“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.”
— Isaiah 43:2
Pax, East
Boston, 2008. After Kandahar.
She wasn’t having good days. In fact, they were getting worse. She was starting to see and hear things in the corners of her perception, and this nervous confession to a friend had been what sparked the outing she was on. They were trying to set things right, but in her secret confessional moments she wondered if it was worth trying. Socializing was harder for her than it was supposed to be.
She didn’t like anime. Another reason she didn’t want to be there. She felt she was too old for it at 24. Some of those twenty-four had been overseas, so maybe it was a new cultural thing she was struggling to adjust to. The idea spooked her. That things could change so much and just leave her behind.
Anime was a weird thing. Drawings of little girls being cute. Whatever happened to Batman? She liked him growing up. Batman was a cartoon hero you could believe in. She digressed, and her head turned in surprise as some young woman in a neon green costume walked by with most of her ass exposed and the rest covered by a swaying little strip of fabric. It was jarring.
“She’s from Dungeon Crawler.” A friend said, noticing and misinterpreting Desdemona’s gaze.
“Is that the one weirdos watch?” Desdemona asked, scanning the crowds of nerds out of habit, her fingers forming shapes as if she was gripping something in her arms. He laughed nervously at the statement. It wasn’t a joke. Desdemona was serious.
“Look, it’s a convention right? Try to have fun, that’s why we’re all here.” The friend said exasperatedly. It was also accusatory. As if Desdemona was incapable of fun. She could have fun, too. She watched him dispassionately for a moment. She never liked him, she didn’t like most people anymore because they did things like this, they accused her of everything.
They’d gone to high school together, a lifetime ago. The whole group of them. Maybe the one she was standing with outside the men’s room wanted something from her. People usually wanted something, but in Afghanistan though? Her boys there were good. Like Jimmy Wilhelm, that one wanted to be a chef and said it was because he was a fat kid growing up. Jimmy Wilhelm could do magic on a MRE. It was the spices, mostly. He did wondrous things with cilantro. Now that she was stateside she put it in everything, a comfort food. The people she’d gone to high school with could never.
This wasn’t the friend she was here for, and she certainly wasn’t here for the accusations. She was there for Matthew Anderson, who had gotten her the ticket from the scalper outside, he was in the bathroom. Desdemona was in that Godforsaken pit of cartoons and odor for him. Godforsaken, because God was in Afghanistan. God was in every graveyard. She shook her head slightly, getting the morbid thought out while she still could.
She needed to make peace with some primal anxiety that this kind of thought pattern was recurring and worsening, and every day she grappled with it like she was about to pull down Samson’s pillars. She wouldn’t go to a shrink and her Dad was supportive but keeping her at an arms length, like she was a venomous snake he didn’t want to kill out of Christian charity but didn’t know how to remove.
Everyone was always so afraid here. Not in a kill or be killed way, but in an anticipatory way. Fear was everything and everywhere below the surface, like all the world was unmoored and so it spent its money on shit like this convention.
It was not an enviable way to live. Like a rock and a hard place. Afghanistan was full of things like that, little valleys that funnel you into traps that you work to escape. Like an escape room. Afghanistan operated on similar principles as an escape room.
Imagine the employee of the escape room has his AK that had been used on Russians in the ‘80s, old and decrepit compared to what you had. Now take the image of that unshaven man. He knows where you live. He could follow you home if he wanted. How do you escape from that? It’d be a fully immersive experience.
She’d moved twice since getting stateside. At first she lived alone but that didn’t go well. She was living at home with dad now. Dad pretended not to notice the little…quirks and eccentricities she had brought home with her. Like putting cilantro on everything.
Desdemona smirked at the idea of opening an escape room, circling back to it like ants trapped in a circle by their own pheromones. They’d spiral until they died. She could hire her old Drill Sergeant to be the face, the guy working the floor. She sometimes missed him in a complicated way when she had been sent to Afghanistan and out from under his protective abuse. It was a different military when she was in boot camp. Or so she had gathered from the ones who came to Afghanistan after her as replacements for kids like Jimmy. Sometimes they, too, felt weirdly wrong to her. Like they were missing something she had, some vital experience that differentiated them. Did her superiors feel the same about her? Their Gulf War perceptions refusing to map onto some little but lanky White girl from the east coast? Now there was a scary thought.
This is what she imagined the Drill Sergeant would sound like if she hired him: The key is in the book on the shelf! Are you crying, are you having a bad day? Is that what you are going to tell the bad guy when he is stabbing you? That it’s a bad day?!
