by E. L. Carter
I was a princess in a castle full of skin and hair, and when I didn’t eat I rode off fast on a horse, its fine grey fur slick with sweat, the kind with muscles roped under the skin and a soft mouth that responds to just a touch of the bit. The castle became cold and dark, I couldn’t stay warm there anymore, only in the bright field where the horse ran. I would lie on my back and ride, the perfection I had sought twenty pounds ago lost somewhere in the drafty castle, to the thrill of holding back, of holding the reins against my own hunger, the animal in me that was desperate for nourishment.
Mom began to force me. She would have Dad hold me down, arms pinned back, and then she’d squeeze my cheeks open, shove the spoon in, hold my chin up hard. I could only hold the food there for so long, and then I would lose, and swallow, and once I had lost I would go limp like a doll and let her feed me until she was done. Those were the only nights she slept next to me—and I was too old then to ache for her anymore yet here she was, the heat from her body filling the sheets between us and the sound of her breathing, slow and measured, not the breath of sleep but the breath of vigilance.
She slept with me so I couldn’t go to the bathroom. My bladder nearly burst. Both of us awake, quiet and still as death a foot from each other, at least a mile from a hug or some kind of peace. My stomach turned over and over, falling in a slow spiral away from perfection. Until the thing was done in the morning, too far gone for me to get it out.
It’s hard to explain what’s so satisfying about starving yourself. I know it was the first time I said “No” to Mom’s face. I know I stood before the mirror, mirror on the wall one day and saw something—a woman all bones, her hips sticking out like spoons on either side of her body, stomach tucked under a rack of ribs, the collarbones almost extending far enough to sprout feathers and flap away—and when I looked into the eyes on the face on that body, I felt like I had come home to something, and I don’t even know what, but I recognized myself from far away. I guess it was my coming of age.
Mom fought me. She didn’t know, of course, about the horse and the castle or the self in the mirror, and so I shouldn’t blame her, but I do, because she fought me and what I needed her to do was let me go. A therapist once called the thing she did love, and I have carried that like sand under my skin ever since.
I’d like to say we’ve all gone crazy, losing Kris, but really it’s ancient history.
December 1, 2003
My CO’s name is Connor. Lt. Colonel Connor H. Fritz. I would never call him by his first name to his face.
Connor has a good nose. I’m not a girl but I think he’s a babe. He’s built. Intelligent. Funny, but he can whip you if you step out of line. He’s perfect. He’s doing his dream job. He says he wants to make a difference, for America and the world.
Ever since New York, he has called me into his office to talk shit. Every time I leave, he says, “Come visit me anytime.” And then before I can take him up on it, I’m being ordered to his desk. Private Urquhart reporting, sir.
He always says, “Sit down.” And then, “What did you think about the news last night?” Or I’ll tell him about Lycorea cleobaea, the monarch relative in Costa Rica that eats figs and papaya. The last few weeks before we deployed, he wanted to discuss ancient Mesopotamia. Did you know artifacts in Iraq date from 120,000 BC? That’s a long fucking time ago.
The other thing Connor always says to me is “Kris, you’d make a good officer.”
I always say, “Thank you.” And then to myself, to make sure I don’t get hexed, “I’d make an even better lepidopterist.”
Since we got to Iraq, he hasn’t called me in. I thought maybe he was busy, getting ready and all. But what the hell, I was hanging around the FOB yesterday and there were no bugs at all, so I went and knocked on the door.
He offered me coffee and a seat. In New York he had a brown couch and a cloth chair. Here there was one folding chair to choose from. He sits behind his desk because there’s nowhere else to sit.
I start to tell him about the difference between the American cockroach and the Australian cockroach, both of which I’ve had the fortune to identify on base. I’m trying to make him laugh. I tell him the American cockroach can live for three months without its head. He’s fiddling with his pencil while I talk, and then all of a sudden it breaks. When it snaps, I stop talking, midsentence. He’s not laughing. He looks at me for a minute. Then he says, “In Desert Storm, we bombed the hell out of Iraq. You know that, right?”
