Girl Divided, Page 2

  It became them or us and you had to choose a side. There was nothing in between. People in mixed marriages were attacked in their homes and separated, husbands or wives killed in front of their loved ones. Those that didn't split up were brutally killed in the streets, some even hung from the lampposts as a warning to others. And you couldn't hide. Your neighbor became your enemy.

  It didn't take many years for the situation to accelerate into a state where it could be called a civil war. And that was exactly what they would later call it, the Second Civil War.

  From the ashes of the old government rose a new leader who had new plans for the country. This leader, with a background as a general in the Air Force, and part of what they called the alt-right movement, was the one who had the vision of a different country, and a way to end the fighting, a way to stop the savagery.

  It happened overnight. The first city to build a wall around itself was Boston. One morning, the citizens woke up to the military in the streets, setting up barbed wire and checkpoints all around the town. The point was to keep an eye on who came in and keep the fighting outside of town, was the explanation. And it worked. In the coming months, a calmness fell upon the city, as anyone fighting was simply thrown out and not let back in. The idea later spread to other cities. New York City was the next to follow, then Washington, D.C., LA, San Francisco, Miami, Savannah, and soon most of the bigger cities in the U.S. became protected areas where the citizens were safe from the fighting. Brick walls were later built where the barbed wire had been.

  But that wasn't enough for self-acclaimed white president Patricia Neuman, who would later be called nothing but Mother, as she saw herself as the mother of a new and greater nation. Next, she started to throw out anyone of color from the cities she controlled. The military came at night and fetched them from their homes, deporting them to ghettos outside the towns. And not only blacks. Anyone of color was soon labeled as black too. That's what they called them. There was no African American anymore, no Asian, no Native American, and no more Hispanic or Middle Eastern people. If you weren’t white, you were black. It was as simple as that.

  Tired of the politically correct labels, the president—or Mother—simply put them all in one category. She started to talk about having dirt in your genes as opposed to being white and clean.

  They might have thought it was wrong. Lots of them did. But none of the whites disputed this new approach once they found out what was really going on. After all, it was them who had killed the former president. They had started it all. They had been destroying this great nation for too long, as the new president told them. Every problem in this country was somehow related to people of color, to blacks.

  "We are already divided. It's time we split up. To save this great nation of ours," she said, standing in the ruins of the White House, where she and her forces had set up headquarters.

  At thirteen years old, Jetta watched the—later to be famous—speech on TV in her grandmother's small apartment in the French Quarter of New Orleans. When she turned off the TV, she heard the sound of heavy boots on the stairwell outside. Sounding like the drums from hell. Doors in the building were knocked in, people were screaming, shots were fired.

  Jetta looked up at her grandmother, who stared at the front door, eyes wide, a breath stuck in her throat, her nails digging deep into the armrest of her old recliner.

  "Nanna?"

  Chapter 5

  They didn't give them time to pack their things. Still, Jetta managed to grab her old teddy bear and a ring her grandmother had given her that she said belonged to her mother before the soldiers grabbed her by the arm and carried her out of the apartment that had, up until now, been the home of her childhood. The soldiers carried her down the stairs, while she heard her grandmother crying and screaming behind her.

  "Nanna!" Jetta cried, but she couldn't see her.

  Jetta was placed on the ground outside, where an officer approached her and looked at her face, placing a hand underneath her chin to lift her face to better look at it.

  "What do we do about this one, sir?" the soldier who had carried her, said.

  The officer scrutinized Jetta's face, while Jetta watched her grandmother be put on a bus, a soldier pushing her forcefully.

  "What are you, child?" the officer asked.

  Jetta looked at him. She didn't answer because she didn't understand the question.

  "Answer me, child. What are you?"

  She shook her head, and then looked at the entrance to the bus, where she could no longer see her grandmother. Panic started to erupt, and Jetta's small body was shaking.

  The officer grabbed her face and forced her to look at him. "What are you, child? Black or white?"

  "I…I don't know."

  The officer shook his head. "I’ve never seen one like this," he said to the soldier.

  "Me either, sir."

  "One side is pure as snow, yet the other is dirty."

  "Clearly dirty, sir."

  "Yeah. She's got dirt in her blood. You know the instructions, soldier. Anyone with any hint of dirt in their blood goes."

  "Yes, sir."

  The soldier saluted the officer, then grabbed Jetta by the arm and pulled her forcefully. He lifted her into the air and she began to cry. He walked to the bus and put her on the steps.

  "This one goes too," he said addressed to the driver.

  Jetta ran up the stairs, her eyes searching for her grandmother in the crowd, but she couldn't see her anywhere. People were standing so close, it was hard to breathe, and as more people were stuffed inside the bus, Jetta could no longer move. She was pinned between a seat and someone's belly, fighting to even breathe.

  "Nanna?" she cried, but no one could hear her.

  So many were screaming, whimpering, and crying out names of their loved ones, her voice was drowned out. The pushing and shoving got worse and as the bus took off, some guy in big black shoes trampled on Jetta.

