Page 47 of The Burning
Viviana’s legs wrapped around my waist. Fuck did holding her hurt, but I ignored the screaming of my muscles. I knew I shouldn’t have lifted the plants, or the chairs, but at the time it felt so good to have my strength back. I was not used to this weak body yet; I refused to ever get fully used to it.
“Who told you I wasn’t coming?” I asked her, pointing at her dad, who had now moved on to liquor, straight from the bottle. “I told him I would be late.” I dipped her body down and she squealed. I barely noticed the pain.
The youngest boy, Julien, had been waving to me from near the back fence for a minute before I noticed. I waved back as his sister continued wiggling in my arms. Julien didn’t seem to want to leave the bubble machine he was playing with. I couldn’t blame him. A stream of fresh bubbles wafted past his face, a few catching on the dark curls hanging down his forehead. He laughed and I took a relaxed breath, watching the happiness on their youthful faces. Then I looked back over at Mendoza, a father who had even more demons than I did. I knew these kids’ lives weren’t always this full of laughter and sunlight. There were mostly dark and stormy nights, with the stress of unpaid bills and their dad’s on-and-off absence due to the Army.
When parents come in and out of their kids’ lives, it impacts them. I knew some of the best, strongest parents who did everything they could right, and I still saw the difference in their family when they would come back from deployment. You adjusted to life a certain way and then they came back and threw things off balance and a new routine began. No matter how happy the soldier’s family would be to have them home again, the transition was always a struggle that no one really talked about, and it was fucking complicated. Plus, now they had a whole new beast to deal with in his PTSD episodes. His bandaged hand was a fresh reminder for us all.
“They’re so messy.” Viviana pointed to a group of five soldiers I didn’t seem to recognize, beers in their hands, rowdy before the sun was even down. She was too mature for her age, but with her mom’s strength and fearlessness to call people out, even adults, I didn’t worry much about her.
I hated being around fuckers like them. Lawson, he was almost as bad as Jones and the rest of the rednecks in our platoon. I was one of two black men, Mendoza was the only Hispanic, and the rest were white dudes from Boston, Alabama, Kentucky. Some were cool as hell, some not so much.
I found it funny that none of them noticed me staring at their backs. They didn’t feel eyes on them like a good soldier should. It never really turned off, that instinct. Not for me, anyway.
“I was working on my present for the baby,” I whispered into her ear.
“What’s the present?” she whispered back, not so subtly.
“You can’t tell anyone, okay?”
While I waited for her to agree, we both looked at her oldest brother, Manuel, or little Manny, as we all called him. Standing there, he was the opposite of his sister’s sweet, toothless smile. He met me with a stone expression. He liked me, too, but he wasn’t affectionate like Viviana. Mendoza had told me many, many times that little Manny felt his absence during deployments most of all. More than his wife Gloria, even. He looked like a spitting image of his father, dark hair, dark eyes, worry heavy on his mouth.
“Tell me, tell me!” Viviana finally said, her childish excitement loud and clear, and right in my ear. Thank fucking god I could barely hear out of the right one most of the time. Rocket blasts night after night would do that.
Little Manny couldn’t hide his smile any longer as his sister giggled. Gloria had walked over and joined us. She looked tired—beautiful, but like she needed to sit down and not move for hours. She was more made up than usual. I was used to midnight Gloria in her pajamas or sweats, panicked as her kids woke up from their father’s screams. In the sunny backyard, she was wearing ripped jeans and a black T-shirt tied up to show her stomach, a jacket around her waist. She had makeup on, a lot of it. Like she was trying to cover up her exhaustion.
She looked good, though; she always did. Half of the guys gave Mendoza shit for how hot his wife was and how hot he was not. When they wanted to know how he got her, their being high school sweethearts always came up, and people nodded jokingly.
She loved him, though; man, did she love him. I didn’t know if I had ever seen people love each other like they did. They were the definition of ride or die.
“I’m building a bed for the baby. A crib,” I told Gloria’s mini-me.
Gloria nodded at me, smiling at her kids. She was looking at Julien and speaking in Spanish.
“Can you make something for me?” Viviana asked.
Her mom and I laughed together. “You always want something, little girl,” her mom teased. “Don’t be a beggar.”
“What do you want me to make you?” I asked.
She thought about it and wiggled down out of my arms. “I don’t know. A bed? Or a princess chair?”
“Princess chair? Got it.”
“Martin! Get the fuck over here! Stop playing with the kids and come have a beer!” Mendoza yelled.
Mendoza’s daughter ran over to him, and I followed behind her. She climbed onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck and his heart around her finger.
“What’s up, man? About time you got here,” he said by way of fucking with me.
“I was at the market,” I said, and his face changed.
“You still go there?”
I paused, looking around. No one except Elodie could have heard us if they tried. But to be honest, she would need to get used to this kind of shit once her man came home, because he would be bringing a lot of baggage with him. I wouldn’t say this to him or her, but his getting her pregnant was a bad fucking idea. For her, mostly, but also for him—he could barely take care of his own damn self, let alone a wife and a baby.
When Phillips told me how they got married fast, I lost my shit. I thought he was joking, that he met this hot French girl online and was going to just date her briefly as an online sex thing, like most dating that happened during deployment. The last thing I expected was for him to get her pregnant and move her across the world to Georgia.
I wasn’t trying to be a dick, but it was way too soon for him to have a baby. He was a baby himself.
