Chapter 12

Thanks to Wen-A-Sprite-Meets-Unicorn for reviewing and to the ones who are still taking time for reading. A short chapter before to say a goodbye to those characters I like so much.

XXX

January 2010

"You know how to draw birds," Elena asked.

"Yes. What color do you want" Daya came close to Cecilia's sister.

Benny and Julio were looking at the images of the manga she had read to them several times, a little further, sat down in the fire escape. Cecilia was still motionless and silent, her arms around her knees. The afternoon's gray sky was now dark.

Elena held out a hand to Daya. "I would like a yellow bird, as a tattoo."

"No problem." Daya smiled at her. Strands, falling from her ponytail, fell on her cheeks. It was cold, and her jeans were now completely frozen, stuck between the concrete and her skin. Yet she had to keep drawing, telling stories, for Cecilia, for Cecilia's brothers and sisters. She took the yellow pencil. A slender body, wings, a long beak appeared on Elena's hand.

"Can we go home now?" she asked. She looks at her sister.

"Ceci?" Elena insisted .

Daya looked at her school friend. What she saw in his dead eyes frightened her. She wasn't afraid of Ceci, though.

She leaned down and whispered in her ear: "The last time they came to my place, they searched everywhere, then they took my mother away."

Ceci jumped, as if she had been eaten by her last words. ,

"I'm sorry...I mean, maybe they're gone now...I'll go check it out," Daya added.

"Are you sure?" Ceci stammered, her first words in a while.

"Yes." Daya picked up her backpack, and walked away into the winter night.

xxx

The present, June 2019

We are behind the counter, Ingrid and I.

My mother takes a dish out of the oven. In the restaurant's room, Sister Ingalls and Sophia, who runs the hairdressing salon, are chatting quietly while sharing rice with beans. Outside, a man walks with his dog in the sunset.

The atmosphere seems disturbingly peaceful, as if everyone in this town has decided to laugh at me tonight, when that fucking truth makes its way from my brain to my lips :

"She'll never get out of prison."

"That's possible," my mother replys. She wraps the dish in paper. She doesn't look at me.

"She told you why she did that? She told Aleida?" I know my question sounds like an accusation, even though I didn't mean to.

"No. I think she was in pain. She couldn't stand the separation from her daughter, the story with this guard ended badly." My mother mumbles, she is confused. Then she said, "Aleida will explain it to you better than me."

Something snaps inside me, and comes, temporarily, to ruin all the progress we've made, all the moments we've shared:

"Of course, I'm going to go to see Aleida, to ask her why Daya screwed up her life. I already know that Aleida always had a shitty hold on her."

I shouted, so hard that Sister Ingalls stops in the middle of a sentence.

My mother sighs, "Don't be unfair."

"It's unfair to say that a woman who spent her life making kids like I'm buying teeshirts for leting them to her older daughter, then who urged her to do the same, has a responsability if the daughter in question went crazy and killed a guy?"

"Calm down," my mother tells me. . She approaches me, and I walk away.

The smell of potatoes, onions and meat are suddenly overwhelming in the kitchen. I look at Ingrid. She is there, silent, but always next to me. Something in her eyes makes me feel like a bucket of water was falling on my head. She wants to help me, but it's too much for her. After Ice, the work on her book, Hher nervous breakdown in February, is too much. His frightened gaze brings me back to the present.

"I know this isn't all your fault." I look at my mother. "I will come back tomorrow."

"Okay. Daya is out of SHU if you want to see her."

I want to say her to stop, to say her that at night I dream of the SHU, that the prison reports on TV are totally scaring me, because I still don't know how I avoided this situation myself. Instead, I say, "No.", just a cruel, selfish, "No." I grab Ingrid's hand, say "Goodbye," and a few other things. We go out. Sophia's kind smile when I meet him comforts me. That's why,, I'm surprised to burst in tears, the door just closed.

XXX

"It'll be OK?" Ingrid looks at me, I remember she never saw me cry before.

"I think so," I hold back a sob, then I ask her this question, even though I know she can't answer it. "Why is she there and not me?"

We're both huddled there, against the door of my car: "I don't know, but you're there." She looks at me, says almost harshly: "You have the right to be there, and that's all." She squeezes my hand, like to hold me back.

I cling to his words, and I think of Daya: "I miss her, but I can't go to see her." My voice come out distorted by sobs, but Ingrid understands.

"Don't think about that now. It's too soon." Her voice is soft and firm.

I whisper that "it's not possible", "really not possible." My body is shaken with sobs, I let the tears fall. There's this little part of me that feels like I'm watching it all from far away.

Ingrid doesn't know what to say, so she hugs me. And she's right, that's all, all that matters to me.

XXX

The start of the chapter takes Daya's POV, then we're with Ceci. The events Ceci and Gloria, are a reference to the show, particularly season 3 and 5.