Red Zone Son

Chapter 41

Adah

And I don’t hide it from them. Mr. Bole starts tuning me out almost immediately. As long as I’m working, he doesn’t care what I say. He says to his wife that the blue zoners called them all sorts of nasty things: deplorables, bigots, racists. “Don’t listen to her, it’s all the same talk.” That’s when I get why he’s doing this. He thinks because I’m not White I’m the same as a blue zoner, and so anything can happen to me and it doesn’t matter.

But it bothers Mrs. Bole a lot. She starts crying once after she remarks how nice the kitchen table is and I tell her she’s going to hell for stealing it. “I was giving you a compliment,” she sobs. “Why do you have to be so hateful?”

“Are you serious right now?” I exclaim. “You took over my house! How would you like it if someone just came up into your house and started acting like it belonged to them?”

It’s like she can’t hear me. She keeps alternating between hitting me and weeping. One time she lunges for me and I move out of the way because I’m tired of getting hit and she falls down onto the kitchen floor. She can’t get up because of her foot, she’s screaming for Mr. Bole but he’s out at work, and a real big part of me wants to leave her there, crying.

But another part of me actually feels bad for her. I can’t believe I do, that I feel bad for someone who’s been slapping me every other day for telling her the truth about what’s going to happen to her for taking my house from me, you’d think she might have the sense to be grateful for the heads up, but no, she does not, and now she’s lying on the floor sobbing while I stand over her. Finally I kneel and help her sit up. I go and get her a glass of water. I hand it to her.

“Thank you,” she gasps. “I knew you’d see that I’m trying my best with you.”

I sigh. I think she might actually be stupid. Gently, but firmly, I reply, “You’re not trying your best with me. You’re stealing my house, and you’re doing it because I’m an orphan who has nobody to defend me, and God will punish you for taking advantage of me. The only reason I’m not punishing you is because God says to leave vengeance to him, that it’s His job to take revenge, and my job to love.”

I have to choke that last bit out. The absolute last thing I want to do is love Mrs. Bole. But since I don’t have my phone anymore, I’ve been reading the Bible a lot when I’m in my room by myself, and recently I read the story about the Israelite girl who got taken as a slave to Syria and how instead of taking revenge on her master who had leprosy she tells him how he can get healed, by going to a prophet of Israel. I don’t know how Mrs. Bole can be healed of her twisted foot but I for sure know how she can be healed of her twisted heart, and it’s got to start with her realizing that what she’s doing to me is wrong.

But I also know that Jesus came full of both truth and grace, that’s what I read this morning, and I remember Umma saying to me that grace is like a bridge that lets the boulder of truth be carried across to be used in building something, and that without that bridge of grace, the truth getting chucked across the river is just a big rock smashing someone in the face. I’ve been doing plenty of truth-telling, and I’m not going to stop, but I can help her get up to her feet and sit her down at the kitchen table.

“I knew you’d understand,” she repeats, when I fill her glass again. “I knew you’d see we’re just trying to help you.”

I close my eyes. I’m remembering another story Umma told me now, retold from when I was younger, about how a grasshopper played his fiddle all summer, and then in the wintertime, when he was cold, the ants who had been working hard all summer and had enough stored for the winter took him in as an act of mercy. “And then,” Umma would say, winking at Dad, since this was a joke she used to say for him, “the next summer, the grasshopper did it all over again, because he realized the ants would just take him in over the winter if he played around the whole summer instead of working.”

That night I play the Les Miserables CD again, but this time it’s the Epilogue I listen to over and over again. Umma loved this song, too. We would play it together non-stop and Solo and Dad would protest and Solo would claim that at night that song would play in his dreams that he could never escape it no matter what, it was always in his head, and then I’d –

I have to stop thinking about him. It hurts too much. I’m crying as silently as I can into my pillow. Why, God? Why are you letting this happen to me? Why won’t you bring Solo home?

