Sand Queen

by Helen Benedict

  It isn’t even dawn by the time I clamber into the Humvee with my new team, so other than saying hi, nobody’s awake enough to feel like talking, thank God. But I lean my head back and pretend to sleep in case they try. My scarf’s still around my neck to cover the bruises, the sweat gathering underneath it. My right boob throbs, and my throat feels so crushed and raw it hurts even to turn my head. As for the rest of me—my soul or whatever you want to call it—that’s still flapping away in the sky.

  My new team consists of three guys and me: Jimmy, who’s been promoted to E5 sergeant and team leader. Our driver, a big muscled blond called Ned Creeley, with a button-nosed face that makes him look fourteen. And Tony Mosca, a.k.a. Mosquito, a hairy little Italian from New Jersey with twinkly brown eyes and a mouth as filthy as Yvette’s. I know they must have heard about last night—me covered in puke and Jimmy in blood—but nobody says anything. It might be tact, embarrassment or just laziness, I don’t know, but it’s fine with me. Far as I’m concerned, it never fucking happened at all.

  Our assignment is to guard a prison compound near the rear of the camp. A compound is what we call a block of forty or so rectangular tents, lined up in rows to make a square. Each tent is twelve feet long and holds about twenty-two prisoners. And each compound is surrounded by a corral of sand and a fence made of three giant coils of razor wire stacked in a pyramid, two on the bottom and one on top. Typically, one soldier guards each side of the block, either on the ground or in a guard tower, while a few extra, like Jimmy, are stationed at the entrance.

  My post turns out to be a tower on the west side, so after button-nose Creeley drops me off, I climb up its ladder to look around. The tower’s about as high as a streetlight, just a platform on a wobbly scaffold made of plywood and twoby-fours, with a flat roof no bigger than a beach umbrella. I’m only ten feet away from the rolls of wire, so the prisoners can come up pretty close if they want. But not another soldier’s in sight.

  This is what I have with me for the job: My rifle. Two MREs. Three one-liter bottles of water. A pack of cigarettes. A walkie-talkie that crackles but doesn’t work. A radio that doesn’t work either. A chair. And a headache.

  I play with the walkie-talkie a while to see if I can get it to do something, but it really is a piece of crap. It looks exactly like the toy one Tyler gave April for her seventh birthday, except that one worked better than this. We let her bring it once when she came camping with us, and we had a lot of fun hiding in the woods where we couldn’t see each other and being able to talk anyhow. When she lost hers and cried, because in our family that would have got her spanked, Tyler crouched down beside her and said, “Hey there, everybody loses things sometimes. I’ll get you another. So no April showers, okay?”

  “I hate that joke,” April said between sobs, but she was smiling a little, too.

  Tyler’s often kind like that. His whole family is. His mom and dad take things easy, like he did with the lost walkie-talkie, even though they’ve got five kids and not much money. They could hardly be more different from my parents. Dad runs us like we’re part of his sheriff’s department. Rules here, rules there—not just about saying grace before we talk and locking the gun in the sideboard, but all day long. He even puts lists of our daily schedules up on the fridge. I think he’d make April and me call him “sir” if Mom let him. He likes posting mottos around the house, too. Take responsibility for your actions. Don’t blame others for your mistakes. If you dig your own grave, you must lie in it.

  Guess that’s what I’ve done. Dug my own grave.

  It only takes the prisoners about ten minutes to realize that their new guard is a female. At first they ignore me and wander around in their man-dresses, some of them in head rags, most not, smoking the cheap cigarettes we give them for free and kicking the bits of dried shrub that grow out of the sand. But when one of them comes up close enough to see my face, all hell breaks loose. He laughs and beckons some others over. They point. They jeer. They gesture at me over and over to take off my helmet and show them my hair. And then one guy swaggers up, pulls out his dick and jerks off right in front of me.

  And this is just my first hour.

