And where is my baby? Where is Larkin?
They separated the women and older girls from the men and older boys while we were paralyzed. They left the men in the larger room of the school and dragged us women into one of the smaller ones. I didn’t think about it at the time, but that was an odd thing to do because there were more women than men in the community. We were dumped onto the wooden floor, half atop one another, and left there. The windows were open, and I remember thinking it strange that no one bothered to board them up or even close them.
The only good thing was that as I was half lifted and half dragged, I saw Bankole. I don’t believe he saw me. He was lying on his back, staring straight up, one scraped, bloody hand on his chest. I saw him blink. I did see that, so I knew he was alive. If only he had gotten away. He would have been more likely than anyone else to find some way to help the rest of us. Besides, what will our captors do to a man his age? Would they care that he was old? No. From the way he looked, it was clear that he had been dragged across the ground just as I was. They didn’t care.
Would they care that my Larkin was only a baby? And where was she? Where was she?
I was terrified every time someone came near me. All our captors were young men, and I’d seen two or three angry, bloody ones. I didn’t know at the time that this was Gray’s work. I didn’t know anything. All I could think about was Larkin, Bankole, my people, and the damned slave collar around my neck.
As the sun went down, my body began to hurt—my back and my hands and arms burned where they had scraped along the ground as I was dragged. My head felt lumpy and sore. It also ached in a hard, throbbing way that might have had something to do with the gas.
It was dark when I began trying to move. For a long time, all I could do was flop around a little. Someone in the room groaned. Someone else began to cry. Someone gasped, choked, and began to cough. Someone said over and over again, “Ah shit!” and I recognized Allie Gilchrist’s voice.
“Allie?” I said. I slurred the word, sounded drunk to my own ears, but she heard me.
“Olamina?”
“Yeah.”
“Look, did you see Justin before they dragged you in here?”
“No. Sorry. Did you see Larkin?”
“No. Sorry.”
“They took my baby too,” Adela Ortiz said in a hoarse whisper. “They took him and I don’t know where he is.” She began to cry.
I wanted to cry myself. I wanted to just to lie there and cry because I hurt so much in so many ways. I felt too weak and uncoordinated to do anything but cry. Instead, I sat up, bumped someone, apologized, sat stupidly for a while, then found the sense to say, “Who else is here? One by one, say your names.”
“Noriko,” a voice said just to my left. “They took Deborah and Melissa,” she continued. “I had Melissa and Michael had Deborah. We were running. I thought we were going to make it. Then that damned gas. We fell down, and someone came and pulled both girls away from us. I couldn’t see anything but hands and arms taking them.”
“And my babies,” Emery Mora said. “My babies…” She was crying, almost incoherent, “My little boys. My sons. They took my sons again. Again!” She had had two young sons when she was a slave years ago, and they had been sold away from her. She had been a debt slave—a legally indentured person bound for her family’s unpaid debts. The debts were accumulated because she worked for an agribusiness corporation that underpaid its workers in company scrip instead of money, then overcharged them for food and shelter so that they could stay in ever-increasing debt. It was against the law for the company to break up families by selling minor children away from their parents or husbands from their wives. It was against both local and federal law, so it shouldn’t have happened. Just as what’s happened to us now shouldn’t have happened.
I thought about Emery’s older daughter and stepdaughter. “What about Tori and Doe?” I said. “Are they here? Tori? Doe?”
At first, there was no answer, and I thought of Nina and Paula Noyer. I didn’t want to think of them, but Doe and Tori Mora were 14 and 15—far from babyhood. If they weren’t here, where were they?
Then a very small voice said, “I’m here. Get off me.”
“I’m trying to get off you,” a stronger voice said. “There’s no room in here. I can hardly move.”
Tori and Doe, alive, and as well as the rest of us were. I shut my eyes and took a long, deep, grateful breath. “Nina Noyer?” I asked.
