Soldier Mom

by Alice Mead

  “Yeah, they showed it on TV.”

  My mood shrivels like a popped balloon. It sounds as if she’s having fun, as if she’s off on a great adventure and doesn’t need us at all.

  “Did you stop in Spain?”

  “Just for a few hours. For refueling. I didn’t forget about calling, but there was no place to call from, Jas.”

  “Will you be back in time for my birthday?”

  “Oh, Jas, I don’t think so. But everyone says we won’t be here long.”

  “When are they going to free Stuart?” I interrupt.

  “Stuart? Who’s Stuart?”

  “You know, the little boy in the blue shorts. Who became a hostage. You said you’d come home after we freed Stuart. Remember?”

  “Oh. Well, I bet in a month we’ll know a whole lot more. The army only tells us a little bit at a time. Hey! Write me a letter. I’ll give Jake the address.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble, ashamed of how short and grumpy my letter is, how awful I was at the bus station. And now I’m jealous on top of it. Jealous of the army.

  “What? I can’t hear. Listen, sweetie, is Jake there? And Andrew?”

  “Yeah, Jake’s getting the extension. Hold on.”

  How can she not remember Stuart? Every time I close my eyes, I see his narrow little body in front of that row of camouflaged soldiers, Saddam pushing him forward. And he’s resisting them, fighting them every step of the way.

  “Hey, Paula! How are you? We miss you so much back here. We really do,” Jake says.

  I wish I had said that to her, that I missed her. I wanted to. But I couldn’t. I can’t even hear the words without feeling as if I’m going to drown in a wave of tears.

  “Andrew says hi,” Jake says. “He’s standing here, biting the phone cord. Same as always.”

  “I didn’t know if you’d be there at the house, Jake. It’s early for you, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, well, I got my hours changed right away. The boss was pretty nice about it. So we’re surviving. Mostly anyway.”

  “Let me give you that overseas address. Got a pencil?” She reads off an APO address. “Listen, I can’t talk long. I waited two and a half hours to get to the phone. The person behind me is about to strangle me.”

  “Paula, just one more question. So, uh, what exactly are the living arrangements out there?”

  “Living arrangements? Well, we’re most of us in tents. The sand is pretty hard-packed, hard enough to drive a tent peg into. We can drive five-ton trucks on it. It’s awful hot. Around one hundred twenty degrees today. It’s like living in an oven. Not like Maine, that’s for sure.”

  “No, I meant are you in a women’s tent, or what?”

  “Oh, I’m in a five-man tent, which in my case is four men and me. I tried to transfer, but my battalion commander wouldn’t let me. Kind of lacking in privacy for all of us, but the guys are being really good about it.”

  “But that’s not good enough, Paula . . .” Jake starts to say.

  “It’s better than most people have, believe me. A lot of the guys have to sleep on their jeeps and tanks because there are no more cots. Nobody wants to sleep on the ground and have a scorpion or snake run up their pant leg in the dark. Listen, I have to go. Don’t panic if you don’t hear from me right away. We’ll get this all organized soon. Write me, Jas! You have the address now. Send me pictures! Love you!”

  She hangs up. The whole house goes dead silent. I let the phone dangle by its cord. The receiver twirls in circles. I’m thinking, She likes it. She left us.

  I thought I would be so glad when she called that I’d be bouncing off the walls like Stevie, but I sit there not moving. Mom isn’t just gone, as in gone to the grocery store. She’s in a boiling-hot desert with scorpions and tanks and huge transport airplanes and fighter jets. And now she’s different, too. I don’t know how to write to her.

  Jake comes out of Mom’s bedroom carrying Andrew. He sets him down in the middle of the living room with some plastic toys, the stackable doughnut rings, giant lock blocks. Then Jake sits down on the sofa next to me. He leans forward with his arms resting on his legs, hands drooping down. “Rough, huh?” he says.

  I nod, afraid I’ll start crying. I don’t want Jake to hug me. We haven’t been real huggy before, and I don’t want to start now.

  “She’s pretty busy, Jas. It may be a week before she calls again. Maybe two.”

  “That’s okay. She’s going to come back soon. All the generals say so. Especially Stormin’ Norman. He says it’s going to be over real quick.”

