Movements

My sister’s namesake, my aunt Aminata, tells me that “Africans like to be in capitols, the places that are high and mighty,” —she means any big city that America could offer—Washington, Columbus, Dallas, or New York. To me, this makes sense; the big cities are the places stories travel from, where the money flows, and where the people are. Like a dream rising up to the stars and into the minds of refugees and asylum seekers across the world, there is the promise of affluence, diversity, and belonging all too big to be true.

On the east coast of North America, Mid-Atlantic USA, there is Maryland. For a long time, Prince George's (PG) County, Maryland, was considered the wealthiest black county in the US. Certainly, it is the most populous African American-majority county—a thing I thought was normal for most of my life. Maryland’s relatively high population of Black people stems from, as most things end up stemming from—slavery. Prince George's had the largest enslaved population in Maryland before the Civil War. The presence of slavery was so rampant, the majority of the population was comprised of the enslaved. Post emancipation proclamation and even later, when Maryland passed State-level emancipation, many African Americans made their way to the urban areas—Baltimore, D.C. —away from the suburbs. Eventually, with the pressures of Jim Crow laws in Southern states, the Great Migration moved six million Black people to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states.

In my hunt to discover why PG is so black, a fact I always knew but never asked why, the only answers I ever found were through a collection of links on the internet and Wikipedia pages tracking the movement of enslaved people on the East Coast. A large number came to Maryland from the states further south because it was closer and cheaper than continuing further north. On June 19, the U.S. Senate passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, incentivizing the allure of Washington, D.C., and the Federal workforce. Ensuring equal hiring, more so than private employers.

I’ve only known PG as my home, even when I felt I was different but couldn't know why. I looked the same—maybe a little darker from most—but ate food that was different, had parents with accents that were different, knew words from their creole language that didn’t exist in the vernacular of plain english, but in my eyes I was just a child in the sea of other black children stuck in a degree of seperation I couldn’t figure out how to bridge.
**

On the west coast of Africa lies Sierra Leone, abbreviated often as Salone by its immigrants. Its name comes from Sierra Lyoa or “Lion Mountain,” given by a Portuguese explorer who saw the wild hills of the land. It is a smaller country compared to its neighbors and the home of twenty tribes. Its capital, Freetown, was founded as a refuge for repatriated enslaved people by the British government. In 1787, a British abolitionist group, filled of white men, established that colony with 411 poor Black people from London. The wave that followed afterwards was freed enslaved Americans loyal to the British Army in the Revolutionary War, along with exiles from Jamaica.
**

A shift began in the 1970s, as the gentrification of DC pushed Black residents out of the city, and African Americans with rising incomes began leaving Washington D.C. for the suburbs. Along with a 70s court order to desegregate PG County schools, the area became an alluring option for Black families seeking better educational opportunities for their children. As this steady increase continued, a large number of white residents moved out, or in other words, the area experienced a white flight.

As Immigration to the U.S. had a boom in the 1970s, a new group of Sierra Leoneans, mostly students, were granted visas to study at American universities. Some of these students chose to remain in the United States, allowing them to encourage others to follow suit with immigration. Into the 1980s, a rising number of Sierra Leoneans entered the U.S. to escape hardships. This all contributed to PG becoming a majority-Black, affluent suburban community by the 1990s (not to say there is an overwhelmingly large population of Sierra Leoneans in PG that’s mostly reserved for Nigerians—their country is huge). Some continue to pursue education, while others also choose to support family members at home and send remittances, a commonality for a lot of African families—I’ve seen my mother and father continuously do it each year they’ve stayed in America.

In 1976, my aunt Aminata—who I can’t say for certain is my father’s sister—and her husband, a man owning the name Soya, (whether it was his first or last name, my father is unsure; he is not completely sure of his name being Soya. I did not ask my aunt because my father has told me he has since died, and I find it hard to bring painful memories of the past to my family when they suffered so much living through them.) came to America for the first time. I learn this over the phone after a conversation with my dad and a follow-up with my aunt to corroborate his story. Soya came to America, went to Harvard, and got his Master's in Colorado, where their son was born. They didn’t have any family in Colorado, nor did they have many friends, except for one white woman who they bonded with. [ I am unsure if my aunt is from Gambia or from Sierra Leone. I found that around this time, travel between the two was abundant in my family; all the same, I’m sure they came with the wave of students.]
**

Sierra Leone was transferred from company control to that of an official British colony in 1808. From that point on, all new settlers were “re-captives,” slaves rescued from slave ships and emancipated by the Royal Navy, upholding the ban on slavery, slave trading, and capturing outbound slavers. Unlike the U.S. and the late emancipation of Maryland, the British were surprisingly dedicated to the cause of abolishing slavery.

Gradually, Sierra Leone gained independence from Britain, and full Independence was granted in 1961. New Traditions in democratically elected governments became established, and tribes gradually regained the dominant position in politics. In its first few years, much was very successful; their first prime minister was well-liked and dedicated to building a democratic Nation. But his position was short-lived and succeeded by his brother, who was accused of corruption and lost the next election in 1967 to an opposition party, the All People's Congress. The events leading to the Sierra Leone Civil War start here.
**

The second time Aminata came to America was in 1992. She wanted to move to New York originally, but ultimately settled in Maryland because here, there was family. After Colorado, all signs said go where family is. Her aunt had told her about a man back in Africa who needed her help to immigrate, and they all moved together to DC—her, Soya, their son, and this man—who she now called a friend. They lived together until she moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Now she lives in Montgomery County, the county that mostly borders PG.

My father, at the time of his departure, was in Gambia writing for a newspaper—he mostly worked on ads— when he received a written invitation by my aunt Aminata to come to America. He was well-connected at the embassy, and his picture in the paper helped sell his cause. Soya wrote the initial application; their son was graduating from high school, and she wanted my father there. The man at the embassy who approved his application could’ve given my dad a visa for three months, but he knew, he knew my father wasn’t coming back. On June 12th, 1996, my dad landed in New York and came to Maryland.
**

The second wave of Sierra Leoneans to the United States was during the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has a Family Reunification category that allows refugees in the U.S. to petition for their parents, spouses, and unmarried children to join them.

The origins and the dominoes that fell into place to lead me where I ended up, where my family ends, and I begin, following the strings all the way back to the point of inception and tracing them down the line to where they intersect— I found that not every detail matters.

While politically interesting, it does not matter here the rebels, coups, grasp for power, blood diamonds, and support of corrupt collusions that led to the bloodshed and instability of Sierra Leone for 11 years. I was never told about it, and I’m not quite sure my mother learned about it either way. What matters here is that it happened and devastated the country. What matters is the millions of people injured and mangled, the child soldiers stolen, used, and killed. What matters is my mother, living in fear of the rebels coming and killing her and her family. This story of her, I remember deep in my body, her face when she told me about it, and the conviction in her voice that makes this imagery stick with me: my mother holding my older brother in her arms, he is young, a toddler, his face is tightly pressed against the breast of my mother, trying to cover his mouth so that he doesn’t make a sound as they hide together in the bushes, afraid of the echoing gunshots.

When I called my mother to ask, not how she ended in America, but why PG, she brought up her cousin Florence, who America recognizes as her sister. It was the only place she had relatives as a refugee. Florence, according to my mother, was in the area because her husband worked a job in D.C. After a bit, they moved to PG, like most people looking for a house in the suburbs. Florence, like my mother, is from Sierra Leone. Ending in America because they married her young and she was sent here to live with her husband, who, from what I can gather, also migrated from Sierra Leone. I don’t know why or what decisions led him to end up where we ended. I didn’t implicitly find where the lines connect, but I can infer.

Most of these conversations happened over the phone, me asking questions that I couldn’t know for sure how they affected my parents. I can't see the ways my mother recounts her memories and the shifts that exist in her eyes when she recalls them. I can’t see my father’s face change as he chooses to tell me things he wouldn’t normally tell, or the face he makes thinking to keep some facts to himself and himself alone. Most of all, I wonder what I lose over the phone, I wonder if I could have these conversations face to face, without space to dampen the tangible feelings between us. I wonder what I’ve lost to memory and to time. Stories I am not a part of existing apart from me, but in some sense still belong to me as inheritance. I cannot know it all, even if I want to; I cannot probe and pick apart the brains of those around me. For memory to be fact, we would have to be able to remember every bit of experience, but that is not human.

One of the oldest narratives in Western culture is the story of Eve and Adam’s banishment from Eden. It stands as a testament to the enduring human experience of losing one's place in the world. Coming to America, my mother found herself a different God. Sierra Leoneans are mostly Muslims, and my father still is, and my mother once was. Her Allah became the Christian God, the man, I believe, gave her the strength to continue on in America and build her life.

