Yvette keeps walking a few steps before she notices. “What’s wrong?” She looks back at me.
“Can we wait till those bastards leave? I don’t want to talk to them.”
“Be a soldier, baby. Don’t let ’em worry you.”
But the shaking’s started up again and my hands have gone cold. “I just don’t want to deal with those jerks right now. Let’s go.”
“No, man, I’m hungry! Don’t be so yellow.” She strides off without me.
I’ve never told Yvette what Kormick and Boner did to me, or to Third Eye, either. She doesn’t know that if I go up to those fuckheads voluntarily, they’ll think I’m asking for more.
I stand there, shivering. All of me wants to turn around and run. But, like Yvette said, I’ve got to be a soldier. I can’t let them make me hide and shake every time I lay eyes on them. I have to get over it.
So I pull out the knife on my belt and flick it open. Holding it behind me, I take a deep breath and force myself to walk up to them.
“Hey, look, Sar’nt,” Boner says. “It’s Pinkass coming to say hello.”
“Pinkass and Bonyass,” Rickman adds with one of his retarded guffaws.
“What’s your problem, cocksucker? Your pussy hurt or something?” Yvette says to him calmly.
Kormick ignores all this. But he stares at me, his mouth pressed into a tight angry line. This is the first time we’ve faced each other since I reported him to Henley. I grip my knife harder, trying to control the shivering.
“So,” he says. “It’s Specialist Tits Brady. How you doin’ this lovely evening, Specialist?”
“Fine,” I mutter.
“Good, good.” He turns to Boner. “Keep an eye on Bonyass here. Me and Tits have a little business to take care of. And Private Sanchez?” he says to Yvette. “Don’t use that language with my soldiers, if you don’t mind. It’s vulgar, even coming from a fine little lady like you. Come on, Tits. This way.”
“I’m staying here.” My voice comes out weak and quivery. Still, I said it.
Kormick steps up close enough for me to smell him. “Are you bucking a direct order, soldier, again?”
Yvette looks from him to me, and suddenly she clicks. I see it happen in her eyes, the switch from dark to light. “Sar’nt?” she says quickly, moving up beside me. “SFC Henley’s orders are that we can’t separate for no reason, so I’m afraid Specialist Brady is unable to leave with you. Apologies.” She takes my arm and we walk away fast.
“Get back here, you fucking bitches!” Kormick yells after us, but we keep moving, sure he’s right behind us. We don’t run, not wanting to attract attention, but we walk fast as we can. My ears are roaring so loud with fear I can’t hear anything else. I expect to feel Kormick’s hand clamp down on my shoulder any minute, his rifle stick into my neck. But I don’t dare look behind me once till we get all the way back to the tents.
When I do, he’s nowhere in sight.
“I can’t believe it!” Yvette sputters when we stop. “I can’t believe he talks to you like that!” She points at the knife in my hand. “You better put that away, girl, ’fore you hurt yourself. You were gonna use it on that mofo, weren’t you?”
“If I had to, yeah.” I shove it back in my belt. My hands are trembling so bad I can hardly get the damn thing in.
“You okay?” Yvette says, looking at me hard.
I nod, turning my eyes away from her.
“Why you shakin’ like that, then? Listen, you better tell me what happened. This shit looks serious.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I’m still avoiding her eyes.
“Fuck that. Of course it does. Look at me.” I do. Her hands are on her hips and she’s staring at me, her little face grim. “Come on, babe. Spill it out.”
So, at last, I do. Kormick, Boner, even Henley—I tell her the whole sorry story.
“Those low-down motherfuckers!” she says when I’m done. “I knew there was something going on. No wonder you’re so jittery, girl. What about Third Eye? They doing this shit to her too?”
I can’t betray my promise to Third Eye, even now. But I do say, “You’ve seen how she’s acting. What do you think?”
Yvette frowns at her feet a moment, kicking the toe of her boot against the sand. “I tell you what I think,” she says at last. “I think you and me better go to the EOO and get this shit stopped right now. If anybody tries to shut you up again, they got me to deal with this time. And we’ll start with what I witnessed tonight.”
“But the EOO won’t listen! You know the officers care more about covering some sergeant’s ass than protecting any of us females.”
