The commander finally shuts up, not a moment too soon, and somebody plays a recording of Taps, which always chokes me up, so we all stand and salute again. I glance over at Third Eye to see how she’s taking this crap—after all, she was close to Yvette too. Her face is like rock.
After Taps is over, we sit back down and a few robots clomp up to the podium to speak about their dead robot friends. One talks about how brave and funny nineteenyear-old Private First Class Robot Molsen was, and how the poor sucker wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up. Another says Sergeant Robot Miller was a devoted husband and dad to his three kids, and how proud they’ll be that their robot daddy died for his country. (Yeah, right.) A third tells us that Specialist Robot Gomez was the toughest and most loyal robot he ever met, and real great on the guitar, even though he was only eighteen.
I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the waste of human lives.
Then it’s DJ’s turn to talk about Yvette. He asked me if I wanted to do it, but I told him no way. If I got up there, I know what I’d say: You fuckers murdered her. Every one of you. Don’t talk to me about honor.
“Private First Class Sanchez was everything a soldier should be,” DJ begins, reading from the piece of paper where I watched him scribble his speech last night. “She went on convoys nearly every night for three months, enduring many attacks without complaint. She was a fine soldier, a good friend…”
I stop listening. I know DJ means well, but he’s making her sound like all the other robots. Easy to sacrifice, easy to forget.
DJ leaves the podium at last, and one by one, he and the other three robots who spoke lay Purple Hearts in front of each of the four soldier ghosts. Then we all stand to sing “Amazing Grace” and bow our heads to pray. But the whole time that I’m standing there—staring first at my toes, then at the toes of Yvette’s empty boots—all I can think about is why I let this happen to her. Why didn’t I stop her from going to Hopkins and making waves when I knew perfectly well that making waves only gets you fucked in the Army? Why did I think Mom’s stupid little plastic crucifix would protect her? Why was I so careless with her life?
The speeches and hymns are finally over. The prayers ended. The metal chairs folded and stacked. Yvette’s nothing but a body in a box now, while an American flag, folded into a perfect triangle, is supposedly on its way home to her family.
But Yvette hasn’t got a family. All she’s ever had in her twenty short years of life is loneliness. She was always saying that we robots were her family, the only family she’s ever loved. And we’re the ones who killed her.
[ NAEMA ]
“NAEMA?” I FEEL a tug on my sleeve. “Naema, my love, listen!”
Blearily, I look up from the child I am tending, the hundredth or so I have seen in this filthy hospital fatally wounded by shrapnel, bombs or fire. Mama’s face is swimming before my exhausted eyes. “I can’t talk now,” I tell her. “What’s the time? Is it morning yet?”
She grasps my arm. “Naema, pay attention. Your grandmother, she…” She breaks down in tears.
“Where is she? What have you done with her?” I say slowly, casting my eyes over the bedlam of the hospital. I have been working nonstop for some eighteen hours now and am so deeply fatigued I feel as if I am at the bottom of a river.
Mama pulls at me. “Come see for yourself.”
“But I…”
“Come!”
“Wait, let me finish here.” I look down at the child I am tending, a little boy of about five. He is lying on the floor, which is splattered with blood, vomit and urine, but he lacks even a sheet to protect him. The hospital has no more sheets, let alone gurneys or beds. His face is charred black, as is much of his body, one arm is burnt off and he is crawling with flies and rotting alive with infection. I have nothing to give him but words, but he is in too much pain to hear them, thus I have nothing to give him at all. He stares at me, his eyes huge with agony, too far gone even to cry.
“Go to sleep, little one,” I tell him. “It’ll stop hurting soon.” As it will.
Turning away, I leave his side and follow Mama, weaving through the other patients laid out on the floor and the wailing relatives gathered around them. If I have ever seen hell on earth, I am seeing it now.
Mama leads me back to the corner where I left her and Granny Maryam so many hours ago. Granny resembles a heap of rags more than a human being, lying curled up in her black abaya, her body oddly crumpled and still. I take one look and know she is dead.
