A Journal for Jordan

by Dana Canedy

  I had just brought a glass of Chardonnay into the living room when the phone rang.

  “I don’t have to answer it,” I told her.

  “I think you should,” Robin said.

  As soon as I heard Charles’s mother’s voice, I knew something was wrong. His sister was on the line, too. Why would they be calling together?

  “Something has happened to Chuck,” his mother said.

  Charles and I had talked about what we would do if he were injured in combat. We were cuddling in bed when he said he might not come back the same, physically or mentally.

  I was emphatic. “If, God forbid, you lose an arm or leg over there, you will come home to us, you will grieve, and you will do your rehab here. Then you will get off your butt and help me raise this baby. I will not allow you to feel sorry for yourself for too long because at least you will still be with us. No matter what shape you’re in, I’ll always love you and, yes, I’ll still want to make love to you for the rest of our lives.”

  “That would take some getting used to,” Charles said, stroking my stomach.

  “It would be the same if I lost a breast to cancer,” I told him. “No matter what, we’ll always be a family.”

  Now, here was his mother on the phone, about to tell me he was hurt. I braced myself, mentally preparing to nurse him back to health, to make travel arrangements, to arrange a leave of absence from work. My mother would have to baby sit since I would stay with Charles until I could bring him home. I wondered if he was getting enough pain medicine, wherever he was. Had he suffered a head injury, lost both legs?

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “Dana, Chuck was killed,” his mother said.

  I collapsed onto the hardwood floor.

  I honestly did not recognize the sound that came out of my mouth. It came from deep inside, rhythmic almost, the kind of sound a wounded animal might make alone in the wilderness. I had no more control of it than I did my body. Thank God Robin was holding you, ori would have surely dropped you.

  I do not know if I lay there for five minutes or fifteen. I heard you crying and saw Robin taking you out of the room. Finally, I picked up the phone and put it to my ear. I could hear Mrs. King and Gail calling my name.

  They were liars, I told myself. How dare they say that he is dead when it is simply not possible? Why would they accept what the military said without doing any “reporting”?

  Denial is a powerful cushion against such a hard fall. I was tumbling into a hole, and denial kept me from hitting the bottom so hard that I would never climb out.

  I slowly got up, still shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone.

  “Are you sure?” I finally said into the receiver.

  “Yes, we’re sure,” one of them said. “The military was just here.”

  They can make mistakes, I wanted to yell.

  “He was riding in a convoy and a roadside bomb exploded under his Humvee,” one of them said. They were speaking to me as calmly and slowly as my college algebra professor used to when he explained a formula to me for the third time.

  I wanted to hold my Charles, kiss his lips, wrap my arms around his body.

  “Where is he?”

  “He is on his way to Dover,” Gail said. That was the air force base in Delaware, where the military first brings its fallen soldiers. “One of his soldiers is with him.”

  That’s good, I thought. He wont be alone.

  “The military is on the way to see you,” Mrs. King said.

  “Oh my God, what about Christina?”

  “The military has already been to her house,” Mrs. King said. “They notified her first. She called me crying hysterically. Her mother is with her.”

  Robin had come back and was bouncing you in her arms. You had stopped crying but looked frightened.

  Now, how am I going to help Robin?l wondered.

  But Robin had not been there because of Gerald. My mother had called her—after hearing from Mrs. King—and asked her to be with me when I received the news. Robin had known when she walked in the door that Charles was dead. She had let me pour wine and talk as if I still had my man and you still had a father. I was irrationally furious with her for an instant but then realized what an impossible situation she had been in.

  At some point, I heard Robin say, “Dana, you have to pull yourself together, for jordan.”

  Didn’t she realize that it had taken everything inside of me just to get off the floor?

  I paced for the next few hours, making phone calls to my parents, our closest friends, my office, and your babysitter. I put Charles’s watch on, smelled his clothes. I was so angry that we had sent them to the laundry before he left, washing away his scent and, to my mind, his essence. I picked up a pair of his black dress shoes hoping that the socks he had left in them might still bear a trace of him. I smelled only leather.

  My boss arrived with bags of barbequed ribs, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. So many neighbors and friends came to be with us until our family arrived that the doorman let them in unannounced. People took turns holding you, but you got fussy and I realized you were hungry.

  I pulled you to me and nursed you. You began suckling voraciously, as if my warm milk was a tonic for your own little aching soul. You fell asleep in my arms and I wanted to follow you. My fatigue had begun to crowd out my pain.

  I could hear hushed chatter coming from the living room when I left to put you in your crib. I imagined my friends asking each other how they thought I was doing, or shaking their heads in disbelief. I rubbed your back and listened to you breathing in the dark. Your father had sworn you looked just like me, but all I could see now was him.

  It was well after midnight when I persuaded everyone I needed to be alone and stood in the living room listening to the silence. You started crying and I felt the first stirrings of hope. It was as if your father was telling me that your life and your voice were preordained to replace his.