  Jake starts to answer, then says nothing. He picks up the remote from where it’s wedged between a cushion and the arm of the sofa. He clicks on the TV. First they show soldiers training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, jumping off low-flying helicopters, wriggling in the dirt with rifles.

  The defense of Saudi Arabia and its oil remains of the utmost importance. By the end of the month, the U.S. will have 100,000 troops there to support the 30,000 advance troops who have already arrived. Here we interview townspeople as loved ones leave Berea, Kentucky. This small town has turned out in force for a big goodbye from everybody. One gas station owner says, “We’ll send ’em, but we want ’em home soon. We don’t want none of that Vietnam thing.”

  Then the TV cameraman focuses on several other gas station owners in Berea, holding signs that say, “Just get the gas and kick their ass.” The men hoot when they see the cameras and raise their fingers to make a V sign. V for victory.

  Jake gives a dry snort of a laugh at the slogan. “I guess that’s one way to sum it up,” he says.

  “What’s the ‘Vietnam thing’?” I ask.

  “That means that back then people felt the war was dragging on forever, and nobody knew what we were fighting for.”

  “Oh. Well, Jake, what are we fighting for this time?”

  “Well, we, I guess like they just said—to get the oil and defeat this guy Saddam, the dictator, so he doesn’t keep on going and attack his other neighbors. He’s got a huge army, and the guy is completely nuts. Plus he’s got those poison weapons. Chemical and biological stuff. He may even have an atomic bomb.”

  I freeze. A huge army? Poison weapons? I put my hands over my face. I can’t stand to look at the U.S. missiles.

  “Uh-oh. Darn, Jas. I’m sorry. Oh, man. Hey. I didn’t mean to scare you. None of that stuff is going to happen. Your mom’s not a combat soldier. This whole thing is to prevent that from happening.”

  I nod. But it’s too late. This new knowledge has burned its way into me in one single instant. Andrew crawls over and hands me a toy. I take it without even looking at it, then set it down. I get up and go outside.

  Down at the cove, the water is gray and choppy. There are small whitecaps of sea foam at the top of each wave. The beach is gray, too, cold and rocky, nearly dark. The tide is up and the beach narrow, crowded with logs, boulders, an old tire. Me. Two sailboats enter the channel with their sails down and tied, using their engines. Seagulls stalk the rocks.

  Across the channel, Moorhead Island looks cold and all alone. The gray rocks around the edge are barriers. No one can cross easily to go ashore. There are silent green pine trees, pointy-topped, and regular, leafy trees already tinged slightly with orange. I don’t want fall to come.

  Why did Jake tell me that stuff about the weapons? I did ask, but I’m a kid. I shouldn’t have to know.

  But what if Jake didn’t tell me? Probably I’d figure it out anyway. I mean, this Gulf War, well, it’s not supposed to be really a war, but it’s everywhere. In every magazine and on every TV station.

  I roll the tire up, away from the splashing edge of the waves, and sit in it as though it’s a lounge chair. I sit there, watching the sky grow slowly darker and little stars pop out one at a time. I sit there until the small, feeble mosquitoes of late summer drive me home.

  15

  On the day of our first game, Jake makes a big announcement before going to work. “You’re not playin
g today unless you’ve written to your mother. You got that?”

  Jake hasn’t learned that you don’t use a big, heavy threat as your first resort, your starting point for negotiations. He’s got a long way to go as a parent. But I let him get away with it this time.

  “I wrote once.”

  “Well, write again. Put some effort into it.”

  I get a piece of stationery, a purple marker, and plop down right away on the sofa.

  Dear Mom,

  I am glad you are having so much fun. It doesn’t sound like fun to me, but if you like it, I guess that’s what counts. We have our first game today. I don’t know if I told you, but a few days after you left, the coach demoted me to co-captain with Bridget. But that’s okay. Jake helped me out that day, thinking about what the team needs. Andrew isn’t crying anymore. I guess his teeth are fine.

  Love, Jas

  It’s mid-August, and Stuart is still trapped in the embassy building with hundreds of other people. I don’t really know what an embassy is, and neither does Jake. We look it up in the dictionary, and it says an embassy is a place where you send an ambassador. I hate when the dictionary tells you the meaning of the word by using the word. Jake hates this, too.

