I have spent eight years with the constant fear that something will happen to Nate. Eight years trembling when the phone rang too late at night, eight years waiting for the one-line email, the five-minute phone call, the message that said my son was not hurt, he was still alive, he had survived another week in Iraq. I am deep-marrow tired of this fear. Is that fear why Jim is leaving me? Did I pay enough attention to us?
ON THAT FIRST DAY OF
kindergarten, Mrs. Linfelter blew her whistle and addressed the “Edna Neal kindergartner class of nineteen ninety-four.”
“Nineteen ninety-four?” we all whispered. “What’s in nineteen ninety-four?” Someone figured it out, “Fifth-grade graduation.” And we all smiled. Fifth graders!
“Edna Neal kindergartners, it is time to line up. Get in line right behind me, one by one, single file.”
There was a confused rush toward the teacher. A few children held back. Julie’s daughter Ella buried her head in Julie’s thigh. Nate raced off, pushing to be the first in line.
Mrs. Linfelter ignored the scuffle of bodies banging into one another.
“One by one,” she said very sweetly, like a cartoon caricature of a kindergarten teacher.
“No holding hands. Single file.”
She kept at it, with her sweet voice, her clear instructions, nothing but business. And when all fifty-seven of them were ready, in a snaking line that filled up most of the dusty kindergarten play area, Mrs. Linfelter gave her first full-class instruction.
“Children,” she said. “Stand up straight. Look at your moms and dads. And wave bye-bye. Good-bye, Moms and Dads!”
Then Mrs. Linfelter turned and walked in the room with fifty-seven five-year-olds in single step behind her.
Most of us were stunned. It was Cheryl who hooted. “Brilliant!” she said. “This Mrs. Linfelter is brilliant! Let’s get some coffee.”
THE MAYOR HAS ASKED THE
cadets to stand, and he is reading off their names one by one.
“Staff Sergeant Nathan James Gisselberg.”
He has used Nate’s Army rank.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Cadet Gisselberg served three tours of duty in Iraq. He was awarded a bronze medal for service. We are particularly proud to welcome him to the Las Vegas Police Department today.”
Nate stands still, like a soldier, and his face does not reveal what he is thinking. Jim and I and Lauren look at each other. Our shared pride is like a rod between us. I wonder if Lauren or Jim also feels the kind of melting gratitude that I feel. When you have sent a child to war, when you have seen what being in a war is like for that child, every single acknowledgment matters. Nate had so damn much courage. It matters to me that the mayor knows it, that he says it.
The cadets raise their right hands. The mayor asks them to repeat the words of the oath. He swears them in. And then, only then, does Nate smile. I know that smile so well. The smile of a little boy who has just caught the long fly in his mitt, who has just wobbled the bicycle down the street by himself, who has just asked a girl to a dance. When I see that smile, I think that everything is going to be all right. I look at Lauren, and I see it in her eyes too: we both believe that things will be okay.
MY SECOND LIFE STARTED ON
that first day of kindergarten. Not when Jim asked me to marry him, not when we moved into a house where the master bedroom was larger than the apartments I had grown up in, not when Emily or Nate was born, but on the day that Edna Neal Elementary School opened, and Nate followed Mrs. Linfelter into kindergarten.
That’s the day when my old life seemed to slip completely off me, when a group of women assumed I was one of them, a suburban mom with a sweet-faced child headed off to school. That was the first time I ever went to have a cup of coffee with women who had been to college, the first time nobody seemed to notice that my memories were not the same as theirs.
I suppose it was that Nate was so very much like their children, and my house so very much like their houses, and my husband so very much like their husbands. Just like that, Sharlene and the boyfriends and the weekly motels and the alcoholic brother melted into some other reality. In those years of Nate’s elementary school, my days were punctuated by the hours I spent with other mothers. The cups of coffee, but also the soup at the deli, the gym classes, the midget football games, the walks to and from school, the hot scones left on a doorstep at six in the morning, the bottle of wine while the kids cannonballed in someone’s backyard pool. Jim and I both loved the Friday-night barbecues then, when the children would “put on a show” for the adults. There would be banged-up heads, torn costumes, uncontrollable laughter, and half-eaten hamburgers all over the house. The dogs would rush in, thrilled to be let out of the side yard, and race to find all the dropped, abandoned food on the carpet.
