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I know what will come next.
Screams in the middle of the night. Sounds from girls who will never make another sound. I feel it, too—something here, then gone, like a tear in the universe.
At night, I huddle deeper in my closet. Waiting for the door to open. Knowing soon it will be my turn. And I try, because I have to try. Because somewhere way down deep, I am my mother’s daughter and I feel her inside of me, as surely as the bullet lodged in my skull.
I get out my pieces of paper. I try to picture those awful lines I see on other scattered documents. If I could just arrange those shapes in the proper order, form words, sentences, meaning. They’re a code everyone understands but me. The right sequence unlocks language, except I just can’t seem to manage it. The lines run away from me. They have minds of their own, and won’t stay where I put them.
I try to start simply. Names. I want to write the names of the other girls because everyone has a name. Everyone but me, but someday I will get mine back. Until then, the least I can do is remember, make a record of all those who’ve been lost. Maybe these people who are coming, they will care, they will help. If only I could talk, write, grunt.
So I struggle, trying to force my clawed hand to grip the crayon, drag down, across, into the shape of these mystery letters. But I can’t get it. The lines grow blurry. Then they dance, bounce up and down on the paper to prove I don’t own them, I don’t understand them at all.
In the end, I draw. Elaborate, vibrant scenes with hidden patches of darkness. The girls that were. The spaces where they will be no more. Late into the night, I draw and I draw and I draw.
So many to remember. I can feel the house shudder around me and I know that it mourns. It’s only a house, and not a bad one. Just an old home that never asked for any of this.
The house and I cry together. Then, when I’m done, I hold up the paper. I memorize each line, color, whorl. This patch of pink, this blur of green, this smile of blue. These new dark shadows.
People are coming.
I need words, letters, something. But all I have is this. The pictures of my pain. Slowly I start shredding. The teeniest, tiniest pieces. Bite-sized. Dots of pink, green, and blue. Larger pieces of red and black.
Then the real work begins. Chew swallow chew. Chew swallow chew.
I consume it all. No record of the girls, no trace of my defiance left behind. Just bits of names, now taken inside me, to carry alongside my mother’s dying breath.
I need a better plan.
I need to act.
Soon.
People are coming.
