by Nafisa Haji
Jake and I worried about Jo, too. But not as much. Jo had promised, when her father asked—after we realized that she was involved, too, somehow, in the War on Terror—that she wasn’t doing anything dangerous.
“At least not dangerous to me,” she’d said, and then refused to explain what she meant.
I knew Jake worked hard not to show how scared he was. He said that this time, it was different. I knew what he was talking about—that he was comparing the war about to start in Afghanistan to the one he’d fought in.
He said, “This one, we didn’t ask for. It’s a war that they came and started on our soil. We’ve got a right to defend ourselves. To get the people who attacked us.”
He was reliving his past while I tried hard not to think of mine. When the war began, I looked Afghanistan up on a map of the world—a country I’d never even heard of until now. It shocked me to find out it was right next to Pakistan, the name of a place I had heard of, from people I had tried very hard to forget. Seeing that map made everything messier, more complicated, than I wanted life to be. I had to shrug off wondering where they were and what they were feeling—the boy I’d made love to, the woman who’d been my friend, people I’d been close to for one irregular moment of my life, yet hardly knew at all. It was the first time in all these years that I considered their connection to the lives I’d carried inside of me, the lives I’d nurtured and raised and kept from them—in the present tense instead of the past. Suddenly, I felt like the tie that I’d denied, my blood mixed with Sadiq’s, was snatching my babies back to the part of the world where he came from. I wanted things to be simple and neat, a line drawn between us and them. But in my nightmares, it was Deena’s face and Sadiq’s that threatened my children, the faces of people who’d been kind to me, people I wanted to hate but couldn’t. When Chris didn’t go to Afghanistan, after all, I was relieved. I could put all those tangled old ties back into a box and turn my attention to another place, Iraq, which, I told myself, was far enough away not to matter.
But the shift, from one war to another, made Jake more uneasy. The day Chris was deployed to Iraq, Jake cried. In all our years of marriage, I’d never seen him cry. It was hard to see him suffer while Chris was away. He started to have nightmares. Something he’d never had before. He talked in his sleep, sounding terrified, whimpering. Sometimes, he’d wake up and get out of bed. I followed him once or twice. And found him sitting in the dark, in Chris’s room. By the sound of his breathing, I knew he was crying. Once, I heard him say to himself, not knowing that I was there, in the doorway, “It’s not the same. It’s not the same.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. And failing.
But that was Jake by night. By day, he was all gung-ho, up on every turn and twist of battle and strategy that I couldn’t bear to hear about, because I was too afraid. He watched the news all the time. Kept the radio tuned to it in his car. He got a subscription to two newspapers, and started using the Internet to keep up with everything that was happening over there, in Iraq. All he talked about was the war, daring anyone—friends, customers, relatives—to say anything against it. Mom tried hard not to rise to the bait at first, her face all pinched up with the effort not to say anything—for my sake, I think. But I knew her well enough to know what she really felt. When she did start arguing with Jake, it was in a softer, quieter kind of tone than she normally used, making me think she’d guessed at Jake’s nighttime secrets—that his furious, daylight optimism was a mask for a fear almost as big as mine was.
The truth is, I didn’t care what either of them thought—Mom or Jake—didn’t care about why or how this war was being waged, whether the reasons for it were sound or not. I couldn’t let myself think about any of that, just keeping my head down instead, focusing on things I could control, putting together one care package after another for Chris and his buddies, praying, praying, praying. I’d lost a father to war and its aftermath. Now, I was afraid of losing a son.
Mom knew, somehow, that I needed her. She stuck by me, not going anywhere the whole time Chris was away, at home longer than she’d been since I was a kid. Whatever the arguments were between them, Mom and Jake and I were on the same page whenever we’d hear about casualties, all of us pacing the floor, waiting until we’d hear from Chris.
Nobody was happier than Jake when Chris came home. But, as time passed, my worry was increasing. Chris was taking longer to adjust to being home than I thought he would. He refused all invitations from his old friends, even the members of his old band, Christian March, who wanted him to come out and play with them. He’d go out alone. And come home alone. Chris had always been the center of a bunch of friends, all the years he grew up.
I was shocked, that first time it happened. To smell liquor on Chris’s breath. He’d never had anything more than a sip of champagne at weddings before. I ignored it the first time. The second time, I asked him about it. He got angry. And told me to mind my own business. No big deal, I suppose. For a grown son to tell his mother off for babying him. But it was a big deal. To me. Chris had never once raised his voice to me before. When he got pulled over, for a DUI, I broke a cardinal rule in our dry house and begged him to bring home whatever he needed. But not to drink and drive. He’d been lucky. The officer who’d pulled him over was the brother of one of Chris’s high school buddies. He brought him home instead of arresting him, giving him a stern lecture, telling him he wasn’t going to haul him off to jail because he had too much respect for the fact that Chris was serving his country.
I regretted giving Chris permission to drink at home. Because he started to drink all the time. Finally, Jake put his foot down.
“Chris. You need help. You won’t talk to us. That’s okay. But you’ve got to find someone to talk to.”
