When guards went to the Robertson house, Olivia was holding her sister’s hand in her own bloody ones, and weeping, “No te preocupes, Rosa… cálmate, aquí estoy, aquí estoy…”
And everything changed. There was a surge of ugliness. Fights sprang up between the races. There were threats, insults thrown in the streets. There was even talk of bringing back Whites Only areas, sending “Mexican” families out into the desert, and it had taken everything Mother Morevna and Mr. Jameson had to calm everyone again.
I remember hearing stories about how Olivia just sat across from Mother Morevna, silent and hard-hearted as a stone, with his blood still under her fingernails. In the end, it was decided: Olivia Rosales, the fifteen-year-old murderess, had to pay for her sins in the Desert of Dust and Steel.
I remember as they opened the doors to the desert. I remember how everyone gathered around the gate, how Rosalita cried out and drooled and had to be taken away to the hospital. I remember Olivia’s black hair flying in the wind, her dark eyes wide with fear and anger. But the doors closed behind her anyway.
Rosalita remained at the hospital for a while, as little seen and ghostly as she had always been. When she died a year later, she was buried in the northeastern wall, at night, to avoid further scandal. Her name was carved into the outside of the wall as well as the inside, so that if Olivia was still out there somewhere, she could see. Their house was boarded up, and we all went back to our lives as well as we could, working ever onward, ever toward the goal we would be measured for in April. But the tension never completely went away. Crop production went down and unrest rose, simmering beneath the surface of Elysium. Especially in these last months before the Dust Soldiers’ return, unease and blame lurked in shadows, smiles, handshakes. And that bloodstained house sat like a scar in the center of town, a constant reminder of the crime that had cracked our foundation. Even going near it made me feel sick.
“I dare you to go onto the porch,” Lucy smirked.
“No!” I said. I glanced back toward the church, still visible from the shadows.
“I’ll do it,” Lucy said.
She crept toward the house, her shoulders bent, her dark skin gleaming in the torchlight.
Just then, the rose window of the Baptist church flared into light, its great round eye opening.
Mother Morevna.
“Shit!” we hissed together. Lucy leapt off the platform, and we ran off in the direction of the hospital, lugging the bucket as best we could together, water splashing against our dresses. No one chased us. No one came for us. But still, we felt Mother Morevna’s presence like breath down our necks. And, behind us, the light in the rose window dimmed again.
By the time we got to Lucy’s house, our arms and legs hurt and we’d spilled nearly half the water. But there was no helping it. Lucy took what was left into her house and brought the empty bucket back out to me.
“Here you go,” she said, handing me a stack of food and water rations. “Thanks again.”
“Lucy!” came a voice from the darkness. We turned.
Jane Cornett, a white girl a year younger than us, was standing in the dark a few houses away. She gestured to Lucy, then to her coat with its full pockets.
“There she is,” Lucy said. “I gotta go. And if Trixie gives you trouble again, let me know, all right?”
“Sure,” I said. “Night, Lucy.”
“Night, Sal.”
And like that, Lucy slipped into the shadows with Jane and disappeared.
I headed back across town with my empty bucket. Then I slipped behind Mr. Jameson’s house to my chicken coop. I unlocked the door and let it swing open. Inside were my few things: my scavenged dresser full of clothes and shoes, my little box of pictures and mementos, my father’s useless old radio, my bed. I crawled inside and set down my bucket, lit the kerosene lamp. On the wall just outside the window, close to the base, Mama’s name flared into light: MYRTLE WILKERSON. As always, my heart twisted in on itself when I saw it. Before I could stop myself, I remembered her as she had been the last time I saw her, thin and pale, lying on her cot in the hospital, her forehead beaded with sweat, a rag beside her covered with mud and blood.