This was supposed to be a super ambitious chapter with tons of plot points moving along, but that didn't work out at all! So, here's what I ended up with. If you're still reading this, thank you! If you still want to continue reading this after you're done with this chapter, thank you even more.
Saigon 1972
"Anna, what did my dad look like?"
My son thirsts for his father and I'm torn between telling him all of these wonderful things about Soda or telling him the truth. I screw my courage and bite my tongue, "look in the mirror." I tell him, closing my eyes.
He stares at himself in the mirror, squinting as if he can conjure up his father with the tightening of his eyelids.
I get ready for bed. Putting Patrick to bed is an exercise maternal restraint, for some reason, even if he's calm and almost tired throughout the day, the moment I mention that it's bedtime, energy and attitude shoots out of him like dragon breath's. It's at night when I know he's mine.
That night, I order him to bed, preparing myself for the shouts and blabbered arguments, when I hear nothing.
I quickly walk into the front room, Patrick is still looking at his reflection. I don't think I ever longed for or hated Soda more.
It's like pulling dick outta a whore's mouth to get Soda to give up the wheel, but not on this return trip. "Drive us home babes, I ain't in no condition," he throws the keys over the hood of our truck and I have to jump up to grab them. Cringing as a large blood clot falls out of my vagina and onto the pad.
It's a line I've heard from him before, accompanied with a set my world of fire grins that ripples through the sallow layers of skin, bone and muscles 'til it reached deep inside of me. Even blood clots and cramps can't dim the spark this man of mine unleashes with his smile.
Watching Soda's grin spread suggestively across his face, 'til I'm sure it ain't just Auntie Flo that's making my Maxi pad moist, I finally get how them crazy ass Manson girls coulda killed for Charlie, cause when Soda gives me one of those grins, I'd burn the Vatican in an inferno of unholy smoke if that will keep that smile on his face.
Reflexively my thumb draws to my first finger to make the sign of the cross. Though I have walked on the wild side at my heart I'm still the little girl in Catechism Class, begging God for forgiveness and grace that is mine as His child and yet feels so far away.
But this time I know the grin ain't really for me, at least not all of it, part of it belongs to Patrick. I'm territorial when it comes to Soda, not afraid to get my hands dirty to protect what's mine. But for Patrick, I'll make an exception. For Patrick, I'll share.
"The worst thing I ever did in Nam had nothin' to do with killin' people, but it was coming home; because while I came home to one family, I left another family behind." Every word is labored and he sounds a bit like Nana Hernandez when she tried to speak in English. He's pushing the words out like a woman giving birth and when he's done his eyes blink in fear and horror, like he just saw that he gave birth to a two-headed monster. He puts his thumb in his mouth and bites down hard, but no blood comes and he keeps on talking.
Sodapop Curtis has done the damn impossible, he shuts me up. I'm slacked jawed and speechless. I feel the prick of tear moisten my eye, it's been so long since I cried, so long since I felt anything. What the hell am I supposed to say? I'm sorry? Those words would be like a surgeon using a butter knife to cut through flesh and bone. His baby is probably dead, I think to myself, his baby is probably dead and he'll never know it.
My heart crumbles into a million pieces and drops into the cesspool of my gut. Everything about him oozes pain, sweat pours from his armpits, a small bit of ketchup gets caught in his beard and he folds his hands, almost like he's praying, before violently yanking his hands apart and gripping the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles turn translucent.
We pass a car on fire pulled to the side of the road. The fire is controlled and no one looks hurt. Soda watches for a split second. He grabs my arm, I feel his fingernails dig past my long sleeved shirt and into my skin.
"Soda? You okay, honey?" My normal raspy voice high pitched. He turns to me, embarrassed and shrugs, "huh, what?" He goes back to looking at the photo of Patrick.
"He's adorable," I lean towards Soda, and he is. The picture is sorta faded, but you can see enough to of him to see that's a damn gorgeous child and he's Soda son. Even with the crappy lighting I can see Soda's features and the two of us can't stop looking at this beautiful boy.
