I don’t wait around for his response. I’m so angry that we’re doing everything we can think of to try to help him and then him throwing something like that in our face that I can’t even stand to be in the same room as him right now, so I storm upstairs to my room and slam the door.
OMG, my brother makes me so MAD!!!!!!! I text Farida.
As they do. she texts back.
She has a point.
But this anger is bigger than the usual brother/sister stuff. This anger has my heart beating faster and my hands shaking, and I feel so much that my body doesn’t feel big enough to contain it. My room doesn’t feel big enough. I’m a ticking time bomb that will explode this house if I go off.
Then it hits me.
Is this Rob at the mall?
Is this Rob punching Wade?
Is that why he couldn’t stop?
Is this how Farida feels every day?
When people tell her to go back to where she came from?
When even her best friend doesn’t get it?
This anger at injustice that feels too big for the world?
ME: How do you cope?
FARIDA: Yusef’s annoying at times, but he’s not THAT BAD.
ME: Ha! Sorry, unidentified change of subject. I mean with unfairness. With anger. With so much crazy stuff going on in the world that makes no sense. With a best friend who never seems to get what the reality of your life is like.
FARIDA: Oh, THAT kind of mad.
ME: Yeah.
ME: Seriously … how do you keep going when you have to deal with so much? I know I sound super white-girl right now, but I feel like I’m going to explode.
FARIDA: Ha, you do sound super white-girl. You keep going because I mean, what else can I do? Give up? Not an option. Sit around and feel sorry for myself? Yeah, sometimes I do that, but where does that get me? Even more depressed about it all. So I just keep on going.
ME: I guess I’ve always felt like I had a choice. That’s what my white girl status gave me. But now I don’t feel like there’s a choice anymore.
FARIDA: Welcome to my world!
ME: So what helps when you get to the feel-like-you’re-about–to-explode stage?
FARIDA: Different things. Sometimes I play music really loud. I recommend Oversized Aviators or Barbie and the Bats. Sometimes I go for a run. Sometimes I eat too much baklava. Believe it or not, when you’re not the one who’s making me want to explode, you help, too!
ME: Good to know! I hope that the ratio of helping vs making you want to explode improves. I know I keep saying I get it and then I don’t, but I *think* I get it more now. Not that I probably won’t screw up again but …
FARIDA: And not that I won’t tell you when you screw up again. But I’d rather not spend all my time with you doing that. There are so many more fun things to do. Like watch movies and argue about which band is better or check out new shoes. Or running lines for the musical auditions! Even if you sometimes sound like a croaky frog.
ME: LOL. All of the above is true. Especially the croaky frog part.
There’s a knock on my door.
“Stella—it’s me. Can I come in?”
I thumb a quick text to Farida. Thanks sorry GTG. Brother at the door.
Good luck xo, she replies.
I tell Rob he can come in, and he does, followed by a tail-between-the-legs, head-down Peggy. Nobody is happy in this house—man, woman, or canine.
My brother sits on the end of my bed, and Peggy jumps up and lies between us, like a furry demilitarized zone.
I stroke her head while I wait for Rob to say something. He takes his time, opening his mouth and closing it, twice, before finally saying, “Stella, I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t say what, exactly, he’s sorry for, but it doesn’t matter right now. Just hearing him say the words is enough that the room slowly shrinks to the right size again, and the fuse inside me flickers and slowly fades. He’s my brother, and even though he makes my life difficult at times, I still love him.
“We were so scared all the time that something would happen to you,” I say. “And now … I’m scared you’ll …”
I don’t even want to say the words in case. I guess I inherited Mom’s superstition.
He nods, like he knows what I mean.
“Are you? Going to? I mean, do you ever think about it?”
He hesitates a moment too long, so even if he says no, I know it will be a lie.
“Yeah, I have. In my worst moments,” he admits. “But I’m not going to.”
“But if you’ve thought about it, how can we be sure? You have to get help!”
“You think I’m not trying?” Rob says. “I did my part. I went to fight when and where I was told. I did the things my country asked me to do. And now that I’m back here and I need help, my country is taking its sweet time on that.”
He sounds bitter and I can’t blame him for it.
“It’s not fair,” I say.
“Nothing’s fair,” Rob says. “If things were fair, then Guillermo Reyes would be home getting drooled on by his baby girl and loving every minute of it. The only thing that baby girl is going to know about her dad is from pictures and the stories people tell. How is that fair?”
I feel so helpless, for my brother and for Jason and for Reyes and his daughter. For the graffiti on our house calling Rob a traitor, and the fact that he has to wait so long to get help from the government he served. I feel helpless because that help came too late for Jason, and now he’s gone. And I don’t know how I’m supposed to help Rob.
“Hey, come on now,” Rob says, and he reaches across the Demilitarized Dog and puts his arm around me. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“How do you know?” I ask. “It wasn’t for Jason.”
“I won’t do that, okay?”
“You better not. If you do, I’ll kill you.”
