War Flower

by Brooke King

  I looked back at Nana, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs again. “How could you do that? That was my room—my room.”

  The panic began to come back. The kitchen became smaller, tighter. John standing behind me was starting to make me nervous. A large truck drove past on the street. Its exhaust loud and thundering like the sound of a Bradley tank starting up. Dad motioned for John to step back. I couldn’t breathe—the feeling of someone’s hands around my neck again—the sharp agony of a pain resonating from my chest. Grandpa stood up from the chair.

  “My room—the stars, they’re gone.” Tears welled up in my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks. “What am I going to do now? They’re all gone.” My legs grew weak and I crumpled to the floor trying to catch my breath. I mumbled under my breath, “How will I find my way home?”

  Grandpa walked toward the kitchen, pushing my dad out of the way. He bent down next to me and hugged me. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You cry it out if you have to.” He shooed everyone away from the kitchen as I cried uncontrollably in his arms until I felt like I couldn’t cry any more. After a while, I lifted my head and said, “Grandpa . . .”

  He shushed me. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll find you again.”

  “What if I can’t? What if I’m stuck like this?”

  “For now, you think you can stand up?”

  I nodded my head.

  Nana popped her head from around the corner. “Brooke, sweetie, we can get you some new stars if you want, stick them up there on the ceiling again.”

  I looked up at Grandpa. He nodded. I looked back at Nana. “I’m sorry, Nana. I . . .”

  Nana walked in as I was getting up from the floor. She hugged me, interrupting my apology. “I’m just happy you’re home.”

  I looked her in the eyes; tears were filling up the corners. I smiled at her. She moved a piece of hair out of my face and stroked my cheek. “You’re home, that’s all that matters.”

  No one spoke at dinner that night—the silence was deafening. Molly lay beside Dad’s chair, her eyes on me the entire time. Every move I made put her on alert—ears pinned back, teeth showing. I was a stranger.

  A couple of days went on like this—starting out the day avoiding Molly in the morning when the house was empty and everyone was at work, watching TV or sleeping to pass the time, not talking to my dad when he got home in the afternoon, and spending time with Grandpa on the back porch, just sitting and watching the sunset as he drank his three drinks.

  “You know, as much as I’m glad you’re here,” he looked at me, “you ain’t doing a whole hell of a lot but sulking.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s got you strung tighter than a drum?”

  “What does that even mean?” I chuckled a little and he smiled.

  He shook my shoulder slightly. “Look, you’re home now, you’re with us. Let things calm down and when you’re ready, we’ll talk.”

  “Gramps . . .” I hesitated. “I’m fine.”

  “You can’t bullshit an old bullshitter, Brooke. You need to talk, I’m here.”

  He got up, kissed me on the head, and walked back inside, shutting the sliding glass door behind him. I looked out over the canyon at the sunset that began to cast a long shadow. It stretched down into Mission Valley, down to Warring Road, where it went flat and covered Jack Murphy Stadium in a dark haze. The sun sank into the oblivion of the horizon, the bed of the world, until everything turned to darkness. I sat there a few moments longer waiting for the night to engulf me, then I stood up and went back inside the house, but before I did, I couldn’t help but look at the sun setting one last time. The oranges and yellows set the sky on fire, like the clouds were burning.

  Dinner that night was more of the same—utter silence. I excused myself early from the table and went upstairs to my room. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I thought about James as I rubbed my belly. I couldn’t be in this room anymore. It wasn’t mine.

  “What’s going on up in that head of yours, girlie?” Gramps asked as he stood in the doorway of my room. When he walked in and sat down beside me on the bed, I shrugged. I didn’t know. Truly.

  I looked at down at my belly but couldn’t bring myself to tell him what had happened in Iraq, even though part of me wanted to. My eyes welled up with tears before I could say anything. Fucking pregnancy hormones.

  Gramps just hugged me and said, “I’m here, if you need me.”

  Before he could get up and walk out, I grabbed his arm. He hesitated and then sat back down. “Gramps, I think I should move into the room downstairs. I can’t sleep in this room anymore. Too many memories.”

