Amen. But wait, I wasn’t done, sorry--God? Can you still hear me? 

Zeinab’s sick again, I saw Ma take her. Even though she doesn’t tell me anything, I know, I always do. First, it’s all the hushed voices -- I have to hold my breath to listen, almost expecting for the grrrr overhead, almost expecting Ma to rush us back into the cellar. Grrrr. The noise used to fill the inside of my ears, rattle my teeth. Hurried footsteps slapping on the concrete, gravel bits breaking like I imagined my teeth would. I hated the dampness underground, crouched in one corner with my jaw clamped tight, Zeinab and Ma huddled at the other end. Jerks, Ma would mutter under her breath, shaking her head, pulling Zeinab in closer, rocking back and forth, muttering, muttering, muttering. Kind of like now, after hospital visits when she mumbles so much walking in, with Zeinab leaning against her thigh.

Let me come with you Ma, I did ask her today--twice.

Monday, school begins again -- did you know the streets are coming alive too? Nana would’ve loved that; Ma says from time to time. Of course, I reply sometimes but always quietly, because I know Nana, I know he would’ve still muttered hot things, blowing them out as he walked me to the gate and left me there without turning to take another look -- because I’m not Zeinab, she was a wee baby and I’m--I’m not. Please don’t punish me, God.

Quaking---quake--sorry, sometimes I still feel the ground is moving. Rumbling under our feet again. Silly, I know -- Ma says so too and then asks me to shut up and pull the covers all the way up so I wouldn’t see anything but a very deep black. 

Tell me God, will you punish me like Ma says you will because I still haven’t filled the water bucket today but the sky’s almost purple now and there will be orange bursts, pop-pop-pop. Unless the bad men want to come for us again. Valorous, this woman on the bus said one afternoon about the men in green, her chin up in the air, and Ma moved us away to the other end, her face turned in an ugly scowl-- like the one she gave me today when she saw I didn’t do the buckets and then she said I’m a man now, adding then: God will punish you.

Why don’t you punish the other men--they look ugly in their green and brown and their helmets that look like bowls overturned, like their mothers boxed their ears for being too bad. 

X in between some numbers, so small it escapes notice from a distance but up close, it’s all I could see  -- all I kept my eyes glued on --- as the black barrel drew nearer to my forehead-- the small dark hole gaping at me, bulging whites right behind it --whites streaked with red, lodged in the sooty face of the man in green, the black getting closer and closer and closer and closer. You see why I don’t pull the covers all the way up? Zillion times Ma’s told me but I can’t, God -- I don’t want to see black no more, or green, or brown, or orange pops in a sooty sky, or the rumbling, quaking, or Zeinab all red, fleshy, gooey--like--like she’s-----she’s not sick again, is she?