We Are Called to Rise

by Laura McBride

  I tried to tell that lady—the lady who tells the judge what to do with us—that I have to be with Tirana, but she didn’t say I would be. Sometimes now I know why Baba was so mad at the mayor. Why does someone else get to decide where Tirana and I live? How come I am not with her, when she is just a little baby still? Nene would be really mad if she knew we were not together. She would not want Tirana to be in a foster home without me. I don’t even know where Tirana is. I don’t even know how to see her.

  Mrs. Delain wants me to come downstairs now, because she and Daniel are decorating the table for the birthday. Mrs. Delain let Daniel choose all kinds of party stuff with horses. He got napkins with horses, and party hats with horses, and cups with horses. Keyshah and Jeff are going to blow up balloons when they come downstairs, but I try to blow up a green one first. I blow really hard, but the air just doesn’t go in, so I quit trying. Mrs. Delain has plastic forks and knives from another party she had, so I put those around the table. The cake is already sitting in the middle, and my candles look pretty good on it.

  When it’s almost two o’clock, Mrs. Delain says we can start eating the pizza, and we can also start playing games. I think it’s sort of funny that we are not waiting for any of the children to get here. The doorbell keeps ringing, but it is always some of Mrs. Delain’s friends, or some of Jeff’s friends, but not any first graders. I sneak out the back door quick and walk around toward the park, to see if any kids and moms are coming, but I don’t see anyone.

  When I went to Alyssa’s birthday, all the girls wore dresses, because it was a diva party. The boys didn’t wear anything special, but Mrs. Button gave us crowns when we came in. I start to worry that Mrs. Delain should have gotten something for Daniel’s friends to wear. At Alyssa’s party, Mrs. Button also gave us presents when we left, even though it wasn’t our birthdays. We all got a bag that had colored diamond squares on it, and inside there was so much candy. Nene put it in the cupboard, and Tirana and I got one piece each after dinner. It lasted a long time that way.

  We didn’t make anything for the kids to take home today, but I don’t think that’s why they are not here, because how would they know that before they came? I haven’t been to too many birthday parties, and I never had one, but I am starting to get really worried about Daniel’s party. Where are the first graders?

  I go back inside, and I don’t feel like eating any pizza or anything. It’s funny, though. Everyone is having fun at Mrs. Delain’s. Daniel is the only little kid, but some of the grown-ups are playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and Ricky says that he is going to blast the piñata all the way to Pluto. Which isn’t really a planet, you know. But I don’t tell Ricky, because he probably wouldn’t care, and I suppose he could still blast something to whatever Pluto is anyway.

  I think maybe I will have some pizza, because I really like pizza, especially pepperoni. After I eat my pizza, I drink some watermelon-colored punch, which doesn’t taste like watermelon but is still pretty good. Then I go and stand by the people who are playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, because I have never played that game before. A really fat man, who is Mrs. Delain’s friend, says I can have his turn. He has done it lots of times. It’s kind of scary when he wraps the blindfold around my eyes, and then he turns me around, which I don’t like at all, and I am just about to pull the blindfold off my eyes when I bump into the wall, and I feel the paper that has the donkey on it. I run my fingers along the edge of the paper and try to remember just where the donkey was. I’m pretty sure that I tape my tail right where it is supposed to go, and sure enough, as soon as I put it there, everyone cries out, “Bashkim, can you see? You got it!” And when I take my blindfold off, I see that my tail is too high but still close, and I am happy about that. This is a pretty good birthday party.

  Now it is time for Daniel to open his presents. There is a big stack on the side table, and I see my note, looking a little bit crumpled, near the bottom. It took me a while to figure out what I could give Daniel. I don’t have any money, and I don’t think we are allowed to ask Mrs. Delain for money. Also, I don’t know how to go to the store.

