insurgents found me, they would assume another faction was responsible. If I was found alive by any insurgent, I would be raped some more and condemned to die for the sins of being female and American.
The men who had raped me first, who had killed the girl that loved summer, were Americans too. Hating women crosses all borders and faiths. Something all the boys could agree on. They thought they were careful, but I knew who they were. I had seen their hands.
Another gust rippled over the wall, dumping a handful of grave dirt over me.
It took a while, but I finally rolled completely over and rose to my hands and knees. Every part of me was shaking with the effort. My head throbbed a golden flash of spinning pain and then I vomited.
Concussion .
The word was part of the catalogue I began writing in my mind. An inventory was needed to assess chances and options. Concussion. Hole in my back. My rib might be broken.
When my gut seemed ready, I opened my eyes again. The puddle of puke under my face had lost its color to the Iraqi dust, making a mottled mud. Careful not to put my hands in the mess, I backed away. That was when I felt the cuts in my backside. I remembered the captain slapping and cutting my ass with the knife as he sodomized me. When he bucked up against me, moaning with his release, he had stabbed, thrusting the blade deep into my right buttock.
The effort of turning my head back to look only made the world spin again. I let my head sag so I could look down the length of my body. More blood and more cuts. Both of my breasts were tracked with bruises, black finger marks on pale skin. The right one, though, had a long gash starting high on my chest and running under the soft flesh, causing it to hang lower and at an impossible angle. On my left, the nipple was sliced and twisted.
Scars. So many scars .
The freckles that had been a part of my identity since I knew to think of myself as separate from my mother were faded out.
Iâm becoming the color of bone.
There was another laceration in the pubic hair, a violent, jagged gash, and a bare strip where the darker red curls had been stripped away.
The lieutenantâs souvenir.
Blood was flowing, a fresh rush over the sticky, semidry coating between my legs. The fresh fluid cut a new path that trickled right down dead-white thighs with dark galaxies of bruising. Most of the blood seemed to be coming from my vagina. I recalled the lieutenant punching between my legs several times before he shoved his fist inside. That ring raking me. Afterward, he said he wanted a lock of hair, like a lover might. He used the Ka-Bar to cut away the strip. With one hand he pulled the hairs tight. With the other, the one with the ring, he cut.
Both of the men had rings. Different years and different designs, but the rings came from the same school. They had the good sense not to wear them during patrols, but around base the rings were always on display. Everyone knew those rings.
Everything hurts.
I cried. For a short time or a long one, I wasnât sure. Maybe it was a short time that only seemed equal to all the time I had lived so far. I stayed there on my hands and knees because it hurt too much to move, and I cried. It poured from my frothy lungs, a quiet, keening wail that sounded almost like a meadowlark, but there was no answering call.
They were supposed to be on my side. My people. Iâll never know how anyone can survive feeling as alone as I did then. When the tears and the pitiful wailing dried up, I was left with just the silence. Eventually even the silence was too great a weight to bear. I started gathering clothes and doing what I could to cover myself. The only thing worse than being raped and left naked behind some mud wall and shack in Iraq, was being found naked in any condition by the local faithful. A naked woman in this part of the world was a whore and whores got no sympathy.
My bra was cut in two and my uniform shirt was just gone. The
The men who had raped me first, who had killed the girl that loved summer, were Americans too. Hating women crosses all borders and faiths. Something all the boys could agree on. They thought they were careful, but I knew who they were. I had seen their hands.
Another gust rippled over the wall, dumping a handful of grave dirt over me.
It took a while, but I finally rolled completely over and rose to my hands and knees. Every part of me was shaking with the effort. My head throbbed a golden flash of spinning pain and then I vomited.
Concussion .
The word was part of the catalogue I began writing in my mind. An inventory was needed to assess chances and options. Concussion. Hole in my back. My rib might be broken.
When my gut seemed ready, I opened my eyes again. The puddle of puke under my face had lost its color to the Iraqi dust, making a mottled mud. Careful not to put my hands in the mess, I backed away. That was when I felt the cuts in my backside. I remembered the captain slapping and cutting my ass with the knife as he sodomized me. When he bucked up against me, moaning with his release, he had stabbed, thrusting the blade deep into my right buttock.
The effort of turning my head back to look only made the world spin again. I let my head sag so I could look down the length of my body. More blood and more cuts. Both of my breasts were tracked with bruises, black finger marks on pale skin. The right one, though, had a long gash starting high on my chest and running under the soft flesh, causing it to hang lower and at an impossible angle. On my left, the nipple was sliced and twisted.
Scars. So many scars .
The freckles that had been a part of my identity since I knew to think of myself as separate from my mother were faded out.
Iâm becoming the color of bone.
There was another laceration in the pubic hair, a violent, jagged gash, and a bare strip where the darker red curls had been stripped away.
The lieutenantâs souvenir.
Blood was flowing, a fresh rush over the sticky, semidry coating between my legs. The fresh fluid cut a new path that trickled right down dead-white thighs with dark galaxies of bruising. Most of the blood seemed to be coming from my vagina. I recalled the lieutenant punching between my legs several times before he shoved his fist inside. That ring raking me. Afterward, he said he wanted a lock of hair, like a lover might. He used the Ka-Bar to cut away the strip. With one hand he pulled the hairs tight. With the other, the one with the ring, he cut.
Both of the men had rings. Different years and different designs, but the rings came from the same school. They had the good sense not to wear them during patrols, but around base the rings were always on display. Everyone knew those rings.
Everything hurts.
I cried. For a short time or a long one, I wasnât sure. Maybe it was a short time that only seemed equal to all the time I had lived so far. I stayed there on my hands and knees because it hurt too much to move, and I cried. It poured from my frothy lungs, a quiet, keening wail that sounded almost like a meadowlark, but there was no answering call.
They were supposed to be on my side. My people. Iâll never know how anyone can survive feeling as alone as I did then. When the tears and the pitiful wailing dried up, I was left with just the silence. Eventually even the silence was too great a weight to bear. I started gathering clothes and doing what I could to cover myself. The only thing worse than being raped and left naked behind some mud wall and shack in Iraq, was being found naked in any condition by the local faithful. A naked woman in this part of the world was a whore and whores got no sympathy.
My bra was cut in two and my uniform shirt was just gone. The
Similar Books