I nod.
“I went in after, you know. A woman tried to give me this burned baby. She was so young, Kris, and she put it right against me, I had to reach out to keep it from dropping. It was all wrapped up, and then I looked down on it, and it was just pink and black, and there was an opening that must’ve been its mouth, because it screamed out of that hole.”
He put the broken pencil down. “What the fuck was I supposed to do for that kid? We had nothing like that in our first-aid kits. I held it while it screamed, and then I gave it back. The team leader said she should go to the hospital. She cried and tried to give it to me again. She wanted me to save it for her. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I tried all the things they told me to do. I found a nice, safe, secret place for that moment. I got pissed. I focused on my career. But this month, ever since we’ve been back, every time I try to go to sleep that little kid is there. I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. And I don’t know what to do.”
I don’t know what to do either. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“I hope war is kind to you,” he says. Then, like he flipped a switch, he picks up his coffee, sips it, and says, “I think John Kerry’s going to get the democratic nomination.”
December 2
Alleys, brick and dust and cobblestones. Alleys everywhere, snaking behind rows of houses, bazaars, intersections. You want to track a sniper, and you go into an alley. You don’t see a sniper. Big windows, little windows. Open windows cut out of mud. Windows with bars on them. Closed curtains rustling in the night wind. Rooftops crammed together in every direction and at every angle. Each rooftop is a small hop from the next. Everywhere you look, there is a new path. Dead end? You don’t know. Beneath the rooftops are layers of balconies, like a wedding cake made by a psychotic. The streets wind and disappear.
I think the true city is composed of alleys. The streets, the gates, the fronts of houses are just a mirage.
December 5
This is what I see: a peaceful Iraq, full of curious visitors who want to know what they are seeing. What is that beautiful bug? Nothing else could be of more concern to them. Not raw sewage. Not toxic waste strewn around like candy wrappers. Not homeless families living in burned-out buildings in the desert. So I will make a guide. A field guide. Not just to keep myself from going crazy, but as a way to visualize the Iraq I dream of.
December 6
The old woman is just sitting there. We came because there was a bomb. The car is still red-hot; the metal hasn’t rehardened. She’s on the sidewalk, the dirty tile sidewalk next to the grocery store where no one is currently shopping. She sits back from the edge where snowdrifts of litter push up against the curb, squashed pop cans, cardboard, wrappers, and unidentified detritus that seems to hold the trash together into a whole.
I’m supposed to make her move. When I approach, she turns her head, but she doesn’t look up at me. Instead she looks past me, straight ahead past my knees, her mouth drawn back and turned down into a grimace.
“Excuse me,” I say. Then “Marhaba.”
She doesn’t budge. It’s as if I’m not there. I crouch down so my face is in her line of sight instead of my knees. “Shlonek?” I ask.
Her eyes flick over my face without stopping to rest. What does she see? A young man whose body is inflated and hardened by ceramic armor, a helmet, sunglasses. I pull the sunglasses off. She turns and spits onto the tile in front of her. Slowly her head turns back my way, but she looks to my left, past my shoulder. Her abaya is worn and
I can see where the dust has gathered from the explosion, creating a light grey coating on the black fabric.
Over in the street I hear Eric yelling at someone to get the fuck back, and then I hear Benja saying “Shut up, man.” I don’t know if he’s talking to Eric, or an Iraqi. I can’t think of a particularly good reason to make the old woman move. I think she knows her risks. Maybe she has explosives strapped to her side. Maybe she knows someone who just died.
I’ve spent my whole life disobeying orders. I guess old habits die hard. I leave her there and go back to my team.
BAGHDAD—AUGUST 2005
Where is the original Baghdad, the circular city built in the eighth century on the site of the Garden of Eden? When Caliph al-Mansur named it paradise, could he have imagined this scene? The bombed-out first madrasa, the cafés no one can visit, the looted museum, the holy people picking up machine guns and killing each other in the name of Allah? Where is the Garden of Eden, exactly?
