by Dana Canedy
I could feel Charles’s anguish in what he wrote about Robbie, and it distressed me that I could not be there to comfort him. I could not wrap him in my embrace and whisper for him to hold on until the pain subsided. Nor could I call him to try to raise his spirits. Even the letter I wrote would take weeks to reach him.
I knew that Charles’s 104 remaining soldiers were drawing on his strength during those bleak days, but I wondered who was giving him strength. Then I remembered the angel print His faith would see him through, I thought, just as his love for his Biscuit would sustain him.
“Oh, man, that was his life, right there,” Garcia told me. “He loved that little boy. He always carried a picture in this book he had.” Charles’s bunkmate, Tony, often noticed that Charles’s light was on late into the night. It was then, he thinks, that your father was writing to you in his journal.
Tony and Charles had known each other casually before they deployed and shared a bond as black first sergeants. But it was only when they lived together in Iraq in their cramped cinder-block, wood, and canvas quarters that they discovered that they had a great deal more in common. Both had lived in Mobile, Alabama. Both were athletic and liked to run. Both were engaged to marry when their tours were over.
“With us being first sergeants we couldn’t associate with the lower enlisted members and we didn’t associate with the officers, so the only person we could really associate with was a first sergeant,” said Tony, a lanky, high-energy forty-six-year-old.
Charles and his roommate looked out for each other. If one of them was late coming in from a mission and the dining facility was closing, the other would save a plate of food for his buddy. They had promised that if either got hurt in battle, the other would come to the rescue no matter what the personal risk. And there was one other promise they made to each other. I’ll tell you about that later.
Your father confided in other friends, too, about his plans for a life with the two of us. His buddy Sergeant First Class Helder Camera knew of our relationship from their days as tankers at Fort Riley, a time when he would teasingly ask your father at the end of a workweek where he was headed. “I’m flying to see my girl,” Charles would say.
When Charles e-mailed Camera, who was serving in another part of Iraq, to say that he was getting married, his buddy was shocked. “At Riley he said he was never going to get married again,” Camera told me.
Camera wrote back congratulating Charles and confided that he was having family problems. “I know you love the military,” Charles e-mailed back, “but one day you are going to retire and the people at the end of the tunnel waiting for you will be your family.”
Charles and I had talked about getting married on a Caribbean cruise a few months after he returned, inviting only our families and a few friends. In the weeks after he left, I thought planning the wedding would be the ideal way to keep him focused on coming home. I pictured myself sending him fabric swatches and sample invitations. I leafed through bridal magazines, fantasizing about a gown—off-white, simple, elegant, and formfitting. Naturally, I would be svelte. I would carry a bouquet with tropical flowers. Since I have always been clumsy, and since Charles had minimal rhythm, I wondered how I could talk him into dance lessons. Could I send cake samples to Iraq?
But I never got far with my planning. It all felt wrong, inappropriate even. I could not bring myself to commit to caterers or florists—much less buy a dress—while my man was still in harm’s way. I abandoned the idea after a few months.
Instead, I concentrated on losing my remaining baby weight in time for our wedding. Mostly my fitness strategy involved long walks pushing your stroller, since I could not seem to drag myself to the gym in our building. I wondered how Charles found the fortitude to start his days in the gym in Iraq. Even his soldiers marveled at his discipline.
“It was hard over there, it really was,” said one of them, Sergeant First Class Kenny Morris. “I spent six out of every nine days outside the gate, so the two or three days inside the gate I didn’t waste my time going to the gym. I chose to relax, but he was obviously very physically fit and took a lot of pride in keeping himself in shape. I know he also ran a lot.”
Charles did not exercise out of vanity. It was a form of therapy. It also gave him the stamina to do his job. Sergeant Shoan Mohammed, a gunner in your father’s unit, recalled walking for miles with Charles in full body armor in the dry heat, searching for weapons and combatants in areas that were not easily reachable by vehicle. When the soldiers took breaks and sat down, Charles was always the first up. “That was to let the guys know that if he could do it, we could do it, too,” Mohammed told me.
Lt. Col. Donahoe recalled one such mission, during which dozens of his soldiers became dehydrated. “It was hot as the dickens. We had to give fifty to seventy IVs.” Charles, he said, was not one of the soldiers treated. “He wouldn’t have allowed anyone to give him one anyway. The first sergeant was not going to let himself get to the point where he had to let his guys see him get an IV.”
Your father was so determined to set an example for his troops that he often made a point of taking on duties usually left to a private or another entry-level soldier, dedication that occasionally took his soldiers by surprise. One day, after a mission to a village to scout out insurgents, Mohammed was “out in the middle of nowhere,” surrounded by sand, when he saw a tank approaching. The gun loader, typically the junior soldier riding the tank, began waving at him to come toward him.
“I gave him the finger, not thinking anything of it, for him calling me over there as if I didn’t have anything better to do,” Mohammed admitted. “So this loader jumps off the tank, I mean literally jumps off the hatch, and now he’s really mad coming toward me. When I started walking toward him I realized it was First Sergeant King and said ‘Oh shit, what did I just do?’ I’m five-six and a half and about a buck and a half dripping wet, and he’s about six-two and two hundred fifty pounds. He was walking through two feet of sand.”
When your father reached his soldier, he got in his face. “Don’t you ever give me the finger again,” he barked.
Charles cooled down quickly, though. He realized that Mohammed had not recognized him from so far away. And how many first sergeants performed the duties of a gun loader?
“You can always humble yourself to do the job at the bottom is what he told me,” Mohammed said. “To me, his rank and stature wasn’t what I respected him for. I respected him as a man. There was a selflessness in him.”
Charles did not always hold his soldiers to the standard he set for himself. He had a soft streak. One of his soldiers’ wives, Valerie Lauer, recalled how Charles pretended not to notice when she spent several nights in the men’s barracks in Fort Hood with her husband, Timothy, before they moved into their home. “I even got to climb into a tank,” she told me.
One soldier recalled how Charles gave him time off from combat training to be with his wife for the birth of their baby. “He gave me his word that I could go and he kept his promise. I stayed in the hospital three days because she had a C-section and he didn’t ask once when I was going to come back to formation.”
These stories were difficult to hear. On one hand, I was envious; Charles had not always been as generous with us as he had been with his men. On the other, I loved him more for embracing the responsibilities of his position in away that set him apart. Only about io percent of enlisted troops ever attain the rank of first sergeant. Fewer still lead troops in war. Charles also earned an army Combat Action Badge for “engaging the enemy” in battle. He was awarded the badge for his actions during a gun battle that took place less than three months after he arrived in Iraq. Some men from another company were ambushed and your father drove into the melee and pulled the wounded to safety. “Without regard to his personal safety, he remained in the kill zone to ensure the rapid and safe evacuation of every other soldier,” reads the citation nominating him for the badge.
Charles did not care much about med
als and awards, but he did give and demand respect for men and women in uniform.
I could tell from the letters Charles wrote in the weeks just before his leave that the trauma of combat was wearing on him. After all, he had been away for nearly eight months. I began to make plans for his homecoming. I bought a black leather backpack for him to use as a diaper bag. I stocked the refrigerator with his favorite beer. I did not know if my efforts would help, but I would have done anything to soothe the suffering I read in those letters.
Twelve
Dear Jordan,
I carried you under my heart for the better part of a year and nursed you for just as long. I got up in the middle of the night to make sure you were breathing. When you cried I patted you, burped you, rocked you, and sang to you. But all your father had to do was walk in the front door that August day and you instantly loved him.
Your dad had worried that he would be a stranger to you, and that two weeks would not be long enough for you to bond with him. I guess God knew your time together would be brief.
What I had worried about was how Charles would handle the transformation from first sergeant to father. It had been a long journey and I wanted his homecoming to be perfect So the day before he was due to arrive, I cooked while you slept, making what I had learned from reading the journal was his favorite meal:
It took half a dozen calls to my mother to prepare the yams and two to my sister for the greens. The chicken was another issue entirely.
I had been a vegetarian for fifteen years, so trying to clean that dead bird made me gag. I had made Cornish hens for Charles for Thanksgiving, but they were tiny little things that did not require much preparation. The chicken, though, was squishy and a sick shade of yellow. I poked at it and rolled it over but could not bring myself to actually handle the thing. Thank goodness for Shaika, my cleaning lady. She was watching, amused, from the living room and noticed my distress.
“Need some help?” she asked in her Caribbean accent.
“No, I’m okay,” I lied.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, if you really don’t mind. I’ve never cut up a chicken.”
She ran water in the sink and sliced the chicken under it. She filled a pan with vinegar and water and let the pieces soak while she scavenged my spice rack for seasonings. I watched her dunk a breast and then a drumstick into a bowl of flour. She heated the frying oil and set the pieces in the skillet.
“You have no idea how much this means to me,” I told her.
She said she was doing it for my soldier, then offered to stay in case you woke up before I had time to finish the rest of the meal and take a shower. I pulled the cornbread out of the oven and stirred my greens, then hopped quickly in and out of the shower.
My body had bounced back pretty well from the pregnancy, but it was still a struggle to squeeze into the pair of black jeans that, pre-baby fat, had hugged my hips and shaped my legs nicely. I chose a rose-colored blouse lined with black lace that showed off my newly plump breasts. After a quick makeup application and a spray of perfume, I set the table for dinner and sent Shaika on her way with a huge hug. Charles’s plane was due to arrive in half an hour. You were awake by then, so I dressed you in a one-piece striped blue outfit, sat you on my lap, and waited.
Two hours later, Charles still had not arrived, and I had begun to panic. Had he inadvertently given me his flight information in Baghdad time? I realized that he must have. That meant he would not be home until the following day! I felt like crying.
I could not sit in our apartment any longer, so I put you in your stroller and the food in the refrigerator. We went for a long walk on the longest day of my life.
