“Are you all right?” he asked me.
I nodded, remembering Robin. Did he know? Russell Dory, Robin, and Jeremy… . “They beat you up?” I asked, feeling stupid and awkward. I didn’t want to tell him his grandfather, brother, and sister were dead.
“I had to fight my way out last night. I was lucky they didn’t shoot me.” He swayed, looked around. “Let’s sit on the curb.”
Both Zahra and I looked around, made sure no one else was near by. We sat with Harry between us. I sat on my pillowcase of clothing. Zahra and Harry were fully dressed, in spite of their coating of blood and dirt, but they carried nothing. Did they have nothing, or had they left their things somewhere-perhaps with whatever was left of their families. And where was Zahra’s little girl Bibi? Did she know that Richard Moss was dead?
“Everyone’s dead,” Zahra whispered as though speaking into my thoughts. “Everyone. Those painted bastards killed them all!”
“No!” Harry shook his head. “We got out. There’ll be some others.” He sat with his face in his hands, and I wondered whether he was more hurt than I had thought. I wasn’t sharing any serious pain with him.
“Have either of you seen my brothers or Cory?” I asked.
“Dead,” Zahra whispered. “Like my Bibi. All dead.”
I jumped. “No! Not all of them. No! Did you see them?”
“I saw most of the Montoya family,” Harry said. He wasn’t talking to me as much as musing aloud. “We saw them last night. They said Juana was dead. The rest of them were going to walk to Glendale where their relatives live.”
“But— ” I began.
“And I saw Laticia Hsu. She had been stabbed 40 or 50 times.”
“But did you see my brothers?” I had to ask.
“They’re all dead, I told you,” Zahra said. “They got out, but the paints caught them and dragged them back and killed them. I saw. One of them had me down, and he… . I saw.”
She was being raped when she saw my family dragged back and killed? Was that what she meant?
Was it true?
“I went back this morning,” I said. “I didn’t see their bodies. Didn’t see any of them.” Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no… .
“I saw. Your mother. All of them. I saw.” Zahra hugged herself. “I didn’t want to see, but I saw.”
We all sat without talking. I don’t know how long we sat there. Now and then someone walked past us and looked at us, some dirty, ragged person with bundles. Cleaner people in little bunches rode past us on bikes. A group of three rode past on motorcycles, their electric hum and whine strange in the quiet street.
When I got up, the other two looked at me. For no reason except habit, I picked up my pillowcase. I don’t know what I meant to do with the things in it. It had occurred to me, though, that I should get back to my garage before someone else settled there. I wasn’t thinking very well. It was as though that garage was home now, and all I wanted in the world was to be there.
Harry got up and almost fell down again. He bent and threw up into the gutter. The sight of his throwing up grabbed at me, and I only just managed to look away in time to avoid joining him. He finished, spat, turned to face Zahra and me, and coughed.
“I feel like hell,” he said.
“They hit him in the head last night,” Zahra explained. “He got me away from the guy who was. .
. . Well, you know. He got me away, but they hurt him.”
“There’s a burned out garage where I slept last night,” I said. “It’s a long walk, but he can rest there.
We can all rest there.”
Zahra took my pillowcase and carried it. Maybe something in it could do her some good. We walked on either side of Harry and kept him from stopping or wandering off or staggering too much. Somehow, we got him to the garage.
15
Kindness eases Change.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2027
Harry slept most of the day today. Zahra and I took turns staying with him. He has a concussion, at least, and he needs time to heal. We haven’t talked about what we’ll do if he gets sicker instead of healing. Zahra doesn’t want to abandon him because he fought to save her. I don’t want to abandon him because I’ve known him all my life.
He’s a good guy. I wonder if there’s some way to get in touch with the Garfields. They would give him a home, or at least see that he has medical care.
But he doesn’t seem to be getting worse. He totters out to the fenced back yard to urinate. He eats the food and drinks the water that I give him. With no need for discussion, we’re eating and drinking sparingly from my supplies. They’re all we have.
Soon we’ll have to risk going out to buy more. But today, Sunday, is a day of rest and healing for us.
The pain of Harry’s headache and his bruised, beaten body are almost welcome to me. They’re distractions. Along with Zahra’s talking and crying for her dead daughter, they fill my mind.
Their misery eases my own, somehow. It gives me moments when I don’t think about my family.
Everyone is dead. But how can they be? Everyone?
Zahra has a soft, little-girl voice that I used to think was phony. It’s real, but it takes on a sandpaper roughness when she’s upset. It sounds painful, as though it’s abrading her throat as she speaks.
She had seen her daughter killed, seen the blue face who shot Bibi as Zahra ran, carrying her. She believed the blue face was enjoying himself, shooting at all the moving targets. She said his expression reminded her of a man having sex.
“I fell down,” she whispered. “I thought I was dead. I thought he had killed me. There was blood. Then I saw Bibi’s head drop to one side. A red face grabbed her from me. I didn’t see where he came from. He grabbed her and threw her into the Hsu house. The house was burning everywhere. He threw her into the fire.
“I went crazy then. I don’t know what I did.
Somebody grabbed me, then I was free, then somebody shoved me down and fell on me. I couldn’t get my breath, and he tore my clothes. Then he was on me, and I couldn’t do nothing. That’s when I saw your mother, your brothers… .
“Then Harry was there, and he pulled the bastard off me. He told me later that I was screaming. I don’t know what I was doing. He was beating up the guy he’d pulled off me when a new guy jumped him. I hit the new guy with a rock and Harry knocked the other one out. Then we got away. We just ran. We didn’t sleep. He hid between two unwalled houses down the street away from the fire until a guy came out with an ax and chased us away. Then we just wandered until we found you. We didn’t even really know each other before. You know. Richard never wanted us to have much to do with the neighbors-especially the white ones.”
I nodded, remembering Richard Moss. “He’s dead, you know,” I said. “I saw him.” I wanted to take the words back as soon as I’d said them. I didn’t know how to tell someone her husband was dead, but there must be a better, gentler way than that.
She stared at me, stricken. I wanted to apologize for my bluntness, but I didn’t think it would help. “I’m sorry,” I said in a kind of generic apology for everything. She began to cry, and I repeated, “I’m sorry.”
I held her and let her cry. Harry woke up, drank a little water, and listened while Zahra told how Richard Moss had bought her from her homeless mother when she was only fifteen— younger than I had thought— and brought her to live in the first house she had ever known. He gave her enough to eat and didn’t beat her, and even when her co-wives were hateful to her, it was a thousand times better than living outside with her mother and starving.
Now she was outside again. In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing.