Fleming Alexandra Rockey - Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit

For my sister Consuelo, whom I love very much, and for my beautiful daughter, Lauryn Anabelle, and in memory of my sister Anabel, who left far too early but remains in our hearts

Whenever youre ready.

My nurse, Mike, pointed to the mirror in front of me.

It had been twenty-six days since Id hit the roadside bomb on a road in Iraq, twenty-six days since Id been medevacked to Landstuhl, Germany, the largest military medical center outside the United States, and then here, to the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

You wont see the same face you remember from before, said Mike. But its going to get better. Just know that.

People had admired my looks all my life. My bright smile. My soft, curly hair. I didnt ask for the compliments, but I came to expect them. I got used to being the guy everyone looked at. Now, after suffering third-degree burns over 34 percent of my body, including my face, hands, and torso, I needed to look at myself.

My eyes met the mirror. My heart jumped. I blinked and turned away. Thats you, I thought. You have to look. I forced myself to turn back.

As a kid Id been terrified by the disfigured slasher Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. Now he was here, in this hospital room, looking out at me from my own reflection.

I pushed the mirror away.

Mike reached out to put his hand on my shoulder. I know this isnt what you expected to see, but youre not going to look like this for the rest of your life.

Rage bubbled up inside me. Look at my face! I screamed at him. The force of my own voice surprised me. You dont understand, I said, struggling to control myself. Im nineteen years old and I have to live the rest of my life like this. What am I going to do?

Just two months after my mother, Maria Felix Zavala, a four-foot, eleven-inch firebrand of a woman, arrived in Texas in 1982, she met a man named Jose Martinez. He swept her off her feet with all the promises of love.

Maria was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador with no money and no English. She had chanced everything to come to the United States to make a better life. She had scraped and borrowed the funds to pay the coyote to bring her first across the borders of Guatemala and Mexico and then into America, risking her life crossing a raging river she could not swim and dodging the immigration agents who waited for people just like her. But worst of all, she had left behind in the care of her mother two young daughters, Consuelo and little Anabel, who had been born with no bones in her feet. Since Anabel couldnt walk, my mom was determined to prosper in the United States so shed be able to buy her daughter a wheelchair.

Jose was from Monterrey, Mexico, but hed been in the United States for a while and spoke English well. Like Maria, he was also quite short, but he was tall in attitude and had long, curly hair and straight white teeth.

Maria was working for a woman taking care of her three young children while the woman was at work. Someone whispered to Maria that the woman was a prostitute. Maria didnt really care what her employer did for a living, but the fact that shed never paid Maria for her work was a big problem. So when Jose impulsively invited Maria to move in with him and his family, it seemed like a godsend.

Ill take care of you, he said.

She quit her job and settled in with her new family. Unfortunately, her new mother-in-law didnt like Maria: She wanted a virgin for her son, and she knew Maria already had two children back in El Salvador. Maria tried to ignore the negativity because she wanted to be happy.

But Jose had trouble keeping jobs, and money quickly became an issue. He wasnt going to take care of her after all.

And then Maria found herself pregnant. She was determined not to let anything hold her back, so she got a job taking care of a two-year-old boy and cleaning his parents house for eighty dollars a week. She scrubbed the toilets, swept and mopped the floors, and washed and ironed the clothes, all while chasing the busy toddler.

Little by little she managed to save a few dollars, and by December 1982 shed begun to send some money back to her mother for the care of her daughters. As the months went by and her belly expanded, Maria worried about the stability of her relationship and speculated about whether Jose would be a responsible father. Or if hed even be around for his child.

It doesnt matter, she convinced herself. Im going to work hard. Im going to raise my children real good.

One day Jose disappeared without a word. Three days passed before he bothered to call.

Im in Shreveport, he said. He had two jobs there in Louisiana, construction and restaurant work. In a couple of weeks, Ill come back and get you. Were going to start a new life together!

He was true to his word. The couple settled in northwest Louisiana in a town called Bossier City, along the east bank of the Red River across from Shreveport. A growing city of about fifty thousand people, it was home to several riverboat casinos as well as Harrahs Louisiana Downs, a Thoroughbred and quarter horse racetrack. There were ample service-sector jobs, but Maria was six months pregnant by then. No one would hire a woman in that condition, so she sat in the couples apartment for months, watching Jose come and go and feeling more and more distant from him.

He seemed to prefer killing time with people whom Maria considered good-for-nothings instead of working. He earned a license to operate semitrailer trucks, telling Maria, Now all I have to do is get a trucking job and well have it made. It didnt happen.

The atmosphere grew tense. One evening, the two were in the bedroom, arguing. Jose had had a bit to drink. He kicked Maria in the leg, and she fell, crying.

I hope you lose that fucking baby, he said.

But she didnt.

On June 14, 1983, she gave birth to me at the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport. A snapshot from that day shows me in the arms of my smiling parents. Youd never know what my father had wished upon me just a few weeks earlier.

Its Latin American tradition to observe a period of cuarentena, or quarantine, for forty days after the birth of a baby. New mothers recuperate and receive special care from other women, especially another mother or a mother figure, while they bond with their babies. But this was America, and the notion of cuarentena was a dated fancy for a woman in my mothers circumstances.

Two weeks after I was born, my mother handed her bundle to the neighborhood babysitter. Struggling to control her roiling postpartum emotions, she forced herself to turn and walk away. Each day for eight hours my mom pushed a vacuum, hauled trash, and scrubbed toilet bowls in offices in Bossier City. By the time she returned home to me, her breasts would be heavy and aching, her back would throb, and shed wonder how she could leave me again the next day.

When shed cry at work, heartbroken, her coworkers would look at her irritably. You just had a baby, theyd say. Its not like youre going to die.

She kept working and my father kept working, and I grew into a chubby, smiling infant. The three of us were a little family unit, struggling but making it. Until we werent.

One day my father was grumbling about my mom to one of her girlfriends.

If you leave her, youll have to pay child support, she told him.

Ill go back to Mexico before I give her a dime, he replied.

In March 1984, when I was nine months old, my father vanished again. This time two weeks passed before my mom heard anything. A neighbor came to our apartment with a letter from Jose. He wrote that he wanted us to join him in his new town, DeLand, Florida, about halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach. There, in what was sometimes called the Athens of Florida, we could be a family again.