NYU Black Renaissance Noire Volume 18 Issue 3 - Fall 2018 | Page 10

***** Glaring at Laurie, Nancy added, “You
guys better hurry up and eat or we’ll be
late again. Breakfast time is over.”
The dining room was half empty.
The buffet, holding steaming trays of
food, was on one side of the spacious
room, and tall French windows, opening
onto the garden, were on the other side.
In between were several round tables
where a few women were finishing their
breakfast. Anne, also late, was at the
buffet counter. Her hair, pulled back
in a single ponytail, left her pretty face
exposed, shadows hiding under her
high cheekbones. She had half a bagel
and a cup of coffee on her tray.
“That’s all you’re gonna eat?” Laurie
inquired.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You never are. I’m starving.”
Laurie loaded her plate with bacon and
eggs, home fries, and two buttermilk
biscuits. She followed Anne to the
table where Rosie was seated with
Nancy, Abigail, and Fat Agatha.
“Good morning everybody,” Laurie said.
“Is this Tuesday or Wednesday?”
“It’s Tuesday,” Nancy replied in her
Southern drawl, “as everyone knows
except the retarded.”
“Thanks, mate,” Laurie said, “it takes
one to know one.”
Agatha, plump and rosy-cheeked,
jumped to her feet. “Breakfast isn’t over,”
she said, “until this fat lady pees.”
They all laughed with her as she
scooted away from the table, squeezing
her knees together. Agatha’s big belly
poked out while her butt was as flat as
a board. It seemed as though she
should be twisted around at the waist.
When not depressed and moody, she
was quite a comic, poking genial fun at
herself and others.
Anne yawned. “I’m still sleepy.”
Rosie, a petite Puerto Rican, said, “So
drink your coffee, girlfriend. It will put
some zip in your zap.”
Laurie asked, “So what the hell is a zap?
“Who the hell knows,” Rosie replied,
as sunny as ever. She had grown up in
the East Harlem barrios, and although
she and Laurie had not known each
other in Harlem, they were simpatico,
lone migrants among these white folks.
By the time Laurie finished her
breakfast everyone had left for Group
Therapy except Anne, who was toying
with her bagel.
“I’m going to town later in the van to
do some shopping,” she announced.
“What should I bring you back? Crack
cocaine or powder?”
Laurie frowned. “Neither. This is no
longer a joke.”
“I know, but I’m fucking desperate.
Come with me.”
“I’ll see you, when you get back. Okay?”
Anne shrugged and stood up without
answering.
She’s angry with me, Laurie thought,
but I’m not going with her.
*****
They arrived at group therapy, as
Mrs. Broady, the house manager, was
finishing her opening remarks. Plump
and freckled face, she had arms long
enough to box with God to protect her
wounded veterans. Her voice though
was gentle and persuasive.
“Please understand that you’re not
alone,” she said, repeating her mantra.
“We are all in this together.”
The latecomers joined the other women
seated on folding chairs forming a
semi-circle. The room was small; the
twenty residents huddled together, as
though the walls had ears.
“Now that we are all here,” Mrs. Broady
continued, “do we have a volunteer?”
After a few moments of nervous silence,
to Laurie’s surprise, Abigail stood up.
“My name is Abigail Adams,” she said,
speaking clearly instead of with her
usual whimper. “I can’t believe I allowed
myself to be broken down in basic
training like…like I didn’t have a will
of my own.”
Still surprised, Laurie nodded. That
had been the beginning of hell for her
also. In basic training. In the Army
boot camp where the National Guard
had sent her. “Shape the fuck up,”
the drill sergeant had yelled at her and
the other female recruits, “or your
sorry asses will be kicked out of here.”
He was a burly bastard, Laurie had
decided, an opinion that did not change
during her weeks there.
