participated in the production of this nonsense. That’s what I was trained to do. Instead of plotting a strategy to do just that, I hit the road.

  I was on US-93, two hours south of the Applebee’s, when I felt some thing break. At first I thought it was one of my ribs—given that they were basically exposed and, depending on what I was wearing, visible even through my blouse. For a moment I thought that maybe the muscle strain I had experienced when moving my belongings into the trailer in St. Louis was something more severe. Maybe I had broken a rib. But after running a hand down one side of my rib cage and up the other, I realized it was something else that had broken, but I didn’t know what.

  27

  Tucson

  Survivors with PTSD often think that the world is a very dangerous place. You may think it is likely that you will be harmed again. If you have PTSD, living in a high-crime area may confirm these beliefs and make you more fearful. If it is possible, move to a safer area. It may then be easier for you to rethink your beliefs about danger. You may be better able to trust that you will be safe.

  From: “Lifestyle Changes Recommended for PTSD Patients,” United States Department of Veterans Affairs, January 1, 2007

  Miguel and I ended up together again in a very small one-bedroom, ground-floor apartment on Tucson’s south side. To me, it could have been Mexico. Everyone spoke Spanish, many of the road signs were in Spanish, and every job required that one speak Spanish. I didn’t speak Spanish. As it turned out, that wasn’t that big a deal because I never left the apartment.

  By this point in time, I was experiencing symptoms of a social phobia. I simply could not leave the apartment—the apartment I hated being in. My incentive to go outside was lessened by the very high crime rate that characterized the neighborhood. Day in and day out I remained inside with the blinds closed and the door locked. I couldn’t go to the grocery store or the library or the doctor’s office. As the landlord no longer allowed pets, I no longer had Grizzly’s company. I was imprisoned … alone … except for—and this was when the rumination began—my memories of and my thoughts about Iraq. Until now Iraq had just been a part of my job as a Marine. It was what I had trained for and what I did. But images and doubts that I hadn’t before entertained fully began creeping into my consciousness. Alone, in that tiny apartment, I began questioning what we were doing in Iraq and what I had done there. Initially, I struggled with issues related to the Corps’ standard operating procedures and my own adherence to them, but before long I was tormented by basic philosophical and, especially, moral questions. Why had we invaded another country? How could I have been complicit in a war that hurt so many innocent people? I tried to see the honor in what I had done over there, but couldn’t. I searched for meaning in the deaths of the soldiers and civilians I helped to bury, but I could not find it. I had put my faith in the Marine Corps, believing that they knew more than me, knew better than me, and now I was losing that faith.

  I started to drink.

  I became convinced that others could tell that I had served in Iraq and what it was, exactly, that I had done there. It felt as though the stigma that had marked me as a deviant at Camp TQ had followed me here. This conviction provided another reason to not leave the apartment. To hide the past from myself, I packed away all signs of my military service: my cammies and uniforms, boots and covers. I didn’t keep a single EGA pin or boot band. I buried my medals and ribbons deep in the back of our small closet because they upset me the most. I’d think about what it was I did to earn them and the shame would wash over me. To hide the past from myself, I dressed in as feminine a way as I could: tight clothes— with lace and flowers—that fit the form of my body, and high heels. My hair was done and my eyebrows waxed.

  Nothing worked. I hid from those who might have guessed I had been a Marine, and I hid from the artifacts of my service, and I hid from the toughened veteran deep inside me by covering her up with a cloak of femininity, and I hid from it all by drinking, but I could still not mute the memories or quiet the doubts.

  One early evening I sat in the dark apartment watching a local television show when I was startled by a loud banging on the door. Bang! Bang! Bang! I didn’t answer the door because I didn’t know a soul in the neighborhood given that I never left the apartment. Plus, it wasn’t as though an elderly neighbor were gently knocking on the door—the door was being pounded. Nor was it Miguel, who, of course, had a key and who, if he misplaced the key, would call or text. Someone I did not know was punching the door hard with the side of a fist. Bang! Bang! Bang! I could hear several voices speaking rapidly in Spanish. I sat motionless, nervous, hoping they would eventually go away. I held my breath. Maybe they were gone. Bang! Bang! Bang! This time the knocking didn’t stop but increased in rate and intensity. Do they think the apartment is empty and are planning to steal what they can? Or do they know I’m in here? I picked up the cell phone by my side and called Miguel who was at work. He told me to get the gun that was on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. But doing so would risk being seen by the intruders through the cracks around the shade covering the window adjacent to the door. Miguel could barely hear my whisper above the relentless pounding. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! He told me he’d be home right away. I wasn’t moving because I didn’t want them to see me, and because I was frozen with fear. Bang! Bang! Bang! The door jam split open. I wondered what was the worst thing they could do to me and thought I had already been through worse than that. I hate my life, anyway, I thought. At the moment I was certain the door would spring wide open, I heard Miguel yelling at the would-be intruders from some distance down the block. He ran to the door, armed and wearing his security guard uniform from work. He shouted at them in Spanish and asked what they were doing. They claimed that I had left on my car’s headlamps, and they were trying to alert me so the battery wouldn’t die. Then the four of them walked away. Miguel checked and found the head lights were on, and then he went back to work. I sat down in front of the television, a few feet from the broken door frame, in
the darkened apartment, with the gun by my side.

