Dear Jordan,
I carried you under my heart for the better part of a year and nursed you for just as long. I got up in the middle of the night to make sure you were breathing. When you cried I patted you, burped you, rocked you, and sang to you. But all your father had to do was walk in the front door that August day and you instantly loved him.
Your dad had worried that he would be a stranger to you, and that two weeks would not be long enough for you to bond with him. I guess God knew your time together would be brief.
What I had worried about was how Charles would handle the transformation from first sergeant to father. It had been a long journey and I wanted his homecoming to be perfect So the day before he was due to arrive, I cooked while you slept, making what I had learned from reading the journal was his favorite meal:
It took half a dozen calls to my mother to prepare the yams and two to my sister for the greens. The chicken was another issue entirely.
I had been a vegetarian for fifteen years, so trying to clean that dead bird made me gag. I had made Cornish hens for Charles for Thanksgiving, but they were tiny little things that did not require much preparation. The chicken, though, was squishy and a sick shade of yellow. I poked at it and rolled it over but could not bring myself to actually handle the thing. Thank goodness for Shaika, my cleaning lady. She was watching, amused, from the living room and noticed my distress.
“Need some help?” she asked in her Caribbean accent.
“No, I’m okay,” I lied.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, if you really don’t mind. I’ve never cut up a chicken.”
She ran water in the sink and sliced the chicken under it. She filled a pan with vinegar and water and let the pieces soak while she scavenged my spice rack for seasonings. I watched her dunk a breast and then a drumstick into a bowl of flour. She heated the frying oil and set the pieces in the skillet.
“You have no idea how much this means to me,” I told her.
She said she was doing it for my soldier, then offered to stay in case you woke up before I had time to finish the rest of the meal and take a shower. I pulled the cornbread out of the oven and stirred my greens, then hopped quickly in and out of the shower.
My body had bounced back pretty well from the pregnancy, but it was still a struggle to squeeze into the pair of black jeans that, pre-baby fat, had hugged my hips and shaped my legs nicely. I chose a rose-colored blouse lined with black lace that showed off my newly plump breasts. After a quick makeup application and a spray of perfume, I set the table for dinner and sent Shaika on her way with a huge hug. Charles’s plane was due to arrive in half an hour. You were awake by then, so I dressed you in a one-piece striped blue outfit, sat you on my lap, and waited.
Two hours later, Charles still had not arrived, and I had begun to panic. Had he inadvertently given me his flight information in Baghdad time? I realized that he must have. That meant he would not be home until the following day! I felt like crying.
I could not sit in our apartment any longer, so I put you in your stroller and the food in the refrigerator. We went for a long walk on the longest day of my life.
It was not until the light of the next morning, when Charles called from Atlanta, that I could breathe more deeply. He was on U.S. soil.
I told him about my confusion the day before and he said he was sorry.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I just hope you don’t mind leftover chicken.”
You and I spent the afternoon in the park, where I watched so many dads pushing strollers and swings. I had waited a long time for yours to be among them.
Finally, Charles called from LaGuardia. He was on his way home. I had instructed our doorman to ring our apartment when Charles was in the elevator. When he did, I jumped, nervous and giddy at once. I smoothed my hair and our clothes, then stood in the doorway.
When I saw Charles walking toward us in his uniform, for a moment I could not breathe. He smiled broadly and dropped his duffle bag.
“Hello, Daddy. Come meet your son,” I said, placing you in your father’s arms. It was a moment I will never forget. He smothered you in a hug and then released one arm to pull me into the embrace. He kissed me and squeezed us tighter. We laughed. You looked startled.
Then your dad studied your face and hands and looked into your eyes, just as I had done for the first time six months earlier. He held you close and breathed in your scent, just as I had.
“He’s beautiful,” Charles said, as you squirmed.
Outwardly, Charles looked like the same man he was the last time I saw him, only thinner and a deeper shade of brown. He had shaved his head, and the mustache I loved was gone, but his smile was as beautiful as ever, and so were his bright eyes.
I watched as he gazed at you as though you were the most amazing thing he had ever seen. He touched your soft hair and then asked for his bag. He had brought presents, a stuffed camel for you and a stone figure of a mother and child for me.
