by Willow Rose
"Just do it."
"You're the one risking getting infected," the lady said.
"I'll take that risk," the soldier said.
Of course, you will. You're a robot. Robots can't get sick.
There was the sound of a lid being opened. It wasn't Jetta's. Soon, the lid was closed again.
"Okay," the soldier said.
Jetta could hear him outside her coffin now.
"Now, that one," the soldier said.
Jetta held her breath once again.
"Now! I don't have all day."
Jetta closed her eyes when she felt a hand touch her face. She opened her eyes and looked up. Her grandmother's hand had fallen into the crack between the false bottom and the wall of the coffin. Jetta clasped her mouth as the lid to the coffin was opened. She lay as quiet as humanly possible, her grandmother's hand in her face, terrified the soldier would hear her rapid heartbeat.
It took forever and Jetta could hardly hold her breath any longer; still, she knew if she did breathe, they would definitely hear her. A dog suddenly barked and someone yelled from the outside, distracting the soldier.
"We have a runner!"
"Shoot," the soldier said.
Breathing freely again, Jetta heard the sound of him jumping out of the van and what sounded like hundreds of boots following him. Then came the sound of shots being fired, and then the eerie quietness before someone screamed from inside the ghetto. Jetta knew the procedure of sounds a little too well. She had seen it one too many times. Sometimes, she would even see the person who had been shot's relatives run out through the checkpoint after him, only to get shot themselves as well.
The lid to the coffin was meanwhile closed and the minivan hurried off.
When Jetta finally dared to open her eyes again, she stared straight into those of her grandmother.
Chapter 14
"Nanna?"
Jetta said it a little too loud. Luckily, the van was bumping forward so no one heard. Her grandmother's eyes kept staring at her from above. Jetta couldn't breathe.
"But…but you are…"
Her grandmother didn't say anything. She smelled like the rain. Jetta realized her grandmother's body hadn't moved. Her body was still lying on the false bottom, on top of her in the exact same position as earlier. It was only her head that had turned all the way around on her neck and now her eyes looked through the crack between the false bottom and the side of the coffin, where her hand had fallen down previously.
Had it stroked Jetta's cheek after all?
Jetta couldn't see all of her grandmother's face, mostly her eyes as they stared at her. She could also see her lips as they turned upwards into a grin. Her grey and steely lips.
"How?"
The rational part of Jetta told her it was just a dream, or some hallucination created by her mind caused by the trauma of seeing her grandmother, her only relative left, dead in the apartment back at the ghetto. That same part insisted that if she closed her eyes or even blinked, the illusion would go away and her grandmother would be lost again forever. So, she didn't. She kept her eyes wide open and stared into her grandmother's for as long as she could, remembering all the days and nights she had spent with her as a child, missing hearing her voice.
But there was also another part of her, a deeply hidden part, that knew that this was her grandmother now, this was the shape she was in now. She was actually there, dead. Yet still somehow looking at her granddaughter from the world of the spirits.
"But..."
She had so many questions, so much she wanted to ask her dear grandmother, but her grandmother couldn't speak, and soon the van came to a halt. Jetta held her breath and waited. She listened while her small grandmother's eyes were still looking at her from above. They were staring, not blinking once.
Voices on the outside, the sound of loud agitated talking. Jetta closed her eyes in anxiety.
Another checkpoint.
Voices kept going for a few minutes before the back door to the van opened. A voice spoke, another answered, but only muffled sounds reached Jetta. Then, the sound of the door closing again, followed shortly by the wondrous sound of the engine roaring as the van took off once again.
Jetta breathed and opened her eyes, only to find that her grandmother's eyes were no longer staring back her. Her body, head, and hand were all back in place on top of Jetta as she had been when they left.
Chapter 15
The van finally stopped and Jetta felt the coffin being carried somewhere, then there was silence. For a very long time. Nothing but darkness and silence. There came a point when she considered knocking on the sides, but she didn't dare to.
Finally—hours later—the lid was opened and light shone into the coffin. They lifted her grandmother off and opened the false bottom. Jetta held a hand to cover her eyes from the bright light. It was coming from a light bulb under the ceiling above her.
"Sorry for the long wait," the woman said as Jetta sat up.
They were both there. The white man and the white woman, now without their spacesuits. They were smiling compassionately at Jetta.
"We had to wait till the sun had set upon the city," the man said. "To make sure no one noticed."
"I'm in the city again?" she asked.
"Yes. New Orleans. We brought you to our house. Inside the walls. Both of you. There is nowhere else for you to go. Outside, on the other side of the walls, is nothing but death. Especially for someone like you. No one is out there anymore except soldiers and criminals waiting to kill you for scraps. On the other side of the ghettos, it's nothing but wasteland and war. People fighting everywhere, burning down entire cities. There are no laws, no one to help you if you're unarmed. It's no place for someone like you. Most of the children I have helped, I took to an orphanage outside of town, but unfortunately, that was burned down a few days ago. I don't even know if anyone survived."