  I’m shocked and disgusted, but I’m not about to show it. I look away, glad my eyes are hidden behind my shades, chew my gum and try to act like he and the other men are no more important to me than ants. All right, I tell myself, this must be a test from God, having to endure one piece of crap after another like this. I’ll handle it, pray when I need to, suck it up like the soldier I am. Anyhow, I don’t really blame the prisoners for being angry. I mean, look at the poor fuckers, stuck in overcrowded, stinking hot tents for reasons they probably don’t understand. I know most of them are innocent because we’ve been told as much. Some are criminals who escaped in the war—you can tell which ones are thieves because they have a hand cut off. A lot are Saddam’s soldiers who deserted soon as the war began and turned themselves in to us, skinny and ragged and desperate for food and protection. Some are real bad guys, of course, Saddam loyalists or insurgents. But most are just ordinary people who got caught by mistake. Like Naema’s little brother—perhaps.

  So I try to be Jesus-like and forgiving about it, the way Mom and Father Slattery would want. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them—isn’t that how the verse in Hebrews goes? It isn’t me they hate, I tell myself, it’s what I represent. The power behind those bombs, the foreigners who arrested them and put those hoods on their heads. And from what I’ve heard, all Arab men think Western women are whores anyhow.

  These are the things I think about during my first few hours as a prison guard, sitting up here on my tower in a fold-up metal chair, cooking in the heat like an egg on a skillet. These, and how much I long for Tyler, for his soft singing, his eyes so full of love—for the days when I could trust people. The one thing I don’t let myself think about is what happened with Kormick.

  “Kate?” A voice floats up from the ground.

  I peer over the edge of my platform. Jimmy’s looking up at me from behind a new pair of prescription shades. They suit him a lot better than his basic combat glasses—a.k.a. BCGs. Those make you so ugly we call them Birth Control Glasses, ’cause no one will sleep with you when you’re wearing them. “What’re you doing here?” I call down to him.

  “I got a break. There’s a bunch of HHC guys working the entrance with me and we’re spelling each other.” He holds out a paper cup. “Ice. Can I come up?”

  Ice is like gold around here, so I tell him he’s more than welcome. Slinging his rifle strap over his shoulder, he climbs the ladder and offers me the cup.

  “All for me?” I’m still croaking, throat raw and sore.

  “No way, we’re sharing.” He looks at me with concern. “You sound terrible—sure you’re okay?”

  “Yup. Don’t worry about it.” We dig out an ice chip each and stand there sucking it in bliss, staring out at the sand. Ice chips in the desert: the best ice cream in the world. It helps my throat feel a little better, too.

  “Can I ask you something?” Jimmy says then. He has this soothing voice, low and calm. Perhaps that’s why I’m letting him talk to me.

  “Depends.”

  “Well, no pressure, but I was wondering—now you’ve had time to sleep on it, are you going to report Kormick?”

  I keep my gaze on the sand. “Why would I want to do that? To win myself more friends?”

  “Well, in case, you know, he tries to hurt somebody else.” Jimmy sounds embarrassed, but he forges ahead anyhow. “I meant it when I said I’ll back you up if you do. So will DJ. We talked about it. That shitbag should be thrown in the brig, have his big-ass career ended. Boner, too.”

  “What did DJ have to do with it?”

  “He took care of Boner while I was busy with Kormick.”

  I shake my head. If Jimmy or DJ stick their necks out for me like this, their careers will be fucked. I can’t ask them to do that. And if I report Kormick, he’ll only ma
ke my life even more fun-and-games than it already is. Anyhow, it isn’t like he actually raped me, only tried to, so what’s there to report? That he attacked me and I failed to be a soldier and fight him off? No, anything I say will only make me sound like one of those whiny pussies all the guys think we females are anyway.

  “I’ll think about it,” I tell Jimmy finally.

  “You’re pretty tough, aren’t you? Were you always like this?”

  “Who, me?” I look at him in surprise. He’s smiling at me teasingly. “No way. I was little Miss Innocent at home. Served the pie at church picnics. You know the type.”