She began to answer, then coughed several times. “I’m here,” she said at last, “but my little sisters… I don’t know what happened to them.”
“Mercy?” I called. “Kassi?”
No answer.
“May?”
No answer. She couldn’t talk, but she would have made a noise to let us know she was there.
“She had Kassia and Mercy with her,” Allie said. “She’s strong and fast. Maybe she got them away. She loved them like she gave birth to them.”
I sighed. “Aubrey Dovetree?” I asked.
“I’m here,” she said. “But I can’t find Zoë or the kids… Zoë had all three of them with her.”
And Zoë had a heart condition, I thought. She might be dead, even if no one meant to kill her. Not knowing what else to do, I went on with my role call. “Marta Figueroa?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’m here, all alone. My brother… My children… Gone.”
“Diamond Scott? Cristina Cho?”
“I’m here,” said two voices at once, one in English and the other in Spanish. Cristina’s English was good now, but under stress, she still reverted to Spanish.
“Beatrice Scolari? Catherine Scolari?”
“We’re here,” Catherine Scolari’s voice said. She sounded as though she had been crying. “Vincent is dead.” she said. “He fell against a rock, hit his head. I heard them say he was dead.” Vincent was her husband and Beatrice’s brother. He had only one arm because of an accident that happened before he joined us. He was, perhaps, more likely than most of us to be off balance when the gas collapsed him. But still…
“He might not be dead,” I said.
“He is. We saw him…” There were more sounds of crying. I didn’t know what to say to them. All I could think was that maybe Larkin was dead too. And what about Bankole? I didn’t want to think about death. I didn’t really want to think at all.
“Channa Ryan?” I said.
“I’m here. Oh god, I wish I wasn’t.”
“Beth Faircloth? Jessica Faircloth?”
There was no sound at first, then in nearly inaudible whispers, “We’re here. Both of us are here.”
“Natividad?” I said. “Zahra?”
“I’m here,” Natividad said in Spanish. Then, “If they’ve hurt my babies, I’ll cut their throats. I’ll kill all of them. I don’t care what they do to me.” She began to cry. She’s strong, but her kids mean more than life to her. She had a husband and three kids. Now, they’re all gone from her.
“All of our babies are gone,” I said. “We have to find out where they’re being kept and who’s guarding them and…and what’s going to happen to them.” I shifted, trying to get more comfortable, but that was impossible. “My Larkin should be nursing now. Right now. We have to find out what we can.”
“They’ve put slave collars on us,” Marta Figueroa said in almost a moan. “They took our kids and our men, and they put slave collars on us! What the hell more do we need to know than that?”
“We have to know as much as we can,” I answered. “They’re not killing us. They could have wiped us out. They separated us from the men and from the young kids, but we’re alive. We have to find a way to get our kids back. Whatever we can do to get our kids back, we have to do it!” I felt myself falling toward hysteria, toward weeping and screaming. I tensed my body. Milk was leaking from my breasts onto my shirt, soaking the front of it, and I ached so.
For a long time no one said anything. Then Teresa Lin, who had not spoken
before, whispered, “That window is open. I can see the stars.”
“Did they put a collar on you?” I heard myself ask. I sounded almost normal to my own ears. My voice was soft and low.
“What, this wide flat thing? They put one on me. I don’t care. That window is open! I’m getting out of here!” And she began scrambling over people toward the window. Someone cried out in pain. Several voices cursed her.
“Everybody down,” I said. “Down on your face!”
I could not see who obeyed me. I hoped all the sharers did. I wasn’t sure what the collar would do to Teresa when she tried to get out the window. Maybe it was a fake. Maybe it wouldn’t do anything. Maybe it would cut off her breath. Maybe it would collapse her, and cause her terrible pain.
She dived out of the window. She’s a slim woman, quick and lithe like a boy. I looked up in time to see her arc out the window as though she expected to land on something soft or on water.
