Veil of Silence

by K'Anne Meinel

  “No, Mom, you can’t say a word until the army says it’s okay,” Marsha tried to explain, but she could see the glint in her mother’s eye and knew it was hopeless. She’d be on the phone tomorrow, disregarding protocol. She tried anyway. “If word of my appearance makes it on the news and they hear it over there…” she began.

  “You already said they didn’t have television, so how are they going to hear?” she pointed out reasonably.

  “They have friends and I’m sure they are looking all over for me.”

  “Pssht, those backwoods rednecks won’t be able to find you over here,” she dismissed.

  “Those ‘backwoods rednecks’ as you call them,” she made the quotation marks to emphasize what she was about to say, “have been fighting Americans and Russians for decades and winning.”

  “They can’t possibly win against our superior firepower.”

  Marsha gave up. She couldn’t argue with someone so set in their own ideals and way of life, one who couldn’t fathom that technology and modern warfare meant nothing to those people. They would and they could win a war…and they had kept her hidden for five years. They would and they could find her if they wanted. She swallowed as she looked at her three children playing.

  “Now, we should plan a family picnic so I can invite…” her mother started again, making plans.

  “I can’t,” Marsha tried saying several times to no avail. One of the many reasons she had joined the army was to escape this woman. Having her close enough that she could hop in a car and drive to her house wasn’t something she relished. She let the woman plan on. After an hour, the children were getting restless and Heather squeezed her shoulder again to remind her that they needed to get to bed, not just the children, but the adults as well.

  “Well, Mom, it was nice of you to visit, but we have to get the kids to bed,” she began, trying to get her mother to leave.

  “Oh, I’ll help,” she assured her.

  “No, Mrs. Gagliano. We have a system,” Heather tried interjecting.

  “I’m sure you do dear, but I know best,” she assured her condescendingly.

  “Mom, it’s best that we follow our system so the kids go to bed on time and in the same way. Heather reads to them and I–”

  “Well, when you were little I just told you to go to bed and there was none of that reading nonsense.”

  “Yes, Mom, I remember; however, it’s been a long day and I have another tomorrow….”

  “Can’t you take a day off? After all, we came all this way to see you and Hayley.”

  “No, Mom. I can’t take a day off. There is no such thing as a day off in the military. I’m sure you remember that.” She looked to her father who smiled and nodded. He was always so oblivious to his wife’s rude mutterings.

  “Well, I’ll have you know…” she began again and Marsha had had enough.

  She got up from the couch, which wasn’t an easy feat in her condition, but she still managed it fairly gracefully. “Well, Mom, it was nice of you to visit, but now you need to go,” she told her bluntly.

  “I’m sure we can arrange dinner or something after your work tomorrow,” she tried sweetly as she reluctantly got up.

  “No, Mom. I don’t think so,” Marsha said smoothly, trying to contain her temper.

  Lawrence put his hand to the small of his wife’s back, giving her a slight push, realizing, perhaps belatedly, that his daughter and her wife were trying to get rid of them.

  “Say goodbye to your Grandma and Grandpa,” Heather told the children, particularly Hayley who would understand.

  The little girl, having heard the anger in the adult’s voices, was a little reluctant. She could remember very well how confused Grandma had made her feel. She didn’t understand it, but Heather had always been her comfort when she returned home. She gave both her grandparents a reluctant hug goodbye.

  “Dad, see if you can keep this out of the media,” Marsha warned him in an undertone, her mother having left without saying anything to her. After all, her daughter wasn’t of further use to her at this moment and it didn’t revolve around her.

  “I’ll do what I can, sweetheart,” he promised, knowing how ineffectual he could be. He saw the pride his daughter had in her children and knew he couldn’t subject her to the legions of reporters that would descend if his wife opened her mouth. He’d do what he could.

  Marsha gave her father a sideways hug.

  “You let us know when this one is about to arrive,” he teased her as he poked her belly.

  “I’ll do that, Daddy,” she promised as she grinned and let him out of the house. Her mother was already standing impatiently by the car. “That woman could cause an avalanche,” she muttered as she waved to them as they left. She turned to see that Heather already had taken the children to the bedroom. She was telling them a bedtime story in the tent they had made in the room. She smiled, wondering if Hayley had slept even one night in her own bed since her siblings had arrived. She sighed. They really needed to get some more beds.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Babe, are you okay?” Heather watched Marsha anxiously that night.

  Marsha looked up from where she was sitting on the couch, rubbing her stomach unconsciously as she watched television. She was surprised at the shows that were on and was avidly watching a TV drama that featured lawyers. The lead prosecutor was hot. She didn’t tell her wife she had a major crush on the woman, although they would both laugh over it. “Yeah, why?”

  “You look uncomfortable.”

  “Oh, it’s just the lasagna. I don’t think junior here,” she rubbed harder, “likes Italian.”

  “He or she better like Italian since you’re the mama,” she quipped with a grin as she leaned over to give her wife a kiss. “I like Italian.”

