She reaches for me—her hands look like they’re covered in bright red paint. She helps me get back on my feet, and her hands leave wet marks on both of my arms.
“What is that?” I ask, pointing.
Momma doesn’t say anything for what feels like forever. She glances over her shoulder toward the people from our flight—they’re hurrying along the enormous first-floor walkway, a long row of stores on either side of them.
Momma looks at me again. Her body is swaying back and forth, like she just finished doing something that makes her dizzy, like twirling with me in the living room.
“Come on,” she says. Her voice sounds like it does when she drinks a glass of wine before dinnertime. “We need to stay with them.”
As the crowd moves deeper into the mall, Momma and I follow at the very back. The overhead lights are on, but nobody’s shopping; the stores are all closed for the night. Some stores even have black gates pulled down over their fronts. As we walk, I hold onto Momma’s arm—she seems like she can barely stand up from being so tired.
The crowd stops when it reaches the food court, and I notice that some of the African men break off into small groups and start talking among themselves right away. I can’t hear what they’re saying; Momma and I are too far away.
Momma sits down at a table while I stand close by, watching her.
“Momma?” I say.
She is taking deep breaths, in and out, even though we aren’t running anymore. Her eyes are closed like she’s about to fall asleep.
“Momma.”
“Yes, hon,” Momma says. She doesn’t open her eyes.
“Why are we at the mall?” I ask.
Momma says something, but I can’t hear her. She’s murmuring. That’s an actual word—murmuring.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I said I don’t know why,” Momma says. She looks like she’s barely awake. “I don’t know anything.”
Momma slowly takes her phone out of her purse, drops the phone on accident and picks it up again. I watch as she touches the screen with her finger, making red streaks on the glass. She slowly puts the phone up to her ear—her hand is trembling.
I want to ask Momma a lot more questions but I force myself to be quiet. When Momma is on the phone, Momma needs peace—I know that rule already.
“Stephen?” Momma says into the phone.
She said Stephen—that means Daddy.
“We’re inside the fucking mall. Yes. The Westgate—across from the airport.” Momma pauses. Her eyes suddenly roll so far back in her head that all I can see is the white part. She doesn’t say anything else; the phone falls out of her hand and clatters on the tile floor.
Momma tries to stand up from the chair, but she doesn’t seem able to use her legs. She sits down again, landing so hard that the chair almost tips over.
“Momma?”
Her eyes close.
“Momma,” I say. My stomach goes cold.
Momma slides off the chair and falls onto the tile next to the phone.
I scream out for help.
An African girl from our flight looks at me from where she’s standing at the edge of a group of other girls, many of them holding small children. She rushes over, kneels down next to Momma, and rolls her over onto her back. She lowers her ear to Momma’s mouth.
Chapter Three
It’s morning now.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor of a toy shop on the second floor of the mall, looking at a coloring book I found on a wooden display rack. Since the book isn’t really mine, I don’t actually color the pages. Momma is still asleep, lying on the floor next to me.
We’re totally alone—Momma and me. We’ve been alone for the whole night, actually, except for when one of the African girls came to visit us three different times. I’m pretty sure she was the same girl who helped Momma at the food court when she fell.
During her first visit, the girl brought bandages for Momma and put them on. When I asked the girl why Momma needed the bandages, the girl said Momma got shot in the belly by the police officers and now she’s bleeding a whole lot.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard.
I never knew someone could get shot in real life—especially not my own mom.
The second time the girl came, she was carrying big plastic bottles full of water. Three of them. The girl made Momma drink some of the water (even though Momma was practically asleep), and then the girl washed some medicine—a few white pills shaped like Hot Tamales candies—down Momma’s throat.
The third time the girl came into the toy shop, she just looked at me from the doorway, shook her head for a few seconds and left without saying a word.
I drop the coloring book on the tile, stand up, and go to the glass windows at the front of the store. It isn’t dark outside anymore; I see sunshine coming in through the skylights built into the high ceilings of the mall.
I take a drink from my water bottle. I yawn really big and stretch my arms.
I go back to Momma, sit down, and start looking at the coloring book again.
• • •
“Jasmine,” Momma says.
The sound of her voice surprises me so much that I almost jump.
I toss the coloring book to one side and throw my body onto Momma’s chest, burrowing into her, resting my head on her shoulder. She doesn’t put her arms around me like she usually would. She groans like she sometimes does when I wake her up too early on the weekend.
“Where is this?” Momma asks.
I lift my head from her chest, look up at her face, and smile. “The toy shop,” I answer. “You got shot, Momma. Did you know that?”
Momma raises her head, blinking a bunch of times as she looks around. “What does the toy shop mean?” Her voice still sounds really tired.
