1. Introductions with Ice Cream

I begged my mother for ice cream four years ago.

I pulled on her arms for what felt like hours. Pleading with her. Bargaining. Negotiating with the important things like my bed time and when I would get around to doing my homework. She finally caved after what seemed like millennia. She drove me to that ice cream parlor a couple streets down from my house that I loved. The ice cream parlor with the a bit too eccentric teenager scavenging tips and the a bit suspicious old man with creepy tinted glasses and a smile that would scare any little girl and the herd of joyous children playing with their food and laughing about the littlest things for no apparent reason. The people of the ice cream parlor were an enjoyable mystery.

I begged my mother for ice cream four years ago.

When I went to this particular parlor, I browsed around all the selections of succulent ice cream. I would speculate what flavor to get. Chocolate, Vanilla, Cookies and Crème, Health? There were endless possibilities! I wanted to try them all and savor the flavors all at the same time. Could they somehow 'suicide' the ice cream samples all together into some kind of shake for me?

My mother laughs at me. "I don't think I can possibly manage that. Maybe you should take that up with Santa Claus. Or better yet, Willy Wonka." Santa Claus? Was she mocking me? It was mid-January. Everyone knew Santa is on hiatus until Halloween.

Even if I managed to make it happen, would it be against some type of international ice-cream law to fuse together so many flavors of ice-cream? "I don't think so. You're silly. The international ice-cream laws were abolished in 2010. It's the decade of Donut Decrees; they're all the politicians are talking about now."

Would the ice-cream gods get offended? "I don't think so. The ice cream gods are lenient types of gods. They only get pissy outside of the freezer, if you know what I mean."

Truth be told, I was irritating her a little bit, although she'd never admit it. I always went through this process at the ice cream parlor. I always had to debate and weigh the options of which flavor I was going to choose when my mother knew I was always going to pick Strawberry. I was a sucker for Strawberry ice-cream. It was the best.

"Strawberry," I mumble disappointedly to the bit too eccentric teenager behind the cash register. I was still a bit sad about my inability to create the ultimate suicide ice cream dish at this parlor, "I would like a Strawberry cone, please."

I begged my mother for ice cream four years ago.

The process of preparing ice cream for the customer is enthralling to watch, at least for me. There were so many tubs of ice-cream, so many tubs of frozen goodness at the employee's arsenal. There was a huge spoon, a rod attached to an open, metal, half-moon, scooping into a world of perfectly pink delicacies. Carefully, she places the dessert on top of a pristine sugar cone and even adds a bit of sprinkles on the top, special for me.

The teenager hands me the strawberry cone with a smile. With a "Enjoy your day." And my mom and I leave the wonderful parlor with a strawberry cone in my hand.

I felt a little bad quite honestly. I dragged her out of the house for ice cream, and my mom didn't even get anything. I wonder why. Mom was being really nice today. Mom is always nice, but she got me ice-cream and even let me sit in the front of her car for the first time ever. On the way home in the car, I speculated this, both her kindness and her evident lack of ice cream, voicing my thoughts a bit rudely quite honestly.

Are you watching your weight?

"My weight? I haven't watched my weight in a while. Not since I was pregnant with you!"

You haven't watched your weight in a while then.

"Stop that! You're making me feel so old, Riri. Believe it or not, the dieting life just isn't for me. I just didn't want ice cream today." I was shocked.

There are people on this Earth who don't want ice-cream. But ice-cream heals children.

"Heals children? What do you mean heals children. I think that a bit too idealistic to even count as an argument. Though, ice cream certainly has the power to make you smile, Rima."

Ice cream. It heals people. It has an ingredient that makes people smile and laugh, and it just makes people happier. It's science!

"Science how?"

Science somehow!

My mom and I joked around a lot like this. I didn't realize that she was being playful, that she was being painfully sarcastic. I was about as oblivious to this sarcasm as the sun was of the moon's existence, but I didn't let that deteriorate my answers. I stood my ground, backing ice-cream's validity and divine powers of all things happy. I don't think my mom was convinced.

I begged my mother for ice cream four years ago.

"Oh Riri," she's laughing. Hysterically laughing. Her eyes closed, her head back, her hand covering her mouth a little bit, "You're so cute. So naïve," She turns her head towards me, "I remember when I was your age and—"

I swear I saw the blood first. I saw the streak of red dripping from the windshield before I heard her last piercing scream. I swear I saw the blood first. Only the blood was there. Even before she whipped her head back around to swerve away from the man in vein, the man on his cell phone who was paying as little attention to the road as we had. I swear the honk was second. I swear the cracks were third. I swear the police and ambulance were fourth. First was only blood. Only blood was there. The blood was everywhere.

Her neck was twisted like a rubber band. Her legs were bent like a broken Barbie doll, in ways that I didn't realize the human body was physically capable to bend. Blood by her head, her neck, her heart, trailing down her mouth, blood in the irise of her eyes. Even there. There was something in her eyes. Something hollow. It wasn't the look of my mom. It was a deer in headlights or a student in the principal's office or a werewolf's transformation, but that mangled, wide eyed look was not my mother. There was something wrong about how they squinted after some time. How they dulled into black pupils and recessed back into her head as if salt in water. There was something in her hair. Pink, Wet, Melting, Sticky. Strawberry Ice cream. This is what death looked like.

I begged my mother for ice cream four years ago.

Funerals were sad. It's a lame thing to say, but that was the only thing I could come up with when they burned her body, a morbid display. My mother's corpse was vulgar, disgusting, bloody, red, burning, hot, ashes; we all fall down.

My aunt, her sister, she asked me how I felt, so I said funerals were sad, and I don't think that was a satisfying answer, but it satisfied my aunt somehow. I can't verbalize how it feels to have the one thing you love the most in this lifetime—that you are the most assured of, that you have the most confidence in—and have it ripped away in an instant. It's like acupuncture to the heart, a bullet to the soul, canon fire to the mind, warfare of this incredible entity called sanity. Love turned to total war.

Funerals were white. It's funny how white is associated with the light. I've come to find that only the saddest things in this world were white. White was a color that knew no colors. It was nothing. Nothingness. It was death. It was my mother who was no more. Things are only white because they forget who they are, desperate for identity, so they tag along. Was White a clean slate? Was White innocent like doves? No. White was nothing. White was nothingness. White was death. War is war.

If I could take back anything, it would be that little parlor that I used to love. I would throw the establishment to hell just to prove a point. I would eradicate the existence of ice-cream. Ice cream that made me so happy. I would ban it for good, make it illegal. I didn't really need ice-cream that day. Why couldn't I have just stayed in my room? Why couldn't I have just watched comedy shows and played with my dolls and completed my homework. Why? Why we have to go get ice-cream?

I was lucky to have Amu to get me through the pain for those initial forty-eight hours. Amu was relatable, sensitive, kind, gentle-hearted. All of the things I couldn't be even as a child. I loved Amu because of this and envied her, a feeling hard to distinguish from hatred. Amu helped me cope with the pain for forty-eight hours, and then, she was gone in an instant, what seemed like a white flash. Another session of acupuncture, more bullets, canons fire away. War. More white. White. Bye. Amu.

I can't verbalize how it feels to be ripped away from your life all in an instant. A vehicle—a car, a truck, a plane, a ship—can separate you from your life, from your world for crying out loud, in seconds, minutes, hours, days. Seiyo was gone gone gone. Seiyo was dead. Seiyo was the new white, and so was everything in Seiyo, so was Amu. Amu was no longer the punky pink, my strawberry ice cream, but unforgiving white. Seiyo had been white for a long time. For four years.

My world was white.