It was not until the light of the next morning, when Charles called from Atlanta, that I could breathe more deeply. He was on U.S. soil.
I told him about my confusion the day before and he said he was sorry.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I just hope you don’t mind leftover chicken.”
You and I spent the afternoon in the park, where I watched so many dads pushing strollers and swings. I had waited a long time for yours to be among them.
Finally, Charles called from LaGuardia. He was on his way home. I had instructed our doorman to ring our apartment when Charles was in the elevator. When he did, I jumped, nervous and giddy at once. I smoothed my hair and our clothes, then stood in the doorway.
When I saw Charles walking toward us in his uniform, for a moment I could not breathe. He smiled broadly and dropped his duffle bag.
“Hello, Daddy. Come meet your son,” I said, placing you in your father’s arms. It was a moment I will never forget. He smothered you in a hug and then released one arm to pull me into the embrace. He kissed me and squeezed us tighter. We laughed. You looked startled.
Then your dad studied your face and hands and looked into your eyes, just as I had done for the first time six months earlier. He held you close and breathed in your scent, just as I had.
“He’s beautiful,” Charles said, as you squirmed.
Outwardly, Charles looked like the same man he was the last time I saw him, only thinner and a deeper shade of brown. He had shaved his head, and the mustache I loved was gone, but his smile was as beautiful as ever, and so were his bright eyes.
I watched as he gazed at you as though you were the most amazing thing he had ever seen. He touched your soft hair and then asked for his bag. He had brought presents, a stuffed camel for you and a stone figure of a mother and child for me.
Charles went into the bedroom and lay on his back on our bed, raising you in the air above him. You looked down and giggled as though the two of you had played that way before. It made your father laugh, too—the sweet music of two beautiful voices in harmony. I stood silently at the foot of the bed, arms folded. Even if there had been words to describe how I was feeling, they would have simply gotten in the way.
Finally, the burden I had felt ever since your father left was lifted. I no longer had to pretend to myself that the stabbing sensation I felt every time the phone rang was just indigestion. I did not have to worry that he might not receive the latest pictures of you in time, did not have to dread the nights I reached for him in my sleep and awoke in agony.
It was too early to tell what Charles was feeling or how the war had worn on him. All that mattered at that moment was that we were at peace in our little safety zone. I thought of all the tomorrows we would have with your father—fourteen to begin with, and then a lifetime more. There would be time in the years ahead for making sandcastles and putting up Christmas trees, for playing tooth fairy and tossing footballs. Yet I was greedy: I wanted each second to last an hour, each hour a day.
Charles seemed suspended in time, too, until he suddenly stood up and walked back into the living room carrying you. His mood had changed; he seemed agitated and had a panicked expression on his face. He said his stomach ached and asked if I had antacids. He searched in his bag for an inhaler.
Was he sick, or could it be an anxiety attack? I calmly lifted you out of his arms, gave him an antacid, and ran a warm bath as he breathed in the mist from the inhaler. I also brought him a beer, thinking it might help him relax. Charles was allergic to shellfish but I had never known him to have respiratory problems. As I watched him settle into the tub, I wondered what had caused his new shortness of breath.
“Sweetie, we’ll stay here and keep you company,” I said and sat on the closed toilet seat with you in my arms. “Just relax.”
Charles exhaled deeply, took a long drink of his beer, and closed his eyes. I thought of turning on music but was afraid the sound or my sudden movement might startle him. Instead I sat quietly as he opened his eyes and looked up at us. He cupped his hands full of water and let it fall onto his face and chest.
“Tell me about your inhaler,” I said softly.
“Oh, I have asthma,” he said.
“How long have you had it?”
“We live by a power plant. I guess I got it
there.”
I was struck by two things. First, he had said that he “lived” near a power plant, just as he had given me his flight arrival in Baghdad time. How extraordinary that the mind can be conditioned to imagine home as being any place that becomes familiar, even one of the most treacherous places on earth. Charles’s very survival must have depended on him immersing himself in that alien environment, so that he was not paralyzed by fear or overcome with longing for the place where he really belonged.
The other thing was his certainty that he had become asthmatic. There was no way to know what he had been inhaling near that plant, but it seemed to me just as likely that his breathing difficulties were a reaction to the stress of combat. Since he was a leader, there were few opportunities to express his fear. Perhaps he kept it inside until it became so powerful that he had to release it, somehow.
I asked him whether the military doctors had actually diagnosed him with asthma, and he said they had. I offered to take him to my doctor for a second opinion.
“I’m fine, Ma. The inhaler works,” he said.
I did not want to upset him so I decided to wait and suggest it again after his tour of duty was over.
Charles got out of the tub, looking much more relaxed, and again lay down with you on the bed. I went into the kitchen to prepare a plate of food and Charles must have smelled it because he came into the living room holding you and said that he could not eat. He seemed exhausted.
“I’m going to take the baby for a walk so you can get some rest,” I told him. “But please try to at least nibble on some cornbread. I’ll bring you chicken noodle soup.”
