Sins of Our Past

Chapter 2 (Re-worked)

 I was five when the country was changed, when the world died. A dark, malicious force like inky black storm clouds pervaded the sky when it all started. At first, I thought it was the rain coming to quench the broken earth, to fill the much needed relief that the American desert longed for but, it was something different. Something bad that promised good things and made you believe with all your heart just to take the dreams away.

I never understood why they came. I didn’t know of the war, didn’t know the pain that was felt through the earth. I just knew Mother and Father and Sister, concrete, safe. I wished every day since The Day for things to go back, even before I was old enough to truly know what I lost. I prayed and hoped and crossed my fingers to any god that would listen for relief from the plague that darkened the world. I didn’t understand, I never really would.

Before the day of hope lost, I was innocent; a child whose future was laid all right in front of her and she could simply reach out and take it, little by little, when she was ready. I was never ready though, but forced into growing up too fast. But, I guess that’s what happens when the world dies and you die along with it.

Before I knew pain, a deep sort of ache that lodged itself into your heart and never left go, I knew family. Mother was in the kitchen, always in the kitchen, cooking food and cleaning and singing. I could only remember her singing as time stretched out though; what the notes sounded like and how her voice would get slower and slower as the tears of a memory fell from her eyes. 

She would sing and cook and I would just watch her, watch her face as if I was trying to remember every dimple and scar and she would catch me. Our eyes would meet and I was sure of life and happiness and love, sure that I would need nothing else. She called me into the kitchen in her singsong voice and we would dance until she had to stir whatever she was cooking for us once more.

I could remember the sun outside our window, surrounded by the old curtains that were yellow with age as it sank below the earth. The color cast by the sun was so deeply red that when I was five, I thought it was dying right before my eyes.  I would cry to my mother and ask her who hurt the sun. She would smile at me and stare with her blue eyes until I thought she had forgotten about the sun altogether.

“Mama,” I asked, the words jumbled and heavy on my tongue, “Mama, save Mr. Sun.”

“The sun will come back, Bay.” She glanced at me, her eyes sliding to meet mine and smiled, “Remember, it comes back in the morning.”

“But how do you know, Mama? How do you know it’s not another sun that took its place?”

She tilted her head, the smile staying in place, almost a permanent feature on my mother’s face before things changed.

“Why Bay, that certainly is a good question.”

I watched her give a couple stirs to the frying pan as popping and cracking noises met my ears.  I waited for my answer, patient.

In a child’s mind, everything is black and white. The sky is blue, the earth is round, and my birthday came just after the trees started turning orange and falling to the ground. As sure as I was about the sun dying and another taking its place, but my mother knew better. She always seemed to know.

“I guess I’m not sure. But things like that are what makes life a question that we can’t always answer.”

“Not even grown-ups?” I asked again, my eyes getting larger at the thought.

“Not even grown-ups, Bay.”

I was five when the country changed, when the world died, and before I even knew how to react, I was being told how to.