An American Story

by Debra J. Dickerson

  Then, without consciously having decided to, I made myself over and started wearing makeup, pumps, and all the jewelry allowed by regulation. Skirts, never pants. I tailored my uniforms, painted my nails, wore perfume. I enjoyed seeing eyes widen when I entered those all-male, all-white, all-pilot meetings. In the secret world of electronic combat, those guys seemed to forget that women existed. Somehow, people were always surprised that the Captain Dickerson (I learned not to use “Debra”) who’d written the intelligence annex to the war plan had legs. It was sweet to watch them fight the urge to rise, then give in to the one to pull out my chair and open my doors. At the coffee break, some middle-aged major would always pick up my lipsticked cup and josh in mock flirtation, as if with his daughter’s friend, “Now whose could this be?”

  With equal measures of spite and affection, I’d enjoyed their befuddlement and played it for all it was worth. I knew they could only stare for just so long and then they’d have to start listening. By the time they did, they’d be eating my dust. I’ll always believe that standing out in this way while also being good at my job helped me.

  Knowing I was close to the end of my Air Force history, and knowing that my gender was a large part of the reason I’d be leaving, I thought about all these things while on deployment. Life in the field, for even just a few days, was a raw and unusual experience. So relevant were these issues of femininity, sexuality, professionalism, and power in that highly charged environment, I couldn’t get them off my mind as I tried to sleep on my cot in our tent at night. Living in a coed environment in the field was an eye-opening, bullshit-free experience. Had my mind not already been made up to leave, those few days would have removed all doubt.

  By the time I arrived, the unit had been in the field for a month. There were 383 men, 3 enlisted women, and 2 female officers including me. We lived in a Tent City—it looked just like the M*A*S*H set but was actually very comfortable.

  The other female officer had a husband stateside whom everyone knew. She was having an affair with one of the pilots, and the whole camp, except for us women, treated her like dirt. Her lover was, of course, exempt from disapproval. I could have told her that there are no secrets in Tent City and that it was a rookie’s mistake to get involved with any of those guys. I knew that any problems (like rape) would be deemed her fault, no matter the circumstances. I knew that indulging her sexual urges would brand her a whore and undermine her authority no matter how much whoring they were doing. And they would know about it. People all but spat after saying her name.

  I, on the other hand, was treated like a vestal virgin. When we weren’t flying, we were partying and each group had a party tent. Many drank to the point of incoherence and physical collapse, which was all perfectly acceptable as long as their work didn’t suffer the next shift. I knew better than to drink or dance and spent those evenings fending off advances, chaperoned by my male deputy. He obligingly stayed too close to me to allow for any serious breaches of decorum and, for his pains, was routinely referred to as “bitch,” “pussy whip,” and “the captain’s puppy.” He shrugged his tormentors off with all the boredom of Mata Hari being interrogated by the Gestapo. To the others’ credit, they never name-called him with any vehemence or disgust. His acquiescence was the price of their grudging acceptance. (His colleagues no doubt knew what I had suspected from the moment we met: I’m sure he was gay, though we never discussed it. Once, while hiding in his tent, he made big moon eyes and bleated, “But, Debra, they neeeeeeeeeed you.” I laughed so hard they found me.)

  Every tent we entered would go quiet for a moment, then men would move forward like the palace eunuchs to deposit me in a seat of honor. They’d ply me with beer and then exchange reverent looks when I’d ask delicately for a diet Coke. Men—married, single, engaged, or openly whoring—would ask me pretty directly for sex and then nod approvingly when I’d remind them of my boyfriend in Ankara. (I wouldn’t let Erik visit. If I left camp with him for a hotel, if I were sexualized in any way in that bare-bones emotional environment, I’d be just another whore and my authority would be compromised. Worse, my safety might be compromised.) Clearly, I was being tested and rewarded with the gift of approval for being a nice girl.