Soda's been examining the picture from every angle, holding it up to different lights, trying to see something new.
"Does he look happy, Mary?" he asks in a worried tone, the first time he has been anything other than happy or emotional since we found out about Patrick.
Grinning, I meet his eyes through the rearview mirror, "he's just like you, baby." I'm so damn happy that my words are slurred on my tongue like I'm drunk.
"That's not what I asked." Soda says softly, biting the bottom of his lip as we enter through a tunnel.
I'm suspended from school and it's weird. In Vietnam, we didn't have suspension; the teacher smacked you if you misbehaved. Anna took me out of school because she said I shouldn't be treated like that. She taught me at home. Some people think it might be fun to have your mom teach you, but if she's as strict as Anna, it's not.
At first, I thought being suspended would be like a vacation, I'd ride my bike, drink slurpies at 2:00 in the afternoon while everyone else was in school. But my teacher gave me a whole folder of homework to do and Mrs. Hansen gave me another assignment, to 'think about what I did,' which is the dumbest homework assignment ever.
Anna was in the kitchen making my supper when I told her what happened to me. With Uncle working most of the time, the two of us have the apartment all to ourselves. I like it, we talk a lot, she helps me with my homework and we watch T.V. together. Lately we've been watching a lot of T.V. but I'm not complaining because there sure are some good shows on.
"Kicked out of the fourth grade?! Now I have proof you're mine." She tries to narrow her eyes and glare at me so she looks like a rattle snake, but she turns her head away and I can see that she's trying not to laugh. I don't get it, Anna is smart she went to college in Saigon for a while before the war. I couldn't imagine her getting kicked out of the fourth grade.
"I wasn't kicked out, I was suspended." I said the last word in my language because it's a hard word to pronounce in English.
"What's this other boy's punishment?" She poured Kraft Macaroni and Cheese into the boiling water. She smiles, to let me know that she's not mad at me, but I didn't think she would be. I really have to mess up to make Anna mad at me, like when I made fun of stupid Minh.
I shrugged, and put my week worth of homework on our kitchen table. "He didn't get punished."
It was only then that Anna looked up from the water, her face goes from calm to hot and smoldering.
"How the hell did he not get punished? He attacked you first!" Her voice rises above the boiling water.
She speaks three languages fluently and knows a bit of Chinese. She knows pretty much everything about anything, but when it comes to school suspensions she's just as lost as I am.
I sigh, "he didn't hurt me, I punched him." I try to hide the grin as I think of Hector's shock when my fist made contact with his nose. I lean over her pot, getting close enough to realize that wasn't such a great idea when the steam hits my face.
Anna stirs the pot so hard that her wooden spatula keeps on banging against the side of the pot.
"There's more than one way to hurt someone." She pulls my hair back from my forehead and looks me straight in the eyes. Her hand is hot from the steam, but she doesn't hurt me.
I straddle the man who, thanks to the blessed hands of an Albino chaplain, is my husband, and sigh.
The joyless expression on both of our faces offers the perfect finishing touches to our drab bedroom.
"You want to do this or not?" I want to give us an out, but he points to his erection and nods. He makes no effort to engage me, doesn't grab my breasts or even my hips. I rub against him in a circular motion, doing all the work, as usual, while he lies there completely impassive and uninterested. It's only his erection that tells me that he's alive. If barely.
I can barely contain my annoyance, "like jacking an icicle up in here," I mutter under my breath in English. Phuc's English consists of nothing more than military terms and subservient suck up phrases, "yes sir, Mr. General Manager, I happy to work 15 hours a day with no over time pay!" served with an obliging white teeth smile and tone deferential and submissive, so I know he won't understand what I'm saying.
It's hard to imagine my husband was once a relatively high ranking military official. This country breaks down proud men into a palpable paste suitable for creating a papier-mâché version of their former selves, 'the happy Oriental' as it were.
Something inside me wilts when I see his latent expression. I crave control, but only when the other person has power to take. Taking from someone who has nothing to give doesn't make powerful, it makes me a thief.
