Black Metal

The sky seems more orange today. I pick up my bag and leave the eighteenth century mansion we’ve been living in for the past few years. Smell of rain used to feel comforting; now it’s just unsettling.

My father was a very dramatic man. He loved reading poetry intently while looking up every few lines to make sure he had your undivided attention. Amiri Baraka, Du Bois, James Baldwin. He was also a pathological liar. Still, I feel sad that no one will hear his stories again. It’s been over a year since he died but Bisa’s still not back to her normal self. She’s eleven now and carries that heart-shaped locket everywhere. I still remember when my father gave me that necklace on my eighteenth birthday as if I would be excited to carry a photo of him and my mother around. In a way I’m glad Bisa is more sentimental than I am. It’s a nice balance. We make a good team.

Everyone thought the Kessler Syndrome would be a slow-burn. Space junk colliding with every other piece of junk; satellites, space stations and the giant low-orbit LED screens sent out in the late twenty-first century for advertising. It took roughly six years after the first big collision for all mobile services and GPS to stop working. Sometimes you get used to things, sometimes you get dependent. I guess we were all dependent. Still, no one thought the disruption would lead to an all out civil war. In low-income neighbourhoods shops were looted so many times that they stopped restocking. So the looting expanded, all the way to the rich white neighbourhoods. People were shot and killed by the police and the National Guard. How did they call the cops? I still don’t know.

My bag contains gloves, pesticides and insecticides. Tomato plants are waiting to be treated for budworms. I feel safe in this New Orleans mansion with over a hundred other people which is ironic because this place must have had hundreds of slaves working the farms and the house. Nat Turner would be proud. We rarely receive news from outside of New Orleans these days. Local radio station, the occasional traveller and the yearly newspaper trucks. It’s always a special moment when the paper arrives. My dad would get Bisa to sit on his lap while they read every single news story. I asked Bisa if she wanted to read it when the paper arrived a few months ago but that just made her cry. I wonder if we will ever have the same relationship again. I wonder if she still blames me for his death. The loud thud of timber logs unloading startles me. We are building a large cabin for more families to stay in.

He was mentally ill, I knew that. What I didn’t know at the time was if this new illness was another one of his manic hypochondriac episodes. A trip to East Jefferson Hospital would be too dangerous with the N.F. (Nationalist Front) patrolling & harassing “non-residents''; an arbitrary term they invented for people who did not own land in the states they were operating in. The idea was that you need to own land to get state benefits, use hospitals, service centers etc. If you’re white enough and willing to join the cause, their NGOs will donate you a small plot of land in the middle of nowhere. Just like that, you’re part of the Nationalist Front. For everyone else: they came up with catchy terms like “non-residents” and “anti-nationalists”. Bisa is still too young to understand the very real and immediate danger she faces because she’s black. I am too old to understand it.

It’s just after nine A.M. when I’m back in the house. Bisa is making scrambled eggs and it smells heavenly. I remember the packages, the branding; free-range, organic, no cage and all that. Eggs here taste so much better. I squeeze a few oranges and for a brief moment, we’re “the family”. It’s just the two of us but we could easily star in an ad to sell things. Swedish furniture, milk or a new smartphone if there was much use for it. Bisa’s mother died giving birth. “Maternal death from hypertensive disorder” is what they told me at a medical camp in Baton Rouge. Would she survive if we were in a hospital? I don’t know.

No one’s too talkative today. People have been on edge since we heard about the attacks on the radio. We have weapons and guard posts but everyone here understands how well-funded the N.F. is. If for whatever reason they chose to target us, we wouldn’t stand a chance. Ex-police officers joined the N.F. en masse because it was a great deal; less supervision, guaranteed food and housing for the rest of their lives. Every single N.F. billboard will feature one of their very few non-white members. It’s good marketing.

In the evening, it's our turn to make dinner. We cook for nearly forty people on our floor. A curry with potatoes and chickpeas. After dinner I go out to lay down on the fields and look at the stars. This never gets old; there are so many large pieces of space junk floating in orbit that it looks like thousands of tiny stars. If you know what you’re looking for, you can easily tell them apart but some large pieces are reflective enough to fool you. Bisa always said it made her feel nervous so I’m surprised to see her lay down next to me. “I don’t want this anymore.” she tells me with an outstretched arm. She’s as dramatic as my father. I take the necklace from her and tell her it’s ok. I tell her it’s healthy to leave things behind, just to make space, to move on. I open the small locket to see my parents stare back at me; young and full of life. It almost seems like they never thought they would die. I can’t blame them.

It must be three A.M. when we wake up to a loud bang. Followed by other loud bangs. We rush to the windows to see what’s going on. It doesn’t seem like the Nationalist Front; there are no UTEs armed with automatic weapons, no flags, no nothing. We hear gunshots. It’s our people shooting at what seems to be nothing. It’s hard to believe they can see anything when it’s this dark out. In what seems to be a millisecond, the window shatters into a thousand pieces. It’s almost beautiful how the flood light reflects from it. I cover Bisa’s face with my sweater but she escapes my grip to run away. I’m worried, but I’m frozen. It took everyone an unexpected amount of time to understand what happened. That one of us in that room had been shot. That the police had night vision goggles, snipers and other long range weapons to pick everyone on guard duty off one by one until it was only us left; people in the mansion. By the time they made the megaphone announcement, everyone was ready to come out with their hands up; with a few exceptions, who were shot without hesitation. When Bisa left the house behind me, she didn’t look afraid. She looked resentful.

I remember my father talking about his time in the military during the Qatar War. They were such elaborate stories with intimate details and interesting characters about places he’s never been and people he never met. Even after learning how most of his stories were fabricated, I still loved listening to them. They were alluring. My stories, on the other hand, are true. After a few months of detention, we were placed in housing commissions in Monroe. We heard that the mansion was auctioned off to a rich family from Texas. Some guy who used to own a basketball team. Bisa doesn’t mind looking at the stars anymore. Maybe this is acceptance; how we are all so insignificant like those pieces of metal floating in the sky. I wish I could tell her that the world is fair, or at least we all get a fair chance at navigating through it, but I’m not my father.