She would make a million dollars in the first month, easy. It’s because people today yearned for authenticity, they needed to believe even if it was scary. Like her old Drill Sergeant, he believed in Desdemona and the awards she had. Heavier than the plastic one the video game characters around her had. She felt angry for one moment and didn’t understand why these happy people in their cheap store bought plastic imitations made her feel that way. She shifted her thoughts.
She’d never once seen someone stabbed. The..locals, they just left the bombs on the road for people like Jimmy Wilhelm. He’d gotten too close to one. In the sand on the side of the road, it required constant vigilance to really see and Desdemona had become really good at it until she wasn’t that one time she didn’t ever, ever talk about.
Sometimes they were in backpacks, and that was obvious. Amateur hour that her and the boys could laugh about once they were safe and off the roads. You just had to laugh a little or else you’d go crazy. Find joy on bad days. One time, one time though it was in a brown lunch bag out there. It just blended into everything. This was right before she came home. After the brown paper bag went off so fast if you blinked you’d miss it. There was no time to process anything but the noise that just engulfed you. Like being swallowed by a whale. Suddenly, darkness and the sound of heartbeating.
They ended up having to carry Jimmy out in a trashbag, that’s all that was left of him. And still, they did it because we don’t abandon our own like that. There were rules to follow. Not like here, the convention was a bucket of crabs with everyone running around taking pictures of everything and buying things. Even the bad things had a clear logic to them that made sense for Desdemona. What was she supposed to do with Dungeon Crawler girl? Desdemona began to pick at her own skin. She thought about poor Jimmy.
It must really have messed them up, putting Jimmy in that bag in bits and pieces. She wasn’t there. People didn’t ask her questions like that, but sometimes she felt the need to clarify, very firmly, that they were wrong.
“Alright, are we ready to move on?”
She turned and smiled. Matthew Anderson stood there dressed like Frodo Baggins from Lord of The Rings. Matthew had something in his hand. He was too tall to be a good Frodo Baggins.
“Had to smuggle this in, no outside food.” He said.
“Trash bag?” Desdemona said with a nervous sincerity.
“Yeah, it’s for the character. Remember when they pick the mushrooms? I couldn’t find a cloth bag, so I grabbed this stuff.” He said, bringing out some packaged store bought mushrooms. Desdemona didn’t move. Someone was laughing in the background and dancing around. Matthew continued on speaking in this oblivious way, like the world was not compressing into them.
“When’s the last time you saw the Lord of The Rings?”
She stood there blinking something away. A voice was speaking.
“I didn’t see it. I wasn’t there.”
The convention ended shortly after that for her. Concerned and bewildered looks were exchanged. Maybe even eyerolls. Desdemona went out and into the crisp cool American air with purposeful and light steps. Past the lines, and to her car. It was a gift, a beat up shitbox gold Hyundai. She drove it a long time, until the skyscrapers got smaller and smaller and turned into houses that turned into trees.
XXX
Concord(?) 2008. After Pax East.
It was cold and windy. She was ignoring the phone calls from the former friends at the convention. Matthew had tried, and failed, and she was tired of trying and failing over and over and over again. The sun was going down. It smelled like trees. Desdemona was lost, again. She had pulled over beside a bridge. She was standing on the ledge of the bridge, looking down into the water she could see from the high beams of her car. It made her guilty, and she had been standing there for what felt like a long time. No other cars had come by. There was time, for something or anything, though. She did not know how tall the bridge was. Maybe it wasn’t tall enough.
She had come all this way to these waters below her, and it maybe wasn’t enough for what she wanted. Frustration bubbled up before disappointingly melting away. What else was there left to be disappointed in now? There was no more language to describe it.
She had left the phone in the car. Her father had tried to get her a new one, but she had insisted pointblank on keeping the BlackBerry. It was like a brick, she could throw it or drop it or ignore it and nothing bad could happen to it. She loved it in a strangely protective way. Like a child with their pacifier. She felt numb because she had been standing there too long, switching between logistical clarity and total downward spiraling. It forced a heavy dissociation just to stay in the moment.
To see the world as if she was standing outside of her own body was the best she could come up with in the moment and she was clawing at her own back trying to grab hold of herself. It must have been a pathetic sort of show for whatever God or Devil was watching her. Waiting to see which way the coin could land.
She swayed and tightened her grip on the side of the bridge, almost knocking the fishing rod down. This almost excited her. So much of her life since coming back had been performed with company. Tonight felt like it was her choice to do whatever.