Rob’s shoulder heaves with laughter under my head.
“Logic isn’t your strong point,” he says.
I realize my error and laugh with him. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do. And I mean it, Stel. I’m really trying.”
“Dad’s proud of you. I don’t know why you think he isn’t,” I tell him.
“Yeah, he and Mom just had that conversation with me.”
“Seems like I’m not the only one having logic fails here.”
“Who said I was thinking logically? Isn’t that why I’m waiting for a shrink appointment at the VA?”
I hope this won’t end up being like Catch-22—that Rob can’t get help because he admitted he needs it. “When do they think you’ll get one?”
He laughs bitterly. “Hopefully before I’m on Social Security.”
Rob gets up off the bed and Peggy jumps down, ever his shadow.
“Mom wants to know if you’re hungry. You stormed out before you finished dinner.”
“Tell her I’m good,” I say. “I need time to think.”
He salutes and shuts the door behind him.
I turn on music and think about all the people like Rob and Jason who did what they were asked and then came home and haven’t been looked after. It’s easy to put a yellow ribbon magnet on your car or wear a flag pin or wave the Stars and Stripes at a parade or a football game. But what about the hard stuff like paying for care? Everyone’s super patriotic when it’s time to go to war, but what about when our veterans need something in return?
I still don’t understand what patriotism means, what it really means to love our country and how to show it. But it has to be about more than just a symbol. Right?
Hey, Roadrunner—
I confronted something the other night—what Stella called my logic fail. I don’t know what the shrink would call it because still no appointment with the VA.
I’ve been convinced that Dad thought I was weak. That I was less than him because I couldn’t just come home and move on back into civilian life without batting an eye. That I could just “suck it up” and “be
a man,” whatever that means.
Especially since I don’t even have any major scars to show for my tours like he does. Not on the outside, anyway.
Dad admitted that he had a real hard time with it, especially at first. But he also told me that it’s not just about me and my stuff. He said that my behavior brought back memories of HIS father when he came back from Vietnam—and those weren’t good memories. It messed him up and made him angry with me, until he finally talked that all through with Mom. But get this: He confessed that he even thought about going to see a shrink himself recently, because he wanted to work through it so he could help me get better.
Words I never thought I’d hear come out of Dad’s mouth in my lifetime.
It made me feel like less of a failure.
But I still wonder: Why did Grandpa Harry and I come back messed up and Dad and Mom didn’t?
Frank Meyers and I went fishing again the other day. Didn’t catch much, but it was good to be out on the lake. I think he’s been taking me under his wing because we’ve both had problems dealing with life post combat.
I asked him if he had any idea why my parents handled war better than we did.
He sat for a while, looking out over the lake with the thousand-yard stare.
I wondered if he’d answer, or if he’d gone to that dark ’Nam place he doesn’t like to talk about. But finally he said, “The thing is, Rob, the war your parents fought had a beginning, a middle, and an end. There were clear objectives. Get the Iraqis out of Kuwait.”
“And they did that and went home,” I said.
“Right. Even though Bill got himself a nasty injury, he knew what he was there for. And they accomplished the mission. Whereas you and me … well, things weren’t quite so clear, were they?”
And as much as I wanted to argue with him that what we were doing in Afghanistan was nothing like the mess of Vietnam, I couldn’t. Because even though we succeeded in individual missions, I still can’t tell you the long-term plan, if there is one at all. I mean, I know we’re just the grunts who fight the thing—they don’t need us to see the big picture.
But it would make it a lot easier to live with the crap that keeps me up at night if I knew that there was an actual endgame.
If I knew then what I know now, would I still have enlisted? Even though I feel like the country broke its promise to you, and me, and so many thousands of others?
The answer is still always yes. Yeah, I’m bitter, yeah, I’m angry, yeah, I feel betrayed and messed up, but I can’t imagine not having done it.
I just wish everyone could share some of the garbage that we have to carry around with us because we did their dirty work for them.
I guess I do have “anger issues.” But can you blame me?
Well, now for some good news. The vets’ group started. Mrs. Cook, a counselor from an outside nonprofit, comes to the college once a week. Five of us meet with her in a room about the size of a broom closet and talk about stuff that’s come up.
It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s helped me feel like I’m not alone. The other thing it’s helped me realize is that even though I’m hurting, it doesn’t mean I’m permanently broken.
Or you can look at it this way—it makes me unlucky like most of the other guys in the group, because our wounds from the war don’t show on the outside. When you’ve lost a limb, people understand why you need disability or why you’re angry or if you’re having a bad day. You also get treatment faster.
When you look the same on the outside? Not so much.
Employers are afraid to hire you in case you lose it. Thanks to the video of me punching Wade Boles in the face, I’m the poster child for that now.
But one thing the group helped me understand was that I was a poster child for something else, too. I was on a roll, getting down on myself for living up to the stereotype of the angry vet who loses it. Remember how you said sometimes you thought the enemy was yourself? It’s true—we do end up being our own worst enemy a lot of the time. But then Tony, one of the other guys in the group, said, “But you were putting yourself on the line to defend someone. That’s what we do.”
