Pieces of Me

by Natalie Hart

  “Hey, babe, I’ve been waiting for you!” he says enthusiastically as I come in.

  “Hey, you, what’re you doing down there?” I ask him. He taps the floor by his side, beckoning me to sit down next to him. On the floor are two polystyrene clamshell boxes that look like the takeaway sandwich containers we used to get from the chow hall.

  “I thought it was about time we had a Baghdad-style date-night picnic,” he says. He reaches behind his back and pulls out a bottle and a corkscrew. “Except this time with wine.”

  I leave my bag and shoes by the door and kneel down next to him, taking his face between my hands and giving him a long deep kiss, silently repeating the internal mantra that accompanies all of our contact now. Remember how he tastes. Remember how he smells. Remember how he feels. Remember.

  “You sure know how to woo a girl,” I say, drawing my face away just slightly so our noses touch as I speak.

  “Well, it worked for me in Iraq,” he says.

  I sit cross-legged among the array of cushions Adam has pulled from the sofa onto the floor. He opens the polystyrene boxes with a flourish, to reveal two large sandwiches from our favourite place downtown.

  I laugh. He is home, this man. The blueprints and foundations of our conversations in Iraq have become walls and a roof. We have decorated the rooms with our love. The olive tree has grown roots and we shelter under its protective boughs.

  “So how was your day?” he asks.

  “It was good thanks… Yeah, good,” I say. I arrived home bursting with news of Noor and our fledgling friendship, but now the words lodge in my throat. This is the time to focus on us.

  Adam adjusts his laptop. It is balanced on a sturdy black box that is three quarters full with the equipment he will take to Iraq.

  “You know we have a TV now, right?” I say.

  “That’s not the point, babe. It wouldn’t be the same.”

  He presses play on his laptop and a film begins. I think I recognise it.

  “Have we seen this before?” I ask.

  “I watched it in Iraq. You fell asleep about five minutes in.”

  We watch the film and eat our sandwiches. I lean my head against him and feel my jawbone moving against his shoulder as I chew.

  “Pause it a minute,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “Just pause it.”

  I push myself to my feet and go to the kitchen, opening one of the cupboards and reaching into the back. I pull out two bags of popcorn, one salted and one caramel, that I bought in the commissary the day I bumped into Kate. I come back holding them triumphantly.

  “Emma McLaughlin, you are the best,” he says, grabbing the belt loop of my jeans and pulling me down towards him. I drop the popcorn and sit across his lap, my arms around his neck, his mouth now on mine, the film forgotten. Feel. Smell. Taste. Remember.

  Let the flames of desire lick at our bodies, leaving their scars. Let his shape be burnt onto the back of my eyes so even in darkness he is visible. Let my hands know his contours so that in his absence they can follow his shape. Let his kisses sear their outline onto my flesh. Let his love be tattooed across me, for after he is gone.

  20

  The day he told me he was leaving, we were on top of Radwaniyah Palace. Unlike many of Saddam’s other palaces, Radwaniyah hadn’t been converted into a warren of offices after the invasion. There were no makeshift plywood screens at odds with the marble surroundings or paper door-signs telling you who was occupying a certain room that week.

  Instead, you could wander around the cool echoey halls of the palace, everything coated in a thick layer of dust and sand. Even in its derelict state, it was impressive, in the over-the-top way of many of Saddam’s buildings. I wondered what would happen after all the troops left and hoped that the complex would be opened up for regular Iraqis to see, not just visiting foreigners with ID badges swinging from lanyards.

  Some of the furniture – what had not been looted for offices elsewhere on base – remained. In one room was a large chair with high armrests and peeling gold guild. The centre of the chair was dark, the dust kept at bay by people sitting and posing for photos. In another room was a deep indoor pool, now empty, with a rusty diving board and broken tiles. The entire palace was a maze of marble staircases, giant chandeliers and faded opulence. It made me giddy with excitement and nauseous with disgust.

