Lillian Giles

Lillian Giles

Droughts

Ella started down the hill in a running leap. The concrete jolted through her hand-me-down sneakers, half a size too big. They’d cost her a beautifully ripened cantaloupe, plus three bunches of collards which Ma said were the color that grass used to be. Ella’s shins ached and she felt entangled in herself. What she most wanted was to stop and gulp in the architecture, the City’s streets like planted rows of promise. To capture an image of that view.

Buildings of red brick and soaring glass pointed toward the blinking water of the Bay. So many people had once been willing to stack themselves on top of one another for a piece of this place. Before her time, she’d been told, people fled to the City because of their differences. They were ridiculed elsewhere but revered here. The buildings seemed to retain that knowledge, even if the patrollers chasing her did not. The patrollers’ largest concern was to remove all people of color from within the City’s limits before nightfall.

The silent glow of dusk approached as Ella’s momentum threatened to topple her forward. Picking up speed, she spread her fingers wide as if bracing against an invisible wall. Her backpack banged against her and her shoes hushed the pavement with each light scrape. Bruises from a rolling fall could destroy any chance of returning to the City. Ma stiffened with worry every time she suspected Ella was in the City and harped on her about the repeated risk. Ella hoped she would eventually come around, since Ma had been an image gatherer herself. Ma insisted that an integral part of their Blackness was connected to their ability to remember precisely. Ella held her to that belief. Pictures didn’t lie. But the lightest punishment was capture. Ella was sure that today she’d been spotted by cloaked air surveillance. They were only holding their fire because she was weaving through crowds of City dwellers. Ella heard the patrollers’ ragged breaths—the gates of the City were almost closed.

Last time, she’d barely made it out. She’d swum fiercely to catch the already sailing water transport and been buoyed by the Bay. The patrollers had shot at her every stroke. Shockingly cold, her body had yearned for the weightlessness she remembered complete submergence offering as a child. This was not it. The waves seemed heavy and confused by the relentless shots of the patroller’s bullets. She’d been grazed on the top of her ear and was immediately sucked under. It had taken endless blinks, frantic strokes before orientation sank in, until she knew for sure she was swimming away in the right direction. Eventually she surrendered under the water’s weight because escaped bubbles surely meant death, but the Bay released her after it kept her down long enough for the patrollers to think they had won. She thought it luck that brought the water transport close enough to pull her out. Someone’s hand had covered her ear insistent on stopping the bleeding. Ella recalled the passenger looking for something in her bag and then the stranger’s surprising ability to bring sudden sharp heat back to Ella’s ear, followed by a gentle soothing. She’d heard healers still existed but had never met one. The woman had rubbed Ella’s back while she coughed and spit out ocean through it all, until she finally turned so that she could hear the woman. The woman mumbling something about breath and burning. She’d stopped talking but continued to hold Ella through the unmistakable tremble of adrenaline drain.

Ella came to a sole-scuffing pause for half a second where California Street met Powell, then took off down one of the steepest hills toward the old Embarcadero. The waterfront. Remember again what Ma said. The water holds our dead. Its loyalty is ours if you choose to remember. Ella now knew, weightlessness didn’t always mean winning. Breathe. A glistening gold and red cable car slid past, but the conductor would send volts of electricity through the door rails if someone like her climbed on. Push. This route was treacherous on the body. Knowing the City streets better than most had to matter. She couldn’t risk a patroller searching her pack—discovering the mango would bring severe consequences. She couldn’t even think about what would happen if they found the imager. But glancing down Lombard Street toward the Marina at sunset was enough to make her want to return day after day. The way the distant northern mountains let the sun slide gently down in hues of purple she had never seen before.

Too close, too many. Just make it off this hill. The sound of their weapons clicking against belts and boots. She ran through a coalescing backdrop of the City, an unimaginable deepening blue.

Ma said they were lucky to have any fresh water left at all, and she went on often enough to remind Ella that it had been the work of the Ohlone, Ramaytush, Chochenyo and other Indigenous peoples to discover the purest sources in the mountains. She made sure Ella knew they weren’t the first to be kicked off this land, simply the latest. Ella’s wind tears fell as she caught whiffs of fried dough, warm curry, and all-day roasted pork from what used to be Chinatown. Meat so tender, it almost disintegrated in your hands. But a consumer permit was required to purchase food in the City, and those were only for City dwellers. The residents of old Chinatown had fought the walls as fiercely as everyone in the East had, but they too lost their homes.