  Marsha smiled as she returned the kiss wholeheartedly. She had missed this kind of closeness. She had missed affection. She wished she could be more intimate with her wife, but just being held, cuddling in bed at night, was all they had. She had tried to initiate more, but Heather wanted to wait until after the baby was born and things weren’t so one-sided. At first, Marsha had been offended. She was pregnant, not sexually dead, but she suspected Heather had spoken to the psychologists and her PTSD over being raped might be part of it all. In her mind, or at least what she had told the SERE psyches was that it was absolutely and totally different. Zabi had been a man, her wife was a woman…it didn’t compare. They assured her that was a major factor, however sex and the violence put upon her and her body may cause flare-ups. They advised caution.

  Marsha wasn’t so horny in these last few weeks that she couldn’t wait. She hoped to resume a fairly normal relationship with her wife. She couldn’t believe how understanding and kind Heather had been; however, she had known her wife was a keeper, a one-in-a-million kind of woman. She loved everything about her. She smiled up at her after she pulled away from the kiss. “I love you,” she responded to her.

  Heather smiled in return and caressed the side of her wife’s face. She had missed the easy intimacy between them. She hadn’t realized that years without the touch of another adult human being had been so missed until she had it again. Cuddling nightly with her wife, feeling the life growing in her, had touched her to the core. She wasn’t letting this woman go again, not without a fight. The army could do what it wanted, this was her wife and she wasn’t going anywhere. She still blamed them, switching it from the anger she had felt towards her wife for being gone. The psychologists she had spoken to helped explain it. The transference was normal since Marsha was an innocent victim. Heather noticed her wife shift uncomfortably again.

  “Are you sure you are okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” she dismissed.

  “Are you having labor pains?” She looked at her suspiciously.

  “No, it’s the lasagna. It doesn’t want to behave and I’m having heartburn,” she lamented.

  “How do you know it’s not the baby. Why blame the lasagna?” s
he teased.

  “I’ve had babies before. I think I could tell the difference between lasagna pains from indigestion and labor pains.” She looked at her wife in amusement and then her mind returned to the television show they were watching.

  Heather didn’t disagree, not wishing to get in an argument with her wife, but she watched her, not the TV show. Watching Marsha’s discomfort, the blonde began to time it. When the ‘discomfort’ got to be five minutes apart, she spoke up. “Um, babe,” she waited for Marsha to look up. “I think you are in labor,” she then explained her timing.

  “Can’t it wait? The show is on…” she gestured to the TV.

  “I don’t think the baby is going to wait,” she laughed at her as she got up to call the babysitter she had arranged. It was a gal she used occasionally to watch Hayley. She had been introduced to Bahir and Amir so that they wouldn’t be frightened by her presence. She was an army wife too and had a little boy who was four, but he didn’t get on well with Hayley. He was simply too bossy to the older little girl. She would be bringing him with her as she agreed to come right over.

  “I think you are overreacting,” Marsha told her during a commercial as Heather brought out the packed suitcase with her things.

  “Maybe, but being prepared isn’t a bad thing, is it?”

  “The show is almost over. Shhh,” her wife admonished as her gaze returned to the TV. Just then, a pain rippled through her abdomen and back. She gasped at its intensity.

  “Doing okay there, sport?” Heather asked, concerned. She’d been through this before with her and Hayley and knew the signs. Still, her wife was stubborn.

  “This doesn’t feel very sporting,” she complained as she breathed through the pain. She recognized this one as a real contraction. The pain was too specific and too intense to ignore anymore. It hadn’t increased by small measures, but had come on full-blown in her mind, and she was trying not to panic. The tribe had her squat to give birth. She was looking forward to giving birth in a modern facility on the base.

  “Never is,” she agreed with a smile as she sat down, not to watch television, but to watch her wife and how she was progressing.

  “Don’t stare. It’s rude to stare,” she joked as she finished breathing through the pain.

  “You sound like your mother,” she retorted with a smile.

  “Oh, don’t you start,” she snapped as she relaxed and resumed watching the show.

  “At least it came during a commercial,” Heather put in sarcastically as she tried to ignore her wife twitching in uncomfortable silence. She hated that about Marsha, her ability to be silent at odd times. She had discussed that with the psychologists too, her anger over her wife not sharing her experiences. They had explained some of it was due to the army and their debriefing of her, which she couldn’t share. Some of it was just Marsha’s nature, which seemed to be intensified since her capture. She simply needed to stay silent to save herself from beatings. Her silence had probably saved her life on more than one occasion and it was now ingrained.

  They waited through a couple more contractions before a knock on the door revealed Janet, who was carrying a sleepy, little boy named Eric. “Shhh,” she warned as she whispered. “Where can I lay him?”

  “How about right here on the couch?” Heather offered and quickly went to get sheets and a blanket for the little boy.

  “How are you doing?” she asked Marsha, seeing her rub her stomach.

  “I’d just like to finish my show and then we can go,” she answered as she shifted to a more comfortable position, breathing through her nose to help with the pain. Those cleansing breaths she had learned during Hayley’s pregnancy did help on a lot of levels, and not just with childbirth. She momentarily thought of other times she had used that technique and then firmly pushed them down in her psyche so as not to mar this moment. She didn’t need to think of Zabi and his brutality at this time. She concentrated on her belly and sent good thoughts to the child who would soon be born. She heard Heather return and watched as she quickly made a bed for Eric. The child was a spoiled brat, but as an only child Janet tended to smother him with affection and he got away with murder. Still, they needed someone here to watch the kids when they got up and Heather was going with her to the hospital.

