by Brooke King
*
I don’t know why I did it, but everywhere I went, I looked for signs of World War II. Germany was filled with them. I guess I wanted to make sense of what it was to feel the sting of loss, to survive war, and keep living. To connect with the world again instead of feeling lost.
On the way to the apothecary shop to buy prenatal vitamins, I walked past an old building shuffled back from the street. Though it had been a month since I had returned from Iraq, I still remembered what bullet holes looked like in concrete walls. Atop the building, a swastika was still visible, the center of it scratched out but the impression of its symbol still stamped firmly into the stone. When I asked the pharmacist about the building, she replied in a thick German accent that some things were best left in the past, that Americans had no right to ask of it anymore. I pressed her for an answer as to where I might find information about it. She shook her head, told me that it was just like an American to demand answers to something I had no right to know. I reminded her gently that if it wasn’t for our involvement in the war, Hitler would have surely ruined the rest of Europe. She gave me a dirty look, told me to leave, but to this day, I do not know why I told her I would not leave without an answer. I knew I had no right to keep pushing for it, but I did. She came out from behind the counter, walked to the window, pointed at the building, and told me that it used to be a general’s house, that Schweinfurt was Nazi occupied during the war, that most of her family was killed when the ball-bearing factory was bombed by U.S. planes, and that if I wanted any more information, I should go look it up on the internet. I told her thank you, but she had already walked away. She did not hear the forgiveness in my voice.
*
At least once a week, sometimes more, I stood outside the chapel on Ledward Barracks at a memorial service for a fallen soldier, listened to the trumpet sound “Taps,” and lent my ears to the tuned pitch of human pain.
*
Dichotomy is described in botany as the branching of a plant, with each of a plant’s branches splitting into two or more limbs. The war seemed to me a dichotomy of humanity, each religion, culture, race, country branching out in different directions, all unable to stop, all unwilling to concede to the inevitability of war, that we are all linked in a downward spiral, like a starling plunging to the earth only realizing its fate seconds before impact.
*
A soldier is driving in his car on base. He is done with work. The day is coming to a close, but the sound of a trumpet over the loudspeakers stops him. He puts the car into park, shoving the gearshift toward the radio. He unbuckles his seat belt. Opens the car door. He steps out. Beret in hand, he fixes it atop his head, covering his high and tight. He steps to one side and renders a rigid salute, his right hand snapping to place at his brow line. He is facing the American flag that is now slowly sinking to the ground in slow, melodic timing. The song is almost over, but everywhere on base it blares from loudspeakers, this small part of the world stopping to render a salute, stand still, and pay their respects to the flag. The soldier is still standing outside his car when the song is finished, and other soldiers around him, they are stopped too. Each one facing the flag, each one stopping their world for a flag and the idea of flags; for the remembrance of what the flag means, stands for, brings with it when it shows itself on installation flagpoles, in front of houses, at ball games, and funerals. The soldier stops for the flag to remember all this and more.
Somewhere in Baghdad, at about the same time, Amir is driving his car or maybe a delivery truck when the adhān sounds. The speakers are broken, so the muezzin with a megaphone in his hand stands at the top of the mosque shouting the adhān, and though the muezzin has a cold and cannot keep his cough at bay, he continues the prayer call. There are no instruments to accompany him. He is but a man of Muhammad, and he does this three times a day to remind his people. Amir stops the vehicle. Grabs his prayer rug. Turns toward Mecca. He makes his intention as he kneels on the edge of the rug. The sun is setting, the adhān screeching roughly through the megaphone, the muezzin coughing. The world around Amir is still, the truck is running, and the slow steady huffing of the muffler burns hot and loud in Amir’s ear, but the muezzin begins:
Allaahu Akbar. Allaahu Akbar. Allaahu Akbar. Allaahu Akbar.
