just spent an hour or whatever telling us your story, and now it’s time to give me a chance to speak! My whole life I’ve hated violence more than I’ve hated anything! And believe me, I’ve had a bunch of things to hate. But violence … it’s why I grew up without a mom. When I was five years old, my dad, that piece of shit, he literally beat her to death when he was drunk. Then in my first foster home, I was physically abused – and no, not by my foster dad, who was actually a half-decent human being – but by my foster mom, who was a bitch from hell. I went vegan when I was old enough to understand where meat and animal products came from, when I was maybe four years old. My mom, my real mom, she was vegan too, and she told me about the reality of animal agriculture. Well my first foster mom, she just could not accept the idea that I was vegan. She used to literally force me to eat meat, to eat animal products, because she was a Christian, and “that’s what God put animals here for”, and if I was gonna live under her roof, I was gonna eat whatever she put on my plate and be grateful for it. My foster dad, he was actually cool with me being vegan, but my foster mom, well that bitch just couldn’t handle it. If I refused to eat the eggs and meat she cooked, she’d slap me around and literally shove my face into the meat. And the kids at school, back in those days when most people didn’t even know what a vegan was … they were real fuckin’ assholes about it, most of ‘em. If it wasn’t my foster mom literally shoving meat into my face at home, it was the bullies at school literally shoving it into my face there. And people have the gall to say that we vegans “shove our opinions down their throats”, ha! Shit, try talking to people about animal rights, uh, other kids I mean, when you’re a kid. Fuck, the amount of mockery and bullying I’ve had to deal with my whole life … and that’s just the tip of the goddamn iceberg! But that’s just me. Violence … it’s what people do to animals, the ugliest, most horrible thing they do. On factory farms, fishing trawlers, whaling ships, hunters, poachers … I’ve seen it all, thousands of videos online. And that’s why I never felt too sorry for myself, even with all the shit that was happening in my own life. Because I knew that the animals always had it way worse than me, and literally the saddest thing, the absolute fuckin’ saddest thing, was that they didn’t understand why it was happening to ‘em. That’s why I never backed down, never shut up, never turned away to save myself from a beating or getting yelled at. I have to draw the line somewhere, though. Literally using violence, that ugly, disgusting thing that took my mom from me, that wrecked my life, that’s been used to beat me down and torment me, as well as literally torture and kill billions of animals? Fuck that. Seriously, fuck that a thousand times over. I won’t stoop to their level, I won’t.’
Njinga nodded slowly, her eyes locked on Chloe, her expression intense but unreadable. Suddenly, she drew one of her pistols and tossed it to the teenager. Chloe’s naturally quick reflexes kicked in and she darted her hands out. Although she fumbled the catch, she managed to hold on to the firearm. She extended her arm out in Njinga’s direction, dangling the gun from her hand as if it was a piece of foul refuse she’d been forced to pick up.
‘I don’t want it,’ she hissed. ‘Take it back. I don’t want this, this disgusting thing. Just, just get it away from me.’
‘Hold it,’ Njinga insisted softly. ‘Curl your fingers around the grip and rest your forefinger against the trigger. Don’t worry, the safety’s on.’
‘No! Fucking no, I won’t hold it! Take it back, I don’t want to hold it, I don’t even want to see it!’
‘C’mon, d-, don’t make her do that,’ Daekwon protested. ‘She d-, don’t want to hold it, so why—’
‘Because I’m trying to show you something,’ Njinga answered sternly, ‘something really important. Do you think I like weapons? Do you think I like violence an’ fighting an’ guns?’
‘You sure as hell l-, look like you do,’ Daekwon muttered with a snicker and an eyeroll, his remark prompting a sputtering of uneasy chuckles and chortles from the other teens. Even Njinga cracked a smile, rare delight sparkling in her eyes; she, like the children, was grateful for this moment of levity, fleeting as it was.
‘I may look like a warrior, yeah,’ Njinga said when the laughter died down, ‘an’ I have had to learn to fight an’ use weapons over the years … but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it. Listen, I may look like a badass fighter in this getup, an’ I can defend myself if I have to, but the truth is, I’m like you, kid,’ she said, pointing at Chloe. ‘I know, I know,’ she continued, pre-empting an indignant response from the teen, ‘you think I’m nothing like you at all, huh? I’m all about weapons an’ killing an’ blowing shit up, an’ you’re a peace-loving animal rights hippie – we ain’t got a single thing in common, right?’
Chloe, frowning, nodded uncertainly, understanding that this was a setup for a counterpoint.
‘Girl,’ Njinga said with a long, slow sigh, accompanied by a slackening of her entire body, ‘you an’ me have way more in common than you realise. You wanna know why I’m makin’ you hold that .45? Why I put that cold, hateful instrument of violence, that travesty of an invention, that mechanical distillation of every one of humankind’s worst impulses an’ most despicable urges in