  My favourite part of the palace was where we were that day – on the roof. There wasn’t much up there, other than a giant aerial and various other bits of communications equipment, but I loved the views. This area of base jutted out into farmland and from the roof I could get a glimpse into normal Iraq. Outside the perimeter wall were fields, where a few farmers worked the land from morning to evening. An unidentifiable crop grew in low green rows. A man drove a rusting tractor between the crops. A woman’s figure folded over as she gathered herbs in the evening light.

  The wall around the edge of the roof was low enough to sit on, so I leant back onto my palms and lifted myself up onto it, then swung my leg over and sat sideways. This made Adam nervous.

  “I don’t see how you can jump out of planes but be scared of heights,” I said to him.

  “When I jump out of a plane I have a parachute,” he replied. “Plus, it’s my safety at stake, not yours.”

  Adam stood next to me and rested his hand on my knee. I could tell he was working himself up to say something. He had been uncharacteristically quiet all evening. I knew what was coming. I knew it must be time.

  “Em, I’ve got some news,” he said, running his other hand around the back of his neck.

  “When do you go?” I asked. Surprise flicked across his face.

  “The replacement team arrives in a couple of days. We’ll do the handover, then head out. So next Tuesday maybe, or Wednesday.”

  I nodded, feeling calm. I’d run this scene through my head so many times that now it was happening it didn’t feel real. Adam once told me that this is how soldiers prepare before an operation. They run through each detail in their head again and again and again. Each possible scenario, down to the smallest detail, so nothing can surprise them.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, unsettled by my silence.

  “Yes,” I said. “We knew this would happen.”

  He took one of my hands, then the other. He pulled me gently off the wall. As he did so, a small piece of blue tile caught my eye. I released a hand and dipped quickly to the ground, slipping it into my pocket.

  “Emma.” I gave back the hand I had freed and we stood face-to-face, hands clasped between us.

  “Emma, I want you to come with me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Hand in your resignation. Leave Iraq. Come with me. Come to the States, like we talked about.”

  “Don’t ask me that, you know I can’t,” I replied. “We never talked about it really. I have a job here, a life.”

  “It’s Iraq, Emma. This isn’t living.”

  “Maybe not for you. But we don’t all just swoop in and out on deployments. Some of us stick it out a bit longer than that. Some of us care.” I heard the harshness in my words but was unable to stop them.

  “Don’t get angry, that’s not what I meant,” he said. “I know your job is important to you, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. But I’m not leaving. You know that’s not who I am. You wouldn’t love me if it were.”

  I looked up. The sun was setting fast, throwing the palace into a brilliant orange. In the distance, mosque minarets flickered green as they lit up. Bats darted around us in the night air.

  I looked back at Adam. I loved him, but I wasn’t ready to leave this place.

  “Okay, let me ask this a different way,” he said. Adam lowered himself onto one knee. “Emma Cooper, I understand that right now you do not want to leave Iraq. But one day, when you’re done, I’d like you to come and live with me. And until then, would you do me the hon
our of becoming my wife?”

  21

  When I wake up, Adam is gone.

  He left our home when it was still night. He kissed my forehead and adjusted the covers around me. I tried to fight through sleep to tell him that I loved him, but I don’t know whether the words got as far as leaving my lips.

  When I went to bed last night, he was adding the final touches to his packing. Loading movies onto his laptop for the journey. Checking he had enough Ambien. I knew he had done this all already, but he was filling time. Killing time. I told him to come to bed, but he was restless. He must have come in at some point, but I do not know if he slept.

  I try to stay in bed longer, dozing, avoiding the reality of what is to come, but eventually I get up. I pad to the kitchen wearing one of Adam’s T-shirts. The floor feels cold under my bare feet.

  Adam’s mug is in the sink, the dregs of his coffee at the bottom. Next to the sink is a note.

  Have a good day, babe. See you when I get home. I love you!

  No one would think that he had left for months.

  The house is different now. In just hours it has changed and become the way it will be until he gets back. It is full of his absence.

