Chutzpah & High Heels

by Jessica Fishman

  After dinner, we are taken to our tents, which make the cold sorority dorms sound cozy. I feel like a toddler going to bed right after dinner. In my bed, I hear the other girls talking. I haven’t said a word to anyone today except, “Yes, mifaked” when my name was called at roll call this morning.

  The girls with whom I am bunking are totally different than my AEΦ sisters. Unlike the JAP mold that all my fellow sorority sisters came in, these soldiers are as diverse as the ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s, but not as sweet.

  As I quietly crawl into my sleeping bag, the others start talking. Many pull out their phones, as this is the first time all day we can use them.

  “Mom, I miss you. This is horrible. It is so cold. The food is awful. The commanders are so mean. I want to come home,” one girl sobs on her phone.

  “Does anyone know when we have to get up tomorrow?”

  “When do you think that we are going to get our guns?”

  “I need enough time to do my hair and my makeup.”

  “When do you think we will get our first weekend off? My boyfriend is in the paratroopers and I haven’t seen him in a month. He is supposed to get next weekend off.”

  Crackle, crackle, crunch. Another girl is opening up a bag of Bamba, which is basically peanut butter Cheetos. “My mom sent some homemade brownies with me. Does anybody want?” offers the chubby girl who seems to think she is at sleep-away camp and not the IDF.

  “I want to be a female combat soldier. My whole family is in the army. My dad is a really high-ranking officer. I’ll be the first female chief of staff. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to get done with my service as easily and quickly as possible. I’m actually thinking of joining a women’s yeshiva and pretending to be religious to get out of it.”

  “Did anyone notice that the showers don’t have doors or curtains? I’m not going to shower during all of boot camp. How many weeks do you think we will be here?”

  I am so tired from the day that I fall asleep before the girls stop talking. I guess being five years their senior, I can’t keep up with them. I was too worn out to write another page in my army diary. I wonder if I’ll have the time in the next two years to write another page.

  Before I even realize that I’m sleeping, I am rudely awakened by our commander yelling, “In fifteen minutes you were dressed and ready.”

  Lessons in Etiquette

  It is still dark and cold outside. The thought of getting out of my sleeping bag seems like the most painful thing in the world, so I try switching out of my pajamas and into my uniform while still under my covers as if I’m a junior-high-school student in the locker room, ashamed of my developing body. After getting dressed, I rush to the bathroom, which is already filled with girls.

  The entire unit shares the same bathroom. These facilities make bathroom rest stops seem as sterile as operating rooms. Instead of sinks, there is a big trough, the toilets do not have seats on them, and the showers have no curtains. The drains of the showers look like Cousin It is trapped inside and all the toilets are clogged, which is odd, since we are not provided with toilet paper.

  It might have felt like summer camp with us all brushing our teeth together, if it were not for the commanders outside with guns on their backs yelling at us, “You have nine minutes and twenty-three seconds and then you were in the chet formation.”

  Some of the girls are rushed and stressed, worried that they won’t make it on time. Other girls mumble under their breath for the officers to shut up. They are still teenagers. They are still in their rebellious stage. I have already accepted that for the next three weeks I will have to do what these teenage commanders are asking . . . or demanding. I choose to obey. After all, I’m a volunteer. It makes it easier, thinking that I actually have a choice.

  “You have nine minutes and fifteen seconds and then you were in the chet formation,” the officer yells again. It feels like I’m on a bad Sesame Street episode in which they are teaching counting backwards.

  No matter what we do, we are timed. And we are usually given a ridiculously small amount of time to perform a task, like build a tent in three seconds or make dinner for the entire unit in three minutes. It is like they are purposely trying to make us fail.

  We are always counting backwards, like Cinderella reaching midnight, or a countdown to a bomb explosion.

  “You have five minutes and thirty-five seconds until you were in the chet formation”

  The commander keeps using the past tense to explain something in the future, which keeps confusing for me, since I’m still working on mastering my tenses.

  We are now all standing in a shape that resembles a chet and a few stragglers are running towards us with only five seconds to spare. I look at our commanders. It almost looks as if our commanders are hoping that the soldiers won’t make it so that they can yell at us.

  We spend the next twenty minutes trying to yell hakshev, attention, in the right manner. There is a correct way to greet a commander, and it is not, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the commander.” The actual salute is much more complicated and must be said at lightning speed. The soldier at the right end of the chet is responsible for addressing the commander, so I resolve to never be in that spot.

  After learning army greeting etiquette, we are then given a lesson in bed-making. There are more ways to fold, roll, and hang a sleeping bag than I had ever imagined. It reminds me of my days working women’s retail.

  Bed-making takes more than two hours and it is still not even 8:00 A.M. Since I had barely eaten anything last night, my stomach keeps grumbling and I’m worried that I’ll be yelled at for making noises without asking permission.

  We are finally marched over to the mess hall. As we are waiting in our single-file lines, a commander walks between our lines and rows and inspects our uniforms. He scrutinizes us more than movie stars are criticized at the Oscars for their outfits. Since we are all starving, it feels like we are about to go out on the runway, minus the makeup and the heroin, of course.

