For one thing, I wasn’t smart enough to leave first.
IF OUR LIVES REALLY DID
mean something, would an Emily be dead? Would a child get raped? Would three toddlers drown slowly in a car rolled into the river by their mother?
How can both worlds exist? The one where a life is meaningful and the one where it means nothing? Does not the presence of one negate the other? Emily is dead. Children are raped. Mothers have killed.
Isn’t it obvious that what is happening to me does not matter?
9
Bashkim
TODAY I AM DOING
my writing project with Nene. Tirana is sleeping, and Baba is on the ice-cream truck by himself. Baba doesn’t like to work on the truck without Nene, because he does not sell as much ice cream. That’s because Baba scares some of the kids.
“What you want? I no got all day for you decide. Point at picture!”
There are pictures of all the ice creams we sell on the side of the truck. Well, not exactly all. There are some ice creams that we never have, even though we have pictures, because the pictures have been on the truck a long time, and our supplier doesn’t make those ice creams anymore. Also, we have some ice creams with no pictures, because they are new, and we never got pictures to put on the truck for them. This is a problem, because nobody asks for those. So Baba always waves those ice creams around, and says, “Special deal. Two ice creams for twenty cents less.” But that doesn’t always work out, because Baba doesn’t explain that you have to get two of those no-picture ice creams to get the twenty cents less, and then sometimes people get mad. Usually Baba gets mad too. Which isn’t that good for the ice-cream business.
Nene sells the ice cream differently, and she can sell all the no-picture ones. When somebody points to a picture that we don’t have the ice cream for, Nene says, “This is your lucky day. We have a brand-new kind of ice cream, and you are going to be the first one to get to try it.” Which works almost every time. That’s just how Nene and Baba are different. Baba worries about money a lot, but he can’t make money as well as Nene can. Nene worries about money too, but between her good ice-cream selling skills and her job at Kohl’s, she makes more money than Baba. I don’t think Baba likes that.
Anyway, Baba agreed to be on the truck by himself because I have to do this project, and I need Nene’s help. Baba doesn’t want to have anything to do with my school anymore, even if this project is going to be about Albania. This year our school’s theme is origins, and every student has to do an origins project. I got Albania.
The first part of my project is a questionnaire. I have to ask someone in my family some questions, and write down what they say. I read the questions to my nene.
“Question one: Where was your mother born?”
“I was born in Tirana, in a hospital, which was somewhat unusual for my family, because my older brother and sister were born at home. But my nene, your
g
j
yshe
,
had a hard time delivering my brother, your
daja
Edon, and she was afraid to be home again. So she went to the hospital to have me. She didn’t like being at the hospital, so she had your
daja
Burim, who is younger than me, at home again.”
I write down: In Tirana, at a hospital.
“Question two: Where did your mother grow up?”
“I grew up on our family farm about fifty kilometers from Tirana. I loved the farm. My baba made me wooden skis, and in the winter, I would ski down the hill behind our house. Baba made a toboggan too, and all of us would get on that and go down the hill very fast. We had goats and sheep and chickens on our farm, and it was my job to collect the eggs each morning. You had to be fast to get the eggs out from our chickens, or they would peck your fingers, and it hurt. My nene would make
torta
from our eggs, and when Blerta and Edon and Burim and I got home from school, she would serve us a piece before we started our afternoon chores.”
I write down: On a farm with goats near a hill.
“Question three: How did your mother get to Las Vegas?”
“When I married your baba, he had already applied for political asylum with the United States. This was a very hard process, because he had to prove that he was in prison for protesting an act of the government and not for being a criminal. It’s hard to get a paper that says that in Albania. But my family and your baba’s family had known each other for generations, and my
baba
g
jysh
had gone to school with someone in the government. After we got married, my babagjysh knew that your baba would always be in danger in Albania, so he got the government to provide the right papers. Even then, it took a long time for the United States to say yes. That’s why you were born in Albania. We didn’t get to choose where we came in the United States. Catholic Charities in Las Vegas had space for three refugees, so we came here.”
