Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,33

went well,” Jimmy said later. “I think she’ll understand.”

“Watch your head.”

We were climbing the ladder into the attic. Grace waited below.

“Don’t forget the Rainbow Brite dolls!”

I pointed to a stack of boxes in the corner.

“They’re behind that.”

Grace keeps all of Cady’s things in a crib so that no one ever forgets to whom she really belonged. Stuffed rabbits, snap-on black leather bracelets with metal studs, half-used hair dye—Enchanted Forest and Electric Lava—black nail polish, a plastic record player, Mutant Ninja Turtle stickers, jewelry boxes, candles, incense, a Bauhaus poster, a walkman, cassettes. If you glued it all together it wouldn’t look like Cady, though. Like when you look at fossils and think the world must have been nothing but seashells but it wasn’t. It was filled with all sorts of things that didn’t preserve.

“What’s going to happen now?” Jimmy asked.

“We’ll put some of Cady’s stuff up, play her music. Make some toasts. We’ll be out of here by midnight. I promise.”

From the rafters, dried Indian corn hung.

“When we were little we used to play Battle of Wounded Knee,” I handed Jimmy a box. “I never got to be a warrior, though. Cady and Credence were always the warriors and I got stuck being one of the babies left to die on the hillside.”

Cady would make speeches of vengeance over my body and Credence would draw plans for a counterattack. If I moved, Cady would kick me. Hard. I broke some ribs once doing fieldwork at grad school and what struck me was how familiar the feeling was. I remember thinking it was lucky Cady didn’t puncture a lung ’cause if I’d ratted her out she would have had me shot. That’s how it was. We were all in training.

Through the window I saw Credence and Annette walking up the path.

“We should probably just take the whole thing downstairs,” I said.

We dragged the crib into the dining room. Grace set out chips and guacamole while Credence and Annette caught her up on the shootings. Riots had started and were getting worse. Organizers were holed up at Higher Ground of Africa Baptist negotiating with the city and that’s why Credence was late. He’d been trying to get the unions to pressure the mayor but the unions were trying to get the mayor reelected and didn’t want him chastised over police accountability. Community leaders split—What solution was to be had? What mystical action could convey both rage and passivity? Candlelight vigil! Credence was trying to act excited but Annette’s disgust was clear.

“Those boys were fourteen and sixteen years old. That baby was holding a goddamned robot toy when they shot him.”

Just then Miro came in. The lost fish of the Morava, he swam muscled and aging, his scales like silver coins fell and glinted between the rocks. Something was wrong. His frayed fins beat the water. He laid a newspaper down in front of Grace. “They’re tightening the borders. Soon people aren’t just going to be able to leave.”

Grace glanced at headlines then poured some salsa into a bowl.

“Sounds like you’re going to get out just in time, Jimmy,” she said.

I could feel Jimmy’s eyes boring a hole in the side of my skull.

Annette asked her to help out in the kitchen.

Grace flipped through the newspaper.

“Let’s get the stuff up,” said Credence and walked into the living room.

Every year we each choose something of Cady’s to decorate the house with. Some things always get used. The dried wildflowers she collected the summer before eighth grade and ironed between sheets of wax paper, her tape deck and the cassettes with her name written in nail polish on the plastic shells. I found a copy of Pretty Hate Machine missing its cover. Cady and I were singing “Head Like a Hole” on the bus the day she died. She said it was “got money” and I said it was “god money” and she called me an idiot and went to sit with some friends up front. Then she ran back crying because Jeremy Sokolov called her fat and she had a big crush on him. So I ran up and whacked him with my knapsack. Then we went off the cliff. All three kids in the very back were killed. I remember Cady like a magical animal with sharp lines and multicolored fur. I knew she would call me a coward for even thinking about leaving.

Miro looked over at me and held up a clay dog.

“She made this at camp, right?”

“Yep. She used to tell