I don’t even know where the dozens of famous mosques are, or the museum of ancient manuscripts, the old ramparts and palaces, fragments of thousands of years of history, the tomb of Joshua with the trained snake guarding it, the Sufi masters. I would like to travel south and visit the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but all I know are the cement walls of my hotel, the smell of hot smoky air, the fear that has grown around me like the hijab I wear, a cloth that consumes my body.
The butterfly sits on the table next to the bed, waiting for its moment to fly. One of the beads has fallen off and I don’t know where I would get the glue to restick it. Kris would have hated it anyway. The wing pattern is unrealistic, the abdomen disproportionate to the thorax, the antennae the wrong shape. But I smile when I look at it, which says a lot. Having a chance to smile is better than fresh blueberries, a big soft towel, or any of the other things that have in two days’ time already become bizarre abstractions, visions of a hedonistic world I can scarcely imagine. There’s no black market on smiles, no secret connections or cash services for a belly laugh.
My fixer—I’ve discovered that this is Raed’s title—comes and goes like a ghost, knocking on my door or calling when he has something to say or something for me to eat. He works for the NGO, but now he works for me too. I will pay him a bonus every week to help track down my treasure. Today he tells me about his excursions through the city, which streets are impenetrable, where the suicide bombs have gone off. He hasn’t been to the neighborhood that Kris’s staff sergeant directed me to. The NGO, providing aid to families in crisis, is his primary client. He says we’ll have to see if it’s safe to go there when he has time.
Raed has nothing good to say about Americans. He complains about the indiscriminate bombing, the accidental killings, the road blocks, the traffic, the power outages. Really he’s complaining about being occupied. He doesn’t say he hates me but I can’t really imagine why not. Maybe tomorrow he’ll go over there.
NEW JERSEY—EARLY JUNE 2005
The man at the restaurant is a concert pianist. If there were another section and another waitress in this godforsaken place, I would make sure to seat him there. He pauses when I hand him his french toast, as if studying tea leaves dumped on the table. Takes a bite, then announces his prediction: “It’s better with blueberries.”
I consider my options. Nod and run, find something demeaning to say, or stay professional. I say, “Fresh blueberries aren’t quite in season, but I can ask the chef if she has any frozen ones we can add.” I begin to back away, my hands in my apron pocket, fiddling with the order book, flipping the pages against my index finger.
“Maddy,” he says, slowly, savoring the forbidden fruit of my name, “Stella tells me you’ve spent time in Canada. They say you can pick blueberries by the gallon up north.”
The man is a concert pianist. A beautiful concert pianist who does his research. I don’t know why Stella likes to talk so much. I want to spite her, but I can’t because everyone she’s ever loved has died, so how can I hate her for wanting people to be happy together, or even for wanting her own place in the game? I try to remember the stories of mine she holds, like a full house in her hands. We trade stories like cards between shifts, or in the middle of the night doing dishes—Istanbul or the Upper East Side, restaurants and managers and lovers and fantastic recipes. I say, “There are lots of blueberries, but they’re small. You have to sweeten them.”
“The wild strain. Sometimes it’s hard to survive winter and stay sweet at the same time.” He smiles.
I don’t. I feel the clip on the lid of my pen snap between my fingers. Stella talks too much. She left me naked out here, and I’m not getting those kinds of tips. “Sweet is the cheapest flavor anyway.” I turn on my heel and walk toward the back.
Go away, I say to him from behind the curtain of the kitchen area. Go away! Why is attraction oppression? Why can’t I wear a black veil, a widow’s veil? It would be my little sanctuary. Stella calls out, “Table five is up!” and I bristle. Walk to the counter, look at her, sweaty under her hat, her grey curls popping out the sides, all business now and not a trace of shame.
“Do me a favor,” I say as I gather up the plates. “Let the concert pianist pay for his food, and not for every story I’ve ever told you. Okay?”
She pulls the skillet off the burner and holds it suspended above the flame, the pause button for chefs, and looks at me. “There’s energy between you. I can see it.”
“Stella,” I say. “I lost my brother. Romance is like a tablespoon of cloves in the pie. Please.”