  I forced myself to drink a glass of water and take a vitamin to help keep up my milk supply. The military officials never arrived, so I put on one of Charles’s shirts, took the phone off the hook, turned out all the lights, and laid you next to me in bed. The rhythm of your breathing finally lulled me to sleep. My eyes soon popped back open and I stroked your head, thinking I felt a tumor. I rubbed that spot for at least fifteen minutes. Surely God would not take your father from us and then let you have brain cancer. I decided to take you for a CAT scan and some blood work, just to be sure. You stirred as I rubbed that spot, and I could almost hear Charles whispering in my ear to calm my nerves.

  Honey, it’s just the grief. You’re anxious and tired. Go back to sleep. I’m watching over both of you.

  I could feel him there, I tell you.

  The sun peeked through the blinds in the morning and I opened my eyes, remarkably calm. Had it been a dream? Then I saw the bereavement flowers on the nightstand, the first of many. Charles would never again lie next to me with you between us. I would never again feel his lips on mine.

  As soon as I put the phone back on the hook, it began to ring incessantly. My sister Lynnette arrived from Los Angeles. By lunchtime I had still not eaten and my friend Dorothy talked me into walking down the street to a Japanese restaurant. I sipped green tea and cried.

  “I should have married him five years ago,” I said, shaking my head. “I was so arrogant and immature.”

  Dorothy reminded me that we were a family in most every way that mattered.

  I knew she was right, but I had no pictures of us kissing at an altar, no shots of a first dance. I had our memories, Dorothy reminded me. They were images that could not be contained by apicture frame.

  “Do you think he wondered where I was when he died? Do you think he was scared?”

  Lynnette called. There were two military representatives sitting in my living room, she said.

  I had been prepared to bombard them with questions, but when I walked in the front door, the sight of those two soldie
rs made me queasy. Charles’s death was now official.

  There were introductions, handshakes. Then Master Sergeant Michael Damitio commenced with his official duty.

  “The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your fiance, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, was killed in action near Baghdad on October 14 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his armored vehicle. The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your son in your tragic loss,” Sgt. Damitio said in an impassive tone.

  He assured me that my soldier was wearing full body armor at the time of his death. I almost laughed out loud. It was like telling me that Charles was wearing a life vest when he drowned. Was I meant to imagine that the armor had stopped the blast from causing his chest cavity to cave in or his skull to fracture? If I had been there as a reporter, interviewing him about someone else, I would have asked: “What exactly did all ofthat gear protect?” And: “Has a grieving mother or spouse ever thought that hearing about body armor made their loved one less dead?”

  At the same time I felt sorry for Sgt. Damitio. He probably wished he were anywhere other than in my living room. He went on to say something about honor and heroism, but once I realized he was working from talking points, I tuned him out.

  “Did he suffer?” I asked, finally.

  “Ma’am, I don’t know.”

  “Was he conscious when they pulled him out of the vehicle?”

  “Again, I don’t know.”

  “Can I show you some pictures of him?” bure.

  He and his silent partner nodded approvingly as I showed them photographs of your father holding you for the first time. I did not care that they were only doing their duty. I needed to talk about my Charles to anyone who would indulge me.

  I said he was an artist, was so proud of his beautiful daughter and his new son, that he was coming home and retiring to marry me and to watch you grow up. They nodded some more, smiled at the appropriate times, and waited.

  I stopped talking because I was about to break down, and Sgt. Damitio saw his chance. “Ma’am, we need a few pieces of information from you,” he said, so quietly I almost could not hear him. “We need your son’s social security number and a copy of his birth certificate.”

  So that was it. They were in my home to gather information, not to give it. I imagined that in death notification training they were taught not to ask for the documents too soon.

  I was grateful that the corrected birth certificate with your father’s name where it always should have been had arrived two days earlier. I roughly calculated the time difference between New York and Baghdad and realized it had probably come about the time he was dying. I never had the chance to tell him we had received it.

  I handed Sgt. Damitio the documents he requested, said I knew he had a difficult job, and thanked him and his partner— who had not said a word but looked suitably solemn—for coming. They were kind enough, but I wanted them out of my home before I started screaming.

  I closed the door behind them and sat stunned. I thought about the sergeant’s perfectly polished patent-leather shoes, his precision haircut, and his crisp uniform. No wonder Charles had not allowed me to do our ironing. Who could get clothes that wrinkle-free?

  Something about the formality of the sergeant’s uniform, the erectness of his back as he spoke, his robotic delivery, had left me feeling cheated. Had he even noticed the grin on Charles’s face in those photographs of him holding you? The only evidence of emotion was the odor of cigarette smoke I thought I detected, which told me he might have tried to calm his nerves before he arrived. I thought about why I cared so much about this stranger’s demeanor. It was, I concluded, because Sgt. Damitio represented the entire military and government to me and so I needed him to be personally connected to my soldier.

  Did he know more than he was saying about how Charles died?

  I hoped I was done dealing with military personnel and bureaucracy. In fact, it was only the beginning.

  A few days later, Sgt. Damitio and his silent driver picked us up and drove us to Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn. The army needed to brief me about the benefits you were entitled to receive as Charles’s dependent. They also said you needed a new military identification card. I was not sure why.