***

I don’t know how but it’s almost August. Has it really been over a month since the Boles moved in? I’m getting tired. I wish I had my phone, I miss school, I miss my old life, and I’m getting discouraged. My efforts aren’t working. Mrs. Bole is too good at lying to herself. Every act of grace of mine she interprets to mean that I’m appreciating how nice she’s being, when it has nothing to do with her, because she’s not nice to me. Every time I speak truth to her, she interprets it as me being ungrateful. I’ve been praying for her, even, but she’s determined to keep her head in a bucket even if it kills her.

Mr. Bole is determined to keep being himself too. So far I’ve only been doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen but he wants me to start cleaning the rest of the house too. When I tell him no, he gets furious and drags me outside onto our back porch. The sun’s set already, it’s dark. “You can stay out here for the night,” he tells me, and then he closes and locks the sliding door.

The deck feels empty without the furniture that used to be here, another thing Solo sold off. I huddle against the house, thankful at least for the mild night. Lately, it seems tears come more easily, and they slip out again, blurring my vision. A thought crosses my mind, bitter and stinging. If I were a White girl, they wouldn’t treat me like this. They’d think of me as someone precious. They’d think of me as someone worth protecting.

The next morning he opens the door. “Ready to work?”

I don’t want to answer him. But it’s getting hard to keep on resisting. “Yes,” I say, and then he moves aside to let me in. I start to clean, and I think about Alice. She’s probably wondering why I haven’t texted her or called her. I know she was going to be busy this summer, that everyone in her house has to work for them to be able to afford their expenses, but I’m kind of hoping she’ll drop by.

Or maybe I don’t want that. I can feel it flaring up inside me again, my determination not to give in. I know Alice will make me come with her back to her house, and I don’t want to, I don’t want them to win like this!

***

But two weeks later, when I come downstairs to cook breakfast, I find both Mr. and Mrs. Bole sitting at the kitchen table, an open letter in front of them. I don’t even have time to feel angry at them for opening my mail when Mr. Bole says, as soon as he sees me, “Your brother’s dead.”

Disbelief courses through me. I instinctively reach for the letter, my hands shaking. Each word I read tears at my heart. “No, no, no!” I exclaim, my voice choked. My vision is spinning. I can’t believe it. The world around me feels like it’s shattering into a million pieces. I look up from the letter at the Boles. Now they’re definitely going to kick me out. Mr. Bole has been wanting to, I know, he’s tired of my mouth. God, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe they won, I can’t believe I’m about to lose Umma and Dad’s house, I can’t believe I lost Solo too. It’s not true, it’s not true!

“We found out about the church opening a nunnery for girls who don’t have homes,” Mrs. Bole says. “Dave very kindly agreed to drop you off there tomorrow. You can do your usual chores today.”

I’m biting my lip, trying not to cry in front of them. When I can’t stop myself, I run up the stairs. I sob into my bed. I don’t want to leave my home. I don’t want to leave all my memories behind. I want Solo to come back, I want my parents to come back, I want my life to come back! Solo can’t be dead, he can’t be, I can’t be left all alone, I can’t, it can’t be happening!

I get to my feet and force myself to stop crying. I wash my face, then I go downstairs, I cook breakfast, I eat while cooking like I have been doing, I clean up, then I go back to my room. I pack everything I can fit into a suitcase and backpack.

Then I wait until Mr. Bole is out of the house for work, and I go downstairs with what I packed. There’s no way I’m getting into a car with him. I’m sure the only reason he hasn’t done worse to me already was because he was afraid if he did Solo would tear him apart with his bare hands when he came back, but now that he got that letter saying Solo’s dead, I’m not going to be safe from him for even a minute. I go to the front door. There’s nothing in the living room I want to take with me. Mrs. Bole took down all my family’s pictures and burned them when I didn’t clean something as well as she wanted, so I open the door to leave.

“Where are you going?” she asks from behind me.

Slowly, I turn to face her. “I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice trembling. “I’m so sorry. You had every chance to stop, and you blew them all. I’m so sorry that you want so badly to go to hell.”