Her limbs were on fire, but she could see the water transport, docked alongside what was left of the Bay Bridge. Demolition had begun and access was forbidden. Not like anyone used road cars anymore. City dwellers had used hydrocars, back when water was flaunted as affluence, instead of survival. The practice only stopped once they came close to knowing what true thirst felt like. Ella was confident that Indigenous people had something to do with that lesson. Her hands were cramping, sweaty on the straps of her pack, she hoped her imager survived another chase. The walkways to the water transport would still be moving if she was fortunate. Sometimes they were cut off just for spite, but if not, she could lose the patrollers there. She’d be swallowed by a sea of other Black bodies, assured by the fact that no one in the City had the skill to distinguish between faces like theirs any longer. Patrollers wouldn’t dare cross over. They rarely left the City unless they were on missions and those weren’t all that common anymore. They wouldn’t chance ending up on the wrong side of the City’s walls once they went up. They said it was for the preservation of prosperity and protection for all but Ella knew better. At sixteen, she couldn’t remember ever feeling like she needed protecting, except when she was in the City.

Last stretch. The walkway was moving, the gates weren’t up yet. Seconds away. She choked breaths in as her heart pounded. She wanted to scream but didn’t have to. Folks heard her sprinting, turned to look and waved her onward. An old man in a tattered gray coat gently pushed people back while eyeing Ella, watching the patrollers chasing her. Suddenly, she heard the patrollers stop. It looked as if the old man were steering people. His broad hands made an opening, a current in their sea. If she dove, fell, or crashed into them, they would catch her. She leapt those last few feet and her shoes smacked the deck. They gathered around her at once, quickly filling in the space that had been made for her. Skilled glances glared at the patrollers and scanned to see that there were no others headed for the last transport out. Ella remained in the crouched position, fists knuckled at her feet, until she heard the clank of the railing door close. She stood, wiping sweat that spilled from under her chin with her cuff. Her sweatshirt was thin, navy paled to midday sky from too many hand washes, and now dirty again. It smelled like the watery breeze around her, only warmer. Taking a deep inhale into her sleeve she caught the eye of the old man’s stare and was embarrassed at her smelling pleasure. She held his gaze, finishing the grin that he started. His faded slowly into a relaxed smile and he tipped his cap to her before turning to look out across the water.

The crossings were breathtaking at night. The Bay looked like its own private storm, battling waves that folded in on themselves just for them. Ella breathed in the saltwater-tinged gusts and waited for her body to catch the familiar rhythm. Her pulse continued to beat in her ears. She looked up at the sky half-expectantly. Ma said that folks of the past lived in such a way that the days shortened, so now the sunlight only lasted a few hours. Ella didn’t mind. She liked the dark. The waves rose and fell like a full belly laughing. The ocean made her think of only good things, like chocolate and fresh fruit and rain. The rain was another thing that left them. As a child she’d danced under a sky turned downwards. Ma said folks in the past acted in such a way that the rain was offended, refused to reach out to the earth anymore. No more washing of the world, no more cleansing. Ella thought they were destined to dry out, bake hot. She figured if things kept on like they were, folks might do more things that couldn’t be undone. Hungry people only stayed hungry for so long.

Ella climbed the stairs to her home, once part of old Oakland’s Victorian Row. At some point the house had been yellow but the paint peeled back and it stood like an old forgotten onion. No one called it Oakland any longer, just the East. The East was made up of towns that blurred together against the relentless lines of the City—Ma wouldn’t even say the City’s former name. Once the walls went up, years ago, the people who were forced outside refused barriers, no borders on their side of the bridge. It wasn’t unheard of for people to walk fifteen, twenty miles in a day to get food, barter, or to sell. Rations rarely covered food for the entire week. Rations were paid with for the good of the people work but for the good of the people work wasn’t all that reliable. Ma made it a little better by growing an array of vegetables but that food also went for trade. Trade for electricity rations, for tools, or for old clothes.