  So I made Daniel something that I made for my baba last year. It is an aircraft carrier with airplanes on it. I cut a box and taped it back together to look like a ship with a flat top, and Mrs. Delain let me use some paints that she had. There wasn’t any gray paint, or white, so I mixed up a whole bunch of colors. It doesn’t really look like gray, more like brown, but it still looks pretty good. I folded the planes out of white paper, and I didn’t paint them at all. I like them just white. My baba and nene showed me lots of different ways to fold planes, and I made three different kinds for Daniel’s aircraft carrier. Then I glued them down, which might have been a mistake for Daniel. It was a good idea when I did it for Baba, because he just wanted to look at my aircraft carrier, but Daniel probably would want to fly the planes. I glued them before I thought of that, and then I couldn’t really figure out what to do, so I just left them glued.

  There isn’t any way to wrap an aircraft carrier, so Keyshah said I should hide it and give Daniel a note telling him where to find it. That’s what I did. I put the present on a shelf with the towels, and I wrote a note that says: “Happy Birthday Daniel. Your present is on the towel shelf.” And then I drew some pictures on the note, so it would look better. Keyshah said I should make a lot of notes and make it like a scavenger hunt, but I didn’t want to do that. Sometimes you just want to get your present.

  I’VE BEEN BACK AT SCHOOL

  for two weeks. I don’t like going, even though I know that I’m at Mrs. Delain’s because everyone wants me to be at Orson Hulet. I don’t know why they think that’s a good idea, because being here isn’t the same at all. For a while, everyone was looking at me. Some of the teachers tried to talk to me and say they were sorry, and I hate that. I can’t even be at school if I think about Nene. I don’t want someone to talk to me about her.

  Mrs. Monaghan is nice. She doesn’t say anything about Nene—or not anymore, not since the first day when she gave me a picture of a quoll. That’s an animal in Australia that has a pocket like a kangaroo. She said I should keep it in my pack, and if anything was making me feel bad, I could just set the picture of the quoll on top of the desk, and she would know. I could go in the closet or to Dr. Moore’s office, or do whatever I wanted. Mrs. Monaghan is like that.

  I have used the quoll two times, once when Levi asked me how it felt to have my mom die, and once when the fifth graders made bread in the marine lab, and it sort of smelled like buke. Both times I went to the office and laid down in the nurse’s room, but I took a long time walking, because I have my own way to get there. I walk all the way down to where the kindergarten rooms are, and then I walk back to the art room, and then I get a drink at the fountain, and then I walk real slow to the office. Mrs. Monaghan gives me a pass when I go out, and I hold it in my hand so nobody ever asks me what I am doing. The nurse doesn’t ask me either, because I think Dr. Moore told her not to.

  Nothing feels the same now. In science class, Mrs. Jimenez asked if I wanted to help her clean the tidepool tank on Tuesdays, but I don’t want to. In music class, we are making a play about buccaneers, and normally I would really like buccaneers, but now I don’t. I don’t like anything. I just try to be quiet, and not think about Nene, and do whatever the teacher asks. I know that Mrs. Monaghan is watching me, even though she doesn’t bring it up, and I know Dr. Moore is sometimes looking at me when she comes to class and says it is her day to observe the teacher. Dr. Moore only observes the teachers one or two times a year, and she keeps observing Mrs. Monaghan. I would be worried about that, but I can tell they like each other.

  Today is a little bit better, because Daniel asked me to help him with the Lego set he got for his birthday, and I still do like Legos. Daniel got a backhoe, which is the biggest box of Legos I’ve ever seen, but it says you’re supposed to be eight years old to do it, and Daniel’s only
seven. I think it’s real nice of Daniel to share his birthday present with me. Daniel doesn’t feel sad about living with Mrs. Delain. So I’m going to help him, but I won’t do any of the really good parts, because he doesn’t even know about having his own mom.

  We are going to build the backhoe right after we get home and do our homework. Jeff said he won’t mind if we leave the pieces out in our bedroom for a long time. He says he might even help us if we get stuck. Which we won’t. I don’t know why I want to build those Legos when I don’t even want to clean the tidepool tank.