Charles went into the bedroom and lay on his back on our bed, raising you in the air above him. You looked down and giggled as though the two of you had played that way before. It made your father laugh, too—the sweet music of two beautiful voices in harmony. I stood silently at the foot of the bed, arms folded. Even if there had been words to describe how I was feeling, they would have simply gotten in the way.
Finally, the burden I had felt ever since your father left was lifted. I no longer had to pretend to myself that the stabbing sensation I felt every time the phone rang was just indigestion. I did not have to worry that he might not receive the latest pictures of you in time, did not have to dread the nights I reached for him in my sleep and awoke in agony.
It was too early to tell what Charles was feeling or how the war had worn on him. All that mattered at that moment was that we were at peace in our little safety zone. I thought of all the tomorrows we would have with your father—fourteen to begin with, and then a lifetime more. There would be time in the years ahead for making sandcastles and putting up Christmas trees, for playing tooth fairy and tossing footballs. Yet I was greedy: I wanted each second to last an hour, each hour a day.
Charles seemed suspended in time, too, until he suddenly stood up and walked back into the living room carrying you. His mood had changed; he seemed agitated and had a panicked expression on his face. He said his stomach ached and asked if I had antacids. He searched in his bag for an inhaler.
Was he sick, or could it be an anxiety attack? I calmly lifted you out of his arms, gave him an antacid, and ran a warm bath as he breathed in the mist from the inhaler. I also brought him a beer, thinking it might help him relax. Charles was allergic to shellfish but I had never known him to have respiratory problems. As I watched him settle into the tub, I wondered what had caused his new shortness of breath.
“Sweetie, we’ll stay here and keep you company,” I said and sat on the closed toilet seat with you in my arms. “Just relax.”
Charles exhaled deeply, took a long drink of his beer, and closed his eyes. I thought of turning on music but was afraid the sound or my sudden movement might startle him. Instead I sat quietly as he opened his eyes and looked up at us. He cupped his hands full of water and let it fall onto his face and chest.
“Tell me about your inhaler,” I said softly.
“Oh, I have asthma,” he said.
“How long have you had it?”
“We live by a power plant. I guess I got it there.”
I was struck by two things. First, he had said that he “lived” near a power plant, just as he had given me his flight arrival in Baghdad time. How extraordinary that the mind can be conditioned to imagine home as being any place that becomes familiar, even one of the most treacherous places on earth. Charles’s very survival must have depended on him immersing himself in that alien environment, so that he was not paralyzed by fear or overcome with longing for the place where he really belonged.
The other thing was his certainty that he had become asthmatic. There was no way to know what he had been inhaling near that plant, but it seemed to me just as likely that his breathing difficulties were a reaction to the stress of combat. Since he was a leader, there were few opportunities to express his fear. Perhaps he kept it inside until it became so powerful that he had to release it, somehow.
I asked him whether the military doctors had actually diagnosed him with asthma, and he said they had. I offered to take him to my doctor for a second opinion.
“I’m fine, Ma. The inhaler works,” he said.
I did not want to upset him so I decided to wait and suggest it again after his tour of duty was over.
Charles got out of the tub, looking much more relaxed, and again lay down with you on the bed. I went into the kitchen to prepare a plate of food and Charles must have smelled it because he came into the living room holding you and said that he could not eat. He seemed exhausted.
“I’m going to take the baby for a walk so you can get some rest,” I told him. “But please try to at least nibble on some cornbread. I’ll bring you chicken noodle soup.”
I had expected the man I met at the door to be somehow different from the one who had walked out of it all those months ago. But I had not expected his suffering to show so soon. What he had seen and done over there I could not imagine. But there was clearly no way to emerge from a world in which you are routinely involved in taking and saving lives and not be transformed. I would try to lighten his burden while he was home, but then he would have to return and endure more of whatever he had been through.
Your father was still asleep when we returned from our walk late that afternoon. You were taking a nap yourself, snug in your stroller. I left you in the living room and snuck quietly into the bedroom. Ever clumsy, I knocked over a candleholder on the dresser and he bolted upright.
“Dana, are you all right?” he shouted.
I put my arms around him, looked into his eyes.
“I’m fine and so are you,” I said. “You’re home now, and you’re safe.”
For the first time since he arrived, we kissed ravenously, like the lovers we had been.
“You’ve been there for me for as long as I’ve known you, even when I didn’t deserve it. Now it’s my turn to take care of you,” I said softly. “I love you, baby.”
