When Mama got home, she laid on the horn since a car was parked in front of the driveway. Her phone was pressed to her ear, Brennan watching all the while as the women looked to Mama and broke into song. The children wailed and covered their ears at the horn.
A man got out of the car blocking the driveway and pounded in fury on Mama’s hood. She got out, screaming at him to get the hell away from her truck and her property. The police were on the way. Then the man got in Mama’s face to yell that she was a bitch who endangered good families, and a lesbian, too, since she drove a truck.
No squad car rounded the corner, no sirens blared in the distance. Worried that this man was going to hit his mother, Brennan flew out the front door. He didn’t think to bring a knife from the kitchen until it was too late. The children screamed to see him and ran into the street. Their mothers stopped singing to shout at them about cars. The man was still railing at Mama, who was railing just as furiously back.
Grabbing up the hose, Brennan turned on the faucet to full blast and depressed the lever. He nailed the man in the back with the hard spray of the water. The man turned, enraged, and Mama ordered Brennan to go back into the house.
“Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of here!” Brennan yelled. His voice broke from a man’s to a boy’s, and he screamed in frustration. He turned the flow to the open window of the man’s car. The breeze flicked drops back into Brennan’s face.
That gave him the idea to move the stream to the man’s mouth as a stopper to his shouting. The man shielded his face and tried to come onto the grass, Brennan moving the spray to his groin and making him dash back. Then Brennan turned the hose on the women and children on the sidewalk and street, screaming incoherently at them. Curses rained down upon him but they did not hurt, not like the true rain pounding nails into their legs and stomachs and faces. The old woman fell when getting up from her chair and no one stopped to help. He sprayed her as she scrabbled on all fours to escape. Backpacks and drums and a purse forgotten, the women and children scattered.
He hadn’t felt angry while watching them through the day. He felt very little, but it was building all along with every prayer and sign, every tap of a drum. Brennan had not known this but now he felt it. To bother his family that did nothing but go to work and school and church! To make him a monster when the monsters were those four thugs running away with Brennan’s money! To tell every man, woman, and child passing by that a zombie lived here! When Mama had cried to the television cameras of her lost son last December, the neighbors brought over food and told reporters of the nice boy he was, even though they didn’t really know him. When Brennan came back with Sombra C, they evanesced. And now it was not enough to ignore him and call their children inside when he appeared. Now they turned his home into a circus!
The man advanced and Brennan sprayed him again viciously, drawing a line from his face to his groin, and then his ear when the guy came sideways. Mama was back at her truck, laying on the horn, and sirens were coming. The man heard the wailing as Brennan did, and ran to his car to drive away. He cursed that it was wet inside.
The women were on the sidewalk across the street now, swearing at Brennan and Mama while the children cried and pulled at their drippy clothes. Brennan sprayed the hose on the backpacks and purse left behind until they were soaked. The dropped drums were on the grass, which made them his property! So he stomped on them while Mama put the truck in the garage. The plastic crunched under his sneaker and he sprayed the purse through its open slit. It fell over from the hammering and a cell phone oozed out. He sprayed that until it tipped into the gutter and returned to filling the purse until it bubbled over with froth. A boy wailed with his mouth open in a fat circle, “My drum! My drum! Waaaaaah!”
Then Mama’s arms locked Brennan’s down and the hose fell from his fingers. He was crying and screaming, still stamping on a destroyed drum and the lever snapping back to plug the water hissing over the grass. Every invective he knew in two languages he hurled across the road. They were bitches, they were putas, their children were ugly and retarded, and their men humped the family dogs. Saliva sprayed from his lips as he swore and thrashed in his mother’s grip. Mama said, “Brennan! Brennan Ciervo!” and then, “Brennan Ciervo Ortega!”
A squad car turned the corner and drew to a stop. Mama turned Brennan around and forced him to sit on the porch. She got to the cop before the women did and exploded. Remaining obediently on the steps, Brennan wiped his nose as a woman crept back to retrieve her purse. Then she was shouting about her ruined phone and a second squad car pulled up.
