To be Seen or Heard

Chapter Thirteen: La Granga (pt1)

That night, Mamí let us spread out more to sleep. Camila and Olivia would be staying in the master bedroom with her. While Isabella and I slept in the hallway bunk beds, and Alexander claimed the overhead bunk on top of the pilot and passenger's seat as his. I had to admit, it was more than nice not to have Camila's bony knee constantly pressing into my back while I was trying to sleep.

This morning Mamí declared that it was laundry day when she saw Ms. Carol gathering up clothes. The farm had a bunch of wells on the property, which meant that we could be a little more free with the water. Not that we were going to be using the gallons we'd scavenged from the highway, Mamí said we were going to be saving those for when we had to get back on the road.

Which made sense. After all, Papí had been drilling it into our heads since the bombs fell that we should never waste drinking water.

The only well we weren't supposed to use is the one east of the farmhouse, apparently, the group found a bloated muerto stuck in it yesterday and now it was condemned... We'd heard more than one adult grousing about how the muerto had been split in half when they'd finally pulled up its torso out of the well--which meant that the muerto's lower body fell back into the now very contaminated water. Mamí had not been happy that we'd heard about it. Honestly, neither had Isabella... my sister gagged every single time the thought of it popped back into her head.

Mamí kept shooting T-Dog and Ms. Andrea dirty looks whenever she caught sight of either adult in the vicinity... since they'd had the biggest mouths.

Mr. Hershel's youngest daughter, Beth, was nice enough to lend us a couple of buckets so that we could wash our clothes in them... and Mamí set up a thick picnic blanket out on the grass for Eva to lay on in her boppy pillow.

My youngest sister's eyes were wide with wonder as she stared up at the clear skies and the branches that swayed with the wind. Olivia was content to play with the Dora figurines and interactive baby toys we'd set up on the blanket, occasionally shoving one of the plushies close to Eva's face to make the infant smile and strike out a clumsy hand for the toy. Even Dottie was out enjoying the sun, though we had to tie up her leash to the picnic table so that she couldn't run off... not that she even looked interested in running when she could lazily lay out on the grass and soak up the sun.

Camila was particularly thrilled with her job to stomp on the soapy clothes in the bucket, her giggles ringing out even when Isabella got a turn at the bucket. Alexander and I had the more boring job of wringing out the wet clothes before passing them over to my mother and Ms. Carol so that they could hang them up on the makeshift clothesline tied between two trees.

Ms. Carol looked sad every time she caught sight of us, eyes all red-rimmed and lips pressed tight, but she wasn't mean or anything. Mamí was even able to drag her into a conversation about natural alternatives to laundry detergent... something about the roots of that stupid pointy-leafed plant that was in the corner of our backyard and how it could be turned into soap. I'd always hated that plant... it was a wonder that it was actually useful for something other than causing injury.

Sophia was still missing, Mr. Daryl hadn't found her yesterday, but he had found an abandoned farmhouse that seemed to have housed someone small enough to be her. That's why he'd gone back out there on his own -apparently, he was a really good hunter and tracker- not long after the sheriff made up search groups.

By the time the sheriff's wife, Ms. Lori, came out of her RV we only had a few things left to hang up. Mamí was taking a small break to breastfeed Eva, a baby blanket thrown over her chest as she leaned against the picnic table so that she didn't have to support all of Eva's weight in her arms. Alexander, Isabella, and I were still helping pass Ms. Carol things to hang up on the clothesline since we weren't actually tall enough to comfortably reach it for ourselves, while Camila joined Olivia on the blanket to play.