Rocio
Memory...
Twelve year old Rocio only wanted to get some agua fresca.
She looked down at TÃa Reh with horror. Her aunt laid there, face upward, unblinking. Her brown skin was ghastly pale, lifeless. She was still beautiful, but now it was disturbing to look at for too long.
She took a step back as the blood puddle grew and grew and grew, ruining the white-tiled, kitchen floor. Her high-pitched voice was as tiny as ever. "TÃa?" Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest when she heard the home's front door open.
"Ma?" Eight year old Renata called out. "Hola, mami! Hellooooo!"
The sweet sound of her voice broke Rocio from her shocked spell. She raced from the kitchen, her pounding steps clearly startling Renata who jumped but soon smiled after with familiarity. "Ah, Rocio! You didn't eat the last cookie did you?" She kicked off her black school shoes, leaving her in her white knee-high socks. "Where's ma?"
Rocio meant to be calmer, but all she did was shout, "stop!"
Renata arched a brow of suspicion. "Why are you being so weird? I need to pee."
Rocio put a firm hand on Renata's shoulder when she tried to move further into the house. "Listen to me! We need to get my ma now!"
"Ow!" She attempted to shake herself free, but Rocio was just beginning puberty and outweighed her by at least twenty or thirty pounds. "Stop that! It's not funny. I'm gonna pee myselfâI didn't go at school."
Rocio couldn't stop the tears as they burned and welled in her eyes. She wasn't shouting anymore, but her grief-filled voice was just as loud. "Renata, please listen to me, we need to go to my house."
Finally, fear reached Renata's big brown eyes when she realized Rocio wasn't playing some strange joke on her. "What's wrong?"
Rocio's chin trembled and she tried her best not to sob right then and there. "Let's just go, okay? Put your zapatos back on."
"Okay," she hesitantly did as asked. Rocio opened the front door again and attempted to pull Renata after her.
She resisted and looked back, but thankfully the kitchen was blocked off by a wall from this angle. "Where's ma?"
Rocio tried to clear her throat, but it did nothing for the cotton clogging it. "We should hurry, okay?"
_____________
Rocio held onto Renata as she cried, inconsolable. They clung onto each other tightly as they shared the twin mattress.
They'd just buried TÃa Reh earlier that day.
"It's okay, Nata," Rocio shushed her, "it's okay."
"I want mami!" She whined, voice crushed by grief. Her face was red and puffy, though it was hard to see as there was only the slightest luminescence from the moon in herânow 'their'âbedroom.
Rocio wanted to cry too, missing her aunt, but her mother had warned that since she was older, she needed to be strong for Renata. "Don't worry. Everything is going to be okay. TÃa's going to be hereâI'm not going anywhere."
"Who's gonna take care of me?" Renata sobbed, wiping her face on Rocio's already-soaked nightgown.
Rocio couldn't keep her heartbreak for her cousin from tainting her response, "I will. I'm always going to be there for you. Always."
"What if you leave me like ma did?"
Rocio shook her head and continued to pet her hand over Renata's wild head of hair. "Don't even say that. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
"You promise?"
Her voice was so small and innocent and vulnerable, how could Rocio respond with anything but, "I promise."
End of memory...
"Honey?"
Rocio snapped back to the present. She'd been staring in the mirror of their basic vanity, not looking at anything in particular as she went back in time. She looked over at Diamond, who also donned an all-black outfit. Her black hair had grown to her shoulders, luscious and shiny beside the faded tips she'd yet to trim.
Rocio, on the other hand, cut her locs up to the middle of her back, so it was more manageable but could still be put up in a ponytail. "Yeah!"
Her eyes turned sad from whatever she saw in Rocio's expression. "Are you ready?"
Rocio remembered what she was preparing for in the first place. "Are you sure we should be doing this? It's only been a year." Well, technically a year and a half had passed since their disappearance, if they counted the six months they spent in the bunker.
"Hey," Diamond crossed their bedroom. Her tanned skin was even darker now that summer had recently completed and they were just entering the fall season. "We're not giving up hope, ever." She laughed, and Rocio found comfort in the sound. "I don't think either of us are capable of itâwe love her too much."
"It feels like we're saying goodbye."