  After months of trying, I convinced Miguel to attend couples’ counseling with me at the VA hospital. He never expressed any doubts about the war or his role in it, and he didn’t believe that I had a right to do so given that I was not a part of the “real” war, the invasion phase. So his heart was not in this counseling plan of mine. I had reminded him four or five times about our initial appointment, but he didn’t show up. When he didn’t show up to our second scheduled meeting, the counselor told me that he wouldn’t be able to see me anymore as he specialized in couples’ counseling. He added that it was clear that I had my own issues to work on and he strongly advised that I set up an appointment for individual counseling.

  And so I somehow brought myself to the VA hospital where a group meeting was scheduled for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I was the only female in the crowded room. I purposefully dressed in a professional and feminine manner. I’m not sure who the waiting men thought I was, but several of them, one after another, approached me, sat down, and opened up about their troubles, about the unrelenting nightmares and angry outbursts and uncontrollable crying jags. They may have initially guessed that I worked in the facility in some sort of counseling capacity, but after learning that I was a Marine who had spent time I Iraq, they seemed surprised and relieved. “Don’t tell me you were a fucking Marine,” they would say with anticipation. After which I would respond with a muted, half-hearted Marine bark: hoorah. It was then that they started to talk about their experiences. After an hour or so my name was called and I was asked to meet separately with a counselor. The second her office door closed behind me I burst into tears. I could not stop crying. I was unable to speak. I cried and cried. I cried for thirty minutes, until the appointment came to a close. I did not say a single word but I left with prescriptions for an antidepressant, anti-anxiety medication, and a sleep aid.

  Each week I’d see a psychiatrist and a counselor. The former had to be in his late seventies. He didn’t seem interested in hearing about my problems. It was as though he had heard them all already. He was there to sign the prescription pad, which he seemed to do automatically. The counselor tried to help me with my all-consuming guilt and depression, but she herself wasn’t military and the distance between us yawned widely. How could she possibly understand what I was dealing with? She didn’t know how young, healthy men could disappear into thin air in an instant, leaving behind a boot or finger or head. She had never amassed remains that were unidentifiable as having once belonged to a human being, let alone a specific individual. She never experienced the guilt associated with having succumbed to the pressure to pose near a sign that reads, “Napalm sticks to kids,” or to assist in the degradation of a proud young Marine who is four pounds heavier than regulations allow. She may have a hint of what it feels like to have every aspect of your physical being critically assessed by nearby men, but she can’t understand fully what it’s like when the assessments are crude and explicit and unending and the men are a horde and you are alone. She cannot possibly empathize with a twenty-year-old girl who learns her colleague, himself a husband and father, had to hand an Iraqi man two bags containing the remains of his wife and four year old daughter. The counselor tried her best to help me but she could not. I attempted to find the words that would help her to understand what I had been through and what I was going through, but I could not. I just could not find the words. My social anxiety had become so overwhelming that at the end of our session—and each subsequent session—the counselor had to walk me out to my car.

  Soon it became too difficult to get to the appointments. I couldn’t leave the apartment. I was too afraid that others would see me for who I was: a completely fucked-up human being who had gone to Iraq and done unspeakable things and who was now doing nothing whatsoever except contributing to a horrible, horrible relationship. I continued to take the medications without the counseling. The sleep aid they gave me transformed me into a potato. I would take it half an hour before going to bed and it would shut off my brain. I was able to sit on the couch and stare at the television with nothing whatsoever in my head. The circuitry had shut down and I was free-floating in a spaced-out zone where there was nothing to worry about because there was nothing at all. During this thirty minute interval, I could be sure that my brain wouldn’t start thinking on its own, without my cooperation. I enjoyed this feeling, so I took the pill every night.

  Until, that is, Miguel caught me getting my medications from where I hid them in a shoebox in the back of the closet. He started yelling and threw the pills to the floor. He reminded me that I was never a real Marine, that I was too weak to be a real Marine, so weak that I had to rely upon fucking drugs. The drugs were only making me more fucked up, he shouted. That was the night I stopped taking the medications.

  28

  Nightmare

  When Jonathan Schulze came home from Iraq, he tried to live a normal life. But the war kept that from happening.

  At first, Jonathan Schulze tried to live with the nightmares and the grief he brought home from Iraq. He was a tough kid from central Minnesota, and more than that, a U.S. Marine to the core.

