Veil of Silence

by K'Anne Meinel

  * * * * *

  “Do we have time to go shopping?” Marsha asked in an undertone as they did the dinner dishes. The children were playing outside before it got too dark.

  “I don’t know if we have the money…” Heather began hesitantly. She really didn’t want Marsha to know how poor they were.

  “Shit,” Marsha mumbled, wondering what else Heather hadn’t told her. Lieutenant’s pay hadn’t been huge, but the bump up to captain should have compensated somehow. She wondered what else she would find and hoped that it hadn’t been too hard on Heather or Hayley.

  “Was there something you wanted in particular?” she bit her lip worriedly.

  Watching Heather chew at her lip, Marsha knew that her wife was worried about something. She had always done that. It was endearing. It made her want to kiss Heather, and that surprised her. She hadn’t kissed her wife, not once since she had gotten back. She put on a bright smile. “Well, the kids can camp out for a while, but we will need beds…eventually.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that. I did pick up a car seat at the Goodwill today,” she told her brightly, pleased with her find. She’d gone out and scrubbed it down with Pine-Sol after they got home. She felt better with the rich citrus smell that now permeated The Wreck.

  Marsha knew then that her wife hadn’t had an easy time of it while she was gone. For her to be shopping at the Goodwill told her more than what Heather could say aloud. “We’ll make due,” she responded as she finished washing the last dish and Heather took it to dry and put away. Marsha waited until she closed the cabinet to lean over. “I’m sorry it’s been so hard on you,” she said sadly as she gave her a peck on the cheek.

  Heather was surprised. She hadn’t said anything and glanced around the house to see what had tipped her wife off. Marsha was amazingly perceptive and she’d missed that. She was also glad she was here and alive. She glanced down at the very pregnant belly. Marsha was wearing sweats again and it looked horrendous. She looked up again. The kiss had been nice and she took the black-haired woman in her arms to hold her and sighed deeply. She pulled back again to look at her face, noting the lines that hadn’t been there before. “We managed,” she returned before she leaned in to peck Marsha on the lips.

  Marsha responded, but barely. She didn’t want Heather to think she was thinking about sex. Her pregnant belly bumped between them and kept them from really being close, but the lip on lip action was nice. She deepened the kiss. “I’ve missed you,” she murmured against the blonde’s lips.

  “Only as much as I missed you,” she responded as her hands slipped down Marsha’s back to her buttocks to pull her closer.

  A group of giggles were heard and Marsha distinctly heard Bahir comment, “She didn’t kiss Mama or Papa like that.” She spoke clearly in Tajik.

  Marsha pulled back, but didn’t release Heather, who tried to pull away. “No, Bahir,” she said in English to correct the little girl. “I wouldn’t have kissed them like that because I didn’t love them. I love your Mommy Heather and she loves me.” She said it more confidently than she felt. She glanced at Heather who smiled in response. Heather let her go as it was not appropriate to show too much in front of the children, in her opinion. All they needed to know was that their two moms loved each other. She let Heather step back, but kept her arm around her. “Why aren’t you playing outside?” she asked the group, noting how dirty Amir had gotten and wondering if he had found mud in the back yard somehow.

  “We were thirsty,” Hayley told her, not sure how she felt about her imaginary, now real, mommy kissing her mom. Her mom looked happy about it though. She glanced between the two of them.

  “Well then, we should get each of you a cup of water,” Marsha announced and turned back to the cabinet where everything had already been put away. She reached for three cups, noticing how all the dishes were mismatched—another Goodwill purchase she was sure. It annoyed her, but there was nothing she could do about it. Heather filled the cups from the tap. “Shouldn’t we get a filter or a pitcher or something?” Marsha murmured, remembering how sick she had sometimes gotten on water from the mountain streams despite the remoteness of the regions.

  “In time,” Heather sighed. There was a lot she would have liked to have purchased over the years, but with barely making ends meet as it was and now three more mouths to feed, it was going to leave her short this month.