I think awhile. Then I write down: My grandfather liked the United States, and he told my parents to move here.
“Question four: What does your mother like best about living in America?”
“That is a hard question, because I miss my family and I miss how beautiful Albania is. I miss our mountains, and the ocean, and all the green fields. I miss the market, and I miss eating food fresh from our garden. In Albania, life is sometimes hard, and the government has a lot of problems, but the women are happier. In Albania, I would never spend a day without talking to my friends and my nene. In Las Vegas, there are no women for me to talk to at all. I miss my baba and my nene, and I wish that you and Tirana could have all your cousins to play with. I don’t like living in America. It’s lonely, and if we run out of money, I don’t think anyone will help us.”
My nene finally stops. Maybe she forgot she was talking to me. Though sometimes I am the only person she has to talk to.
“I’m sorry,
shpirt
. What is the question again?”
“It’s okay, Nene. I have the answer.”
I write down: My mother likes that the government is better in America, and that she can make money here.
I am getting tired of writing, and I can see that my nene is getting a little sad, so I decide to ask just one more question. I can put something in the other spaces later, because I pretty much know the answers.
“Question seven: How is your origin country similar to the United States?”
“People in America always ask what religion I am. I don’t like to say Muslim, because Americans don’t like Muslims. But I don’t want to say I am not Muslim, because that is disrespectful to my baba. In America, people think that they are the only ones who have many religions together. But in Albania, half the people are Muslim and half the people are Christian. And nobody is worried about this. We don’t care if someone Christian marries someone Muslim. I think people in America worry about that more.”
I write down: Half the people in Albania are Christians. Albanians accept many religions, like Americans do.
Nene wants to read what I have written, but I tell her it is a surprise, and that Mrs. Monaghan is making a portfolio of our writing to give to our parents at the end of the year. That last part is sort of true, because the art teacher is making a portfolio of everything we are making in art, and some teachers do make portfolios of what their students write. In any case, Nene won’t understand that my answers are good for her.
EVER SINCE THE RPC THAT
wasn’t an RPC, I have been getting headaches at school. It isn’t that anything bad is happening. Mrs. Monaghan has been real nice, and the principal was nice too. She wanted me to come to her office, but instead of sending a note with another student, which would really have made me sick, she just mentioned that she wanted me to come with her one day when she was already visiting my class. We had most of our conversation just walking in the hallway, so by the time I got to her office, all she needed to do was give me some goldfish crackers (that’s what they give at my school, since we have a marine lab), and she also showed me that she has her own aquarium in her office. She said I could come by any day and feed the fish for her. Which I might do.
It’s not Mrs. Monaghan or the principal who are making me sick. It’s just that I don’t feel as comfortable anymore. Sometimes I think about what Specialist Luis Rodriguez-Reyes wrote to me—even though Mrs. Monaghan took the letter, and I never got to see it again—and it makes me feel like someone is going to hit me. Like I want to crawl under my desk table or put a sweater over my head or something. Mrs. Monaghan hasn’t said very much about our letter-writing project. Some of the kids ask her, because everybody was so excited about adopting a soldier, but I think maybe my letter messed that project up. Nobody knows it’s my fault, but they might be figuring it out, and that makes my stomach hurt too.
I think Specialist Luis Rodriguez-Reyes might be like my baba. Maybe he can’t forget anything, and killing that boy is always in his mind, like prison is in Baba’s mind. I feel sorry for the specialist and for Baba, and I feel sorry for the specialist’s wife too. It’s not very good when a man has a bad thing in his mind.
10
Luis
I SHOT ME.
I shot myself with a .22. A toy gun.
Didn’t achieve the mission. Not dead. Three years in hell, three years of killing people, but somehow, I shot myself in the head, and I am still going to walk out of this hospital some day. Walk out. That’s the goal.
I guess there was a lot of loose space in my head.
So now I’m here. Which isn’t Iraq. It’s DC. My
abuela
was always going to take a trip here.
I’ve messed myself up pretty good. My physical therapy goal is to walk five hundred feet unaided. My occupational therapy goal is to return to the military. That’s what I said I wanted. It’s not what I want. I don’t want anything. So I might as well tell them what they want to hear. Especially since I’m stuck in their hospital, and they’ve got all the cards.