He held me so tight it almost hurt, then released me and looked into my face.
“I love you, too, Dana” was all he said.
He would not eat more than a few bites of cornbread and a sip of broth. Then I suggested that he help me with your bath. He undressed you and studied your plump little body, remarking on your chubby knees and long feet. When I half filled your little blue tub on the kitchen counter, your dad watched as you looked startled for a moment before relaxing in the warm water. He watched as I washed your face and hair and then your squirming body. I dried you off and he rubbed lotion on you. I dressed you in a yellow sleeper and sat in a chair in the living room feeding you. Your father was mesmerized by the sight of me nursing his son. His healing had begun.
The warm bath and your full stomach made you drowsy and we laid you in bed between us. You lifted your head and looked at your father and, I will never forget it, a wide smile spread across your face. Then you went to sleep.
Charles took your tiny hand in his and rubbed it. He rubbed your hair and kissed your cheek, staring at you as though he was afraid to even blink for fear of missing a detail.
After a shower, I rubbed baby oil on my body, sprayed myself with perfume, and slipped into a sheer pink nightgown. I was not sure what the night would bring, but I wanted to feel soft and sexy in his arms anyway.
When I returned, I put you in your crib, then got in bed beside Charles. He took me into his arms and kissed me wildly, lifting my nightgown over my head and letting himself rediscover my body. Then he made love to me with a force that startled me. He tried to be tender, but there was a rawness to his longing. It was as if he had been holding on just to make it back to me and release all his pain.
We were asleep but still clinging to each other when you awoke later that night, crying in the darkness. Your father instantly got out of bed and changed your diaper, then handed you to me and watched as I nursed you in the moonlit room. After you fell asleep, he lifted you out of my arms and kissed your cheek before lowering you back into your crib. Then my Charles returned to our bed.
“I’m hungry, too,” he whispered in my ear.
Sometime in the twilight hours I opened my eyes and found Charles staring at me. “Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“I like to wake up and watch you sleep,” he said. “I always have.”
I felt an overpowering passion for this man who would leave again so soon. I hugged him as tight as I could and felt milk trickle down my chest and onto his. He held on, too, so tight it hurt, and it somehow seemed we still could not get close enough. I could barely breathe, but I did not care. My man was home, safely in my arms.
We awoke slowly the next morning and lounged in bed sipping coffee—a normal Sunday for an ordinary family. No bombs would be exploding in Charles’s world that day.
Your dad lay in bed reading to you while I took what might have been the longest shower of my life. I had never been so glad to see wrinkles on my fingers. You were still content by your father’s side when I returned to the bedroom wearing a towel.
“Hey, do I get an honorary membership in your gentlemen’s club?” I said. “I can’t believe this boy has taken to you so quickly. Do you know how many diapers I’ve changed and how many times I’ve whipped out my boobs to feed him?”
“Hey man, what do you think? Should we let her in our club?” Charles asked you.
It was nearly noon before we made our way out the door. I tried to convince Charles to stop at a deli for breakfast. “At least some toast,” I pleaded. But he still insisted that he had no appetite.
We strolled through a park looking out onto the East River, Charles pushing your stroller and my hand rubbing his back. Every few minutes he stopped to make sure the sunshade was still shielding your face. We sat on a bench and watched people jog and walk dogs and toss Frisbees. Things people do in a peaceful place.
A helicopter flew overhead and the sound made Charles flinch. He pulled out his inhaler and breathed in the medicine. I waited for him to speak.
“You know what I was just thinking about?” he eventually said. “All the soldiers who won’t be around to watch their children grow up.”
“We have to count our blessings that you’re not one of them,” I said.
He would only have six weeks left in Iraq when he returned, and then he would be home for good.
“Charles, you just have to get through the end of this. It’s almost over, and this little guy needs his daddy.”
He beamed at you.
“I need you, too,” I said.
“I know,” he said, and then: “So what do you want for Christmas, Ma?”
“You home.”
“We have to do something special,” Charles insisted. “It’ll be Jordan’s first Christmas. I hope you can take some time off. Maybe we can take him on a carriage ride in Central Park.”
“It’s a date.”
As the week went on, I could see the mellow man I had known emerging. Noises no longer startled him. He ate skinless chicken and salad. He still barely put you down.
