DEL.ICIO.USONE TOWN'S WAR / An occasional series
Heartache at homeThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/18/05
DUBLIN — Almost every day at noon, Belinda Stanley leaves her work station at the Laurens County Board of Education and drives to her grandparents' house for lunch. She rarely eats. She just wants to talk. Her route takes her past a concrete reminder of why she needs these "counseling sessions," as she calls them: the National Guard Armory where her husband, Ricky, reported for a year of duty in Iraq.
"I heard from him this morning," Belinda says as she steers her 1984 Delta 88 out of the parking lot. The front seat is littered with yesterday's mail, packets of half-eaten Pop-Tarts and other scraps of a hectic life.
|  | ||
|
MOST POPULAR STORIES
EMAIL THIS
PRINT THIS
MOST POPULARAt 34, she has two teenage daughters, a full-time job and a heaping plate of volunteer activities at church and school — not to mention two disabled sisters she helps care for. She has never been apart from her husband this long, and like hundreds of Guard spouses across the state, she is straining under the burden of going it alone.
"It was 3:15 when he called," she says, squinting at the road with bleary eyes. "He wanted to tell me there had been another bombing."
Belinda already knew. After Ricky departed for Iraq in May, she was so jittery she'd change the TV channel if she saw her girls watching the news. She'd flip to something safe like TV Land; once she flipped right to "Gunsmoke." In phone calls home, Ricky tried to settle her down, assuring her that by the time a fatality in Iraq made the news, the military already had notified next of kin.
She'd heard about this latest bombing on a Macon station: four more Georgians obliterated on a road near Baghdad. What Belinda didn't know until Ricky phoned was that he had been on that road the day before, delivering supplies — and that he was part of a detail sent to pick up the pieces of the mangled Humvee.
"He told me that he saw things no person should have to see," Belinda says.
Ricky started to go into the grisly particulars, but she stopped him. She didn't want to know.
The Delta 88 pulls up at a ranch house where Belinda's grandfather sits in the carport smoking. She greets him, then lets herself in the side door and enters a kitchen where a window air conditioner struggles against the late summer swelter.
A woman in a housecoat pulls out a chair at the breakfast table. "Here," she says, "sit down and tell me about it."
Four months into her husband's deployment, Belinda Stanley spends her days tethered to a telephone. If she isn't running the switchboard at the office, she's on the cellphone with her daughters or a member of her sprawling family. At her home, in the countryside west of Dublin, she rigged her bedroom with four phones to make sure she'd wake up when Ricky calls from Iraq in the middle of the night. When they all go off together, their various ring tones sound like the babble of electronic turkeys.
Belinda begins her days by getting their girls ready for classes at West Laurens Middle School. Ra'Teema, 14, is a basketball player and honors student who wants to be an ob-gyn. Chazmine, 13, is a cheerleader who loves horses and wants to be a veterinarian. Ricky used to help his wife send them off to school after he finished his shift as overnight shipping supervisor at the YKK aluminum products plant in Dublin. Now he's a distant voice asking about their grades and potential boyfriends.
It's Wednesday morning, and Belinda doesn't feel like doing much of anything. She has a sinus headache, one of many she has suffered lately.
Despite her hoarse voice and sniffly nose, she ferries the girls to school and arrives by 8 at the Board of Education, where she's the receptionist. She works behind a plexiglass window, beside a filing cabinet topped with family photos and a pair of guardian angel figurines.
Belinda needs all the heavenly help she can get this morning. A pump has blown out, and there's no water at the high school or middle school. She dashes off an announcement for the local media that classes are canceled and then, kneading her brow, braces for the lines to light up. It doesn't take long.
Half the parents in Laurens County call to find out what's going on. Belinda handles the onslaught smoothly — although one man throws her off-stride.
"Ooooh, he was cussin'?,?" she says. "He didn't believe that we were having an electrical problem. He said he'd heard there was a terrorist attack at the high school."
One other recent caller took Belinda aback even more. When he identified himself as being with the U.S. Army, she panicked and thought of all the Georgia families who have received the worst possible news from military representatives this summer. This one was only a recruiter who wanted information.
Belinda is aware that her husband's deployment has thrown her into an emotional state that makes her co-workers cautious around her.
"Sometimes I don't know what to say to her," says Latonia Smith, a longtime friend in accounts payable. "I want to ask about Ricky and how she's doing, but I don't want to upset her. We worry about her."
Her colleagues showed their concern last month when Georgia observed a moment of silence for its recent war dead. Returning from lunch, Belinda was asked to step into the boardroom, where the entire staff was waiting for her. An associate superintendent — a former Guard member — spoke about the sacrifices of soldiers and their families and then asked Belinda if she wanted to say anything.