He shows no change of expression, everything about him, from the tip of his short, stubbed eyelashes to the limp hair sprouting out of his nostrils is dormant.
A quote by Anais Nin slumbers through me, I often think of poetry and literature during bad sex, a way of keeping at least part of me satisfied, "I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
I have chosen a man who compels me to suffer through premature ejaculation, who makes enormous demands on me and who is so doubtful he makes Descartes the image of certainty.
At supper, his gopher hands with their slender fingers grabbed onto my waist, and his thin lips red and moist whispers forcefully 'tonight.' It's the only words he has spoken to me besides a cursory hello since he arrived home tonight. So here we are, 'tonight,' trying to make love with the awkwardness of two virgins.
I let out a yawn and the tingled sensation that runs from my chest to my privates is the closest I've come to an orgasm in months. I curve my back and my head falls right on a coiled spring jutting from under the cheap mattress they gave us when we first moved to this cowboy limp-cock hellhole. A shiver snaps through my spine and bouncing my back against the springs, feeling every coil thrust against naked skin that spikes with goosebumps, I pray that today I will feel. To feel something other than a heavy emptiness that is already beginning to lick me.
Damnit, if he can't satisfy me, at least I can satisfy myself.
I let out another yawn, a dramatic one, and hope to rile him, because what guy wants to think that he's not, as I used to tell the parade of GIs who would eat my pussy, "the number one lover ever!" With every bat of my eyelash my accent grew thicker and thicker, my I.Q. lower and lower, sometimes, for good measure I'd purposely mess up the order of the words, "lover number one ever!" (giggle, giggle, giggle).
Funny thing, they all seemed to believe me.
I grind against him as hard as I can, desperate something, even if it's a phantom of pleasure because that would be so much better than the deep waves of numbness that have been filling through every pore of my body since I came to this country.
The springs move up and down and from side to side bouncing and jutting up. I bite my thumbnail, feeling the ridged cuticle against my un-stimulated tongue and try to slow down, but the bed springs shake and squawk like one-hundred untuned violins. My son plays the violin in orchestra at school. He's not good. For a second, I worry that my son can hear and that he knows exactly what we are doing.
Even the bed mocks us.
I move faster.
"Slow down Bian," his voice so lethargic that it melts whatever pseudo orgasmic thrill I created for myself. With that, the springs stop squeaking and I slow down because I don't feel like dragging his five-inch dick carcass to the hospital if he has a heart attack.
Leaning towards him, smelling the chicken stock broth I made for his supper dangle off his tongue, I look right into his lifeless eyes, "my name is Anna, don't you ever fucking call me Bian." My voice is as low and ice cold as his love.
I left behind Bian in the village years ago, she's not even a part of me anymore.
I slap his warm, sunken cheek, feeling a tiny trickle of sweat against my palm. Not hard, but I'm taken aback by my own movement. I need to be in control at all times, and being in control means knowing exactly how my body and mind will react, my son and I are alive because I've always think two steps ahead.
My dominatrix personality aside, I can't bite the hand the feeds us, or slap the face which pays our rent, but my hand operating on its own rhythm, reached out before I could realize what I was doing.
I pull back, I'm not worried that he'll hit me, part of me wants him to. To know that I can still bring out the warped essence deep inside us all. The masochist in me is tempered and my mind spins a million threads of thought as I try to guess Phuc's reaction and how I can play it to Patrick's advantage.
As I'm already plotting my mood, something inside of him breaks open and for the first time I don't feel like a nurse giving a geriatric patient his last 'happy moment' before he flops over and dies.
It's the slap which juts him out of his stupor, and awakens a spark of passion in him. I'm a fucking idiot, of course he's one of those guys who gets off on being slapped and punched, it's the whole military thing. Lot of my guys got off on my slapping them during sex, reminded them of their mothers. Sick fucks. A barely contained grin spreads across my lips. The sick guys always turned me on the most, I knew them. I'm one of them.