Then she began to scream and scream and scream. Allie Gilchrist got up, stepped to the window, and looked out at her. Then Allie tried to climb out to help her. The moment Allie touched the window, she screamed, then fell back into our prison room. Allie curled on her side against me, and grunted several times—hard, agonized grunts. I turned my face away, her pain twisting in my own middle. It helped that I hadn’t been able to see Teresa once she fell below the level of the window, but I had already gotten a taste of her pain too.
Outside, Teresa went on screaming and screaming.
“No one’s around,” Allie said, still gasping. “She’s just lying there on the ground, screaming and twisting. No one’s even come out to see.”
She lay there all night. We couldn’t help her. Her voice deteriorated from full-throated screaming, the way any of us might scream in fear and pain, to hoarse terrible grunting. She didn’t pass out—or rather, she did, but she kept coming to again and making her terrible noises.
Going near the door meant pain. Going to the window meant pain. Even if you didn’t try to get out, just being there hurt, hurt bad. Diamond Scott volunteered to crawl around the floor, letting her own collar tell her what was forbidden. People complained when she crawled over them, but I asked them to put up with it and Di apologized and the complaints stopped. We were still human, still civilized. I wondered how long that would last.
“Someone’s here!” Di said. She almost screamed the words. “Someone’s dead here!”
Oh, no. Oh, no.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She’s cool. Not cold yet, but… I’m sure she’s dead!”
I followed Di’s voice, and spotted her silhouette, a darker shape in the darkness. She was moving more than the others, scrambling away from the body that she was sure must be dead.
Who was it?
Then, as I crawled toward the body, trying to be careful, trying not to hurt anyone, I had a feeling, a memory. I was afraid I knew who it was.
The body was sitting upright in a corner, against the wall. It was small—child-sized. It was a black woman’s body—a black woman’s hair, nose, mouth, but so small…
“Zahra?”
She had not answered when I called her before. She was a bold, outspoken little woman, and she would not have kept quiet in all this. She might have been the one to go out the window before poor Teresa…if she could have.
She was dead. Her body wasn’t yet stiff, but it would be soon. It was cooling. It wasn’t breathing. I took the small hands between mine and felt the ring that Harry had worked so hard to buy for her. He’s old-fashioned, Harry is, even though he’s my age. He wanted his wife to wear his ring so that no one would make a mistake. Back when Zahra was the most beautiful woman in our Robledo neighborhood, she was beyond his reach, married to another man. But when that man was dead and Harry saw his chance, he moved right in. They were so different—black and white, tiny and tall, street-raised and middle class. She was three or four years older than he was. None of it mattered. They had managed, somehow, to have a good marriage.
And now she was dead.
And where were her children? I had another sudden, horrible thought. I felt for wounds on her, found scratches and dried blood, but no penetrating wound, no terrible soft place on her head. She had been brought in with the rest of us. Chances were, she was alive when she was brought in. Wouldn’t our captors have noticed if she were dead? We were all dumped into this room and locked in by way of our collars during the same few minutes.
After that, no one had come in.
Perhaps, then, it was the gas that had been used on us. Could she have died of that? She was the smallest adult in the community, smaller, even, than Nina, Doe, and Tori. Was it possible that she got too much of the gas for her small size, and that killed her?
And if so, what did that say about our children?
Somehow, time passed. I sat rigid beside the body of my friend, and couldn’t think or speak. I cried. I cried in grief and terror and rage. People told me later that I made no sound at all, but within myself, I cried. Within myself, I screamed with Teresa, and I cried and cried and cried.
After a time, I lay down on the floor, still crying, yet still making no noise. I could hear people around me moaning, crying, cursing, talking, but their words made no sense to me. They might as well have been in a foreign language. I couldn’t think of anything except that I wanted to die. Everything that I had worked to build was gone, stolen or dead, and I wanted to be dead too. My baby was dead. She must be. If I could have killed myself, just then I would have. I would have been glad to do it. I awoke, and there was sunlight streaming through the window. I had slept. How could I have slept?