  AFTER SCHOOL, DANIEL AND I

  meet by the swings, and then we walk toward Mrs. Delain’s house. I don’t get to cross the street with Mr. Ernie anymore, but I can see him from where Daniel and I are waiting to cross, and I keep looking at him, hoping he will see me so I can wave. I haven’t talked to him since I came back to school, and I don’t know what he thinks about why I don’t cross with him anymore. I know he saw me last week, because he held both his arms out to me, but Keyshah had come to walk Daniel and me home, and she was going fast. When Mr. Ernie held his arms up like that, I almost started to cry. Maybe he knows about Nene, because lots of people in the neighborhood do, and I hear them stop talking when I go by.

  Mr. Ernie doesn’t see me, and Daniel’s crossing guard says, “Pay attention” when I don’t step off the curb quick, so I stop looking at Mr. Ernie and Daniel, and I hurry up the hill toward Mrs. Delain’s. When we get home, she is talking to someone in the living room, probably someone from Child Services, because people like that come here all the time. Daniel rushes right in to her. He’s still kind of a baby, and he always hugs Mrs. Delain when he comes home. I hear Mrs. Delain ask him how school went and then she says, “Hi, Bashkim. There’s something to eat in the kitchen.”

  I walk to the kitchen instead of going in the living room, and put my backpack under the bench where it belongs. Then I take some of the toast Mrs. Delain has left for us on the table. When Daniel comes in, he races right by the toast because he is so excited about the Legos. He throws his backpack on the floor and races up the stairs to get the backhoe. We haven’t done our homework yet, but Mrs. Delain is busy, so Daniel might just open the box right now. I go up the stairs quick just in case.

  30

  * * *

  Luis

  I LEAVE WALTER REED on Friday morning, March 20, five months after I arrived. I still don’t remember anything about my last days in Iraq, or the week I spent at Landstuhl, or even the first days in DC. Dr. Ghosh says I probably won’t remember. I still know that I shot myself, but not like I knew it when I first realized it. Then it felt like a memory, even if one without any details, but now it just feels like a piece of information. It could be about anyone—but it happens to be about me.

  I’m not going back to the Army, though. I’ve been given a general discharge, and at least for now, there’s no investigation into anything I did. Not what I wrote in my letter, and not what happened to Sam. I suppose there’s nothing to investigate with Sam, and I’m guessing that there’s no reason for the Army to open a can of worms over a note that a suicidal soldier sent. Nothing corroborates what I wrote, nobody has protested. It’s a bit like a loaded gun there in my file. I guess it could be found and turned into an investigation, perhaps a court martial, at any time. This should bother me, but it doesn’t. See, I’m not trying to get away with anything.

  I’m glad to be getting out of rehab, I’ve been ready to leave for a while now, but the actual leaving is still emotional. People keep dropping in to say good-bye, at the end of whatever is their last shift before I leave. Alison gave me a book. It’s called Soldier’s Heart: Coming Home from Iraq. The print is pretty small, so she said she hoped it would motivate me to keep working. I don’t need motivation. I will read and write again. Terence came by at eleven last night. I hadn’t seen him since Monday, when I wouldn’t open my eyes, and when he first came in, I felt awkward. But he acted like nothing happened, and he gave me a big hug, and told me that I’m going to have a good life and that I deserve it, at least as much as anyone else, and to please remember that for him.

  It’s Dr. Ghosh that I’m dreading saying good-bye to. I don’t need to talk to Dr. Ghosh the same way that I did. In fact, I’m ready not to be talking to him like that, but, still, he’s the closest thing I ever had to a dad—which he doesn’t know—and I wish there were some way that he wasn’t a doctor, and I wasn’t his patient, and that we could just be friends or something.

  He comes in very early, about five in the morning. I’ve been lying awake, thinking about what is to happen today.

  “Good morning, Luis.” His slightly clipped accent is so much a part of my days here, a part of everything that has happened. I suppose that every Indian I ever meet will now remind me of him.

  “Hi, Dr. Ghosh.”

  He sits in his usual chair and stares out the window past my bed for a while.

  “You’re going to be all right, Luis. You’re a good man.”

  I don’t say anything, and he watches out the window awhile more.

  “I’ve been talking to Bashkim’s principal, Dr. Moore. You could meet her if you like. She’s quite an unusual woman.”