Ella and her brother Titus made a lengthy journey nine months ago to trade for her imager. The man who’d sold it to her, Buwan, was a shade of brown that she’d learned made City dwellers uncomfortable because it blurred too many lines. As soon as Buwan had opened his mouth, Ella could hear the unshed tears on every word. He had a heart that had been nicked one too many times. She’d been wondering where he kept those tears when he interrupted her thoughts with, “It works well enough, plenty of features I ain’t bothered with tryin to figure out.” His skin and gestures seemed as contained as his voice, Ella remembered thinking, as her fingers brushed his smooth wrist in the exchange. “What you aiming to capture with it?” he’d asked. He held her in his eyes as if they shared kin.

“Everything, I think.” Not surprised that she spoke so openly but she was a little startled that she sounded less like her full self. A bit of his sadness falling onto her. She shouldn’t have been. It was like that in the East, a kind of melding she’d grown to understand was key to their survival.

Since then, she carried the imager everywhere. She’d done work in the old shipyards to earn enough rations to offer for it, making a deal with a regular employee and giving him most of the earnings. It had taken six months to save enough and another two to find Buwan. Since then, she’d been capturing images in the City far more than was safe. In front of her home, she swung her backpack around. Her imager was still there, undamaged, along with the mango she’d snatched for Titus. Her little brother was quiet, hesitant, and would never ask, but she owed him for walking all that way with her without complaint, to trade for the imager. They’d walked twenty-three miles roundtrip that day, the sun daring them to tire. She opened the door to the wafting smell of fried eggplant. If Ma was cooking eggplant, then that was all they would be eating. She sighed in resignation, dropping her backpack in the doorway while stepping out of her shoes and kicking them out of the way.

“You home? You been thieving?” was Ma’s hello.

“No ma’am,” she lied. She needed to think of a place to hide the mango.

Titus would have to eat it soon and out of sight. She’d been sure to pick a ripe one so they wouldn’t have to hide it for too long. She was lucky it wasn’t too bruised up from the chase. They couldn’t eat it in front of the neighborhood kids. She didn’t want others thinking she’d steal for them too, not that she wouldn’t, she just didn’t want to have to.

“What were you doing in the City then, without a work pass or a friend pass or a consumer-for-dweller pass or—?”

Neither of them had held any kind of city pass for at least five years.

“Ma—” Ella cut in but it didn’t slow.

“Uh-uh, don’t Ma me. I don’t know why you insist on going where we ain’t welcome.” Ma was standing there with her brow furrowed like she was trying to decide which parts to yell at Ella about now and which parts to save for later. “You heard what they did to the Johnson’s boy, didn’t you? For stealing an apple. I try not to mind any of what you taking. We had a right to it once too, but Ella, they sliced his finger clean o—”

“I heard,” Ella said before Ma could finish.

“I know they done opened up that island again. They won’t say nothing but that prison is up and running. What would they tell us for? You mark my word, they puttin folks in there that they won’t let back out again.” They both knew that prisons having been outlawed in the East was irrelevant. The islands remained the City’s jurisdiction. Ma turned to go back into the kitchen but kept talking. “You’re mine. I don’t want you to one day be up and gone. You got a brother to tend to.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ma wasn’t finished but her tone was softening and Ella knew that meant Ma’s frustration wasn’t really about her. “All the daylight done come and gone without you being here. I needed your help in the garden.”

Ella was leaning against the far counter staring at her socked feet. The last accusation from her mother was issued as rhetorical but carried the expectation of eye contact. “Yes, Ma . . . sorry.” She looked up to meet her mother’s bright eyes, eyes that were a reflection of her own. She knew the anger was gone, knew that Ma too thought the City gorgeous. Ma’s natural features were all sharp edges, a refusal to give way to roundness. “I wanted to climb the old Potrero Hill again, see where the houses crowd in on each other and shine . . . like M&M candies.” Ella checked her mother’s face for any response. The candies were Ma’s favorite treat from the past, and she had shown Ella images of them. “And to look at the red bridge cause they’re threatening to tear it down.”

“What you know about M&M candies? And how many times you think you need to go see that bridge? It ain’t worth it Ella.” Ma leaned over the stove. The food, meant for three, could easily be a serving for one. Standing, Ella’s mother was all length, towering over her and her brother. Ella walked over and let her head rest just above her mother’s elbow. She nudged her nose into the side of Ma’s bicep while loosely holding onto the crook of Ma’s arm. Ma slid the sliced vegetable back and forth against a sizzling pan.

