To be Seen or Heard

Chapter Eleven: Revelations (pt2)

Eva woke us all up at six-thirty.

It was a good thing Mamí had taken the time to pump breastmilk yesterday while she was driving, because this was the second -and last- bottle I was feeding her. Her cries had woken up a very cranky Olivia, who wasn't really pacified by 'Dora' this time. Even Camila, who was usually all 'sunshine and rainbows' from the second she woke up to the moment she went to bed, was a bit grumpy.

It did not help that Olivia, after being told that Mamí was working and would not be back soon, started asking for Papí... and then for Abuelita or Tía, when we said that they couldn't come... well, it led to Olivia and Camila breaking out the waterworks. Even Isabella was angrily wiping away errant tears before she turned around and locked herself up in the puppy-bathroom for a private cry.

It made me feel all sorts of helpless... because all I really wanted was my Dad and grandmothers too... to see Andres pull Alexander under his arm and give him a noogie. But Abuelita and Tía Esther were dead. I'd seen their bodies for myself... and Papí was missing. Just gone. And Andres had been gone long before all of them.

The truth was, there was no guarantee that I'd ever see Papí again. It made me want to curl up and cry too, but my eyes felt drier than the desert and my heart colder than ice.

It wasn't time for that.

-Maybe it wouldn't ever be time for that.-

Even Alexander looked grief-stricken as he tried to calm down my baby sisters while I fed Eva... My poor cousin would never know what happened to his parents or his brother.

I'd learned that it was worse- the not knowing.

There wasn't any sort of closure with that. It felt like their return was always pending... which only made their absence ache even more.

Isabella was the one who eventually calmed our sisters down by taking out the photo album and pointing out pictures until the tears stopped flowing. Alexander practically jumped to put on a funny movie after that so that the mood wouldn't get somber again.

It was a relief when my mother finally appeared.

Carl lived through the surgery. Though the sheriff's son would be bed-bound for about two weeks. He got very lucky.

The man, Otis, who'd accidentally shot him... not so much.

Otis had gone with Shane to get some supplies that Carl had needed to survive the surgery, and he'd ended up getting killed by a herd so that Shane could get away. Three hours after my mother got back to our RV, she ushered us all out to pay respect at the fallen man's grave.

I'd only been to one funeral before.

My best friend's older brother had died two years ago in a DUI accident. It'd been... the despair coming off everyone was almost physical. Like Joshie's ghost was in the room with us, making his unseen presence known. The room had been absolutely suffocating, muffled sobs and soft broken whispers were like canons. Jenna had been inconsolable, and even with time, my friend had never really recovered. Some part of her was always sad and lost, always looking over her shoulder for a brother who would never tug on her hair again.

I didn't really understand her sadness, her grief, not until Andres disappeared in the early chaos of the apocalypse. Not until I saw Abuelita and Tía die.

The Greene family and Otis' wife, Patricia, built a marker for the fallen man's grave out of rocks 'cause there was no body to bury.

Miss Patricia's body shook with swallowed sobs as she leaned on a pretty blonde teenager, while Mr. Hershel -the owner of the Greene's farm- read a passage from a weathered bible. It was strange how similar and different grief looked like, but it was still a real thing. Like a wound-up snake nestled tightly in the center of your chest.