Free Forty Leap by Ivan Turner Page A

her dad, and go on.”
    She stopped talking then and just began to
sob as the story played itself out in her head. Next to her, so
close, I couldn’t do anything. Never had I felt so completely
useless in my whole life. My heart was breaking for this child, my
friend Jennie. So I just sat there with her, silent, waiting for
her to get it out of her system. We sat for almost an hour while
she composed herself. I imagined, with relief, that she was
finished, but I was wrong. When the tears had gone and the sniffles
had ceased, she began to speak again and I felt a captive audience.
As much as I could hardly bear the images she projected, I would
not ask her to stop. Telling the story was her choice to make and
listening was my obligation.
    “Grandma never called me nothing but Child . This is what I heard from the tangled people below.
It was like a whisper and I knew it was Grandma calling for me. For
a minute, I thought she was a ghost ‘cause I was sure she was dead.
But, no, it was Grandma and she was the only one alive. There was
still five or six people down there and they all broke their necks
or their backs and none of them was moving. Mr. Lopez lay over one
of his other kids, bleeding all over him from the nose.
    “I moved some people to get Grandma free, but
she wasn’t going nowhere. Both her legs was broke and maybe her
head. She was hurting so bad.
    “’Why you still here, Child?’ she said to me.
What could I do?” Jennie looked at me, whispering, “Mathew, what
could I do?”
    I took her hand. “What did you do?”
    “I kissed her face and waited for her to die.
I couldn’t leave her. She was my Grandma. I brought her water and
some food. She took the water, but she wouldn’t take no food. She
wasn’t really Grandma no more. I knew she was dead when she stopped
taking the water. I didn’t leave, though. The bombs had stopped a
long time ago so I just stayed there with the dead people and the
smell.”
    I waited a while for her to continue, but she
didn’t start talking again until I asked, “When did you leave?”
    “Reesha came for me. She was with Devon and
when they couldn’t find me with all the people, they came back.
They was good friends. We helped each other for a while, kind of
like you and me.”
    “What happened to them?”
    “They’re gone,” she said. “When the soldiers
came into the city, people started breaking up and hiding. We did
the same. We didn’t see no one for a long time. Then we saw a group
of guys and they was with these two girls and they looked used . You know what I mean? Devon took us away from them
because he knew what would happen. They’d have killed him and used
me and Reesha. So we left them.
    “It didn’t matter, though. We picked a bad
place to sleep one night and another group caught us up. I’d gone
to pee so I wasn’t there when they came on Reesha and Devon. I saw
them when I was coming back and I couldn’t do nothing. There were
five guys and one girl and they beat down on Devon like I never
seen before. And Reesha… I just hid away until they was gone. They
left Devon, but they took Reesha with them. Of course they left
Devon! He was dead! ”
    She began to cry again, this time worse than
before, and she didn’t stop for a long time. I just sat there,
feeling terrible, wishing I could do something to help her and
knowing that I was powerless. It was a truly defining moment in my
life. Never before had I been so needed by another person and so
unable to do anything. Never before had I even noticed. Throughout
my life, I had remained so detached, even from my own family. And
now I understood why Martie disliked me so and my nephews shunned
me. I had always felt so much for Livvie because she had cared for
me when no one else did, but now I didn’t understand why. I was a
freak! I recoiled at the thought of basic human emotional contact,
a thing which is second nature to most people. Sniffling, scorn in
her expression, Jennie finally