LaRon's mother calls in sick. A red rose unfurls on the grass covering his grave. These are the first signs that something is changing.
Kardi Mitchell works in health care. Pediatrics. Eleven years in the field on September 23. Her career was a Libra–balanced; beautiful; indecisive. General surgeon turned cardiologist knocked into neurologist shaken out into a pediatric oncologist with a side-interest-made-into-speciality in adolescent mental health. Drinks antibiotics with cereal for breakfast. Hot drips of hand sanitizer fall from her eyes in place of tears, and she kept syringes tucked in her coat pockets and purses at all times. It takes an army to wipe out the Nation of Kardi, and so comes an epidemic, so comes a disease which ravages, bites, leaves for dead. The stomach bug.
It begins in the evening. The news is on–local politicians fight tooth and nail to rip the carpet out from under her feet, her neighbor's, her patients'. The usual politically-born nausea introduces itself. Her eyes glaze. Her tongue dries and bitters. And then–a shift in the stomach; a jolt in the organ. Kardi clenches the brown off the banister, while her intestines twist and straighten like clothes in brittle hands.
The downstairs toilet was haunted, flushed only when the heaviest of shits was left in it to fester and ferment uninterrupted for many days, eventually disappearing down the white hole as slow as it had come. Kardi presses two fingers to her lips and walks quickly out the front door into the street, into the sticky embrace of an approaching summer night.
Vomit jumped immediately from the pit of her stomach into the Earth at the sight of her driveway, a resting place for cats in varying states of mortality. Many would meet their ends here, on the slick black pavement paradise of numbah thirty-five on Francis Lane, the first establishment, wet with gasoline and piss. She threw up her whole life onto the thin strip of pavement right off her property, swaying in time with the gentle wind, which pulled and loosened the knots in her body so well it brought forth even more vomit from her mouth. Her reflection in a puddle of dirty brown water is weary, but bright-eyed. Kardi Mitchell did not throw up. She drank water and swallowed. She came from a long line of women who would have been doctors, had the shadows not called them back home. She smiled in the face of blood. Bared her teeth in the midst of illness. She loved it, respected it, hated it, never feared it.
Kardi cleans her mouth on the back of her hand and walks back to her home. A cat drapes its body languidly on her doorstep, waiting for her foot to push it closer towards death. Its eyes scroll her face, darting back and forth like arrows with no target. Her skull is too soft. Her hair is too rough. Her lips too eager to be pierced.
A bottle of ginger ale makes its way through her system, slow slips of fizzy liquid that scorch her throat in a pleasant way. A headache plants itself neatly in the garden of her brain, and Kardi allows herself, in the darkness, in the throes of sickness, to think of him.
The boy would say it was a stomach ulcer. What did he know, except for what he had overheard, what sounded the most interesting in his ear? If she whispered 'headache' he'd whisper back 'brain tumor', look for pride in his knowledge on her face, smile smugly when she reprimanded him, smacked his head a little bit. He saw a fist and said, 'Tense hand', not 'Angry man,' never 'Duck before the punch lands'. What did he know? If she complained about her throat burning, as it was right now–acid reflux–he'd tut-tut, frown. That's why you can't swear no more, Mama. Look what it's doing to your throat.
The last voicemail he left was just like that: spinning mountains out of molehills, stomping molehills out of mountains. Hey, Ma, it's LaRon. I'm at the party. Some of the people here look mad suspicious, but I think I'll stay... They probably didn't drink enough water today. You know what that does to your face. I found somebody to kick it with, since Hakeem deserted me. His name is Mac. He goes to school with me. Actually, he's in my chem class. He's...wonderful. Call you in an hour. Bye.
The most recent voicemail on her phone came five minutes ago, when she was busy emptying the contents of her stomach like a pink hand bag. Greenfield County Morgue. 'Good evening, Ms. Mitchell. My name is Walter Mackenzie, the tender for all the graves in Greenfield Cemetery. I've been–been keeping tabs on your son's grave, as you requested. Something happened today. Please come by to see it when you get the chance. I'll be here until midnight, if you'd like to talk. Thank you, and have a good night.'
"Oh, God damn it," Kardi says. Her stomach gurgles. Her throat burns.