There were good days, when Nate snuggled into a pillow and read Where the Wild Things Are all by himself, and bad days, when Emily’s little feet kept jutting into my line of vision, reminding me and daring me. There were days when the contrast between my life and Sharlene’s life threw me sideways, when I couldn’t bear to hold in one heart the memory of what it had felt like to be Sharlene’s child, and also the awareness of how young she had been, how little she had had, how alone she was.
JIM AND LAUREN AND I
make our way out of the council meeting when the swearing-in is over. We wait for Nate outside, on Stewart. Somewhere behind us, the neon cowboy on the Pioneer Hotel lifts his left hand in permanent salute; beyond him, the blinking red and yellow letters of “Plaza” cast a strange orange glow. Lauren sees Nate first. She hurries toward him, and he grins as he wraps his arms around her. They look young and happy. I smile then too, and without thinking look to Jim, and for a second, we are there, eyes locked, just as we were when we were young. Of course, Darcy flits through my mind, but I don’t let it take me, I don’t go there, I just relish that Nate is happy, that he has a lovely wife, that he is not going back to Iraq, that Jim and I, no matter what, we did okay.
5
* * *
Bashkim
THE UNITED STATES IS in two wars, and some of the soldiers are from Las Vegas. That’s because Nellis Air Force Base is here, right over by Sunrise Mountain. Mrs. Monaghan says that we should be supporting the people who fight for us, so our class is going to adopt some soldiers in Iraq. Adopt means that we are going to write them letters all year long. I have never written anybody a letter, even though I have family in Albania. I don’t know why my family isn’t the letter-writing type.
Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, Mrs. Monaghan is going to give us the names of our soldiers. We each get our own one person, and I am really excited about mine. Today we are going to learn how to write a letter, because these are soldiers, and we have to send our letters in a professional way.
Letter form takes up a lot of space. You have to write the date, and space. Then the name and the address, and space. Then Dear So-and-so, and space. I am almost at the bottom of the page, and I have not started writing anything. Mrs. Monaghan says we have to write a lot neater, and smaller, so that the letter will look right. I don’t think I am going to like this part of writing letters.
Also today we are learning about Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s pretty amazing, because Iraq looks like southern Nevada, and Afghanistan looks like northern Nevada. That’s what Mrs. Monaghan says. She showed us pictures of Iraq, and if you don’t look at how the people are dressed, and if you don’t look for any big buildings, it does look like Las Vegas. Then Mrs. Monaghan showed us pictures of Afghanistan, and pictures of northern Nevada, and we had to guess which was which. And we couldn’t. Because they both have snow, and mountains, and trees, and Mrs. Monaghan says they are both dry, and that’s why they look alike. Even Carlo, who used to live in Reno and is the only kid in my class who has ever been to northern Nevada, got mixed up.
Isn’t it weird that we are at war with two countrie
s that look like Nevada? Even the people look like us. Mrs. Monaghan says we are not really mad at Afghanis (that’s what she calls people who live in Afghanistan), but we are mad at people who are hiding in Afghanistan, and we have to find them. And we used to be mad at Iraqis, but we are not mad at them anymore. I don’t know what we are still looking for there, but I might have forgotten to pay attention to everything Mrs. Monaghan said. I am looking forward to writing to a soldier, and I understand why we should adopt some of them, but I don’t really like when Mrs. Monaghan talks about being at war. It makes my head hurt, like it does when Baba talks about Albania. There are a lot of bad people in the world, and I try not to think about them. Especially when I am at school.
