I first met Ana at an international banquet celebrating the fall of Portugal to North African troops. Her straight and confident posture hid the tension in her features as she methodically chewed her food.
Her eyes were surveying the room as she listened in on conversations around the table, and as she lingered on the figure of her mother across the table, we both reached for the glass water pitcher. Her startling eyes snapped towards me.
“I-I-I’m…excuse me Madame Flynn,” I stammered out, “Let me pour a glass for you.” My hands were shaking.
“Thank you, Miss…”
“Private B—–.”
Ana relaxed as I set the glass near her bread plate.
“Private, it is not often that one dares to speak to a member of my rank so freely,” I tensed, unable to read her smirk, but—
“I enjoy the change.” Ana’s mouth let a thin smile escape her lips, and she winked, ever so slightly.
Her mother, Getty Mwakadi, rose at that moment to thunderous applause. Thousands of hands were honoring Ana’s mother, when within a few years, they would be murdering them both. General and Mr. Mwakadi held hands as the microphone was handed to them. Ana’s posture regained its inflexibility as the cameras panned to our table.
“My husband, Marshall Flynn, and I, General Getty Mwakadi, are honored to be here
tonight in celebration of this great victory. Though this is only one small country from which to tie the first millstone—it is a great millstone which we tie. Though this victory is over a small country, our forces are enough to flood the oppressors, blot out their lives as they have done to us.” General Mwakadi paused to cheers and passed the microphone to her husband. Taking a bow, she sat again, with a smug glance to her daughter. Ana’s façade did not change."
...blot out their lives
as they have done to us...