“Look, before it was just you against Henley and his homeys. This time there’s two of us, we’re going to a different officer, she’s a female and nobody has a fuckin’ thing they can pin on you. Let’s go.”
“Now? But it’s so late.”
“Yeah, now. Before we talk ourselves out of it. Come on Kate, you know this is right.”
I’m not so sure I do, but I follow her anyhow, two voices inside of me arguing the whole way. One’s saying I’m only going to get myself into more trouble and bring Yvette down with me, because there’s nothing a platoon hates more than a tattletale. The other’s saying here’s my chance to help Third Eye at last; here’s my chance to stop being a yellow-bellied, piss-ass coward.
We find the EOO sitting behind a plywood table in her makeshift tent office, looking as bored and hot as the rest of us. Her name is Lieutenant Sara Hopkins and I don’t know her at all, even though she’s half of all the female officers in our entire company.
My experience with female officers up until now hasn’t been too good, to put it mildly—at boot camp, AIT or here. Every one of them has been a ruthless, ambitious bitch ready to cut down any other female who got in her way. So I don’t feel exactly encouraged at the sight of this one. She’s tall and narrow and tidy, with a heart-shaped face and big brown eyes. And her dark hair is pulled back so flat and shiny it looks painted on, like the head of a wooden doll. She makes me realize how dirty and scrawny I’ve become, all bones and sunburn. Nails bitten, camos stinky, nerves shredded. A total fucking mess.
After we’ve saluted, given our names and ranks and all that other rigmarole, I tell her my story. It’s torture to have to describe it to a stranger again, although not quite the torture it was with Henley. Still, it’s hard to look her in the face as I tell it, because even while I go through everything that’s happened—Boner punching me, Kormick attacking me in the shack—I keep thinking, You could’ve fought back harder. You could’ve been tougher. You gave the wrong signals, admit it. What kind of a soldier are you, anyway? And I’m sure this officer is thinking exactly the same thing.
But then she surprises me. “This is appalling!” she says. “You should have come to me weeks ago.”
“I know, Ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Have you told anyone else about this? The chaplain or anyone?”
“No, Ma’am.”
She frowns down at her desk a moment. “I’m going to follow this up, don’t worry. It’s too late to do anything tonight, but I’ll look into the appropriate measures and send for you. I’ll do my best, soldiers, to make sure these men don’t get away with this.”
I can hardly believe my ears. “Really? I mean, thank you, Ma’am. I… I appreciate it.”
“Me too, Ma’am,” Yvette says enthusiastically.
“Well, we can’t let a few bad apples bring down the morale of the whole company, can we?” the lieutenant says brightly. She stands up, comes around to the front of her desk and shakes our hands. “All right, you can both go now. And Specialist Brady, I know this wasn’t easy for you, so I commend your courage and persistence here.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.” I’m even more amazed.
“You’ll be hearing from me. Meanwhile, I suggest you keep this to yourselves.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” We thank her once more, salute and leave.
“
Wow!” I say as soon as we’re out of earshot. “She’s incredible!”
“Yeah, didn’t I tell you? Why didn’t you go to her before?”
“’Cause I didn’t believe it’d do any good. You know how most females are around here. I thought she’d just tell me I’m a skank and send me away.”
“Not everybody’s out to get you, you know,” Yvette says with a chuckle. “You need to relax, babe.”
I look at her sideways, then I smile too. “Thanks for doing this, Yvette. It was real good of you.”
“Hey, no problemo. We females gotta stick together, right?”
“Yeah.” I pause. “Yvette?” I say then, kind of shy. “I’ve been thinking. When—if—we get home safe, you want to room together? Like, find a house somewhere and share the rent?”
She turns and looks at me, her face tiny under her helmet. “You for real? I thought you were gonna go home to your family and fiancé and shit.”
“No, I’m not doing that anymore. I want to move somewhere I’ve never been and share a house with you.”
A huge smile spreads across her skinny face. “Yeah. Okay. That’d be cool.”