“Arrest him for assault! Arrest him!” the women demanded. Mama demanded that they be arrested for harassment and littering, and that her son could not even water the lawn in peace! It ended with no one being arrested, the cops telling the women to disperse and everyone go home.
Mama’s hands in the kitchen were angry during the preparation of dinner, Brennan at the table listening to clangs and thunks. Once Mama said, “Almost sixteen! That is how old you are to have your first tantrum. I should wash out your mouth with soap.”
He would not take back any of it, and readied to tell her no. Mama slipped butter under the skin of a chicken and shook herbs over the top. The oven door closed with a bang. Then she cut potatoes and threw the pieces into a bowl to be fried when the chicken was close to done. Brennan studied the pattern on the table, not wanting his mother to be angry with him. “What did Mr. Jenkins want?”
“He told me that we must move,” Mama hissed.
“Move?”
“Yes. Somehow he found out about your illness, and he doesn’t want Sombra C in his rental. So he demands we go immediately, and he refuses to pay back the deposit. That will be his money to pay for sterilizing this place once we’re out.” Mama glared at a potato chunk that escaped the bowl and slid over the counter. Her fingers snapped shut over it.
“Where will we go?”
“Go? I told that old man that we broke no provisions of the rental. That means he has to give us thirty days’ notice, since we have lived here less than one year. Your mama knows the law. I know that from your papa, your real papa, who told me such things. You do not wish to know your true father, but he was a smart man! After thirty days’ notice, old man Jenkins may begin the eviction process. And even then we can contest it, make him fight us in court and I will do this to waste his time and money!”
She watched television while the chicken cooked, casting evil eyes to the window at every noise. It was mostly just the wind. Brennan had no homework so he watched the television, too. There were three new walled communities being built in Hawaii, and Mama shook her head when the reporter said it cost fifty thousand dollars a year to live in one of the units. Applications were coming in so thickly that each place was swamped with them. Fifty thousand dollars! That was every dollar Mama made in a year without any taxes taken out.
His cell phone rang with a number he did not know. Picking up, he said, “Hello?”
“It was stupid,” a voice said.
Brennan felt punched in the chest to realize it was Nevara. “I’m sorry, but what was stupid?”
“How did you get Sombra C?”
Quickly, he carried the phone into his room and closed the door. Then he pressed it tightly to his ear to catch all of her words. “I was attacked in the woods while trying to go to a party. We got lost.”
“So you weren’t stupid. But I was. Do you know what I did?”
How could he? Brennan didn’t even know this girl’s last name. “What did you do?”
“We were in Los Angeles visiting my uncle’s family last December. All of my cousins, my siblings and I climbed down a ravine to this old subway tunnel in the hill. The tracks are pulled out and it hasn’t been used for anything since the 1950s. We were daring each other to go inside. We always play this game, how far do you dare to go into the pitch black? My cousin Hector called us cowards so I went in deep and walked right into zombies hiding there.”
She dismissed what he had said with a bitter scoff. “How many times did I see on the news not to go into dark places? We even laughed about it while climbing down the ravine. What if there are zombies in our subway tunnel? But we’ve played there since we were young children, so it felt safe. My father did not want me to have a stamp, so he kept the attack a secret. But my little brother told a friend who told a friend who told a friend . . . the Health Department came to our door and tested everyone in the household. You’re at 5%. I saw you fix your scarf.”
“Yes. The fever set in fast and I fell asleep in the woods after the attack, as some people do.”
“So I am a stupid girl, the stupidest girl in all the world. My uncle beat Hector until he bled, since he is the oldest of us at sixteen. But I’m fourteen, and I can’t believe I was so stupid. What’s it like at your school, being a zombie?”
“It can be hard.”
“No one talks to me now. I am required to sit on a chair I carry from room to room and take notes on my lap.” Someone yelled in the background. “I have to go, my father is home.” She hung up.
He had done this, reached out, and she had reached back. Returning to the living room in a daze, he said, “Mama, a girl called me.”