  “You weren’t so innocent. You had that boyfriend you told me about.”

  “I have that boyfriend. Fiancé, in fact.”

  We fish out another ice chip each.

  “What about you?” I say then, happy to keep off the topic of Kormick. “You got anyone waiting for you at home?”

  The age-old question. The stuff soldiers have been talking about since war was invented.

  “Nope,” Jimmy says, looking away from me. “I had this girlfriend, but when she found out I was coming here… well, you know.”

  “You mean she dumped you? What happened to standing by your man while he serves his country and all that shit?”

  He shrugs.

  “Well, that sucks. Sounds like she didn’t deserve you. You’ll find someone better. You’ve got plenty of time.”

  He glances at me, then gazes over the concertina wire at the prisoners.

  “We’re in a war, Kate. What fucking time?”

  On my second morning of guard duty I get up even earlier than usual, determined to fit in a run. My throat’s still bruised and aching but at least my boob feels a little better. If I put on my tightest sports bra, I think I can run without it hurting too much. But the idea of being trapped up in my tower, facing another long day of masturbating perverts without even having had my precious morning exercise is more than I can stand.

  Third Eye won’t come, which surprises me. She just rolls over, growls, “Leave me the fuck alone,” and goes back to sleep. But Yvette’s ready. I’m still pissed at both of them for not speaking to me the night after Kormick, but since I can’t go running by myself—too dangerous and against the rules—I appreciate her company, at least.

  The air feels thicker than usual, even though the sun hasn’t risen yet, and a light wind’s already stirring up the moondust, making it hard to breathe. “Looks like we’re in for another frickin’ sandstorm,” I say while we jog down the road.

  “Shit. It’ll suck to have to drive in this.” Yvette’s been going out on convoys for weeks now, often at night, which is way more dangerous than anything I have to do. Her MOS is convoy security, which means she rides in the passenger seat of a convoy truck with her weapon out the window, scanning the desert for danger. I’m still a fob-goblin, a soldier who’s never left base.

  We run in silence for a time, sinking into the rhythm of it. The sand road’s a pretty good running track as long as you keep your eye out for stones, but one step off it into the soft stuff on either side can twist your ankle in a flash. Ahead of us the road stretches straight as a plank till it disappears in a haze. I swear the Iraq desert must be the flattest damn place on the planet.

  “You okay?” Yvette says after a while, her voice strained. “I heard some shit went down the other day.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Oh, the usual BS. Fuck, this moondust’s hard to breathe.”

  We run for a while without saying anything.

  “Well?” she says eventually. “You ain’t answered me yet.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I’m okay thanks.”

  “You sure? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “It’s nothing. Just a sore throat.”

  “Is that why you’re wearing a scarf in one hundred and forty-fucking degree weather?”

  “Yep.”

  She eyes me skeptically. “If you say so. But talk to me anytime you need to, all right, babe? I mean it.”

  I glance over at her bony little face and for a moment I feel a flash of love for her. Or maybe it’s just abject gratitude. She knows something happened to me and she’s acknowledged it, which is more than anyone else in my frigging unit has done, aside from Jimmy. We never confide how we really feel—we’re much too busy keeping up a front. Specially Third Eye, with that tough-guy act of hers. Some days it seems like all we do is brag, tease or lie to each other. Whatever happened to the band of brothers and sisters we’re supposed to be at war, I don’t know. In my company we’re more like a band of snakes.

  By the time we get back to the tent, the horizon’s turned a dark streaky orange and the air’s clogged with dust. I rinse off with a bottle shower the best I can, although it only makes the dust stick to me worse than ever, then go inside to change into my uniform. Third Eye’s sitting on her rack giving me the strangest look. “What’s the matter with you?” I say, squeezing my hair carefully with a towel. I have to be careful since so much of it’s been falling out lately. “You’re looking at me like I turned green or something.”