Unlike the majority of the Black people in PG, my family isn’t built here in generations, not migrated from slavery and then stationed here. And still they found their way here among the others with people who don’t share the same history as us, but still look the same.

Despite the disparities that I later learned come from the composition of what it means to be African American and to be an African whose nationality is American, I was always American first. My parents, my siblings, and my whole family are everything else. African first, Sierra Leone and Gambia are their homes. Even my niece, 15 years younger than me, has experienced her homecoming onto the beaches of Salone.

For a while, my parents and I could only be that one thing, American first. They were exiles from their land, forced to move to have a better life, conceiving me into that life. But they aren’t exiles anymore. And America is no longer their “true and only” home. When retirement comes for them, my parents will go back home to their houses in Freetown, where they will live in serenity, old with the white sand of the beaches and the beautiful images of the hills. The smell of a country changed from their childhood, but still ultimately home.

Inevitably, when I go to Salone, its past, to me, is nothing more than a constructed memory. My life has been shaped by stories, language, and experiences of my family’s past. Will I feel my history in its soil?

A homecoming is not a return to the past, but a confrontation with what time has quietly rewritten. I imagine that when my mom went back home for the first time in years to retrieve my siblings, it didn’t feel like home at all. Friends and family dead, buildings different and not what they used to look like. I imagine her walking around and saddened by the connections she can never reclaim, by the sights that only now exist in her memories, and her choosing to accept it as her home all the same. To my mother, some things are set in stone—home is always home, even if it is different. There is nothing as important to them as where your family is and God.

I hope to reconcile with this displacement. To experience Freetown and feel free. To feel its history and know that I have a place where my history lies and is actively being created for the future. I will leave PG, maybe for D.C., New York, London, or maybe I’ll just go to Salone.

Outside, look in

When I arrived in London, the first thing I was, was jealous.

I was picked up from Heathrow by my father’s “best friend,” who I had never heard anything from or about. The airport was west, and I needed to get so far east it was almost torturous. Stop-and-go traffic so slow that I never had to depend on my conversational skills so hard before. I listened intently to my father’s “best friend’s” words, trying to cut through his thick South London accent. In some ways, this was the best introduction to London I could’ve gotten.

As we drove on the thin, perilous roads and down one-lane streets that were not one-way, he gave me history lessons, pointing to buildings and explaining central London. The palace that lives across the river, and the bigger palace I didn’t get to see. The restaurant where Saltbae works and the luxury brand buildings that line the street—Rolex, Chanel, Gucci. He pointed at the old but modern buildings that, imposed an elegance that only existed in movies trying to propagandize Americans going abroad (see ‘What a Girl Wants’).

He asked me, “Do you smoke?” To which I instinctively said no in fear of it getting back to my father, but no doubt he would’ve offered me a cigarette or would’ve smoked one in the car right there (so European). As we drove down the street, I started noting just how British everyone looked. Overlined pink lipstick with heavily piled on makeup, the tracksuits, and crew cut haircuts. I was in awe at how these British people were walking stock images.

Expressing my disbelief, he shot back, saying he could say the same for Americans walking down the street. And so we played a game, watching strangers walk down the street in front of the big historical buildings and tall banks—me pointing out people who looked a little too British and him pointing at people who he thought looked American. Our game subsequently invited him the chance to say, “Those boys love to wear __,” “I can tell they're from __ london, because that's how the __ dress over there”. Fill in the blanks with whatever stereotype you want. I mean, this man isn’t racist; he talks of race in a matter-of-fact way, noting the recurring patterns he sees. He's an African man, he talks of race like my parents do, saying a little more than most people would be comfortable saying aloud, or even thinking. But as we make our way into East London, the imposed elegance on the tourist’s eye begins to shift.

He started pointing out the brown people and implying that I had somehow reached the land of undesirables. “Isn’t it sad how the women are forced to wear those scarves?” Oh brother, yikes.

But this interaction did instill a growing fear within me, a fear that I had chosen the wrong place to be, the wrong school to be at. That I am missing out on the cool parts of London, of the “nicer parts” that I left in Central, it was an odd fear to have. I was not afraid of the overt Muslim population— it made me feel more welcomed being dominantly surrounded by a religion that wasn’t Christianity. It gave me a sense of nostalgia for going to the mosque with my father each Friday and the Arabic classes he forced me to take. I was glad not to be smuthered by just white Brits. I’m not from a relatively NICE place. East London, if anything, reminds me more of home than Central. But still, it’s odd to find myself thinking all of this and coming face to face with the fact that I fled America to shed pieces of me, to redefine myself as a new person. It’s hard to know what type of person I was imagining myself as. It’s worse to think that I subconsciously let the promise of whiteness seep its way in.

In November, I wrote, “I am looking forward to London. To being new—starting fresh.” Starting fresh, new, more refined? Impressing the illusion of living in a place that was richer than I was, a higher class status than I am. I think I was looking for what everyone looks for when they experience something new, the clean-cut TV version of what things could be.

But really, I wanted change, I needed change. The months before took and took and rarely gave back—“This semester has made me realize that sometimes you have to give away pieces of yourself to make it through and hope that when the time is right you’ll find those pieces again and they won’t be forgotten.” Floating in an abyss of obligation and responsibility, that not once let up since I've been in academia. “I have constantly felt that time is fleeting from me, every new day is today’s day after the next. When it’s Tuesday, it’s basically Thursday, and there’s never enough time.”

Evidently, my only close friend in London at the time (Maya) and the other people I slightly knew decided to go to UCL in Central. So yes, upon driving into London, sitting in a car for two hours going from west to east, knowing where my friend was, having to leave that, while also having my dad’s “best friend” in my ear—I was jealous to not be in the center of it all. I never said it aloud or wrote it down because it’s hard to admit not that you’re wrong, but wrong without your own consent. I would be too afraid to admit if I hadn’t unlearned my childish subconscious need to center the feigned sophistication of whiteness, to automatically adore it.

As I settled in, I learned that what I was trying to do was find myself. Not new, but not the same as I was before. I was running away from Smith. The only PWI I’ve ever been to, and although I didn’t realize it till I left, I had dwindled away, feeling withered down to less than flesh and just bone. Before I had left, I was a gaping hole yearning.

My first real memories of elementary school were of me being bullied for being too dark. No one ever explicitly said these words. But I knew. I knew it was part of the reason the girls in my first-grade class laughed at my dad. I knew it was the reason two other dark boys in my class were “gross” and “weird.” I knew it deep in my body because when one of them whispered into my ear that he had a crush on me, I shuddered and chose to forget the words were ever uttered in shame of being complicit in a truth that I could be seen like him. Growing up where I grew up, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I could be worse off, in a different county surrounded by people who didn’t look like me, then where would I have been? I fear thinking of that other Kaday lost and over taken by the presence of whiteness that has latched onto her soul like a parasite that you’ve had for so long you no longer know what's yours and what's its. But I still never quite “fit in” (have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on? That's weird).

Three summers ago, I worked at the concessions stand of an AMC theater. The smell of popcorn only ever permeated the air, your clothes, your hair, your mind. I was having a conversation with my co-worker Karina, and she asked me,

“What high school did you go to?”
I responded with “Roose.”
She then replied with “makes sense cause I haven’t really met–”

She didn't get to finish her sentence, but something about me “makes sense” that I came out of Roose. To get into Eleanor Roosevelt, I had to test into the science and technology (ST) program. My parents were prepared to fake my address if that didn’t work, anything to keep me out of my zoned high school, which to them wasn’t good enough and too ethnic in the wrong ways. Before me, my older siblings had gone to the high school my parents were so desperately trying to keep me out of, so did Karina. I was the smart one—the American one. And despite it all, I wanted to prove that I could get into Roose, that I was smart enough, lucky enough. I got on the waitlist, my folder was different from the accepted students' at the open house. Theirs green, mine orange, I was lesser but still hoped.

Roose, in itself, had a social hierarchy within the ST kids; they called everyone else “comp kids,” which is in a way, derogatory. But more than anything else, Roose was different from the other schools. The “best testing” school in the county, so we were awarded the privilege of not wearing uniforms. Something about the imposed distinction of the school was bred into its students. The need wasn’t to blend into the culture; it was instead to prove how smart you were. It might’ve been the only school in the county at that time that would’ve socially allowed me to have an emo, K-pop, indie phase and not get ridiculed for it. The only school that allowed me to live my internet interest in real life, albeit, an internet overtaken by whiteness. I lived on the outskirts of the dominant PG/DMV culture because I knew there were other kids who also did.

At the moment, I didn’t take offense to Karina’s supposed comment, but it ruptured in me a thought. Once, in middle school, one of the boys who used to bully me for that odd year asked if I was an “oreo,” an idea I’ve had to dissect and deal with many times over, living in PG. A vulnerability that I wasn’t the right type of black. And if I’m not that black, what's left?