Mama laughed to see his shocked face, and they watched a movie. Then the local news after that, and the reporter said that the bomb threat was unfounded and school was back on. Brennan would rather be in school than watching the protestors through the crack in the curtains. Would they come back tomorrow? Or would they respect the hose drumming into their flesh and his feet crushing their children’s toys? He should feel ashamed for spraying that old woman, but he did not. She crawled away and he hoped her knees were bloody with scrapes from the concrete, and that her diabetes kept them from healing.
It was eleven when they went to bed. Brennan said his prayers beneath the poster of Mary and Jesus. The children’s Bible waited with its nightly story, but he settled into bed without picking it up. A girl had called him. It muted the protestors and the hose, the screaming and squad cars, even pleading with God to cure him. Brennan hoped that Nevara did not think any of what he had said was stupid.
This wasn’t her fault, a child’s game that ended in Sombra C. It was no more foolish than being so fascinated at wild Christmas displays as to not pay attention to the directions to a party. And really, the fault belonged to this Hector! Brennan would never have goaded his little siblings and cousins into entering a dark tunnel. He closed his eyes and saw Nevara stung at the taunts, swelling her chest with bravery to show she was no coward in front of the younger ones. A warrior taking on the dark! As she had not mentioned Hector getting infected, Brennan could only presume that he heard her scream and ran away like a coward rather than rush in to save her. That was beneath contempt. This girl had spirit. Brennan lay in the dark reworking his fantasies of a happy girl to one showing no fear in the face of danger.
He wanted to dream of her, but the dream that came was of school. Yet Papa was there, sitting on a sofa and whining that Mama was not making his dinner. A strange man sang in a kitchen within math class, stirring soup in a blue pot and sharing a look of disgust with Brennan about this whining stepfather having a tantrum. A baby clapped its hands and played on an ABC mat by the sofa. Papa cried in triumph, “I told your mama to have a baby!”
Mama wasn’t even there. Brennan picked up the boy, black hair at the crown and dark brown at his nape, and said, “No, he is mine.” The shape of the boy’s face was Brennan’s, the shape of the eyes was Mama’s, and the boy cooed in a voice that was like the man’s singing in the kitchen. A stag watched from the window, high on a hill since he was a guardian angel.
There was no stamp on the baby boy’s neck, which Brennan noticed with delight. He was a stupendous creation, with fat thighs and a tummy round from good feedings, rosary beads in his slim fingers, and that throat brown and clear. When he was bigger, Brennan could seat him in the regular pews at Mass and watch with pride from the red his healthy son sing praises to God.
It smelled like smoke, and he looked up to the stove. The man was gone and the soup in the pot burning, gray streams of smoke rising into the air. The smell grew more terrible. Brennan ran to the stove, the baby there and gone and there on his arm as he fiddled with the knobs to turn off the heat. The smoke rose more furiously even though the flames went out.
Fire caught at the wall and Papa wailed on the sofa, still wanting his soup and for Brennan to carry him outside. The floor was twisted with wet laundry, which Brennan leaped to get to the door with his son. Now the boy was ten years old, his stomach flattened and his eyes round from fear as his papa kicked the door hard and broke it to splinters. They clattered to the floor in tiny brooms. He could sweep this fire away . . .
“Brennan! Brennan!”
Brennan woke up and gagged on the clots of smoke. How had this detail carried over from his dream? Shaking his shoulders, Mama screamed over the crackling, “Wake up, the house is on fire!”
The sleepiness disappeared. He threw aside the blanket and jumped out of the bed to follow his mother to the door. She was in her nightdress. There was no time to pack his things but still he grabbed the wood carving of the stag on his desk. This he would not leave behind! The stag, the jacket over the chair, and Mama screamed in the hallway to hurry.
He coughed on the smoke and staggered after her with the jacket and stag clutched to his chest. His cell phone! It was on the nightstand but he couldn’t double back when it was so hard to breathe. His eyes stung with the smoke, his feet following the path he’d traveled for months and guiding him to the front door. Since Mama kept her purse by the door, she snatched it and ushered him outside.
