“Okay, guys and gals, just line up in the order in which you hear your names called. The shot will take less than ten seconds and you’ll have an extra twenty minutes for break. Enjoy a flu-free winter!” Mr. Plummer dug in his ear and scratched his throat simultaneously as he waddled back to the huddle of administrators with his clipboard crammed underneath one of his armpits. His elbows were dry and rough and permanently white. They were the last things I saw before my sister Maya and me made a mad dash for the slides. Some kid was kneeling between the monkey bars and the fire pole. Idiot.
“Psst! They’re going to see you!” Maya whispered. She was one year younger (and bit more compassionate) than I was.
“Don’t look at us!” I hissed. “Then they’ll see us too!”
“Make sure they aren’t looking, then slide under here,” Maya offered. The boy looked from where the administrators were standing, to where the kids were lining up, to where the teachers were gossiping, then he slid to where we were.
“Who are you?” I was a believer in first things first.
“DJ”
“Why are you hiding, DJ?”
“My daddy told me to never, ever, let anybody stick anything in my arm. If I get sick, there’s a herb that’ll cure me.” I envied the certainty peppered with pride in his voice. “Why are you guys hiding?”
“We aren’t hiding,” Maya squinted. “We’re revolting!”
That night the school called both of our homes. DJ’s mother confirmed, that yes, D.J. was out of school that day. Maya and I were spanked; our parents were instructed to schedule flu shots for each of us immediately.
“I don’t know where that school thinks I’m supposed to get the money for that flu shot from, but you better pray to Mighty Jesus that you heifer’s don’t get sick…” my mother ranted while she prepared dinner. We never ended up getting sick, but we got into a shit-load of trouble.
We were warriors; extremely angry at something we couldn’t quite put our finger on. So we became wary of our peers, suspicious of our elders, and skeptical about our future.
“If that bitch even looks at me sideways I’m going upside her head.” Maya was standing with most of her weight on her left leg, staring into the back of some girl’s head like she was trying to burn a hole through it.
“Why don’t you just turn around, dude? If you weren’t looking at her, you wouldn’t know if she looked at you sideways or anyways.” Maya turned and looked at DJ incredulously.
“That bitch don’t decide what direction I look in! And if you got a problem with me talking about your little girlfriend, you better tell her to keep her eyes in her head!”
By high school, everyone thought Maya was our leader because she was beautiful. Her long, thick, hair was soft and springy, and she had the fortuitous combination of dark skin and tight eyes that made college boys call her China Doll. As time went on, and our senses matured, we knew that nothing Maya did was on accident. She was a born-leader who, at a very young age, could feign surprise and manufacture spontaneity.
“You do understand what I’m asking you to do, don’t you Moon?” I nodded.
“And you’re not going to have any problems executing, are you?” I shook my head.
“And Sun, what about you?” DJ saluted and stared ahead. The Commander knew that we could execute. He also knew that this assignment could build or destroy our existence. He was prepared either way. The other Moon and Sun stood in a room below us preparing to pick up the slack in case our emotions took over. DJ followed The Commander out, locking the door behind him. I went into the bathroom and pressed my hands against the cold marble of the sink—trying to stabilize my instability. Cautiously, I lifted my head to look into the face of my sister’s killer.
“Ten minutes, Maya.”
I imagined her four blocks away, engaged in a similar ritual. She applies her blush as I apply my shoe polish. She moisturizes her perfectly manicured hands and I slip my clean, purposeful mitts into leather gloves. As she slips into her nylons and I lace up my boots, we both pause and look over our shoulders.
“Five minutes, Maya.”
She becomes uneasy…and it’s not the pre-speech jitters that usually propel her into fiery use of vocabulary and dramatic pounds of the podium. She wants to wear the garter with the .22 secured in it, but to what avail? What life would she be protecting? She gave hers up a long time ago.
Maya walks into the restroom and presses her beautiful hands to the cool, hard porcelain—trying to stabilize her instability. Slowly, she lifts her head to look into the face of her killer.
“Show time, Maya.”
DJ and I walk in silence to the event that my sister is headlining. Before we walk the last block he squeezes my shoulder and I remember the last time we three were together…
“Where are you going?!” I asked, but I knew. I knew when they said, “advance” and “new car” and “creative freedom”.
“This is my chance! We can’t change the world from a basement! These people are offering us a chance to have our message heard.” She was good. Even before they groomed her, she could lie to us without flinching. They needed a pop star that would speak to the restless youth…someone they could trust to keep the economy afloat, they said. But when she left in the Mercedes they bought, I realized that “my chance” couldn’t possibly coincide with “our message”.
“She’s not your sister anymore,” DJ said squeezing my shoulder.
“Yes she is.”
Maya had strayed, but she was just as much my responsibility as she was when I was saving her from flu shots. She was my sister, the cultural icon—The New Rebel, leading the generation in the televised revolution of consumerism.
I ascended the steps to Maya’s dressing room.
Maya descended the steps to the stage.
I went into the dark bathroom and placed my gloved hands on the porcelain. Stabilized.
The men are always better in my dreams; that’s why I like to sleep in. I woke up this morning, calm. Having been fully aware of my task for six months, April Fifteenth came as no surprise. April Fifteenth was embedded in me—tattooed in my psyche like MAYA was on the insides of both my wrists: one tattoo for the day we fought, one for April Fifteenth.
What did shock me was the look in her eyes when she came down off of her pedestal. She didn’t see me—walked right by me to her vanity—but she knew. And when she called out to me, “Luna”, she did so in my father’s voice.
The last time I heard my father (or anyone) say my name, there was a man with his knee in my mother’s back. He had split her lip, and she had spit her bloody, nigger spit in his face. He stripped her of her ability to sit upright. My father cursed him in Patwa before firing a round into his face, and before his own body hit the ground, he called to me.
“Luna”. I went to him. His body was limp, save the fist clenched around his weapon, and his stony face, disapproving, directed me to my sister. Twenty years old and crying hysterically, she wept in the arms of one of the men…one of the men who had fired against our father…one of the men who had smashed our mother’s FACE into the pavement! I stood to take action—both furious and discreet action—but I was trapped. I looked down and the face had sympathized. The weapon was released and the strongest man I knew held fast to my ankle pleading with me to be merciful before he gasped his last.
I snatched her, we ran. I drove. Her face was dry: what was the point in crying with someone who was going through the same thing? Where was the visual individuality in that? No, her tears would be saved for when they would be most useful.
“What happened?” He approached us as soon as we pulled up.
“I don’t know. They came for my father…”
“Oh, DJ!” Maya wailed, wet-faced, and flung herself on Sun. He watched me, held her, and listened to her stammer through the summary of our parents’ demise.
“….then…then daddy came out with a gun…and…mom was laying on the ground…” I flinched. My mother was not laying, as my sister so sinisterly put it. My mother was fighting and bawling for Maya to get away from the baldheads.
“…and THEY SHOOOOOOOT HIIIIIIIIM!!!” At this, I walked into DJ’s house. And for the first time, I heard my new name.
“Moon”. The Commander stood behind me with a hand on each of my shoulders, and said that he knew what they had done to our parents. He said that I was his daughter now; he said that my name was Moon. And he gave me a garter with a .22 in it. My sister, he said, was both stubborn and weak-willed—a dangerous combination. He told me that if I could not control her, I would have to neutralize her.
Before I spoke, I watched Maya with her hands behind her back trying to feel around for the garter—the garter wrapped around the MAYA, wrapped around my wrist.
It registered.
“LUNA!”
I moved in: furiously, discreetly. And I whispered:
“My name is Moon.”
Posted on April 20, 2011
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