  I have been dreaming about Stuart, both daydreams and night dreams. In the daydreams, I am a soldier in charge of organizing Stuart’s rescue from a Baghdad hotel. At night, I am the little boy in the blue shorts, lying on the floor, with soldiers in machine guns standing in a circle around me. They never sleep. I am always watched. They won’t let me go to the men’s room. They tell me to pee in a bucket, but I won’t. They tell me to eat stale bread with marmalade, but I won’t. I am going to die. It’s better that way.

  . . .

  Mom’s first letters reach us on Thursday, the day of my first away game. One is for me and Andrew, one for Jake. My letter is very cheery. And short.

  Dear Jas and Pumpkin Man,

  You won’t believe this, but every single soldier over here has a cold. A cold. In the desert! A fever, a croaky sore throat that just won’t quit. And it’s over one hundred degrees every day. Maybe we all came down with the flu. Troops are flying in by the hundreds day and night now.

  Everybody hates the food and says it’s worse than dog food. Most of the time, we move water and dig holes. For fun we’ve got a volleyball tournament going. Every time I play, I think of you. How’s Pre-season going? Write to me. Please? Give my favorite pumpkin a great big squeeze!

  Love, Mom

  P.S. Calling isn’t that easy because of sandstorms and equipment problems. But I’ll be sure to call on your birthday no matter what. Write me!

  I watch the news station while I wait for Danielle’s mom to pick me up. Stuart is still trapped in the embassy with a bunch of other people, and Saddam, who tried to pretend he was so nice to them at first, now hardly gives them any food or water. The newsman says they’re nearly starving.

  Mrs. Roberge is honking in the driveway. She is driving most of the team to Scarborough for our second game. I grab my gym bag and run for the door.

  The girls chatter in the car. Danielle turns on her tape deck, and they sing loudly. But I watch out the window as the fields that used to be meadows for cow farms slide by. How udderly sad.

  The moment I step onto the glossy gym floors, I am changed. I feel washed clean. I am a windshield after a car wash. Invisible, but in a good and powerful way.

  I bounce the ball a few times, my eyes on the rim with its soft trailing net beneath. My feet are where they need to be. Bounce, a small jump. A lift, really. The arc is like a rainbow falling through bruised clouds onto the sea is-lands after a storm passes by.

  A three-pointer. People are clapping. Danielle tosses me the rebound.

  Check my feet. A few bounces and lift. Height, an arc. A hose watering sunflowers. A scatter of clapping.

  Coach comes up behind me, tugs my braid. “What’s this, Williams? You got a secret weapon now?”

  “Yeah.” I smile. “I guess so.”

  “Well, don’t give it away. We’re in enemy territory here, don’t forget.”

  He blasts his whistle, and we crowd around for his little pre-game pep talk. His sermon, Bridget calls it.

  “This is our toughest competitor. So how are we going to win? Psychology. Attitude.”

  Oh my God. He’s been in basic training!

  “This is not a game for show-offs. It’s about one thing. What’s that one thing, Danielle?”

  “Teamwork.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s teamwork mean, Bridget?”

  “Passing,” she mumbles.

  “Wrong. What comes before passing, Jas?”

  “Looking for the open girl.”

  “Right. Know where your teammates are all the time. You ready?”

  We put our hands into the circle and squeeze them together like spokes on a wheel. We squeeze harder and harder and then we yell, “Fight!”

  And then I yell, “Free Stuart!”

  Everyone stares at me as if I’m nuts.

  When the score gets close at the end of the third quarter, Coach calls us all over. While we’re toweling off, he says, “Danielle, we need a ten-point lead now, right? So I want everyone to feed Danielle the ball. Then, Jas, go ahead and take a three-pointer whenever you feel comfortable.”

  “What?” shrieks Bridget. “Only Jas gets to take three-pointers? That’s not fair.”

  It’s not fair that I’m so hot this afternoon, either. I can’t miss.

  We win by a lot.