  Yet his moods when he returned home told another story. He sobbed on his parents’ couch as he told them how fellow Marines had died, and how he, a machine gunner, had killed the enemy. In his sleep, he screamed the names of dead comrades. He had visited a psychiatrist at the VA hospital in Minneapolis.

  Two weeks ago, Schulze went to the VA hospital in St. Cloud. He told a staff member he was thinking of killing himself, and asked to be admitted to the mental health unit, said his father and stepmother, who accompanied him. They said he was told he couldn’t be admitted that day. The next day, as he spoke to a counselor in St. Cloud by phone, he was told he was No. 26 on the waiting list, his parents said.

  Four days later, Schulze, 25, committed suicide in his New Prague home.

  From: “This Marine’s Death Came After He Served in Iraq,” by Kevin Giles, The Star Tribune, January 27, 2007

  After convincing Miguel that I’d never find a decent job without going to college and that going to college in New York would be cheaper than it would be in Arizona, he did not object when I packed up the beetle once more and headed east. I knew we couldn’t live together and he did too, and I wasn’t at all sure that I could live alone. So the break wasn’t a clean one. We would talk and text every day and I would come back when time allowed.

  The first two months home I spent on my father’s sofa. Both the television and my thoughts ran continuously but I tried to not pay attention to either. Worried, my dad convinced me to visit the youth pastor at the Bemus Point Methodist church to share with him what had happened to my life since I was sixteen. He immediately got me involved in church activities, such as working with toddlers and babysitting in the nursery, but I couldn’t shake my lethargy or find any motivation, and two weeks later was back on the couch. It became increasingly difficult for me to sleep and, when I did sleep, I had nightmares.

  I am in the desert, surrounded by the flat beige of an endless expanse of sand. We are under attack. In front of us, extending for miles is the thick four-foot tall protective berm we hastily erected out of sand and sand bags. There is gear and equipment scattered around us—quadcons (large bulletproof storage containers), 40-foot storage containers, discarded canteens and LBVs (plate armor vests worn to absorb the impact of bullets). Our berm absorbs the bulk of enemy ground fire but we are assaulted from the air as well. I keep my head down, following my platoon and running along the length of the berm through the tedious sugar sand. I can hear the roar of small aircraft overhead, dropping bombs all around us. Mortar shells whistle over our heads from across the berm. The combination of explosions and the sandy wind mutes the sound of my comrades shouting to one another. I am running as fast as I can manage with the heavy burden of my equipment, trying to keep up with my platoon. I pause for a moment to lay down protective fire over the t
op of the berm, but when I take aim and squeeze the trigger of my M-16 nothing happens. Thinking that the weapon has jammed, I eject the magazine and am panicked to realize that I have no ammunition. I resume running, and rummage frantically through my belongings for any spare rounds. Finding nothing, I begin searching the discarded gear on the ground as I continue the slog through the sand. I scan the bodies of wounded and fallen Marines, their limbs broken and turned at awkward angles, looking for any magazines or ammunition that I can scavenge and use.

  I would jolt awake, sweating, terrified.

  My father finally let me know that he wasn’t going to enable me forever. He would not stand by and provide the wherewithal that allowed me to stay on that couch. It was hard for him, but he made it clear that I had to stand up, on my own two feet, and, if not make something of myself, at least make a life for myself. I put my gear in my car and drove one town over, to my mother’s house, where I parked myself on her couch.

  I awaken still groggy from sleep at “zero dark-thirty” (before sun-up) in my barracks room. The room is constructed from cement block walls covered in chipped and faded beige paint. The floor is covered with cold tan tiles. I know that I have to be suited up in cammies at formation soon so I begin gathering the pieces of my uniform. I retrieve my tee-shirt, black socks, trousers, belt, cover, and blouse from my locker and pile them on my rack. Upon inspecting my blouse however, I notice that my chevrons (rank insignia worn on the collar) are missing. “Oh shit! You’ve got to be kidding me” I think, frustrated that this easily lost or damaged component of my uniform is not in its proper place. I begin rifling through the top shelf of my locker, realizing with increasing anxiety that I don’t have time to go to the PX (Marine Corps Convenience Store) to buy new chevrons. I sift through the items in my locker, such as extra boot laces, boot polish kit and extra belt, but can’t see any trace of the missing chevrons. Frustrated, I check my blouse once more and then scan the room frantically, knowing that I have to come up with some kind of plan to avoid the inevitable ass-chewing I’ll be treated to by the squad leader and platoon sergeant. I consider going to formation without my chevrons, but I know that this would mean spending the day as a private, doing the dirtiest work on base all day, risking reprimand and even a “page 11” (written citation in my permanent service record). Then I notice that something else is amiss in the room. I see a strange shape in the corner. Crumpled in the shadows is my room-mate. I move closer to investigate and realize that she is dead. I feel a sense of relief, as I know that she is the same rank as me. I check her collar and find the chevrons I need and pin them on my blouse. The crisis averted, I leave the room and head for formation.