by Dana Canedy
The night before he left, Charles settled into that cot and called me one last time. He told me not to worry about him, to take care of myself. He told me he would contact me as soon as he could after getting there. I told him that I was proud of him and would try to be strong.
“Charles, can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure, Ma, what?”
“Can you think of anything we haven’t talked about? Anything left unsaid?”
He thought for a minute and said he could not.
“Well then, if you have to go, I’m so thankful that we can’t think of a single thing that we haven’t said to each other. Isn’t that a blessing?”
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“I love you, Charles.”
“I love you, too, Dana.”
He said he had my letter in his carry-on bag and would read it as soon as he was in the air. He said that he knew it would sustain him during the journey ahead. No words I had ever written were more important than these:
Charles, my love,
Thank you for the gift of your heart. I do not feel worthy of your love, but I cherish it and thank God every day that he led me to you.
I am so in awe of you, my brave man, and I am so proud that you are the father of my baby.
When you have fulfilled your duty, please come safely home to us. I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life as your wife.
Do not worry about us: focus on protecting yourself and I will take care of myself and your son.
With all that I am, I love you,
Dana
Nine
Dear Jordan,
In the months before I gave birth to you, I had two hearts beating inside of me, and from the moment my Charles left for the war, one of them was broken.
He left his scent in our bed and a note on my pillow, inside a card made from his angel print.
To my Sunshine, Dana,
I knew that it would be difficult to say good-bye. Yes, I am praying that I will be able to return and help you with Jordan. He will be such a blessing to you and everyone that meets him. I think he is going to be so special. Thank you, God, for our little miracle.
I must write this so you can read it from time to time. Thank you for everything you have taught me. Thank you for the great times we have had together. Thank you for being my best friend, a friend who has always been honest, loving, and caring. Most of all, thank you for Jordan, our son.
Thank you for being a counselor and standing by me when I needed it. Thank you for reaching out to me and showing me that you loved me for who I am.
I ask you to forgive me for any pain I have caused you. I love you very much. I will miss you and think about you and Jordan.
Love, Charles
The words were soothing, but even in that joyous time — with the weight of your growing body inside me, and the occasional jab of a foot in my ribs—they were not enough to dispel the worrying.
The first weeks without him were the hardest. I did not have a phone number for Charles and he was only able to checkhis e-mail sporadically. I immersed myself in work and took comfort in the knowledge that in early December of 2005 your father was likely still training in Kuwait and had not yet crossed the border into more treacherous territory. Still, if the phone rang after dark, I jumped, fearing the unthinkable. I had told Charles that if something awful happened, I did not want to be called at work or on my cell phone, only at home. He kissed the corner of my mouth and explained that, if the worst happened, military representatives would visit rather than call. He would ask his family to call me only at home with bad news.
As the weeks without him wore on, it was increasingly hard to stay composed. Television sets throughout the newsroom were continually tuned to news programs, and because of my responsibility for breaking national coverage, one of them sat squarely on my desk. Often a large “Breaking News” banner would appear on the screen, and I would instinctively turn to it. The report might be about a courtroom shooting in Atlanta or a school bus crash in Fort Lauderdale—events that I would need to assign a reporter to cover. Or it might be about something far more personal: more dead American soldiers in Iraq.
“Don’t watch that,” one of my colleagues would call from behind a nearby desk. If the coverage was particularly grim, someone would turn the television away from my view or shut it off.
Other reminders were harder to screen out. An editor who sat across from me was in charge of tracking American casualties in Iraq. Whenever the military released new numbers, she would shout, without looking up from her computer, to a clerk who kept the tally, “I’ve got more dead guys!” No one seemed to flinch but me. I never got up the courage to ask her to handle it differently; I feared I would break down if I had to put into words the way her broadcasts tore through me.
The one thing that could distract me was a challenging story, so I kept up the ten-hour workdays throughout the winter, by which time my belly bulged so much that people on the subway gave up their seats for me each morning. My due date was March 25, and by the middle of January my colleagues began to ask when I was planning to ease up.
“Still here?” someone would ask when I walked into the office every morning. An editor started an office pool on when I would give birth—it grew to two hundred dollars. One colleague offered to split the winnings with me if I would arrange to give birth on the date he had selected. To the woman who chose the day that was furthest away, I said, “I hope you lose. I want this baby out soon.”
My girlfriends flew in from all over the country and hosted a baby shower in a private room at a gourmet restaurant. My colleagues had another shower in the grand, glass-enclosed executive reception room that looks out onto Times Square. My boss took up a collection for a stroller. The editor who tracked casualties gave me a yellow and blue sweater with duck-shaped buttons that she had knitted. A feisty reporter whom I never would have imagined in a kitchen baked cookies in the shape of baby rattles. The publisher hugged me and joked about my “making deadline” for the biggest assignment of my life.
