by Brooke King
Battle Scars
I stood naked in front of the mirror examining my pregnant belly, the lines that creased the form at my hips, the fullness of my breasts that had become fuller, more pronounced since last week. I rubbed my stomach, pushing it in, trying to remember what it was like to have a flat tummy. I stretched the skin tight at my hips, hoping that the stretch marks wouldn’t be that noticeable by the time I was done being pregnant. Fat chance. I looked down the mirror at my feet, my legs, which I couldn’t see any other way, and noticed that they looked swollen, and then I noticed it—the scar on my shin. I hadn’t looked at it before, but now it stuck out of my body like an unruly branch poking out of the hedgerow. I imagined one of my children years from now rubbing it, asking where it came from, the coarseness of their fingernails roughing the already scarred skin as they accidentally scratched it. It had happened so long ago that I had almost forgotten that it existed at all. The small thumbnail scar was browned around the edges, darkened by the time it spent rubbing against my uniform, being banged up against the stoop staircase outside my hooch, on lips of truck doors, and inside edges of protruding metal seating in a Humvee. Each bang or scrape would reopen the wound quicker than it took to heal. I had tried to cover it with bandages, gauze strips taped on that peeled away from movement, but the result was always the same: scar tissue busted and bleeding. I looked at it now and thought back to the piece of shrapnel that I had tried to pull out. Each time the wound was reopened, I tried my hand at pulling the piece out, but every effort was made with the same result: shooting pain up my leg and the inability to cut it out of my shin. Now I looked down at it, contemplating whether I could get it out, if it was radioactive, if it would hurt the babies to have something like that in my body. I thought about going to the clinic, letting them know it was still in there, but as quickly as all the thoughts raced through my head, they left when James walked into the bathroom and saw me standing there naked. I hurriedly walked out of the room, leaving my pile of clothes on the floor. Now dressed in a nightgown, I sat on the bed thinking of the scar I could not see. James walked in, asked why I dressed so soon, and began pulling off my nightie. I stood up in front of him naked, looking at him as he studied the formed curves on my body, the overarching of my stomach, the lines that crested over my hips, the thick and unflinching thighs that gave way to swollen calves, and ankles, and feet. Naked I stood there and watched him reason to the fact that my body was deformed, lumpy in the middle, round around the edges, soft and malleable in the arms and breasts. This was no longer the woman I was, but some tender mothering figure unhardened by war, weakened through the pulling and stretching of skin, more vulnerable in the middle than before, and soon James smiled, moved the hair away from my face, and began to kiss my body. When he reached my legs, I shifted, pulling away from him, but he grabbed firm at my knee, raised my right leg, and kissed the scar on my shin. He looked up at me and said that this was his favorite place on my body. When I asked him why, he did not respond, but I knew the answer. Of all the places on my body that had turned to mush as the months went by in my pregnancy, the scar held firm, the center unbroken by change.
For a Short Time We Had Peace
You held the rifle for months at a time, the weight sometimes unbearable, the sling cinching it around your neck, the thing that bound the war to your breast. You walked with it proudly at first, carrying it to the chow hall, on missions, displaying it like a war trophy. After a while, you tightened your grip on it, holding firm to the belief that it is your best friend, without it you would be dead. The rails made grooves in your palms, digging deeper calluses into your lifeline that has now split sideways, one veering too dangerously to the line that said the number of children you would have and how many husbands you would go through. The thing around your neck bore down on you as you used it to clear buildings, stop cars from coming toward your convoy, and get children to leave you alone when pulling security. After more time had passed, the weight began to bear down on your soul, dragging it through the dirt. You no longer cleaned it; dust collected in the grooves, trigger well, and bolt. You were told to clean it, make sure it worked, but there was no part of you that wanted to hold it any longer. It swung as you slung it over your back, no longer carrying it at the ready. You had started to become a danger to yourself and others; soldiers no longer wanted to ride in convoy with you, the stages of maddening crossing your face like a distant shadow of light haunting the corner edges of your mouth; the stale look of long days pushed the bags under your eyes deeper into your skull. At times when the maddening was finite, in the spaces in between waking, you played the scene out in your head; the memory stretched out before you. You remembered Iraq, the rifle in your hand, and what blood looked like when it was mixed with dirt.
The convoy was stopped. The boy in front of you was bleeding out, a sucking chest wound, and the seal of death lingering on his lips. He looked up at you, but you could not bring yourself to look into his eyes. The six bullet holes in his chest were beyond help. There was no medic in the convoy, and I was the only one with Combat Lifesaver training. I did not kneel or try. I did not move or give last rites. I stood there looking away as the blood seeped into the dirt, turning it into a pool of brown mush that, when stepped on, stuck to your boots. It was getting dark. The convoy was ready to leave. Sergeant Lippert told me that there was nothing I could’ve done, that it was for the best, that it could’ve been me. None of it comforted. Too long I walked with the kill switch on, checking, breaking, and moving through war with unfathomable accuracy, stepping into death with speed and assurance, guiding me forward with a cocky, well-assessed lease on life. The boy was dead. I was alive, but the urge to kill was off, replaced entirely by a panic switch that made me reach for a rifle in the middle of the night, the one that was not there but still bound the war to my breast, cinching it down tight around my neck.