  “Your appearances are sloppy. You are not up to code. Your work pants have to be tucked into your boots. For those of you who aren’t wearing boots, tuck your pants into your army-issued gray socks,” orders our commander.

  Wearing black Reebok tennis shoes, I bend over and tuck my pants into my thick, scrunched down, tube socks. I turn to the girl next to me and whisper, “I feel like I belong in the movie Flashdance.”

  With her forehead crinkled up and a zit on her nose, she looks at me like she has no idea what I’m talking about. I think to myself, “Wow, I am old!” She had not yet been born when I was wearing hair scrunchies and bright pink eye shadow.

  After our uniforms are approved one by one, we are allowed to enter the mess hall. But once I see the food, I lose my appetite. The food from last night was laid out buffet style in cold metal serving trays. I had been told that many girls gain weight in the army, but with this food I don’t understand how. After drinking some chalky liquid that is labeled juice, I sneak back to my tent to take a much-needed fifteen-minute nap.

  Would You Like Whipped Cream With That?

  My eyelids feel as heavy as lead. I feel like I haven’t slept in years. I’ve only been here three days. I’m trying to keep them open because an extra-long blink will get me yelled at in front of two hundred girls. The punishment for sleeping is standing for the rest of the lesson.

  It is hard to pay attention to a lecture when I only understand one out of every four words. It is hard not to zone out and fall asleep. I’m sure the information is important, but there is no way I can understand it, no matter how hard I try. I can concentrate until I have a migraine, but then the only result will be my head hurting. I try asking people next to me what things mean, but I get yelled at for talking. I accept that I will understand less than thirty percent of the lecture.

  Every day we have a different lesson. We have been taught Israeli history, IDF history, IDF rules and regulations, different ranks
and units, CPR and first aid, radio communications, dieting skills (so we won’t gain weight), and other necessary information that most of them will never use as secretaries in some office.

  Most of the girls in this type of bootcamp—except for me of course—will be glorified secretaries. If the IDF really wants to prepare them for army positions, then they should teach them how to answer phones, use Outlook, and serve coffee. But there is no way that I’ll end up making coffee for someone. I certainly am no Starbuck’s barista, considering the fact that the last time I made coffee, I made it for Orli and she went running to the sink to spit it out, since I accidentally used salt instead of sugar.

  I force my eyes open as they begin to droop again. I wish I had some coffee now, even with salt.

  Boot camp is wearing me down. I’ve showered once in three days. My hair is greasy enough to fry food. I’ve stopped having bowel movements. I’ve eaten maybe a total of two full meals. And I still have yet to get my gun.

  “You’ll be tested on this information so you better pay attention. The next lesson is on gun parts. After you successfully label all the pieces of an M-16, you’ll receive your weapons.”

  Knowing that I’ll never learn all those Hebrew words in time, I wonder if I’ll get a plastic gun instead.

  Shopping Spree

  We are about to get our guns. There is electricity in the air. We know that we will never need to use them, nor do we ever really want to have to use them, but there is still something thrilling about holding a semi-automatic weapon.

  My commander hands me the gun and shows me how to attach the strap to it. After connecting it, I hang it over my shoulder.

  “What do you think you are carrying? A purse? Put it around your shoulder and carry it behind your back!”

  Embarrassed that this is something my AEΦ sorority sisters would do, I quickly put the strap over my head and lay it between my boobs. My gun is hanging behind my back. The kaneh, barrel, hits my calves.

  The next girl receives her gun. She used to be a gymnast and is so short she could easily date Gary Coleman and still wear heels. When she hangs the M-16 over her back it nearly drags on the ground.

  By the time everyone receives their guns, my shoulder hurts from the weight and a bruise is forming on my calf. These new accessories are not very comfortable. I’m already beginning to feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The only person that this gun is going to injure is me.

  “You have five seconds and you were in the chet formation!” our commander declares.

  Even after nearly a week, we still can’t get the chet formation down. It takes us nearly two minutes to get into configuration, and yet North Korea can arrange more people in a dance routine than we have in our entire country in ten seconds flat.

  As the commander is yelling at us, I remember how excited I was at sixteen to shoot an M-16 for the first time when I was a pretend soldier in the IDF. When we first got our guns then, we didn’t even really get to hold them. Instead, we sat in classes for hours while the guns sat on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall. We were forbidden to touch them, get near them, or even look at them for too long.

  Now, the commander grabs my hand and stuffs a rag into it. He tells all of us to sit down in our chet formation. Demonstrating how to strip a gun, he tells us to follow. We take the gun apart into little pieces. It doesn’t seem so intimidating lying on the ground in multiple parts that could just as easily be used in a car, a lamp, or a toy.

  “Start wiping it down. Use up and down motions, like this!” orders our commander.

  We spend the next two hours jerking off our guns with a rag. After having shared such an intimate experience with it, the gun feels like it’s mine, more than just a random piece of metal, like it had when I was sixteen. I have a feeling that whenever we have some spare time during our boot camp, our officers will tell us to start cleaning our guns.