Guys like Soda Curtis. My mouth opens slightly and Phuc gives me a dented grin, thinking my O mouth is meant for him. The jaws of orgasmic reminiscence snap shut, and a small piece of bile slides up and down my parched throat. Both the unshackled expression and the bile belong to Soda.
For the first time Phuc finally decides to cut the limp dick act; his fingers, forceful squeezes my breast, pulling me towards him and nibbling on my collarbone. He bites me. A rush breaks through skin and I cry out, needing more. His square jaw is firm and I rub my hand on it, a thrill going up my arms a thrill that he owns.
Hallelujah he can still fuck.
The bed spring penetrates every inch of my body, my energy is bouncing, my mouth opens wide enough to hold an entire coil.
"Again" he says softly, eyeing my hand.
I slap him harder, hoping that he'll continue to pay me back. I am a greedy lover.
Not to mention, it's fun slapping him.
I ride him hard, lost in my own passion.
But his eyes roll back slightly and then close. He makes an 'uh,' sound and then dead silence.
The only sound is my breathing and the bed springs. For a second filled with uncommon dread and wanton titillation and above all a feeling of freedom.
He's dead. A thorned smile of twisted desire spreads across my face. I'm about to face the sickest part of me, yet instead of shying away I feel every molecule in my body open up to welcome her home. My blood laps around my bones. I shiver.
I never fucked a dead guy before, and there is something sick and deep inside of me that feels the blood rush into my privates thinking of breaking the ultimate taboo.
It's not that I have a particular thirst for necrophilia, but the last eight months of my life have been so fucking bland that I'm itching to cut off the veil of normalcy and decency that's been shrouded on me ever since I became a wife and moved to Oklahoma.
Diving fully into the pit of darkness is so much better than wading in the shores of blandness; those sharks that everyone else is afraid of? I know them too.
Then I hear snoring.
Eyes rolling to the back of my head I can't help but let out a laugh bitter and cold at the absurdity of it all, to have some guy fall asleep while still inside of me. I guess Phuc does know how to fuck me after all.
I squeeze myself in bed next to him. I look at him in all of his middle-aged blandness and I swallow hard. I pull the covers over him, he prefers the covers; I always preferred the open elements hitting my body, taking in the heat and the cold as it comes, refusing to hide from anything.
But what does it say about me that he fell asleep on me? I think as I push the tip of my thumbnail against my tongue. I try not to let it get to me; try not to think what it says about my own desirability.
I grind against the springs, trying to feel something to counter the doubt which cuts through me. I feel nothing.
I shake the self-pity off and change into the sexiest outfit I have, except for my naked body, and look at myself in the mirror, pathetic and desperate for affirmation.
How pathetic is this? I'm 32 and I'm seeking validation from a short piece of fabric, I feel like a common gutter trash hooker. I never needed to do that before.
I know I'm desirable, I know I have something that no one else does, everyone knows it, but why doesn't he? What's wrong with him?
Everyone tells me I should be grateful for him, that it was his military connections that got my son out of Vietnam, and I'm beyond grateful that my son has an opportunity to grow up in a place where being an American is a boon and not a danger.
But I was the one who got my son out of that country, I did everything I could to give my son a safe and normal childhood in a place that wasn't safe and where his father's blood cursing through him made him abnormal. Yes, I'm grateful for Phuc's connections, but even more grateful that I had the perseverance to save my son.
Why do people think I should just decimate half my brain cells because I'm now a Mrs.?
He should be fucking grateful for me. He should be grateful that I even gave him a second look, I can have any man in the world, and I stuck by him and no matter how grossed out and numbed I am by the servile savant who sleeps next to me, I don't look at another man, I am the dutiful Vietnamese housewife and I fucking hate it.
When I married him, I gave him my hand and my sexuality. It was to death do we part, and only now do I realize that a small part of me died the minute he put his ring on my finger. That the very act of tying myself in holy matrimony to another person, especially someone like General Phuc meant ensnaring myself in the locks of normalcy that I have clawed my way against since I was a little girl.
I quickly turn away from the lost, if sexy, soul staring at me through the mirror. Bian would be so ashamed if she knew who I became.