“Kill, kill, kill,” she yelled, as he
commanded, while thrusting her
bayonet into a huge stuffed bag
representing the enemy, the stinking
hajjis, the godless scumbags. On their
long marches she was packed down
with forty pounds of equipment and
ammo, her rifle slung over her shoulder
and a helmet on her head. Informed
that they had to be as tough soldiers
as the men, the women marched four
abreast singing in cadence:
Gun down all the Iraqi bastards
Bomb the men while they are
praying
Kill the children while they are
playing
In the village and wherever found
Shoot all the motherfuckers down.
How the hell can I sing that? Laurie
had wondered outraged. But day after
day, complying so as not to fail, she
chanted it with less concern and more
bravura, reasoning that it was only
words, and the song also had a nice
rhythm for marching. “Bomb the
men while they are praying. Kill the
children while they are playing. Kill.
Kill. Kill.”
Abigail’s voice, rising in anger, pulled
Laurie back to the meeting.
“The chaplain told me to pray. I was the
sinner, not the soldiers who had gang
raped me.” Abruptly, Abigail sat down,
her face flushed and angry.
“Thank you for sharing,” Mrs. Broady
said. “Rape has always been one of
the spoils of war, but when it’s done
by your own brother-in-arms, that
makes it all the more heartbreaking.
We understand, Abigail, and share your
pain. What we are attempting to do
here is to own these incidents, which
are so crippling. Then we are in control,
rather than letting them control us.”
After group therapy, as they were
walking down the hall together, Anne
again asked Laurie to accompany her
to town later.
“Not if you intend to buy some coke,
Anne.”
“That is my intention.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.
Come with me.”
Anne’s smile was winning, but Laurie
refused to be intimidated. “I’ll see you,
when you come back.”
“Why are you so chicken, Laurie?”
“Why are you so fucking bold?”
Anne shrugged and turned away.
Laurie watched her walk down the
hall her ponytail bouncing, until she
disappeared, descending the stairs.
*****
Anne had not been raped. She told
Laurie, at one of their midnight pot
sessions, that at fourteen she used to
hang glide with a bunch of daredevil
friends, soaring over the hills of
Pasadena like a graceful bird and loving
every second of it. Her doting parents
were alarmed, and as an alternative to
jumping off a cliff harnessed to
aluminum wings, they allowed Anne to
attend a high school flight academy.
By the time the Iraq war started, she had
been a flight instructor, a commercial
airline pilot, and had the qualifications
necessary to enlist in the Army Air
Corps, which had always been her goal.
“I hate to admit it,” she confessed to
Laurie one night, but it was exciting
bombing Baghdad. Such an adrenalin
rush. Precision bombs, we called
them. Smart fucking bombs. Our crew
would laugh and congratulate each
other when we hit the target. Can you
believe that?”
Laurie nodded. “In the Army we
do conform.”
“I can deal with killing soldiers who were
trying to kill me,” Anne continued,
“bomb them back to the Stone Age, as
our president suggested. But we were
the invaders. Once, I hit an open-air
market, blew it sky high along with the
women and children shopping there.
Later I saw a photo of the market, a
woman cradling a baby in her arms,
half of its head blown off.”
The memory was in Anne’s eyes.
She blinked, but it was a camera she
could not shut off. “I bombed hospitals
and schools and mosques. Caved
concrete buildings into rubble. I killed
school kids and invalids. And men
praying on their knees. Their bones
scattered among the rubble were
deemed as worthless as the rubble itself.”
She suspected that Nancy was a closet
alcoholic, her bleary eyes this morning
matching her frizzy red hair. She hailed
from Atlanta, had been a Sergeant
First Class in the Army, and still had
a tendency to lord it over others,
particularly Abigail, a sallow speck of
a woman who was her silent shadow.
They had served together in Afghanistan.
Laurie could barely tolerate Nancy, and
the feeling was mutual.
She walked down the hall past the
other residential rooms and the
telephone booth at the end of the aisle.
A few of the women had cell phones;
others barely owned the clothes on
their backs and were homeless, as
Laurie had almost been. She took the
stairs slowly in no apparent rush, her
depression easing with each step, her
sense of humor at this shitty situation
gradually being restored.