And yet, going to war was like being alive; after my deployment, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two; I couldn’t live any other way. I had gotten married before the war so that I wouldn’t be alone, so that I would have something to look forward to coming home to, but that faded with every blow across the nose that he gave me, and soon the thought of being married sickened me. I forced myself to hate being married and love the war instead. At first I loved the missions, the fighting, the mortar attacks, the uncertainty and adrenaline of not knowing which day would be your last; I even came to love the bullets, the death rattle a body makes before it chokes on living, the feel of the air ripping apart as a rocket or grenade blasts the buildings to rubble and rock. I loved the violence, the blood, the way muscle tore open and frayed at the edges from shrapnel. This was my life, the very reason I was at war, the reason why I volunteered. But all these things were a trap that I found myself caught up in, the moments of fear, panic, tiredness, and the countless nights of not sleeping because of ambushes or attacks or worse, sleep. It moved me forward, the feel of the weapon in my hand, the pull of the trigger, the bang it made, where so much depended upon the sight and angle of kill. I loved the emptiness of it all, the way I was cut off from everything, how the world around me became a snow globe encircled with T barriers, barbed wire, and machine guns on towers. I loved how each day our missions brought me face to face with not living, how everything on invisible front lines brought me at odds with living. So it never occurred to me in the moments when I lived them that these were lulls in the fighting, that the point when I should’ve died, it was the soldier next to me or the hajji across the street who did. On recovery missions some of the bodies made me vomit, pull away from the stench, but never moved me enough to care about the war around me. Each body, leg ripped off, severed arm, smashed skull with brain matter spewing on the street like a kicked-over stew pot—none of that did it for me. It only pushed me further into the suck, raising the stakes for the next day. If I’m going to be honest, war is hateful, hard, and menacing to humankind. It takes no pleasure in killing you, but it will kill you
all the same, and for the soldier who does not love it back, it will take you quickly and painfully. That is why I walked around with blank stares, a canvas of white, haunted by the fact that to survive is to love war. I piled death upon my shoulders, carried the weight in my chest because to love something so completely is to forget that you are good at anything else but that. This was what war did, defeat or win. I carried on because when it was over, it didn’t matter that I loved it; it only mattered that I survived.
Tin Box Battalion
The flag lowered, sinking down to white-gloved hands that were already saturated with sweat from standing in the late afternoon sun. The rope whipped against the pole, slamming the rings against the metal, the sound of shell casings dropping from a machine gun onto the roof of a Humvee.
I stood there among a sea of black, stuffed tight into a green army dress uniform, the waist of my pants too tight to be considered comfortable. My ungloved hand was pressed against my head in salute, the rigid lines of my fingers tracing the outside edges of my right eyebrow. The trumpet began to play “Taps,” the slow, steady sound ringing through the base as the flag sank down to the ground. The wife and infant son sat in the chapel, the doors open, the music carrying through to the front near the pulpit, where a pair of boots stood next to an upside down rifle, a helmet adorning the top. The music kept playing, each note long and steady, the slow motion of a body rippling from a bullet, explosive, shrapnel impact, the tearing away of flesh and bone, limbs and gear, the flight of the body’s uncertain landing on the ground, met with the collision of air casting the sad melody of the trumpet as I stood there holding back the tears that were blurring my vision. An envisioned look at the Vietnam wall, a man’s palm pressed against the names and an invisible soldier holding him up, a job his legs could not do for him on that day. The tune continues at the grave of the Unknown Soldier, the soldier standing guard, his rifle at salute, the song echoing down the corridors of white, marked gravestones, the price of freedom some would say. But I stood there, unflinching, as the flag was folded, carried inside the chapel, and presented to the woman, now widowed. I didn’t flinch when the first volley went off, or the second. The third, all seven men standing there, guns at the ready, aimed. The final nail in the coffin, the third volley. Many couldn’t stand the gunfire, most flinching through the whole procession, others unable to keep composure at the sounding of “Taps.” I stood there, tears down my face as I watched the soldiers one by one follow suit. Another name was engraved in the stone in front of brigade headquarters to remind me what the cost of war included. But I did not deserve the song, the salute, or the flag. I did not commit my life to stone.
State Your Name for the Record
We settled on names after weeks of turning over pages, sitting at dinner asking, What about Luke? Or Jonathan? Or something tied to our heritage, Declan or Amish? Or a relative’s name? Asa Alva? Salvatore? In the end James got one first name, Zachary, and I got the other, Bowen. Their middle names were simple: the twin archangels of God, Michael and Gabriel. We determined that whoever came out first was Bowen Gabriel, the second Zachary Michael. We did it just in case James was not there for the birth, just in case I was not conscious when they came out. We named them together, just in case.
