“Okay, thank you, officer.” Chantal takes my hand and starts to walk back.
I take a few steps with her toward the car, but something tugs at my insides. I can’t go back home. I have to know what happened with Kasim. This is all my fault, and there’s something back at that party that I have to fix.
I pull away from Chantal and run. I run past the cop. I run toward the blue and red siren lights. I run toward the crowd of teenagers.
“Hey! Hey! Stop! Stop!” the cop’s booming voice shouts behind me.
But I don’t stop.
I hear Chantal calling my name. But I don’t stop.
I only slow down when I reach the crowd. My heart races. The air around me isn’t enough. I can’t breathe. Something is wrong. I can feel it.
Then I see her. Detective Stevens is standing right there, a few feet away. Her eyes are stuck on me as if she can’t believe that it’s me, that I’m here.
She opens her mouth to say something, but she stops. Then she starts again, “Fabiola . . .”
Behind her, I catch a glimpse of cops unraveling a long stretch of yellow ribbon with the word CAUTION. The word goes around the whole ribbon and reminds me of one of Papa Legba’s warnings: Beware the lady all dressed in brown. The word beware echoes in my mind as Chantal pulls me away from Detective Stevens.
CAUTION. Beware. CAUTION. Beware.
Again, I run. I run past the detective. I run between the people standing around the yellow tape—some whispering, some covering their mouths, others shaking their heads. I push them out of the way because that yellow tape is like a magnet. I’m pulled to it because there is something there. I know it. I just know it.
The first thing I see is a white sheet. I remember seeing this before. The earthquake. White sheets. Bodies. White sheets over bodies. A sea of white sheets. A mountain of bodies.
But here, there is only one white sheet. And one body.
I feel as if something is rising out of the earth. But the ground doesn’t shift. It’s my bones that are quaking. My knees are weak. I’m closer to the white sheet—to the body. And I know.
I know that body.
It’s Kasim.
It’s Kasim’s body under that white sheet.
I fall to the ground.
I become the earth and I crack on the inside. The fault line spreads and reaches my heart.
I am the one broken now.
Kasim means “divided amongst many” in Arabic.
I remember those words. His voice is clear in my head.
So when I am completely split in half, I wail. I scream. I yell out his name over and over and over again. Kasim. Kasim. Kasim.
I try to crawl toward the white sheet. Toward the body.
I’m on my hands and knees, and the cold ground beneath me is as still as death. It doesn’t rumble. It doesn’t crack. But I do.
Someone picks me up from off the ground and whispers, “Get out of here, Fabiola.” It’s the detective. I let myself go in her arms. But she is too weak to carry my load.
“You killed him?” I say with my tiny weak voice. “You shot him?”
“Not me, Fabiola. You have to get out of here. Get her out of here,” the detective says to Chantal.
My body still trembles. It’s as if my soul wants to let go of it, to climb into that space where Kasim is lingering. He wants me there with him, I’m sure.
Chantal’s hold is even weaker. She almost falls with me. I can’t walk on these broken legs. I can’t hold on to my soul with this broken body. Kasim.
Still, we make it back to the car. I fold myself into the backseat next to Pri.
“The police shot Kasim,” Chantal says, quiet, quiet.
When I hear those words, I become undone. So I cry and scream and hold my belly as if I am giving birth to all the misery and pain that has ever walked the earth.
Kasim is the earthquake and he has shattered my heart into a million little pieces.
THIRTY
WE ALL CRY. We are a chorus of silent tears, tiny whimpers, deep guttural wails, and sharp piercing shrieks.
The drive back home is slow, as if we are inching our way through muddy dirt roads. Chantal leans in close to the steering wheel, wiping away tears every few seconds. She has to see straight for us. She has to be strong for us.
I unravel. I am the loudest. I am the shrieking one. It all pours out of me like a billion knives. I can’t stop. I can’t think straight. I only dump sharp, slicing, painful wails out into the car. The windows are closed. None of it escapes into the cold, wild air.
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Pri says over and over again when we drive up to the house.
I quiet down to a whimper. Through the windshield, I spot Dray sitting on the steps to our house. I don’t react. I have no emotion left for him.
“How the fuck did he find out so quick?” Pri says through tears.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Donna says, sniffing back her tears.