  “You been to the crapper yet?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “You better go look. Come on, I’ll go with you.” She has this heavily serious expression on her face, so I guess she isn’t kidding, although you can never be sure with Third Eye.

  “Okay. Whatever.”

  I slip into my fart sack to change (no need to give the guys any more eye candy than they take already), pick up my gear and trudge out after her, the men following our asses with their eyes, like always. She doesn’t say anything more.

  When we get to the Porta-Johns, panting from trying to breathe through the whirling sand and pizza-oven air, she points at one. Through the dust I can just make out some writing on it in big black letters. I walk up to see.

  TITS BRADY IS A COCK-SUCKIN SAND QUEEN.

  SIGN IF YOU’VE FUCKED HER.

  Under it are fourteen names: Boner. Rickman. Mack. And close to half the guys in my tent. At least DJ’s name isn’t there. Nor is Kormick’s—doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, I guess. But Jimmy’s is.

  Third Eye comes up beside me and stares at the list. “All I can say, kiddo, is I warned you.”

  Without looking at her, I turn and walk back alone.

  “Mom?” I’m behind the tent, my cell phone crackling in my ear. “I know it’s late for you, did I wake you up?” My words echo back at me.

  “Katie, is that you?” Her voice is delayed by the distance, so it’s overlapping the echo of mine, tangling up our sentences.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Did I wake—”

  “It’s so good to hear your voice, sweetie! You know you can call any hour you want. You okay? Not hurt or anything?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. But Mom?” My voice is trembling. I can hear it echoing in a pathetic whine. Mom, Mom… “It isn’t going so good out here—”

  “Thank the Lord.”

  “No… did you hear me? I don’t know if I can hack it—”

  “What? Oh yes, I can hear you now. I’m sorry you feel that way, honey, but don’t give up. You’re just adjusting, I’m sure. It’ll get easier. And if you just pray to the Lord Jesus, He will help you. He’ll help you be strong.”

  “I am being strong. That’s not what I—”

  “Katie?” Dad’s on the other extension but I can hardly hear his voice between the echoes of mine and Mom’s. “Don’t worry, little girl. Just hang in there. Everyone has a rough time in the Army sometimes. It was hard for me, too, when I first entered the Force. But I know you can do it. We have faith in you, sweetheart.”

  “But—”

  “Be brave, my girl. Remember, we love you. God loves you. Make us proud.”

  A few minutes later, I’m in my team’s Humvee again, on our way to the compound. Jimmy’s in the front, as usual, next to baby-faced Creeley, and hairy little Mosquito is squashed into the back with me, cracking
obscene jokes with the guys. I stare blindly through the yellow plastic side window, my arms crossed tightly over my chest. I can feel their eyes raking over me—I know they’ve all seen the latrine. They were probably snickering about it on their way to pick me up—the Sand Queen, the list of names, everything. Sand Queen is one of the worst things a female can get called in the Army. It means an ugly-ass chick who’s being treated like a queen by the hundreds of horny guys around her because there’s such a shortage of females. But she grows so swellheaded over their attention that she lets herself be passed around like a whore at a frat party, never realizing that back home those same guys wouldn’t look at her twice.

  In other words, she’s a pathetic slut too desperate and dumb to know she’s nothing but a mattress.

  I’m trying to hang in there, like Dad said. I’m trying hard. But in a way, that graffiti is worse than Kormick.

  When the Humvee stops on my side of the compound, I climb out without looking at anybody and set off for my tower. The sandstorm’s blowing stronger by the minute, so I pull my scarf over my mouth to keep out the grit. Right now, I wouldn’t care if the sand just buried me forever.

  “Wait!” Jimmy calls. Normally he drives on with the others, but this time he jumps out, sends Creeley off without him and runs after me. The whole frickin’ base is going to hear about that in a flash.

  I ignore him and keep walking.

  “Listen, can I explain something?” he says.

  I speed up.

  “It wasn’t me put my name there. You’ve got to believe me. Some other fucker did it. You know I wouldn’t do that!”

  I keep going.