  The children soon had cups of water and were satisfied with that. They left to go play. Heather watched them for a moment and then Marsha suggested she go watch the disk.

  “I’ll watch the kids. I have so much to catch up on,” she indicated Hayley who was bossing around her younger brother and sister.

  “You didn’t watch Bahir and Amir play?”

  She shook her head. “I was a servant. The children knew that I was their mother, but Malekah was the first wife and she ruled the roost. They were ‘her’ children,” she said resentfully. “I was nothing more than a breeder.”

  Heather was horrified as what Marsha said sunk in. She picked up the disk from where she had laid it on the counter and went to watch it. Without the children in the house, it was the best time. She had a lot to learn.

  Heather watched the camera as it captured Marsha. She didn’t listen to the words, not at first. Instead, she looked at how tense Marsha looked. The video had been taken in Kabul, in the embassy apparently. She tried to pay attention….

  “I remember it was a beautiful day. Perfect actually, not a cloud in the sky. It wasn’t dusty as the rain had stopped the previous day. Even the rotors from the helicopter didn’t stir up much.” She glanced away from the camera at someone, apparently waiting for a response. Whatever he or she said compelled Marsha to continue. “I’d packed up the previous day and had my gear bag. So did the others. Two were being reassigned and one was going home, like me. We had to get to Bagram to take a flight out for home. It was going to be a quick hop by helicopter. It’s not like they sent it for us special or anything. Everything started out fine. It was as we flew over some mountains that we did a dip that had my stomach dropping out.” She petted her round stomach as she remembered.

  Heather smiled at the gesture that was so familiar. She’d done that a lot when she was pregnant with Hayley too.

  “We all hung on tightly to our straps,” meaning the straps that hung down from the helicopter in convenient spots. “I mean, we were all buckled in, so we didn’t worry, you know?” She looked around again at someone off-screen and then at a different angle before she continued, leading Heather to realize there was more than one person there. “A loud bang was heard and as I was by a window, I looked up. I swear I saw something spin off the chopper and black smoke could be seen streaming behind us almost immediately. I saw the pilot fighting the stick. He yelled that we were going down. They were both trying something, but as I’m not a pilot I don’t know how effective they were,” she stopped again to look away from the camera.

  “The crash itself was anti-climactic. I mean we knew we were going down, but it felt like something from the rides at an amusement park. Maybe those pilots really knew their stuff after all. Watching the others, I knew we were all facing the reality of dying. The spinning was sickening.” She rubbed her stomach some more and she had closed her eyes. “Knowing you are going to die and actually hitting the mountain…” she shook her head. She was quiet for a moment.

  “Were you hurt? Did anyone die on impact?” A voice that Heather recognized now as Captain McKellan asked into the quiet. He could see she wasn’t having an easy time.

  “The pilots were both dead. A huge boulder came through the front glass,” she opened her eyes to look into the camera and then glanced towards the other side of the camera. Obviously there were others in the room besides the captain and perhaps another.

  “Do you remember their names?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I had only just met them. Sergeant Ames was the only one I knew and that was because he was going home too.”
r />   “What happened when you hit?”

  “The noise was horrible, the rotors kept spinning and hitting the mountain side. I was afraid they’d somehow slice through the helicopter. We couldn’t get out the door behind the copilot as it was against the mountain. We were trying to get the door open on my side. It took three of us to pry it open as it had buckled a bit with our crash. We ended up kicking at the thing. The cabin was filling with that black smoke and I thought we were going to choke to death from it.” She paused for a moment, breathing deeply as she relived it in her mind.

  “So, the four of you were alive at this point?”

  She nodded. “I think so, but one of the guys was having trouble breathing. The black smoke,” she paused until Heather heard Captain McKellan, repeating what she had just said. “I think he was asthmatic, but I couldn’t be sure. Once we got the door open we heard this grinding noise as the blades finally began to stop. They were hitting the mountain and the clatter against the rocks was terrible.” She shuddered a little as she remembered, her eyes closing as she described it.

