The Other Side of Blue (21 page)

 

One

 

W
HITENESS EXPLODES
behind my eyelids, and my eyes shoot open. I'm not sure if I am awake or still asleep and dreaming. My heart beats hard and fast and tight, as if trapped inside a small glass jar.

Light glows around my bedroom shades like a solar eclipse.

It's morning. Early. I'm awake after all.

The noise builds again in the distance. First a crackle. Then a sizzle.

Silence.

Then
boom.

Boom.

BOOM.

Firecrackers. Just firecrackers.

Somebody down the block with leftovers from last night's Fourth of July. I lie there in bed, trying to force my heart back to normal.

Across the room, Cara sleeps in her toddler bed. She always wakes up when I try to sneak out of the room in the morning, but now she could sleep through a war zone.

My ears strain to hear anything more. Maybe it's finished. Maybe some dad or military police officer on the block has tracked the kid down and yelled at him.

I don't care.

Just that the noise stopped.

Because, after last night, I hate fireworks. The way the lights flamed in the sky and made people sitting on the beach look like silhouettes of soldiers waiting to go into battle.

The clock radio by the bed blinks
12:00
in red over and over like warning lights on a runway. The power must have gone out overnight. It happens during Florida thunderstorms.

With the clock out, I don't know what time it is. I told Meriwether and Sam I'd meet them at the post exchange, the PX, at eight to staff the booth.

I don't know what time it is in Afghanistan, either.

Rumors of troop movements have spread through the post like a game of telephone.
Have you heard? Surge. Maybe this week.
No one knows what's true
.

Already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, I fling off the thin sheet and dash for the kitchen. I plug in the computer and press the on button, holding it hard until the machine strums to life. The monitor glows for seconds with a gray, empty light. Then the login page appears, and I enter my password.

The screen flickers.

I tap my fingers against the keyboard.
Hurry up.

In the upper right-hand corner, the time shows. 6:44 a.m.

Late afternoon in Afghanistan.

I click through to my e-mail.

Pressing the icon to get mail is like entering a code that sends Dad's message across a wire from Afghanistan to here, and I imagine cables running undersea, across deserts. As if Dad's physically connected to me by a cord, knotted and strong. Something that can't unravel.

I know it's really just a signal through a satellite. It seems impossible, almost magical. Something not to trust.

Only, his e-mail is there.

I check the date and time of his note. As of this morning, Dad was still alive in Afghanistan. I try not to think about it this way, but I can't help it.

I reach toward the wall and pick up the chewed-end pencil—Cara's—tied to a string. I mark an X on the calendar for yesterday, July 4. One day less to go before he comes home.

A ritual, marking off the days on a calendar until a whole month, and then another, and another, is crossed out. Only then—it has to be in the proper order—do I open the e-mail message. It's short.

 

Dear Jess: I attached a video and some new photos Cpl. Scott and I took at the orphanage. Guess which photos I took. (Hint: They'll be the catawampus ones.) See how great Warda looks? What a difference you all are making. The school supplies are a big hit. Keep them coming.

Love, Dad

PS—We roasted hot dogs on the Fourth over the burn pits. The buns were AWOL, but the dogs tasted like home. What I would have done for sparklers.

 

Sparklers.

Last year, when it got dark enough, Dad brought out sparklers. The bright flowers danced, and the smell of match tips lingered in the air. We ran up and down the beach, waving our wands of light until they fizzled.

Then the real fireworks started. The firemen lit them off a barge towed out into the gulf. The rockets shot into the air. I couldn't see them when they lifted off, but you could hear them. The swoosh of power jetting them up, followed by silence until they burst overhead. Green and red and blue and white sparkles showering the sky. Dad said the blue was the rarest color. I forget why.

I open the attached photo, and my hand squeezes the computer mouse. Warda's photo. Her wide green eyes are like those of the Afghani girl from an old
National Geographic
magazine Ms. Rivera tacked to the bulletin board at school. She said it was taken when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Gunships fired on villages, and bombs disguised as toys glittered in the village roads, tempting children to pluck them off the ground like piñata candy.

Warda's eyes are just like those from the other photo. Startled, haunting, seeing more than they can express. As if there's something just beyond the reach of the camera, something she can't forget. They're like the photo I found in an old album in the utility closet after we moved on post. A photo with curled edges. A girl wearing a faded T-shirt and a hat, haunted eyes staring out. Mine.

In this shot, Warda stands straight, stiff, facing forward. Dad's on one side of her, and Meriwether's mother, Corporal
Scott, kneels on the other side of Warda and smiles. But it is Warda's eyes that draw me in, and somehow her eyes are my eyes. I am the girl thousands of miles away in an orphanage, Dad's hand on my shoulder. And I am safe.

I download the other photos and the video of the children playing in the courtyard, the milk goat we raised money for grazing on weeds in the background. We named it Zebah. It's a name that's easy to say. Sam and I dig deep inside for a voice that rumbles out into a big long
zzzz
sound when we pronounce it.

Against the pockmarked building, oleander bushes battle to survive. Dad said they bloom in the same shades as here. That's what gave me the idea for Operation Oleander, the plan to donate supplies to the orphanage. It's why I'm meeting Meriwether and Sam at the PX so early. I print out the photos and upload the video to my MP3 player so people get to see what they're supporting.

I type a reply.

 

Dear Dad:

Great photos. Our hot dogs had buns.

 

I don't say we didn't go to the post fireworks, that we stayed home. I don't ask about the surge and if it's started.

Instead I write,

 

Remember the fireworks last year? How perfect they were? Love, Jess.

 

I hit the send button and let my fingers linger over the keys. Feel the connection being made and the message reaching back across the distance to Dad.

Inside the house, everything is quiet. No more firecrackers. No more booms. No noise comes from my bedroom. Cara is still asleep, and Mom's door is shut tight.

I sign off the computer, make sure Mom's coffeepot is programmed to brew at eight, grab my iPod, and head out the door. When the key clicks in the lock, I rattle the doorknob just to make sure it's secure before I walk toward the PX.

Visit
www.hmhco.com
or your favorite retailer to purchase the book in its entirety.

 

V
ALERIE
O. P
ATTERSON
was raised in Florida. She has an MFA in children's literature from Hollins University, where she twice received the Shirley Henn Award for Creative Scholarship. She also won an SCBWI Work-in-Progress Award. An attorney by day, she lives with her husband in Leesburg, Virginia. Visit her website at
www.valerieopatterson.com
.