Tossing the toilet paper aside, your hand flails overhead in the hopes of finding the string. After hearing the metal end clink against the ceramic fixture, you wait for it to pendulum back toward the palm of your hand, which it does. With one yank, you’ve illuminated a preponderance of tiny metallic ribbons and bows splayed atop a pile of presents. They draw you toward the back of the closet, where you peel open each and every one of the to-from labels, leaving a trail of shitty footprints as you go.
Most of these gifts are emblazoned with your name. Some are meant for Debbie, but it’s okay. She deserves something, right? Even with her being so old she’s almost out of the house.
Satisfied with this bounty of gifts, you turn back toward the door to discover the mess you’ve made and absently slide off your slippers, sail down the steps, going faster and faster until you move faster than your legs can carry you and you plant your ass on the second to the last step.
Holding it in for so long makes you quiver from the searing pain and piss across the tops of your own two feet while standing astride the manhole in the bowels of the basement. Once the pressure lessens enough to allow you to breathe normally, the bouquet of smells in the basement evaporates the last of the early morning fog, and you remember you need to grab the mop and slink back upstairs and swab the floor clean, which you do. Mostly.
But you’ve missed a spot.
Shoving the hangers that hold her shirts and skirts to the side so you can wipe away the last little streak, you see another pile of boxes, all yet to be wrapped: Battle Cat, The Claw, Lite Brite, Construx, Photon, GI Joe and Micro Machines. Overjoyed, you spit a slurry of swear words and slap a hand over your mouth. If she knew what you’d found, you’d get socks and underwear instead for sure. Not to mention, she’d take up a handful of those clothes hangers and beat you into the middle of next week, again.
Christmas comes and the turkey gets carved, the cranberries uncanned, the carols are sung. The voices from the living room slur through all the standards while the excited voices of the grandkids crack and squeak, the whole pack sitting around the Christmas tree waiting for word that it’s okay to tear into the gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. But the ritual bores even the jolliest of the cousins, and Bing Crosby gets switched out for the Chipmunks, then Ray Stevens, then the radio gets switched on, and all in attendance are treated to a medley of contemporary tunes, including the one you’ll never forget the words to:
Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.
Everyone sings along when it comes on. It’s funny. It’s about a grandma who’s been drinking too much eggnog, who forgets her medication and walks home on a snowy Christmas Eve.
Tragically, she’s found trampled to death the next morning.
Grandma Audrey bellows out to the house, “You’d all just love it if that was me, wouldn’t you? You want me to up and die.” The house is hauntingly quiet until Aunt Bobbie lets go a nervous laugh and says, “Oh—c’mon, Ma,” and the needle is again run through Bing Crosby’s Christmas classics.
For the youngest, you, it’s bedtime. It’s a stupid song anyway. Reindeer don’t run down the street. They fly from rooftop to rooftop.
You close your eyes.
You open your eyes.
You stumble down the stairs bleary-eyed, see how one of the cookies is gone, the other only half eaten. Wasteful. “Finish it. There are starving children in Africa,” Grandma would say to Santa. Meanwhile, Tippy squishes her head into the cup, doing what she can to finish off the milk. Erring on the side of caution, you take the cup into the kitchen before she can knock it onto the carpet. She yowls when you take hold of the handle, which is why you don’t dump it down the drain. You know she’d exact some sort of revenge for being robbed of this one simple pleasure. Instead, you pour what’s left into her bowl.
You know what would happen if you tore into any of the wrapping paper before there is a camera to capture the magic of Christmas, so, instead, you spill the stocking out onto the floor and wait. And wait. You pull the Polaroid camera out of the bottom of the buffet and ready a new pack of film. Breakfast becomes a plastic candy cane chock full of Sixlets. The bundles of batteries and blank cassette tapes hint at what lies beneath the tree. Last year the fat man forgot the batteries. Things are looking up.
Then hunger strikes again.