Of course, with journalists as hosts, I was showered not only with gifts but with questions. Had I started to dilate yet? Was I planning to have an epidural?
I ignored the question about my cervix but announced, “They can hook me up with the drugs now.”
Someone asked whether Charles would be able to make it back in time for the birth. “Yes, thank goodness. I couldn’t imagine going through this without him,” I said. “Besides, meeting his son will help keep his morale up until he comes home for good.”
Most days, that thought buoyed my spirits, even during the long periods of silence between Charles’s phone calls. The day the crib arrived was not one of them. As the deliverymen put it together, I had to push out of my head the vision of your father assembling it himself. Of course, if he had, we surely would have fought over which rail was supposed to be attached to what spring. He would have huffed at me to let him figure it out. I would have crossed my arms and watched him struggle until I could no longer resist pointing out that he was doing it all wrong.
It was an argument I wished we could have.
While the men finished with the crib, I distracted myself by writing Charles a letter—enclosing pictures of my naked belly, taken as a shower gift by my gay friend Ciro. Charles and I wrote often, but it had been weeks since we had talked. I longed to hear his voice and let him know that I could almost make out an elbow and a foot when I felt those increasingly sharp kicks.
He finally called in early February while I was lying in bed reading, and I placed the phone on my stomach so he could talk to you.
“He’s kicking,” I said when I put the receiver back to my ear. “I think he can hear you.”
I tried to imagine pride on Charles’s face, but there was only weariness in his voice.
“How are you feeling, Ma?” he asked.
I told him I was all right, just worried about him. He said he was fine, too, but “definitely gainful
ly employed.” He told me not to worry, that I had enough on my mind already.
The conversation was innocuous, but something about it made me uneasy. He would not elaborate on where he had been and what he had been doing. He had warned me in a letter that the military monitored our calls and to be careful what I said. I was incensed at that. Was it really necessary for someone to listen in while we discussed the pros and cons of circumcision?
Later, reading the journal, I would question whether he had ever been “fine” in Iraq. But even if Charles had been able to speak freely in our phone calls, he would have said little about his missions for fear of upsetting me during the final stage of my pregnancy. He seemed to want to talk about anything but himself
“You look beautiful, Ma,” he told me one Saturday evening, after he had received the pictures. “I love the belly.”
“That’s because you’re not the one who has to carry this baby around!” I said. “I can’t wait until he gets here. I’m ready to meet him. Thank God the crib arrived in time.”
He asked how the crib looked in the room. I told him about the light blue sheets and quilt and the teddy bear mobile hanging above it. I told him that a friend had given us six months’ worth of diapers and that we had two strollers. I told him that you had more clothes than the two of us combined.
“Wait until you see all this stuff,” I said. “Which reminds me, you need to let me know soon when you’re coming so I can set a date to be induced.”
“Uh, I don’t know, Ma,” Charles said.
“You must have some idea. Haven’t you put in the request for your leave?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, what are you waiting for? You’re cutting it kind of close.”
“I don’t know, Ma.”
“You don’t know what?”
He said nothing.
“Charles?”
“What?”
“What are you telling me?”
More silence.
“You’re not coming home, are you?” I said.
“Ma, please try to understand. I just got my guys settled and I have to be here for them. They need me. I’m sorry, but I’m going to be the last one to go home.”
He had made his decision and nothing I said was going to change it—but I pleaded with him nonetheless.
“Who’s going to hold my hand? I can’t do this without you,” I said.
I began to sob. I knew he was less than three months into his tour of duty, but I had never considered that the warrior’s priorities would win out over the father’s. He had promised to be there beside me.
“Dana, I don’t think you understand a first sergeant’s job. I’m responsible for a whole company of men and most of them are real young. They’re just adjusting to being in combat. I couldn’t forgive myself if one of them got injured or killed while I was gone.”
My pain turned to anger. I gripped the phone tighter, my hands shaking. It was hard to breathe. I had to stand up, to pace. I said, “Those men could get hurt or killed whether you’re there or not. And it’s not like I’m asking you to go on a cruise. We are your family—this baby and me. We need you as much as they do. I want us to be together when we meet our son. I want to see both of your faces when he’s born. Please don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry, Dana, but I can’t come,” he said. “Please try to understand.”
I told him I didn’t understand and he sighed deeply, clearly in his own agony.
I wanted to tell him that I would never forgive him. I wanted to say that all the love I had ever felt for him had just drained out of me. I wanted to say that it was over between us, that I did not ever want to hear from him again. I wanted to tell him to go to hell.
But what if those were the last words he ever heard me speak?
I could not risk it. I simply said I was tired and needed to take a nap.
“All right, I’ll call you later,” he said feebly and hung up.
I threw a framed picture of him against the wall, shattering the glass. Then I gathered up all the other pictures of him and shoved them into a dresser drawer. I paced, crying, before falling to my knees, rocking and hugging my belly. I hated him.