She couldn't. She was crying.
Belinda appreciated the gesture, but she tries to deal with Ricky's absence by not dwelling on it. She has resolved to distract herself with ceaseless activity.
After work, she drives to West Laurens High and begins what she calls her second job: coaching the junior varsity cheerleaders. On this night, that isn't enough. After practice, she walks next-door to her daughters' middle school and takes on a third job.
A few minutes before the first meeting of the Parent Teacher Organization, Belinda agrees without hesitation to head the group's annual membership drive. The PTO president, Christy Clements, hands her a thick stack of forms and a pep talk. "I want you to drive that membership like a big ol' truck."
"I'm going to try," Belinda says. "I'm going to stay as busy as I can to make this year go by."
Clements nudges her. "Take a Valium every night and you'll be OK."
Belinda has other prescriptions for peace of mind — like visiting with her grandparents.
The following day at lunch, she finds herself once again at their table talking about anything and everything. Belinda is the oldest of nine children. This is her father's side of the family: Thomas Pooler, her grandfather, a retired Baptist minister she calls "Rev"; his wife, Johnnie Mae, who joins in when she isn't watching her favorite soap opera; and Belinda's stepmother, Faye Ray, who usually plays shrink in this daily therapy session.
"What's going on?" she asks Belinda.
"Chaz is going to be 13 this weekend. She wants a SpongeBob bedroom set."
Faye makes a face. "That SpongeBob gets on my nerves."
"I'm not going to buy it. She'll be too big for SpongeBob in a year or two. She's growing up. Now she wants to go to a Bow Wow concert."
It's Rev's turn to make a face. "What's that? Rap?"
Belinda laughs. "Ricky said no, she's not old enough for that music. He thinks they're still 9 or 10. Well, 'Teema's gonna be old enough to drive a car by the time he gets back."
Belinda has a cellphone in her lap and fidgets with it constantly.
"Sorry," she says, stifling a yawn. "I woke up last night at 3:15. That's when Ricky usually calls."
"You been having dreams?" Faye asks.
"No, but Ricky's father, he has dreams all the time."
Maybe it's hereditary. Ricky had nightmares about fighting before he left for Iraq, and his father, Carnell Stanley, a brickmason and farmer who is very close to his son, seems to have picked them up where he left off.
"He dreamed he was fighting in Iraq with his son," Belinda says, "and Ricky yelled out, 'Watch out, Daddy!' Mr. Carnell was kicking the covers, and he rolled out of bed and cut his arm on the nightstand. That's his war wound. He's proud of it."
Rev feels a sermon coming on and rears up in his seat. "They ought to stop that war. The only reason they're blowing up people is that we're over there. It wouldn't be happening if Bush hadn't dipped his blip in it. What a bunch of baloney."
Dipped his blip? Belinda just shakes her head.
"But those suicide bombers," Rev continues, "they think they're going to heaven doing that. But they're going straight to hell, just like Saddam."
Belinda picks up her cellphone and looks at the screen.
"I think this is bothering me more than anytime since Ricky left," she says. "After he left, I was so lonely that I asked the girls if they'd come in and sleep with me. They're like: 'No, Mama, we're too big.' Now they're back in school and I have no one to talk to but y'all."
Faye nods her head sympathetically.
"I can't remember the last full night of sleep I got," Belinda says. "Most nights we just go home and eat pizza or fast food."
"You need to cook those children a meal once a week," Faye says.
"I don't have time."
Faye notices Belinda playing with the cellphone again. "You're flipping that phone like you're waiting for Ricky to call," she says.
"No, I don't expect him to be calling for a couple of days. He's on blackout because of the casualties." The military confiscates soldiers' cellphones until relatives are notified of a death.
Belinda drops the phone in her purse and rises wearily. "I reckon I better get back to work."
One day it all caves in on her.
Belinda returns from lunch, sits down at her computer and bursts into tears. Her co-workers ask what's wrong. Is it Ricky? Belinda says nothing except that she has to leave.
Ron Kea, the associate superintendent, doesn't press her. "None of us here can really know the stress she's under," he says.
It has been a particularly difficult week for Belinda. Tomorrow is her late mother's birthday, which always leaves her blue. And her mother's mother keeps calling to ask for help with Belinda's sisters, who have muscular dystrophy. Belinda wanted to place them in a group home before Ricky left, but her grandmother wouldn't hear of it, so caring for them has become yet another responsibility.
Above all, she's worried about Ricky. Her 36-year-old husband is a gentle, deeply religious soul who wrestles with the moral dimensions of war. He joined the Guard out of high school and has always enjoyed helping out during natural disasters like last year's hurricanes. Iraq is different.
