Most of the lights on the other side are that of our colors: red, blue, and white, like Henry wore when he left. The colors appear in the circles of buildings, and the squares, and the rectangles, and the octagons, and the triangles, and every other shape a building might have; they grace upâthe colorsâas far up as the buildings go, and as wide as they go too.
"So this is how much it's grown, eh?" said my mother, admiring all eight of the buildings which were now covering her in their shadow...the colors of the building glowing and radiating over my mothers' face...her eyes wide open, admiring back. "Seems like you haven't had it that bad, then?" she then asks me, not truly knowing a fuck about what I've been through, not truly knowing a bit of anything, but rather simply thinking that a look of a city can have an effect on a person's emotional well-being, personality, and heartâwell, if you don't already know...it doesn't.
The beautiful girl's eyes opened as wide as my mother's. They also had that new-look on them: like they hadn't seen any of this before. "You know, I once saw it in a picture," she said. "I saw videos online, of how it was growing, but damn, Ludy, y'all really stepped on up." she said.
Remember ladies, "yo, dude!" reminded the sergeant before rolling up, telling us we were approaching the destination, telling us what the windows already did: we're here; we're at the check-in window.
"Don't talk much," muttered my mother before the next welcoming chatter blurted out from the other side of the window.
The check-in officer is a short, stubby man. The funny thing is that he has the color of my mom, and my grandmother, and most of the Catzâyet, here he is, checking for those with his color, banning those with his color from crossing over to enjoy what those without his color made to enjoy, instead of doing the obvious and helping those with his color to see what he's been lucky to see. A stubby mustache hung and flared over this officer's lipsâhis big, fat lips.
Gallego, read his badge.
Is he one of me? Is he my kind? Am I, my own kind?
While Gallegos uniform was identical to that of the officer driving us across, the colors and names were differentâjust a 'tad. Border Wall Officer, said Gallegos tag, his badge; while West Wall Sergeant, said our "chauffeur's" tag, his name plate, plated over him to give us his title for us to refer to him whenever need be.
"Sergeant Rumper," the check-in chubby man announced, nodding in recognition at our driver.
"Wall approaching," repeated the Alexa.
"God damn, thing," divulged the sergeant, clapping back at the Alexa, turning it off. "These things never shut up," he then uttered to the sergeant in the check-in window, whom was now smiling and laughing, smacking his hand at the rail below him, that which borders his window, his clap as that of a man laughing at a joke he did not think was funny but still needed to laugh at in order to keep his position in whatever ladder, or pyramid, he had chosen to live in.
In the tone of the sergeant and of Gallegos, my mind drifts to a belief and question: are we being driven to a cross investigation (literally) or a sortie of sorts (also literally)?
*******
Looking down at the check-in officer, I could see his sparkly, fresh white New Balance shoes usually seen on fathers or older men of that age, worn and tied nicely at the end of his uniform pants, suitably straightened and ironed to a teat, until you could only see that one line in the pants that can't be creased or ironed out because it always re-appears with the folding and tucking of any pants in any situation, in any side of the Wall.
Then when the other officers made themselves visible from the other row of check-in windows, I could see, too, their white, sparky New Balance balanced souls: the staple in feetâor one of them at least, in our side of the Wall.
Crossing over, to the other side, the side where my mother has been hiding, is very different. It is unrecognizable to this, not mirrored: the wall is different, the people are different, the treatment is different, the looksâespecially the looksâare different.
The side to cross to my mother's side, the East, is placedâstrategically I guessâaway from this side. They are miles apart.
To cross to my mother's side, you don't need to show anything, you don't need to talk to anyone, you simply drive. There is no Wall like this. There is a highway that just tells you that you are crossing. And that's that.
East approaching was the only "officer" you got.
And that of your family, or friend, whom had decided to trek with you as your only "chauffer".
Maybe if there was such a look to it, to crossing to my mother's side as there is to crossing to my side, maybe then there wouldn't be so many peopleâor anyone at thatâto make the foolish trek my grandmother and I did, and then Moritz and my grandmother (again) did to rescue me; my uncle, of course, didn't have a choiceâhe never got an ID from this side.