  During the next few days I wipe my gun more times than I wipe my ass. The worst part is that we won’t even get clips or bullets for our guns until our first shooting practice. We walk around with our guns, but without a clip, for nearly a week. It is like my sorority sisters walking around with Prada purses, but without any of Daddy’s credit cards—we can’t really do any damage.

  A Not-So-Imaginary Friend

  We have to carry our guns with us everywhere. M-16’s become the newest, must-have fashion trend on our base, but unlike the accessories that Paris Hilton carries around, this one cannot be encrusted with diamonds.

  I eat with my gun on my lap. I sleep with my gun as a pillow. I share a bathroom stall with it. I stare at it when I shower. It becomes my shadow except I can always feel its weight on my back. I wonder if this is what it’s like to have a baby.

  If we ever forget our guns, we are yelled at by our commanders. It feels like it would be worse if we left our guns somewhere than if we accidentally left our kids in the car . . . on a hot day . . . with the windows rolled up.

  The worst part is that I have this weapon on my back and the only thing I know to do with it is hold it in different positions during our morning inspections.

  “Stand at attention,” a commander yells to the entire platoon.

  CLOMP, STAMP, BANG, BANG, THUD.

  In sync, hundreds of us move our guns from their positions on the ground to holding the butt in the palm of our hands and standing straight with our feet together and heads up.

  “Stand at ease,” the commander yells.

  THUD, BANG, BANG, STAMP, CLOMP.

  Vastly improved from not being able to make the chet formation, we still sound like a bad version of Stomp as we put the butts of our guns back on the ground, move our legs apart, and slam the barrels of our guns into our hands.

  We do this another fifteen times.

  “Break into your classes. Your commanders will check your guns.”

  It is 8:30 A.M., we have not eaten yet, and this is the fifth time today that our commander is checking our guns.

  We line up in a single file line. We follow every instruction that the commander says.

  “Angle your weapons up to sixty degrees,” our officer commands.

  “Weapon at sixty degrees,” we say simultaneously, while also raising our guns to point to the sky.

  “Turn the switch to semi.”

  “Switch turned to semi.”

  “Check for a bullet in the chamber.”

  “No bullet in the chamber.”

  “Pull the trigger.”

  Click.

  Not surprisingly, nothing shoots out.

  Then the pimply-faced commander goes through the entire line and looks in the bullet chamber to make sure that there is no bullet in the chamber.

  A terrorist is more likely to find 72 virgins in heaven than our commander is to find a bullet in our gun chambers.

  At the other side of the line he yells, “Is your gun parok, badok, and nazor?”

  Like a pep squad, we reply, “The gun is disarmed, checked, and on safety.”

  They seem to worry a lot about impossible things. I guess you can’t take the Jewish grandmother out of the Israeli army.

  Would You Like Ketchup With That?

  This morning our officers told us that we were going to the mitvach. I was surprised when all the girls got excited, because I thought that this meant we had kitchen duty. It turned out that I was wrong. Mitbach is kitchen. Mitvach is the shooting range.

  We left for the shooting range around dawn. It is now lunchtime and we have yet to even hear a loud noise.

  While sitting on the sandy ground with the wind hitting my back, I’m watching two girls scraping something called loof out of a can and spreading it on a stale piece of bread with a primitive can opener. It looks like pinkish dog food for humans, and smells worse. It is guess-from-what-part-of-the-animal-is-this canned meat.

  Our lunch is manot krav, battle rations. It looks and tastes nothing like the packed lunch that includes a little “love you” card that I got as
a kid at Hebrew day school.

  After sitting around like a bunch of prisoners, we are called into the outdoor shooting range, which is a pure concrete building with three walls, a ceiling, and a floor. We look out to the field and see cardboard cut-outs of terrorists, like those of actors at movie theaters.

  Every precaution is taken. We’re given reflectors to put on our shoulders so that we will be seen in the dark. We are given ear plugs so that our ears don’t ring. We are given exact instructions on what to do. But the most important instruction is that we are not allowed to do anything unless we are told to do it.

  Everyone is on edge. No one talks. Our commander seems more tense than normal. The army seems so much more real to me today than it did yesterday. It feels like we are about to go on a mission.

  We stand in a row with our guns by our sides. I look down the row. Everyone looks identical. I look exactly like them, but I still don’t feel like them. I feel like an outsider, but my uniform makes me blend in.

  Facing forward, I’m staring at the terrorist “movie star” cut-outs that we are supposed to shoot. One of our commanders walks down the line and hands us each a clip filled with ten bullets. We are not to put the magazines in until we are specifically given the command to do so. Baby steps.

  This time feels different than my time at Gadna when I was sixteen years old. This time it is my gun. This time I won’t be giving my uniform back the next day. We are told to go down on one knee. To put in our magazines. And before I know if I’m supposed to shoot or propose to the cut-outs in front of me, the commander yells, “Fire!”