Carlo was really excited about seeing the pictures of northern Nevada. His dad lives up there, and he liked living there better than here. He says Reno is just like Las Vegas, but bigger, with more lights. Which must be quite a lot, because where I live, it never gets really dark at night. I can always see the Strip glowing, usually kind of white but sometimes kind of pink. And there is a big light on top of a pyramid that points right at our apartment, like a laser. Tirana is afraid of that light, but I tell her that it’s a spotlight shining at us so that we could never be lost. I suppose God doesn’t really need a spotlight to know where Tirana and I are, but I don’t know that much about God, and I think it is good to have that backup light.
In Albania, the sky is black, and there are millions and millions of stars. My nene misses the stars in Albania, and I think my baba does too, because when she was talking about the stars and how she missed them, my baba put his head on Nene’s cheek. Nene says that in Albania, there are so many stars, it feels like a sparkling blanket over your head, and she says that nobody ever gets tired of looking at them because they always find a star they never saw before. Plus, Nene has seen lots and lots of shooting stars. She says that in the summer in Albania, there are more shooting stars than I could count every night, and all the people go outside and find a place to lie down and just watch them. I have never seen a shooting star, but Nene says that some day we will drive out to the mountains, and I will see them then.
I am not sure why Las Vegas does not have as many stars as Albania or the mountains. Nene and Baba say that it is because of the lights on the Strip, but I can’t figure out how that works. Mrs. Jimenez told us that stars are billions of miles away, and the light we see is actually thousands of years old. How could the lights on the Strip change that? Las Vegas is not very old at all.
Iraq and Afghanistan are old, older than even Albania, I think. And they are really hard places to be a soldier. In Afghanistan, the roads are bad, and the mountains are very high, and sometimes the trucks hit bumps on the road and fall off the mountains. Also, there are lots of places for enemies to hide, and shoot at our soldiers, and it is very hard for our guys from Nellis to find them. In Iraq, it is hot (just like it is here in the summer), and there is no shade or air-conditioning or swimming pools, and some people are so mad there that they make bombs and put them on their bodies and blow themselves up to try and kill some of our soldiers. When Mrs. Monaghan tells us this, I start to feel weird. I don’t like to think about a person making a bomb and tying it on his body. It’s so sad that I feel dizzy, like I do when Baba yells at Nene, or when Nene says that it would be better if she were dead.
I am getting kind of nervous now, but I am going to write very neatly to my soldier. I want him to know that I am sorry he has such a hard job.
WELL, TODAY WAS THE DAY.
Mrs. Monaghan handed out our soldiers. My soldier’s name is Specialist Luis Rodriguez-Reyes, which is going to be hard to fit on one line of my letter. I am a little worried about that, but otherwise I like his name. I think he is Mexican, like my friend Carlo, because Carlo has two last names too. Carlo’s soldier is Chet Buckley, which doesn’t sound Mexican at all. I don’t think there are any soldiers with Albanian names. Maybe Albanians aren’t soldiers. Or maybe they only fight in Albania.
All of us kids were so excited about getting our soldiers. There are even some girl soldiers, but Mrs. Monaghan didn’t pay any attention to whether girls got girls or boys got boys, just like she didn’t pay any attention to whether Carlo got a Mexican. I’m sort of glad I got a boy, but I don’t say that, because that is the kind of thing Mrs. Monaghan does not like. Mrs. Monaghan says we don’t always have to say what we like and what we don’t like. We should just practice dealing with it.
Anyway, we were so excited about our soldiers that Mrs. Monaghan decided to cancel social studies and give us all that time to work on our letters. She is not really supposed to cancel social studies. She has a list of what we work on every day on the board, and the minutes we spend on each subject. Mrs. Monaghan does not like this list, but Nevada makes every teacher spend the same number of minutes on every subject for every student. And Mrs. Monaghan has to write down the minutes every week, and the principal has to be able to see the minutes written on the board if she comes in the class. Mrs. Monaghan says Americans are kind of crazy, and even though her husband is American, and she thinks we should support American soldiers, she does not like American subject minutes.