  Once they accepted that none of them was going to get any, I became everyone’s big/little sister, mom, daughter, surrogate wife. The blacks especially claimed me. (I was also the only black officer.) I tried on innumerable gift sweaters and jewelry. I edited letters home. I read letters from home for hints of infidelity and gave advice to the lovelorn. I felt foreheads for fevers. I was Woman. I was a natural resource.

  From the time I arrived, I spent not one moment alone. You can’t knock on a tent flap, so men started yoo-hooing me at first light. By my second lap jogging, I’d have a detachment in tow. An attentive cohort waited for me as I emerged from the shower tent in my robe. If they couldn’t find me anywhere else, they’d move down the line of wooden latrines calling my name.

  By the second morning, the commander was refereeing the seating arrangements at chow: “You Red Horse guys had her yesterday. Give Supply some time.” Solomonically, he inclined his head, and I reported to the Supply table to bestow the balm of virtuous female presence. (The enlisted women were smart enough to know to ensconce themselves as “one of the guys” in their work units. No one from outside that unit could come near them.)

  I borrowed a pilot’s coffee cup one day at work and he stopped me when I tried to wash it before returning it. “No,” he said. “Leave it.” He placed it on his desk next to his wife’s picture. After that, men asked me to drink from their cups and I saw my lip prints on filthy cups all over camp.

  I was frightened the entire time I was there. I was furious the entire time I was there. No one ever suspected either because I knew I would ruin myself, personally and professionally, by showing it.

  I was afraid because I knew that one pair of form-fitting jeans, one hour of spontaneous pleasure, would rob me of both my good name and my effectiveness in the job I’d earned. I was afraid I’d risk one beer and wake up again with a drunken GI pounding away at me—you can’t lock a tent flap either. I was afraid I’d start screaming the fury bubbling up inside me into every sweet, milk-fed American man’s face that passed me on the muddy paths between our tents. I hated them. They could simply be GIs while I could only be a female GI. I would never be truly free in the military.

  I was newly determined to get out but I couldn’t do so from Turkey; war with Iraq was looming and I was, again, declared essential. I was on indefinite hold as to when I’d be able to separate. It was just as well because I had been having so much fun, and then was so sidetracked by the war that we in the Middle East could see coming from some distance off, I’d made virtually no decisions about my future. I still didn’t know what I was going to do and knew I needed the time stateside to make the transition. In any event, with the war against Iraq percolating, I had no intention of leaving when I might be needed, especially if things went badly.

  I applied for an operational assignment back home and once again was punished for my excellent record. Just like in my damnable assignment to Kelly, I was once again being forced to push pencils, this time in the worst place I could think of—the Pentagon. It was a coup to win an assignment to the Pentagon as a junior officer and everyone was overjoyed for me. Everyone but me. I’d rather have been debriefing pilots at Bugtussle Air Force Base in a swamp or living in an igloo at the Arctic Circle Air Station than fighting turf battles over who got to shine some general’s boots at the Pentagon.

  As the world knows, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and we went to war against him. Even before that, though, the situation in Turkey was fraught with danger. Over the Martin Luther King Day holiday that year, when Erik and I returned home from my first-ever ski trip, we found his apartment blown to smithereens by a terrorist car bomb. A Saudi Arabian diplomat who lived in his building was the target, but so what? The military community was required to tra
vel to and from work in civvies and to vary our route each day. A secular Muslim nation situated at the crossroads between East and West, Turkey was a frequent battleground between interregional secular and fundamentalist Muslim factions. In the 1970s, kidnappings and assassinations involving Americans had been far from infrequent. But by late 1989, life was good for Westerners in Turkey. Once the war broke out, though, our “good-time Charlie” lifestyle went right out the window. Eventually, we’d even lose a few people to terrorism.

  Given that Turkey borders Iraq, my one-man intel shop was immediately overwhelmed with more work than any one “man” could handle. I requested reinforcements from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, U.S. Air Forces in Europe Headquarters, and two men were on the next thing smoking to Turkey. They ended up staying “in country” longer than I did.