  “It was getting hot in there and Sergeant Ames yelled, ‘I think she’s gonna blow.’ We all scrambled to get out as the rotors ground to a halt. It was then we realized the fourth man hadn’t followed. Me and Ames went back to pull him out. Damn! It was hot!” she looked up and Heather grinned, knowing she was embarrassed that she had cursed. Someone must have done something off camera as she continued. “We pulled him out, choking and heaving. We drew back away from the helicopter about twenty-five yards, amongst some other rocks. The going was rough. We were, after all, on a mountainside. It was a good thing those rocks were there as the chopper did blow. The fireball went up and we could all feel the heat despite the distance. I must have passed out because when I came to, the others were missing and I was being pulled along by some locals. They were dressed very simply from what I had seen of other native Afghans. They kept yelling at me, but I didn’t understand them or their dialect.” She looked apologetic.

  “You didn’t see Sergeant Ames or any of the others?” Captain McKellan verified. As the camera caught Marsha’s nod, he asked, “You didn’t see what happened to the bodies of the pilots?”

  “I have to think they were blown to pieces by the explosion,” she answered.

  “Why do you think the chopper went down?”

  “Well it wasn’t anything they were doing that I could tell. Perhaps the chopper simply malfunctioned.”

  “Do these malfunction often, Captain?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Captain. I’m not a helicopter mechanic.”

  She told of how she was unceremoniously hung over the rump of a horse. She didn’t know if she had any injuries at that time, but she passed out again since her head was down over the side. When she came to, she was being raped. She glossed over that part of the story and looked away. Heather’s heart went out to Marsha as the pregnant woman gulped audibly and straightened her spine.

  “Would you like a glass of water?” Captain McKellan offered, and at her nod there was the sound of liquid being poured and then a glass came into view.

  She sipped at it, looking into the glass like she didn’t really know what to do with it after she had taken a drink.

  “Is something wrong, Captain?” another voice was heard, a woman’s.

  “The water is so clear,” she commented.

  “The water wasn’t clear where you were?” she asked.

  “Yes, it was straight from the streams in the mountains. There were some that the tribe knew we shouldn’t drink from. I don’t know how they knew, but I accidentally drank from one and ended up with the worst dysentery,” she confided with a rueful little grin.

  “Are you ready to go on?” Captain McKellan’s voice asked.

  “Yes,” she smiled and nodded and took another sip before continuing. She told about how she was taken into the mountains, how the tribe lived in caves and they avoided most people. She found out later that the pieces of the helicopter had been buried so that it wouldn’t be found and so that people wouldn’t come there to investigate. Even the vestiges of the explosion had been hidden, first by the tribe, and then by time.

  “How do you know that?” another voice asked, interrupting her tale, confirming Heather’s thought that there were others in the room behind the camera.

  “I heard the women talking about how their husbands had buried the debris they had found, how they found me and the others. They stopped talking when they saw that I could hear them. I never did find out what happened to the others,” she said, looking sad.

  “These people, they weren’t insurgents?” Captain McKellan’s voice clarified.

  She shook her head. “No, they seemed to be avoiding the fighting. They didn’t want their sons fighting a war they didn’t understand. They didn’t agree with it.”

  “They weren’t Afghan people?”

  “Yes, they were, but they didn’t want their sons killed for a war they didn’t agree with. We spent winters in the caves, hiding from people. Summers were spent on the plains or traveling.”

  “How did they travel…jeeps and trucks?”

  She shook her head again. “No, the only time I ever saw a jeep was the last day I was there when I stole it. They rode horses and kept to themselves. There are other nomadic tribes like that. They would meet up in the summer and their young people would be paired off. There are many that feel that way.”

  “They don’t want to fight?” Captain McKellan asked and Heather wondered if that might be important information.