Diamond took a seat on her lap. "We're not, but we can't keep going like this, in limbo, ignoring the big ass elephant in the room. We've talked about this. It'll be better for both of us. Paying homage to someone we've lost isn't the same as saying goodbye."
Rocio's throat tightened. "She's lost, not dead."
Diamond placed a kiss on her cheek. "Only lost."
Rocio sighed. "Okay, let's go."
Minutes later, after Rocio attached her poorly-made, wooden limb, they walkedâwell, Rocio limpedâinto the backyard.
This woodland area was immense, but each house in this town entailed a similar amount of land. After leaving the bunker, they stumbled upon this near-abandoned town and house after a four-day-long walkâthey weren't willing to go much farther from the disappearance site. Over the next year, they worked with around fifty other human residents to rebuild the town, to create a sense of community while the rest of the world also scrambled to put itself together again.
Thus far, no countries have stepped up. No one was sure how many were actually dead from what people began to call 'The Blast', but everyone knew one thing...
The world was very quiet.
While fighting off stragglers and grasping onto their new reality, they'd somehow managed to settle into this new, mundane routine of physical labor and community-building as a stronger-than-ever, united front.
Rocio and Diamond. Honey and Blue.
Diamond stepped aside to reveal the small altar.
Rocio studied the items on it and smiled with tenderness. "Blue, it's beautiful." She'd spent the last month or two carving into the humungous tree in their backyard. Now, there was a small cavern. In it carried five chunks of wood with names carved into them: Renata, Tahoma, Nirvi, Reh, and Isa. At the center, there was a small wooden crucifix and a faded picture of the lady of Guadalupe was stapled next to the cavern.
"You helped," she responded as she came to Rocio's side and slung an arm around her. "It's not nearly enough, but it is for now."
Rocio nodded along. "So...what next?"
"Well, when Sonya suggested it, she said we should say something, offer up words of appreciation and love, share whatever is in our hearts."
Rocio studied the tree. "Oh..."
Diamond sighed, but it was in no way a frustrated sound. "I can go first...with respect to Tahoma, Nirvi, Isa, and Reh, I'll just talk to you, Ren..." Her words thickened. "I don't know where you went, but ever since that night, I've had this huge hole in my chest. I hate the way we left things," she sniffled, "I hate that you're not here...I believe in my heart you're not dead, but it hurts like you are." She sucked in a deep breath. "Not knowing where you are, what's happening to youâit kills me. I pray everyday I'll wake up and somehow you'll be there. Until then, I'll take care of your sister, I'll keep going, I'llâ" She errupted into powerful sobs.
After comforting her for a while, Diamond stared at Rocio expectantly. "Sorry, your turn."
Rocio cleared her throat. "Right." She sighed. She couldn't manage to raise the volume of her shameful confession, but she loved Diamond and entrusted her with everything, and so would participate in this with the most earnest of intentions. "Ma and TÃa...I feel like I failed you. I feel like I failed to do the one thing you both trusted me to do: protect Renata. She's gone, and I don't know where she is or how to get her back. I feel like I don't deserve to be here, that I should have somehow taken her place." Tears streamed down her face. "And I'm sorry I didn't, Renata, I'm so sorry I couldn't take on this burden for you."
She cried to herself, allowing herself to feel the pain she'd made a habit of avoiding, which only worsened her grief and emotional turmoil, the entire reason why Sonya suggested this ritual to the both of them.
"I miss all of you," she continued, "Sometimes it's so bad, I just want to die. But then I realize I'm being selfish when I think those things, and despite those hurtful things I did to you and how you might not believe me, Nata, I love you so much. Please, come back to me. Tahoma, you fuck, you better come back too. You're my brother, and probably would have been my brother-in-lawâwhat am I even saying?" They both laugh-cried, exploding with tears and giggles and they probably looked like they needed to be put in the looney bin.
"Well, I guess that's it," Rocio continued, "but please, please come back."
Then, they fell into a silence as they studied the small altar.
Rocio sighed. "I feel like we're waiting for permission."
"To what?"
"To live on. I hate the idea of betraying her more than I already have."
Diamond pressed a kiss to Rocio's cheek. "She was angry but never spiteful, remember? Give Ren more credit than thatâtrust me, honey, we have it. I have a feeling she'll be back to give us hell."
Rocio looked up and whispered into the air, "you better."