  I think about that. Meeting Bashkim’s principal. I can’t quite imagine it. Imagine why. Would I meet Bashkim too? I’ve been wondering if I’ll meet Bashkim when I get home, or if the letters now are just at an end. His situation is terrible. It doesn’t seem like meeting me would fit in.

  “I believe that coincidences can be powerful, Luis. I don’t think they’re entirely random, nor do I think that they must be acted on. I believe the strangest coincidences are opportunities. I wanted you to know that. There is something unusual about you having written that letter to Bashkim and about what has happened to Bashkim now. You have a great heart, and there is a child whose heart has been broken. Perhaps this is not only a coincidence.”

  Dr. Ghosh has never said anything like this to me before. Our conversations are about how I think, and I see now that I don’t know very much about how he thinks. And I don’t know what I think about what he has just said.

  Making something up to Bashkim, for what I did to him, changed a lot for me. There were a lot of dark days here, right to the end, but the days that weren’t dark began after I started writing to him. I haven’t really taken in what happened to Bashkim; what we learned from Dr. Moore on Monday. I don’t know what to do with it. I keep thinking about how the officer who shot his mother was in Iraq. I wonder which unit. I wonder where he was. I wonder who he lost. I wonder what he saw.

  Dr. Ghosh is still sitting there, not looking at me, not looking out the window. I realize that we have become friends—whatever that means in our situation. But it means something. I trust him, and he trusts me. I can feel it.

  “Dr. Ghosh. I don’t know how to say good-bye to you. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  He turns to me then, listening.

  “You are the first face I saw. I wanted to die. I wanted to die so many times here.”

  That is all I say. That’s all I get out. Nothing that I want to say. Nothing about what he means. I’ve been practicing in my mind, trying to find some words, but they’ve all been taken, all used for ordinary considerations that mean nothing in comparison to what he has meant.

  We say “Thank you very much” and “I so appreciate what you have done” to people who fill our grocery bags, to people who offer us a ride across town. What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was possible to feel? Shouldn’t there be another language for this? Different words altogether? And if I use the same old words, did I change what I was trying to say? Did I make it a same old thing?

  I should not risk words. But some come out.

  “I wish you were my father.”

  The faintest surprise scrims his
face. A pause.

  “I would be proud to have you as a son.”

  MY ABUELA COMES AT ABOUT

  ten. She has flown out to bring me home. She surprises me by saying that she’s just been in Dr. Ghosh’s office. I wonder what they discussed, and who set up their meeting.

  I suppose that Abuela knows everything now. She knows about Sam, and if she knows about Bashkim, then she would have to know about the other boy. Without the one, there would be no reason to know the other. And why am I so certain that Dr. Ghosh has told her about Bashkim?

  I know that she and Dr. Ghosh have been speaking to each other for a while. They don’t talk about it, but they don’t not talk about it either. Abuela might mention something about Dr. Ghosh, or vice versa, and I never know if these are slips, or if they’re trying to find a way to tell me that they’re in conversation—that I might as well include Abuela in my thinking about Sam and Bashkim and the boy in the market. Perhaps, but I’ve been careful to ignore these hints. I’m not ready to talk with Abuela about these things. I can’t bear to look at Abuela and admit what I did.

  Dr. Ghosh says that secrets aren’t healthy, and it’s because of him that I won’t lie about anything that has happened. Not lying is not the same, however, as telling, and I’m not ready to tell. It’s partly being a patient. I have so little control of what is private, so little opportunity to be unobserved. If I told Abuela something while I’m here, or Terence, who is someone I could imagine telling certain things, then I could do nothing about the response. I couldn’t get away from it, from whatever the reaction might be. Being able to close your eyes just isn’t fucking enough.

  THE FLIGHT HOME IS A

  lot harder than I expect it to be. The airport is exhausting, and there’s too much to look at. By the time I board, my head is pounding, and the six hours of sitting straight depletes me. I can’t make it up the gangway without a wheelchair, and my final return home from Iraq is punctuated by my abuela’s ragged breaths as she pushes me into the terminal.