Page 141 of Mazywood

Mom only shook her head, determined. “No, Imani. I don’t want you to see it.”

“Why not?”

Mom pursed her lips, considering whether to answer. “The bone is showing, baby,” she finally said. “Skin scraped right off. I need more than alcohol. Okay? I don’t want you to see it.”

The bone! Imani’s mind took her to the horrendous collection of stripped bones in the cavern she had left behind her. She had hoped that Mom could walk out of this cavern with her, and quickly. But now what? With an injury that bad, she was surprised that Mom hadn’t passed out from shock. And for the first time, Imani observed how vulnerable her mother was to the cold. Mom’s trembling wasn’t from joy; she’d been out in the cold all morning in flimsy clothes.

Imani was ready to cry again, but the promise of new tasks held her tears at bay.

“Is it bleeding a lot?” she asked. She bent over to see for herself. A few spots of blood had soaked through Mom’s makeshift wrapping.

“I’m not worried about the bleeding. It just hurts.”

Imani raced to open her backpack again. While she’d searched for her glow sticks, she’d remembered that the wrapped foil pouches the size of Pop-Tarts in her backpack were hand warmers. Too bad she hadn’t recognized them before! She pulled out the emergency blanket and handed it to Mom while she searched for the medicine kit Dad had found for the aspirin.

As soon as Imani thought about her father, Mom said, “Where’s Johnny? And Sharise?”

“Probably looking for me,” Imani said. “Dad was trying to get us to go back, like you said… and…” She couldn’t bring herself to talk about her defiance. “… it grabbed me.”

“They don’t know where you are?”

Meaning Dad and Sharise didn’t know where they were. Imani heard the yawning disappointment in Mom’s voice.

“Sharise saw up close,” Imani said. “Dad was right behind us, and he has the gun. He’ll find us. We’re somewhere under a cliff.”

Mom looked worried as she wrapped herself in the stiff folds of the shiny emergency blanket. Imani remembered telling Sharise how she planned to give Mom this blanket and Sharise had looked at her with such pity in her eyes, not believing it. And now it was happening, just as Imani had imagined it. Despite everything, Imani felt giddy. She only wished Sharise and Dad could see they were alive. And uneaten.

Imani hoped they would have the same faith. Maybe she hadn’t been able to help having so much faith because of the name her parents had given her.

“I’m sorry if I ever teased you about watching those survival shows, little bean,” Mom said. “All the hunting and making fires… I didn’t understand why it mattered to you so much, what you were looking for. But I’m so glad now. Even this blanket… it helps so much, Imani.”

“I just wanted to know how to be ready,” Imani said. “So I wouldn’t be so scared.”

She had never imagined needing to be ready for this—but she had felt sure that something bad was going to happen, and soon. Bad things were happening to people everywhere on the news she saw online—wildfires and earthquakes and the government kidnapping people, even children, and police shooting too many Black people whenever they wanted—so it had felt obvious that she should learn everything she could if her family ever had to run.

Why didn’t everyone get ready to run? Why didn’t they teach it in school?

In her flashlight beam, Imani squinted to read the instructions on the back of the hand-warmer pouch, written at a font size only meant for ants. She extracted what she needed: Rip open the plastic. Lasts for twelve hours.

“Here,” she told Mom. “Warm your hands up with this too. I have Tylenol. Or ibuprofen. Or something. Dad ate all the aspirin.”

“He’s hurt?” Mom said it like that had never dawned on her.

Dad had complained about chest pains and said he wanted to thin his blood, but she decided that Mom had enough to worry about. “He hit his head when he was chasing you. He got knocked out. But we left him a note and he found us.”

“But how did you find me?” Mom said. “It happened so fast…”

Imani recounted their adventure like it was an everyday thing, trying not to brag too much—but it had been her idea to follow Mom, although she had to give Sharise respect for leaving a note for Dad. Without that, and if they hadn’t dragged Dad into the house, everything might be different.

New tears came to Mom’s eyes as she pulled Imani close to hug her again.

“What’s wrong?” Imani asked.

Mom only shook her head against Imani’s shoulder.

“Are you in bad pain?”

“Yes,” Mom said. “But… mostly, I’m just so grateful, Imani. I don’t have words for it.” Then she hissed with pain.