“To Allah we belong and to Allah we return,” I mutter automatically. But I have seen too much this past night to feel anything.
“We must carry her home right now!” Mama says. “We have to prepare her for burial. We can’t leave her poor body like this, Allah have mercy on her.”
“Yes, all right,” I say numbly. “How long since she died?”
“I don’t know! I fell asleep and when I awoke she was gone, may Allah forgive me. How could I—”
“Mama, shush. You aren’t to blame. Let me tell a nurse I have to leave.”
The nurse I find is unhappy to let me go, but of course she cannot stop me. “I’ll come back as soon as I can to keep helping,” I tell her, but she is already too caught up in the next emergency to answer.
So I return to my mother. Together, we lift Granny’s little body, twisted and stiff, and carry her out of the hospital and through the crowd to our car, which we find exactly as we left it. Mama climbs into the back, trying tearfully to keep Granny’s rigid body and head decently wrapped in her dusty shawl. I sit alone in the front, hunched over the steering wheel, drenched in other people’s blood and nearly blind with exhaustion. And once again, I drive excruciatingly slowly for hours through turmoil and danger.
Why must we go through these things? Why can’t we and all those other suffering people in the hospital be left alone to lead peaceful, ordinary lives? Granny Maryam should have died in her own house, saying her last prayers to Allah, not abandoned in a filthy corner like a poisoned dog. She should have been able to lie in her own bed while Mama and I washed her tenderly with lotus leaves and camphor. She should have been able to die with dignity, not amidst blood and ruin. Is it so much to ask that a good-hearted old woman be allowed to die in peace—or that those poor children I saw tonight be allowed to live?
[ KATE ]
NOTHING’S THE SAME now that Yvette’s dead. I can’t eat without feeling her blood in my mouth. Can’t sleep without seeing her body pincushioned with shrapnel. Can’t get through the day without thinking that I’m seeing her over and over. She comes walking out of a dust cloud, only to dissolve into air. She turns to grin at me when I enter the tent, only to change into somebody else. Her voice is everywhere, too, telling me to look after myself, telling me to trust her. And when I try to cry, she says, “Be a soldier, baby,” and the tears turn to sand.
Jimmy comes to see me as often as he can. We’re almost a real couple now, although we still haven’t done any more than kiss. He’s waiting for me to recover from Yvette and the attacks, if such a thing’s possible. I’m waiting to feel clean enough in my conscience to deserve him. But he comes every morning to pick me up for our shift (I can’t get it together to run anymore), he comes at lunchtime to my tower and he comes over to my tent at night when he can, too, so we can sneak outside for a cuddle. “I love you, I’ve always loved you,” he tells me, and it’s so good to hear. The only moments I feel even near to normal are when I’m with him.
If only I could get over the sense that everything I am and everything I say is a lie.
One day in mid-August, a couple weeks after Yvette’s funeral, he climbs up to my tower as usual, only this time he seems uneasy. We sit together quietly a while, watching the prisoners milling around in the dust—I hate them so much, the bile churns around inside of me all the time now. Then he heaves a sigh.
“Kate, I got something to tell you.”
“That sounds bad.” I try to sound jokey, but already my stomach�
��s in a knot. I’m always expecting him to see the light after all and dump me.
“I spoke to Ortiz last night. He asked me to give you this. It’s not good.”
I forgot all about Ortiz. Yvette’s driven everything else from my head.
Jimmy pulls something out of his utility vest and hands it to me. It’s the torn-in-half photo of Naema’s little brother I gave to Ortiz all those weeks ago, only crinkled and faded. The kid’s still grinning out at me from his goofy long face, but three jagged creases run across his head now, and I notice more writing on the back than was there before. I turn the photo over. His name is still there in Naema’s handwriting, Zaki Jassim. But next to it, in different writing, is scrawled:
July 9, 2003, shot in attempted escape. Deceased July 10.