We headed into the subway one afternoon to take care of the only bit of business on our agenda—correcting your birth certificate. Charles had taken the news of my dust-up at the hospital calmly and wanted to do what was necessary to get it fixed. But when we entered the Office of Vital Records, my spirits sank. Dozens of people were in line, waiting to approach clerks sitting behind glass partitions in what looked like bank teller booths. We filled out a form while we waited and asked strangers in line to sign as witnesses. When we finally made it to one of the windows, I explained our situation to the clerk.
“Put your form in that slot,” the young woman said, unyielding. She looked as if she had heard every manner of paternity story and was simply waiting for quitting time.
“But isn’t there someone we can talk to? He has to go back to Iraq soon.”
“No, there’s no manager on duty,” she said brusquely.
I gave up and slipped our form into the slot, hoping for the best. Then we stepped away from the window and I asked your dad to stop a minute.
“Charles, I hope this will take care of it but, if it doesn’t, I swear to you that I’ll see to it that your name is added to Jordan’s birth certificate. I’m just so sorry it’s not on the original.” I wanted him to hear me make that promise aloud.
“Thanks, Ma. I know you’ll take care of it.”
As we left the building, Charles was enjoying strolling through the downtown city streets and I did not want to spoil his mood with my anger. But inside I was seething. How could it be that no one — not the Congress, the military, hospital administrators—had dealt with the issue of birth certificates for children born to single military fathers away at war? It was a grave injustice that a blank should appear where a father’s name should be simply because he was in combat when his baby was born. That a marriage license was the only way to avoid the problem was insulting. Worst of all, no one seemed to care.
I was hosting a baby shower for your father that evening, but we had the whole afternoon in front of us, and spent most of it relaxing while you napped. Before I knew it, the clock said 4:00 p.m. Our guests were arriving at 5:30 and I had not even done the grocery shopping, let alone prepare the food. Charles rushed out to the grocery while I fed and bathed you, running back and forth from the kitchen every time the musical mobile on your playpen stopped and you began to wail. I was still wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt when he returned, and was in the process of wiping dribble off my shirt. He smiled and gazed at my lips—an amorous look I knew well.
“Charles, again? Are you kidding? I know you’ve been stuck in the desert with a bunch of men for nine months, but we have guests arriving in less than an hour.”
We were barely dressed when the first guests arrived—Lara, who worked for me, and Ciro, my gay Italian friend, who had a crush on Charles. The two of them pushed past me to your father, hugging him tightly and telling him how good he looked. As more guests arrived, I watched each of them take your father into long, warm embraces. People were taking pictures, giggling, watching him hold you. I realized the evening was not about what I served; it was about sustenance for our spirits. I gave up on cooking and ordered pizza.
It was, after all, a baby shower, so someone ordered Charles to sit in a chair in the middle of the room and open his gifts. I could tell he was embarrassed. He handed you to me, the first time during the evening that you left his arms. He unwrapped some books about fatherhood, a set of tub toys, and a small photo album to fill with pictures from his leave that he could take back to Iraq. He opened my gifts last: a coffee mug with his favorite picture of you and the black leather backpack, which I had filled with diapers and wet wipes, pacifiers and burp cloths.
Charles was not the type to make speeches but he made sure to spend time with each guest. Several times I heard him talking about his soldiers.
“I just hope everybody’s all right when I get back,” he said. “They know it’s almost time to come home, so I have to work hard to keep them focused.”
Lara and Miriam wanted to discuss the politics of the war, but Charles mostly smiled and listened. Katti kissed his cheek and told him she had been lifting him up in prayer.
“Don’t you worry about your family,” she said. “I’ve got your back.”
You fell asleep at sunset, but laughter and your hunger woke you a few hours later. I sat near a window surrounded by friends, rocking you back to sleep. Your father was standing at the edge of the room; he seemed lost in his thoughts. I caught his eye and motioned for him to sit beside me, but he just stood there, watching— savoring the love that filled the room. We ended the night with promises to our friends of an even bigger celebration when your father returned for good. After the final guest left around midnight, your father and I stood in the living room, hugging in silence and gazing out the window for the longest time.
I realized as we settled into bed that night that Charles had not used his inhaler that day. He was eating much more and had resumed ironing my clothes in the mornings.