But here I am, having done all that, having trekked all those miles, having gone back and forth to the Wall and to the other side, now finally making my way back to my side, the side I begged and fought so hard to get to, to only feel an opposite way as I did when I was at the Catz bar, or with Henry, or at the Government Mansion, or even...at my mother's house, because I now feel this sense of leaving a place rather than that you get from coming back to a place like your home, that sense of rejuvenation, is gone, it's not here, it's not traveling with me anymoreâit seems as if I left it back home. But where is that home? The Catz bar? My mother's house? Simply the land on the other side of the Wall where I lost Moritz and my grandmother and where people lose their people like I did mine every day without anybody caring or showing it on the news simply because they are from this side of the Wall, my mother's side.
******
Coming back here, to my side, doesn't feel as it should, but we have no choice; my sergeantâno, our sergeantâhands the check-in officer our ID's and rolls down our window.
"Window rolling down," proclaims the Alexa, showing us what we can easily see.
"Mhm, I see," says the chubby check-in officer, his big, fat eyesâas fat and round as his bodyâlooking at us, and his cactus, like the deserts, looking at us tooâit right over his forehead, right over his eyebrows, showing us that he was just like us, no matter how much he didn't want to be like us.
The ironic thing about looking like this check-in officer and doing his job is obvious. You would know if you could literally see it like I could; if you could see his skin, his eyes, his nose, his lookâhe is just like I am; maybe I would weigh as much as him too if I didn't play soccer, and if I wasn't running this whole time. It's hard not too with all the "tacos" we "eat".
"Which one is Ãshka?" asked the check-in patrol, holding only one ID, and looking straight at the beautiful girl.
Could that be her name, I thought? Is that what beauty is called on this side? Or on my side. Who knows where a name like that is raised from.
"I am," the girl responded, not moving an ounce, not making any effort; not that the check-in officer expected her to make any effort:
"YeahâI figured," the check-in chub then said. He then looked at us:
"Which one is the young Ludivina?" he asked, holding up two ID's.
I wanted to cherish this moment: with the two ID's. I wanted to capture it in a mental picture, because my mom and mines identify, have never been that close to each other, for that long. But, there's a funny thing about cherishing moments that I've discovered here.
You see, the thing about embracing the moment and not letting the good-times slip you by, is that the good times will always feel as if they slipped you by...therefore, you should only live the moments you truly want to live...because in the end, it will feel as if you lived no moment....at all.
"Never mind," then said the officer. "You two the divines?" he laughed, along with the sergeant.
"Yes..." my mother and I answered, coherently, timely, chorus-ly, stupid-ly.
"Y'all family or something?" he then asked.
That made the sergeant add his opinion:
"Yeahâand they're one fucked up family," he laughed.
Then, when I was going to reply, this ultrasound just blasted all throughout; it rang into our ears; it made both the check-in officer and the sergeant driving us, lunge for their ears, covering both holes on each side of their head; we thenâmyself, my mother, and the beautiful girlâdid the same.
"Just go!" screamed the check-in boy. "Just go!"
The sergeant reverted the parking pedal to drive and pressed the gas, while still holding onto his ears.
It's all been a fucking ride: that's what I think. This whole trip, this whole journey to my uncle's store, what was supposed to be my first fucking summer job, has just turned out to be a fucking ride I did not want to ride, leading me to a place I did not want to go to...but maybe, I don't know, it was a place I had to go to...maybe it's a place I needed to go to see things I didn't see before...maybe it's where life has always wanted me to go, to figure out my mind's puzzle (if at all). All those things are circling and pondering and swimming all in my head as the sergeant continues steering the wheel up-front and pressing down on the gas and then hitting the break whenever he hits a street light. My mother and Ãshka have been conversing since crossing, since the ultrasound sound, but I haven't been listening or partaking, I've been too busy in my own mental-meeting. I've been too busy questing everything; too busy wondering if this is at all where I belong. But is now the time to think about shit like this? Because really, even if I could do anything about it, could I actually do anything about it in the hands of this sergeant, in the hands of my Party? Whatever they want to talk about, whatever I might be able to say to Moritz' parents, it will never let me move on, or change my life to what I want it to be. Let's be honest with each other: my life is fucked, my mind is fucked, my travel is fucked, my family is fucked, everything I've ever known and thought I've known is fucked.
*********
"Ludy! Hello?" my mother repeats.
Great: I missed something that will now inflict on my answer.