Headlights in the distance. She hopped down and busied herself with the fishing pole as they slowed for a moment before passing. When she was alone again she put it down and hopped back up onto the ledge. Feline, slinking around.
It was important she be seen holding the fishing pole. She was always holding something. The phone, a fishing pole, a lie. She’d learned little tricks like that in Afghanistan. It was called misdirection, and it worked very well on most people.
Her eyes strained in the twilight. New England at night was weird. Birds she used to recognize, and that weird tensing and relaxing she underwent when she heard voices in languages she did not speak.
It’s why she didn’t want to leave the hotel once she got here. Hotels don’t ask questions, and everything was harshly sanitized. She felt safer there than outside.
She leaned forward, looking to see if she could find the water under the bridge. To find that point in the current that might pick her up, and pin her in place under those fallen trees in the distance. She couldn’t. She hopped back down and looked around, exhausted. Her car was still on. She didn’t know how much gas was in it, and had a choice to make.
She could either do…something, or go home to her father. She sure as shit wasn’t going to be the one calling him for a ride. Hi Daddy, my car ran out of gas by a bridge. Can you pick me up? She had worked so hard to get driving privileges back after the last incident that she wasn’t willing to halfass it either way. She’d almost crashed the car, and lied about it. Had to swerve around into someone’s yard. The truth she didn’t tell was that she just wasn’t paying attention anymore, and just kind of swerved around whenever she felt bored. It killed that dog that jumped out at her, and when the owners started crying and screaming she just stood there thinking about how she’d seen worse, once. Innocence didn’t mean anything anymore. Not to Desdemona.
Everyone acted like she was a psychopath because she processed grief differently now, and it scared her then to realize this.
She licked her lips, cracked her back, and picked up the fishing pole. She screamed, and threw it into the river below her in one fluid movement. Her voice echoed in the air and she walked away from it quickly. It frightened her a little, the sudden noise that warbled out and became something unrecognizable. Who knows who could have heard? But at the same time she did feel better, like something had been exorcized.
And then after that, she got in the car and pulled out the map she’d use to get home. Pencil lines were all over it, routes she’d mapped out to and from Boston and her fathers house and across state lines and other major cities with gas stations and banks marked along the way. Some of the lines didn’t lead anywhere but to random stars in red, just in case someone who wasn’t supposed to see it saw it.
Her maps had to be in precise chaos. Her dad didn’t like it. He didn’t understand why she just refused to feel safe. She kept it hidden in her backpack and had a little padlock on the zippers so it could only be opened by her.
“Oh, force of habit Daddy. You know how the Army is. No privacy.” She’d said with a smile. She knew he didn’t know how the army was. Sometimes it felt like the deception was a close-run thing. This, too, made her feel guilty and unclean.
She pulled away from the bridge quickly, accelerating faster than the narrow roads allowed, and sped off, hitting a pothole and whooping with joy at the sensation. With one hand she held the steering wheel, and with the other hand checked the phone. Her father had called and texted twice.
I’m proud of you for going to hang out with your friends.
Another, hours and hours later.
Call me when you’re almost home. Got pizza on the way, and mozzarella sticks! Your favorite. 🙂
She almost swore, and felt something in her throat as she swerved around a corner needlessly. She dropped the phone and it landed somewhere on the floor under the passenger side seat. She rolled down all the windows, and leaned onto the gas pedal with a sigh. The engine and the wind roared around her, and drowned out all the other thoughts. Maybe she’d crash into a tree around one of these almost 80 degree turns, maybe she wouldn’t. The simplicity of the choice was delightful.
She was going home, down the line on the map traced out in yellow highlighter. She didn’t need to look at the map to know how to get there, not more than once.
XXX
Home. 2008. After The Bridge.
There was no pizza. Her wrath was booming and heaving and scared. An ambush like what they did to Jimmy Wilhelm. Like what they fucking did and all her tears didn’t change anything.
She was very tired, and hungry, and wanted something fatty and greasy and crispy and warm to eat and to keep eating until she could not move. At once she was worried about the stockpile of cilantro she had.
Like it could run out. Water in the desert. She needed it. She needed it. And she did not know if he had touched it. She just knew he had been rooting around in the spaces she kept her things, by the look on his face. Caught doing something naughty. Like contractors looting from the locals in Kandahar.
It had been a display of careful hedging and diplomacy on her part to keep it there instead of her room or her cargo pants pockets, and her father was fucking around with it. Maybe. She was pacing around the living room, tracing the outline of the rug with her feet. One foot in front of the other. Left, left, left right left.
