“I’ll be careful with Anders,” I say while caressing Dove’s face. “He needs a family, and we can be happy with him.”
“He wants you, Pixie. Not us. And how can we live in this place? Will I go to the supermarket and fill a cart full of trash? Then have my children eat it, so you’re full of garbage?”
“Why can’t you buy good food and feed that to us? Don’t they have fruits and vegetables at the supermarket?”
Mama frowns at me. I know she’s making a point about how this world corrupts. At the Dandelion Collective, we never fought with our fists. No one starved. Anger was dealt with in other ways. People shared.
Our life is different now. I’ve killed a man. We’re in a community with beautiful houses filled with guns. The men here take lives. They keep the Village from eating.
The outside world has already corrupted us. She’s right about that. Papa wouldn’t want us living in this house. But he never would have liked the Village either. The dour faces, the mismanagement, the favoritism—Papa would rebel.
But he’s gone on to his next story. We’re left behind. Mama knew we couldn’t survive in the outside world, so she agreed to come to the Village. We tried to be happy there, but it was never easy.
“I miss the Dandelion Collective,” I say, reaching for Mama’s hand. “Life on the commune was best, but the government stole it from us. We tried the Village, but John Marks stole that. Now, we should try this community. There might be bad parts just like at the Village. But, at least, there’s food, and Dove can sit in the sun, and Future has the energy to smile.”
My words burn Mama’s soul. Her life was so good at the old commune. She and Papa were deeply in love. The people in the commune were our family. Everyone had known each other for generations. I only have good memories of my life there.
I understand how much Mama misses Papa and what we lost. There was never any time for her to grieve. She had to keep fighting—the government, the people at the apartment complex where we lived for a few short weeks, the elders at the Village. Yet her children suffered, and her face is bruised, and her helpmate is missing. Mama feels as if she’s failed, and my words rub salt in her wounds.
“We should try to live here,” I say, stroking her bruised knuckles. “At least until John Marks makes the biker men too angry and they kill him.”
Mama looks at a wet-eyed but quiet Future. He shows her his block with the letter “B” on the front. My little brother always watches Mama to know how to feel.
In the Village, he followed her around, playing next to where she worked. If she smiles, he does. If she gets angry, he balls up his little fists. Mama is his favorite person.
Right now, he cries because Dove does, and he’s confused about what’s happening. Is the food going away? The toys? Where will we sleep? He waits for Mama to signal whether he should be scared.
“This is a good house,” Mama says to Future and then smiles at Dove before looking at me. “We could live here without bothering Anders at all.”
“There’s a whole other house under the floor,” I say as my fingers create braids in Dove’s thick, wavy hair. “With a kitchen and a big area for playing and a television. Bedrooms and a bathroom. So much stuff.”
“And he has more space upstairs,” Dove says, looking at me. “We could put a tabernacle in the yard if he doesn’t want us inside.”
Mama’s eyes fill with tears. She rarely cries. I’m startled to see her so emotional.
“We were going to die there,” Mama admits. “The Volkshalberd will be dead by the winter.”
Afraid of my mother’s sadness, I try to make her smile again. “There’s so much space in the yard for a garden. We could grow food like we did when we were Dandelions.”
“We’ll always be Dandelions,” Mama whispers. “And you were right to help Anders yesterday. Those boys had no right to hurt him when he was just visiting you. Anders shouldn’t have to die because John Marks filled their heads with hate.”
Mama and I come to an understanding. Just like when she asked me to help her settle the family into the Village, I’m asking her to give this new community a chance. We can be Dandelions here, believing what we’ve