  “All right, we’ll get you sorted tomorrow, but for tonight, how about you go sleep down on the sleeper sofa in the den.”

  “Okay.”

  Gramps patted me on the back.

  Rubbing my belly, I said, “I think . . . I think I need to go to the VA.” I hesitated but knew if I didn’t say it now, I probably never would. “I saw too much, Grandpa, too much of everything.”

  I started to cry, but Gramps hushed me and said, “I’ve heard all I need to hear.” We sat there for a moment, then Gramps got up and started to walk out of my room, but before he left, he paused in the doorway and said, “I’ll take you to the VA in the morning.”

  “What if I can’t do it?”

  “Well, if it was me, even if I couldn’t, I would.”

  “Gramps, your sayings don’t make sense.”

  “Sure they do,” he said, as he walked out of my room. “You just haven’t figured them out yet.”

  A little bit later I walked downstairs and into the den, where Nana was making up the sofa bed. I sat up until midnight thinking about Iraq. I rolled over onto my back and fell asleep to a barren sky above.

  The next morning I went upstairs to get dressed and returned downstairs. Everyone was doing their morning ritual. Dad was drinking coffee and reading the San Diego Tribune. John was inhaling some sugar-saturated cereal that was in a mixing bowl instead of a regular cereal bowl. He had just shoved another bite into his mouth when he noticed I’d walked into the room. He smiled wide, spilling some of the milk and cereal out of the corner of his mouth and onto the table. Nana was standing next to the kitchen counter, making cinnamon raisin toast, spreading the butter on lightly. The kitchen reeked of burned toast. Under her breath Nana was scolding Gramps for messing with the toaster settings again. Gramps had his back to Nana, trying to ignore her and sneak a shot of bourbon into his coffee before she noticed, but he perked up when he saw me walk in.

  “Okay, I think I’m ready.”

  Gramps smiled, Dad looked confused, John couldn’t have care less, but Nana, Nana was concerned and disheartened.

  “Ready for what?

  “I have to go to the VA.” I lowered my head and looked at the floor so I wouldn’t start crying. “There’s something I have to do.”

  “It’s all right with me,” Dad said, folding the newspaper over as he scanned for another article to read. I looked at John.

  “Do what you gotta do, sis,” he said with his mouth full of Cap’n Crunch.

  I looked over at Gramps in the kitchen. He turned around toward the counter, fumbled with something, and turned back holding a pair of car keys and smiling. “I’ll drive.”

  I smirked at him. “Thanks, Gramps.”

  When I tell the VA counselor that I haven’t been raped, that I’m not a victim of sexual assault, she looks at my pregnant belly and then back up at me with a puzzled frown and asks why I checked the boxes related to war trauma. I tell her that I was in combat. Her eyes widen, her frown disappears, and she tells me to hold on as she leaves the room. She doesn’t return. Instead a man comes in, asks me to follow him down the hall to the TBI and spinal injury ward. He points to men inside the room, tells me to think long and hard about lying about combat before I tell him anything more. I look at him. I do not tell him the customary fuck you that should’ve come from my lips. I look at him blankly, the thousand-yard sta
re. He asks me if I have anything to tell him, and it is then that I walk away. Later, when I tell my grandpa what happened at the VA, he tells me to go back, that he’ll set him straight, but I tell him that it’s okay, that the VA isn’t ready to help me, that I don’t trust them yet and probably never will.

  The VA had been a total failure. We pulled into the driveway, but before we got out, Gramps looked at me. “You know, just because someone doesn’t believe you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

  “I know, but what the fuck was that?”

  “Come on inside. I’ll fix me a drink while your grandma nags at you about what happened.”

  “’Cause you know I’m looking forward to that.”

  Gramps laughed. “She’s just looking out for you.”

  “She’s going to shit a brick when I tell her what they said to me.”

  “I’ll let you take the credit for that one.”

  We walked toward the front door of the house, but Gramps paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Brooke, can I just ask you one thing. How bad was it over there? I mean, were you in the thick of it or just on the outskirts?”