I want to ask Momma why she’s so tired—she should feel totally awake after sleeping for so long—but I don’t ask.
“The best toy shop. The one I like,” I say.
Momma looks at me with wide eyes. “Why the fuck are we in a store, Jasmine?”
I don’t answer Momma’s question—I can’t. Momma doesn’t usually use the f-bomb, but whenever she does, I get so nervous that I forget how to talk for a few seconds.
“Jasmine,” Momma says. “Why are we here?”
Her voice sounds a little bit calmer now, which helps me to calm down too.
“I picked the toy shop because I remembered that I like it. Remember? Plus it was unlocked for some reason. And you just said the f-bomb, Momma.”
“Look at me,” Momma says.
I do what my momma tells me to do—I look at her.
“Where is your dad, baby?” she asks.
I shrug. “I’m not sure.”
Momma turns her head to look one way, then the other.
“He’s not here,” I say.
“No shit, Jasmine—I’m aware of that. That’s why I need my purse.” Momma looks around some more. “Where’s my fucking phone, Jasmine?”
Momma sounds really, really upset at me. I try to answer her question, but I get so nervous that I feel myself starting to cry.
“All right. Stop. I’m sorry, hon,” Momma says. She reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it once. Her skin feels scratchy where the blood dried up and hardened. “Jas. I’m sorry. I’m not mad, all right? You didn’t do anything wrong, baby. I just need to know where my things are. Did you see my things anywhere?”
I wipe my eyes with the back of a hand. I shake my head no.
Momma nods. “I need a favor from you then. Can you help Momma, please?”
I don’t answer. I think about it for a little while.
I’m really mad at Momma for raising her voice at me, so I don’t want to help her with anything right now. But I also know if I don’t help, she might raise her voice even more.
It seems like there’s no way I can win.
“Okay,” I say. “What.”
“That’s my girl. Help Momm
a sit up.” She points toward a shelf along the wall—it’s full of stuffed animals. “Get me one of those plushies. One of the big ones.”
I go to the shelf. “This one?” I point to a grey mouse.
“I said big. A big one, baby. Please.”
I point to a purple hippo. “This one?”
Momma closes her eyes and makes a big sigh. “Okay. Yes, hon. That one is fine,” she says. “Bring it to Momma, please. I want you to put it under my shoulders to prop me up.”
I do what Momma tells me to do. I prop her up so she can see everything better.
After that, Momma asks for some water. I bring her a bottle and unscrew the cap for her so she can drink.
She wipes her mouth with her knuckles. Her hand looks like it’s shaking again.
“Okay, baby,” Momma says. “Tell me how we got here. To the toy shop, I mean. Do you remember?”
Of course I remember—it was only last night.
“Okay. It all started when you fell down on the floor in the food court,” I say. “You fainted, Momma. They carried you up here.”
“What do you mean up here?” Momma asks.
I point toward the ceiling. “Up. To the second floor of the mall. They carried you up here.”
“Who did?”
I shrug. “I don’t know their names.”
“I don’t care about their goddamn names, Jasmine. Just tell me who they were.”
Momma’s voice sounds upset again—I’m not sure why she’s acting like this. I don’t want to answer her question because I’m scared she’ll get even more mad. I look down at the floor instead.
“All right. I’m sorry, baby,” Momma says. “Just tell me what they looked like. The people who carried me. How about that?”
I nod. “It was two girls—ladies, I mean. Two of the African ladies from the airplane.”
“They carried me here?” Momma shakes her head like she’s confused. “Why would they do that?”
“Pretty much right after you fell down, some other people—three men—came to the food court and started yelling at everyone,” I answer.
“The police?”
I shrug. “Some people who work here, I think. They were wearing black clothes—like police clothes, but not exactly the same. They told us to get out of the mall.”
“So they were security guards,” Momma says.
“Whatever they were, they didn’t want us to be here at all, Momma. So our group—the people from our airplane—had to start running again. But we didn’t run out of the mall like the guards told us to. We went upstairs! I didn’t know what else to do, so I asked the two ladies to carry you. I ran all by myself, though.”
Momma stares at me. Neither one of us makes a sound for what feels like a long time.
“I need you to call someone for help,” Momma says.
I look at her.
“Me?”
“Yes. You,” Momma says.
“But why can’t you call?” I ask.
“I can barely move, Jasmine,” Momma answers. “I need you to do this one thing for me, okay? Please, hon. I need you to do this.”
I don’t want to say yes to Momma right now, but I don’t feel like I have a choice.
I nod. “All right.”
“That’s my girl,” Momma says. “I need you to run to the back of the store and find the cash register—you know what that looks like, right?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” Momma says. “Once you find the cash register, go behind the counter and find the phone.”
“What phone?”