“Only what you showed us. The wrapper covered in images of bright round chocolates; you remember?” Her voice was muffled through her mother’s sleeve.

Her mother’s response was pushed through a smile. “Mmm hmm. I don’t want you messing around near that bridge. They’ll be taking it down soon enough, not just walling it off. Need to cut off as much of our access as they can, like they ain’t cut off enough.” Ma mumbled the last part.

It was exactly why Ella wanted to be near the bridge, she needed to capture it just so, before yet another demolition began.

Ma finally gave way to the affection, leaning back into Ella, before ushering her off with a quick kiss on the forehead. “Go wash and get your brother.”

Titus turned from his notebook when she walked into their small shared room. Their collection of tidbits lay on the floor between the twin mattresses: a green jacket too small for either of them, some kind of helmet that remained glossy on only one side sporting a leftover image of a big cat, two red books that belonged to a larger series, and a small wooden doll with moving limbs.

Titus wrote poems for trade, but only old people bartered for them. He wrote a four-page one once and it got him a battered tennis racket. Ma scolded him, said his writing could have been traded for spices she didn’t have. She rarely did that, told them what to get, but that had been a particularly food-bare week. Titus thought the racket was pretty, the pink and green Wilson still visible against some black shine, although most of the strings were missing.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“This is yours.” She walked the mango over and placed it on the desk beside him. His eyes lit up like it were two meals in one. Fruit was nearly impossible to come by in the East.

“Whoa!”

“Shhhh! I’ll peel it for you tonight after Ma’s asleep.”

“You don’t want to share it with her?” Her brother had grown increasingly aware that they didn’t hunger in isolation.

“Oh.” Ella glanced at their bedroom door. “Then she would know I wasn’t just out gathering images and . . . .” Ella watched him work out how she might be further scolded for all the risk she took in one trip. “I’ll figure it out. Maybe leave slices and say it was a gift or trade or something almost believable. You go wash for supper.”

He hopped up. He was only slightly shorter than her, even though he was four years younger. She watched him leave and she put the mango in the desk drawer.

She took out the imager. It was heavy and curved, shaped like a ball with one side chopped off, and dull black. She thought it almost deserved a name for having survived water, multiple chases, and bullets. But what it possessed was enough. The open face snapped in a range of positions for different kinds of capture. What operated as the shutter grabbed views from further than she could see in all directions. Taking multiple shots gave her plenty of images to work with. Today, she would have more images than slices of eggplant.

At the table, Ella ate quietly. Her mother took her and Titus in silently. While Ella chewed, she listened hopefully for sounds coming from the shared wall with the Prewitts. Ma had known the Prewitts since they were girls in a pre-walled City together. Both Ma and Mrs. Prewitt had parents who moved from states where no one had to long for the smell of pine, the children played catch-and-release with lightning bugs, and a ripe peach was rarely too far out of season. Mrs. Prewitt hadn’t traveled into the City for as long as Ella could remember, and she went on long rants about its demise. The most interesting takeaways began with I remember when . . . or they used to . . . She recalled a they used to ending with love us. She’d pondered that one for a long time, merging it with Ma’s recollections of what the City used to be. Ella couldn’t imagine anyone in the City loving people like them, now or ever, but she couldn’t help but believe Mrs. Prewitt, because she was a mother with calloused hands, like Ma. Whenever Mrs. Prewitt looked at Ella, her face broke into an easy grin and she would call her darlin in an accent that Ma said matched her parents, grandparents Ella never had the chance to meet. Would they have held her like Mrs. Prewitt did? She found ready excuses to pull Ella in close for hugs that smelled like simmering fruit. The hearty embraces never failed to stir something in Ella that she wasn’t aware had been sleeping until it was awoken.