  Far too soon, the war was over for me. With my rotation back to the world imminent (October 1990) just as things were heating up, I moved to block the arrival of my successor. Even though every GI understood that this was a war about cheap oil, paid for with the suffering of long-oppressed Iraqis, politics went out the window for me once we were at war. I may have serious bones to pick with my country, but it’s still mine. Also, I was not unaware that there was likely to be an adventure or two in the Persian Gulf War unfolding before my eyes. I convinced my superiors that it was better to leave an experienced intel chief in place with the war raging than live through what might be a deadly learning curve with a newcomer.

  If only I’d thought of it sooner, because my replacement (also a wily prior-service captain) pulled the oldest GI trick in the book. He went underground and incognito. Obviously, he feared exactly what I was pulling—not only stealing whatever glory might be in store during a wartime, front-line posting but also robbing him of a personal role in aiding the war effort—and put me in checkmate. He outprocessed from his base early, went on a protracted leave, and left no forwarding information. I tried desperately to track him down so I could have his orders cancelled, but alas. I went to work one morning and there he sat in my office waiting to relieve me of duty. He successfully, albeit nicely, blocked my attempts to get an emergency increase in Ankara’s intel billets to two so I could stay. He parried my attempts to keep even a minor role in the day-to-day intel affairs while I waited for my rotation date. I would have done exactly the same. Damn.

  All too soon, I found myself beginning my last year in the United States Air Force at the Pentagon. I took over management of the conglomeration of intelligence programs that included the one I’d worked on at Kelly AFB. That meant that I inherited a team of ten people who’d been in the war zone since ten days after the Iraqi invasion. These were people I’d worked with in San Antonio, in one case a young mother with a civilian husband, an infant, and small children at home. She was team leader. The responsibility kept me up at night. The only way I could think of to sleep again was to volunteer for the war zone. I was terrified they’d approve it but I couldn’t send anyone, let alone former friends, anyplace I wasn’t prepared to go myself. But unlike in M*A*S*H, where Major Houlihan was always getting overnight reassignments, the real military doesn’t work that way. I wasn’t even allowed to fill out an official request. But at least I could sleep again. (All my team members made it home safely.)

  Or I could have if I had not hated every moment of every hour of every day I spent there at the Pentagon. I never had a clue how to be effective in a place like that, where everything is subtext and behind-the-scenes machination. Secretaries, let alone lieutenant colonels, bested me in turf battles.

  Which is not to say that I never had indecisive moments about staying in. After all, were I to play my cards right, my military future was limitless. I spent as much time as any other ambitious young officer fingering colonel’s eagles, even general’s stars, at Clothing Sales. But reality always came knocking at the door. Like being told that, because I’m black, it was unlikely I’d be chosen as a White House escort officer.

  With my separation paperwork once again gathering dust in my desk drawer, I was looking for signs that leaving was a mistake. Turkey had kept me happy for a little while longer; might not something else? I found myself in a briefing room at the Pentagon with more than fifty of my fellow officers, yet not one of them objected when the major recruiting for this extra duty decided to tell this truth. When I’d asked why there were so few blacks in the prized annual photos he displayed of the escorts with the presidents, he’d first pointed out, rightly, that blacks were relatively few. “You have to understand,” he added, “these escorts are seen as representing the United States to all sorts of foreign dignitaries and, well . . . you know.”

  Aghast, I’d waited for the room to explode, but the next officer just raised his hand and asked about the time commitment, the opportunity to hobnob with the guests . . .

  Most surprising was the attitude of the few other black officers present. Though I was near tears I was also furious, and made myself sit through the entire presentation so I could confront the briefer. While we waited, I tried to mobilize the black officers to make a stand. I expected them to be furious at the major, at the Air Force, at cosmic injustice. They were furious all right. Furious with me.

  “You know better than that,” one seethed, and turned his back. “What did you expect him to say?” another hissed evilly, too low to be overheard. Others checked to see if the white folks were watching and rolled their eyes like I was a naive child. They moved away to shun me, to distance themselves from my career-busting militancy. I had broken the “one nigger” code of conduct: my job was not to buck the system head-on but to compete with them to see who’d be the one nigger in the photo (there was always at least one).

