“My name is Brandon” I say, extending my hand. She only looks at it, she sighs “my name is Rhea, and this is my grandaughter, Jennifer.” She nods towards the young woman “ come here, lets get you cleaned up” she walks down the hall, a slight hesitation of her left foot as she walks, she must have had some injury earlier in her life, something that never healed properly. I follow her down the hall and into the bathroom. She uses an bulb syringe and squeezes some hydrogen peroxide into my ears, it burns at first and for a moment I flinch, but soon the burning subsides and I sit on the toilet as she wipes the dried blood from the side of my face. Her eyes are softer now, maybe she see’s a vulnerability in me now that I don’t, so now I’m no longer threatening. I feel like a child who was riding his bicycle for the very first time and fell and scraped his knee, and his mother is cleaning it for him. She stops and looks me in the eyes, her eyes look worried and at the same time, somehow happy, they now have a lightness to them. I stand up and follow her back into the living room. “Do you know what’s going on, or why?” Rhea stares at me for a moment, suddenly apprehensive of me again. “No, we don’t know anything” She avoids looking me in the eye. I feel like she’s lying, after all she just met me, and the world seems to be falling apart at the seams, so why would she feel any need to tell a 16 year old what she knows? I press on “ I saw a soldier shoot a man…. In the head” The image burns as it re-enters my thoughts, how pliable the man looked lying on the floor, and the dark red on the pavement and his cloths. “What? Why?” Suddenly both their eyes are fixed on me, filled with intensity, like animals searching for prey.
“Did he do something wrong?” “No, he asked what was going on, and the soldier pulled his gun and shot him in the head” The words sound almost frantic coming out of my mouth, like I cant release them fast enough. They stare at me in awe, the people who are meant to protect us, are gunning us down in the street. “My son, he’s in the army, but he didn’t say anything about anything like that” Her voices stresses on the last word. I knew she was hiding something, but there is no triumph in making someone admit their child is an army which is now a band of murders as far as I know. “Did he say anything to you at all?” her eyes are suddenly dark and her face droops, her presence wilting. “He said not to go outside, or talk to anyone. Don’t let anyone in and don’t do anything to attract attention” “That’s all he said?” I press on. “He said something bad is going to happen, but that’s all he said, he can’t be responsible for something like this, he can’t be doing things like that, that monster in the streets, not my son. That soldier must have been rogue, or not right in the head.” Her voice is frantic as she speaks, she doesn’t know any more than that. Jennifer gets up and walks over to her grandmother, embracing her for a moment. He hands wrapped around her back, she calms, her breathing slows and she regains composure.