Jake called my dad for advice and to see if he still knew his way around the VA. I didn’t object. I remembered how I’d met Jake in the first place. We’d only been in touch with my father through Christmas cards in all the years since the twins were born. That’s all the contact I’d wanted to have. Ron had done more, though. Had even visited him in L.A., with his family. After that, Jake knew how to help Chris get an appointment at the VA. We drove him there together. The people there told Chris that he had PTSD, which is what Jake had suspected, and gave him a couple of prescriptions. What they talked about, what he said to them, I have no idea. I wasn’t happy about the pills. Especially when I found out that there’d be no follow-up appointment for another six months.
At first, the pills seemed to help. But that was before I realized. That Chris, like Jake when Chris was in Iraq, was walking the halls at night. I’d wake up when it was still dark out, thinking I’d heard a sound in the kitchen. And there’d be Chris, getting himself something to eat. Keeping vampire hours. I’d make myself a cup of cocoa, offering to make him some, too. I’d ask him, beg him, to tell me what was on his mind. He’d shake his head and say nothing. The scariest thing was—there was no more light coming out of Chris’s eyes, where before there’d been stars, suns, of light. Now, there was none.
I was looking forward to Thanksgiving. Was glad to see Chris make the effort to liven up. To shave. And shower. To clean his room, which was a place I didn’t even try to set foot in because of how mad he’d gotten when I offered to clean it months before. I made a menu. And a list for groceries. Chris offered to do the shopping for me. He helped me in the kitchen. I felt like he was coming back.
Jo came a day later than she’d said she would. She told us not to come to the airport. That she was flying in through L.A. She drove home in a rental car. I asked her why she didn’t bring Dan with her. I liked Dan. I was hoping to hear some kind of announcement soon. She said she didn’t want him here for Thanksgiving. That she just wanted things to be like old times. Chris watched her face when she said this. He smiled, happier than he had been in a long time, I could tell. That Jo was home. That he’d have her to himself for a while. Sometimes, by the way he looked up to her, even when they were littl
e, it seemed like there were years between them, instead of only minutes. She’d always been his big sister more than his twin. When she’d left for college, I’d seen the wedge come up between them. I hadn’t done anything to stop it—something I regretted now. I’d been selfish, at a cost to their relationship that I’d pretended not to notice. Until now, when I knew he needed her. More than he’d ever needed her before. Chris was shaken and scattered and nothing I’d tried was helping.
Jo would help him put the pieces of the puzzle back together. She was good at that. Even when she was little, just a toddler, I saw how she made connections, fitting things together to make sense of the world around her. She’d sit there, with her tongue between her teeth, and figure out those wooden picture puzzles when she was two years old. At that age, Chris still thought the pieces just tasted good. If Jo couldn’t understand what her brother was going through, and give him words to express it, then no one could.
On Thanksgiving, the house was bursting with people and laughter and love. Mom had flown in the night before. Ron and his family came early in the day. Jo and Chris and their cousins gathered around the television, watching the game, while I got the turkey ready in the kitchen, with the help of Mom and my sister-in-law, Lisa.
Everyone was still smiling when the meal was served. I asked Ron to say grace. And then we dug in. The turkey was the best I’d made in years. The stuffing, just right. And then, as the food on the table cooled, the conversation heated up.
What is it about Thanksgiving? That controversy always has to be on the menu? Like turkey can’t be digested until someone around the table picks a fight. The one that day started before I served the pie. And, like every year when Mom was around, the fight started out being between her and Ron—both of them shooting biblical bullets at each other to defend their very different views on God and life and the world in general. Only this time, Jake, who had never before had anything to add to the spectacle that Mom and Ron seemed to enjoy making of themselves, had something to say, too. Something fierce.
“All I’m saying is that when I see your friends,” Mom spit the word out at Ron, “on television, going around rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of Armageddon, it makes me cringe. All this talk of End Times! It’s like they’re playing some kind of board game with the Bible. Like the war and death they see happening in the world is just another move forward, roll the dice, and full-steam ahead. Yippee!” Mom raised her hands up, sarcastically, and waved them like a fan at a ball game. “Jesus is coming! And we’re going to win!”
“These are biblical scholars you’re talking about,” Ron said, ignoring Mom’s snicker. “They’ve done their research. They’re just sharing what they see ahead of us. And it’s not good.”
“Biblical scholars! Puh-leeze! What does it take to be able to call yourself that? A certificate you earn off the Internet? You went to Wheaton, Ron. You know better!” Mom was even louder than usual. “You can’t mean what you’re saying. Giving these charlatans—these false prophets!—any credit for scholarship! The Bible can’t be read that way. Picking and choosing passages. To support the twisted way they see the world. And what for?! To foster fear? As if there isn’t enough in the world already!”
“Fear is good. Fear is what pushes people in God’s direction,” Ron said.
“Fear leads us into hate,” said Mom.
“Watch it, Mom,” said Ron scornfully. “You’re starting to sound like one of those hippie Christians again.” Ron was on a roll. “That lefty, liberal, mealymouthed version of Christianity that you preach, Mom—making Jesus out to be some kind of spaced-out, long-haired peacenik with no muscle in his words—it’s just an attempt to make religion weak, to make God into something ineffectual and effeminate.”