I stare at it a second. July 10th. That was around the time Naema’s dad freaked out in the compound. The time I stamped on him and ground his face in the sand.
I crumple the photo up and throw it off the tower.
“What are you doing?” Jimmy says.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I answer. “Those people killed Yvette. They tried to kill all of us. They’re stinking animals and I don’t give a damn what happens to any of them.”
Jimmy stares at me. “It doesn’t bother you that we shot a thirteen-year-old kid?”
“I wanted to shoot a kid myself out there on the convoy. A little kid, about seven, same as April. Shot his donkey instead.”
Jimmy’s looking shocked now, but I can’t stop. “I wanted to kill him. Really wanted to.” I glare into Jimmy’s face. “That’s who I am now. See?”
“Don’t talk like that!”
“It’s true. I’ve hurt so many people, you don’t even know. I’m bad news.” I begin to laugh. “And this is just the beginning because there’s other people I’m going to kill too! Starting with fuckface Henley.”
Jimmy takes me by the shoulders. “Snap out of it, Kate! You’re talking wild. You’re just messed up ’cause of all the bad shit that’s happened. You’ll be all right, sweetie, you will.” And he hugs me.
But I see it in his eye, I hear it in his voice: doubt.
“I need to go back to my post now,” he says gently. “But I’ll come see you tonight so we can talk about it more, okay? Just hold on till then. You’ll feel different soon.”
But when I walk back into the tent tonight, I don’t feel different at all. I feel hard and tough and cold inside. I feel like a soldier now. A real robot soldier. I know who I hate and I know who I want to kill. All the rest is bullshit.
“Third Eye?” I poke her in the arm. She’s lying on her cot, staring into space like a dead woman, as usual. She’s been a robot for a long time now. I just didn’t see it before.
“What?”
“I got a message for that Naema girl. She is still coming to the checkpoint, right?”
Third Eye turns her head in her slow-motion way and looks at me. “Yeah, she’s still coming. Or was till the last couple of days, at least. She’s a pain in the ass. Always insisting that we tell her this, tell her that. I think she wants to blow the crap out of us.”
“Well, this’ll shut her up. Tell her that her little brother’s dead. And probably her dad, too.”
Third Eye looks startled. “Where’d you hear that?”
I unsnap the fasteners on my utility vest. “From this guy who guards the boys’ compound. He says the kid was shot trying to escape, but who knows? He probably thumbed his nose at an MP who got pissed off and blew him away. Whatever. But the dad flipped out when he heard, got himself beaten up, and I haven’t seen him since. Naema told me he has a heart condition, so my guess is, kaput.”
Third Eye swings her legs off her rack and sits up. “Why the hell should I tell her all that? I’m not the one around here who likes to cozy up with those fucking hajjis.”
“Don’t tell her then, I don’t give a shit.” I pull off my vest.
Third Eye frowns at me. “I thought you cared about her.”
“That’s over.” And I walk out of the tent to meet Jimmy.
Whenever I meet Jimmy at night, we hide in this shadowy patch between my tent and its neighbor. Most couples sneak off to the motor pool to find an empty two-and-a-half ton truck with a cover on it, where they can have sex in private. But, like I said, we haven’t gotten to that point yet.
He’s already there when I duck out of the tent, and once we’ve turned the corner to get out of sight, he gives me a hug. “Feeling any better?”
“Not really.”
He lets go of me and steps back to look into my face. His own is so sad. I can see that even in the moon shadows.
“I know you feel bad now,” he says quietly. “But you’re a good person, Kate. Don’t let this place make you forget that.” He put his arms around me again. “Don’t push me away, okay? We need each other. I know things are fuckedup here, of course they are. But I love you, and I want us to help each other when we get home.”
I pull out of his arms. His words make my whole body ache. But I know, I really know that he’s wrong.
“Jimmy.” My voice comes out detached and icy, a real robot voice. “This isn’t going to work. I’ve decided.”
“What do you mean? Decided what?”
“I’m going back to Tyler.”