“Those assholes burned down this house to make us move!” Mama said once they were on the sidewalk. Orange flames were eating the back of their home and everything they owned was inside to feed its appetite. It was freezing and Mama shivered in her thin nightgown as she called 911. They were both barefoot. Wind blew and the fire lifted like a ballerina to leap to the roof of the house next door.
Screaming people ran out of their homes all along the block, knocking on doors and shouting into phones. Brennan said, “The truck!” and Mama replied, “It’s gone.”
Gone. Fire trucks bellowed and squad cars wailed, ambulances zoomed around the corner with angry squawks. Mama refused to take Brennan’s jacket so he put it on and watched their house burn. The police made them back away and people clustered together, holding their arms out and shouting that Brennan was contagious. They didn’t want him to stand anywhere near them.
“We’re going to lose the next one!” someone yelled, and the fire leaped to a third house with the wind. Water sprayed and firefighters shouted, children cried and a woman screamed about her dog in its kennel inside. She was restrained from running in, and a firefighter said that the dog was gone. A man roared that this was the Ortegas’ fault, and when he rushed forward with his finger out in accusation, police stopped him and put the Ortegas in the back of a squad car for their protection.
“Get them out of here!” a firefighter shouted as people pounded on the car. They were driven away from the fire to the station, Mama given a blanket to cover herself by the man at the desk. Brennan hugged his stag like a child with a teddy bear. In time, an aid worker knelt before them and asked with kindness if they had anywhere to go.
“We have nothing, not even shoes,” Mama said. The aid worker got on her phone to call the local Super Sleeper and reserve a Sombra C room.
“Mama, I’m sorry,” Brennan whispered. This felt like his fault for getting Sombra C. It had ruined their lives, and all because he took a wrong turn.
“This planet is full of such hideous people,” Mama said, and cried.
Micah
February had been a rough month since its inception with Imbolc.
Back at the start of freshman year, Micah h
ad abandoned her faith altogether without so much as a backwards glance. The timing was to avoid having a flow party to commemorate her first period. Her mothers were very concerned that this was because Micah was ashamed of becoming a woman, her self-esteem crushed by patriarchy already and making her reject the maturation of her body. Or maybe she was transsexual, and all along they had unwittingly encouraged a male mind trapped in a female body to go against its hormonal impulses. Jubilee had changed her name to the more boyish Micah. It was a horrifying thought to them, years upon years of having been oblivious to the troubles and torment of their daughter/son.
No. She just didn’t believe in anything, and a flow party was dull. Boys got camping trips and drum circles to celebrate that amorphous moment of puberty when they became men; girls got red balloons and chocolate cake and lots of conversation. Micah had spied on Shalom’s flow party and knew exactly what it was going to be. For a day Shalom fasted and did not speak, although she was allowed to write in a journal whatever deep thoughts or dreams starvation and silence induced. She had a ritual bath in water sprinkled with rose petals, and answered the door quietly to admit women dressed in red if they were still bleeding, white if they did not, or pink if in menopausal transition. The crone Flies with Crows wore blue since she liked to draw attention to herself. All of them carried presents of what they found comforting during their moon times: candy or bath beads or teas, music or favorite books.
StarTruth set up an altar of red flowers and red candles (all organic and grown or created locally) and cast a circle with her athame (which was made in China). After the ritual back-and-forth, everyone talked about what menarche and menstruation meant to them and how they loved to free flow in their gardens to connect to Mother Earth. StarTruth put a dot of red food dye on Shalom’s forehead and everyone embraced and welcomed her to the circle of womanhood. Then she could speak but cried in Uma and Tuma’s arms since this was meaningful in a way Micah years later still did not grasp. As Shalom was a woman now, it meant she could ask anything she wanted and not be told she was too young to hear the answer. So they all sat around in the living room offering her food while talking frankly about sex and birth control and female power, Micah bored in her hiding place and devising ways to sneak out for cake.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 47