"Sorryâwhat did you say?" I ask, pretending like I was actually listening this whole time but only tripped up during this question.
"You can't say what happened," my mother says. "You can't say that the Catz took you."
"Why?" I respond, glad my response didn't require a steady, attentive ear before.
"Because-"
But before my mother could tell me why, what was the "because" about...the sergeant announced the arrival.
"We're here, ladies," he announced, his pompous tone in full effect, as always, as the day (which was yesterday) I met him.
Throughout the whole way, in thought and in my mother's conversation with Ãshka, the darkness that traveled with us from the other side of the Wall no longer followed us onto this side, as the buildings shined and lit our faces in their rainbow-like colors, trying to grab our attention and sell us on whatever they were meant to sell us on with their design, but were instead met with blind, uninterested eyes and mouths and ears, some covered in human redness, some parts cut, allowing the design to sink into the skin, but still, skin that is inattentive, uninterested.
And as usual, the Alexa pointed out the obvious:
"Arrived at location," she said, over the cauldron of static behind her.
I wonder if my grandmother and Moritz arrived at the same time. That is something Alexa doesn't tell us, but should. But then again, she doesn't really know shit. She's not human. She's not like Moritz, or my grandmotherâshe is nothing like my grandmother; she doesn't have a soul like my grandmother, and she doesn't love like my grandmother, and there are no lines on a robot like there were on my grandmother, telling you about her life, her memories, the curls and sinks on her skin demonstrating the long life lived.
"Arrived on location," the mindless dummy says. I don't say that, of course, I just think it; saying that would only be pointless, and a waste of breath; plus, I still need to retrieve Moritz and my grandmother from the Party; I still need to confront Moritz' parents.
What will they sayâMoritz' parents? What will I say? How can I ever explain this? The only thing I can do is give up my life to avenge him, for them.
*********
It's easy for my mother and Ãshka to step out of the car because they could give half-a-shit about Moritz, and being that she (my mother) left my grandmother (her mother), how can I ever expect my mother to look back and ask twice about my grandmother when she didn't look back, ever, when we first needed her to?
So my mother steps out of the carâbut not before being handed a water bottle by the car door, its robotic hand sticking out in tiny pieces, flashing, like a toothpick, but metallic and grey.
"For talking," said the Alexa voice, not matching her scrawny body. But its disappointment? Yes.
The sergeant is already out of the car. He's fixing his hair. He's licking his lips. He's flicking his tooth with his mouthâhis old, gold mouth with its gold tooth; the tooth that is more valuable than Moritz or my grandmother...to them.
Ãshka pats down her suit. Her vests. Her uniform. She pulls her hair back and lets out a cough to get the water out of her throat...the water of nervous reactions.
My heart goes into superconductivity-mode.
I step out. But I step out unlike my mother, unlike Ãshka, unlike the sergeant, unlike the check-in officer did when he did step out of his check-in window, or even, like Moritz, or the other check-in officers that came to see me and my mother and others, or my grandmother on that trip when we got close and when we approached, and when they saw that we might be crossing over.
While the buildings are highâsky highâhere, some things never change, they stay the same, on this side of the Wall as they are on the other side of the Wall. The parking lot gravel, the unsteadiness of the earth, the curves created by the global heating we've caused, by the destruction we drive every day, the food we kill into our stomachs, the airs we dispose of from the kills we doâthese things only change in one direction...forward, towards more discretion, never changing, really.
But whatever I feel at the moment, I know, right now is no time to whine. I still need to figure out answers for Moritz' parents.
When I stop freaking-out internally, I set my eyes on the building the sergeant is leading us too. It is, like every other space, attached and inserted in another tall, cloud-piercing building stacked besides a mirroring one with different colors, stacked besides another mirroring building...and so on, until the city was no more and the waters reached us again, or as far as your eye could reach.
A limpid world is what I want.
And that is never going to happen.
I must accept the fakeness, the camouflage of evil in goodness, the battered benevolence everywhere doing its best to survive, lingering in every direction, in every corner, in every house, in every buildingâlike the building we're about to enter at the moment.
The sergeant holds the door. But before we reach it, as I had forgotten, there is another vendor selling something.
"Glasses, purses," the man shouts, in the usual salesmen-tone that populated and unpopulated out cities.