Flat, waiting, always waiting. Not patient, not hopeless, but suspended. Cee. Ycidra. My sister. Now my only family. When you write this down, know this: she was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine. Who am I without her—that underfed girl with the sad, waiting eyes? How she trembled when we hid from the shovels. I covered her face, her eyes, hoping she hadn’t seen the foot poking out of the grave. The letter said “She be dead.” I dragged Mike to shelter and fought off the birds but he died anyway. I held on to him, talked to him for an hour but he died anyway. I stanched the blood finally oozing from the place Stuff’s arm should have been. I found it some twenty feet away and gave it to him in case they could sew it back on. He died anyway. No more people I didn’t save. No more watching people close to me die. No more. And not my sister. No way. She was the first person I ever took responsibility for. Down deep inside her lived my secret picture of myself—a strong good me tied to the memory of those horses and the burial of a stranger.