Brunch becomes a slice of cornflake Christmas wreath atop a bowl of peppermint ice cream—recompense for having to sit staring at Christmas gifts for hours on end.
When the sun comes up, you turn the television on with the volume down as far as you can, and you wait some more.
You try the trick with the coffee pot taught to you by Folgers’ commercials, but they still do not wake. The coffee burns long before you hear the click and creak of their bedroom door.
Her hellhounds need tending before anyone is allowed to open a single gift, so you ready their water dish and pour their kibble while the rest of the household trickles down the stairs. Then, like Easter morning, you go on the hunt. It’s your job to scurry about the house searching for their shit piles while Debbie drags gifts from beneath the tree.
Once the crap is cleaned up, you’re able to take a seat at the edge of the couch by Grandpa’s feet. You know which of the gifts you’ll open first. You spent a good bit of the night tracing the packages through the wrapping paper, lifting them high overhead, and shaking them while listening for movement from the floor above.
The first box is a big one. Lite Brite. You push the box to the side and move on to the next one—after pausing for a picture, that is. Next, you peel back the paper and read the word Photon scrawled across the packaging. This slows you down, makes you look around the room. Maybe there was a mix-up. You told Santa you wanted Lazer Tag. Grandma must have bought this for Glen or one of the other grandkids. Then there’s a dozen Micro Machines you unwrap, none of which will work on the Hot Wheels track you got last Christmas. Slick as you can, you go into the trash bag searching for the wrapping paper, which once adorned the presents. The tags are undeniable. There’s no mix-up. You see Santa’s name written in the scrolling cursive that comes just once a year.
All these presents came from the back shelf in Grandma’s closet. This realization forces a smile to spread across your lips for fear of being asked, “What’s wrong?” and having to admit you saw all these gifts before they were wrapped.
The next one to slide from the pile is obvious. Santa, somebody, whoever, did not even try to conceal what it is: an action figure. GI Joe. Spirit Iron-Knife and his pet bald eagle, Freedom. But it didn’t come from Santa. It came from the closet.
A shovel topped with a bow sits propped up in the corner behind the tree, and the flakes are falling outside. But the doorbell rings and some other distant relative appears from the haze of Christmas past. You recognize her, but that’s about it. Grandma greets her with a name you’ve only heard spoken a time or two—always in a venomous voice. She sits at the table and watches while you stuff the last of the wrapping paper into the trash bags. Then it’s time to lug all the presents upstairs and change clothes, so you can leave with the little redheaded lady a little later.
The two of you ride in silence until she asks how you like the presents. You let her know you know about Santa, that Grandma Audrey signed Santa’s name for him.
But she wants to know about the ones she dropped off for your birthday, back in October, and Christmas too. She brought things from her mother, your uncles, aunts, and cousins. At least a dozen gifts.
You’re confused.
So you sit and listen to your mother rattle off a list of everything you asked for, and then some—including some things you’d never bother to ask for because you knew circling it in the Sunday morning ads would make Grandma say, “Don’t be stupid,” and “You’re never happy with what I can give you.”
But it was Mom who got you everything you thought came from Grandma Audrey and Grandpa Bub and Dad, as well as the fat man and his eight tiny reindeer.
GROUNDHOG DAY
MORNINGS ARE SPENT SCROLLING THROUGH social media: liking, sharing, so on and so forth—letting people know you’re still breathing. Roll call complete. Twenty-two brothers and sisters die every day. None last night, though. You’re still here, too.
For now.
Next is the morning news hour. Local first, then national, followed by more coffee.
Maybe breakfast.
A talking head tells you about a tragedy in Paris and what they know so far and how they think it can be avoided in the future. The president follows with his thoughts on what steps to take next. You laugh at all this—not because of its comedic value, but because you spent nine months watching over Class Charlie detainees: the worst Iraqis, Third Country Nationals, and former regime officials ever rounded up. Then you watch while a change in your own country’s regime brings about the release of twenty-some-odd thousand of them back into polite society. One of which becomes a trainee of your unit while guarding the oil rigs in the gulf. You’ve no wonder where this new group found recruits.