  I looked him in the eye. “I was stuck in the middle like a death trap.”

  Gramps grabbed the nape of my neck and kissed my forehead. “You know me and Nana are here for you.” I gazed up at him. “You survived the war, and when James gets back, you two are going to have a family, live your life, make memories, and have fun.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek. “Is that even possible?”

  “What? Living?”

  I nodded, waiting for his answer, but he just smiled and walked into the entryway.

  “Why don’t you wait till those babies come, and if you still don’t know the answer to your question, then you’ll know that you didn’t really try. Sound like a plan?”

  “I hate it when you’re right.”

  “I’m very seldom right, but when I’m right, I’m right.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It’s grandpa wisdom. Comes from years of experience in the art of bullshit.”

  I laughed and stepped inside the house. Nana was in the kitchen sautéing mushrooms and onions in a skillet. She turned and looked at us. Gramps looked at me and smiled, but before he had a chance to slink away into the den, I stopped him.

  “Hey, Gramps.” I opened up the top cupboard, pulled out the Johnny Walker Black, poured him a drink, and handed it to him. “Thanks for today.”

  He smiled. “Sure thing, kiddo.”

  “Jake,” Nana shouted as he walked away quickly. “Don’t you dare.”

  It was too late; he was out of sight, so she turned her attention to me. “Brookie.”

  “It’s only one drink.”

  Warning Signs

  The sound of a car alarm: 3:45 a.m. It startled me out of bed. I bolted upright and ran barefoot past the kitchen, out the front door, and to the street in my nightgown. I had set off the house alarm by opening the front door. It blared warnings of an intruder entering or escaping, a variety of sirens set off by a person unaware of the alarm system. The neighbor’s Hummer, two houses down, was flashing lights and screeching its horn. I was in the middle of the street, standing there looking at it. The light bar on top flashed in time with the headlights, the flickering of iridescent yellow throwing shadows onto the blacktop. I turned to look at the hedges across the street; a stray cat wandered out of them, sauntering its haunches as it walked off the grass and onto the sidewalk. There was no traffic, no helicopters, no sign of warning beyond the house alarm and the Hummer’s lights and sounds set off by ghosts or the wind. I heard my name called from the open door of the house and turned to see that I had woken our household and our neighbor, and soon kitchen lights flickered on in two other houses as I stood in the street trying to find the danger. I turned around in slow circles, looking at every bush and tree and house, but I couldn’t find anything that brought me solace, and until someone removed me from my place in the street, I stood there searching, looking for a ghost of the past or maybe just for that fucking cat that walked past me as if I wasn’t there at all.

  Definitions

  I was the only one in my family besides Gramps who had seen anything remotely close to combat, and it only took a week before we were sitting down at dinner and they asked me what Iraq was like. At first I could not bring the answer to my lips, the question too ambiguous, the answer too convoluted. They wanted a firm answer, something concrete, an answer that would bring justification to the war, so when I did not answer, they were confused. They asked me the question again, as if I hadn’t heard it the first time, but when I brought myself to answer, I said this:

  Iraq is the shit, the suck, the all-determining factor of things forgotten by time and a displacement of trust. It is the razor-sharp kiss on the end of your tongue that spits blood when you try to speak of peace. It is the bilateral incision on the dagger’s tip that slices the Fertile Crescent into almond slivers. Iraq is a wring-dried promise of protection that eludes even the protectors. It is an unfathomable display of fear coagulated by the uncertainty of control. Iraq is Death spelled out I-E-D. It is the trigger-happy complex of soldiers unsure that they will survive. Iraq is civilians used as bombs and collateral damage. It is kicked-in front doors that ask for polite curtsies and afternoon chai tea with scared faces staring back. Iraq is waterboarding and brutality disguised as information-seeking fun. It’s concrete walls lined with concertina wire and machine guns. It’s tattered American flags lit on fire in protest. It’s marketplaces filled with the aroma of saffron and cooking cuts of lamb that will be a blast point for a suicide bomber, his explosives strapped to his chest. Iraq is enemies hidden in doorways, on rooftops, and open windows. It’s dogs made into wolves that lap up blood pools and feed on shredded flesh from corpses. Iraq is Saussure’s signified mocked and mimicked when the land is left behind. Iraq is dredged-up memories and a conversation that, right now, is better left unsaid. Look me in my eyes and ask me again what Iraq is and I will tell you, Iraq is this. . . .