Ash-hadu an-lā ilāha illā allāh
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan-Rasulullāh
Ash-hadu anna Alīyan walī-ullāh
Hayya ʿala ṣ-ṣalāt
Hayya ʿala ‘l-falāh
Hayya ʿala khayr al ʿamal
Allāhu akbar
Lā ilāha illā-Allāh
He says every line twice, each with the same intonation. The twelve melodic passages are slow and tonal at best, the muezzin’s voice barely audible over the grumbling coughs that spurt through the megaphone. While listening to the adhān, Amir repeats the same words silently, except when the muezzin says hayya ʿala ṣ-ṣalāh and hayya ʿala l-falāh, Amir quietly says lā hawla wa lā quwata illā billāh.
After the adhān is over, Amir recites the dua. The call to prayer is almost over, but Amir’s back is rigid as he bows toward the ground, his head touching the rug’s outer edges, his eyes closed, his mind on the prayer, a thousand years of religion pressed between the words, his lips are the fastener of their meaning, and those around him know that Amir is a believer of the faith and all the history that it carries; the prayer has reminded him of that.
The House in Iphofen
There was a stillness to the air. A stagnant, pungent odor that crept into the bed next to me, lying in between James and me while he slept and I lay awake. I tricked my body into thinking there was a panic switch that would wake me up if the nightmares became too severe, but the pep talk only lasted a short while, and soon, after barely two hours of sleep, I was awake again, staring up at an eggshell-colored ceiling with crumpled waves of plaster. The fetuses moved inside my stomach, making the restlessness worse. Barefooted, I walked down the tiled floor toward the living room. Empty and barren of anything but black leather couches that clung to your skin like a dark abyss, furnishing only the remembrance of what it was like to seek comfort in a house that had promise to be a home, I stood at the window that met the porch instead. I contemplated smoking one of James’s cigarettes, thought about Iraq, and pondered whether it was too cold out to go for a walk, but I chose instead to sit on the rug with a puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle. I looked at the puzzle pieces, each one more perplexing than the last; none of the edges seemed to fit, and soon my frustration at my inability to sleep was cast upon the puzzle pieces before me. One piece was too short, the edge around it wide and thick, the corners ridged. Piece after piece infuriated me. I started mashing the pieces into place, trying to make the puzzle come together, but no matter how hard I tried, none of the pieces fit, the picture incomplete, the overall goal hopeless. Soon I found myself back in bed, fed up with the puzzle, fed up with sleeping, the small flat-screen TV on, and a show turned on that we had started to watch on DVD, Prison Break.
*
The fan rotated back and forth, flipping the sheet up against my face with each rotation. Inside the bedroom James lay awake watching TV while I slept, a lazy Saturday night. In my sleep I dreamed of Iraq. The after action reports, the rifle cleanings, the mortar fires, the bombs bursting in agony upon impact—the dream took them all in, sucked them under, drove them free. My body lay there twitching, forcing muscle contractions produced by muscle memory recalling how the limbs move and muscle burns as the body is forced backward from a blast. I dreamed of preconvoy meetings, of reloading magazines and ammo cans, of burning through a pack of cigarettes while waiting for the flames to subside on the Humvee so that the bodies inside might stop screaming. I dreamed of the feeling of vomit rising in the throat as the stench of bodies, burning trash, and feces broke the smell of my own body odor. In the room my legs began to move too quickly. I accidentally kicked James. He got up and went into the kitchen, but I was sleeping. I did not see him leave. I drea
med of radio silence, NVGs, barrier blockades, and the feeling of breaking flesh as a bullet opened the skin like a finger poking through plastic-wrapped meat in the grocery store. I rolled onto my side, my arms flailing as I tried to wrap them around an invisible body bag, to grip a nonexistent rifle. I dreamed of golden, glinted sand trapped in the corner edges of my Oakleys, of boots laced too tight around the toes, of the feeling in my stomach when I knew that something was not right about this road. The twitches became violent shakes, and moaning was turning into soft screams. I dreamed of shouted orders through in-truck comm systems, of standard operating procedures forgotten by screams and all the fucking blood, of shaky hands trying to dress wounds that could not be mended, of the sinking feeling of death creeping up your leg to your spine when the tire rolls over a divot in the road, the one you did not see a moment ago. I awoke upright in bed screaming. I had scared James, who was in the kitchen making a sandwich. He ran in, asked what was wrong. I told him that one of the babies hooked his foot in my ribcage, that I’d be fine, but I was drenched in sweat, my mouth barely able to bring the words to my lips, my breathing unsteady. I lied to him. He knew but did not say a word, put his hand on my swollen belly, smiled, and said it would be okay. He lied to me. I lay back down on the bed and said, “I know.”