“I think we need a mommy day tomorrow/’ he said as I lay in his arms.
“That’s not necessary/’ I said. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you, remember?”
Charles stood firm. “Jordan and I are going to take you to get a massage. And then he and I are going to hang out.”
“Hang out where?”
“We’ll go to the park and the bookstore. Just leave me enough milk and diapers.”
I reluctantly agreed. “But I’m going to keep my cell phone near in case you need me/’ I said.
I awoke in the middle of the night with full breasts and pumped the milk he would need for his first father-son outing. Charles offered to keep me company. So he sat next to me in the bathroom and we talked about our perfect baby.
“He looks like you, you know,” Charles said.
“I see you in him, too.”
“Dana, this boy will be a blessing to everyone he meets. He’s special. Remember that I said that”
We fell asleep listening to you breathe in the crib nearby.
A light rain was falling the next morning—sleeping weather.
The rain had dwindled to a mist by early afternoon, and your father bundled you in blankets in your stroller and put the rain cover over it. We walked to a spa that I liked in our neighborhood and he followed me inside, handing the woman at the front desk his credit card and urging me to get a massage, a facial, a manicure, and anything else I wanted.
“Just a massage,” I said. The attention made me blush.
Peeking through the window as the two of you left, I watched your dad push your stroller down the street, wearing his new backpack. Then I wrapped myself in a luxurious robe and sipped water flavored with slices of lemon while I waited for the massage therapist, who led me into a candlelit room. I had just about succeeded in willing myself to relax when the hour-long treatment was over.
Your father arrived precisely when he said he would and I watched him maneuver your stroller through the front door as though he had been doing it for months. He had changed your diaper twice, he said, and fed and burped you. He showed me the books he had bought for you and said that you had charmed the women in the checkout line.
“You should have seen him, flirting with those women,” Charles bragged. “The cashiers kept trying to get people to move up in the line but they were surrounding us, talking about how cute he was. One woman chased me down the street to tell me his sock was falling off.”
“I don’t think I’m letting the two of you out of my sight again,” I teased, imagining my men surrounded by gorgeous, indulgent women.
“Blame your son.”
It might have been his ease with you that day that emboldened me to share with him an idea that I had—that he could take early retirement after he came home and care for you full-time for a couple of years while I worked. He seemed slightly taken aback by the proposal.
“Dana, you know you’re not the type of woman to be married to a man who doesn’t work, and I’m not the type of man to not take care of my family.”
I told him he would be taking care of our family—and, in away, still contributing financially given the astronomical cost of New York child care. I told him he could work on his art and teach—or do whatever he wanted as a second career—when you started school.
“So many black kids grow up without fathers,” I said. “It would be nice if ours had a daddy who was the primary caretaker. And you have nothing to prove about your work ethic.”
He said he would consider it—but I knew that for a man as old-fashioned as Charles, the notion was radical.
I had planned to make a simple salad for lunch and save my appetite for our time alone that night at our favorite Mexican restaurant while you stayed home with a babysitter. But your father suggested that we make it a family lunch instead of a dinner date. He didn’t want to be without you for even a few hours. So we hailed a cab and took you along on our date.
As we gazed at you cooing in your baby carrier, we agreed that we did not need an evening out alone to reconnect romantically.
“I think we’ve already taken care ofthat,” I said.
He smiled at me bashfully and fed me a salsa-dipped tortilla chip.
“So when do you want to get married?” Charles asked.
I told him I had picked the perfect date: June 9, a Saturday— the day that fell between my birthday on june 8 and his on June 10. He loved that idea.
I asked what he thought of our original plan to get married on a cruise ship and invite our families along. We could have a reception in New York when we got back.
“You just had my baby, so you get whatever you want,” he said.
“I guess I should start looking for a dress.”
“Then I guess I better look for atuxedo.”
“No,” I said emphatically. “Anyone can wear a tux. I’m marrying a soldier. Nothing would make me prouder than to walk down the aisle and see you in your military dress blues.”
Charles grinned.
I asked what he wanted to do the next day. He could think of only one thing: buying winter clothes for you.
“You want to buy winter clothes in August?”
He nodded. I did not ask why.
We had not been shopping together since I was pregnant and it felt nice doing it again as new parents. The winter merchandise had begun to arrive, and Charles filled a cart with jackets and mittens and long-sleeved shirts and cotton sweat suits, as well as socks and diapers and a larger baby tub. He kept asking whether you needed anything else and I kept saying you did not.