I suppose Dr. Ghosh is for the mental part. Sam said the Army didn’t care a damn about us, but if you really fuck up and try to kill yourself, they care all over.
Must be in the paper.
So many of us grunts offing ourselves that they have to do something about it. It makes them look bad. How are they going to get more money for the war if their own soldiers are killing themselves?
That’s my theory. That would have been Sam’s theory. Maybe that’s why I hold it.
DR. GHOSH IS NOT SO
bad. He’s persistent, anyway. He comes every damn day. It’s not like I can do much about it. I can’t even get out of this bed. And I sure as hell can’t get agitated, because even though I didn’t do enough damage to lose whatever they mean by “executive function,” I did give myself a world-class headache. And it never goes away.
It’s okay. I don’t care if I have it forever. I don’t know how I’ll stand it, but it’s not like I’m looking forward to something else. It’s not like Sam wouldn’t trade this headache for what happened to him.
Sam.
Damn fucking war.
“LUIS. GOOD AFTERNOON. HOW ARE
you today?”
That’s how Dr. Ghosh greets me every day. He says I can call him Arjun, but I prefer Dr. Ghosh. I don’t care if he calls me Luis or not. I don’t care what anyone calls me.
“Luis, it says in this report that you were talking in your sleep again last night. Talking about the kid. Have you remembered anything?”
Have I remembered anything?
I remember everything. But I’m not telling Dr. Ghosh about it. I’ll take that day to my grave.
“No, Dr. Ghosh. I don’t know why I talk about a kid in my sleep. Maybe I’m saying something else, and the nurses just hear
kid
.”
“I don’t think so, Luis.”
“Well, maybe I’m thinking about someone back home. There’s a lot of kids in my family.”
This last isn’t exactly true. I just thought he might buy it since I’m Mexican-American, and everybody seems to think we have a lot of kids. I grew up an only child. My abuela raised me, and her children were all grown by then.
“Is that right, Luis? Do you want to tell me about your family?”
I like Dr. Ghosh. I like him because I like people who stick to things. That’s a big thing for me. Reliability. And one thing about Dr. Ghosh, I can count on him being here every day. But I hate these shrink-stink questions he asks.
“Sure, Dr. Ghosh. My dad was a guy named Marco Rodriguez. But he died before I was born. He was probably a gang member. Or he died in a gang fight, anyway. My mom was Maricela Reyes. Real beautiful. So I must look like my dad.”
“Are you close to your mom?”
“No. I am not close to her. And she’s not real beautiful anymore. She’s an addict. Has been for years. My grandma raised me. My mom left me at her house when I was a year old, and she didn’t come back. I mean she came back a few times, to get money, or sleep on the couch. One time she came back so messed up, she thought I was my dad. I was about eight years old, and she thought I was her twenty-year-old Latin lover.”
“Sounds tough.”
I smile then. Because sometimes Dr. Ghosh is just funny. People think they know everything about me when they hear my dad was a gang member and my mom was a drug addict, but they don’t. They don’t know anything. Because my abuela is a saint, and she loved me, and the real true story is that I am just like any other pampered kid. My abuela had a home, and a good job, and she fed me well, and read stories with me every night. Her family came to America four generations ago. So she’s American. She speaks Spanish, she likes Mexican food, but she’s American. And she raised me nice. She raised my uncles and my mom that way too. It’s just my mom got messed up real young. Probably because she was so beautiful. It’s not that great for a girl, at least not for a Mexican-American girl. You end up with some asshole gang member like my dad.
“Do you want to talk about your mother, Luis?”
“No, Dr. Ghosh. My head’s real bad. Could we just talk tomorrow?”
And I close my eyes. Because that’s another thing I like about Dr. Ghosh. He’s not too pushy.
