In Black

In April, the cherry blossoms used to fall, covering the courtyard outside our apartment in a pink blanket. Dad used to tell me that the building was designed to look like a Spanish hacienda. I think hacienda means big house, but I never did ask him about it. I’ll never be able to ask him about it. The cherry blossoms won’t fall this year because the trees are dead. Almost everything is dead now, including my dad.

My mom died when I was a little girl. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m almost thirteen. Dad used to say that thirteen was his favorite age. It was the year my grandma and grandpa bought him his first motorbike. He became obsessed with them after that, buying a new one every few years. He had to leave motorbikes behind when he married mom and moved to the city.

An old man used to live in one of the ground floor apartments across the courtyard from us. His wife was a lot younger than him. Grandpa used to joke that he probably had money. I was never sure what money had to do with it. Every day, she would bring him outside in his wheelchair and sit with him beside the fountain. He would talk, and she would listen, always smiling. I used to watch them and think they were really and truly in love. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to fall in love.

The fountain is full of green, scummy water now. We haven’t had running water in over a month. It rains sometimes, so I stand outside in the open, letting the water wash away the grime. I feel oily after my rain showers, probably because of all the pollution in the air. Sometimes I will see black smoke rising up high into the sky. I wonder if it is an accidental fire, or if it was set by the crazies. I call them the crazies because I don’t understand why they are fighting each other and burning everything. I don’t really know what that accomplishes.

I used to watch the riots on the news, but Dad would always come in and turn off the tv. He said it wasn’t good for me to see that. Sometimes I would overhear him talking on the phone with Grandpa about it. Grandpa and Grandma live in Wyoming, way out in the country, so I don’t think what’s happening here is happening there. Before he was killed, Dad wanted to drive us out there. He said it would be safer for us, and Grandma and Grandpa were prepared. Except we never got around to it.

Dad and I were out getting gas when the man shot him. He was a big, fat man in a black uniform. I thought maybe he was a policeman, but he didn’t have a badge. There were no gas stations still open, so Dad was sucking gas out of abandoned cars. The man just shot him. Didn’t say anything at all. I was standing pretty close when it happened, and the blood from his head splattered on my cheeks. I ran away after that, found my way back to the apartment. When I went to wash the blood off my face, I just couldn’t do it, like I didn’t want to wash away my dad.

A week before he got killed, Dad gave me a heart-shaped locket that belonged to my mom. He said that if something happened to him, there was a pill inside the locket that would help me. He told me to take it with a glass of water and lie down afterward. I don’t know how long ago that was.

I’ve gone out a few times to look for food, but food is the problem, so I usually don’t have much luck. Sometimes when I lay down to go to bed, I count my ribs, pressing the tip of my finger into each one. I was never able to do that before. The last time I went out looking for something to eat, I saw a stack of long yellow bags on the sidewalk, each filled with something bulky. I knew those were dead people. I didn’t think it was right for people to be shoved into bright yellow bags when they died. Something about it felt wrong.

Sometimes I stand outside and look down at the courtyard, remembering how things used to be. On summer nights, an older guy with stringy gray hair would sit cross-legged on the bricks and strum his guitar. Sometimes he would sing, but he wasn’t very good. I think about the little boy from the apartment below mine. He was six. He still wore a diaper and sucked on a pacifier. I wonder if something like that would help with the constant hunger.

Every now and then, I open up the heart-shaped locket and look at the little black pill inside. It makes me think about the yellow bags with the dead people inside them. I think the bags should be black. Black is solemn. Black is the color of death. When I die, I hope someone finds my body and puts me in a black bag, so then whoever sees me will know to feel sad, and will maybe cry for me. I hope someone cries for me like I did when I lost my mom. I cried because I loved her so much, and if someone cries for me, then that means there is still love in the world. If I’m going to be dead, then I want to be dead in black.