Ricky drives supply trucks for the 148th Support Battalion and has been on numerous missions along roads where Georgians have died in clusters. He has had close calls himself. In late July, he made a supply run to Camp Anaconda, an installation that soldiers have nicknamed Mortaritaville, and couldn't return to his base near the Baghdad airport for five days because patrols kept finding bombs in the road. Mortaritaville lived up to its name; there was so much incoming fire that Ricky couldn't sleep for more than a couple of hours without having to roll out of his cot, grab his rifle and head for a bunker.
After she leaves work, Belinda drives straight home and collapses on the sofa. Then the phones start ringing. It's Ricky. They talk off and on until the next morning — five calls totaling more than seven hours.
Ricky tells his wife that he's utterly exhausted. He has acid reflux and has lost 25 pounds. He's suffering from constant headaches and has an appointment to see a doctor about his blood pressure.
All in all, he's sick of Iraq and doesn't understand why U.S. troops need to be there. "I'm going to lose my mind if I don't get out of here," he tells her.
In 12 years of marriage, Belinda has never heard him so despondent. But she doesn't know what to say anymore. She's every bit as sick and tired as he is.
At work the next day, Belinda still doesn't seem herself. She's distant, unsmiling, short. Latonia Smith has never seen her like this at the office.
It's a cheerleading day, so Belinda leaves work an hour early to drive to the high school for practice. As she walks into the cafeteria, her face still blank, the girls can tell something is wrong.
"Do you have a headache, Miss Belinda?" one of them asks.
"Are you getting enough sleep?" says another.
Belinda claims she's OK and instructs them to launch into their first cheer:
All across the nation, there's a Raiders sensation
That makes you want to sliiiiiiide, and move from side to side.
She offers a terse critique. "That looked good, but it didn't sound good. You need both."
But as the afternoon wears on, a wondrous thing happens. Maybe it's the cheerleaders and their relentless playing around. Maybe it's her oldest daughter showing up after school with the proud tidings that she earned an A in earth science.
Maybe it's just the memories this place evokes. Belinda and Ricky met at West Laurens. She was one of the cutest cheerleaders around; he was a well-liked basketball and football player.
She was wary of his boyish exuberance at first, the way he hung around her and kept asking, "Can I just touch you?" He coined a nickname for her — "Boonkie" — and used it until she wondered whether he even remembered her Christian name. But when she relented and started dating him, they became inseparable, inevitable.
Maybe the people and places and things she loves simply crowd out her anxieties. Because an hour into practice, the old cheerful, multitasking Belinda is back. While her daughter sits beside her doing homework, Belinda makes a beauty salon appointment on her cellphone and keeps an eye on her squad as they run through another cheer.
"Much better," she tells them. "But none of you has rotten teeth, so I want to see you open your mouths and smile."
For the first time in hours, she's wearing a smile herself.
The first JV football game is over, and Belinda is lead-footing it home, stopping only to buy some cream of chicken soup. Dinner has to be quick. She wants to make a revival at 7:30.
But church will fall by the wayside tonight.
At home, Belinda dumps the soup into a saucepan, adds some frozen chicken and puts it on the stove. Her daughters drift into the kitchen after a while and fix their own plates. They're well-mannered girls who help out around the house and can sense when their mother is overwhelmed. They leave her alone tonight.
Belinda sinks into the sofa, turns on the TV and floats downstream with an episode of "Good Times," a sitcom she remembers fondly from her childhood.
"People ask me how I'm getting through all this," she says. "Well, I pray a lot. And I watch TV Land."
The cellphone keeps ringing: relatives, friends, not Ricky. Belinda stares at the screen and absent-mindedly hugs a throw pillow tight to her chest. Sometimes she chews on the corner, like Linus with his blanket. When she isn't laughing at the TV, a shadow of sadness falls across her face.
It's getting late. "Girls, have you taken your baths?" Belinda calls out to the back of the house.
This is the time of night Ricky sometimes phones home to speak with Chaz and Ra'Teema. They talk about school and church and sports. They never talk about war. The girls know how their father feels; he has told them that he does not want to see them in the military.
Ricky is scheduled to return home for a two-week leave in late October. Chaz wants to show him how much she has learned about riding horses. Ra'Teema will beg him to erect a new basketball goal so she can take him with that between-the-legs dribble he taught her before he went away.
But October seems so distant. For now, the girls have a nightly ritual to bring them closer to their dad.
Each, in her separate room, kneels beside the bed and recites a prayer Ricky taught them before he left for the Middle East: "Lord, dispatch angels to watch over my father and all the troops in Iraq, and bring them home safe and sound."
Chaz, kneeling over her new SpongeBob bedspread, adds another line.
"Dear Lord," she prays, "please don't let my father run over a bomb."
Services »