THE NEXT DAY, I’M WAITING
for him. Because it occurred to me last night that while I do not care a damn what Dr. Ghosh thinks about my family, I don’t want some government report misrepresenting what my abuela did for me. What if I’m dead sometime, and this report that Dr. Ghosh is probably writing gets sent to her, and in it, she sees all this stuff about my mom and my dad and nothing about her. Imagining that makes me sick. I practically jumped out of my bed to tell the nurse to call Dr. Ghosh, but I knew they probably wouldn’t make the call, and he probably wouldn’t have appreciated it if they had.
“Good afternoon, Luis.”
“Dr. Ghosh. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have? Well, that’s good. That’s good news. What do you have to tell me?”
“It’s about my abuela. My grandmother.”
“Yes?”
“She raised me, you know. And she did a great job. Not that you can tell from seeing me here. I mean, what I did and all. But I had a really nice childhood. My mom was an addict, but she wasn’t even important. My abuela loved me so much. I was really like a prince.”
“What do you mean, ‘what you did and all’?”
“What?”
“You said that I might not know you had a really good childhood because of ‘what you did and all.’ What did you mean?”
“Dr. Ghosh. It’s not about what I did. I’m trying to tell you that my abuela gave me a very nice life. And I wasn’t some screwed-up Mexican kid who signed up for the Army to stay out of jail or something.”
I almost said, “to get his green card or something,” but that made me think of Sam, and I don’t want to talk about Sam either.
“Okay. Okay. How do you feel about being Mexican-American, Luis?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you mention it a lot. You mention your Mexican heritage a lot, but then you talk about Mexicans trying to stay out of jail or your father’s Mexican gang. I was just wondering how you feel about having Mexican heritage?”
Like I said, Dr. Ghosh has some really shrink-stink questions. I can’t think of a response to this, so I keep quiet. I look away too, so it won’t feel as uncomfortable. I really don’t have anything to say to Dr. Ghosh about this.
“All right, Luis. Will you tell me about your abuela? She must be very special to you.”
Dr. Ghosh has a slight Indian accent, and I’ve never heard anyone say
abuela
quite like he does. I want his report to say something good about her, so even though I am kind of irritated at Dr. Ghosh, I answer.
“She’s a great lady, my abuela. She’s got a good job. She went to college when I was a kid. Her husband, my abuelo, died in a car accident when my mom was about fourteen, which was really hard on the family. But he had insurance, so they were okay that way. My abuela had worked in his office part time, but then she went to work in the executive office of the Boyd Group, and now she has a job at the Mirage.
“I grew up in the house she bought after my mom and my uncles left. It’s real nice. We have a pool. She sent me to Catholic school, but I didn’t want to go after eighth grade. I had friends on my block and they were going to Valley, the public high school, and I wanted to go with them. So, you know, it’s not like my childhood was really about who my mom was or my dad. I’m middle class. If my abuela hadn’t taken me in, I would have been in trouble. But she did. She took me in. She did everything for me. She raised a whole second family. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Thank you, Luis. Your abuela sounds like someone I would like to know. I’m glad you had her.”
“Yeah, well, I just don’t want some report about me mixing up my story. Making her out to be someone she’s not.”
“Yes. My report. Luis, I have to leave now. I have somewhere else to be. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Sure. Thanks, Dr. Ghosh.”
That’s the first time I’ve used up all the time he had. Usually I quit talking, and he decides to go.
DR. GHOSH IS LATE THE
next day, and for an hour or so, I am pretty pissed off. It would be just like the Army to stop paying for a shrink because I finally told him something. “Hey, we got you to talk. Not as tough as you think you are, are you? Yeah, we got you to talk. Now, suck it up and figure it out on your own.”
I’ve built up a pretty good head of steam by the time Dr. Ghosh walks in. And even though he hasn’t done anything, and apparently the Army hasn’t either, I’m still mad.
“Good afternoon, Luis. How are you feeling today?”
I don’t answer. I can’t believe how angry I am. If my head wasn’t busting open like it is, I’d knock Ghosh to the floor. Dr. Ghosh. What the hell sort of name is that? What are Indians anyway? Buddhist? Muslim? Something else. Dammit. Well, who the hell does Dr. I’m-so-important Ghosh think he is?
