Page 14 - WTPVolI Vol.#4

If you’re a woman and you want to join the U.S. Army, “I thought you wanted to join the Army?” he says.
the first thing the recruiter at the Army Recruiting Office in Dallas will tell you is to drive across the city to talk with the Air Force guys. The Army won’t turn you down, he says, but the Air Force is better for women.
“I changed my mind,” you say, shrugging.
He might be joking, but if you’re eighteen and nervous, you smile shyly and, after lingering near a brochure rack, unfolding and refolding one without reading
it, you return to the parking lot. You climb back into your father’s truck which he lent you for the afternoon and find directions to the Air Force Recruiting Office on your phone. What sounded reasonable when you stood in front of the recruiter suddenly seems incred- ulous as you drive across the city. At every stoplight, you consider making a U-turn regardless of what he said. You’ve wanted to join the Army since you were thirteen and your father taught you how to shoot a .22 long rifle at the indoor shooting range down the street from your apartment.
He looks at you curiously, like he’s about to ask why, but doesn’t. Instead, he sinks back into his worn lazy boy, the gray light from the muted TV flickering on his face. Your father is tired from a long day at the plant where he works twelve-hour shifts as a ma- chine operator making polyethylene products. When he comes home to the apartment, he smells like iron and gasoline.
Instead, you continue driving and when you reach the Air Force office, which is wedged along a strip mall be- tween a donut shop and a laundromat, you’re relieved that the small, fit woman who greets you at the door smiles kindly. Why join a branch that doesn’t want you? The Air Force recruiter offers you stale black coffee in a Styrofoam cup and leads you into a musty room with hard plastic chairs to watch a ten-minute promotional video where pilots in fighter jets scream over the Pacific Ocean and smiling intelligence officers in sharp, pressed uniforms stroll through the white halls of the Pentagon.
That’s all you say to each other. You hardly ever say more than ten words to your father each day. He eats his microwaved dinners in the lazy boy in front of the TV, watching Fox News and reruns of sitcoms. You order greasy Chinese takeout and eat the noodles straight from the cardboard container on your narrow twin bed.
Afterwards, you fill out the yellow entrance application on a clipboard while sitting beneath a metal air condi- tioner that clicks. Every so often, the recruiter looks up from the papers on her desk and smiles. When you’re finished, she shakes your hand.
the numbers and symbols on the page. You’re tired but can’t fall asleep, and you wake too early the next morning from the dread flaring in your chest. You worry you’ll fall asleep during the test and chastise yourself in your head. The Air Force is still the mili- tary, and there’s nothing you can do about it now.
“The aptitude test is June 3,” she says. “After that, we’ll schedule your physical.”
Basic military training is hard, but it isn’t the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Harder was watching your mother die of breast cancer when you were eight years old.
The recruiter’s hand is soft and warm, though her grip
You don’t have many happy memories of your mother. Before she knew she had breast cancer, she was angry and sad. You remember the day she got so angry at your father she swept an entire stack of dishes off the kitchen counter. A knife landed deep in the back cush- ion of your father’s chair. A fork thwacked into the dry wall beside your bedroom door.
is strong.
You climb back into your father’s truck, the dreary spring sky dribbling a fine mist that chills.
~
7
Three weeks later, when you show your father the contract with your signature beneath the Air Force insignia, he looks confused.
After the diagnosis, you remember your mother sleeping on the couch, a pink bandana tied snug
Go Boom
“I’m proud of you,” he says, patting you on the arm. “You’re a good kid.”
That evening, you study for a calculus test you have at the community college in the morning, the used text- book fanned open on top of your pink bedspread. You don’t look at the Go Army poster taped to the opposite wall, but every few minutes, fear about your future fires up in you so bright you can’t see through it to
~
elizabeth hamilton