He was simply being a dutiful dad, I told myself. But I couldn’t help feeling concerned about why he was thinking so far ahead. Was he planning for a future that didn’t include himself?
“Dana, I want to write you a check,” he said when we got home. “I want you to have half of my combat pay”
I resisted. We still had some of the checks he had given me. He reminded me that I would be going back to work and would need to pay for your babysitter.
“I’m not taking half your combat pay,” I insisted.
“Dana, please. It’s for our son. And you should buy something for yourself, too.”
He wrote a check and tried to hand it to me. I waved him away.
“Take it, Dana,” he said. Finally, I did.
Then Charles began to talk about life insurance. I began to pace.
“Charles, if something happened to you, you know I would only use that money to take care of Jordan.”
He put his hands on my shoulders, his expression as serious as I had ever seen it.
“Dana, that money is for you, too,” he said. “It’s for you, too.”
I did not want to discuss it. I was not accustomed to taking money from a man, but that was not what was making me anxious. I was unnerved by Charles’s sudden desire to stock up on winter baby clothes and discuss death benefits. I could finally count the time until he came home in weeks instead of months. What was the point?
Yet as we resumed going through a stack of new sweaters and hats he had bought, I had to admit to myself that I had also been making some grim preparations. Soon after Charles arrived, I had arranged for him to meet the babysitter I had hired; I wanted him to feel comfortable with the person who would be caring for you after I returned to work. I took him to your doctor’s office and pointed out how close we lived to one of the best pediatrie emergency rooms in the city. As we strolled near the East River one afternoon, I showed him the mayor’s mansion and told him about the high level of security in the park because of it. Without consciously thinking about it, I believe I was trying to make sure he was content with the world in which I was rearing his son—in case he never lived in it with us.
Our moods shifted from moment to moment. When Charles decided to wait until he returned for good to visit your sister and his parents, I took it as a sign that he was sure he was coming back. But as I watched him put away the baby tub and diapers, I realized that he was thinking about it differently. Charles talked to Christina often during his leave and heard from his parents and sister almost daily, but he was determined to spend the entire two weeks alone with us. They had had him for a lifetime; he knew that you might have each other for only two weeks.
Mothers being what they are, though, your grandmother King simply had to see her Chuckie. My membership in the motherhood club might have been new, but I understood completely when she called in the middle of the second week to say she would be arriving at LaGuardia Airport the following morning—just for the day. She showed up in a blue suit with a colorful silk scarf tied around her neck and her long hair twisted into a tight bun. As you know by now, Grandma King is a reserved woman who is not prone to extravagant displays of affection. So I had to laugh to myself when she smothered you with hugs and kisses even before she embraced her son.
In the taxi on the way home, I sat in the front seat and gazed in reverence at the sight of three generations of the King family together.
You got fussy that afternoon when we took your grandmother to lunch, and your father insisted on spiriting you over to the window as his mother and I ate. I tried to persuade him to spend time with your grandmother and enjoy his meal, but he would not hear of it. Standing at the window, rocking you and kissing your head, your father seemed to have all he needed, and in his arms you calmed down completely. Your grandmother and I could barely eat for watching the two of you together.
When Grandma King and your father kissed good-bye at the airport that evening, I felt that peculiar mixture of happiness and sadness that had haunted me all week. Time was running out. We had only three more days before Charles would leave for Iraq.
I wanted to spend the rest of our time alone, but we had promised to have dinner the following night with Gerald Boyd, my former boss, and his wife, Robin Stone. They had not been able to make it to the baby shower and I had not seen Gerald in months, so when we arrived at their brownstone in Harlem, I was startled to see how thin and weak he looked. Something was clearly wrong, but Robin and Gerald made clear that they wanted to keep the focus on Charles’s homecoming.
We sat in the great room drinking cocktails as Robin prepared dinner. Gerald looked at Charles rocking with you on his chest and smiled a long time before he spoke.
“Man, this is what it’s all about—family and shared goals,” Gerald said.
When we sat down to eat, we held one another’s hands in prayer. Gerald prayed for “whatever will be” according to God’s will. I thought it a strange thing to say to a man who was returning to war. It was not until weeks later that Robin confided in me that her husband had been diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer, and I understood then why he had sounded such a note of resignation.