Pre the coming of what my friend Nandi likes to call “The Great Shift,” to be light-skinned was the closest you could get to God. As crude as it was, the kids were having sex in the stairwell of my middle school and in the back halls of my high school. The favoritism was rampant in the social sphere, the ugly lighskinned boys had more girls crush on them than crushes I’ve had in my whole life. People were cycling through romances and friendships that toed that line left and right. And all that happened to me in the course of my adolescence was mediocre crush confessions from people I deemed too weird to ever consider but seemed to attract anyway.

If anything, I was trapped, trapped by politeness. No one would ever say it, no good person would admit to not finding a dark-skinned woman attractive, but it’s a secret that I knew, like so many other girls just like me. I knew it and hoped that wasn’t the reason, that I could be the exception.

I was terrified for much of my life that I would never be romantically loved. Constantly afraid of settling or simply being alone forever. Of course, I blame the media, society, and my youth for romanticizing romance because how could I help but desire it in the way that’s all-consuming, perfect, and uncomplicated. But also fuck them all for not having enough girls like me to help me believe that I’ll ever achieve it, and warping pieces of me into thinking I could find it in places that were never meant for me.

White people are constantly awarded for mediocrity; hell, I did it subconsciously. When I looked at my friends' faces in middle school, staring at their faces and finding their beauty in all the things I am not. In all the ways I was far away from whiteness. Long, wavy, straight hair, light skin, freckles, small nose. My first real crushing crush was on a Jewish boy who didn’t deserve my mind, and all the same, I yearned irrationally in an ignorance that never admitting it to him allowed me (I’m sure now he knew, and if he really wanted me, I would’ve known). But validation in that way really doesn’t matter. Being found beautiful doesn’t matter if it’s not from your own, understanding pieces that are and can only be intrinsically yours.

Leaving Maryland, I wanted everything it couldn’t give me. In my senior year, I wrote, “I have this subconscious need to be liked by people in a way that matters,” which is nothing but a little sad because people shouldn’t be liked in any other type of way but in a way that matters, especially by friends.

When I arrived in Northampton, I had no expectations, nothing to be but open minded. Coming to Smith, I wanted what I wanted from London, but I didn’t know it yet. I wanted to be new, to have new possibilities, and for a girl who didn’t know any better, Smith did that for as long as it could. I wanted the college experience you watch, the youth and freedom you can only reasonably indulge in when you’re young. Year after year, I was hopeful, fed breadcrumbs, then disappointed, and eventually, I don’t know who I became or what exactly I wanted from college anymore. Smith had festered and become a wart on my body so big, grotesque, and ugly. Smith had developed this unique ability, unlike Maryland, where, everywhere I turned, it made me feel deeply unwanted, unattractive, and pathetic. I was jealous of everyone around me who had their youth happening to them.

Going abroad, I wanted to know that I could be wanted, that I am wanted, that I could want, and be held, really tightly. There are a lot of feelings that I deem inherent, conditioned, and socialized. One of them inevitably is the feeling of being wanted. That feeling specifically is universal, I know that much. But I flew in on that plane, with a goal. This is how I had my first real (subjective) kiss in London. It wasn’t great, wasn’t even memorable, nor am I sure I really desired it, but importantly, it happened. It wasn’t the culmination of my whole adolescence waiting for this moment to happen; it wasn’t special, it was as normal as I could imagine it. But if I could, on my first night out, make out with this girl who I didn’t really want – which is the most motion I’ve gotten all college, what else was in store for me?

I quickly learned Central London wasn’t for me. I am not a tourist by nature or spirit. I find seeing the “sites” to be arbitrary and boring. There is nothing the elegance of inauthenticity could give me. It was an innate feeling, feeling the way I did when I first arrived, but it wasn’t me. That jealousy wasn’t mine, it travelled from the ether of colonization and rooted its way into my body unconsonsentingly. Walking down Mile End Road was many times more culturally stimulating than what I could’ve been offered in the West.

I can’t say what it is specifically about that place, but I can guess in bits and pieces. It might’ve been the melting pot that New York claims to be. It might’ve been the city, and the busy life that lives into the late night, that neither Maryland nor Northampton can replicate. But I know for sure I fell in love with London in the still grass of Victoria Park. In a moment, I knew I had found a peace, with all the rugged little pieces of life that youth tries to piece together. Two Germans that I had more in common with than most people in my childhood, friends I had grown to know but never had the chance to know before, decks surrounding me and self-proclaimed djs to man them, people I had grown so weirdly close to in such a short amount of time, a mix of accents, and the ever-present presence of alcohol. I was lucky in that moment to recognize I had found it.

My soles in the blades, sun in my eyes. I've come to love that city the way that you love a friend. I felt solace seeing the buses run 25 or 205. The markets that sardined the streets, familiar, the people selling raw fish, fruits, and garments, that reminded me of when my parents used to run a business from their home. Food was abundant and abundantly ethnic. The Mosques surrounding that made me feel safe, knowing in a way it meant that their Allah could be mine and was watching, and that this community belonged to each other. Truly, I loved walking around, not having to think if I was enough of anything (other than the basic insecurities that hit when it's that time of the month). Visually finding consolation in the brown and the white and the ways that it didn’t permeate my brain that we were in competition to be wanted.

There is no reason, I’ve learned, to limit what I want and my pursuit of it. Fear or rejection can’t kill me, although I’m sure at Smith it might’ve. I stepped out into what feels like a different world. Smith wasn’t real; it was a bubble in an echo town with its own set of rules and cultured eyes to watch you. That didn’t exist out there—I was allowed to be myself not tied down to what people expected of me. No one was looking at me to figure out how smart I was, or what type of black I was (save for the random black people I would see on the street who would ask me what part of West Africa I was from). Leaving gave me hope that when I can leave again, I’m not expecting the world to be more like college or more like my childhood. I’m expecting the world to have pockets for me, that it is forgiving, and it moves and never stills, except in the moments that you want to keep in your heart, and you beg time to slow down.

I've come to love the friends that I made in that city and the people I met, like the way you love a dream. It is always fleeting in the back of my mind, a thing that has happened but doesn't feel real anymore. My first dream in London was about packing, being in the airport, and leaving. Scared that I would find it all passed me by. The months and the days did pass, and as much as I wanted it, I never ended up finding some of the pieces of me that I had lost to Smith in the semester before, and that was fine. As young people should do, I lost myself in the pleasure of the moment. I wasn’t worrying about how much of a real person I was, how right I am; I wasn’t arguing with bits in my mind about the pieces of me I had to give up to continue on, about the expectations that I had to let go. I was instead dealing with tons and tons of embarrassment, which I loved because it meant I was doing something I cared enough about to be embarrassed.

My lack of jealousy for the remainder of my days in London was freeing. I knew that the people I surrounded myself with wanted me there and weren't expecting me to be anything other than what I was. I was never worried about what I was missing out on because I wasn’t missing out. My friends hanging out without me never diminished the knowledge of love I knew they had for me. I never wrote lines like “your thoughts and body are clogged with sadness that you want to spill out but can’t because you’ve forgotten how to cry.” Instead, I wrote “I have since felt the sun, enjoyed its love on my face, its beams on my body. It has scarcely rained, I wonder if I came to the right London. But it did rain yesterday for the first time in about 3 weeks, and I am greatful the clouds don’t drain me. I am happy.”

This is not a testament to London and what that city can do for you; It just happened to be there. But like the way the bikers and runners on the path next to the Regent’s Canal made me feel, and my time spent, everything in London was too small. When exposed to so much, how could you expect people to fit into such limited boxes.

This was never about wanting something that isn’t mine, that jealousy, the green eyed monster she is, didn't stem from me. If it looks like a spade, call a spade a spade. Jealousy never looked like me, but I was told to look like her. I wonder when jealousy finds me again, will I remember it was ever mine to begin with.

