Soldier Girls

by Helen Thorpe

  Her commander said he knew what it was like to be in a combat zone.

  “I know what it’s like to be in a combat zone as well, sir,” Desma told him. “I’ve been there.”

  “Well, how are you injured?” he wanted to know.

  The commander did not appear to be aware that she had spent a year driving a gun truck at the front of a supply convoy or that she had hit an IED, according to Desma. Even after she described the bombing, he seemed unconvinced that she had suffered a real injury. Desma must have looked fine to him; perhaps he thought that because he could see no sign of her medical challenges, she was manufacturing everything. All over the country, soldiers with traumatic brain injury were running into similar problems. Within the medical community, it was widely known that damage to the frontal lobe could cause memory issues, irritability, poor impulse control, and increased risk-taking due to a compromised ability to regulate behavior. But the public, including many in the military, did not know that traumatic brain injury caused these issues. Soldiers with TBI often just looked like difficult people. Medical personnel were calling traumatic brain injury “the silent epidemic” because they were seeing so many people with TBI and because it was so hard for others to grasp the extent of their liabilities.

  Desma hated working for that particular commander, but she could not find another job that would pay as well. She reenlisted with the National Guard for an additional six years—her new official end of service date fell in 2016—so that she could keep her job. As time went by, her standing did not improve. “Life is easier in a combat zone,” Desma declared at one point. All she meant was that in many ways, her life had been simpler at Q-West, when other people had done her laundry, fixed her meals, and planned her day. Her supervisors appeared to view the comment as a sign of instability, however, as someone added a note to her military file that said, “Process for fit for duty.” If a commander considered a soldier unable to perform a job, for physical or mental reasons, the commander could ask the army’s Medical Evaluation Board to determine whether the soldier was fit for duty. If the soldier was deemed unfit, the finding could result in involuntary retirement. Desma went to her next therapy appointment and said she believed she was being pushed out of the Guard. “Patient reports that since her last appointment she had discovered that she may be being medically-boarded from the service due to her PTSD,” wrote McGlocklin.

  The idea of being forced out unnerved Desma because she could only hold on to her well-paying job as long as she remained in the military. When she spoke to the company commander, he said he had no intention of forcing her out of the service. She did not fully trust him, however, and upon reflection she thought perhaps the best way out of the unhappy situation was to seek a medical retirement voluntarily. If she could not take leadership courses, and could not advance in her career, she might as well find another way to make a living, Desma figured. She spent several months amassing the documents she would need—she had to prove that she had done two tours of active duty, had been in an IED blast, had sustained traumatic brain injury, had PTSD, and could no longer perform capably as a soldier. If she could demonstrate all of the above, the medical board might allow her to retire early with a partial pension, perhaps 50 to 70 percent of her active duty salary—which would be $1,700 a month. Desma sent off her documents and waited. It would take more than a year to hear back, the Medical Evaluation Board told her.

  The ten-year anniversary of the airplane hijackings that had started the two wars fell on September 11, 2011. All US combat troops had pulled out of Iraq by then, and the drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan had just begun. That fall, however, as the war in Afghanistan persisted, it surpassed Vietnam to become the longest war in US history. Michelle was thinking of returning to graduate school to become a physical therapist or an occupational therapist—she wanted to work with veterans who were returning with traumatic brain injury. She had just learned that she could use the GI Bill to defray part of the cost of the tuition. Meanwhile, Debbie had been speaking with Delia McGlocklin about how she might fill the void that retirement had created, and with the encouragement of her therapist Debbie had started studying welding at Ivy Tech, the tuition subsidized by her benefits. Everybody else in her welding classes wanted to work at one of Indiana’s factories, but Debbie wanted to make sculptures. She completed most of her course work by the spring of 2012. To celebrate, Jeff took Debbie to Mexico for what was meant to be a second honeymoon, but while they were partying in Puerto Vallarta, Debbie got the news that her mother had been hospitalized for complications having to do with pneumonia and heart disease. Debbie wanted to cut the trip short. Everybody at home said her mother seemed to be improving, however, and urged her to stay in Mexico. Unexpectedly, Debbie’s mother died several hours before Debbie’s plane landed in Indianapolis. After years of caretaking, Debbie did not get the chance to say good-bye—anytime she left the country, it seemed, somebody important passed away.

  As luck would have it, when this occurred, Akbar Khan had just returned for another visit to the United States. Michelle, Desma, and Akbar knew that Debbie was going to have a terrible time forgiving herself for being on vacation when her mother died. Akbar was already planning to fly to Indiana; Michelle jumped on a plane and flew there, too. One week after Debbie’s mother’s funeral, they drove to Bloomington and picked up Debbie, then drove to Roy’s house. By this point Desma owned three dogs: a fast German shepherd named Ginger, a tiny Chihuahua named Tori, and a roly-poly black Labrador mix named Sammy. Sammy had just given birth to a litter of ten, and the newborn puppies were crowded around their dam, all trying to nurse at the same time. When they woke the next morning, Desma discovered that one of the puppies had died in the night. Michelle and Akbar volunteered to bury the one dead puppy, and told Debbie her job was to get an eyedropper and feed the nine puppies that were still alive.