Robin and Gerald had a nine-year-old son, Zachary, who had eaten before we arrived and gone down to the basement to play We had just finished our meal and your father was feeding me a piece of pie off his fork when we heard Zachary scream. Robin and Charles both took off for the basement, but Charles was the first to make it to the bottom of the stairs. Gerald followed as quickly as he could.
I heard Robin say, “Oh God.”
Then, Charles said, “Son, what happened?” He did not wait for an answer, and Zachary was crying too hard to provide one anyway.
“I have to stop the bleeding,” Charles said.
He ran up the stairs past me to the bathroom and grabbed some towels, wetting one. I could see that his shirt was streaked with blood. “It looks like one of his teeth might be lodged in his lip but I need to stop the bleeding first to find out,” he said.
He ran back down the stairs and I heard him tell Zachary that he was going to apply a lot of pressure to the towel on his face. He sent Robin for ice. At last Zachary’s cries quieted and I heard Charles say that he wanted to take a look at the wound. It looked as though it might require stitches, he said.
“You’ll be all right. Just hold this ice on your lip,” Charles instructed as they climbed the stairs. Charles told Zachary’s shaken parents to take him to the nearest emergency room, and we gathered our jackets. We were in a cab on the way home when Charles took a deep breath and gripped my leg. We rode in silence.
Later that night I was jolted out of sleep by the sound of Charles groaning. He was shaking his head from side to side, his face contorted, his breathing rapid.
I spoke his name softly, not wanting to startle him, then shook him gently.
“Wake up, baby, you’re having a dream.”
“There was so much blood,” he said, his eyes half open.
“Where? Where was the blood?”
“Iraq,” he said. “The children.”
I kissed his eyelids and rocked him.
“You’re safe now, Charles,” I said. “You’re home with me and Jordan.”
He rolled on top of me and clung to my body.
“There was so much blood.”
“I know, baby. I know. But you’re home now.”
I lay there, wide awake, until his breathing slowed and he fell back to sleep. My breasts ached from the pressure of his body, but I did not dare move.
By morning’s light Charles seemed to have no memory of the dream, and I did not bring it up.
We had only a day left.
That night we took you with us on one last “date,” to a Chinese restaurant, but you were squirming and crying and your father insisted on taking you outside. “You won’t have a chance to eat any meals like this in peace until I come back,” he said. I complained that he was spending too much time putting my needs before his. I told him I would tend to you, but he would have none of it. So I ate my food as fast as I could and asked for a carryout box for his. Then we walked slowly home, enjoying the evening air on a cloudless night.
Your father spent an hour and a half writing on the remaining empty pages in the journal, but he was constantly interrupted by phone calls from family and friends wanting to say good-bye. I remember how frustrated he was—he was trying so hard to stay focused on what he was writing. Then we stayed up talking and making love until dawn.
Charles took a shower and packed his bag, and I made chicken sandwiches for his lunch. You were still asleep as I lay on the couch in the living room watching him put on his uniform. I longed to take him back to bed once more, but we had run out of time.
“Why don’t you just go AWOL and stay here with us?” I joked as he zipped his jacket.
“Now, Dana,” he said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, “you know you wouldn’t want to be married to a coward.”
“Oh, all right, go,” I said playfully, as though this were an everyday good-bye.
He smiled as he laced his boots and put on his patrol cap. His transformation back into First Sergeant King was now complete.
I watched him go quietly to your crib and lower the safety rail. He kissed you lightly and rubbed your back. You stirred and he smiled as he looked at you one last time. Then he removed a medal from his pocket—the army Combat Action Badge he had been awarded for running into the gun battle to pull wounded comrades to safety. Handing it to me, he said he did not need to wear it on his uniform to prove his bravery.
“Keep it for Jordan,” your father said.
We stood in the doorway, my Charles and me, and kissed and held each other tight. He stroked my hair. It felt as though all the clocks had stopped.
“Now, you’re going to marry me, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering. “I love you, and I would be honored to be your wife.”
“I love you, too, Dana. You’re my queen—remember that.”
I shook my head but could no longer speak. He kissed me one last time.
We would run out of time on this earth and there would be no wedding, but I am certain that at that moment, declaring our love before God, I became his wife.