The Royale

          Every time a death occurs, the bell is rung, and its echoes shake violently enough to hear the birds rustle the leaves as they fly away. Vernon has grown used to the ring after the seventh time, and now barely wakes from his sleep. Orion is not sure he will ever be familiar with the rumbling that squeezes his stomach and shortens his breath. The sound plagues him, echoing in his mind, forcing restless thoughts, wondering when he dies, will the ring catch him before or after the life slips from his body. Vernon says it’s pointless to worry about things like that. Orion usually retorts with how could you not?
          “There’re so many more things to be angry about than to be afraid of,” Vernon complains, resentment in his brows drawing them together. His dark features make his face hard to distinguish in the night. Sitting up, Orion can only see the moonlight shining on Vernon’s skin, a blue glow.
          “You’re not afraid of dying?”
          “Who isn’t? Of course, I am.” He offers this information with a patronizing tone, but follows with reluctance. “I know you pretend not to hear me, but I’m so afraid I think I’ve cried myself to sleep every night.”
          “So how am I wrong here?” Orion’s voice is pleading for a win, looking for optimism in a morbid argument.
          “I didn’t say you were, I said it was pointless. If we die, we die, our families die. If we live, we live for now,” there is a cascading snarl in his voice. “I refused to let their fucked up way of them telling us another one of us,” his hand motioning from Orion to him, “Is dead, make me anything but mad. They want me scared.” He gestures outwardly to ‘them’, but Orion can’t see it in the dark. “So they can use me, so they can use us. Our lives are a useless thing to be used and that makes me so mad more than anything.” Vernon’s breath is heavy, cutting through the otherwise quiet of the night.
          Orion approaches his words with caution, “But, as much as I hate it, that ring is useful,” he pauses. “It tells us how many of them are left till one of us gets out of this. So we can see our families again.” He’s fiddling with the flower in his hands trying to distract from the deeper implications of their conversation.
          “I don't know how you haven’t learned there's no getting out of this,” His breath more still. “I don’t think it’s every other kid in here vs. us. It’s all of us vs. them—out there—If you think about it, we aren’t all that different. We all have things to lose.” He sighs, “It’s a wonder how you lived so long with so much trust in this game.”
          Like a child looking to remedy the situation he caused, Orion offers a small smile, “It’s because I have you, I'm your parasite.” It is a useless smile in the dark.
          “...Yeah. Maybe I should’ve dropped you a long time ago.” Vernon has a habit of saying cruel things, the words coming out too fast, almost like a reflex. Orion chooses to believe Vernon doesn’t mean it, but can never fully convince himself that he's right. He fiddles with the bluebell he was given. Orion finds that keeping his hands moving provides his anxiety an outlet. There is a blushed blue growing from the center of its cupped interior. It’s a soft color doused by faint moonlight, but still, he finds the single bluebell strange; he has only seen them in groups. But he finds hope in the promise given.
          A silence passes before Orion once again tries to alleviate the air. He changes the subject, “I wish I could fall asleep.” Offering a piece of himself for Vernon to comfort.
          Like a moth to a flame, Vernon follows suit. “I can’t blame you, it’s hard to sleep in here.”
          “Sometimes when I can get to sleep, I dream of someone who feels nice to see.”
          “It’s good for you to have something to look forward to. I barely dream anymore,” he pauses, “But it’s probably a good thing, when I do, it’s always nightmares…” He shivers, trying to shake the thought of it off. “Who do you see in your dream?”
          “The thing is, I don’t know. It’s just a,” thinking of his next word, “Feeling? But it feels familiar, like a blanket on my mind? They take care of me, say they’ll protect me, and it feels true—but I never see their face.”
          “Do you think it could be your mom? I still see her in my dreams when I have them,” He pauses, deciding whether it’s worth it to be vulnerable. “...A few days ago, I had this dream where my mom and my dad were making dinner. It’s my favorite, okra soup and rice. It’s nice, being there again until it gets bad, it usually gets bad. I’m back there in that moment when they take me from my family. The violent banging on the door that only gets louder, pounding, and screaming. I’m back there in that moment, but it’s like I know what's coming next. We’re holding each other tight, hiding while whispering sweet consolations, it’ll all be okay. It’s hard, but still, being able to see their faces in my dream makes it a little better… I’m sorry, I wish you could sleep too; we all deserve to be comforted.”
          Orion pauses, taking in Vernon’s words. “I’m sorry, I know I’m not family, but I’m glad we have each other.”
          They lay in the overgrown grass, under the filtered moonshine shining through the leaves, unafraid of ticks, remaining in silence for the rest of the night as Vernon stifles his cries, wading himself back to sleep. In the quiet of the night, Orion hears a familiar rustling in the bushes. It soothes him as he prays for sleep—to find his comfort.

          Under the widespread canopies of towering trees, running low with the bushes and shrubs, thirty-five children, ages spanning from six to eighteen, used to be alive. Eighteen have died. Two girls and three boys were mauled and hunted as food. The remains of their bodies left scattered, to rot, and found by the others. A girl and a boy, strangled in their sleep by a gang of three kids, their hands asphyxiating her windpipe. Later that night, those three kids ate poisonous berries and never woke up. Two girls and two other boys were bludgeoned to death by rocks left bloodied at the scene of the crime. All of the rocks were no bigger than the palm of a 10-year-old. Another girl, bitten by a spider, fell into anaphylaxis. Another boy, impaled just under the rib by a makeshift spear, thrown from the hands of a boy clinging to the promise of a better life if he survived. He was left to bleed out, gasping and wheezing for air. Another’s carotid artery slit, blood pouring, and their life gone within a minute. Just now, in the torment of the night, darkness surrounding—a boy jumps off the highest cliff he can find. It is a shame it isn’t high enough to deliver a quick death; it leaves him to the bed of shrubs to lie in pain as he slowly thirsts to death.

    –
In the morning, Vernon makes breakfast for both of them because Orion is absurdly bad at scavenging for any sort of food. When Vernon was younger, he hated being a Boy Scout, but his dad thought it was important to develop life skills, so he could learn how to take care of himself in a world that wouldn’t do it for them. Now he’s grateful for any semblance of knowledge he remembers about berries, nuts, and eggs. The act of gathering reminds him of the hopes of seeing his dad again; it slows him down, trying to bury the anguish that hope brings. He keeps the nuts and berries separate ever since Orion mentioned he was allergic to nuts. Vernon makes a fire for both of them. It’s a chilly morning; the air has become heavier, visible, and carries with it a chill neither of them can warm from.
          Goosebumps rise prickling on Orion’s skin.
          “Here,” Vernon says, shoving his only long-sleeved shirt towards him. Orion takes it, he likes it when Vernon thinks of him. Sitting in front of the fire, Orion puts the shirt on, deeply entrenched with the smell of sweat. They make their way through the light breakfast.
          Midday comes, and Vernon supplies Orion with tasks to do while he goes gathering. Orion collects dry branches, makes sure their bags are packed for a quick move, listens for sounds, and keeps track of the water. Nothing too hard, all things Vernon knows he can do. They’re preparing to move in a few days, they both agreed it’s best not to stay in one place too long, and they have been in this clearing in the trees for three days now, which was enough time for Orion to make a friend.

    –
On their first day in the clearing, Vernon went off, while Orion stayed. He’s grown used to listening for sounds, one of his only jobs. Having a lot of time to practice since sleep rarely arrives. So he’s not surprised when he hears rustling, it’s normal, a frog or a snake. He is surprised when the sound reveals itself to be neither of those things, but rather a girl. She looks like him in a way. They have the same burnt skin, the same brown eyes but she is older. Her hair longer than his, but both of their curls a tight light brown, tracing the soft features of their faces. A smell of vanilla wafts from her. She feels familiar, like a wish that lives intimately in his mind sprouting in front of him.
          “I’ve been watching you,” she says. That scares Orion, as he suddenly realizes he doesn’t have anything to protect himself with.
          “So you can kill me?” He asks this cautiously.
          “No…I have no interest in doing that, only if I have to.” She is confident in her stance, no fear indicated on her face, but she asks “Are you going to kill me?” It’s a half-baked question. She is sure of the answer.
          “No, I don’t think I could.”
          “Okay, good.” She smiles, “So we’re in agreement, I’m not trying to kill you, and you’re not trying to kill me.” He can’t help but believe the sincerity in her voice.
          “So, why have you been watching me?”
          “I guess,” she thought for a second, “It’s more accurate to say I’ve been watching you both.” Orion’s breath dropped its anticipation, and he had to fight a frown that was forming on his face; it disappointed him... “I want to join you guys, and you seem nicer than the other boy.”
          It shocks Orion. They are in a game where it’s one for all; he was lucky enough that Vernon let him tag along, but they both know it’s better than being alone. Extending their bubble to more than two seems risky, for them and everyone they were taken from. But there is something about her, her similarity reminded him of home. “Why?”
          “Because this is a shit game, and it’s more shitty alone.” She let her words linger in the air for a while, “And because I think I deserve to take control of whatever life I have left, I can’t let them,” she gestured outwardly, “Choose who I get to hate. There’s no one out side of here they can blackmail me with anyway…they’re all already long gone.” the girl whispers the last part, “So it doesn’t hurt to ask unless it gets me killed.”
          He hangs on her words. She seems so sure of herself, something Orion can barely grasp the concept of in here. He believes her. “Vernon’s…hard, it’s hard for me to talk to him sometimes.”
          “And that’s why I’m asking you. You have a better shot than me, I figured, ask him for me?” She can see Orion’s discomfort in his face. “Look, here’s a sign of good faith, here,” she hands him a singular bluebell. “It’s my favorite flower. Look at it and think of Pope.” He takes it in cupped hands. “Oh–and my name is Pope, I’ll be around if you decide to take me.” She leaves him with nothing else but the blush in his hand.

