13

When I returned from the five months of entry training -- my eyes always on the look out for S____ -- I was devastated to arrive at the unit. Now that I knew what being a soldier was, I was embarrassed of my year as a recruit, and many of the civilian years before that.
Also, unexpectedly, the closer I got to God‘s Country, the louder the Roaring got, to the point where I could barely hear the unit Supply Sergeant issuing me my gear, and calling each item out one by one as I confirmed I had received it. I felt like a soldier when I was out West, I felt like I belonged.
K____ passing me a note in those early days; Drill Sergeant D____ approving of me; H____ telling me his life story during early morning guard duty; the hotel room where the group of us ended up at after we’d snuck out and got drunk; H___ dashing out into the street cheering and half naked .. Little I could remember now that the Roaring was back, I couldn’t even picture the West’s vast skies anymore. I felt like I couldn’t be a real soldier and from the House at the same time.
My first mission with the unit was to convoy to the South of the state, a three hour drive. I was a private, and brand-new-back-from-Basic, so I did not have a military license.
My section chief took me on as his Assistant Driver and off we were. His name was Sergeant T____ and he had the same skills I have now, though I was severely lacking back then: He could pull a person’s story out of them just as easily as if he were asking their name. All he needed was time.
He learned by my manner and my body language and my attitudes that I was undeveloped. In psychiatry this is not a big deal, it’s just par for the course: since the child’s development stops when the Abuse starts -- due to the child being now completely reactive to everything happening to him -- he never gets a moment to himself, a moment to think and to grow, he just reacts reacts reacts -- to stay alive.
Sergeant T__ seemed to think this was extraordinary. I was independent and smart, while lacking all the Real qualities such an existence would seem to require.
He chose me as his A-driver for the ride back the next afternoon, and treated me the way an older person finds a younger person amusing. He laughed a lot with a booming, sly, laugh.
He was a black man who treated those with the skin tones like mine as if they were specimens-to-be-observed, so I could make him laugh unexpectedly.
He talked about ‘white people’ a lot -- people who had never claimed me -- pointing out their ignorance and their obliviousness. He reminded me of the way M____ and R____ and Big B would laugh and joke, with that underlying amazement for the just-now-freed-white-boy-American-slave.
During two weeks of training at the Military Academy, we were roommates, which was unheard of, since we were of such different ranks.
In the military, a Drill Sergeant, is the representative of what a soldier is. These representatives are called Sergeants. I left the school of Basic, with Drill Sergeant D____, and moved on to the school of Advanced Individual Training and a different Drill Sergeant, D_____, and finally I was assigned to the teachings of Sergeant T_____. It was the way the military was set up, and it was the most important thing in my military life.
He listened to my story, when I finally told the bit that I could make out. He knew what Tolle knew without knowing Tolle. He knew what Morrison knew without knowing Morrison. All because he was well-raised (he was from a wealthy black family) and completely confident. He seemed totally in-the-moment, not-numb, focused, and spiritual.
His abilities showed for it, especially compared to the other Sergeants in the unit. He had an understanding of life well beyond what I had ever known. He said, _Someone who comes from that. There’s no way they’ll ever be normal._
And I accepted this.
_Someone from abuse that was sexual like that, there’s no way they’ll ever have a normal sex life._
I accepted that, too.
He said, _Someone who never went to school can’t ever be as smart as the ones who did. Because there’s more to the education you receive in high school than just what you get out of books._
I accepted that, also.
His teachings continued over the three months after I returned from the West and the Army’s sheer test. It was in the third month, at the military academy, that he named my skin.
All along I had simply accepted that I was still not good enough, and now, due to Sergeant T____‘s teaching, I accepted that I never would be. It seemed routine.
Then his words named my skin in the same way he had named my abilities, and my qualities, and my possibilities, but this time he named my Skin.
Him naming MY skin, did something to my hearing, so that his words, and the words of the people around me became dulled and meaningless, they became just sounds.
In two days, I was at home, and the Roaring Reared. MY skin. His sounds. The House. Its sounds. What used to be words, what used to be teachings, and now were just sounds ..
MY skin was Real, and MY bones, Real. MY hearbeat.

Real.
And their hate, just sounds, and their crimes, just injustice. That’s all it was. That’s all it ever was.
I stepped to the mirror and thought the words: There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with your Life. Lke a thunderbolt I remembered .. I could see the whole thing, as for a precious moment life simply unfolded before me.
I could hear the Roaring now that it was just sounds, only sounds, and now that its emotions were just emotions, only emotions, and its thoughts reeling, were just thoughts, only thoughts, and just behind them just on the other side, was me.
The me that knew its movements, it knew the natural way I sat down, and the natural way I stood up, that knew His true voice, that knew His preferences and wants, that knew His own heartbeat and His own soul, that no world of sounds, emotions, thoughts, could ever taint.
They were liars.
It was Sweet to have been done such injustice. All along I had thought no injustice had been done, it hadn‘t even occurred to me. I simply accepted it, trying to be strong and brave and tough.
It was June 1^st. Sergeant T____ or anyone else in the unit wouldn’t hear from me again for nine months. I took a Break.