  Michelle turned thirty years old in September 2012. After seven years together, she and Billy had recently ended their relationship. In the weeks that had followed, Michelle had turned fragile and weepy, and one night she drank too much and got a DUI. Now she was driving around Colorado with a Breathalyzer attached to her steering wheel. It seemed important to move on, however; Michelle was not getting any younger. That fall, she was out on a date with a man she had met recently when Akbar called her cell phone. She did not answer. He sent a text message. She did not write back. He sent another text demanding that she call. Then Desma sent a text saying Akbar was trying to reach her. Michelle wrote back: I’m having a sleepover tonight and he needs to back off. Desma replied: Got it!

  When Michelle finally returned Akbar’s calls, she learned that he had been trying to reach her because he had been shattered by witnessing a horrific attack. He had been at Bagram, standing with a group of colleagues, when an RPG had blown up several of the soldiers. Akbar had been covered in blood and gore. He could not eat, he could not sleep, he could not keep track of his keys or his phone. Doctors had prescribed psychotropic medication and he had to take the pills to calm down. Meat reminded him of what he had just seen, and he could put only fruit or vegetables into his mouth. He tried to quit his job at the prison, but Mission Essential Personnel said he had to finish out the remainder of his contract. Meanwhile, Akbar’s wife had been diagnosed with cancer, and shortly after the RPG attack Akbar learned that she might need to seek treatment in Dubai. It would be very expensive. He decided to keep working at the prison.

  That same fall, when Desma went to one of her regular drill weekends, she was instructed to participate in another mandatory health screening. Desma stood in line for hours, got fed up, and blew off the screening. She walked into a building and down a flight of stairs, and there he was, Josh Stonebraker. She had not seen Stoney since they had gone through demobilization. Four years had elapsed.

  “Papa!” Desma cried.

  Stoney said warmly, “Hey, Hooker!”

  He wrapped her in a bear hug. They created their own little island, let
other soldiers wash around them. Stoney wanted to know how she was doing. Desma told him they would not let her carry a weapon anymore, her career had stuttered to a halt, and she was seeking a medical retirement.

  “I’m sorry,” Stoney said.

  “For what?” Desma asked.

  “I’m sorry I led you to it,” he said. “I was the one directing you in. I’m sorry.”

  “I was just trying to get a little closer,” Desma said. “I wasn’t trying to hit it.”

  “You didn’t hit the box,” said Stoney. “The box went PFFFFFFT, turned into confetti. I watched it vanish. You never hit the box.”

  “I know I didn’t hit the box,” said Desma.

  “I gave you shit for it afterward,” said Stoney, rueful.

  “Because that’s what we do, man,” said Desma.

  She went home thinking about that little scrap of conversation. Hearing that Stoney shared some piece of her yawning sense of being at fault—it meant that she was not alone. The conversation did not erase her sense of accountability, but it made her realize that she was not carrying that weight because she was female, or not as good as Stoney, or inadequate in some other fashion—all those things she had accused herself of when she had searched for the why of it. Why had she hit a bomb? Why had her truck gone nose up in the air? Why had she not been able to yell, “Missed me, motherfucker!”? She kept telling herself it was her fault. But if Stoney carried the same burden, then maybe they had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  In the two years since Desma and her daughters had moved to Hagerstown, the problems Desma had been having with Paige had escalated. One day, Paige had called 911 while Desma was out shopping. Paige said afterward that she had called the ambulance because her mouth had gone dry and her heart had started racing and she had felt dizzy. Desma had little sympathy, however, because she got a bill for $3,000. Why hadn’t her daughter just picked up the phone and called her? Paige maintained that after she left school she went straight to the Boys’ and Girls’ Club and stayed there all afternoon, but the staff told Desma that her daughter vanished for long stretches. Paige also created an alter ego for herself on Facebook, a supposed friend named “Haiydan.” On more than one occasion, “Haiydan” wrote emails to Desma asking if Paige could spend the weekend down in Spurgeon. Alexis stayed on the honor roll, but Paige was put on academic probation. Her seventh-grade report cards were littered with Ds and her eighth-grade report cards were not much better. Paige swung around like a weather vane that did not know which way to point; half of her still longed for the comfort of childish things, while the other half of her spun toward grown-up declarations of pain. At one point, she taped a sign to her bedroom door. It was a list of things she wanted to get:

  1. Gauged ears

  2. Lip piercing

  3. Good grades

  4. Abs!

  5. Orbies!

  6. Ceiling stars

  7. Neon colored eyeliner

  When Desma determined that Paige had been lying about remaining at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club, she took away her daughter’s electronic devices. In response, Paige said that she found living with Desma to be intolerable, and demanded to live with her father. With a mixture of sadness and relief, Desma let her go—although a few months later, Paige asked to return to Hagerstown. Desma welcomed her back, but the trouble continued. They tried counseling, to no avail. “Those little people have been really hard to live with these past six months,” Desma told Michelle in one of their phone calls.