I awoke with my head on someone’s lap. Natividad’s lap. She had come to sit against the wall next to Zahra’s body. She had lifted my head off the floor and put it on her lap. I sat up, blinking and looking around. Natividad herself was asleep, although my moving woke her. She looked at me, then at Zahra’s body, then back at me, as though the world were just coming back into focus for her, and it distressed her more and more every second. Her eyes filled with tears. I hugged her for a long time, then kissed her on the cheek.
The room was filled with sleeping women and girls. I counted 19 of us including myself and…not including Zahra and Teresa. Everyone looked dirty and scratched and abraded, and they lay in every possible position, some sprawled alone on the floor, some in pairs or larger groups, heads pillowed on laps, shoulders, or legs.
My breasts ached and leaked and I felt sick. I needed to use the bathroom. I wanted my child, my husband, my home. Near me, Zahra was cold and stiff, her eyes closed, her face beautiful and peaceful, except for its gray color.
I got up, stepped over people as they began to wake up. I went to an empty corner that I knew needed repair. A small earthquake a few months ago had caused a slight separation between the wall and floor in that corner. It wasn’t obvious, but ants came in there, and water spilled near there ran out. Gray had promised to fix it, but hadn’t gotten around to it.
I moved people away from the area—told them what I was doing and why. They nodded and gave no trouble. I wasn’t the only one with a full bladder. I squatted there and urinated. When I finished, others followed my example.
“Is Teresa still there?” I asked Diamond Scott, who was nearest to the window.
Di nodded. “She’s unconscious—or maybe dead.” Her own voice sounded dead.
“I’m so hungry,” Doe Mora said.
“Forget hungry,” Tori said. “If I could just have some water.”
“Hush,” I said to them. “Don’t talk about it. It just makes you feel worse. Has anyone seen our captors this morning?”
“They’re building a fence,” Diamond Scott said. “You can stand back from the window and see them. In spite of the collars they’ve put on us, they’re building a fence.”
I looked and saw maggots being used to string wire behind several of our homes, up the slope. As I watched, they smashed through our c
emetery, breaking down some of the young trees that we planted to honor our dead. The maggots were well named. They were like huge insect larvae, weaving some vast, suffocating cocoon.
Our captors were keeping our land, then. Until that moment, this had not occurred to me. They were not just out to steal or burn, enslave or kill. That was what thugs had always done before. That was what they did in my old neighborhood in Robledo, in Bankole’s San Diego neighborhood, and elsewhere. A lot of elsewheres. But these were staying, building a fence. Why?
“Listen,” I said.
Most of the room paid no attention to me. People had focused on their own misery or on the maggots.
“Listen!” I said, putting as much urgency as I could into my voice. “There are things we need to talk about.”
Most of them turned to look at me. Nina Noyer and Emery Mora still stared out the window.
“Listen,” I said once more, wanting to shout, but not daring to. “Sooner or later, our captors will come in here. When they do, we need to be ready for them—as ready as we can be.” I stopped, drew a deep breath, and saw that now they were all looking at me, all paying attention.
“We need to pretend to go along with them as much as we can,” I continued. “We need to obey them and watch them, learn what they are and what they want, and where they’re weak!”
People looked at me either as though they thought I’d lost my mind or as though it was good and hopeful news that our captors might, perhaps, have weaknesses.
“Anything they tell us may be lies,” I said. “Probably will be. So any of us who get the chance should spy and eavesdrop and share information with the rest. We can escape from them or kill them if we can learn about them and pool our knowledge. Learn about the collars, too. Any little thing might help. And most important, most essential, learn about the kids.”
“They’ll rape us,” Adela said, all but whimpering. “You know they will.” She knew they would—she who had already suffered so much rape. She and Nina and Allie and Emery. The rest of us had been lucky—so far. Now our luck has run out. Somehow, we’ll have to cope with that.