  Chapter 6

  The ghetto was like a small city itself. Once Jetta managed to get herself off the bus, she saw barbed wire, tons of soldiers, and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of black people. All the faces were strained and the eyes filled with the terror of uncertainty.

  They were ordered to place all their belongings in a pile, including any electronics and cellphones since they wouldn't be able to use any of them in the ghetto. They would get it all back later, the soldiers said. But no one understood how they would ever be able to tell the belongings apart and get them to the right people when they were all put in the same pile. Those that complained, or even asked about it, were beaten with batons or tased.

  They told them to get into lines and to walk forward. Jetta called her grandmother's name but received no answer. She pulled the shirt of someone walking next to her, but he pushed her away, mumbling something about her being a Halfling, and belonging to them, not belonging here.

  Jetta didn't understand.

  "Excuse me? Have you seen my grandmother?" she asked a lady walking behind her.

  "Don't talk to me, you disgusting creature," the woman replied, then pulled her child away from her.

  That was when Jetta realized that her grandmother had been protecting her. She had kept her at home and home-schooled her and told her to never go out alone, only so Jetta didn't have to face people and how they felt about her. She was used to staring eyes but had never realized people would find her appalling.

  She looked at her own reflection in a car parked on the side of the road. Jetta stopped to glance at it, and for the first time, she found herself hating what she saw. She touched her face on both sides and realized she liked neither of the sides anymore. They were both ugly. Then she pulled the hoodie of her shirt to cover her face, so no one would see it.

  A soldier came running to her, hit her in the face with his rifle, then yelled at her to keep moving.

  "Don't stop; keep moving," he yelled first at her, then at everyone else. "You need to keep the line moving."

&
nbsp; Jetta wiped the blood off her nose, pulled the hoodie further up, to make sure it covered her face completely, then hurried back into the line, remembering her neighbor, John, who had been on the police force before this all had started. He had told her how he had been stripped of his badge one day, just out of the blue. One day, when arriving at work, he'd been called into the chief's office and told to hand over his badge and gun, told that he was no longer a part of the force.

  "No explanation. No reason. No nothin'. Just like that, they took away everything from me," he told Jetta's grandmother, sitting in the kitchen of their apartment.

  He told her there used to be blacks in both the police force and the Army, but not anymore. Blacks were not even allowed to be firefighters anymore. They were all replaced with smart robots, he said. But the robots were created to all look like white people.

  "They're getting rid of us," he said, looking at Jetta as he spoke. "I'm telling ya. It's comin'."

  Jetta's grandmother had called it nonsense, but Jetta had sensed something in her voice that made her know she wasn't so convinced. Just a few days earlier, she had been discussing it with another of their neighbors, Miss Melissa, who used to be a schoolteacher but wasn't allowed to teach white kids anymore, according to the new regulations.

  "There are rumors," Melissa had said. "Of trains. Black freight trains that they use to transport people of color off to secret camps, moving across the country, the white man's sins covered by the blackness of the night."

  Again, Jetta's grandmother had answered with a scoff. "Nothing but rumors and fairytales, Melissa. Nothing but fairy tales. You believe in Little Red Riding Hood too?"

  And then they had laughed. But it wasn't a happy laughter.

  Chapter 7

  She was put inside an apartment with six other people she didn't know. There was only one bedroom and only one bed for all of them to share. Jetta slept on the floor, along with a few others. Weeks went by, and those weeks turned into months. She didn't know any of the others and kept to herself, keeping her face covered by the hoodie. Mostly, she sat in the corner, her teddy bear in hand, looking out the small window, down into the courtyard where people walked around like caged animals.

  The buildings were all new, made especially for them, they were told. Yet there was no clean running water and no air-conditioning, which made the place very warm, especially with the summer approaching. Food was distributed once a day when a big truck brought it inside the fence, and it was thrown out to the crowd. There were days when Jetta didn't get anything at all to eat because she was too short to catch it, or someone pulled it from her hands if she did.

  Four of the people she lived with were all part of the same family. A mom and dad and two teenagers. They stuck together, keeping the rest out, hoarding the one bed. The others were an elderly woman, who had been badly beaten on her way to the ghetto, and a young boy, who—like Jetta—sat in a corner and stared into thin air most of the time. Every now and then, Jetta saw a tear escape his eye and roll across his cheek.

  One day, she went to his corner and sat down next to him.

  "Hi, I'm Jetta," she said. "What's your name?"

  The boy's big eyes landed on her as he searched for her eyes inside the hoodie. Jetta smiled, then pulled it back a little. When the boy saw her face, he started to scream. He held both his hands to his face and cried out so loudly everyone in the small one-bedroom apartment stopped to look at them.

  "Monster! Monster!"

  The two adults approached Jetta and pulled the hoodie all the way off. The mother gasped and drew back, the dad right behind her.

  "Dear Lord," he said, scrutinizing her. "What are you?"

  "She's a freak," the mother said.

  "You're half white," the dad said. "You're one of them, aren't you? Were you sent here to be a spy? Were you? To tell on us, give them a reason to kill us, huh? I told you this would happen. Over and over again, I said it, didn't I? All they're waiting for is for us to make one mistake, one wrong move, and then, they'll strike. Kill us all. Is that why you're here, huh? Of course, they would use a child. Nothing but pure evil."