“As opposed to macho and muscular? I’ve got news for you, Ron,” Mom said. “Jesus did have long hair.”
“You know what I meant!”
“Here’s a question, Ron,” Mom said. “A simple one. When Jesus said, ‘Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you,’ who do you think he was talking about? Only some? Or all? Do you think he only meant this group of us and not that group of them?”
“Luke. Chapter seventeen, verse twenty-one,” said Ron, always eager to prove that he knew his way around a Bible. “That Kingdom, Mom, as you well know, can only be realized by those who are saved. Justified, by the blood of Christ.”
“But—he was talking to the Pharisees, Ron. Not to the Disciples. Not to the saved. He didn’t use the future tense. He didn’t say the Kingdom will come into you if you accept Me. He said it’s already there. Not just in those who followed and accepted his teachings. In every human being. What gives anyone, especially those of us who consider ourselves followers of Christ, the right to destroy, to kill, any other body that contains that Kingdom? Even if it’s only in potential form, yet to be realized? Isn’t that the whole argument against abortion? In war, we kill. We kill. People. Human beings who carry that same Kingdom in their hearts. I just can’t stand the way those swindler friends of yours can talk about war and destruction—celebrating it!—with no sense of sorrow in their hearts.”
And that’s when the talk at the table turned more specifically to the war. In Iraq. I wasn’t even listening to them anymore—to Ron and Mom—wanting to put my hands up to my ears as they carried on.
Suddenly, Jake pushed his chair back with a screeching scrape on the floor and stood up. “What the hell do any of you know about war? Huh? Nothing! Not a damned thing!”
I scooted forward to the edge of my seat, thinking I should say something to stop Jake, to explain his outburst, or apologize for it at least. But then I saw Jo’s face. Her eyes were fixed, anxiously, on Chris. My eyes followed hers. And so did everyone else’s.
Mom looked from Jake, still standing, fists clenched, to Chris. And said, “You’re right, Jake. You’re absolutely right. No one here has any right to talk about war. No one except you. And Chris.”
The eyes that were already on Chris’s face seemed to hold their breath, as if eyes can breathe. Chris shook his head. Said nothing. Stood up. And went upstairs to his room.
The rest of the evening was quiet. And awkward. Both Mom and Ron went to knock on Chris’s door to try to get him to come out, apologizing through it when he wouldn’t. Mom looked at me. Something she saw in my face made hers look worried.
Chris came out of his room the next morning as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t locked himself away in the middle of a family gathering, not bothering to say good night to his uncle, his aunt, his cousins, and his grandmother. He was in the kitchen, eating cereal, when Jo came in, rubbing her eyes.
She took out a bowl and served herself some cereal, too, taking a seat next to her brother at the kitchen table, saying, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he answered back.
I realized, all of a sudden, that Jo, like Chris, had had nothing to say in the discussion the day before. I looked from one face to the other. Then turned back to finish unloading the dishwasher, wondering which of them I should be worrying about more.
Over the next few days, I watched them both like a hawk. Some of the tension eased out of my neck and shoulders as I saw them laugh together and joke. Jake’s eyes, when he looked at me, were happier, too. It felt like old times, just the way Jo had wanted it to be. Like back when they were in high school, before Jo moved away.
At night, they’d stay up late, long after Jake and I would go to bed, watching movies and late-night talk shows. Laughing at Letterman and Leno. Both Jake and I slept easier than we had in a long time.
One night, they pulled all our old home videos off the shelf to watch. I walked into the room while they were watching them, Jo laughing loudly, at my expense, at the series of hairstyles that always look funny in hindsight. Chris’s face was hard to read. When had he developed that skill? To flex the muscles of his face into a mask no one could see through? Was this something they taught in the Marines? In my heart, I cursed the Marines.
The next morning, I woke up early to the sound of the phone ringing. It was picked up before Jake or I could get to it. I got up and found Chris in the kitchen again. I smiled brightly at him and asked him if he’d answered the phone. He grunted a yes and glowered at me with doom in his eyes, the spark of light that had seemed to come back when Jo arrived totally extinguished. He grabbed a breakfast bar and, mumbling to himself, marched out the door. I heard the door of his car open and shut, the engine catch, go into reverse, and then pull away with a reckless squeal of the brakes. I sat down at the kitchen table and bowed my head and prayed.
I was still in the kitchen, stunned and scared, when Jo woke up. I turned on her, sharply. “Did you tell Chris?!”
She looked confused. “Tell Chris what?”
I knew, from that confusion, that she hadn’t. I didn’t say anything.
She repeated her question, “Tell Chris what, Mom?”
“Tell him about—what I told you. When you asked me—about the color of your eyes.” We hadn’t talked about it since before she left for college. I saw the surprise in her eyes. That I’d raised the subject.
“No! Of course not!” she shouted.
No. Of course not. What was it then that had made Chris fall back into the darkness? Was it the phone call?
Another one came an hour later. “Mrs. March? Christian March’s mother?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But there’s been an accident. Your son’s in the hospital.”
My heart stopped. Oh, please God, please Jesus, please, let him be safe!
Jo
I have arrived where news of myself never gets back to me.