After our visit to Lieutenant Hopkins, nothing much happens for a couple of weeks. Yvette goes out on her night convoys and comes back too pooped to talk. Third Eye lies on her rack, staring at the ceiling, her face blank as a concrete block. Macktruck keeps up his usual filth. I hear nothing from Hopkins or anyone else about my report. And Naema’s dad never shows up again in my compound. But the thing that really hurts, hurts so much it overwhelms everything else, is that Jimmy won’t go running with me or visit me in my tower anymore. He’s polite in the Humvee to and from our shifts, but he acts like he doesn’t know me or even like me much now. And maybe he doesn’t.
I wait for him anyway. Can’t help it. Every morning and all the way through lunchtime, when he always used to visit, I hold my breath in the hope he’ll come. Every afternoon too. I spend more hours scanning the edge of the compound to see if he’s going to appear around the corner than I do watching the frickin’ prisoners. And I keep thinking I do see him, because on windy days, when the sand and moon-dust are swirling around in great billowing clouds, it’s easy to see the shape of a human being even when there isn’t one. It’s like the air is full of ghosts, only it’s daytime and you’re wide-awake.
July ends and August rolls in, the days grinding along one exactly like the other. Without Jimmy’s visits to look forward to, I’ve got nothing to wake up to but dread, and nothing to do all day but sit alone in my tower, wondering why I never see Naema’s dad and how the hell I can find out what happened to him. Meanwhile, inside of me, a black ooze of hopelessness is spreading through my organs like a poison. And nothing I do or think can stop it.
At the end of one of those long, empty days, I find Yvette in our tent, covered in dust and sand as usual, but jiggling with excitement. “Freckles!” she says when I walk in. “Come here.” She lowers her voice so no one can hear us. “I just got word from Lieutenant Hopkins. You and me need to report to NCO quarters right now. I think we got some action at last, girl!”
“Right now?”
“Yeah.” She puts her hands on her tiny hips and cocks her head sideways. “What’s wrong? Ain’t you glad? Isn’t this the thing you been waiting for?”
“I guess.” But I can’t make myself care anymore. It’ll all be a lot of hassle for nothing, I’m sure of it.
“Come on, babe. They said it’s an order, so we better move our asses.”
“All right. It’s not going to do any good though.”
On our way, Yvette gives me a pep talk. “Listen, I know things get pretty damn discouraging around here. I know it’s hard to believe in Army values or anything they taught us when this company and this war are being run by a bunch of know-nothing mofos and pervs. But you gotta have faith, y’know? You gotta keep trying. Otherwise you sink, baby. You sink clear down to hell. So I want to see that fightin’ spirit I know you got in there, okay, Freckles? You promise me?”
I have to smile at that. “You’re too much, you know that, Yvette?”
When we reach the NCO quarters and report our business to the grunt standing guard, we get a surprise. Instead of being sent over to report to Hopkins, like we expect, we’re ordered inside to see suckass Henley.
“Shit,” Yvette whispers on the way. “I don’t like the smell of this at all.”
Once we’re inside, we get an even bigger surprise. Lieutenant Hopkins is there after all, sitting next to Henley behind his plywood desk and looking as polished and perfect as ever. She gives us each a formal nod. Relieved, we salute her and stand at attention.
“At ease,” Henley says, his Daddy Bush lips white and tight. I bet the dickwad’s been practicing that phrase since he was eight years old. I can just see him as a pudgy little brat barking it at his army of toy soldiers while his mommy feeds him cookies. “I have orders here that pertain to the both of you,” he goes on. “Specialist Brady and Private First Class Sanchez, you are both ordered to move out at oh six hundred hours tomorrow on a convoy up to Baquba. As outstanding soldiers, you have been selected for the honor of being assigned to a shooter mission. There will probably be a promotion for both of you at the end of it.”
We stare at him. A shooter mission? That’s what they do to soldiers to punish them! It means you pull security for convoys. Not like Yvette’s been doing, riding in a middle truck somewhere, but right in the front or at the very rear of the whole convoy, sitting in the passenger seat with your weapon sticking out the window. It means you’re the first line of defense, the first to take fire and the first to get a body part blown off if you hit an IED. It means, in our case, that Henley’s trying to get rid of us.
“Sergeant, is this meant to be punitive?” Yvette blurts.