A sharp look crosses her face. I see her hobbling toward me, she’s going to try to hit me again, no, she’s picking up a poker from the fireplace, and I see at once that I was smart to pack to leave now, that without the threat of Solo hanging over their heads, neither of the Boles are going to practice any restraint at all. Thankfully, Mrs. Bole is slow, so I am able to get out the door and onto the sidewalk before she can reach me. All she can do is scream at me from my front porch as I start walking to the bus stop.

***

I don’t go to Alice’s house or the nunnery. Instead, I make my way to the militia base, taking the 231 and then transferring to the 19, and finally to the 29 which takes me all the way there. I’ve done this route dozens of times before. When I arrive, I head straight to the visitors center, where a soldier is stationed. I approach him and I explain, desperation in my voice, that I received a letter stating that my brother who was with the militia is dead. I tell him my name, then ask, “Is it true?”

The soldier’s fingers stall midway on the keyboard, his focus shifting to something on the display that holds his gaze. “Wait here,” he instructs, before stepping away through a door at the back of the center. I’m left alone, the silence pressing in. There’s nobody else in the visitors center. Without letting myself stop to think about it, I sneak around the desk to look at the display. My eyes land on Solo’s file, and my heart skips a beat when I read the words: “Killed in Action.”

It feels as though the air has been sucked out of the room. I struggle to catch my breath. Desperately, I keep scanning his file, and I see the note beneath it, which states that his death ought to be attributed to Samuel Wilson. I see that Samuel Wilson’s file is pulled up next to Solomon’s, and so I read it, about how Samuel Wilson was a defector who is going to be officially marked down as defecting back to the blue zone in order to explain the failure of the mission into the blue zone. And then I remember what Mary said to me, and my hand flies to my mouth as I understand for the first time what she meant when she said my brother was missing: she meant missing in the blue zone.

“Hey! Hey!”

The soldier is back. He’s pulling on my shoulder, yelling at me for looking at the display. I know the right thing to do right now is to cry, and since that’s what I feel like doing anyway, it’s easy. “The militia killed my brother,” I scream at him. “You killed my brother and all you did was send me a letter!”

Now he looks awkward. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I… I’m sorry. But you have to go now. You can’t stay here.”

Still sobbing, I leave the visitors center. I get back on the bus, my face all wet, and I cry all the way back. At one point I realize that the bus is going through the North Shore and since that’s where the church is, I stop and get off. I go to the information desk with my suitcase and backpack and ask where the nunnery is, and she tells me that it’s across the street, and then gets up and helps me with my suitcase to cross to the building. I guess I’m not the first girl to show up at the church crying looking for the nunnery, and after the lady at the nunnery takes my name down and shows me to the dormitory, I see there are lots of other girls here too.

That evening, as I lie down in my bunk bed I listen to the sounds of the other girls in the dormitory. Most of them are talking quietly, some of them are laughing and joking with each other. I’ve been crying all day, and now I’m tired, like I’m all cried out. The other girls have been nice to me about it, one of them told me it took her a week to stop crying after she came here when her stepfather kicked her out because she wouldn’t have sex with him. As for the nunnery itself, it was nice to eat food that I didn’t make, and to clean up afterwards with help instead of alone. I’m grateful that I don’t have to beg Alice to take me in when I know that would burden her family. I’m glad that the church started this place for girls like me.

I’m still really upset that I lost the house, and even more upset that I lost Solo. I can’t think about him too hard or I’ll start to lose it again.

I do notice one thing about me, though. Even though I’m so upset, and even though this summer has been the literal worst, I think one thing that happened is that I really believe now. Maybe it’s just because I said it over and over again to Mr. and Mrs. Bole, but I really believe that God is going to come back and avenge me. I really believe that I’m not only going to get my house back, but that I’ll be restored a hundred times over. I really believe I will see my parents again in heaven, and Solo too. I’m angry, and I’m upset, but I’m not hopeless. I know that I’m not alone.