We were only three blocks from the northern entrance when the van pulled alongside us, and three men in black got out. “Dr. Griffith,” one of them said to Grandfather, and Grandfather, who had stopped to watch as the van approached, standing next to me with his hand on my shoulder, now took my hand and squeezed it, and turned me to face him.
“I have to go with these men, little cat,” he said, calmly.
I didn’t understand. I felt like I was going to collapse. “No,” I said. “No, Grandfather.”
He patted my hand. “Don’t worry, little cat,” he said. “I’m going to be fine. I promise you.”
“Get in,” said another of the men, but Grandfather ignored him. “Go home,” he whispered to me. “You’re only three blocks away. Go home, and tell your husband I was taken, and don’t worry, all right? I’ll be back with you soon.”
“No,” I said, and Grandfather winked at me and climbed into the back of the van. “No, Grandfather,” I said. “No, no.”
Grandfather looked out at me and smiled and began to say something, but then the man who had told him to get in slammed the doors shut, and then all three men got into the front seat and the van drove away.
By this point, I was shouting, and although some people stopped to look at me, most did not. Too late, I began to run after the van, which was driving south, but then it turned west, and it was so hot, and I was so slow, that I tripped and fell, and for a while I remained on the sidewalk, rocking myself.
Finally, I stood. I walked into our building and up to our apartment. My husband was there, and when he saw me, he opened his mouth, but before he could speak, I told him what had happened, and he went immediately to the closet and took out the box with our papers, and removed some. Then he went to the drawer beneath my bed and took out some of our gold coins. He put them all in a bag, and then he scooped some water into a mug for me. “I have to go see if I can help your grandfather,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, all right?” I nodded.
I waited all night for my husband to return, sitting on the couch in my cooling suit, the blood from the scrapes on my forehead drying in place and making my skin itch. Finally, very late, just before the curfew began, he returned, and when I asked, “Where is Grandfather?,” he looked down.
“I’m sorry, Cobra,” he said. “They wouldn’t let him out. I’m going to keep trying.”
I began moaning then, moaning and rocking, and my husband finally got my pillow from my bed so I could moan into it, and sat on the floor by my side. “I’m going to keep trying, Cobra,” he repeated. “I’m going to keep trying.” Which he did, but then, on September 15, I was notified that Grandfather had lost his trial and was to be executed, and five days later, he was killed.
Today was the six-year anniversary of the day Grandfather was taken, which my husband and I always commemorated with a bottle of grape-flavored juice we bought at the store. My husband would pour us each a glass, and we would both say Grandfather’s name aloud, and then we would drink.
I always spent the day alone. Every August 13 for the past five years, my husband would ask, “Do you want to be alone tomorrow?” and I would say “Yes,” though in the last year or so, I began to wonder whether that was actually true, or whether I was saying yes only because it was easier for us both. If my husband instead had asked, “Do you want company tomorrow?,” would I not also have said “Yes”？ But there was no way I would ever know this for sure, because last night, he had asked as usual if I wanted to be alone, and as usual, I said I did.
I always slept as late as I could on that day, because that meant there was less of it to use up. When I finally rose, around 11:00, my husband was gone, his bed as neatly made as ever, a bowl of porridge left for me in the oven, a second bowl inverted over it so the surface wouldn’t dry out. Everything was the same.
As I was walking toward our bathroom after I had washed out my bowl, however, I noticed there was a piece of paper on the ground near our front door. For a few moments I stared at it, because I was for some reason afraid to pick it up. I wished my husband were here to help me. Then I realized that perhaps it was a note to my husband from the person he loved, and this made me even more afraid—it was as if, by touching it, I would be proving that this other person existed, that he had somehow gotten into our building, and climbed the stairs, and left a note. And then I was angry, because although I knew my husband didn’t love me, how could he care for me so little that he wouldn’t tell this person that this was the worst day of my life, that every year on this date all I thought about was what I had once had, and how it had been taken from me? It was that anger, finally, that made me stoop and snatch the note from the ground.
But then my anger disappeared, because the note wasn’t for my husband. It was for me.
Charlie—meet me at our usual storyteller today.
It wasn’t signed, but it could only be from David. Now I was confused, and I began to walk in a circle, deliberating aloud about what I should do next. I was too embarrassed to see him: I had misinterpreted his feelings for me, and I had behaved stupidly. When I thought of him, I remembered the look on his face before I had pulled away from him, and how it had been not mean, but worse—it had been kind, even sad, and that was more shameful than if he had pushed at me, or made fun of me, or laughed at me.
But I also missed him. I wanted to see him. I wanted to feel as I had when I was with him, the way only Grandfather had ever made me feel, as if I were special, as if I were a person of interest.
I paced for a long time. Once again, I wished there were something to clean in the apartment, something to organize, something to do. But there wasn’t. The hours passed slowly, so slowly that I almost went to the center for a distraction, but I didn’t want to put on my cooling suit, and I didn’t want to leave the apartment, either—I don’t know why.
Finally, it was 15:30, and although it would take me just five minutes, less, to reach the storyteller’s tarp, I left anyway. It was only on the walk over that it occurred to me to wonder how David had known where I lived, and how he had gotten into our building, which you needed two keys to access, as well as a fingerprint scan, and suddenly I stopped, and almost turned around—what if my husband was right, and David was an informant? But then I reminded myself, again, that I knew nothing, and was nobody, and I had nothing to hide and nothing to say, and anyway, there were other explanations: He could have seen me go home one day. He could have handed the note to one of the neighbors who was entering the building, and asked them to slide it beneath my door. It would have been unusual to do so, but David was unusual. Yet this reasoning led to another unpleasant thought: Why did he want to see me after all this time? And if he did know where I lived, why had he not tried to communicate with me earlier?
I was so consumed by my thoughts that it wasn’t until I became aware of someone speaking to me that I realized I had been standing at the edge of the storyteller’s tarp, not moving. “Are you coming in, miss?” asked the storyteller’s assistant, and I nodded, and spread my piece of cloth on the ground, near the back.