This is why you’ll stop watching television.
The news of attacks starring those with their faces hidden behind a shemagh churns up all you’ve worked to forget. Everything is breaking news now, so it all becomes background noise, but more like a mosquito buzzing right outside of arm’s reach. The faceless enemy they love to flash across the television screen and tell you to hate is not the one you fear, though; they had their chance to bring you harm and failed. The man in the fogged-over mirror following your morning shit-shower- shave routine is who you can no longer trust not to hurt you or your loved ones.
The residents of your theater internment facility transferred to Camp Bucca, a prison made of canvas tents and razor wire with floors made of desert sand, where juvenile delinquents will slather themselves with their own shit to avoid being raped. And the American people wonder out loud why so many were radicalized in the encampments meant to keep them safe, warm, and fed until the time of their trial.
You’ll get a fish tank. Then a bigger fish tank. Then an even bigger tank—big enough to violate your lease. The thing about fish growing to the size of their environment isn’t entirely true. The Fantail grows to the size of a softball. The Shubunkin grows as long as your hand and forearm combined. The thing cannot even turn around in the tank anymore without bumping the glass. Watching them swim is supposed to be soothing, but it’s depressing. It’s worse than watching animals pace at the zoo, and you’re the zookeeper.
It takes years to notice the series of prisons that structure this story. Every prisoner, conscious of their confinement, wants to escape. This thought becomes intrusive, then a source of mental decay. These thoughts are not a way to shirk off boredom or pass the time. They’re what happens when demons are exercised, rather than exorcised—when they take you by both shoulders, shove you into a chair, and you don’t offer a fight.
Instead, you sit slumped with a Beretta on your lap, mull over life’s greatest hits and a few B-sides, thinking about what you’ve done.
Right then is when Mom’s voice rolls in from the other room, breaks your concentration, really fucks up your derailing train of thought.
You blink, but don’t budge.
She says your name a second time, but not your full name the way mothers do when their children have genuinely disappointed them—she only says, “David.” Though there’s a tremble in her voice you’ve never heard before. It’s a lot like when someone screams, and someone else takes to whispering, which makes the whispered words seem more frantic than the scream. Your eyes trace the shadows along the edges of the hardwood toward the carpeted floor of the bedroom where she’s standing, hands on her hips, the way she does when she’s discovered you still haven’t done what she asked.
Ten years have passed since she passed, and you’d like nothing more than to see her face, but that’s too bad; she’s silhouetted by the streetlights outside the windows. Then, as if on cue, a set of turning headlights flood the room that cause you to lean forward in the hopes of getting your wish.
The Beretta falls to the floor.
The sound draws your attention away from her and to your feet. The gun doesn’t go off, and she’s satisfied that her special guest appearance is enough to reroute your deliberation and leaves you by your lonesome.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The phone rarely rings. The last time someone you knew called it was Mom’s brother, Brian, on Groundhog Day 2005. He’d gathered the family first, gave them the news, then locked himself in his bedroom and gave you a ring, but got told to leave a message after the beep.
You’re manning an entry control point on a Navy base in Mississippi when you notice the screen on your phone is aglow and says you have a missed call, so you tell the overwatch you need to hit the head and check a message.
The voicemail asks you to give your uncle a call back. You know what’s coming: Grandpa Bill, Grandma Lynn’s second husband, is on life support in a hospital in Phoenix.
Or was.
When Uncle Brian answers, you hear the house bustling around him like when you call at Christmas. But instead of passing the phone around to other family members, you hear him close himself on the other side of a door and ask, “Have you heard?”
“Grandpa Bill,” you say more than ask.
“No, David, your mom.”
“What? What’s wrong with her?”
“She died.”
“What? When?”
“Today.”
