Matteo's Rapture

Quinze

Emma Chassériaux

Province of Modena, Italy
Autostrada del Sole
The third of July, 2:10 p.m.

It was when we lived in Arizona, I was fourteen—the Scottsdale days—that I realized, my family could never be considered normal.

Because we were anything but.

One day Christian and I were out with Mama, doing a relatively normal errand we'd never do back in Paris without the protection of guards. We were a family in Scottsdale, a traditional one, but only because we pretended to be so.

And you can only go so far when living a lie.

Mama had sent us to aisle nine for a box of linguini—Fettuccine Alfredo was on the menu and she was going to teach me how to make it.

I remember asking for Christian's help to get the box off the shelf and simultaneously hearing a shitload of things clatter to the ground.

"Watch where you're fucking going, monkey mutt."

The man who shoved Christian into the shelf had this look of pure hatred on his face, I've never seen anything like it before. And neither had he. It does something, hate like that. It's an evil that's so indescribable it makes your skin prickle, your ears ring, your throat run dry.

I'll never forget the hurt and confusion in his eyes, but more so shock. No one had ever spoken to him like that, ever. No one even dared to and I'd never heard that kind of language. But Mama? Mama knew all too well, she had experience with it before meeting Papa.

"Get away from my son." She had demanded coldly, marching fiercely up the aisle past surprised bystanders. Watching the whole exchange was almost unreal, the terrible insults he spewed at her while she argued with him, fervidly defending Christian and herself.

The argument concluded with the nasty man calling Mama a "black slut" and shoving past her—barreling thunderously down isle nine. I knew that absolutely devastated her, I could hear it in her voice while she ushered us out of the supermarket—struggling to keep herself composed and together for us.

She was humiliated.

Papa was calm when he caught wind of what happened, I'll never forget that either. The blank look he sported while I relayed to him everything I'd witnessed.

"A-t-il aussi touché ta mère?" His brow lifts, brown orbs shifting back and forth between Christian and I.

"No." I shake my head as we answer lowly in unison.

"Il m'a seulement poussé." Christian snarls gratingly, his face twisting with a scowl. "Fucking asshole."

"But—" Glancing at him, I take deep breath. "—he did say some...things. Choses cruelles, to Mama. 'Race mixing'."

The man's name was William Monroe. I only know that because his name was all over the news two and a half weeks later. Missing and then found in Saguaro Lake.

In pieces.

We weren't different because of what happened to us. Mama wasn't special because she was black and Christian and I weren't special for being mixed. The racist, inflammatory, rant isn't what made us different. It was the aftermath, the savage nature of how William Monroe departed this Earth. I know it was Papa, I never asked but I know—I saw the knowing twinkle in his eyes during dinner while the newscaster went into detail.