“Momma!” I screamed. But my cries were drowned out by all of the ruckus. Thefiremen put out the fire in less than five minutes. The police officer lifted my mother offof the ground. The left side of her face was soiled, dried leaves were stuck in her hair,and the bottom half of her sweater was seared from the flames. The police tucked herhead into the car. She resisted against it. She looked drained, exhausted.
Someone was tugging on me. I was lost, almost in a trance. I looked behind me andsaw that Ali was pulling my arm.
“We got to go,” he said. I shook my head. I didn’t want to go and leave our mom; wehad to be a family. We needed to be a family.
“Nelly, do you want to be taken away?” he continued; I just looked at him. For somereason my mind couldn’t process the words that he was saying.
“You’ll never see me or mom again,” he yelled knocking some sense into me. Yes,he was right. We had to run. It was best that we stayed together. Families needed to staytogether. We blended into the crowd. Ali was still tugging on my arm. I had to take twosteps in order to keep up with one of his. He was moving way too fast. I paused. I wastired, I needed to rest and think about what had just happened. Ali felt the dead weight.He turned around, grimaced and yanked hard on my arm like I was a dog on a chain. Imistakenly bumped into a plump woman, who was standing with her feet spread apartand had her hands placed on her hips. She was wearing a shapeless floral dress withbright violet colors. Her brown pea coat was clean, but a size too small. She couldn’tbutton it. A little black purse with a spaghetti strap dangled around her right shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” I managed to say fleetingly as I was tugged away by Ali. She keptlooking at us.
“Hey! Stop!” she yelled. Ali turned. He looked her up and down and then his facefroze.
“Run,” Ali yelled. We took off and ran with full speed.
“Hey come back here!” the woman barked. Her voice was deep and frightening, likea wolf howling in the night. We only stopped when we were a great distance away. Wejust looked at each other, our chests heaving in and out with rivulets of sweat drippingfrom our chins and foreheads.
“Ali, who was that woman?” I asked between breaths. Ali collapsed to the ground,folding his legs underneath him.
“Not sure, I think that it might have been our grandmother,” he said. I rested myhands on my knees, my heart was pounding and I was still struggling to catch my breath.
“Who?” I managed to ask. Ali’s body seemed to have cooled down. His breaths werenormal and he seemed relaxed. He looked up at the sun and then squinted. It was a coldsunny day. He spread his legs out, leaned back on his elbows, and just looked at me. Ittook him a long time to answer.
“Who is she?” I asked impatiently.
“You don’t know her, or maybe you were too young to remember her,” he said. I satdown next to him. I wanted to know more about this abuela person.
“She’s a real bitch. I almost shit my pants when I saw her.” “She’s huge,” I said.
“Yeah, that bitch is a real heavy weight. She could have knocked both of us out withone punch.”
I was silent for a minute. I wanted to ask him a question, but I was kinda afraid to. Irested my hands on the grass and then began to pull out shards of it by the handfuls. Alilooked over at me; I suppose that he knew what I wanted to ask him.
“I don’t think that she would have been able to help us,” he said. My head shot up.
“But she’s the only family we have now,” I said.
“No! She ain’t family. We don’t know her. Besides, there’s a reason why mommynever spoke to her,” he said.
“But mommy was crazy,” I said. His head snapped. He squinted and just glared atme.
“Never say that shit again,” he hissed. He reached out and grabbed my arm.
“Don’t ever tell anybody about mommy or about the fucking shadows. You keep thatshit to yourself. You hear me?” he said squeezing my arm. I grimaced from the pain. Ididn’t answer him right away and he squeezed tighter.
“Do you hear me?” he repeated.
“Yes,” I whimpered. He released my arm and I began to massage it with my righthand. I knew that the whole mommy topic was closed. But I still didn’t know what wewere going to do. We were still two kids. Neither of us could work and we didn’t haveany money, or even anything to sell to get money. How were we going to eat? Ali leanedback and tucked his hands behind his head. He seemed rather smitten for a boy who justwatched his mother get arrested. His face looked calm, and I slowly gathered the courageto ask him another question.
“Are we going to try and find daddy?” I asked gently.
“Fuck him. He never did nothing for us. He ain’t even our real daddy anyway,” hesaid. My mouth opened wide from exasperation. I couldn’t believe it. Ali knew. All thistime he knew, but he never said anything. I looked over at him and wondered what elsehe knew, about our family. My brother was not the talkative type, but I knew that he hada horde of secrets tucked away in his mind.
