“So, we tell him to shut the fuck up. We don’t want to give away our position, and Jenkins’s screaming is like a homing beacon for the enemy. We were all kind of losing it at that point. Jenkins on his back, crying out for his mama, his God.
“I don’t know if it was then when Jax noticed that the door didn’t reach the ceiling. That there was a slap of window right on top. But that Jax did what he had to do. Grabs a grenade from his belt. Throws that son of a bitch in a perfect upward arc through that top window above the door into that fucking room, shouting, ‘Ukhrug barra! Ukhrug barra!’ and to the rest of us, ‘Get back, get back!’ I remember thinking he’d thrown it just like Fergie Jenkins—it was that well aimed. In the aftermath of the explosion, we saw movement from inside the room and shot.”
Mazz paused then. Raised his eyes from the table and looked at me head-on for a moment. Then he noticed his glass was empty and waved it in the air. An obliging waiter hurried over.
“How the hell were we to know that the room was full of kids, Meer?” he said. His voice was louder now, closer to his regular pitch. “A girl, ’bout Joan’s age now, holding fort. Protecting her siblings. We just shot the first thing that moved. The room was dark as shit, dust and debris floating in the air. The power cut out from the artillery shells long before. You ever seen something happen so fast you only realize what you saw in hindsight? It wasn’t till after that I realized it wasn’t another army, their guns, that had moved. It had been a tiny palm held up in plea. And even through the Oz green of the night vision, we could all see the bright red of a single tiny shoe. Attached to a brown foot, a bit of the tibia sprouting from the ankle, it lay on the floor alongside a crib.
“It was the red shoe that broke him. We entered the room. All the kids were dead. Most of them in more than one piece.
“I found Jax afterward, walking in circles by the burning carcass of the army Humvee we had been sent in to save. Where his M-Sixteen should’ve been—strapped to his chest, the metal crossing his heart like a crucifix—was the red shoe. The child’s foot still inside. I tried to pry the foot out of Jax’s hands, but he wouldn’t let go. Kept mumbling about how Joan is mad about The Wizard of Oz. Said he’d just given her a pair of those red shoes for Christmas…” Mazz took a long drink from his tumbler.
“And I wear red shoes tonight,” Miriam said. Her voice sounded stronger than she’d thought it would.
“And you wear red shoes tonight,” Mazz repeated. He took another drink.
Miriam sat back. The story was horrifying. It was. But she was no stranger to fear. Terror. Grief. Rage. She thought of Jax sitting in his armchair in the early hours that morning, black coffee in hand, saying with a bitter coldness, “Having you for a mother is worse than having no mother at all.”
“I’m glad,” Miriam said.
Mazz cocked his head.
“That nigga will remember the night I leave him.”
CHAPTER 6
Joan
1995
I awoke to the sound of a tornado. I heard the crash of something heavy downstairs and tossed off my many quilts, looking over at Mya through the stack of L. M. Montgomery and Addie books that were piled on the nightstand between our matching twin beds. The room was dark but for the pink nightlight Mya insisted be left on every night. I went to Mya. She lay fast sleep in her bed, snoring. Whatever earthquake roared in our house, Mya would sleep through it. Our room had a slanted, vaulted ceiling and a giant bay window that faced the street. I used to sit at that window for hours when I was younger, gazing at the stars, convinced Peter Pan would appear, teach me how to fly.
I loved our house. Victorian style and three stories, to Mya and me, it was an exact replica of a dollhouse. We charged the other kids who lived on base dollar entry fees to explore the uneven floors and the hidden butler’s pantry and the unexpected maid’s stairway that led to back bedrooms. The attic was a buck-fifty. “The Secret Garden House,” Mya and I called it. Mya had been afraid the house was haunted. But I’d say, What them dead white folk going to do? Turn off the lights? Still, Mya had insisted that the pink nightlight above our stack of books be turned on nightly. Stamped her feet, in fact. So, we left it on every night. I never let it slip that I hoped the pink light might, just might, let me catch the moment my toys came alive.