In Vietnam, a lot of people believe in ghosts. I'm not saying that ghosts are real or not, but I know what it's like to be haunted. I just turned ten years old, but I already feel like I've lived a million lives and I've been a million different people, and maybe I have? Maybe there are a million little Patrick Nguyens that live inside of me, like those Russian nesting dolls? Open one up, and there pops another one. Except in my case instead of being rosy cheeked Russians with red scarves tied around their heads; they are blonde haired Vietnamese boys with Superman pajamas on.
Oh yeah, one of the ladies at the community center, bought me a bunch of toys and clothes because she said I reminded her so much of her own son. I never had a lot of toys growing up, when my birthday or Christmas or Tet came around, Anna would usually buy me books, if we had money. Told me she didn't want me to be a 'damned idiot.' But Mrs. Ford, she didn't care if I was a damned idiot because she bought me a Nerf football, a skateboard, an Evel Knievel doll and stunt cycle, a bunch of Hot Wheels, a Superman and G.I. Joe and a bunch of pencils and paper. Oh yeah, my bike too. Oh by the way, I'm a good drawer, Anna tells me that maybe I'll go to art school someday in Paris. So, I guess I'm going to art school in Paris someday. Anna likes French movies and books.
Anna hangs up all my drawings she tells me that that me and Egon Schiele are her favorite artists of all times. I have a hard time drawing hands, those fingers really trip me up, but Anna says that it's okay, that she can tell what I'm trying to draw.
Anna showed me a book of Egon Schiele paintings it was in French. I could tell Anna really liked Egon because she was talking very fast and Anna never talks fast.
"What do you think?" Anna's always asking me for my opinion on everything. I think it's because Anna has an opinion on everyone, so she thinks I'm the same way, but a lot of times, I just like to watch things just as they are without thinking.
Anna is always thinking.
I looked at his paintings, they're weird. Everyone looks creepy, like a starving ghost man.
"It's weird," I told my mom. To make my point I spun my finger around my ear like a crazy person.
She pulled me closer to her, "that's why I like them Patrick. He draws what people are feeling on the inside, but reflects it on the outside, he twists everything inside out." She wrings her hands and I look at the paintings. I still think they're weird.
Oh, another thing about me, we got a T.V and I love it! My teacher calls T.V. the idiot machine, and I guess she would know. Not that I would tell her that to her face, because even though she's dumber than dirt I wouldn't want to hurt her feelings. She might be mad at me. I don't like people being mad at me, even when I'm mad at them.
I'm obsessed with cartoons and Starsky and Hutch. Oh, and Baretta and Welcome Back Kotter. Those guys remind me of my class. When I first moved to this country I could only understand 10% of what they were saying and Anna had to interpret for me, now I can understand about 80%.
I like being a kid. It's weird, I feel younger at 10 than I ever did at 7 or 8. Can you go backwards in time? Maybe I am. Or maybe it's America? Maybe this country makes you young?
I'm ashamed for wanting to be a kid again, because that means I'm not a real man. But then I get my slurpee or jump on my bike or play with my Hot Wheels and I wish I could be young forever. But then I look at my face in the mirror and once again, I'm old.
I'm confused. It feels like I'm both too old and too young all at once. Maybe there's a kid Patrick in me and an adult Patrick and they're fighting with each other?
I don't know who is going to win.
At the community center, Mrs. Ford after giving me the toys, kept on talking about her son like he was sitting in the room with us, which was scary and my hands were shaking. I kept on looking over my shoulders but all I saw was a poster of a girl with blonde pigtails thanking me for not smoking.
I smoked. In the refugee camp. Didn't like it. Smoking or the camp. I don't think about it. At all. Don't think about it. Don't remember. Don't remember.
Every time I turned away from the poster and back at her she kept on saying how much I looked like her Jimmy.
I always remind people of their sons. Which is funny, cause I don't remind myself of nobody. Not even me.
I saw a picture of her son, and I don't look like him at all. He looked like an asshole, like he thought he was all tough shit in the picture, but I didn't tell her that.