Tyler came up behind her. "But in here, we'll be killed if they find us. This is white man's city."
The white woman nodded. "I know. But you'll be safe here. We'll make sure you stay safe."
Tyler looked at the man, then back at the woman. "But if we're found, they will kill you as well. "
They looked at each other. "We know," the man said. "We know."
"But we can't just do nothing, can we?" the lady said. "After all, the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
"Albert Einstein," Tyler said.
The man smiled and reached out his hand. "I'm Peter. Peter Johnson."
"I'm Joy," the woman said and waved a little awkwardly. "We have a son, Philip, here too, but he's asleep. Now, I'll take you to the attic. There's an entrance in the back. We run our undertaker business from this house, but no one ever uses the attic. The entrance is covered by a movable case of shelves with cans. It can only be pulled away from our side of it."
Joy showed them up the stairs through a small kitchen and into the pantry, where Peter grabbed the shelves and pulled them aside to expose a door behind it. He opened it and revealed a staircase.
"Here we go," he said. "Come on. You must hurry."
Jetta looked up into the darkness. Tyler was right behind her.
"I'll go first," he said.
Tyler disappeared up the stairwell, almost running. Jetta followed, taking first a few cautious steps upwards, then pausing while the door was closed behind her and the faces of Joy and Peter disappeared along with the light.
Part II
Chapter 16
Shango was asleep. It was bright daylight, yet he hadn't opened his eyes, even though it was way past midday in Barapireli, a village in the Mopti Region of Mali in West Africa. Shango was lying on the wooden floor of the Bla Bla Bar when someone came up to him and kicked his leg a few times. Shango blinked and opened his eyes.
Then he grinned.
"Wake up, you drunk," Salif, the bartender, said. "Time to go. I have to open in a few hours."
/> Shango sat up, looked around, and spotted a bottle of rum, his bottle of rum from before he passed out. It was still half full. That was more than what you could say about him. He was hardly drunk anymore.
"Only one thing to do about that," he said, put the bottle against his lips, and drank, gulped the sweet drink down into his throat. A satisfied sigh followed as the drink did its work in him and he slowly returned to his own self or at least the version he liked the best.
He grinned at Salif once again. Salif was holding Shango’s drum under his arm and now he threw it at him.
"Don't come back."
"Come on, Salif. I thought we was friends. How about those women I got to you last night, huh? Can't complain much about them, can you?"
"You're married, Shango. Go home to your Oya. Take care of her."
Shango smiled from ear to ear, thinking about his wife. As a matter of fact, he’d had three of them, but Oya was by far his favorite. "She's fine," he said and drank from his bottle again.
Salif shook his head with a disapproving grunt. "I need to clean this place up. It's a mess. Now leave."
Shango reached out his hand towards Salif, waving it enthusiastically while belching.
"A little help here?"
Salif sighed and shook his head, yet helped the man up from the floor where he had passed out the night before, drunk as a bat as usual.
"Thanks, mate," Shango said and saluted Salif, already sounding slurred in his speech.
Shango staggered towards the door, drum under his arm, opened it, and was blinded by the sunlight outside.
"Oh, dear," he said and looked in his pocket for his sunglasses, found them, only slightly cracked, put them on, sipped his rum once again, and left with the words, "Be back tonight."
"Don't!" Salif yelled after him, but the door was closed and Shango long gone.
"Ah, what's the use," Salif mumbled, shaking his head as he started to mop the floor where Shango had slept. The wood was burned, leaving charcoaled spots, and so was the ceiling above him. At the rate this was going, he wouldn't have a bar to tend in just a few weeks if he didn't find a way to keep Shango away.
Chapter 17
They weren't alone in the attic at the undertaker's house. Five people were already up there, hiding. Besides Tyler and Jetta, there was a family of four, two adults and two children, along with an elderly man, Mr. Richards.
The family stuck mostly to themselves in one corner of the attic. Mr. Richards was alone while Tyler and Jetta kept together. They got to know the rules really quickly. There was to be no noise during the day. No walking around, no lights turned on, and most importantly, no talking. It had to be this way since the Johnson's had clients coming all day, clients who had loved ones that had died somehow, who wanted a proper burial for them. There was no telling when a new client might walk in, so they had to be quiet at all times. At nighttime, it was different. They could talk, walk around, and eat. But there were to be no lights turned on. They risked being seen from one of the drones flying around town, looking inside people's windows, or from the surrounding apartments or houses on the street, waking suspicion among the neighbors.
Those were the rules and they lived by them, not knowing what else to do or how long it would have to last. The Johnsons provided food once a week. They left it by the doorstep in a basket. They had a very old refrigerator in the attic to keep it in and there was a small kitchen for them to cook in at night when they were allowed to walk around.
The days dragged themselves away and Jetta was extremely bored. Sometimes, she would try and look out the one window under the ceiling, but often the parents told her not to, afraid she would be seen. But, every now and then, she would sneak there to do so anyway, when most of them were asleep during the day.