Waiting (#2)
It was not past ten in the evening when I started to count the minutes like seconds. Every set of headlights passing down the street began to refract through the glass of the front door like the ones that were expected in the driveway. I stood a while at the kitchen sink, soapy water in the one side, the dishes filling it, and when the lights passed, I hurriedly dunked my hands into the water, scrubbing a glass or fork, making myself busy enough to show that it didn’t matter that he was gone. If I’d had courage enough to drink while pregnant, the bourbon on the top of the refrigerator would have sufficed to go down as smooth as water, each pour as easily executed as the last, the ice barely melted before the next drink was poured. But I was afraid of drinking, of smoking, of waiting at home by myself, the anticipation of loneliness creeping through the blinds like an intruder forcing himself through the darkness of a sleeping house. When the lights kept moving down the street, I walked to the window, looked out at the silence of the street, the lamppost with the flickering orange light reminding me of the one outside of James’s hooch in Iraq. It buzzed on and off, casting shadows on the cars, making them dance across the pavement and up the driveway. Then I walked into the living room, looked out the window. Off the porch the vineyard in the distance spiraled shadows of grapevines stretching through the darkness, the stillness of the roots climbing through the night, the grapes expanding and bulging with excess water from the mist that was coming down in soft billows. I wondered how James was fairing on the winding back roads, if the tires on our Audi were worn enough to make him spin off into a ditch or a rock wall; Germany is lined with them in the countryside. Bavaria’s small villages are marked only with small town centers and long walls that stretched just enough outside the limits of the town to be called annoying by an American driver who is used to no barriers of any kind on the sides of the roads. The roundabouts flagged both sides of the villages, and on days when it was quiet James would go around them, skirting the tires, breaking hard lefts and rights so as to make me scream at him, begging him to slow down. I had not survived Iraq to be killed by his stupidity. I looked out the window now and wondered if he had veered off into one of the walls, taken the roundabout too fast. I poured myself a glass of water, dreaming of what bourbon would taste like on my lips, wishing that I had even a drop to help me sleep. I remembered Grandpa’s three-drink rule and wondered if three would hurt the fetuses, if three would help me sleep, ease the restlessness, and calm my mind enough to stop thinking of James.
When he told me that some of his friends from his old unit had gotten back from Iraq, I knew what he was trying to ask for but couldn’t bring himself to say. We had agreed on a set time home, midnight. But as I stood at the window in the living room and glanced over at the clock that now read eleven, my heart jarred loose from the confines of my chest, the water uneasily consumed as though it were a shot of Jäger, the licorice concoction forcing its way down my throat like razors dragging my esophagus open. Soon I found myself standing in the office with no recollection of making my way through the door. The wooden wall locker was open. The uniforms—BDU, DCU, and ACU—all lined up, pressed, his and hers dangling next to each other. Boots lined the bottom. Patrol caps stood ridged on the top shelf next to the berets, one captain, one PFC, a picture of us from Iraq plastered to the door. Dress greens held up next to dress blues, the mangled coagulation of military camouflage melting together like a modern interpretation of a Picasso painting splashed with rank, gleaming silver insignias, subdued black combat action badges, and unit patches. The abandoned traipsing of letters, financial statements, and orders stacked among the chaos on the desk behind me. The laptop open but turned off. A Big Red One calendar fixed to the wall, the month showing June of last year, a year too late. I walked to the living room: the clock, 11:20. I pulled out my mobile, dialed his number, paused over the green call button like a young boy looking at his first nude mag, rubbing the edges as though each groove was more important than the last, staring down at the green phone icon as if it were St. Peter standing at the gates ready to bring good news or bad. The house, half empty when I moved in, was now cluttered with the assortment of both our lives mashed together in a frantic attempt to create something outside of the war. I looked at it all. James’s Star Wars Legos jumbled on shelves next to my anthologies of British