“The store’s phone,” Momma answers. “It’ll be somewhere near the cash register. You’ll see it.”
“But how will I see it?”
“Just look for it, Jasmine,” Momma says. “There’s always a phone behind the register somewhere. Just find it.”
“Then what do I do after that?” I ask.
“Then you call the ambulance. 9-1-1, remember? Tell them that you’re at the Westgate mall and that your mom is hurt. You can do that for me, right?”
I don’t answer.
I imagine myself searching for the store’s phone, finding it somewhere near the cash register, and using it to call the ambulance for help. I imagine the person—a really nice lady, I hope—who will answer the phone and tell me that everything will be okay.
“I guess so,” I say.
“That’s my girl,” Momma says. “Now go. Please hurry, sweetheart.”
I run to the back of the store as quickly as I can.
Almost right away, I find a long countertop where the cash registers are sitting—one, two, three in a row—and I see a shiny black phone exactly where Momma told me it would be.
“Momma!” I call out. “I found the phone!”
I’m too far away to see my momma right now, but I’m almost positive that she’s close enough to hear my voice.
I run to the phone, pick up the black handle, and hold it up to my ear.
I hear a dial tone.
“Momma!” I call out. “I can hear a dial tone!”
I search the keypad for the number 9 until I find it. I press the number 9 once. Then I find the number 1 and press it twice in a row.
I listen, expecting to hear the sound of the phone connecting to the ambulance people, but nothing happens. All I can hear is silence.
I hang up the phone and try dialing 9-1-1 again.
But nothing happens.
“Momma?” I call out.
“What,” Momma says. I can barely hear her voice.
“Um. The phone didn’t work, Momma. I think something’s wrong with it.”
“I thought you just told me that you could hear a dial tone,” Momma says.
“I can hear one. But when I press the numbers, everything just goes quiet. Nothing happens.”
Momma doesn’t say anything.
“Momma?”
“I heard you,” she answers. “Maybe you just need to connect to an outside line.”
“What’s an outside line?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter. Try pressing 9, then dial 9-1-1. So it’s like you’re pressing 9-9-1-1. Two nines, two ones. Does that make sense?”
I think about it.
9-9-1-1?
“But that doesn’t seem right, Momma,” I answer. “It’s supposed to be 9-1-1.”
“Just do it, Jasmine,” Momma says. “Now. Please. Just try for me.”
Momma sounds pretty annoyed, so I decide to try her idea, even though I don’t think it’s a very good one.
I press 9-9-1-1.
Nothing happens.
Just like I thought.
“The same thing happened, Momma,” I call out.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “All I hear is nothing. It’s the same as last time.”
“Try the other numbers then. Try every number,” Momma says. “Dial 1-9-1-1. Then 2-9-1-1. Then 3-9-1-1. Keep on going until something works.”
“But Momma?”
“Goddammit, Jasmine. I don’t want to argue with you. Just do it.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine,” I answer.
I do exactly what my momma tells me to do.
One at a time, I press each number on the keypad—1 through 8 (because I already tried 9)—before dialing 9-1-1.
But none of Momma’s number ideas work.
I told her that they wouldn’t work, but she didn’t want to listen to me, like usual.
I hang up the phone and walk back to the spot where Momma is lying on the floor.
“Well?” she asks, staring up at me.
“It didn’t work,” I say, shrugging. “I’m sorry, Momma. I think the phone must be broken or something.”
“Really, Jasmine? You couldn’t dial a damn number?”
“I’m sorry, Momma.”
“You’re sorry. Lord, have mercy,” Momma says, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”
Momma makes a huge sigh and closes her eyes.
/> I stare at her face.
Even though my momma got shot yesterday, she still looks really pretty in my opinion.
Without making a sound, I sit down on the floor beside her and cross my legs.
“I need a phone, Jasmine,” Momma says, making me jump. Her eyes open. “I need my phone. So I want you to try and remember. Is my purse still downstairs?”
“I don’t know, Momma.”
“Try, baby.”
“I am trying,” I say, crossing my arms. “I don’t know.”
“Well, what the hell do you know, Jasmine? Anything?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Do you know where everybody else is?” Momma asks.
“Everybody who?”
Momma lifts up her arms and starts to spread them open, but suddenly stops. She cries out like she just got bit by a bug or a spider. She closes her eyes—I can see tears building up in the corners.
I listen to her breathing in and out. I wait for her to be ready; I know better than to ask Momma anything when she’s breathing hard like that.
“I want to know where everyone else is,” Momma says. “All the other passengers from our flight. Where did they go?”
“I don’t know,” I answer.
“Did they make it out?”
“Out of what?”
“Here, Jasmine,” Momma says. “The mall. Did they get away?”
the two levels Page 5