    –
Orion has had frequent visits from Pope since then, most of them consisting of her asking him when he was going to ask Vernon. A lot of him telling her he will, and to give him time. When she knew she couldn’t push anymore, they would joke around.
          “No wonder we ended up in here, they couldn’t stand your corny ass jokes,” she would say.
          “At least it’s only my jokes. They couldn’t stand your rank smell.”
          “Take a whiff of yourself, I think you’ve gone nose blind.” And in a moment of pure indulgence, he would stick his nose in his own armpit and playfully drop dead from the pungent odor. And they would laugh. He felt a little lighter just knowing her.

          By the third day, Orion has resolved to bring her up. Vernon is back from gathering, the sun is falling, and the day is only getting colder. They sit across from each other on logs, on top of patches of grass. The fire between them roaring in waves, ebbing back and forth, orange and warm, illuminating the rooted frown lines and dark circles that have come to life on Orion’s face. A face that Vernon realizes is too young to hold so much detail, likely like his own. Vernon pities the youth stolen from Orion’s face. Orion catches Vernon’s eyes lingering on his mouth.
          “You should frown less, you don’t want to die dejected, it gives them satisfaction to beat you down,” Vernon offers his words as kindly as he knows how to.
          “I hope to not die at all.”
          “Well, with the way I fend for you, I’m not sure you’ll make it on your own,” Vernon has taken to talking about their deaths as a certainty.
          “You’re not dying either, so I don’t have to make it on my own for now,” Orion has taken to finding the quickest way to shut down the conversation.
          “I’m a bit worried you depend on me too much.”
          “What if I didn’t have to?”
          “What, are you finally willing to try scavenging again?” Vernon laughs at his own suggestion.
          “No, I mean—wait, hey, I could probably do it if we really needed! But, no, I mean…what if I–we had someone else?”
          This time, Orion can see Vernon’s brows pinch in confusion, “Someone else? Who else is there?”
          “...There’s Pope.” His hands are tense, and he is biting his jaw; he is bracing for a storm.
          The passing silence contorts Vernon's face into vulgarity. “Orion, who the fuck is Pope?”
          “You trust me, right? …Enough?” Orion doesn’t wait for Vernon’s response. “She doesn’t want to hurt us, just not to be alone. Like what you said, it’s not them vs us.”
          Vernon feels like he’s missing a page, or skipping a chapter. Orion is usually the timid scared one. And yet, here is Orion repeating his own words back at him, asking him to bring someone in. “Where did she even come from? How long have you been sneaking around with her?” He can’t contain the rising anger of betrayal overtaking the tone of his voice.
          “It’s only been three days, I promise. She wanted me to tell you…I’ve just been…building courage. She’s like us.”
          Of course, he knows any other person in here is shaped by the game and he can’t judge her for it but he has to be cautious. Vernon owes it to his parents to be cautious, to Orion and himself. He takes a breath and calms himself down, his anger isn’t useful here.
          “I think you forget if it comes down to it, you know it’s either you, me, or this—Pope. And, Orion, not to be like a dick, I’m not just trying to survive only for me and I bet neither is she. Are you sure you can justify keeping her around when it comes down to that? No one here is laying down their life for me, or for you.”
          Orion knows this to be true, of course, Vernon can’t lay his life down for him. He lowers his head and fixates down at his hands, fidgeting.
          Vernon sighs, “I’m just saying I know we’re forced to be against each other, but you have to be careful.”
          Vernon is his own person with wants and hopes, who deserves to live. He’s sacrificed enough to take care of Orion, but his words don’t hurt him any less. Steeling himself from his feelings, he takes a breath.
          “I promise, I trust Pope. I feel like outside of this, I could know her, that I do know her somehow.”
          It takes a long back and forth, to break Vernon down. Finally, Vernon agrees to meet Pope tomorrow. Orion lets Vernon's prior comment linger in his head, “Also, don’t worry about it, these frown lines are from before here.” There is a moment of silence. He looks up and sees Vernon’s eyes on him, listening intently. “Well, back home, me and my dad were one of the only people who looked like us around. I didn’t have many friends in school, or any really. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, until I figured it out. They spit on me for being too “burnt”. My dad had a hard time finding a job, and I just always felt alone. I thought eventually they would see me and I could have someone. Turns out kids don’t like it when you talk different from them or look like me—I always hoped when I got old enough I would find a place where me and my dad could fit. ” He sighs an exacerbated sigh, realizing his present. “Now I'm here, and it’s almost like another point to a tragic sob story.”
          “Those people suck.” Vernon’s face struck with an intensity that knows this tale all too well.
          “Yeah, well, they say kids are mean.” Orion shrugs, playing nonchalantly.
          “No, people choose to be mean. If anything, if you’re too burnt, then what the hell am I? Ashes?” This makes Orion laugh.
          “Well, at least they,” he gestures outwardly, “Can’t have the satisfaction of being my only trauma,” he pauses, his frown lines prominent once again as his lips start to curl downward.
          “They’re one and the same, those people are the ones who put us in here. So FUCK THEM!” Vernon yells this to the sky, unafraid of the attention they could attract.
          “Whoa, Vernon, shut up!” But he can't help but smile, teeth and all. “I can add being stuck with you to my trauma list,” they both smile, he jests. It’s a dry sense of humor they share. Whenever Orion says something mean, Vernon knows he could never mean it.
          They hear birds flocking away first, craws and rustles filling the sky. Followed by a familiar rumbling in the ground. Their smiles drop, and they know what’s to come. The bell rings—a sharp, hollow chime that unsteadies the logs they sit on. One less player. One step closer to the end. Orion doesn’t know if he is supposed to feel relief or fear.

    –
On the fourth day, they plan to leave the next morning. Pope and Vernon have met, and despite a rocky start, they found commonality. Even though they’ve only spent a short amount of time together, all three of them work well. Vernon, even if he won’t admit it, likes having someone else around. He had forgotten how small the world of two people was until he heard the laughter of three ringing in harmony.
          They have supplies and decided on a general sense of what direction to travel in. Tomorrow, Pope and Vernon would scavenge for more food before they left. To pass this time, they have taken to talking. Orion and Vernon want to know more about Pope, she indulges them. I also had a partner before this, a girl.
          “Ixca, I hope, was at least seven; she could barely fend for herself, like she’s never gone anywhere without an adult around her. I don’t know how it could be okay that she was in here in the first place, but I guess there’s no age limit on who’s allowed to play,” bitterness escaped her voice. “She was a smart kid for her age; she learned how to make a fire, was resilient, always kept up with me, she barely cried, and my god did she love any fruit we found.” Pope began to smile from the memory, but it didn’t grow wider. “I left in the night to pee—” the boys started to laugh at the thought.
          “Shut up! It’s normal,” she picks up a stick and some dirt to throw at them. “Anyways, I went a little further than normal because she was a light sleeper, so I left her there.” She stops, tears start to rise to the surface of her face. “I left her there—” she takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t stop her voice from shaking. “And while I was going back, I realized I could hear her crying.” The tears falling from her eyes. “I started running, as fast as I could, but when I got close enough, there was already a kid not much older than her standing over her, a rock in his hand. It was shiny in the dark, dripping, but I couldn’t see if it was red like blood; I guessed it was. She was whimpering, like a hurt animal on the street begging, but there was nothing I could do for her. I couldn’t move. I could only watch that kid. He dropped the rock when he saw me, and he looked so afraid, like he was caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t. That didn’t stop me from killing him, and the bell rang. I had to do the same for Ixca too. I just—I just couldn’t leave her there wimpering in pain like that. I had to endure another ring.”
          “I’m sorry.” Vernon doesn’t know what else he could say.
          Pope wipes the tears off her face. “I did something I’m not proud of—to him, and to her.” They both understood what she meant.
          “This game asks you to do that,” Orion tries to comfort. “You were just playing along to survive.”
          She sank into herself, “But it doesn’t mean I had to,” guilt dripping from her words. “It was his fault, but it really wasn't. He was a danger to Ixca, but was he a danger to me? They must’ve had families, and their blood is on my hands too. If we weren't in this fucked, fucked place, he could’ve grown up. They both could have—been normal. He and I and Ixca—we’re all the same.”
          Vernon understands, “You, Orion, and I are all the same, too. It’s hard not to act in the only way they let us. They could’ve had a normal life outside of this. But it’s fucked everywhere, Pope. You could’ve had a normal life outside of this too. You didn’t make it fucked you're just living the only way you know how. They want the blood on our hands so they can say theirs is clean.” Vernon gives her a look, waiting for her gaze to find his. His eyes asking her to be a little kind. She returns it, accepting his words in shards — she doesn’t know if she can ever wholly forgive herself. Orion couldn’t share this look, he doesn’t quite get it, but he sees it pass between them and he can’t help but feel like he missed a pivotal moment.
          Pope cuts the silence, “Yeah yeah, okay enough of my sad story.” She wipes the tears from her face excessively, trying to rid herself of the feelings as well. “This whole thing is sad enough. Let's sleep it off, big day ahead of us tomorrow.” She’s hoping to sound optimistic.
          They prepare for another luxurious sleep of prickling grass and cold winds. laying in another dark night, darker than most, a sliver of moonlight sprinkling in—approaching a new moon. Trying to join in on a past moment, Orion whispers to Pope, “You did what you had to do, even if it didn’t feel right. I think killing him might’ve been the only way for you to move forward. Playing along might’ve been the only way for you to get through it.”
          Pope doesn’t respond, feigning sleep. She doesn’t know what to say, she can’t agree and doesn’t think Orion should agree. But it’s past the time of words. The only sounds that exist are Vernon’s sniffling and Orion’s tossing. Orion still holding the bluebell Pope gave, more fragile and less blushed. He lays, eyes open in the thought of Pope’s silence. Feeling shut out and displaced.

