Pieces of Me

by Natalie Hart

  Adam cleared his throat and I felt the red begin to creep up the base of my neck. With pale skin there was no hiding my blushing. There was a moment’s silence, which was interrupted by the buzz of my BlackBerry on the table between us. It was a reminder that I had a meeting in half an hour. We’d already been talking for thirty minutes and I still wasn’t much clearer about the woman he wanted to help.

  “Sorry,” I said. “So, um, Ali sounds like a really great guy, but you said the visa was for his cousin, not him?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Adam. “Ameena – she’s the cousin. Second or third cousin, I think. She worked in a medical centre that received US funding, but she stopped because she started getting threats. Ali said it could be because of the job, but someone killed her husband a year or so ago, so it could be linked to that too.”

  “Can she prove it? The threats, I mean,” I asked. It was a question I hated, but it was part of the job.

  “I don’t know. Does she have to? What’s she supposed to do – ask them to wait while she gets out a voice recorder?” Adam looked annoyed.

  “No. No, of course not. It just strengthens the case if she can. Could speed things up a bit. Does she have children?”

  “Er, I think so. A young one. Ali said she lives with the kid and her mum.”

  I nodded, thinking about the application form. Single mother. No direct male relatives. I hoped for her sake it was a case I could put through quickly.

  “So what now?” Adam asked. “Shall I find out more information about the family?”

  “First she needs to go onto the website and fill in the online registration form,” I said. “Then she’ll be invited in for the first interview, in my office. After that there will be background checks, which can be slow, then another interview with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. It’s a long process and there are no guarantees.”

  I rummaged in my bag for a business card.

  “Tell Ali to give her this. If she calls me when she’s registered I’ll try to interview her myself.”

  Adam took the card and turned it over in his hand.

  “Do you think she has a chance?” he asked. I saw a worry in his face that I hadn’t noticed before. He rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. His other hand was on the table in front of me and I almost reached to touch it with my own. “I really want to help Ali. I… I owe him one,” he said.

  I felt more words rise up in Adam and then get pushed back down, not yet ready to be released into the air between us.

  “I’ll do what I can, Adam,” I said, placing my hand on the table so close to his that our fingertips were almost touching. “I promise.”

  8

  This is not what I expected.

  The man at the front of the briefing room who is giving the presentation keeps using the word “we”. It punctuates his sentences, this reminder of an army family of which I do not feel part. I did not expect to find it this hard.

  “It is four weeks until your husbands leave for Iraq,” he says, but the name of the country that leaves his mouth sounds foreign to my ears. “Eye-rak”. The “eye” is harsh and the “rak” is emphasised and the country is mutated into a place that I do not recognise.

  The k catches at the back of his throat. I see other women flinch at the sound. It is the click of the gate closing behind the men as they leave the base. It is a bullet sliding into a chamber. It is the moment before detonation.

  I must not let myself believe in this American version of Iraq. I must not let it transform into a different place now I am not there. I shut out the man’s voice. In my head I say Iraq in my voice, over and over. I say Iraq the way I say it when I talk about my work, my life, about how I met the man I love. I say it like a mantra. I make it softer. I make it true.

  Is this how Iraqis in America feel when they hear the name of their country from someone else’s mouth?

  This week Adam came home from work with a “deployment readiness pack”, like a child sent home with letters from school. This pack was supposed to prepare us for everything that is war – the paperwork, the logistics, the emotions. I know what it is to be in a conflict zone, yet these pamphlets made the experience into something alien. Something to be feared.

  I searched military spouse blogs, to read the experiences of women who have been there, done that, come out the other side.

  Deployment survival guide! said one title. How to survive your first deployment! said another. And I paused because I thought he was the one who was supposed to be surviving. Not me.

  The articles told me how to say goodbye to your soldier and how to communicate when your soldier is away and how to prepare for you soldier’s return.