“Luis, you seem a little upset. Do you want to talk about it?”
Man, I hate those shrink-stink questions. I roll over, and then maybe I doze off, because the next thing I know, there’s a nurse in the room, and no Dr. Ghosh, and she wants me to get to the chair so she can change my bedsheets. Change the sheets. Boy, I really did a number on myself this time.
THE NEXT WEEK, I START
to let myself think of Sam a little. I want to remember that day, that mission. What happened just before. Why was Sam on the left? What was he doing?
I’ve thought about this day a lot, right after Sam got hit, just before I was hurt. And there’s a blank there. Even though I didn’t get a scratch, I can’t remember that day clearly. Sergeant Reidy asked me to write it down. The Army always wants a detailed report when something like that happens, but I kept coming up blank. We were on the road, we were making our usual pass, and then there was the explosion. But why had we stopped the Humvee? Why had we gotten out? Why was I so far away from Sam?
I can’t remember.
You don’t survive ninety-one IEDs taking a random stroll. Sam and I never did anything randomly. We were lucky, sure, but we were smart too. And we never did something without thinking it out first. Not if we had the time to think.
And then I think about that other day.
The day I will never tell Dr. Ghosh about.
Or anyone else.
I am the only person still alive to remember that day, and I guess I tried to get rid of that evidence too.
We weren’t on a run.
We were on a leave.
Off the base.
Sam wanted to get out. Have a conversation with someone not in Kalsu. Maybe a meal. But we were strung out. Three guys killed that week. Doing what we did. Could have been us. We pretended like it couldn’t have been, like we would have seen something, sensed it, but when you’ve fucked with ninety-one IEDs, you value two things: care and luck.
Yeah, we were careful. Nobody was more careful than Sam and me.
But we were lucky too. And that’s what we didn’t talk about. Couldn’t talk about. Because after ninety-one live ones, after enough guys die around you, you know that you don’t own luck. You know that luck runs out.
So there we were. In this dust-bit dirty market that served as the center of the village. We were paying attention, of course. We knew they hated us. Roles reversed, we would have hated them.
But even though they hated us, they loved us too. Especially their kids. We had candy in our pockets, and Sam had this damn yo-yo. He was some kind of yo-yo champion back home. Ever heard of that? A yo-yo champion? Well, if you’re from Wisconsin, it’s possible. So he’d get this beat-up wooden Duncan going—really fast—and as soon as he knew he had some kids hooked, staring at him from doorways and tent flaps and things, he’d start doing tricks. Obvious stuff—around the arm, under the leg—and then stuff you’ve never seen a yo-yo do. Faster and faster—he had this extralong string—and all the time with this goofy spaced-out look on his face. Like he was in some other world. Like when he had that yo-yo going, he might have been in Wisconsin, or Nirvana, or God knows where. Sam usually looked stern, but when he messed around with a yo-yo, in the market, knowing the kids would be watching—hell, not just the kids, everyone—he blissed out.
I liked watching him too. But I hated that blissed-out stare. It didn’t fit with the Sam I knew, the one I trusted. I was always on double alert when Sam was like that, because he didn’t seem to be on alert at all, and I needed to keep it together for both of us.
So maybe it makes sense what happened.
A bad week. Me on double alert. In the market. None of our guys around.
There was a shout. Someone yelled something—I thought he said Allah, which scared the hell out of me—and then he came tearing at us, at everybody watching Sam. And something was on fire. He had a torch, or his shirt was on fire, I still don’t know which. I don’t know if he was attacking us or just trying to get some help because he somehow caught fire. People screamed, everyone was moving. I had my gun out, I was trying to see the man, trying to see what he was doing—fast, you got to think fast. And then I saw him.
The kid.
Ten, maybe eleven.
Looked like all the rest of them. Huge eyes. Thin.
And he was carrying something. A bag. Very gingerly. And I saw him look at the man, I saw that he knew him; he was so calm, he knew why the man was running. The kid had this bag, and he was headed straight for Sam. And I saw it. Everything had slowed down. My mind was crystal clear. I could see it all so perfectly.