“No, Daddy, we wouldn’t have to have a talk if there was pizza we could be eating instead!” She shouted. He was standing there with his hands up. She noted how tired he looked. She did not know what time it was, and the revelation was stressing her out. She was breathing sharply now and she fought like a cornered street dog to get a grip. Dad was on the far side of the room from her, outside of striking distance. The revelation made her stop and look at the coffee table.
He was afraid of her.
“Did you touch the cilantro.” She asked, as calm as her shaking and raw voice would allow.
“No, I did not.” He said, putting down the phone on the table by the doorway.
“Okay. That’s good. I needed to hear that. Thanks.”
He was nodding.
“Do you want to talk now?” He asked.
“Can you order a Hawaiian pizza from Fat ‘Tony’s place?”
“If you can do it, I’ll go back to the kitchen and get my wallet.” He said.
She called and ordered. They waited in silence. Then the pizza sat uneaten on the living room table. He looked like he was waiting until she ate, probably so she wouldn’t yell at him again. So she reached for a slice and began to chew. Then, like she predicted, he began to speak.
“I’m so worried about you, Desdemona.” She made a sound into the pizza.
“Can I get some cilantro? Please.”
“Sure, kiddo. As much as you need.” He said. So she stood up mechanically and marched into the kitchen. She came back and began to dump it out onto the slice she had taken, careful not to spill any onto the others in case he wanted one, the consideration betraying the tenderness and love with which she handled the jar. Like it was a pyx. Her hands shook as she held it.
“That’s a lot.”
“It makes it taste good.” She said, taking another bite. She felt calmer than she’d felt in months.
Her father looked at her from behind tired eyes.
“I don’t want to see you keep punishing yourself. You’re a good person, Desdemona. I love you.”
She crumpled in, and almost dropped what was left of the pizza she had been wolfing down.
She wiped her eyes, her face, pulled at her shoulders and the shirt she wore and back up to her face and then wiped them again because of the orange grease on her fingers. She started breathing funny. And then crying. And then the crying became ugly heaves.
“I tried my best, I tried.” she said. Her father shook his head sadly and she didn’t know why but the act set her off further.
“I’m tired and I wake up tired and I need you to know it’s the best I can do. Help me, Daddy, I don’t know what to do anymore. This is the best I can do. Do you believe me?” No one looked at anyone. She let it out freely, aware of how embarrassing this was to watch when her own father had put her medals in the living room right where they could watch her.
“Jesus, Desdemona. Jesus Christ.” Her own father said to her.
Eventually she finished. She was silent for a long time after, exhausted and staring at the ground without expression. He brought her water and held it for her gingerly. She drank it greedily, spilling it all down her face.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“I know. We’re going to get you help.”
“No, I don’t need a doctor. This is who I am now.” She said, and the truth embarrassed her.
“Desdemona. We’re going to get you help. Come on, let’s get ready for bed.”
“I just need some rest.” She agreed. Her father led her to the upstairs bedroom that used to be hers. He laid his hands on her and she almost buckled under the slight weight. He didn’t know about the bridge, and for a moment she grappled with whether she should ruin the moment by saying it out loud.
“I don’t need a doctor. This is just who I am now.” She said again at the threshold.
“What do you want?” He asked. She looked into his eyes, and remembered they had the same eyes.
“I want to go. Can we get a hotel somewhere?” She said softly.
“We can take a drive to your aunt’s house? I can call tomorrow.”
“Okay, yeah. Let’s do that.”
“She’d be thrilled to have us, you know how she likes making you do yard work. Then we can go to a doctor.”
For the third time, Desdemona denied this, but it was getting softer. Yard work didn’t seem so bad. Not anymore. She looked into her room. It was dark, the light was off.
“We’re going to be okay?” He said. She nodded, and from the look on his face she could tell he believed it. And because he believed it, she could too. She stepped over the threshold. Tomorrow it would be Thursday. And it would be a new day, and when the sun came up. Like the words had renewed some promise that she was not alone, and never had been.
For a moment there, it almost seemed like everything was burning down. Maybe it still was. But as she laid down in her bed under the covers, she realized everything was going to be okay. That Thursday was a new day. She’d escaped, at least for now. It was enough.
Thursday she’d pass back through the river, and it would be smaller than the one before. She would take longer strides, and it would not come up so high. And even if she felt alone, it would be manageable. She closed her eyes, and waited.