  I read it all but I could not find us anywhere in the words. I did not recognise me and I did not recognise him. He is not my soldier. He is my husband, my friend, my lover. He is the army’s soldier. Not mine.

  “Em. Em? Are you okay?” There is a quick squeeze of my leg. “Hey, babe, anyone home?”

  The PowerPoint presentation has ended now and there is a slide in front of us that says ARMY STRONG in giant letters. Underneath is the black, yellow and white five-pointed star of the army logo.

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I zoned out for a bit there.” I turn towards him and force a smile. I want to reach out and hold his hands in mine, but there is a rule against public displays of affection when soldiers are in uniform.

  “No worries,” he says. “That last part went on for ages.”

  I don’t even know which part he is referring to. I stopped focusing about halfway through. The presentation had driven home the reality that Adam was leaving and I was going to be left in Colorado with no purpose. Nothing.

  “Look, there’s coffee over there. Do you want one?” he asks.

  I want to leave but I say okay and he puts a single finger on the small of my back, guiding me between the groups of people until we reach the table with coffee.

  We stand quietly, holding our polystyrene cups. I look around the room at the other wives and notice that many seem to be standing much closer to their husbands than usual. When I look down, I see that my arm is pressed against Adam’s too. I feel my pulse thud in the place where our skin meets.

  He is leaving. I feel my pulse quicken. Thud. Thud. Thud. He is leaving and I am staying here.

  “Hey, there’s Dave and Kate,” Adam says, moving the arm that was touching mine to point out a couple. “Let’s go say hi. I really want you to meet them.”

  “Just give me a second,” I say. I hand him my coffee and slip away before he can answer. I find the bathroom and shut myself in a cubicle, trying to gather my thoughts. Thud. Thud. Thud. I put the toilet lid down and sit with my feet up, staring at the grey of the door, taking long slow breaths. What is going on with me? It is just Iraq. It is just for a little while. Everything will be okay.

  It’s just Iraq, I say again, but images, tastes, sounds begin to flash through my mind. The office. The alarm. The dust on my tongue. The tremors of the ground. The relief. Then Sampath. The blast wall. The arm on my neck. The blood in my mouth. And now I have nothing.

  STOP, I tell myself.

  Please. Stop.

  Two women enter the bathroom. I am grateful for them disturbing my thoughts. They are discussing some new teacher at the local elementary school who came from a military family herself.

  “She’s really helped Joe,” one of the women says. “He acted out a ton during the last deployment, but I think with her he’ll be different.” I flush the toilet. One of the women smiles at me as I leave the cubicle. I wash my hands and reapply lip balm. My lower lip is red. I must have been chewing it during the presentation, a nervous habit I developed at university. I am fine.

  When I come out, Adam is already talking to Dave and his wife. Dave is a tall man with dark hair and the same broad shoulders that seem to be standard in Adam’s line of work. He is almost matched in stature by his wife, an athletic-looking woman wearing ripped jeans and an oversized swe
ater with long brown boots. Her hair is pulled into a messy knot at the back of her head. She looks different to the other wives I’ve met and I like her already.

  “Ah, here she is,” says Adam as I approach. “Emma, this is my old friend Dave and his wife Kate.”

  “Hey, easy on the ‘old’ part there, Adam. You’re catching up fast!” jokes Dave as he shakes my hand. “Glad to finally meet you Emma. I’ve heard a lot about you!”

  “Uh-oh. All good I hope?” I say, trying to smile.

  “Well, apparently there’s a new British girl in town who likes to throw herself down the front of the Incline,” says Kate, extending her hand.

  “Oh God, you heard about that?” I ask her, shooting Adam an exaggerated disapproving look.

  “Word got round fast,” Adam says. “Dave heard the Sergeant Major saying his son had just helped a British lady down the front of the Incline before I even got back to the office. You sure chose your rescue party.”

  I groan. This is not the first thing I want people to hear about me.

  “Well, I thought it was impressive to go down the front,” said Dave.