    –
In the morning, Orion wakes up alone. He dreamt that dream again, the one of the person comforting him. He thinks Vernon is right, he can remember pieces of the dream and the fading images. It’s his mother. She left before he could know her. Her memory built off of photographs and nothing else. In the dream she caresses his face, her thumb wiping off a tear he didn’t notice had fallen. Her touch warm, just like her skin, like her smell—a vanilla. She draws him into her brown curls, holding him in an embrace. Her hand on his head, fingers combing through his hair. A mother comforting her small babe.
          The absence of the dream is made all the more pressing by the quiet of the sun and wind whistling through his hair. He can feel the beating of his heart growing as he tries in delirium to get up from his sleeping position. He is alone, he is alone and he is trying to suppress his fear. He hasn’t woken up alone in a long time, Vernon is always there. Did he say something wrong, did they leave him? He could feel the events of last night replaying in his head. Was Pope’s silence voluntary? Orion’s train of thought blinds him to the supplies still in the clearing. Hyperventilating, his breath labors heavily in and out forcing him into a bubble of his own world—only to be forced out by the toll of the bell—and thrown back in more fervently. His hand rushes to search his body. He isn’t sure if he is alive; his vision blurs. Searching for a hole for blood, but all he hears are the birds screaming, the ground seizing, and his heart pounding. He is engrossed in fear.
          Pope and Vernon rush back, finding Orion petrified. Pope crouches to approach him, and he is unsteady to the touch. But her touch does calm him down. He realizes he is alive; he is alive because dead people don’t cry.
          Vernon starts, “We came back as soon as the bell rang. Orion, we were so scared it was you.”
          “You left me here, alone.” Orion’s voice riddled with fear. Again, “You left me here, alone.” This time anger, wobbling with the tears that stream down his face,
          “I know, it was stupid, we both woke up early and wanted to get a head start on the scavenging. We’re sorry, it was so stupid, stupid,” Pope follows.
          “You left me here!” He yells. And he thinks of last night, “Even after what happened to Ixca?” Her smell permeates his nose, and he smacks her hand off his shoulder. “You don’t care about me.” They are supposed to be allies, and for the first time, Orion realizes he really doesn’t know Pope. He doesn’t know her, and yet his words carve her like a butcher well acquainted with his prey.
          She too, starts to cry, “No, I wasn’t thinking,” she paused, over taken by the memory of Ixca. “I didn’t think you were in danger–” she stumbles over her words, “You’re older than she was—I’m sorry.” She gets up, tears falling, “I’m sorry,” and backs away.
          Vernon tries easing the situation, “Orion, hey, cut her some slack. You vouched for her. We were both being stupid. We didn’t realize it until it was too late.”
          As if awakened to a new truth, Orion does not let up. “Vernon, we don’t know her.”
          He rolled his eyes at that. “I told you to be sure about who you trust. You trusted her, you begged me! I trust her, Orion, she was with me. I’m sorry we left you, but I’ve left you by yourself before; this isn’t so different.”
          “But you’ve never abandoned me without saying a word, not while I was asleep.” He remembers his fear waking up alone; it still bubbles inside of him. “She didn’t learn from her mistakes, she’s gonna get us killed…or who knows…she’s done it before.” Vernon's face can’t hide its disgust from Orion’s allusion. “She said it herself! She didn’t have to kill them. Pope has no one waiting for her out there; she has nothing to lose here.”
          “Stop it!” It’s a whisper yell. “She is not our enemy, Orion, and you know it. Don’t make problems where we don’t need them yet.” Vernon storms off to console Pope. Orion is jealous that he isn’t given the same kindness. They had left him, and yet it’s his fault. Orion realizes the bluebell he slept with in his hands had dropped in the night. He searches his body and finds it under his leg. It is nowhere near blue anymore, but brown, crusted, and crushed. He brushes it to the side, and a little spark simmers inside of him.

    –
They all know they don’t have the time to directly address the tension in the air. They have things to do—they’re leaving today, and their early morning scavenge had been cut short. Vernon is determined to get the rest of their stock before they leave. He doesn’t feel right leaving Orion after the morning, and he doesn’t want to push Pope. So he goes alone to do the task.
          While he is away, Vernon leaves Orion and Pope to do the packing and clean up. Pope stands gathering the wood they’ve been using for fire, and Orion sits in the grass packing bags. Orion’s gaze shoots at Pope like curdled milk, sour and riddling Pope in guilt. She can feel his eyes burrowing into her body; she can’t stand it. Vernon is gone, and Orion’s sweet bluebell is wilted. His limbs are fidgety, looking for any relief, trying to shake off his discomfort. His fingers settle on a rock on the ground next to him.
          Pope doesn’t like to leave words unsaid, especially when it’s so easy for words to slip into the oblivion of never being said. The tension weighs on her, and to alleviate the strain, she begins, “Orion, look, I’m really sorry.”
          He finds that now even her voice irks him; there is a shrill to it that he never noticed before.
          “I know I hurt you,” she continues, “I wasn’t thinking of it like that.”
          And yet when she talks, he is reminded of their similarities. Maybe she is like him, afraid like him, desperate like him. Is she thinking like he’s thinking? It all set him more on edge.
          “Look, I know it’s stupid, I really wasn’t thinking, maybe some part of me was hoping not everything would be like Ixca, like I was trying to move on from that. That maybe there are people out here not all like that boy, more people like you and Vernon. That you wouldn’t be in danger.”
          “But you are like him, Pope. You killed him.” He growls at her, trying to instill his own karma for the morning. His fingernails run in circles on the rock.
          It takes her aback, “And I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself.” She is hurt that he took the jab, and she doesn’t like to leave unsaid words in the air, so she jabs back “...Either way last night you said I didn't have a choice. That killing was the only way for me to move forward.”
          “Ah-ha! So you did hear me last night! And you chose to ignore me?” This talk was starting to set him off. He grabs the rock, rolling it in his hand, liking the cold feeling against his heating palm.
          “Because it was late and I didn’t want to fight about it.”
          Fight? Had he said something so wrong, she wanted to fight about it? Orion defends himself, “What? I was trying to cheer you up!”
          She scoffs, “Be serious, how was that going to cheer me up? You were giving me permission to murder that boy.” Her voice raises, it’s accusatory.
          “You did murder him!”
          “I KNOW! But what is it about you that makes you think that it’s okay?” She is accusing him.
          He can feel the blood rush to his ears. He is getting angry again. “I’m not the dangerous one here, you are!”
          “You think I’m dangerous? Really?” She starts to approach him. Gazing down at him. “After what I told you,” her voice starts to rise, “You think I’m dangerous AND NOT THEM! I’M NOT THE ONE HOLDING YOUR FAMILY HOSTAGE!” She is startling, it scares him. He shuffles to his feet, rock still in hand.
          That snaps her out of her rage. “Look, I’m sorry, come on stinky you're not afraid of me.” But he is, it’s buzzing off of him, causing every part of him to tremble. She spots the rock in his hand, “Come on Orion, put the rock down.” But he won’t. She tries to approach him and he counters with three steps back. “Come on, be serious. I’m not going to hurt you.” He stares at her like a deer caught in headlights. “…ORION!” She yells again, in hopes of snapping him out of it.
          But the yell perturbs him and his grip becomes tighter. Their eyes darting back and forth between them. He can really see their similarities in her eyes.
          Pope lunges for him, her hand outstretching, eyes wide with desperation. Orion’s grip tightens around the rock. His knuckles pale, his breath caught. He can feel the smoothness of the stone pressed into his palm—cold. She is too close, and in an instant, he doesn’t even know he’s moving until he feels a crack run up his arm. It’s a heavy hit, hard enough that the impact rings from his hand up to his throat, and down to his feet. Pope falls forward on top of Orion with a heavy thunk. He falls. He can’t hear; his ears are already ringing, but he can feel the tremble of the ground. The death toll rings once more.
          For a second, Orion doesn’t believe Pope's death. He tries to draw her into him, to say sorry for hitting her, to embrace her, his hand runs his fingers, combing through her hair. The blood douses it, and he frantically tries to push Pope’s limp body off of him; her blood spilling onto his clothes. He is hyperventilating again.