“Tyler? Why?” Jimmy’s voice holds so much pain it makes my whole body ache.
“Because he’s the best side of me. Because if I don’t find that side of me again, I don’t know how I’m going to live the rest of my life.”
“So what’s that make me?” Jimmy says bitterly. “The evil side?”
“No, I don’t mean that. You’re the real thing. You’re kind and brave and honest. You’re the best person I’ve ever met.”
He pulls a wry face. “But?”
“But we’re in a nightmare here. I mean it’s real but it’s not real. It’s got nothing to do with life at home. And if we’re together, we’ll be stuck in the nightmare forever.”
“That’s not true! We’ll help each other cope, don’t you see?”
“But I don’t want to be the person I am with you, Jimmy. I hate who I am here. I hate who I am even with you.”
He steps away again, and now he looks angry. “Well, don’t come crying to me when you hate who you are with everybody else, too. You are who you are, Kate. You can’t change that.”
We stand silent a moment, both of us staring at the shadowy ground. “Jimmy, please try to understand. I’m just so tired of screwing up people’s lives.”
“Then why did you just do it again? Fuck.” He turns away from me and leaves.
Back in my tent, I can’t sleep even for a second. My conversation with Jimmy keeps playing over and over in my head, coming out the way I want it to instead of the way it did: Don’t worry, Kate, I’ll wait for you, no matter what you say. But Jimmy never said anything like that, and I know he never will. So I lie here writhing and twisting like a fly with its wings torn off. Sit up, lie down. Kick off my sheet, pull it back on. Shake my head to get out the words and cicadas. Makes no difference. One minute crawls after another like the slow drips of sweat running down my ribs. Soon, all I can focus on is Macktruck snoring in my ear, and it irritates me so bad I want to shoot him in the fucking neck.
I peer around the edge of my poncho to check on him. He’s flat on his back, stomach bulging like a pillow. He seems to be asleep, although how he can sleep at the same time as making all that racket is a mystery to me.
“Mack!” I pick up my rifle and poke him in the ribs with it.
He wakes up with a start. “Uh, what?” He sounds pretty shocked to hear me speak to him at all.
“You think you could shut the fuck up? You sound like a dying pig.”
“Uh, okay, I’ll try.” He heaves himself over on his side.
“And Mack?”
“Yeah?”
“If you come anywhere near me ever again, snore one more snore, or bother me in any of your fucking pervert w
ays at all, I’m blowing a hole in you so big a friggin’ convoy could drive through it.”
A pause while he thinks this over.
“You’re losing it, Brady, you know that?” he says then.
“Yeah, I know. That’s the point.”
After that, he doesn’t say another word.
I still can’t sleep, though. Each time somebody sighs in his rack, a critter runs across our plywood floor with its scratchy little feet, or a prisoner cries out in the distance, adrenaline jolts through me, bringing back Naema’s mourning dad and what I did to him, that Iraqi worker’s pleading eyes in the mortar attack, the boy and his donkey, Yvette’s last little sigh. Her blood all over my body.
All the rest of that night, I lie on my back, eyes wide open, rifle clasped to my chest. Head exploding with despair.
The second the sky begins to lighten, I get up with relief and yank on my uniform. I try taking a couple bites of T-Rats for energy, but each time I bring the food near my lips I think of Yvette, and my mouth fills again with the taste of her blood.
Giving Macktruck a warning glare—he steps out of my way pretty fast—I head out to the latrines with Third Eye, who’s back to her rock-faced self. The lack of sleep and food is making me lightheaded, and black spots keep skittering across my vision like bees, but since that’s how I feel most of the time anyway, I pay no attention. When I climb into the Humvee with Jimmy and the rest of my team, he doesn’t look at me once.
It’s extra hot up in my tower today—hundred and forty, I’m sure, at least in the sun. I sit sweating till I’ve soaked through my underwear, my uniform, even my flak jacket. I have water with me but it tastes of blood too, so I push the bottles into the tiny square of shade under my roof and leave them there to cook.
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