  “No, their people don’t want to see their sons go off into the world. Anyone different,” she sounded like she was talking about herself, “was squashed or their modern thoughts ridiculed. I tried to introduce some modern conveniences, even making a paddle wheel in the stream for my son, and they broke it.” Her own voice broke as she remembered.

  “How were you treated?” Captain Lamar asked.

  “Badly,” she admitted. Her voice took on a hollow note. “I was given to the chief of this clan. His name was Zabi. He stopped the rapes from the other men when he claimed me. That didn’t mean he didn’t rape me himself. I learned later he took me because he felt I as an American warrior woman. He felt I was a challenge.”

  Heather’s heart was in her throat, crying inside for what her wife had endured. Her hand was on her chest as she watched her wife try not to have any emotion as she told what had happened to her.

  “Did you fight him? Did you try to escape?” Captain McKellan asked.

  She nodded. Her voice remained a monotone showing no emotion. “I tried many times. I didn’t know where I was. They beat me horribly.”

  “And you couldn’t escape?”

  “I was watched. All the time I was watched. When I managed to escape a few times they beat me on the soles of my feet. It makes it so painful that you can’t walk. Then they would beat me for not working.”

  “Did the beatings stop?” the woman’s voice from the other side of the camera asked

  “Only when I became pregnant that first year. Zabi was thrilled because his first wife was barren. She was older than he was. She resented me and the attention he gave me.”

  “Did she beat you too?”

  Marsha nodded. She looked tired. “She stopped when Zabi commanded her to. He was disappointed that my first child was a girl child. He,” she closed her eyes at the memory, “was on me as soon as I was no longer unclean. I lost that baby because of his beatings.”

  Heather was horrified at what Marsha had gone through. The details weren’t there, but the simple story she told was bad enough that her imagination could fill in the blanks. The camera caught the pain that the retelling of the story was causing.

  “The next baby was the longed-for son. My son. My son,” she repeated. “My children were given to the first wife, Malekah. They were treated as though she had given birth to them.” She closed her eyes again. “This one they hoped for another boy.” She rubbed her stomach pro
tectively. “All the men want boys to come after them.”

  She flinched at something and Heather wondered what was going through her mind. She looked over at what Heather guessed was Captain McKellan and asked, “Could we take a break?”

  “Of course,” he agreed and the video went blank. Heather looked up and saw Marsha leaning against the entryway to the living room. Both women had tears in their eyes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I have something to tell you,” Heather began later that evening after the children were in bed.

  Marsha tensed, even though nothing about Heather’s demeanor indicated anything might be coming that was going to upset her. Her fevered imagination was putting together tidbits that her wife had told her since she returned home. She’d dated others, maybe there was someone else.

  “When you first disappeared, they didn’t tell me. It was only after I inquired as to why I hadn’t heard from you that they finally told me. You promised to contact me from the base before you shipped out for home,” she reminded Marsha and the black-haired woman nodded.

  “I know they repealed DADT and we are allowed to be married in the service now, but they certainly don’t treat us equally,” she said with a tone of bitterness. “I had to do all the asking and they didn’t tell me much. After I made a nuisance of myself, a casualty assistance officer came to see me.”

  At the word casualty, Marsha started to frown. “Did they think I was dead?”

  “They didn’t know where you were. There was no sign of the downed helicopter, no crash site, and no survivors. They just didn’t know.” She started picking at the frayed edge of her jeans. She’d pulled her leg up for comfort on the couch and she played with the fronds as she continued her story. “He explained that he was assigned by the army to assist me in every way possible during the time while my loved one was missing or captured. Now, it hadn’t occurred to me that you were captured until then. I thought you were just hurt and unable to make contact with the army.” She looked up to see Marsha’s reaction to her thoughts. The black-haired woman looked concerned. “He explained to me that he was my immediate source for ensuring that I understand all the resources available to me, both military and non-military. He told me that he would be the one to go to for updates on your status, if there were any.”