She experienced the cloud of sand and smoke, the sound of gunfire, the killing of the Taliban men, the days she was unconscious in the hospital, and the news of Luz, raped and dead. It had all happened at once, in a flash; it was a big jumble, a black cloud, and she was caught inside it. She hadn’t been due to go home for another four weeks; she hadn’t prepared herself for the transition from that world of violence and death to her home in California. She learned after her first deployment that leaving the war meant crossing over from one state of mind to another, that there was a shift from soldier back to mother. Now she was only the mother of a dead girl.
Why wasn’t this girl’s mother supervising her? the people in town had said.
When the formalities of the funeral were over, she sent her mother to Texas with her sisters and the rest of her relatives. Two of the young men who’d raped her daughter were out on bail and they were going to die, she was sure of that. She’d killed before, it was easy. She was only a medic, and a woman, but she’d been trained to kill the enemy. That’s what she’d done and would continue to do.
Leaving the war meant crossing over. The mind of a soldier wasn’t the mind of a mother, but she wasn’t a mother anymore. When she was in Afghanistan, something had crossed over in her, and when she went home, it didn’t cross back.
? ? ?
A QUIET SETTLED OVER CALLIOPE HOUSE the day after the Jennifer revelations became public, as if we were holding a moment of silence for the mother who’d lost her daughter, which was at the root of everything. The story was still taking shape; some questions were answered, but many others remained. Information about Soledad stuffed the papers and airwaves, much of it speculation. There was no news about Leeta, but she hadn’t been lying when she told her roommate she knew the identity of Jennifer.
After a morning engrossed in the news, I had the kitchen to myself in the afternoon. I slid a tray of cupcake batter into the oven. That Leeta was connected to me and also to Jennifer—Soledad—was unreal. I didn’t know how to think about something that was so far removed from anything I’d experienced. For the rest of the day I wanted to pretend that they didn’t exist, but as I went through the messages in my inbox, I discovered I didn’t have that option.
The messages were mostly from new girls who’d sent their addresses, requesting books. One girl suggested a high school edition of Fuckability Theory, an idea I said I would pass on to Marlowe, amused at the thought of her replacing every occurrence of fuck and its variations.
Working my way to the top of the inbox, I found two names I recognized, Hannah and Jasmine. They’d written several times to discuss Marlowe’s book, so it wasn’t unusual to see email from them in my inbox, but these messages were different. The girls explained that they’d received weird correspondence in recent days, each time from a different, vague email address, with subject headings such as “Revolution!” and “Rise Up!” In one of the messages, the girls were advised to cancel their subscriptions to Daisy Chain and donate the money to Reproductive Justice, a nonprofit group. In another, they were encouraged to skip school and engage in acts of civil disobedience. Hannah forwarded the most recent one to me:
From: account7
To: Hannah_hannaH
Subject: Fight Back!
The police and the “justice” system don’t take violence against women and girls seriously. If you’ve been assaulted or harassed, take the law into your own hands. Form vigilante groups with other girls. Sign up for self-defense classes, but don’t just use the skills defensively. Go on the offensive!
Hannah wanted to know if these messages were from me. “Oh my God,” I said under my breath, slamming my laptop shut. I recalled Julia’s response when I asked her why Leeta wanted the spreadsheet: Maybe Jennifer’s army is looking for new recruits. No. I scoffed at my own wild thoughts. I was becoming paranoid like Julia.
And yet, something nagged at me.
As a woman being hunted by the FBI, Soledad had better things to do than email Kitty’s readers, but her network was large and Leeta was out there somewhere. Maybe someone in the group wanted to reach out to these girls—at the heart of “Jennifer” was Soledad’s own lost girl. There was a certain degree of logic to it. I wondered if this could be traced back to me or to Julia, and what would happen if it was.
“What’s burning?” Sana was standing in the doorway, next to the refrigerator. I didn’t know how long she’d been there watching my rising panic. I’d forgotten about my cupcakes and now opened the oven, a gush of smoke blinding me. I slid the pan of charred cakes onto the stovetop.
“Are you all right?” Sana said, a question she asked too often and not without reason. We were still slightly awkward with each other the day after our argument.
“I have a lot on my mind, you know, with all the stuff in the news.” I used a knife to flick off the burned top of a cupcake, then pinched a chunk of the moist part underneath, blew on it, and ate it. I was hungry and I didn’t want to face Sana, so I stuffed my mouth. She took the tray away from me and dumped the cakes in the trash.