“I have to go. They’re taking her home, and Ube’s requested some supplies I was meant to bring by.”
“Okay, I’ll come with you.” Bitter started looking around for her jacket, but Aloe’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“It’s still Assata only,” he said, his voice gentle.
Bitter pulled her arm away, stung. “You’re not Assata.”
“I know. I’m just doing a drop-off. Besides, the protests haven’t stopped.”
Bitter blinked in shock. “What?”
“Yeah, they cleared out the center, but Assata’s Elders got people pushing in from the sides. You’re safer indoors, Bitter. I’ll be faster on my own. I’ll make it to Ube and back before you know it.”
The panic was fluttering inside her now, its wings coated with thick, angry oil. What if he didn’t make it back to Eucalyptus? “Why haven’t they stopped?” she asked, her voice shaky. “They usually stop.”
Aloe pocketed his phone, his expression grim. “I don’t think anyone’s stopping this time,” he said.
“But the protests can’t go on forever.”
There was something in Aloe’s eyes that Bitter had seen before, in Eddie and in Ube and sometimes when Alex actually got to talking. It was determined and bleak and hopeful all at once.
“We have nothing but time,” Aloe said before pulling her into a hug and kissing her forehead, his lips smooth against her skin. “Stay here. I need you to be safe. Call Blessing.”
“I think she’s still out there with Alex—she would’ve come by my room if she was back.”
Aloe frowned. “I talked to her right before I called you. She’s safe—she’s not at the protest. Don’t worry, they’ll be back soon. Just stay inside Eucalyptus, okay?”
Bitter nodded, and then he was gone and she was standing there, Eddie’s face scorched into her mind, boiling oil puddling in her belly. It rose up slowly inside her as she remembered Eddie laughing, Eddie looking at her paintings, Eddie taking her hand and reminding her that everyone had a role to play. Bitter could feel the old urge itching under her fingernails, but this time it was furious, not lonely. This time it wanted to fight, it wanted to punish the monsters for breaking the peace of her bubble, for hurting her friend, for everything they were doing, thinking they were unstoppable, thinking no one was big enough or powerful enough or rich enough to make them stop. Blessing had been right. Not everything was about money.
Some things were about blood.
An hour later, Bitter’s arm was aching from the force of what she was drawing, but she couldn’t stop. The jagged wooden panel leaning against her wall had a figure sketched out on it in chalk and ash, muddled whites and grays. She and Blessing had found the huge piece of wood outside a few weeks ago, and it had taken the two of them to carry it back to Eucalyptus. They’d brushed all the dirt and debris off before taking it upstairs. Bitter had thought it would be useful if she ever wanted to make a painting that size, but she hadn’t been ready back then. Things were different now, though, and all that furious oil simmering inside her had to go somewhere. It felt like if she didn’t push it out through her hands, it was going to smother her heart, drown her in the despair of living somewhere like Lucille, where people were being hurt so often, in so many directions that you couldn’t keep track of it all, you couldn’t grieve it all, you were always catching up and falling behind, and how was this supposed to be a life? There was a sheet spread out on the floor below the wood, and Bitter wasn’t even sure she had enough materials for what she wanted to make, but she was determined to use every drop of anything she could find. For Eddie, for want of a world without monsters.
Fumio Itabashi’s “Watarase” was playing on an endless loop, maddened streaks of piano trilling through the air, washing away everything outside the walls so that it was only Bitter and the hot oil flooding her heart and the wood and her arm striking across it. To her surprise, the rage didn’t feel heated as it worked its way out of her. If felt cold, certain as ice, dark as deep water. Her desire was clear—she wanted the monsters gone. Assata had been fighting for this for as long as she could remember, their Elders before them, for the same thing, and how long was everyone supposed to wait? James Baldwin had asked this question years and years before; so had Lena Horne; so had thousands of tired people who just wanted to live. How much time was it going to take? Bitter drew more bold lines with the chalk, thick and white across the wood, shadowing a face in gray, filling in the long neck, the wide, wide mouth, a stain of turmeric and charcoal for the eyes. The figure was folded in, flattening itself out over the grain of the wood. The panel was too small for what it was; it needed more space than it had. It was crammed, hemmed in, cramped and trapped and angry about it. Bitter got lost in its form, cloudy and textured.
She stepped back and looked at it, the music racing like a river through her veins, white foam and speckled water. The figure wasn’t even close to enough. Bitter maneuvered the wood panel down to the floor, on top of the sheet, so it spilled like a pool at her feet. That felt better, like it was under her hands now. She reached for a brush and a small tub of white casein paint, falling back into the figure, as the piano swept lightly over deep bass notes, over and over again, and the hours went by. Bitter added wax and eggshells, intermittent fragments of smooth gloss within the figure’s coat. She burned sheets of paper to make more ash, letting the flakes drop onto the wet paint, filling up every inch of the wood, layering the figure’s shape on top of itself, and at some point Bitter realized she was sobbing, her tears splashing on the painting, but she didn’t stop and the piano didn’t stop because the people out there hadn’t stopped so nothing, really, nothing could stop.
When, finally, the figure was almost complete, Bitter fell back against the edge of her bed. Her muscles were sore and exhausted; she had no idea how long she’d been painting. The figure was roiling inside the wood, like an imprisoned cloud with a dark, wide mouth. Bitter stared at it numbly, her face tracked with dried salt from all the crying she’d done. She should have been afraid of what she was about to do, but there was nothing that could scare her inside her bubble. They had shot Eddie, taken her eye. They had killed more people than anyone even knew about. No matter what Bitter could imagine, the monsters had done worse. It didn’t make her happy to paint something that could be more terrible than them—that wasn’t something to be proud of—but she wouldn’t know until the painting was complete, and there was only one thing left to do.
Bitter reached out and grabbed a precision knife from her supplies. In movies, people were always cutting their palms, but that seemed like a terrible idea, because then she wouldn’t be able to use that hand until it healed, and also, that would take forever to close up. Bitter knelt in front of the painting, the knife hovering over her left forearm. She wanted to do it quickly, but that wasn’t how these kinds of things worked. She’d never needed this much blood before—usually a pinprick would do it—but this figure was larger than anything she’d ever made, hungrier than anything she’d ever made, and Bitter wanted to make sure it was also more powerful than her little silent creatures that faded away so fast. She took a deep breath, and as the piano dug into a crescendo, she sliced the skin of her forearm open with a quick stroke. It gaped palely at her for a moment before rushing red with blood, pain yelling up her nerves. Bitter gasped and tears stung her eyes as she watched the blood spill over her skin. She held her arm over the painting and gritted her teeth from the pain as the blood dripped into the ash and chalk and wax, spreading in bright blurred circles. Her heart was racing, pounding like it knew she’d opened her flesh up, like it was trying to make up for the blood she was using. Bitter dropped the knife and cupped her right hand under the cut, letting the blood collect in her palm, crying quietly. It hurt so fucking much, but it didn’t hurt as much as what they’d done to Eddie or as much as what it felt like to be alive at a time like this.