Page 19 of Longing for Liberty
“Watch out,” I warned. “They might know Spanish too.”
“No, they don’t,” Gabriela assured me. “Because when I said something on the bus to a new girl who doesn’t know very much English yet, the boys told me to go back to Mexico.”
I bristled and looked at Paola, both of us frowning.
Summer huffed. “And I told him she is from America just like him, and he should go back to the neanderthal cave.”
Oh, dear.
Paola pinched the bridge of her nose, trying not to laugh, but I was disturbed.
“Honey, I want to talk to you about this more, later, okay? Kids shouldn’t be talking like that and being mean to each other. Let me talk to Mrs. Paola. You guys go play.”
The girls ran off with the container, and I looked at Paola.
“Did you know about that?”
She shook her head. “Tale as old as time.”
I scoffed, my foot bouncing in its flip-flop as I rubbed Asher’s back. “I’m going to talk to the bus driver. And the teacher. I’m not having that.”
She gave me a small smile, and I stewed as we sat there finishing our drinks. I squatted and pushed my hand into the icy cooler, pulling out two more and popping them open for us.
“I’m serious about having Summer over for a weekend,” she told me, accepting the dark cherry can. “Only if it’s okay with you, of course.”
“Of course!” I took a drink. “I might come so I can learn too. Mine is rusty.”
“You all need to come to Panama with us when we go next summer to see my grandparents…well,ifwe go. Denari’s not so sure with everything he keeps hearing at work.”
My stomach turned a little, and I bounced in place as Asher wiggled. I knew things were bad after all of the protesting and disappearances, but with such little news I let myself hope that good people working for the government were trying to make things right behind the scenes.
“What has he heard?” Denari worked for the government after a stint in the Army. He and Jeremy spent a lot of time sitting out on either of our porches these days, talking.
She shook her head, and her gaze went unfocused as she watched the men playing. “He said there’s talk of changes…departments combining, layoffs. Hundreds of contracts expiring and not being renewed. Lots of secretive projects with huge budgets. Just weird stuff that they can’t make sense of.”
Jeremy had been quieter than usual lately, lost in thought a lot. I knew he didn’t want to stress me out since I had my hands full. I knew all of the big news, and that was all bad enough to digest and deal with. But whatever rumors Jeremy’s brother Aidan and Denari were hearing through their federal contacts must have been really disturbing to have both of these normally chill, gregarious men in their feelings so much lately.
Did I want to know? I should have. Ireallyshould have. Maybe if I’d been better informed, I would have insisted on leaving sooner. Maybe I could have talked Paola and Denari into leaving, too. Instead, I stuck my head in the sand, and I hoped for the best.
SEVEN
STATE NEWS: LAST CELL OF ANTI-STATE TERROR ORGANIZATION HAS BEEN ROOTED OUT AND DESTROYED IN COMMUNITY FOUR!
Days passedwithout seeing the Secretary.
I watched the mass of roses change each day, falling open to reveal their insides, reckless in their immodesty. Until one day they were drooping, heads heavy, a sad sight of dead petals, dry and crackly on the glass surface of the table. I stared at them for a long time, feeling heavy, as if they were a direct reflection of lost things, before I threw them away.
Each day a breakfast awaited me. Like day one, I ate until I was full and then came back throughout the day to eat more. Every bite had me wishing I could take it and share it. Every bite made me wonder why some should nearly starve while others had a belly full. Every bite was a reminder that Amos Fitzhugh and I were worlds apart. Still, I couldn’t help but be grateful, because with every bite I felt a little stronger. A little more energy.
Too bad my newly acquired strength and energy didn’t equate to my feet feeling less sore. I found myself stopping frequently to roll my ankles and lean against something to take the pressure off my feet for a moment. Each year got a little harder to be on my feet all day in heels with no support. As I neared thirty-six, the pain became a daily part of my life. But I wouldn’t let myself sit while at work. And I never stopped. My parents would be proud: my mom, a middle school social studies teacher, and my dad, an Air Force veteran killed in a car accident a year after he retired. I’d been pregnant with Summer, so he never got to meet any of his grandkids. I had no siblings.
I’d been close with my mom and thought about her a lot lately, missing her and desperately wishing I could talk to her. We’d always been open about everything; nothing was TMI for her. I told her every single gross thing that happened during my pregnancies, and we’d have animated conversations about the wonders of the female body. On days like today when I felt like a total wimp, I yearned to hear her say, “Oh, yes, I started to feel changes in my mid-thirties…” I wanted to feel normal. I missed being able to talk about…well, anything.
As I removed the Secretary’s bedsheets that morning, a large inhale had me taking in the rich, masculine scents of Fitzhugh, imagining him sprawled here in sleep. An unexpected tingle went through my body, landing with warmth between my legs. I stilled for a moment before shifting in place, pressing my thighs together for a second before realizing that made it worse.
During the first few years after the bombs and losing the children, my libido had tanked. Jeremy, saint that he was, never once made me feel bad for not being in the mood. I’d been a zombie, and his spirits were low too. Slowly, though it was never the same as it had been before, I began making an effort to regain our physical intimacy. It was strange at first, not having any privacy and knowing State Force could look in our windows at any moment. It proved that people could acclimate to anything.
But I’d been feeling this a lot lately…randomly turned on throughout the day. Probably just my age and hormones, and the fact that I was getting adequate nutrition again, but the timing was not great.