  “Me too. I like a woman with a bit of grit,” says Kate. “And the British accent just makes it even cooler.” She pauses. “Hey, can I ask you to say something for me, Emma?”

  Dave rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

  “Already, Kate? Seriously? You’ve only just met the poor woman.”

  I laugh. Requests to hear my accent are normal for me these days. It’s a constant reminder of how I don’t quite fit in.

  “Of course,” I tell her. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Predator,” she says, clasping her hands together.

  This is a new one.

  “You want me to say predator?” I ask.

  She grabs Dave’s shoulder and lets out a loud laugh that makes some of the other women turn around. Perhaps they don’t consider laughing appropriate at pre-deployment briefings.

  “Brilliant,” she says, in a voice that I could almost swear is purposefully louder.

  “That was it?” I say. “Predator? As in, Predator like the movie?”

  Dave runs a hand down his face, trying to stretch out the creases of a smile.

  “That’s a really good one, Kate,” says Adam, openly smirking.

  Kate, meanwhile, is trying to copy my pronunciation herself.

  “Preh-duh-tuh. Preh-duh-tuh.”

  I look to Adam.

  “You say it,” I tell him.

  “Predator,” he says with a shrug. The t has become a second d and the r rolls long at the end of the word. Prehdeh-dorrr.

  “Yeah, okay, that’s pretty good,” I concede.

  “I’ve been waiting to hear you say it since I found out Adam married an Englishwoman,” she tells me.

  Dave checks his watch and looks at Adam, then me.

  “Emma, do you mind if I borrow your husband for a quick work chat?” he asks.

  “Of course not. But no promises about what your wife might be saying by the time you get back.”

  Kate claps her hands together in excitement.

  “Love you, babe,” Adam whispers in my ear, then follows Dave out of the room. With the men gone, the mood between Kate and I shifts slightly.

  “So… How did you find the briefing?” she says.

  “Um, it was interesting,” I reply. “A lot to take in. I haven’t had to think about the other side of it before. What about you? You must be a pro at these by now.”

  Adam had mentioned that Kate and Dave have been married fifteen years. They had been to the same high school apparently. She doesn’t look old enough to have been married more than a decade, but I remind myself that Americans (especially the military kind) tend to marry early.

  “Yeah, I could pretty much recite the whole thing by heart,” she jokes. “But I never enjoy them. They tend to freak the crap out of the new wives and remind us older ones about all the admin bullshit we have to deal with when the men are gone.”

  I take a sip of my near-cold coffee.

  “I was kind of interested about how you’d react to it though,” she continues. “Having been out there too, y’know, on the civilian side of things… How are you settling into Colorado?”

  “It’s lovely,” I say. “The scenery is amazing and everyone seems friendly…”

  “I feel like there’s a ‘but’,” she says.

  I laugh. She is perceptive.

  “To be honest I’m just a bit, well, bored.”

  “I’m not surprised. It always takes Dave ages to adjust after a deployment and he has a job to come back to.”

  I try not to wince. Adam must have told them I’m not working. That’s part of who I am now. She notices my expression.

  “But hey, we’ve heard impressive things about you. I’m sure you’ll find something soon.”

  “Thanks,” I say awkwardly. I hope she’s right. I am about to ask her about the son Adam mentioned when a woman with a pastel pink jumper and a perfect blow-dry walks towards us.

  “Ah. It’s Olivia,” Kate says. “Have you met her yet? She likes Europeans. I saw her at a meeting once explaining to one of the German wives what pancakes are.”

  I have met Olivia only once before. She has something to do with the unit’s Family Readiness Group, or FRG, which seems to mean she’s a ringleader among the wives. Our single exchange had been strained. She kept using acronyms I didn’t know and then asking me to repeat things because she didn’t understand my accent.

  “Hello, Kate, Emma. Good to see you both. Would you like a muffin?” she asks, holding out a tray of small cakes with intricate frosting on top.