  We have four more games, through the week before school starts. And every time at the end of the third quarter, even though we’re usually already ahead, Coach tells me to start going for the three-pointers. He loves to hear the crowd hoot and holler is why. At the home games, I can even hear Shawn whistling from his perch in the top row.

  I want to have fun and be like the other girls. I try to smile and look happy. But the truth is, I feel hollow, divided into two parts. One part of me is in the desert, in fear, hot, lost, and always worried about my mom. The other part is standing here, smiling at the crowd.

  16

  September 4 comes. It’s my birthday. Mom always has a few presents for me on the sofa when I come out in the morning. She calls them her tokens of appreciation. When I trot out to the sofa, there’s nothing there. But it’s still early.

  I don’t say anything at first, because it’s barely 7 a.m., and Jake is busy getting Andrew into a fresh diaper and clothes, and that’s a lot of work. Andrew seems to get squirmier every day.

  From the kitchen, I hear Andrew’s playful laugh and the thud, thud, thud of his little hands and knees as he crawls down the hall. Jake is in the bathroom, yelling, “Hey, Andrew, get back in here.” Every time Jake hollers, Andrew shrieks with laughter and crawls farther away. He’s speedy.

  I bring the newspaper from the front steps and put it on the table. Jake likes to read the overnight stuff from Saudi Arabia while he feeds Andrew breakfast.

  Finally they come out of the bathroom. I’m kind of hanging out on the sofa, expectantly. “Well?” I ask.

  Jake gets a bib, puts Andrew in his high chair. He places a bowl of Froot Loops on Andrew’s tray, and a cup with milk beside it. But when he reaches for the lid, Andrew lifts the cup and leans over the side of his chair to watch as he carefully pours the milk on the floor.

  “Can you get that?” Jake asks, his first words to me. Not “Hi, Jas. Happy birthday.”

  “Uh, no.” He’s the one who gave Andrew uncontained milk, not me.

  He turns around. “You really talk this way to your mom?”

  “No. She doesn’t ask me such stupid questions.”

  “Wow. Which side of the bed did you get up on? What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s my birthday! See!” I snatch the calendar off the wall and shove it in front of his face. “See all those purple circles that are on the calendar so people like you won’t forget? Well?”

&nbs
p; “A well,” Jake says, “is a hole in the ground.”

  “No. I mean, have you got any presents hanging around?” I ask.

  “Presents? Ohhhh. Yeah.”

  He hurries back to the sink, getting sponges to clean up the milk. “Right. Eleven years old. Twelve, as of today. That’s what a birthday is. Yes, sir. Couldn’t find the wrapping paper last night, so . . .”

  “That’s okay. They don’t have to be wrapped or anything.”

  I lean against the doorframe. The calendar from Ken’s Hardware has only one photo, showing a typical New England fall scene with orange-leafed maple trees. September 4 has been circled about a billion times in purple marker.

  “Listen,” he says, “can you pick up Andrew at four-thirty? I have to be a touch late.”

  I don’t have basketball anymore, so that won’t be a problem. Jake probably has to go buy me a cake.

  “Yeah, sure.” I’m still waiting.

  Anyway, Mom will call me. I know she will. I take my bowl of cereal to the TV and sit down. I don’t think twice about turning on the news now. Jake and I watch it whenever we can. But then I get up and head back into the kitchen.

  I glare at Jake. “Why don’t you just admit it? You totally forgot my birthday, didn’t you? Right?”

  Something in Jake snaps. This time I’ve gone too far.

  “Hey, fine.” He throws his hands up, then grabs Andrew’s diaper bag. “If you want somebody to blame for this whole mess, that’s right. Go ahead and blame me. I’m here, doing what I can, pitching in so you don’t have to get sent away to Japan, and for you, for Miss Basketball Princess, I’m never good enough. Right? You make that pretty darn obvious.”

  He grabs the bag, scoops up Andrew, and heads out the door.

  “See ya tonight,” he mutters. “Don’t forget to pick up Andrew.”

  Seconds later, I hear the VW start up and back out of the driveway. Did Jake really forget my birthday? How could he leave like that? And then a worse thought: Is he going to run away? I’d never thought of that before. If he did, and he took Andrew, there’d be no one to take care of me. I’d be sent to Japan for sure.