The rest of the conversation isn’t clear, or staticky, and you’re unwilling to wrap quotation marks around it. One of you eventually has to hang up the phone, and then you’ll slide down to the floor where you’ll unsnap your pistol belt from around your waist and kick it as far away as you can. The bathroom door never latched quite right, so the overwatch catches a glimpse of you sitting on the floor, and asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Call the watch commander.”
He asks, “What’s going on?” when he sees you with your phone in one hand and the pistol grip in the other. You’re not thinking suicide,you’re thinking foul play. You’re thinking you can make it to Mom’s apartment before morning, but you’re not thinking straight. You’ve gone from a stoic sentry to a puddle. They see the have-gun-will-travel in your eyes and take away your car keys, and you write the inscription for Mom’s headstone on a cocktail napkin on an airplane early the next morning.
You’ll be fine if you can keep the pen moving.
Mom was the only one who encouraged you to write. She bought you a typewriter and then an electronic word processor, but the first thing you ever published is her obituary.
You write her eulogy at a tire shop right before you meet the reverend who suffers from Bell’s palsy, and all you keep thinking is how he’s going to slur and stammer the whole way through her final salutation. She deserves better, but this is all the family can afford.
Mom would slap you if she ever heard you say something of the sort. No, she’d give you nipple twisters. She knows you’ve been hit enough in this lifetime, so the one time you do bow up to her, remind her how much bigger than her you are, she reaches out and grabs onto your nipples, twisting them—up and out—making you even taller, sending you up onto your tippy-toes before setting you down onto your knees, and tells you you’ll never be as tough as she is.
She was found cold on the bathroom floor, her husband tells you, still wearing her bathrobe from earlier that morning, from when he went to work.
These are details you didn’t need, didn’t want, will never shake.
You spent Mother’s Day weekend at the Minneapolis MEPS a month before high school graduation. It would have—could have—should have—been the last Mother’s Day you spent with her before you went away.
The first time you raised your right hand, your tattoos could still be counted. Six. Now a heart with Mom and her birthday followed by Groundhog Day 2005 is inked deep into the flesh of your forearm, but it�
��s always covered by long-sleeved shirts. You think it’ll soften your exterior and let the past fade into memory. You’ve tossed away your razors too—hoping it’ll hide the clean-cut exterior so synonymous with the military man. But you still march with a thirty-inch step when you walk, swing your arms nine inches to the front and six to the rear, don’t you? You still punctuate sentences with sir and ma’am, don’t you?
You can still make yessir and yes ma’am sound a whole lot like fuck you.
The one letter you do receive while playing in the sandbox is from a high school somewhere in the Rockies. It’s from a Support Our Troops school project, but this seventeen-year-old has other things in mind. The words in her letter allude to it, and the picture she slips inside, wearing what some might call a swimsuit, solidifies it.
The letter gets filed in the trash, but somebody fishes it out and tapes her picture to the back of one of the stalls in the bathroom. You sit in the dark, staring at it until your legs fall asleep, more times than you can count, wanting nothing more than a moment of silence, privacy, solitude. If you could lean forward far enough to prop your forehead against the stall door, you could finally get some rest.
You shit-shower-shave in a bathroom big enough for a handful of men. Yet every morning, there is a handful crowded around each sink. Some mornings you piss in the shower while shaving without the water running. A Hollywood shower will get your ass kicked. A quick rinse will do. If you even decide to turn the water on, that is. Last you heard, the water they truck in is tainted. Some Lieuy went home with E. coli, another with Hep C, so you rinse your feet off with the rest of the bottled water you brushed your teeth with, and you go about the day.
You’ll be soaked with sweat soon enough anyhow, and once the sweat mixes with the kerosene the Kurds use to disinfect your uniforms, you’ll be as headachy as you were the morning you left for boot camp—when you took down a case of Reddi-wip because you knew whippets wouldn’t show up on a piss test. It’s harmless, as is everything else when you’re eighteen. It’s never brought up while talking to the doc, unlike the black mold that wormed six inches deep into the concrete walls of the berthing at FOB Suse.
As You Were Page 13