And other guy in the group, Jack, said, “Yeah, just because we take off the uniform, it doesn’t mean we lose that commitment.”
I’d been so busy hearing everybody else’s voice in my head that I’d forgotten my own truth.
“I miss having a common purpose,” I confessed. “I don’t remember if it was like this before, but it seems like since I got out, everyone is out for themselves. I miss being part of a team. Something bigger.”
Nods of agreement and “right ons” from the other guys.
“Have any of you experienced that sense of being part of something bigger since you’ve been out of the military?” Mrs. Cook asked.
Silence.
We were all looking at our hands and our feet, at anything but her or each other. Then I looked up and spoke, because I remembered that morning.
“The time when we’d woken up to find graffiti all over our house, calling me a traitor and a terrorist lover. When the folks from the American Legion came over and helped us clean it off,” I told them. “At first I was … well, embarrassed, if you want to know the truth.”
“Why?” Tony asked.
“Because they saw the graffiti. They saw the embarrassment I’d brought on my family,” I confessed. “And because I was going to need help cleaning up this mess. I’m used to being able to clean up after myself.”
“But isn’t being part of a team that you can count on others to have your six?” Jack said.
And I thought … Duh. Yeah.
That’s when Mrs. Cook said how we have to remember that it’s okay to ask for help and to accept it when people offer it. That it’s not weakness and there’s no reason to feel shame.
Easier said than done.
But I guess you have to hear the message before you can start living it.
ThunderGeek out.
The day before the governor election, Ken, Farida, Adam, and I head to the local field office of Jack Witham after school to make get out the vote calls, like we’ve been doing a few afternoons a week. Between that, debate, working on AstroNews, and school, I haven’t had any time to chill and watch movies or really to even chill, period.
“We’ll have time to do that after the election,” I reminded Ken when he started complaining about missing our Keeping It Reel sessions. “Priorities, dude. Right now the priority is making sure that we have a good governor.”
“All work and no play makes Stella a dull girl. All work and no play makes Stella a dull girl. All work and no play makes Stella a dull girl,” he says, quoting from The Shining movie.
Laughing, I remind him that the latest Marvel movie is coming out the week of the election. “We can go see it for our victory party!”
“Or to commiserate if Witham loses,” he said.
“Don’t even joke,” I told him. It was bad enough losing the school election to Chris. Jack Witham has to win. The consequences of him losing are way bigger.
One thing I’ve learned volunteering is that making phone calls isn’t my favorite thing to do. I don’t like talking on the phone at the best of times, and it’s worse calling someone I don’t know, who might get angry and hang up on me as soon as they hear what I’m calling about.
But, although I’m getting used to being hung up on, when I get through and talk to someone who confirms they’re going to vote for Jack Witham, it makes me sit up straight and dial again, because that’s one more voter to help defeat Mayor Abbott.
And volunteering is something I can do that might help my brother and all of the people who the mayor has been targeting in his speeches.
It doesn’t hurt that they have good snacks here, too.
“Ugh, I just got an Abbott’s-right-about-immigrants! guy,” Farida says. “Quick, hand me a gummy bear to take the bad taste out of my mouth.”
I pass her the bowl.
“I just
had this really supercool older lady who said she’d love to go door to door with me, but her walker would probably slow me down,” Adam says. “I asked her if she needed a ride to go vote tomorrow and she said she voted absentee in case she died between now and then. She said if she goes, she wants voting to be the last thing she does.”
“She’s my hero,” I say. “I want to be like her when I grow up.”
“Do they still count her vote if she dies between now and then?” Farida asks.
“Good question,” I say. “I hope so.”
My next call picks up. According to the call sheet, he’s a twenty-eight-year-old man who has only voted once. He says he’s not going to vote because he doesn’t like either of the candidates. “I hate politicians,” he says. “You can’t trust any of them. What’s the point?”
“The point is that they make the policies that affect your life,” I tell him. “Don’t you want a say in that?”
“Yeah, like my one vote is going to make a difference.” He laughs.
“All those one votes add up!” I say, but I’m speaking to myself. He’s already hung up on me.
“Democracy is really hard work,” I complain.
“No one ever said it was easy,” Farida says.
“A lot of people I spoke to aren’t paying attention,” Adam says. “They don’t even know what each of the candidates stands for. Or if they are paying attention, they think their vote doesn’t matter.”
“Well, it’s definitely not going to matter if they don’t bother to vote,” I say. “I get that, and I’m not even old enough to do it yet!”
My frustration with voters is still hanging over me at dinner.
“What if people don’t vote?” I ask.
“We just have to hope that more of Mayor Abbott’s people don’t vote than Jack Witham’s,” Dad says. “It’s always a numbers game.”
“But it’s not a game!” I say. “It’s important. It affects people’s lives. Rob’s life. Farida’s life. The lives of so many people in our state.”
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