  We sat in an office while a woman pecked your information into a computer and took your picture for the card. I looked at it and could not tell the difference between it and the one I had gotten for you just three months earlier. Then I saw it. The box denoting the Sponsoring soldier’s military status had been changed. Instead of “active duty,” it said “DEC”—deceased. I felt my stomach churn.

  Soon we were shuttled into another office belonging to a rotund man with piercing eyes and a demeanor that made Sgt. Damitio seem downright effusive. He gave me his card, which said “Retirement Services Officer.” I sat there holding you tightly as the man talked about survivor benefits and one-time emergency grants that help families in my situation keep the lights on during financial hardships. Then he said I might have trouble obtaining all that we were entitled to because I’d had you “out of wedlock.”

  I had no energy to challenge him. Instead, I sighed, and tears ran down my face.

  “My sweet, sweet Charles, how did we end up here?” I thought to myself.

  Then the officer said something that snapped me back to attention: “All right, I know you’re nervous, but you need to calm down.”

  It was the second insult in a matter of minutes. First he had treated me like some bimbo with a baby in tow who had come calling for her dead man’s money. Then he had the audacity to tell me how to express my grief. I had not so much as whimpered as I sat there, but even if I had, that man had no right to tell me to calm down. I was furious. My head felt like it was going to explode from the anger surging through me.

  I stood up and looked into his eyes to let him know I was not intimidated. “First of all, I am not nervous,” I said. “I am hurting. Charles may just be a number in a file to you, but he was the man I loved and the father of my child. We planned this baby and you have no right to judge.”

  I pulled a picture out of my purse of your father and me boarding a cruise ship and shoved it in the man’s direction.

  “Look at this,” I insisted, “so that you’ll remember the next time someone like me is sitting in front of you that their loved one was a person.”

  I turned to Sgt. Damitio. “He’s ajerk, and I’m not sitting here any longer,” I said and walked out of the building and into the sunlight with you in my arms. I knew I had violated some sort of military protocol, but I was not going to sit there and let that bureaucrat offend me. I knew Charles would have expected no less of me.

  When we got home, the message light on my answering machine was blinking. Among the dozens of messages from family, friends, and colleagues was an unfamiliar voice: a man who sounded raspy and far away—and anguished.

  “This is First Sergeant Wesley,” he said. “I’m calling from Iraq. I was a friend of First Sergeant King’s and we loved him very much. I know you are already aware of what happened. First Sergeant King gave me your number and he asked me to contact you to make sure you were all right if anything ever happened to him. I’ll call again to check on you when I return to the states in a few weeks.”

  I felt a surge of energy. Not even death could keep Charles from finding a way to let me know he was protecting us. For that moment, anyway, I could feel his embrace.

  Sgt. Wesley never did call again, but his message had served its purpose. I played it over and over when I was at my lowest.

  Cesar, the doorman of my building, stopped by one afternoon, hat over his heart, with a story to tell. That last morning, he told me, Charles was plainly crying when he emerged from the elevator. He motioned for Cesar to come near.

  “How can I leave my family? I need more time,” Charles said softly. “Please look out for them.”

  Cesar hugged your dad and promised that he would. Before he
could say more, Charles said he could not stay any longer. He picked up his duffle bag and was gone.

  Hearing this story, I wept. The Charles who had kissed me good-bye had been strong and unflinching. He had protected me from his tears, perhaps knowing that if he showed them to me, I would have done anything in my power to keep him with me.

  A few days later, the phone rang and another unfamiliar voice asked for me. It was Charles’s ex-wife, Cecilia. I had talked to Christina the day after we learned of your father’s death, but I had never expected to speak to her mother.

  “Dana, I just wanted to call and say I am so sorry,” Cecilia said. “I’ve been thinking about what to say to comfort you. Chuck loved you and Jordan very much. I want to say that I’ve had a chance to watch Christina grow up with some of the same qualities as her father. You have that to look forward to in Jordan.”

  I started sobbing.

  “Cecilia, thank you so much,” I cried. “I know you’re hurting, too. I just don’t know what to say.”

  She said that she was holding up and trying to be strong for Christina. She said I should call if there was anything at all she could do. I will never forget her graciousness, and the way it momentarily eased my suffering.

  Every part of me ached for Charles, but anger at him for having left us was beginning to creep in. Your father and I had been having a playful argument just before he returned to Iraq about what kind of dog to get for you someday. Charles wanted a Great Dane or a German Shepherd. I wanted a “teacup” dog.

  “Not no oversized rat,” he protested.

  “All right,” I said, “but if you go and die on me, you will lose this argument. I will get a dog so tiny I can carry it in my purse.”

  Now I was without him and all I wanted was another chance to bicker about dogs or how much I had spent on your shoes or how we planned to discipline you in the years ahead. (Charles was more of a strict disciplinarian.) I wanted to punch him for leaving me. I wanted to go to bed, pull the covers over my head, and stay there forever.

  But in you, Charles had given me a precious gift, and you deserved something more. A strong mother. Even a strong overwrought mother.