So anyway, I guess she doesn’t think the principal will come in today, because she is letting us write our letters. I am a little nervous for her, since she is a new teacher at Orson Hulet, and she might not know how serious the rules are, so I put my social studies workbook on my desk, and I tell Carlo to put his on his desk too. Mrs. Monaghan thinks we are using our workbooks as writing pads, and she likes us to be self-sufficient about stuff like that. She doesn’t know that I can put my workbook on top of my letter real fast if the principal catches her.
September 23, 2008
Specialist Luis Rodriguez-Reyes
A BTRY 2-57FA
FOB Kalsu
APO, AE 09312
Dear Specialist Luis Rodriguez-Reyes:
My name is Bashkim Ahmeti and I am in third grade at Orson Hulet School. I am eight years old, but I will be nine soon. My sister Tirana is three. My baba and nene have an ice-cream truck, and that’s how we make money. My nene sometimes works at Kohl’s too, during inventory, but when they don’t have inventory, then she just works in the truck with Baba.
Most days, I go with my baba and nene after school. Lots of kids like to eat ice cream, so that is our busiest time. Tirana comes too, but she just plays.
I bet you don’t know any other Bashkim Ahmeti. I am the only one I know, though there are probably some in Albania somewhere.
This is the longest letter I have ever written and I don’t want to write anymore. Please write me and tell me about your life in Iraq. Have you had a hard time in the truck? Do you have to kill people? Does it make you feel funny? I have never killed anyone, but I feel funny when my baba kills our mice and things.
Your friend,
Bashkim Ahmeti
MRS. MONAGHAN LOOKED AT ME
kind of funny when she read my letter, and later she told everyone that we should not ask our soldiers about their soldier work, which is going to be kind of hard for a whole year, but I think she sent my letter anyway. I don’t think I could have redone it if she had asked me to, because my hand is still hurting from all that writing.
MRS. MONAGHAN SAYS OUR SOLDIERS’
letters back to us have arrived. Every one of us got a letter back, though Mrs. Monaghan says this will not keep happening, and we cannot expect to get a letter every time we get a bag from Iraq.
The letters are in a camouflage bag. Isn’t that cool? They were all bundled together, and sent on a special plane back to Las Vegas. Mrs. Monaghan says that won’t happen anymore either, and maybe we are even going to start writing our letters during computer room time, so that we can send them without any stamps, but that might be a problem, because our computer room minutes are not just for writing letters, and she has to see if the principal will allow it.
; I am pretty sure the principal will not, so I hope she has another plan. Also, I don’t know how to type, so it might be really hard to keep writing letters if we can’t even use pencils.
I can’t stop looking at that bag of letters. I wonder what Specialist Luis Rodriguez-Reyes has written to me. I wish I had sent him a picture too, like some of the kids did, but it took me too long to write the letter part. I would really like a picture back from him. They probably don’t have cameras or art supplies in Iraq, so maybe that wouldn’t have worked anyway.
I am looking at that bag so much, and thinking about it so hard, that I almost can hear the soldiers reading their letters to us. It is like a whole bunch of people talking quietly at the same time. I am trying and trying to listen, but I cannot make out what they are saying, and I can’t tell which one is Specialist Luis Rodriguez-Reyes.
“Bashkim, are you listening?”
“Yes, Mrs. Monaghan. I am listening very hard.”
I am surprised that Mrs. Monaghan knew what I was doing. But when I look at her face, she looks surprised at me. I think she has been talking, and I see that some of the kids are standing up like they are going to go somewhere, but I am confused. In my head, I was thinking about soldiers.
“Bashkim, the blue reading group is going to sit in the hall today. Isn’t that you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Monaghan.” And I quickly get up and find my reading book, because sitting in the hall is a special privilege for students who will stay on task, and I don’t want to miss it.
We Are Called to Rise Page 4