Black Catz

Chapter Seventeen - "Inspection of Identification"

When the front window is fully closed, my mother turns to me:

Maybe we all do everything we do to simply stay alive? As they have to here, on my mother's side, maybe we do too on my side, even though our care is half-off, while there's is full price. They don't get any discounts here, even when they only make two percent of what we do per dollar on our side.

"We'll need to be off as soon as we see them off," my mother says, looking at the cars carrying Moritz and my grandmother.

Since it is a movable-cafeteria that we're traveling in, my mother and I, along with the boy, we take time to refuel ourselves. We take some food, a lot of water, more food, a lot more water; who knows how long we'll be without either again, so we take and keep as much as we can, before reaching the entrance to the other side of the Wall.

In the other car, a youth girl looks at me. And for some reason, something comes over me. There was a look that the hard-jaw-lined boy gave me that made me think twice. But on the contrary, this girl, before me, has made my thinking stop.

This girl shone bright. She was a walking lightbulb. A walking light of hope. Maybe the one my uncle so desperately asked for in his store. Her smile was thin, not too wide but not too short—just right. Her hair curled down under her Party-given cap. And her eyes glowed in the moving-shadows of darkness. She has been the only shining light I've seen since leaving Moritz.

"What are you looking at?" asks my mother, not seeing the youth girl like I was.

"Nothing," I reply, giving her my full attention again.

*******************************************

The cars kept going, and soon, we were leaving the hospital way behind. So way behind.

First the vans speed up, revving up until they all passed us. Then they got left-off.

Then the two trucks before us speed up too, to pass us. And when they do—when they pass us—they stay in front of us the whole time, creating a shield-like barrier before us, the way you would see whenever a president is rolling by any street, in any city, for any country, in any continent.

Are we that important right now?

Part of me wishes that I would have at least looked back with a goodbye for Oso and Congo. So much time spent with them, I think—well, not really that much time personally with them, but you know what I mean; and it all came to nothing; it was all for nothing; it all only came to end like this, so suddenly; but then again, I guess that's how all life ends: like that...that fast...leaving in a split second, at any moment...with no time to think about suddenly, or what can happen suddenly, because death doesn't care about suddenly; it doesn't care about your plans.

Up front, conversation took place and mumbled all the way to the backseats through vibrations—whenever these vibrations were at reach, up to us, we held our own conversation: my mother, myself, and the hard-jawed boy.

It's glass to cover the front, but the glass doesn't' cover everything.

"We'll see that mum has a good resting place, and that Moritz reaches his family, and then we'll have to see where we leave you," my mum says.

"But I'm not going anywhere apart from you again," I say. "I'm coming back here to help you," I say.

"Help me do what?"

"Whatever it is that you do."

"You don't want any part of this, Ludy, That's why mum took you away from me."