  The clutter that has filled the living room for weeks is gone. There is nothing waiting to be packed or shipped. No medical kits or uniform or unidentifiable bits of sturdy black equipment. No notebooks filled with scrawled lists. Nothing. Just me and the fading signs of his presence. But I have imagined this already. I am prepared.

  I make coffee in a daze, his face grinning out from photos as I open the fridge for milk. I sit out on the porch and stare at the Incline, tucking my legs under me and hugging my mug. I do not want to talk to anyone or listen to the radio or turn on the television. I want the last voice to have touched my ears to be his. I sit and I stare but I do not cry. I am numb.

  I decide to shower. In the bathroom there is a towel on the floor. It is still damp from drying water droplets off his body. I hang it on the towel rail to dry, then remember he will not be here to use it again. I throw it in the laundry basket instead.

  I go to brush my teeth and I notice there is only one toothbrush in the metal holder now. This I had not imagined. This I am not prepared for. This is the moment when I break.

  PART TWO

  DEPLOYMENT

  22

  My ringtone wakes me and for a moment I am back there. It is not the regular bleep of my morning alarm, but the sound of someone calling – it’s an Arabic pop song I downloaded after Hana played it on repeat in the office for about a month. It reminds me of polystyrene coffee cups and dusty laptops and the early days of being in love.

  After leaving Iraq I couldn’t bring myself to change the song, despite the looks people give me if my phone rings when I am grocery shopping on post. Adam once joked that my choice of ringtone probably set off PTSD episodes in at least a few of the soldiers. I replied that it was nowhere near as bad as the idiot who downloaded the sound of the incoming alarm for his.

  The song continues. But I am not in Iraq now. I am in Colorado and it is too early for my phone to be ringing.

  My alarm clock says 5.30am. Since Adam left, I have become used to sleeping in a little later, not being woken by the sound of him getting up to shower or his heavy footsteps as he goes out the door. I am not usually awake at 5.30am.

  A phone call at 5.30am. My brain starts to fight through the haze of sleep. No one calls this early. I am not still there. Something must be wrong. I am suddenly filled with the tingling anxiety that the incoming alarm used to bring. Except now it is not fear of an incoming rocket that terrifies me, but incoming news.

  I fumble for my phone. Press answer without looking at the name. Try not to let my thoughts race ahead of me.

  “Emma,” the voice says. It is Kate. “Emma, there’s been an attack. US soldiers… Casualties… I can’t get through to Dave.”

  “Shit. What? Where? How do you know?” It’s like I’m curled up on the floor under my desk as the rockets fall. Helpless. Just praying this one won’t be mine.

  “I read it…” she says, “the news…” Her voice sounds strangled.

  I push back the covers, frustrated at how they try to hold me back in the bed. Then I am in the living room. I turn on the television. I search for the twenty-four hour news channel. I half expect to see Dave and Adam’s faces staring out of my television screen with the rolling ticker tape headline telling me that my husband is dead. Except that it is 2011. Dead soldiers don’t make headlines anymore.

  When I find the news, it is showing the highlights from a baseball game that was on last night. There are no dead husbands. Mine or otherwise.

  “What did you read? Where was it?” I ask Kate. “What did it say?”

  I hear her take a breath, then begin forcing words into sentences.

  “It was something about an Iraqi policeman. He opened fire. Killed two soldiers.”

  My laptop is open on the kitchen counter from where I emailed Adam last night. I type Iraq, shooting, US soldiers into the news search engine. Several news stories come up, one with today’s date. The word policeman catches my eye.

  “Got it,” I say. My eyes scan across the article, looking for clues.

  Iraqi policeman. Checkpoint. Shooting. Mosul. Everything comes into focus.

  “It’s Mosul.”

  “I know,” she says. “Have you heard from Adam? Could it be them?”

  “No, Kate, listen to me. It’s Mosul. That’s not where they are.”

  “But it’s Iraq. What if they went there? What if–?”