  The dad leaned over Jetta and slapped her face. The slap stung across her cheek and she whimpered. He then spat on her and kicked her. The mother soon followed, throwing in a kick herself, and soon the two teenagers were doing it too. They slapped Jetta and kicked her in the stomach. Jetta whimpered and curled up into a ball, letting them beat her, thinking she deserved it, believing she deserved it all. It was, after all, her fault, wasn't it? She had heard it all her life. It was her fault her parents died in that fire, along with all the others. She had brought it upon them and on the rest of the people. It was all because of her. Because she was a curse sent to Earth from the evil spirits. To torture them, to doom them all. She knew it was so, and so she let them beat her, thinking maybe they could beat all this evilness out of her, so she—and the world—could be set free.

  Chapter 8

  The beating was bad, but still, Jetta woke up the next morning with no signs of being hurt, except for a few bruises on her legs that disappeared after a few hours. As the sun rose and shone into the small warm apartment, rapidly heating up the corner where she lay curled up, Jetta realized the bruises were all gone. Not even were her eyes swollen or her cheeks red.

  The mother was the first to notice as she got out of bed.

  "What the…? Sam? Sam, come look at this!"

  The dad did, and he too had to look again a few times before believing his own eyes.

  "How is that even…possible?"

  They both backed up—their eyes torn in fear—as the dad repeated his question from the night before.

  "What are you?"

  Jetta looked terrified, yet fascinated at her arms and legs, distinctively remembering hearing her arm break as the teenage son stepped on it the night before. She lifted it into the air and looked at it, turning it in the sparse sunlight. Not a scratch.

  "This isn't natural," the mother said, her voice shaking. "The way she looked last night…I thought she would be dead by now, but…this?"

  The older teenage children approached Jetta, staring at her with big glaring eyes. The mother grabbed them both and pulled them away.

  "Don't go too close to it." Then she turned to her husband and, even though she spoke with a low voice, Jetta still heard it perfectly.

  "What do we do about her?"

  "I don't know," Sam replied.

  "We can't have her here. I can't stand the thought of her here...with us. I won't be able to sleep. I can't stand it, Sam. I just can't."

  "I know. I know."

  They glanced at Jetta once again, then looked away.

  "Can we kill her?" the woman asked, lowering her voice to almost a whisper.

  "One less mouth to feed," Sam said. "I say no one will miss her. There are way too many people in this place anyway. And there is barely enough food for everyone as it is. People are getting desperate around here. Hunger does that to people. No one would notice."

  "I heard they have some sickness in the building next door. Three people died in there yesterday," she said.

  "Maybe we could take her over there and let nature take care of her," Sam said. "Take the old lady with her. She doesn’t have long either. That just leaves us with the boy. He doesn’t eat much, though."

  The woman sighed. She looked at her husband, and then put a hand to cover her mouth like she had just realized something.

  "Oh, no, Sam."

  Sam nodded and rubbed his forehead. "I can't believe I just said those things. What has become of us?"

  "It's the hunger," the woman said. "And this damn place. The walls, I can't stand being locked in like this. Will we ever get out of here?"

  Sam turned around and looked at the corner where Jetta had been sitting. "She's gone," he said. "Guess the problem solved itself."

  Jetta, who had heard the entire conversation, had sneaked out of the apartment, teddy bear in her hand, and was running
down the stairs of the fifteen-story building, doing what she should have done when she first got to this strange place months earlier but had been too afraid.

  Search for her grandmother.

  Chapter 9

  The ghetto was enormous for such a small girl. It was like a city sealed from the outside world by an eleven-foot-tall wall with barbed wire on top, and guards by the only entrance leading outside. Jetta searched the entire building she had been in for the past several months first but found nothing but despair and fear-torn eyes in dark bony faces.

  Jetta walked through apartment after apartment, knocking on doors, asking, pleading for news about her old grandmother.

  "If she's old, she probably died," a tall man said and slammed the door in her face.

  She kept her face hidden the best she could and only peeked out using her one brown eye, hiding the side of her that people here loathed.

  "I'm looking for my grandmother," she said after knocking on the next door. The woman who opened it shook her head. "We have no old people here. Try the courtyard. Many people are sleeping outside because there is not enough room."

  Jetta nodded and walked on, knocking on several other doors on her way, but getting nothing but shaking heads. A few let her go inside and search, and what she found was forever burned into her memory. Everywhere she went, she saw nothing but misery. People were dying in every corner, thin skeleton-looking people, old people, young people, people who were weak or sick. Some reached out for her, asking her for food or water, their skinny arms pulling her clothes.

  "How do you expect your grandmother to be alive?" someone asked her when she ran into the courtyard and started to call her name.

  The guy was tall and muscular, wearing a dirty tank top not covering many of his tattoos and baggy pants. Could have been what her grandmother would have called a gang member once, when they still could walk the streets and would see them on corners. Or a drug dealer. The type she would tell her to stay far away from. He was young, maybe four or five years older than Jetta.