Anna taught me how to look at people; she taught me that people say one thing with their voices and another thing with their faces.
When I was little she would point out the men in her bar, "you see these assholes, Patrick?" I nodded.
"Every man in this room is a liar Patrick, and the worst type of liars, because they don't even know it."
She taught me how people say one thing with their mouths, another thing with their hands, and a third thing with the eyes. I asked her what about people who were blind? Or who lost their hands? I saw people in the streets of Saigon without legs or arms, they crawled around like crawfish, begging for money. I felt bad for them, but Anna would yank me by the arms and yell at me to stop staring. Saying how would I feel if someone gawked at me?
"People look at me all the time, Anna!" It was true. No matter where I went in Saigon people always looked at me. One of my aunties at the bar told me it's because I'm cute, but Anna said it was because I'm half American.
I liked my auntie's explanation a whole lot better.
But that afternoon in my city, eating a banh mi that Anna bought for me, Anna looked at me, "then you should know better."
One guy had no legs and arms, he was just a torso and neck and head. He had a little crate next to him. I put my sandwich on the crate; I thought it might be real hard for him to get food with no legs or arms.
Anna bought me another banh mi, she didn't even complain even though they were very expensive sandwiches.
She still didn't have answer to me about how people who are blind can lie with their eyes.
Anna is the smartest person I know, but sometimes I can trip her with one question.
Jimmy looked like he KNEW he was a jackass. He was smiling like he wanted to show off the number of white teeth he had, but instead of looking happy he looked like he was squeezing a really big turd.
I laughed, but Mrs. Ford just thought I was smiling at the picture of her son. She smiled too and she stroked the picture up and down.
But I found out her son died in my country fighting the war and I felt really guilty and my stomach twisted and turned like it do before you vomit, or squeeze a big turd. All I could do was whisper "I'm sorry." I didn't pull the trigger, but I felt like I did, and all because I was born in the same place her son died.
I felt so old.
She looked like she wanted a hug, and her arms opened up a bit, her hands reaching out for mine, but I'm not great at hugging people.
Before she could squeeze me to death I reached out my hand on top of hers for a few seconds, like I was touching a porcupine, I moved back a few inches, so she wouldn't try to hug me. I lost my pinkie when a piece of shrapnel sliced it off when I was a baby. I don't remember it happening, but sometimes I feel this sharp pain where my finger should have been. My pinkie stub was on top of her pinkie and I looked her in the eye, hoping that she would take my peace offering.
Her hands were shaking and mine began to shake so maybe it's good that we didn't hug, she'd probably fall on top of me, I'm not sure if I would have been able to pull her off of me. Anna would kill her if she crushed me to death.
I knew she would hate me because I'm Vietnamese, but she just smiled and said "thank you." But I know she was just being polite, because while she was smiling with her mouth, her eyes were empty stones and while I can't read people's minds like Anna can, I know she was thinking about her son. She told me that my "sweet words" made her feel better, but her voice was full of sorrow and her arms just plopped down into her lap.
Men in bars aren't the only people who lie.
She looked out the window and squinted, and I may sound crazy, but I think she imagined she could see Jimmy and maybe she could. After all, who knows, right?
In Vietnam, before the war, the ghosts could be friendly or evil but now there are millions of angry ghosts, Vietnamese and Americans, which haunt every corner of my country. I think there are more ghosts than people.
Uncle and his friends sometimes talk late at night about going back to Vietnam and staging a 'counter revolution.' Most of Uncle's friends are old, but they still wear their old South Vietnamese military uniforms when they visit us, but they all lost weight so their uniforms hang off them.
I bet by the time I'm Uncle's age Vietnam would be nothing but a country of ghosts.
If ghosts are real, I bet Jimmy isn't in Oklahoma City with his mama, but angry and afraid somewhere in Vietnam, trying to find his way home. Maybe he's missing his legs and his arms and he's just a torso, a neck and a head, screaming for help. I sure hope he gets a lot of banh mi to eat.