  I left without confronting the major. Why bother? He was right. The spots for blacks would be held to a minimum, and the competition for those spots would be so fierce it was unlikely I’d be selected, because, well . . . you know.

  Twelve years in uniform, yet I was not fit to represent my country. Just like my father forty years before, I was airbrushed, albeit before the fact, from our national consciousness. What was the real difference between that and the whites-only Laundromat of my youth? Erik listened helplessly when I called him at his Pentagon office in tears. I submitted my separation paperwork red-eyed and haughty.

  As if all the portents weren’t fully in place, then the William Kennedy Smith rape trial happened.

  Until that moment it had never occurred to me that the outcome of my rape prosecution might have been different. Not once had I looked back in relief that he hadn’t gotten away with it. How could he—he raped me and he knew it. To me, all that was required was for me to stand up and name my accuser; of course he was found guilty.

  But all the Spineless Worm would have had to do was deny it. Had he not confessed, I realized as I watched that lying cad on television, he wouldn’t even have gotten the slap on the wrist he did get. It would have been my word against his and he would have gotten off scot-free. I would have been even more humiliated than I was. It wouldn’t have taken Dershowitz to make me look like the delusional nymphomaniac and vengeful harpy who can’t face up to her own raging hormones that every rape victim is made out to be.

  Didn’t you spend the whole evening with him?

  Didn’t you defend and protect him? Come on now, you were flirting with him, weren’t you?

  Hadn’t you been drinking for hours and hours? Didn’t you tell him you’d leave the door unlocked?

  Weren’t you already cheating on your boyfriend?

  Why didn’t you scream? Wouldn’t the neighbors have heard you?

  Why didn’t you notify the authorities right away instead of going to sleep?

  Didn’t you stop to curl your hair the next morning? Weren’t too upset, were you?

  Didn’t you lie in your statement—an official legal document—when you called the boyfriend who didn’t care whether you lived or died your fiancé? What else are you lying about?

  What a trustin
g fool I’d been. Thank God I’d had no idea what I was doing when I pressed charges.

  I was aware that I had not dealt well with the trauma of my rape. When the Kennedy Smith farce unfolded on television, I feared it would force me into an emotional crisis. I couldn’t get it off my mind but I didn’t want to alarm my mother. I’d never told her and I didn’t want to alarm her with a breakdown now. So I packed her off to visit relatives. I took leave and watched the trial on TV, waiting to fall apart. But that’s not what happened.

  I wasn’t sad. I didn’t cry. I didn’t have flashbacks but I did have trouble sleeping. I was too pissed off to doze off.

  The Smith trial affected me more than the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill debacle, though both were galvanizing. Having always eschewed identity politics as counterproductive, I now felt forced to revisit that decision. As well as I’d done, I would always be seen as black and female, regardless of all the other things I was. Sometimes they’d work for me, sometimes against. But they would always be relevant. A lifetime of incidents convinced me that, though my instinct is to see myself simply as an American, I feel forced to see myself as African-American, as female.

  I see it this way: in military intelligence, we weren’t necessarily concerned with where our own forces actually were at any given moment. What we wanted to know was where the enemy thought our forces were. That’s what’s going to start a shooting war. In terms of my personal and political well-being, it only partially matters what I think I am. It’s what my overlords think I am that really counts. That’s what’s going to get me shot at.

  I’d played the game the mainstream, middle-class way, but it made little difference when push came to shove. I tried to buy my way in by abandoning other blacks, abandoning other women, by learning their language, adopting their ways. It worked, and it didn’t work. We are a nation of factions. We should frame our decisions in terms of what’s best for America, but we don’t. It’s what’s best for farmers, what’s best for my district, what’s best for homeowners, what’s best for noncustodial divorced fathers—what’s best for me. To make matters worse, those who claim to speak for the inner cities, where my heart truly lies, too often have hidden agendas, debilitating baggage, or are simply untalented but well-connected apparatchiks.