  “I’ll be right back,” Heather said as she touched Marsha’s shoulder and headed into the kitchen to make another phone call.

  Marsha tried to watch the last of her show. There had been enough interruptions and she was annoyed to lose some of the storyline. She didn’t know why it was so important to her to follow the TV show, but maybe not having seen any shows in all those years, she missed it. She did have one good moment when the female lead got all sexy with her male counterpart and she got to see her in a revealing teddy. The black teddy against her white skin made it all worthwhile.

  “Ready to go?” Heather asked cheerfully.

  “It’s almost over…” she pointed to the TV where the two lovers were moving to the bed after kissing heatedly. She sounded irritable.

  Heather tried not to roll her eyes, but her wife wouldn’t have seen it anyway as she turned back to the screen.

  “Oh, I love this show! The characters are–” began Janet, but Marsha shushed her a little rudely and the woman subsided into surprised quiet. She glanced from Marsha to Heather who shrugged, and then back to the scene on the television, which shortly faded out and went to a commercial.

  “There we go,” Marsha said as she began to pull herself out of the chair and up onto her feet.

  “Need help?” her wife offered.

  “Nope, I got this.”

  Heather watched as her stubborn wife pulled herself to the edge of the deep-seated recliner and after struggling, got to her feet, only to bend over with a gasp as a pain hit her again. They waited it out, letting Marsha deal with it before the two of them headed through the kitchen. Heather carried Marsha’s suitcase to the garage. “I’ll call you,” Heather said to Janet before they left the living room. The woman just nodded, still stunned a little, and perhaps miffed over Marsha’s rudeness. She couldn’t help but compare her husband being away for the army to Marsha’s captivity and it annoyed her.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” Heather tried to joke as she helped Marsha into the car.

  “Let’s hope The Wreck starts!” Marsha joked back, already another pain was starting and she knew she had left it too long…they were coming faster. That damn TV show would probably be repeated later in the season anyway. She hoped so. She had missed enough of it this evening and she wanted a look at that teddy again. Maybe she could buy one like that for Heather someday.

  Surprisingly, The Wreck started on only the second try and they carefully pulled out of the garage.

  “You’re driving like an old woman,” Marsha barked at her wife as she gripped the dashboard and the door armrest with her fingers, trying to breathe through the pain.

  “I’m driving at a safe speed in order to get you there safely. It wouldn’t do to get in a wreck on the way to the hospital, now would it?”

  “Probably. Get me there faster!”

  Heather tried not to take it personally. After all, her wife was in pain from the birth of what would be their fourth child. She tried not to think of how it was conceived. She tried not to resent that she hadn’t been part of the decision to have three more children. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Marsha’s fault. The psychologists had been wonderful with her problems over it. She hadn’t been one to assign blame anyway, but how could she help it when her wife was giving birth to a product of rape? She kept telling herself that the man who had caused this was far away and wouldn’t ever know these children he had caused. They were theirs, hers and Marsha’s, and he had unknowingly provided them with what they really wanted…a large family. She also conveniently forgot about the sperm they had on file for when it was time for Heather to have a baby. She still wanted that, but hadn’t the nerve to bring it up to her wife…not yet. The timing h
adn’t been great since she got back.

  They were soon pulling up in front of the hospital. Heather had called ahead so that Marsha’s doctor, a woman by the name of Doctor Cook, would know she was in labor and could be ready. Someone ran out with a wheelchair and they helped the straining Marsha into it. “I think this kid is already coming out,” she got out through the pain she was in.

  “Oh, no. Not in the ambulance bay,” the man behind the wheelchair teased. “We don’t want that!” he took her and rushed off as Heather went to park The Wreck.

  Heather quickly followed inside, but there was no sign of her wife. They gave her a slight hassle before revealing they had taken her immediately back to the birthing rooms. Heather had a hard time finding them, but fortunately she had been there once before for Hayley and the confusing corridors at least seemed familiar. She knew part of the problem was that they were a same-sex couple and it was like the people were deliberately making it harder. She had to explain time and time again that Marsha was her wife, and then she had to deal with their blank stares of incomprehension over and over. It was frustrating, and by the time she found Marsha, was gowned, and got into the room with her, the black-haired woman was yelling.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you people? Get this out of me!”

  Heather was shocked at the language. Her wife, while being in the army and hearing choice language from the people she associated with, never spoke like that otherwise. She knew it was something she was unaware of at the moment, and if she had known, would be immediately contrite. Looking at her ranting at the doctor and nurses, maybe not. She looked like a wild woman, her curly hair already streaming down her face and clinging to her due to the sweat.

  “Where the fuck were you?” she asked as Heather took her hand.

  Heather nearly cringed, not only at the language addressed towards her, but at Marsha’s grip on her hand. The woman had no idea of her own strength.

  “Traffic,” she replied, using humor to deflect the hurt.