          Vernon rushes back expecting a tragedy, but still hoping the ring was for someone he didn’t have the opportunity to meet. He finds tragedy anyway.
          Approaching the scene, he asks with caution, “Orion, what did you do?”
          “What did I do?” He starts to cry, “Why won’t you ask what she did?”
          “You’re not the one lying on the floor dead!” In a beat, watching the blood pour from her head, he asks in a haze, “Did she do something?”
          “No–I–I don't know.” Orion was sobbing now.
          Vernon is searching for understanding. His eyes rushing from Pope’s lifeless face to Orion’s bloodied hand. He starts to back away. “Orion, you killed her.”
          “We couldn’t trust her!” He pleads this bag, like an answer.
          “NO! NO! You killed her–” fear rising in his voice, “because you wanted to.” Vernon can feel his heart throbbing. He’s grieving the loss of two friends that happened a few minutes away. “I can’t be here anymore,” he whispers to himself. He begins to grab any supplies lying around that he can.
          “Where are you going?” Asks Orion.
          “I’m leaving.”
          “You're leaving me? You can’t—” Orion vomiting for any explanation he can give, “I wasn’t thinking, I just wanted to survive, and she came at me, we couldn’t trust her, we didn’t know her—”
          “BUT WE DID!” Vernon’s voice drops, “We knew her, Orion.” He, too, starts to cry. “And I could’ve sworn I knew you too.”
          Orion tries to follow Vernon’s frantic movements, “You do know me.” Orion approaches him, hands stretching out, covered in blood.
          “STOP! Get back, don’t touch me!” It stops Orion in his dead in his tracks. He’s heard that same tone of disgust in Vernon’s voice from back home.“No, Orion, it turns out I didn’t know you. And I can’t stay around waiting for you to decide you don’t trust me either.” He starts gathering supplies again. Hurriedly picking up everything he can. “You didn’t have to kill her, you didn’t have to. You didn’t do that to protect yourself, you did it to win their game.” He is pleading for Orion to understand, “But they’re all the same, they will never accept you. You are different, and you never win. You don't see one of them in here, and I'm not gonna wait around for you to choose them over me, over us,” His eyes lingering on Pope a final time.
          Vernon backs away slowly, his eyes hollow and distant. Orion lunges forward to try again, reaching for him, fingers brushing fabric, but Vernon pulls away fast. Vernon turns, steps heavy, deliberate, he doesn’t look back. The sound of his footsteps fades into the trees, leaving Orion in the stillness. Alone. Red-handed. His breath fogs in the cold, but he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything. He stands in the spot where he tried reaching out for Vernon. The spot where Vernon left him sobbing. The sun shining through the trees stings his face. The cold wind prickles at his skin, and the air is thick, pressing on his chest. He wails, overwhelmed with all the weight of their fears.

My Mother Was a Bitch

I love my Mother. I love her the only way a daughter could love her mother. I understand her—in a way that I don’t think anyone else in her life does. She and I exist in a place that I don’t think is replicable with my Father or my siblings. I am more like her than anyone would care to admit.

I recently finished In the Dream House, and it reminded me of myself.

“The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn’t that they’ll remember; it’s that you’ll remember.”
-In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado

When I was younger, people were obsessed with asking the question of who I loved more: my Mother or my Father. I never answered because there wasn’t one. It always seemed wrong to me to measure and compare the love you have for two people, but an answer was always thrust upon me. “You’re a daddy’s girl.” “Don’t lie, you love your dad more.”

My Dad never in such plain words reveled in this perception, but he would tell me stories of when I was a baby. I would cry and cry, and the only person who could calm me down was him. When my Mother would give me my favorite blanket, I wouldn’t take it unless it came from my Dad. It’s cruel the way my Father uses those stories to solidify a truth I never agreed with, that he is better than my Mother. If those stories are true, I am regretful of memories I can’t remember.

My Mother is a very devout Christian; every night she reminds me to pray, every night without fail. Despite always saying I will, I rarely follow through. My Father is a pretty devout Muslim—their marriage didn’t work out. Much of my childhood was defined by forcibly going to Church every other Sunday because my Mom had to work for the remaining ones. Church is where I learned to dissociate, to force time to go by faster. And while they argued for years and years over going to Church or the Mosque, whether I would get baptized or not, that isn’t what broke up their marriage. I was always a pretty reasonable child. I understood that people who don’t love each other shouldn’t stay together. I was never upset about the divorce; I think I barely cared. I still don’t know if my parents ever really loved each other or if it was a marriage of convenience.

When I was younger, I always had a full house—three siblings and always a guest staying with us. My parents ran a business from our townhouse, selling food they got from frequent trips to Sierra Leone. We had two freezers in our kitchen to contain the overflow of cold, iced food. People flowed in and out of our house for peppers and fish. For spices, leaves, and plants. A freezer always filled to the brim, a townhouse always filled with moving bodies. I would lock myself in the bathroom for long amounts of time to think, to talk, to be alone. And in the mirror, I would look into my eyes and talk about a future where I leave that house and never talk to my parents again. Where I’m free from their religious wants, my lack of freedom, and am finally given the opportunity to find out what I want. But I was still the same girl who would freak herself out on the bus back home from school about the thought of my parents dying and never being able to see them again.

“Fear makes liars of us all.”

I was taught at a young age to forgive forgive forgive, and forget. When my older sister slapped me in the face, I had to forgive her because she said sorry. She didn’t have the bandwidth to understand that saying sorry doesn’t make it okay. Sorry was a privilege. If my parents did something that upset me, they wouldn’t rectify the problem. I could continue to be upset, but my feelings were already long forgotten. No one but me was ruminating on the way I felt hurt. To linger in resentment was to be alone. The only thing I could do was forgive and forget. I cannot to this day hold a grudge, not in a way that’s real. I cannot tell you all the reasons I was so upset when I was younger, not because they were trivial, but because I had to forget.

“Eventually, everyone forgets. That’s the worst part, maybe.”

This was my relationship with my Mother. She would reject me the liberties of sleepovers and friends, and there was nothing I could do about it. She was afraid. Of the world outside of our townhouse, of America. And no matter how much I pleaded, I couldn’t change her mind. There are scary stories and things I didn’t know about until recently. Last year, I learned that when I was in first grade, my sister used to let a man in a white van pick me up from the bus stop and buy us McDonald's. When my Mom found out, she rightfully freaked out about the fact that we were in a white van (the very thing they tell you to avoid) with a strange man she didn’t know. She told my sister to never again get in his van and to avoid him. He eventually came to our house and told my Mother that he intended to marry my sister. My Mom stressed that my sister had seizures and a mental disability—still, he persisted. My Mom told him to leave his name and address, and got my uncle (or maybe older cousin, family roles are weird with African families), who was living with us at the time, to run a background check. Turns out he was recently out of jail for assaulting his ex-wife and had a serial history of the same behavior. My Mom made up a lie to make him disappear, and that was the end of that.

When I was 17, I think I hated my Mother the most. It could’ve been teenage hormones or she really could’ve just been difficult. As with most things, I can’t remember the specifics very well. But I was having a difficult time, and it felt like she barely tried to meet me halfway. During my senior year of high school, after Covid, after months of barely doing work and sleeping for most of the day, I understood I was depressed. I was always one to do things myself. I could never ask for homework help because no one knew how to do it. I always filled out the doctor’s form even though the receptionist handed it to my parents, field trip slips, and documents my parents brought home. So I told no one and filled out a therapist form for Children's Hospital. Eventually, after the screening process, the therapist agreed I was depressed, but to put me on meds, they needed parental permission. I had to choose between two evils: tell my Dad or tell my Mom. I told my Mom, for deep-seated reasons that I would never be able to explain it to my Dad in a way that he understood. He constantly invalidated and twisted my feelings. He found it fun to pick fights that riled me up and would say half-hearted sorries. I was afraid of the confrontation.