  “No, stop. It’s okay. I promise. It’s not them, Kate. It’s too far north. It’s not them.”

  When Kate speaks again, there is a crack to her voice that I have not heard before.

  “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, Emma. I panicked. I… ”

  I slump down on the sofa, relieved.

  “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry,” I tell her, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal.

  I am concerned about Kate. She has looked tired recently. Last week she cried when Harvey escaped his lead in the park and wouldn’t come back when she called him. We laughed about it afterwards and she said it was just the frayed nerves of deployment, but I wasn’t convinced. I look at my watch, 5.34am. My shift at the art shop doesn’t start until 9.00am. Noor is going to stop by for coffee at 10.30am today, which has become a regular Friday morning routine for us. There is still plenty of time.

  “How about I bring over breakfast?” I say to Kate.

  “That would be great.”

  I pull on denim shorts and a sweater, and leave the house without looking in the mirror. The names of the dead soldiers weren’t in the news article, which means that next of kin haven’t yet been informed. I imagine a woman waking somewhere to a black sedan pulling up outside her house. She opens the door and they start to talk. White noise fills her ears. She braces herself with one hand against the wall. Her legs give way.

  The report from Mosul worries me. Not just that soldiers died, but how. Iraqi police was supposed to be better now. Reformed. Cleared of “bad apples”. I guess not completely. I suppose the Iraqi Army isn’t either.

  I stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on my way over. Kate claims it serves the best coffee in America. I overheard the same comment in Iraq once, from a contractor in a baseball cap whose belly hung over the top of his cargo trousers.

  “Not Dunkin’ Donuts, is it? But it’ll do,” the man said as he ordered a large vanilla latte in Green Beans. Sampath picked up a black marker pen, crossed out the Green Beans logo on the cup and wrote Dunkin’ Donuts instead.

  “There you go, sir,” he said, as he handed it over with a smile.

  Inside Dunkin’ Donuts there is a bored-looking girl examining her nails at the counter. I order two large coffees and the most sugary doughnuts I can see. She smiles at me and asks if it was a late night. I wonder whether I should have checked the mirror after all.

  When I get to Kate�
��s house, Harvey comes bounding out of the front door and down the garden path to meet me. Noah follows behind as fast as he can with bare feet, wearing his favourite red pyjamas with pirate ships on.

  “Memma!” he shouts. In the fourteen weeks since Adam and Dave left, I have spent a lot of time with Kate and Noah. I haven’t spent so much time around a child since I was one myself. It makes me realise how much of my niece’s development I have missed. Not just the big markers like taking steps and speaking, but the subtle changes in behaviour and personality that you only pick up on by seeing a child regularly. I realise that I do not really know my niece at all.

  Fourteen weeks. We might even be past halfway.

  Kate stands in the doorway and takes the coffees from me, ushering her son and dog back inside. Her voice is cheery but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

  “You’re a star,” she says between sips. “I’m so tired, I couldn’t even work the coffee machine right now.”

  “Well, next time you want a breakfast delivery, just tell me. You don’t have to pretend our husbands are dead,” I say. The dark humour slips out. It seemed completely normal in Iraq but doesn’t sit comfortably in the “real” world. I scan Kate’s face for a reaction.

  “I have all the tricks, Em. This ain’t my first rodeo,” she says. Perhaps military spouses have their own dark sense of humour too.

  In the kitchen, Kate slices up a banana and lays it beside the doughnut on Noah’s plate.

  “I can at least pretend I’m being a responsible parent,” she says.

  Noah eats half of his doughnuts and runs out into the back garden to play. We finish all of ours and Kate starts to clear away the plates

  “So, are you going to tell me what’s up?” I ask her as she loads the dishwasher. “You can’t pretend a freak-out like that is normal.”

  “No, you’re right,” she says, standing with the dishwasher door half open.

  “Is it stress?” I ask.

  “Not exactly.” She closes the dishwasher door firmly. “Actually, not at all. I’m pregnant.”