Between frequent trips to the bathroom and my disbelief over Charles’s decision, I did not get much rest that night. I finally fell asleep sometime before dawn and awoke late Sunday morning to feel you squirming inside me.
“Someone is hungry,” I said, patting my belly.
I turned on some music and fixed a cup of tea and some toast with strawberry preserves. Then I phoned Miriam, who bore the emotional weight of my pregnancy more and more. After our trip to the emergency room, she had agreed to attend a childbirth class with me and be my labor coach in case Charles did not make it home in time. She was a calm spirit, just what I would need when the pain of labor hit. She told me she would be honored and was excited by the prospect of seeing a baby born.
Within a week, two other women I loved had signed on to be there for the big day. My mother would fly to New York two weeks before my due date and stay until after I came home from the hospital. My friend Katti, a writer and one of the sassiest free spirits I had ever encountered, wanted to be there, too.
“Trust me, women are a lot more helpful during labor than men anyway,” my doctor said when I told her that I would not need to be induced after all. She placed a hand on my shoulder and said that it would be “just us girls” when I delivered. Once I finally accepted that Charles was not going to be a part of the birth, I began to relax and warm to the idea of celebrating your new life in the company of three women I knew would love and protect you from the moment you arrived.
Even so, I could not help feeling sorry for myself when Miriam and I walked into the first childbirth class and everyone seemed to stare. As I waddled to the back of the room to grab one of the dolls the instructor told us to take, I told myself that I would not have minded if they thought we were lesbians. What I absolutely did not want them to think was that I was just another pregnant black woman without a man. As I perched on a metal chair and listened as the instructor welcomed us, I felt a need to make sure that no one thought I had gotten knocked up by some no-good man who could not even be bothered to attend a childbirth class. So when it came time to introduce ourselves, I said that my name was Dana and that my friend Miriam was graciously standing in for the father of my baby, who was a soldier fighting in Iraq.
Suddenly I was the star of the class. Several of the husbands offered to help me up from the floor after the breathing exercises. One mother-to-be said she admired my strength. But instead of being relieved, I felt foolish. I knew that in a couple of weeks I would never see these people again, so why had I made such a point of telling them my business? While I was feeling defensive, they were probably focused on their own prenatal anxieties. But I could not help it: I wanted them to know that the father of my child deserved their respect. He had not abandoned me. He was protecting each one of them. He was missing his baby’s birth for them. He was putting his life on the line for them. And I was living through it with him.
Meanwhile, Charles tried to help me understand that he had not made the decision lightly. In deciding to have a baby with me at a time when he knew he would miss most of my pregnancy and the initial period of bonding with you, he had postponed his own happiness. He did so because he did not want to leave this earth without making me the mother of his child. For that, I owed him my loyalty and continued love. Each day I forgave him a little more.
A fierce snowstorm blew in that Valentine’s Day. I was lounging in the living room listening to music when the doorman rang to say that there was a delivery—a gorgeous vase of roses, lilies, daisies, and other flowers. A teddy bear was hugging the vase, and balloons floated above it.
I ripped open the card.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Ma,” it said. “Love, Charles.”
I was stunned. I announced to the poor deliveryman that if my fiance could order flowers from Iraq, t
hen no other man on the planet had an excuse not to remember his wife or girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. I felt like the queen Charles had always said I was.
By the end of February, Charles did his best to call me every other day, but we had also enlisted a network of military wives to get the word to him when I went into labor. Not once did I worry that they would not be able to find him. They are a unique brand of brave, the military spouses who keep small businesses going and homework checked and cars tuned up while their husbands—or wives—are away. I was ashamed that I had ever resisted becoming one of them.
“Babe, you let me know when the time comes and we’ll find him,” said Donna Morris, whose husband, Sergeant First Class Kenneth R. Morris, was one of Charles’s soldiers and a friend. The plan was that as soon as I let her know that I was in labor, Donna would call and send e-mails to the wives in Charles’s company. If one of them received a phone call from her husband that day, she would tell him to “find the First Sergeant.” The wives would also send urgent e-mails to their men with the same instructions.
The evening of March 27, that is just what happened.
My mother and I had been playing Scrabble much ofthat day and I was ahead by about 100 points in our latest round when I could no longer ignore the intensifying pain in my belly.
“I think I ought to call my doctor,” I said.
My mother is about as calm as a hurricane, and she was thunderstruck when I told her I needed to take a shower and do my hair and makeup before following my doctor’s orders to go to the hospital.
“I can’t meet my baby looking like this! It will be his first image ofhismommyandl don’t want to scare him.”
The contractions seemed to ease when the warm water hit my stomach but they began again when I started applying plum eye shadow and black mascara. I gripped the sink and stared into the bathroom mirror. Someone clearly had mistaken my stomach for a wet towel and was wringing it out. I felt the urge to vomit. My mother had a look of sheer terror on her face. Miriam had arrived and was behind her, instructing me to breathe.