  “They look delicious, Olivia,” I say. We both take a muffin and one of the pink napkins, which match Olivia’s outfit but are at odds with the many shades of green and beige in the room.

  “It’s a family recipe, with extra chocolate. I’d never indulge in one myself, of course, but the men seem to love them,” Olivia says as Kate is midway through her first mouthful.

  I try not to laugh at Kate’s face and take a bite myself.

  “I can see why they are popular,” I say.

  Kate nods in agreement through another mouthful. The compliment softens Olivia’s face into a more natural-looking smile.

  “Thanks. So, will I be seeing you at any of the FRG meetings soon?”

  “Um, yeah… I’ll try…” I say awkwardly.

  Kate is far more upfront.

  “Oh come on, Olivia, you know me. There’s no point me making a promise I can’t keep. It’s a busy time of year for sports injuries.”

  “Sports injuries?” I say.

  “Yup, I’m a physiotherapist,” she says, turning to me. “I used to work in a practice downtown but then I went private, so now people just come to the house.”

  I hate myself for having assumed that she doesn’t work. I didn’t even ask her.

  Olivia sighs a little at Kate’s response and I almost feel sorry for her, but I know it can’t be this difficult to get other spouses along to FRG meetings. Some of the women in the front row of the briefing raised their hands so often in the Q and A section that I thought it would never end.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “I just think it’s important that we stick together during this deployment, that’s all. Especially after what happened to that poor man from Fifth Group last week.”

  “What happened to the man from Fifth Group?” I ask. Fifth Group is who Adam’s team will be replacing.

  Kate shoots a warning look at Olivia, but she is already swelling with the importance of having information about Iraq that I do not.

  “You know, maybe you should ask Adam about it,” says Kate quickly, cutting in before Olivia has a chance to speak. “There was an accident, but the guy is okay. He’s at the hospital in Landstuhl at the moment. I’m sure Adam will want to explain it to you himself.”

  “It was the medic that got injured,” says Olivia. I try to control my expression on heari
ng Adam’s specialisation. I don’t want Olivia to see how unsettled I am. “He was shot in the shoulder.”

  “Where was he?” I ask.

  Olivia looks confused. “Um… Iraq.”

  “Yeah I know, but where exactly?” I ask her, sounding harsher than I intended.

  Olivia is flustered by the question. She is on the back foot now. Iraq is my territory.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know. Somewhere central I think. Or was it southern?”

  Kate senses the tension and interjects.

  “Hey, Emma, I think it’s about time we find those husbands of ours, don’t you? I need to go and rescue my neighbour from my grumpy toddler.”

  Olivia gives us her best cheerful goodbye, but her voice is too high-pitched. I let Kate lead me away, then when we’re at a safe distance she turns and squeezes my arm.

  “Hey Emma, I’m sorry about that. I don’t know you that well, but I do know Adam. I’m sure he was just figuring out a good time to mention it.”

  I nod, but there is no time to reply because Adam and Dave are walking over to join us. Adam catches my eye and smiles.

  “Hey, Kate, are you about ready to release my Brit?” he asks, returning to my side.

  “Ugh, if I must,” says Kate, “but make sure she gets my number. We have a bunch more hanging out to do.”

  As we leave Fort Carson, I stare out of the window of the truck in silence. We pass by the checkpoints where soldiers examine the IDs of people entering the base. It is still strange to me to see checkpoints outside a conflict zone.

  “You and Kate seemed to hit it off,” Adam says to me.

  I continue to stare, my head resting against the gently vibrating window of the truck. We pass row upon row of military accommodation, cookie-cutter houses separated from the rest of Colorado Springs by a high wire fence that reminds me of the CHUs in Baghdad.

  “Em?” says Adam.

  “What? Oh, yeah, she seems cool,” I reply. I do not want to talk right now.

  “Did she tell you she’s a physio?” he asks. “I meant to mention it last week after your fall, but then your ankle seemed to be healing well and I forgot.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” I say. Adam shoots me a sideways glance.