Jetta enjoyed looking out. Sometimes, she would see explosions coming from the other side of the wall and, in the quietness, she could hear gunshots. Oftentimes, she worried that this war would never be over and that she would have to stay in this attic for the rest of her life.
Other times, she could see children playing in the courtyard beneath her and dreamt of being with them. White children, of course, playing hide and go seek in their nice clean clothes. She wished she could smell the fresh air on their skin and missed the feeling of being out of breath from running really fast.
Who will run with me if this war ever ends?
She glanced at Tyler, who was sound asleep just like the rest of them. He had been so good to her, but she worried he only was because he had needed her to escape the ghetto. But she also knew war brought out the worst in people, especially when all they thought about was their own survival. It was only natural. She wondered if he thought it had been worth it at all. Going from one shape of captivity to another. At least he could breathe fresh air in the ghetto. In the attic, it was getting muggy and humid.
As nighttime came and Tyler finally opened his eyes, she sat next to him, her back against the wall. The others had woken up as well and had been sharing the food rationed for the day. Jetta had saved a portion for him, so he wouldn't miss out on it since he slept a lot longer than the rest.
"Thanks," he said and ate rice from the bowl using his fingers.
"No problem."
Jetta drank from her water cup. She ate a little herself but had realized that she could get by on very little if she had to, and often she wouldn't eat much just to make sure the rest of them had enough.
Mr. Richards didn't eat much lately either, she had noticed. Not like when they first arrived in the attic. Maybe he didn't need much either.
Or maybe it was something else.
Chapter 18
"I'm home!"
Shango slammed the door open and staggered inside. On the table stood a portion of cornmeal porridge with banana and mango.
Shango grinned again. Oya always knew just what he liked. He sat down and started to eat, shoveling the food down, while whistling loudly between bites. Then he started drumming on the table.
"No whistling inside the house," Oya said coming in from the kitchen. She looked so stunning, Shango couldn't stop smiling while she walked across the floor, moving so elegantly she was barely touching the tiles.
"You know what happens."
Shango stopped and shoveled in food. "Sorry. I am just in such a great mood."
"You always are, Shango, you always are."
Shango rose from his chair, walked to Oya, grabbed her by the waist, and started to swing her around. Oya laughed.
"Stop it, Shango. Stop it."
He continued. Oya spun and spun, around and around. As she did, it was almost like he could see her change, but then she was back, and she stopped. He grabbed both of her hands and looked deeply into her eyes.
"We need to talk, Shango," she said.
He lifted her up and started to carry her towards the bedroom. "Yes. After."
He threw her on the bed and soon they made love so loudly all the neighbor's houses shook.
When they were done, Shango pulled his pants back on, walked out of the bedroom, whistling again, small spits of fire landing on the walls. Oya ran after him, yelling at him to stop the whistling while putting out the fires with her scarf.
Shango walked outside and sat in a chair, smoking a cigarette, when she came back out to him. She handed him his bottle of rum. It was almost empty by now. He sipped it, then clapped his leg.
"Come. Sit with me."
"Not now, Shango. We need to talk, remember?"
"Ah, that, yes." Shango rolled his eyes, put the bottle down, and looked up at his wife. Three times he had been married and the first two had both ended with a, “We need to talk.”
"I will give you children, woman. A whole quiver full," he said. "Just you wait and see."
"It's not about children, Shango. It's about the girl."
Shango, who had pressed the bottle against his lips again, spat out the precious rum, and it ended as a cloud of little droplets in the air.
"What?"
"The girl. She's in trouble."
"Pah," he said, trying to look innocent. "I don't know nothing about no girl."
"Yes, you do, Shango," she said, kneeling next to him. "It's time."
Chapter 19
There was a storm coming. Jetta knew it when she felt the wind on her face. That was also when she knew she had to be dreaming because she hadn't felt the wind or even breathed fresh air for months. Jetta closed her eyes and let it caress her face. It felt almost like little kisses. Small kisses of freedom, of promises of a better future ahead.
She heard thunder in the distance as lightning struck not far from where she was, and she opened her eyes with a gasp. She was in a forest. A forest of massive tree trunks and trees as high as mountains. They seemed to be growing as Jetta watched them.
She was no longer alone, she realized. In front of her stood an animal, looking at her with its big brown eyes. It was an antelope. Jetta looked into the animal's eyes, finding them surprisingly familiar. The eyes were huge, almost black. They blinked.
She approached it, the sound of thunder rumbling in the background.
"It's gonna rain soon," she said to the antelope as if to warn it. She didn’t know why.
The animal bent its head and showed off a set of very impressive antlers. It scraped the ground with them, then raised its head and looked at her again.
"A storm is coming," the antelope said.
To Jetta's surprise, she found it completely normal that the animal spoke; it was, after all, a dream, with all its dream logic and of course it would speak with a soft woman's voice.
Jetta could hear the water. Drip. Drip. Drip. She looked up towards the sky to see if she could spot the rain and make it fall on her face. She could smell it coming. It was the most wondrous smell in the world.