It was the same stirring Ella experienced when she combed the City in search of images. A crescendo when she arrived at just the right view beside clifftop homes which seemed to hang in midair. The feeling would rise to sit squarely beneath her collarbones, then settle warmly in her stomach. When she could grab images that scooped up the love the City must have once offered, but now withheld like bosoms gone dry. She was determined to capture what her elders spoke of. She’d walked the length of the old Embarcadero on her way toward the red bridge. The water lay so close to the painted gleaming sidewalks, it looked as if you could trail your fingers in it and ask it to keep you company. She kept her eyes low when she spotted someone who appeared like they were from for the good of the people. She carried the wide friend pass in front of her, her finger over the date of the expired pass received in trade. She didn’t have a plan for what to do if someone stopped her to inspect it but it was better than nothing. Every so often her view was blocked by pier buildings that rose tall and wide like swelled churches with nothing to worship, but the sight of the Bay always returned.

When she’d arrived at the red bridge, she’d lodged herself among precarious rocks and become still. The bridge was stunning in a way that gave her chills, especially blanketed in fog. Ella sat in awe for hours at this beauty only seen in segments. Ella tried to imagine the secrets it held. How many millions had sought to cross it for commerce, for the gold coins she’d heard of, for refuge, even those looking for death. She imagined the bridge crying for those who used it as their last companion when they could no longer find reasons to stay on this side of life, the bridge itself taking in a deep breath every time someone fell forward toward the ocean, a majestic attempt to suck them back against gravity and pull them up to the safety of its swaying rails.

Often folks rode the water transport in silence, but when they spoke, she heard stories about the many lives the City itself had lived. She tried to picture a City full of people who looked like they came from everywhere. Now, only one type of person came, and never left. How had the City held so many magnificently difficult stories?

Ella pushed the last piece of eggplant around on her plate.

“Where’s your head gone youngin? We’ll lose you to your thoughts for all eternity if you don’t let some of them loose every now and then.”

Ella offered a weak smile in response. “Was just thinking about Mrs. Prewitt.”

Ella’s mother nodded. “Prewitt took it harder than most when they walled us out. You know her family took up two whole blocks in those big pretty brick houses over in the Fillmore way back? We owned almost as much only one street over.” Her mother kept on. “Brick stretching out to glorious Victorians and back to brick. What a neighborhood.” Ma said to no one in particular.

Ella did know. Mrs. Prewitt’s family, like their own, had been part of the Black migration that happened centuries ago. Luckily, she’d heard the story enough to know it by heart.

“Yes ma’am, may I be excused?”

“Of course, help your brother with the dishes before you go to bed and remember I need your help with the garden tomorrow.”

Later that night, Ella lay next to Titus in the twin beds they pushed together for better viewing. Ella held the imager up in front of their faces but the ceiling remained dark.

“Want me to turn the light back on so you can see?” he offered.

“No, just give it a second.” He leaned in closer, scooted up backwards into the bed so that his cheek nestled against hers. She could smell the mango she’d sliced after their mother went to bed, lingering on his breath. He’d left a bowl for her in the fridge. Ella smiled to herself because clearly he was just as excited as she was.

She clicked through the controls as he waited beside her in silence.

“You got it. Right there. Now it’s supposed to light up.” He was right. He was a quick learner. Even she didn’t have all the controls down yet. The imager buzzed and clicked, glowing dully, and threw a blurry menu askew onto the ceiling. She rotated until it came into focus and searched the last week.

“It has voice recognition, doesn’t it?”

“Hadn’t figured out how to work that part but yeah.”

She clicked through. Two women from the East’s Pride celebration, one clad only in pants and suspenders, the other in a bow-tied shirt and short-shorts. Mountains tinged pink from the East’s setting sun. Old Jack London Square, where mural-painted boats lined a waterfront so peaceful that the ducks continued to flock. The City and the old 19th Avenue overpass she’d huddled under to get the view of the bridge. She could almost smell the cypress, feel the crevice in the rock that held her. And then the bridge.

In a final flash, the bridge blanketed the ceiling, spilling over into the corners and down the tops of their walls. Titus inhaled audibly. “Whoa, it looks like you can reach out and touch it.” She clicked and resized. The bridge fit squarely onto their ceiling. It looked as real as she’d hoped, came running out of the mountains to where turbulent ocean met rolling bay. No fog clinging to the bridge’s girders. Brilliant red-orange against an audacious blue backdrop. She’d been fortunate to catch so much daylight in the image. The towers stood almost as tall as the ocean was deep, ushering through all those who made the journey. Ella imagined the slightest sway, a ripple there on the ceiling above them, and settled fully into the warm bed beneath her.