It's late at night and I'm watching Starsky and Hutch and eating the popcorn from Uncle's store and you know what the best part of it is? I don't have school tomorrow!
"Aren't you too old to be wearing a cartoon on your shirt, Patrick?" Anna has he hands on her hips and she looks at me like I'm crazy.
Anger boils through me and I stand up and snap at my mother.
"Look at you Anna, aren't you too old to be wearing that?!" I cross my arms, my eyes go right down her short skirt and long legs. My voice is pointed and sharp.
She just lets out an empty laugh, like I asked a really dumb question, "shut up, Patrick."
I sit back down on the couch and cross my arms but Anna squeezes next to me, her head on my shoulder. I want to push her away, but I can't. She's my mom.
I look down at my blue and red pajamas with Superman's head on my chest, "you really think I'm too old to wear this?" I'm about to take my shirt off, but Anna stop me and flicks my forehead with her finger,"stop being so dramatic, I was only teasing."
I flick her forehead with my finger, "look who's talking." Anna doesn't laugh much, but she cracks up now and her laughter is really sweet.
This is how we tease each other.
It's hard for us to stay mad at each other.
"You gonna see someone tonight?" I ask Anna, pointing at her skirt. Anna snorts, "yeah right, you know I'm a married woman now." She rolls her eyes.
Back in Vietnam Anna made money talking to men and running our bar. But now that she's married she can't do that anymore.
"Why are you up?"
I shrug, "can't sleep."
Anna snorts, "believe me, Uncle doesn't have that problem at all." Her voice drips disgust when she says Uncle's name.
For all of Anna's big talk on liars, Anna herself is very secretive with everyone, saying one thing to one person and the entirely different thing to another person.
I'm the only person Anna is completely honest with, which can be a mixed blessing because sometimes I don't like what Anna tells me, but even when she hurts my feelings, I trust her.
"I fucking hate it here." There is bitterness in her voice that would make my blood run cold if I didn't know how much she loved me. Anna can be kind of mean sometimes, but not to me, never with me.
But as cold and bitter as her voice is, her eyes are so flat and sad.
They reminded a bit of that lady in the community center.
I hate seeing her so upset. I put my arms around her and for a second, she snorts and shakes her head, but she pulls me in real tight for a bear hug.
Oh, that's another phrase I learned recently. I'm not good at bear hugs either, but I make an exception for Anna, as long as no one is watching us.
"This is asinine Patrick, you're getting too big for me to hug," she says and she tries to laugh, but when I try to pull away from her she pulls me in even tighter, like I'm about to fly away.
She runs her hands through my hair, the way she used to do when I had super long curls. Her lips quiver and her eyes aren't crying but they're wet and I'm scared.
It's one of scariest thing I've ever seen. Anna isn't supposed to cry. She's tough.
I turn away from her, angrily, my stomach does a flip flop, my eyes focus on Evel Knievel.
"You're the only person I love Patrick." Her words sink into me. I love her a lot. She goes on, "I wish we were back home."
I think about the last few months, the slurpees, the toys, the getting punished by getting to stay home and you know what? I don't miss Vietnam. But I'm not as honest with Anna as she is with me, so I put my arms around her neck and feel her heartbeat through her veins, "me too."
Every man is a liar.
"I guess I'm gonna have to find Anna." I snuggle next to Soda. I don't like the way he says her name. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but he doesn't say her name like she's just the mother of his baby. He says it with craving, his mouth is twisted, but his eyes wild.
He's on top of me, penetrating deeper and deeper and normally I eat it up, but tonight, reaching my fingers up to his beard, curling my thin hands through him, doubt barrels through me.
"You ain't thinking of her are you?" I try to sound harsh, but my fear is louder.
Soda stops moving and he glares at me, his eyes narrow, his mouth wide open, "what the hell?!" He shouts, but seeing my worried expression, his face softens. "No, I ain't," he runs the back of his hand against my temple and his touch and words relax me.
He continues for a few more minutes, but the mood is lost. He pulls out.
Thanks you SO much for reading, and if you choose to, reviewing. :)
S.E. Hinton owns.