She drops the skillet back down and it immediately resumes sizzling. “Whoopee shit, girl. Life is for the living. You’re lucky if you find a man like that to love.”
Stunned into silence, I take the plates for table five, a Benedict and another french toast, and head back out into the open. I can see Avi across the room, his eyes on me as soon as I appear, the bones of his face defined and square, his game with me still on, and I don’t know who will lose what.
I don’t ask him how his meal was and I never bring any blueberries. When I clear his plate, I say nothing, and he just sits reading his paper like I’m the hired help. Just a waitress! The plates clang against each other. He won’t look at me.
I guess it’s a relief to see the distance in his eyes.
I stand at Mrs. Bird’s front door with a bouquet of her zinnias in one hand, the scissors in the other. Water droplets cover hand, scissors, and flowers, and when I take off my jacket my hair drips inside my shirt. She takes my jacket for me and then leads me down the hallway, as has become our ritual. I drop onto the couch as she runs her fingers through the wet flowers, combing the orange, fuchsia, and yellow orbs. I’m raining on her couch now. The clear beads hover on the fabric and disappear. “There’s a man at the restaurant I work at,” I blurt out. “A concert pianist. He stares at me like I’m food.”
She stands still for a while, looking at the zinnias. Then she says, “His art won’t make you happy.”
How dare she? “I want a man about as badly as I want a car wreck.” I set my cup down. I won’t drink it.
She’s quiet for a long time. Finally she says, “You were really good at the harp.”
I look up at her. There’s too much love in her eyes to bluff. “That’s what people said. I don’t know if it’s true or not.” I put my shaky hands in my lap and hold them together, two children comforting each other.
“And?” Her gaze doesn’t waver.
“I don’t play anymore. When I told you I was running to be happy, it was only partly true. I’m also running from trying to figure out the answer. About whether it’s true or not.”
Mrs. Bird’s eyes shadow over. Her sadness or mine, I don’t know. “As if the answer to that question could bring you love.”
I say, “How do you know?”
“Wanting to be loved through art is a poisonous occupation. It’s like selling your soul to the devil.”
“Maybe good art is worth it.” Why am I ly
ing? If I were telling the truth, I’d still play.
Mrs. Bird shakes her head.
Years ago, Grand-mère paid for me to study with a tall, graying older woman who had studied at a famous conservatory in Paris. She had me play endless scales, untold sonatas by Naderman, and she yelled as if she’d been hurt every time I hit a wrong string. The harmonics had to be in exactly the right place on the string or they failed and she ran toward me with her hands up as if she might clobber me. Somewhere between my fear of her and my love of the mindless place I floated to when I played, the idea was presented that I should aspire to be a concert harpist. Whose idea was it? Maybe Mme. Martin’s, or maybe my parents’. I don’t think it was mine but I swallowed it and it became part of every song.
When I practiced, Dad would stay in the doorway as if it were standing room only. He always stayed for the whole song and the look on his face made me blush. I held my fingers in a crab shape and plucked a series of harmonics, a perfect octave up. His red hair, pushed away from his eyes, bounced and swayed as he nodded his head to the rhythm. The easy answer is that he loved what I did.
When Dad was a child he played piano like I did the harp. Then there was a long interlude of years, the dark ages. And then as a teenager, between high school and college, he had gone to Europe and North Africa. Whenever Dad talked of these two time periods, which percentage wise he did more than many other things, there was reverence in his tone. Not so much about the things he saw or the pieces he played, but about himself—about the person he used to be on the piano bench. He never spoke of himself with reverence in the present tense.
That was before he went to Vietnam. Before he returned bloated like a corpse, full of stories he couldn’t tell—not to his wife, or a psychiatrist, or even a pillow. Before he turned to medicine to wash the stories out. He filled himself with anything he could find—scotch, cooking sherry, Listerine. The stories didn’t wash away. They floated inside him, in the poison, and the music got trapped, locked down in a body too drunk to sing. The need for music will never go away. But war was stronger. Music was a POW and Dad went quiet.