  *

  Everyone took turns coming to see me. It’s best to do it in waves, I had heard my grandmother say. It’s best not to talk about the war, she would warn. Each family member would sit down next to me, ask me how I was doing, ask about the babies inside me, make small talk, and say nothing about the war. My brother came into the house, reeking of cigarette smoke and pot, and with bloodshot hangover eyes. I envied him. He walked over, gave me a hug, and told me what I wanted to hear. You look fucked. I was, and for the most part, I wanted to be fucked up, to drink until I could feel again because feeling was better than nothing at all. Nana slapped John for being insensitive, Grandpa frowned, and I smiled at my brother. He knew me best of all, knew pandering to me only pissed me off. Dad stood back for a while, rubbed my shoulder, gave me a shit-eating grin whenever I looked at him, and drank his Johnny Walker and Coke while I sipped on some godawful Lipton Iced Tea that had barely enough sugar to be called sweet. This was the measure of my homecoming: no fancy parades, no barbecue, no celebratory binge drinking, just a living room full of relatives consciously trying to pretend that I didn’t look completely gutted and shell shocked.

  Breathe through Your Mouth

  “Brookie, honey, is everything okay?”

  Sitting in the living room recliner in my grandparents’ house, I glanced up from staring at the blue carpeted floor and let the numbing pain in my chest subside before I say, “Yeah, Nana.”

  I had been back from Iraq for a month now, and it had become a custom since I had returned to tell my grandparents that I was fine each time they asked about my state of mind. The endless maniacal questions that followed any other response to them would be followed by my futile attempt at trying to convince them that I was “better” and that I didn’t need a babysitter, at least not until the boys were born. To them I was still their eldest granddaughter, the one they had invested their love in first, and so it was hard for them to watch as I
slowly disintegrated from the inside out. Each time I refused to talk about Iraq or go back to the VA, Grandpa would pull out his newspaper clippings from the San Diego Tribune and magazine articles from Newsweek, in an endeavor to try and comfort me.

  “Look here, Brookie, this guy’s got the same thing as you, except they gave him one of those service dogs for his PTSD.”

  “Grandpa, I’m not even close to being as bad as he is. Besides, I don’t have PTSD, okay?”

  “All right, Brooke,” he said, as he walked out of the living room and set the clippings on the kitchen table. “I’ll just leave these here for you.”

  I watched as he poured himself a cup of black coffee, and without raising his head or saying a word he disappeared into the den. I sat in the recliner in the living room, and though Nana sat in the other recliner next to me, I felt utterly alone.

  Grandpa was right most of the time, but his valiant efforts at helping me only seemed to push me closer and closer to loneliness, a dark place I had created inside myself where I could cope on my own or wallow in my self-induced misery. I had dodged yet another bullet by deflecting Grandpa’s conversation, one that surely would have ended up with everyone in tears. I was not ready to talk about Iraq or myself because I still was not sure how I had made it out alive when I had watched so many others come back in black body bags.

  I didn’t expect my family to understand immediately all of what I had gone through in Iraq, but I had asked for some distance until I could cope and fully comprehend the extent of how much I had suffered. My grandparents for the most part left me alone. Grandpa gave me what he called “my own space,” and Nana only fussed at me when I cursed in front of her.

  Having my grandparents there in the first month home while I was still adjusting to civilian life was a comforting reassurance that, if I did decide to talk, I would have two sets of ears that were ready to listen. However, “my own space” only lasted a month, and before long Nana was pestering Grandpa into talking to me again. Grandpa seemed to be more in tune with what I wanted and for the most part kept his word and left me alone, but as any good grandmother would do, Nana felt it was her job to chime in when it came to my health. She was slightly less oblivious to the fact that my repetitive, monotone, two-word responses had not changed in a month.