literary works; his Xbox holding up Poe, and Hemingway, and Plath. I went back into the kitchen again, looked outside at the lights splashing white reflections on the wet road. I put on my coat and walked outside, hoping that a short walk would consume time wasted waiting inside an empty house. I walked up to where the vineyard gates met the road and back. I stepped back inside, hung my coat up, and looked at the clock. Only ten minutes had been wasted. I filled my glass with water and sat down on the coffee table in the living room, stared at the clock, tried to dial the number once more, but found the button more disturbing. I thought of the infinite things that could be wrong, might be happening, all things out of my control, and soon the rush of panic turned to anger, a bitter jealousy that ate at my concern. As a child, I was the oldest, never receiving more than I should; I balked at my brother’s ability to get everything he wanted and more. Oftentimes I would try to ask for more but would be met with the understanding that asking too much of a good thing is hurtful to the person giving it. So I never complained, never asked more than I should. Staring at the empty living room, the darkness of the space, my hesitancy to dial the number fueled my jealousy, the bitter pregnant woman patiently waiting at home for her mate. I contemplated throwing the glass of water against the wall but knew that I would be the only one to clean it up. I got up and walked to the kitchen, leaving the empty glass on the table. Through the filmed mist collecting on the pane of glass, I looked out at sets of headlights hurriedly moving through the streets, coming home from late-night parties or work. Each set that passed reflected shapes around the rims, each one different, and I imagined that the next set could be James, but Peugeots, BMWs, and Land Rovers passed, all square-shaped lights with no cylindrical scope to their making. After a while the traffic would die down, the street silent again except for the distant sounds of a dog barking and the slow, steady dripping of collected water coming off the downspout of the gutters. I stared at the phone concerned that by not calling I was being a bad fiancée. I looked at the numbers, confused by the green call button. From somewhere far off, I heard tires screeching, an engine revving too high in one gear. I sat waiting, mentally preparing my speech, the contemplation of how angry I was coupled with concern. As the headlights came around the corner and veered into the driveway, I stood up and walked out onto the landing. James got out of his car and shuffled toward me. I asked how the meet-up had
gone as we walked through the front door. He mumbled an unintelligible answer that it was okay but how they seemed to be weird to him when he mentioned us. I rubbed his back and told them that not everyone would understand why we did it, not everyone would be on our side. I thought back to my anger, the misunderstanding of his tardiness, but he wasn’t late. I asked why he didn’t call me on his way home, that I had been worried about him driving after drinking. He walked up to me and kissed my forehead; the smell of beer saturated the air between us with a lingering yeast smell that ate at my nose hairs. As we walked into the living room and James plopped down onto the black couch, I stood next to the coffee table; arms crossed, I reminded him that he said he would be home by midnight. He leaned his head to the side and glanced at the clock on the wall and told me it was not even midnight yet, that he wasn’t late. I reminded him that he didn’t call me on the way home. He lifted his phone out of his pocket. The phone was dead; the battery had long since extinguished his ability to receive calls. I asked why he didn’t charge it. He said he didn’t know it was dead. He got up and walked to the kitchen, got himself a Dr Pepper, and walked back to the couch, plopping down harder than before. He asked if I was angry at him. I switched stances, uncrossing my arms and resting them on my pregnant stomach. I nodded my head yes, told him that he should’ve called, that he should’ve charged his phone, that I was up late waiting on him because I was worried he was going to do something stupid, like crash the Audi. He leaned away from the couch, told me I worried too much, that it was just the pregnancy hormones making me crazy. At the mention of me being crazy, I picked up my empty glass from the table and threw it at the wall. He jumped off the couch and yelled at me for breaking a glass. Called me crazy. I turned and walked down the hall, told him to go fuck himself, to sleep on the couch, and to clean up the mess because a crazy lady shouldn’t be trusted with broken glass; I might kill myself with it.