Page 18 of Longing for Liberty
“Well, your stupid accident burned my dinner,” the guy said.
“We’ll share some of our rations,” Jeremy suggested.
“That’s not the point,” the guy said. He made an aggressive move to grab his wife’s wrist, but when she flinched away, I instinctively moved to stand in front of her. The guy bucked up, stepping into my face.
“Mind your own business, lady.” He glowered down at me, and I started shaking as the ashes stirred within my soul.
“Libby,” Jeremy said softly. I realized I was standing tall and scowling back at the kid. I quickly checked my face and loosened my posture to my usual meek self.
“We’re a community,” I said gently. “And we’re here to help each other.”
“Well, we don’t need your handouts.” He reached around me and grabbed the girl by the arm, yanking her to her feet.
“Are you going to take care of this?” the older forceman asked the husband.
“Yes, sir, I’ve got it,” the husband assured him, souring my stomach.
“Good, because we can’t have her disturbing the peace again. Let us know if we need to put her in the stockades.”
I gritted my teeth hard as the husband nodded at the forcemen and pulled his young wife into the house like a naughty child, slamming the door behind them. But the look the girl had sent me over her shoulder, begging me for help, would haunt me.
“That’s enough,” the enforcer said to all of us. “Go back to your business.”
Without a goodbye to Rebecca or Stanley, Jeremy took my hand, and we went home in silence like everyone else.
I wondered if any of our neighbors had the same urge I did at that moment to let loose a primal scream of rage.
All night, I thought about a time when we lived in a different kind of neighborhood. Our last Fourth of July. It seemed so distant now, like just another fictional delusion.
* * *
“Cheers to gettingto have a drink together!” I’d raised my pineapple hard seltzer and tapped it against Paola’s raised mango one, and we both let out elatedWoosbefore drinking. In the past four years as neighbors with the Baker family, one or the other of us had always been pregnant. Now we stood in our cul-de-sac with babes—hers on her hip, mine strapped to my chest—having a drink together in red folding camp chairs under a pop-up canopy that looked unstable.
The sun was hot that day, bouncing off the asphalt where the guys played basketball. Denari and Jeremy took turns lifting the kids so they could “slam dunk” the balls. Half the time, they still missed from a foot away. We were highly amused. The sun glistened off Denari’s sweat-slicked dark skin, and Jeremy’s shoulders were already turning red.
“Babe!” I called. “Let me reapply the sunscreen!”
“Nah! I need to get my base tan!”
Denari had a good laugh at this, and Paola rolled her eyes, amused. The men turned on a sprinkler in the yard, and we laughed more watching the kids run around screaming, especially when the Baker toddler’s diaper filled with water and he waddled with his little butt crack showing.
“Mommy! Mommy!” Summer was out of breath as she came to a skidding halt beside me with Gabriela right behind her. Both girls were holding their dolls. “Can we have watermelon now?”
“Of course, honey.” I raised the lid on a container for them.
“Don’t eat the whole thing, Gabby!” Paola scolded. “It’s for everyone.”
“There’s plenty,” I told Gabby with a wink.
“Mommy,” Summer said, slurping down a chunk. “Miss Pow-la said she would teach me Español.”
“Oh, really?” I raised my eyebrows at Paola. “That’s so nice of her.”
“Yeah, she said if I came to stay one weekend, I could learn because she would only talk to me in Español the whole time.”
“Nothing like immersion learning,” I told Summer, smoothing down her braid. “It’s the best way.”
Gabriela piped up. “And we can speak Spanish at recess so the boys won’t know what we’re saying.”