  In the end, though, it was Josh who broke her heart. He had graduated from high school at age eighteen in the spring of 2011. The following summer he had gotten arrested for possession of alcohol as a minor and spent one night in jail. That fall, Josh had asked if he could move in with Desma and Roy, saying he needed a new start. Desma had fixed up a bedroom for him and bought him a black 1998 Neon and gotten him a job working part-time at UPS. Josh had failed to show up regularly, however, and after a while he had been fired. Then Josh had moved back in with his surrogate father and started working at a plastics factory, but he lost that job after fighting with a colleague. Afterward he was arrested for possession of marijuana. He moved back in with Desma and Roy again. Desma never expected her son to be lazy, but Josh seemed to have a sense of entitlement, an idea that good things should simply come his way. He spoke of enrolling in community college but never filled out the forms. He spoke of finding another job but never did that, either. At night he had insomnia and during the day he seemed only half awake.

  One day Roy came home to find his stereo missing and his tools gone. There was no sign of forced entry, and he suspected it was Josh. Desma did not want to believe that her son would steal from Roy, but she feared that maybe he had. Those tools meant the world to Roy and he was so angry that he asked Desma to give him back the key to his house. In the evening, she had to wait in the driveway until he got home before she could enter. Josh went to live with his surrogate father again, and Desma told him to straighten out or else he was going to wind up in jail. But Josh had acquired the wrong kind of friends and the wrong kind of habits. In February 2013, Josh was arrested for breaking and entering a home in Richmond, Indiana. The police said Josh had beaten up an elderly man and stolen prescription medication, cash, and credit cards. According to court documents, Josh faced charges of burglary, burglary resulting in bodily injury, armed robbery, battery, battery resulting in bodily injury, theft, and resisting law enforcement. He was put in jail to await trial. Desma went to see him but it was awful: they had to talk on a phone, separated by glass, and she was asked to leave after only fifteen minutes. His lawyer told Desma to expect the worst, and so she was not entirely surprised when Josh was sentenced to twenty years. Maybe he could get out in eight, for good behavior, the lawyer said.

  Desma asked herself: Would this have happened anyway? Would Josh have turned to crime if she had stayed home? Or was he in jail because she had gone to Afghanistan and Iraq? Should she have skipped one of the deployments? Both? Then in the late spring of 2013, Desma learned that Paige had failed eighth grade. “Over the last five years since I have been home, I have tried very hard to show my kids how much they mean to me,” Desma wrote shortly afterward in an email. “I just can’t seem to help Paige with whatever she is going through.” Repeating eighth grade would put Paige two years behind her peers, in the same classes as her younger sister, Alexis. Desma did not think she could handle Paige anymore. She considered sending Paige to a therapy-driven boarding school, but ultimately decided to allow Paige to live with her cousin Lesley instead. Desma recognized that she was prone to fly off the handle and that she and Paige had developed a conflict-ridden dynamic; she hoped that her cousin could do a better job parenting her daughter than she could herself. “I really wish raising kids was easier,” Desma wrote wearily. Again, she asked herself: Would this have occurred if she had stayed home? Was Paige in trouble because of the two deployments?

  At the point when Desma learned that Paige would not move on to high school with her peers, it had been almost five years since Desma had hit the IED. She had recently started seeing a new therapist, a psychologist named Dr. Heidi Knock. The psychologist did not believe it was important for Desma to recount painful memories of her own middle school years, and what had happened right before she was placed into foster care. She focused instead on modifying Desma’s present-day behavior in small, concrete ways. Dr. Knock asked Desma to go to a movie and sit in the middle of the theater. “I wouldn’t sit in the middle of the room before the Batman shooting, there’s no way I want to sit there now,” Desma objected. “There’s no way to get out, in case of a fire, if you do that.” Dr. Knock pointed out that this was an example of hypervigilance. Desma argued this was common sense. Dr. Knock gave her a different assignment. She told Desma to go to a restaurant and sit with her back to the door. Desma went to an IHOP and tried to do as instructed, but the sound of unseen people coming up behind her made her half crazed. Dr. Knock
asked her to keep practicing until she could sit through the experience without discomfort. She also asked Desma not to switch lanes so often on the highway, and to adjust her speed to the flow of traffic. If she felt impatient, she was supposed to breathe deeply and try to relax.

  In the summer of 2013, after they had been working together for several months, Dr. Knock asked Desma to make a series of voice recordings in which Desma would describe the explosion in detail. She was then supposed to listen to the recordings daily, and discuss them with the therapist every week. Rather than avoid her frightening memories, the psychologist wanted Desma to wring them dry of emotion. The bomb blast was accidentally stuck in the present moment, the therapist observed; every time Desma thought about it, it was as though the incident were happening all over again. Dr. Knock wanted to help her get it safely into the photo album of history, where it would carry less valence.

  In the first recording, Desma recounted everything she could recall about that day. She was inside the truck, and had just taken off her helmet. She could see Jeff Stacey standing on the hood of the vehicle, yelling to get the fuck out. But she could not reach her angel wings.