Among many instances, he was once picking a fight. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but he had said something I didn’t like, and this was back when I was convinced that if I kept calling out the shit he did, he would recognize it and learn. I was naive, my Father is a stubborn man who rarely thinks he is wrong. In this argument, he wasn’t letting up and said something along the lines of “Well, why don’t you just kill yourself over it?”

It stunned me, to say the least, and I told him that he shouldn’t say things like that. He was combative about it and said it again, like a hill he had to die on. Then I began to cry uncontrollably. It shocked me that my Father could say something like that to me, that he could suggest, even in joking, that I kill myself. He didn’t understand why I was upset, and neither did I really. He half-heartedly apologized when my tears kept rolling.

“A reminder, perhaps, that abusers do not need to be, and rarely are, cackling maniacs. They just need to want something, and not care how they get it.”

“Afterward, I would mourn her as if she’d died, because something had: someone we had created together.”

When my Mom found out I was depressed, she thought I was dying. She cried. She invalidated my experience, tag-teaming with her new husband. He told me, “Kaday, you can’t let them prescribe you medication. They told my friend he had schizophrenia and all sorts of other things, gave him medication, and he jumped out of the window.” I didn't get on meds, they didn’t believe in them. I understand why my Mom got remarried. Before America, she had a big family; everyone lived in close quarters, in a community. No one did anything without family around, and she tried to replicate that feeling in our home. We used to have a full house, but it was all so quiet now—just me, her, and my oldest sister. Then just me and her, and soon to be just her when I went to college. More than anything, my Mother hates to be alone in a quiet house. I hate being forced to be alone because I feel like most of my childhood, my joy, and my loneliness were out of my control. But the man she met off of Facebook and married less than a year later was not what I would’ve picked.

He picks fights with everyone, yells like a teenager, and gets angry when you don’t give him a straight answer. He argued with me like a pubescent boy, despite being of retirement age. Called me stupid or stuck up, and hid his insults behind the compliment of me being “too smart for my own good”. Once, he yelled at me for faking my depression for attention—my Mom did very little to stop it. After the end of a 20-minute car ride filled with accusations, my Mom told me I needed to have thicker skin. People in college wouldn’t be nice to me, and I should’ve been able to take that. She could deal with his anger if it meant not being alone in that house. I cried that day, and he, too, half-heartedly apologized for making me upset, not for what he said.

I think after this rough, rough patch, when I left for college, things just changed. Space really does fix things—some things. Through therapy, I’ve learned radical acceptance. I cannot change who my parents are, all I can do is take them as they are. And space lets you forget. I know I love my Mother, my love for her is unconditional. I cannot with all my heart say that her love for me is.

Before college, when my Mother was picking me up from school, she told me, because I was going to a historically women’s college, not to become a lesbian. To not let the girls “finger finger” me. While driving on the local road away from Greenbel,t she started to cry at her own delusions of me being a disappointment and ending up with a girl. I will never tell my Mother about all the girls I’ve kissed and the crushes at College that have caused so much mental distress, anxiety, and stomach pains. Still, I’ve had less damaging conversations with her than with my Dad. I don’t know what the future holds in terms of my identity and their expectations. But I guess I always knew my parents were homophobic—not much I can do about it.

Since college, my Mother has been kinder. I flock to her rather than my Father. Before I left for London, she told me about her life before she came to America. The war in Sierra Leone. Villages shot down and burned, children kidnapped and forced to hold guns, forced to kill for greed. Her stepmom, who took her in as her own, was shot and killed. My brother at the time was maybe 4. She would hide with him in the bushes, his face pressed to her breast to muffle any sounds he would make. Her father died of exhaustion going from village to village looking for safety or comfort—still, the war killed him too. Growing up, I never had grandparents, and I always assumed they died of old age because my parents weren’t as young as the other parents my classmates had. I made peace with the fact that I, unlike many people, would never know my grandparents. It hurts a little more knowing the reason I never met them was because they were killed, not simply because they died.

After coming to the States through a refugee program, under a guess of an age and a different last name, she became a citizen. Eventually, she met my Dad, who was staying on an expired Visa. They married, and she gave him citizenship. She brought her children and his child with her to the new world. She worked for the house, while he searched for jobs—longer than you would need to. Maybe my affinity for my Dad at a young age was because he was just there while my Mom worked. He rejected job offers because they didn’t suit him, despite the fact that they had four other mouths to feed and a mortgage to cover.

My Mother tells me that he convinced her to give him thousands of dollars to start a business in Freetown. My Dad was in Africa for long periods of time. We had to constantly buy call cards to get the land phone to go through, and use the minutes sparingly. He missed my sister and brother’s high school graduation. He had a business partner, a woman he would never let my Mother speak to on the phone.

I’ve heard hurt people hurt people. I never understood this phrase until right now. I thought it was ‘hurt people’ x2, not hurt people hurt people. Cycles of pain and violence are as old as time. An eye for an eye. Perpetuated by many things, sense of entitlement, fear, protection, and systems. I hope to never exchange my hurt for a false sense of security in hurting others.

“you can be hurt by people who look just like you. Not only can it happen, it probably will, because the world is full of hurt people who hurt people.”

But when I think about it, she was there. She was there when I got my first period a little too early, while my dad was away in Africa. She tried to protect me when my breast came on too fast, in her own way. She dressed me every day in color-coordinated turtle necks and pants for school. She is there when I get home, and she will talk to me and not shove ideals down my throat. My childhood will never be what I wanted it to be. I don’t know if I’ll ever receive the love I want, and because of that, I’ll constantly feel I might be asking too much of others to replace a familial love I always wanted but never quite got. I know they’ve tried their best, and maybe their best will never be enough, but I choose to keep on.

Whenever I get sick, it’s somehow my fault, but still, she tells me about how when she was young, she was the same way. She calls to check on me, and she goes out of her way to send me medicine. She’s my Mother, and she takes care of me the best she can. She has given me religious trauma—like the time she let a Texan pastor tell me there was a witch inside of me and to get it out I had to drink a bottle of oil that gave me horrible stomach pains and throw up every ounce of food I had eaten the day before—and much guilt I don’t know if I’ll move past, but I love her. I love her. I love her when she says she has gotten fat and I tell her her body is perfect, when she gets upset at her husband and has no one else to take her side, when she doesn't take my side, when she blames me for things that are out of my hands, when she makes misogynistic remarks—I still love her. (Despite it all, I love my father too. He tries his best the way he knows how. And he is here too. He was there at times when my Mom wasn’t, but he shouldn’t fault her for that. They both are flawed people, and yet my only job in the world as their child is to love and take care of them.) Time has let me be able to say this.

I feel guilt writing this, I feel guilt admitting it. But when I look at my Mother, I am filled with compassion and love. I want to hug her for all the times she needed it and didn’t get it, for all the times she didn’t know it, for all the times I wanted it and couldn’t ask for it, for the future when I won’t be able to, and I wish I did it more.

“A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”

coming real soon...

coming real soon...

coming real soon...

coming real soon...

coming real soon...

coming real soon...

midsummers skies
(After She Had Forgotten How The August Night by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

july skies were always painfully bright
and when the moon hit, softly dim
the cicadas in unison buzzed as loudly as buzzes could be and
she laid submerged in the moon’s light carrying the weight
of youth losing sight of time and the girl she once knew
who would bathe in the sun’s light, golden brown

but now, like all the rest—simple and pale
which seemed to her an honest enough test of
whether she could still love, and
she had forgotten if she had an answer,
then or now

I was too much for my body

It’s why I bled well before
you considered me ripe

It's how anxiety found me first
running to meet the way my head turns
and my heart contracts
I heave
needing to move so that fear cannot
claim the ease of overtaking a still body

I was too much for my body
gained the consciousness of a woman
that grew out of a five-year-old’s
breast

too much to think of
too much for my body
much too much
to think about

They say women are more mature than men
Then what use is there for a mature little girl?

Isn't life Under the Sun just a dream?

when I was created, time never existed
it wasn't one and done
it wasn't fast
or maybe it was
the spur of a moment

bright light collisions and blinding explosions
remakes and recycles
new and old tired and tired
precursors to the ancestor’s ancestor
a loop of my existence on repeat over and over again
a long time ago

dust—mites
time fast slow
stretched still
and here I am
in a moment that is now and never

when I was created
it took more than a trillion years
longer than time took to find itself into existence

when I was created
it was as fast as an atom crashing into another
pressure guiding collision

the same piece in the cog fighting for a meaning

when I existed I heard my voice tell me
there you are
real but not just quite

living in the abstraction of the brain
when you lobotomize me where do i go

will it prove that i was never there at all

where does my soul lie?
when i feel that pain in my heart, is it just my head telling my chest to heave
when i feel the heart break is it just my head telling my body to fall
to my knees

where am i am here

i have always been alive, my particles old
time has always existed and yet
i will still die
gone in the abyss