*
The Article 15 for misconduct had stripped me of everything—my money, my rank, and all of my wartime medals, but I did not care because I was no longer at war. I was outprocessing from the military, taking a Chapter 8 discharge for pregnancy because I did not have a family care plan in place in order to stay in the army, and no one in the unit wanted to help me because everyone in the unit thought I was a fuck-up who was not worthy of staying in the army, so I carried out my days pushing paperwork, doing funeral detail, rubbing my swelling tummy, and spending time with James before I left. But there was one last thing, a plea agreement. I would not go to prison for adultery and misconduct if I testified against James.
“Sign it or go to jail.”
Captain Apple, the prosecutor in James’s court-martial, passed a piece of paper across the desk to me with a Post-It attached that read “sign here,” a red arrow pointing to the signature block.
“And if I don’t?”
“You go to jail six months pregnant.”
He leaned back in his chair.
I signed it.
James had told me over the phone that it was better that only one of us go down for this. He would take the fall. He didn’t want me in jail pregnant. He didn’t want his babies being born behind bars. He told me that it would only be a day, just like any other, but I knew what it meant—he was sacrificing himself for me and his children. He was giving up his honor, his duty as an officer, his ability to find a decent-paying job for the rest of his life, and he was doing it because he loved me, or at least that’s what I thought. Whatever the reason was, he did it all the same, and in a way I am thankful for it even now, but the court-martial, the children, being engaged—it all happened so fast that it strained our relationship. It broke us and we never recovered. Years from this moment, when we are standing in our kitchen in Florida and I am telling him that I know about the affairs, the lying, the cocaine use, and that I could no longer stand him, James will use this day against me and tell me this was the reason why he no longer wanted to be my husband. He will blame it all on me. He will cite the day I sat on the stand and told them he was the father as his excuse to pack his things and leave me for another woman, that this day ruined him and doomed our marriage, but in truth, our relationship was doomed from the get-go. Nothing good survives war, but it still survives in whatever form it left in, and for us, our relationship left Iraq fragile and would continue that way for many years to come.
*
I will now read to you the charges which I have been directed to investigate:
The two charges are Charge I in violation of UCMJ, Article 92, Specification 1: In that Captain James R. Haislop, U.S. Army, did at or near Camp Liberty, Iraq, on diverse occasions between on or about 20 February 2007 and on or about 6 April 2007 violate a lawful general regulation, to wit: Army Regulation 600-20 . . . by having a relationship with Private First Class Brooke King that creates a clearly predictable adverse impact on discipline, authority, and morale of the command, and . . . by dating and wrongfully having sexual contact with PFC Brooke King.
Charge II, a violation of UCMJ, Article 134: In that Captain James R. Haislop, U.S. Army, did at or near Camp Liberty, Iraq, on many occasion wrongfully have sexual intercourse with PFC Brooke King, a married woman, not his wife.
It is my intention, at this time, to call as a witness in this investigation PFC Brooke King.
Q: Please state your full name and rank for the record.
A: Brooke Nicole King, Private First Class.
—Record of Trial of Haislop, James R., Captain, D Co, 299 FSB, 2 Brigade Combat Team, Tried at Conn Barracks, Schweinfurt, Germany, on 7 September 2007
*
After the trial that day, we walked into the house, but the silence between us bowed the windows in, a storm of words, a conversation begging to be unleashed. He walked down the hall, his uniform pants swishing in symphonic percussion to the clacking of his combat boots on the tile floor. I sat down on the couch unable to articulate a word, and soon the silence became half-hearted apologies in eyes when they met. It became resentment. It pushed from the inside of my belly, slow-moving feet or hands rubbing churning around with sporadic aggression against my skin. It was three-in-the-morning nightmares, stifled screams into the pillow in the hopes it wouldn’t wake him. It sucked the vitamins from my body and stretch rings around my legs, stomach, and back. It nurtured and calmed the air with a faint wind from a stationary fan. It made the tile cold and unfeeling, the water in the shower too hot to bear on my skin. It tightened the band around my finger, swelled my face. It burrowed sunken black bags under his eyes and pulled the thin lines around his smile tight. It became a tattoo gun, a cigarette poised between lips, his fueled cocai
ne and ecstasy binges in late-night lulls when lovers should be sleeping. It became hatred balled up in fists slammed down on tables and couches, against walls and the hoods of cars. It became emergency room visits, heaving lunch into a toilet bowl, seven pills a day, and the fear that this might not be forever. It became empty I love yous and it’ll be okays. It swelled the body bloated of sin and wrapped it tight around our hearts. It broke every promise ever made to be true, honest, and loyal. It corrupted values like honor, commitment, self-sacrifice. It tore at your feet when you tried to run away. It brought you back from the brink of slicing wrists and tormented memories. It shushed the staggered breathing between us after we realized that only one of us was going to make it. It slid tape over boxes and labeled them home. It instilled determination for things that had not transpired. It soothed and comforted the goodbyes, no see you later. And still, as we stood there, my household goods ready to be shipped to the States, the silence became things never imaged. Like faith, and hope, and the promise of a new life together.