“I’m surprised to hear you ask such a thing, Private,” he answers coolly. “As said, it’s a vote of confidence in both of you. You should take it as an honor.”
I glare at his sun-dried face, and then at Hopkins, whose own face is as smooth and hard as the shellacked hair on her head. Is this the best she can do with all her sympathy and understanding? She’s a lieutenant; she outranks Henley— what the fuck happened here? Did she believe Kormick’s bullshit about me trying to seduce him? Did she buy that graffiti about me being a Sand Queen? Or is she just another Army bitch looking out for herself by keeping other females down, like I feared all along?
“Ma’am,” I say desperately, “permission to speak frankly?”
“Denied,” she replies, avoiding my eyes. “We’ve heard quite enough of your frank talk, Specialist. Both of you, dismissed.”
We’ve got no choice but to salute and leave.
As soon as we’re out of the tent, Yvette explodes. “Motherfuckers! I can’t believe it! No wonder she told us not to tell anybody else! I bet Henley has something on her. Fucking bitch!”
I let her fume for a while without saying anything. I’m too overwhelmed. These bastards are sending me and Yvette on a suicide mission. And it’s my fault.
“NURSE? WHAT DAY is it?”
The nurse puts the breakfast tray down by the bed. “It’s Monday, honey-pie. Says so right there on that newspaper.”
The nurse has to know by now that her patient can’t look at newspapers. Any more than she can watch TV.
“What’s the date, though?”
“October twenty-two. Know what that means, honey? Means you kept your bed dry a whole week now. Means you getting better. Now move your little butt. Therapy starts in twenty minutes.”
If it’s October 22nd already, the soldier realizes, she’s been rotting in this place for five whole weeks.
The soldier waits while the nurse bustles about, then as soon as she’s left, climbs gingerly out of bed to dress. Jeans, sneakers and a faded blue T-shirt from home. She chooses the shirt because nothing is printed on it at all. No corporate logo, no asinine jokes. No U.S. Army. Over that she puts on a denim jacket. Time
to execute her plan.
She brushes what’s left of her hair, still thin and limp from Iraq, stuffs her toilet articles in her backpack with the rest of the things she packed the previous night, and adds the cash she sneaked from the ATM in the hospital lobby. Then she swallows a bunch of painkillers so she can walk, packs them too, and pokes her head out the door. Nobody in sight.
Moving quickly, she heads down the empty white corridor and into the back elevator. Sinks to the ground floor… and she’s free. Easy as that.
Parking lot. Sun. Dazzle. She puts on her shades and works on remembering that she’s not in the desert anymore. The October air helps, cold, with a cheek-slapping wind. She walks out of the hospital grounds as fast as she can with her wrecked-up back and neck.
Bye Dr. Pokerass. Bye Betty Boop and the rest of you loser ladies who think you’ve got it so tough. Bye the whole sorry-ass bunch of you.
She heads for a bus stop, concentrating on making it down the road without flipping out. A plastic bag flaps in the wind, caught underneath a fence, and she flinches, eyeing it uneasily. She’s already breathing too hard and her back’s cramping. So she starts a prayer in her head, a prayer she’s been saying to nobody for weeks now, since Jesus and the rest of His clan seem to have stopped listening: Let me forget, please let me forget.
The only person at the bus stop is an old woman in a baggy tan raincoat who pays the soldier no attention. There isn’t a shelter or even a bench, so the soldier has to wait out in the open. The back pain is shooting through her worse than ever, in spite of the painkillers, and the cold’s penetrating her flimsy jacket. She puts her pack on the ground and sits on it stiffly, watching a coffee-stained Styrofoam cup roll down the road in the wind.
At least she knows where she’s going. What she doesn’t know is what’s going to happen when she gets there.
The bus doesn’t come for half an hour, and by the time it does her head is light and woozy, she’s shuddering with cold and her nerves are zinging like breaking guitar strings. It’s the first time she’s been out on her own since she got back from Iraq, and every time a car drives by she cringes. When a garbage truck bangs somewhere behind her, she barely manages to stop herself from dropping to the ground. She goes back to praying. Please don’t let me hear any cars backfiring. Please don’t let me hear a shout or a scream. Please don’t let me see a soldier.
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