Before Mama left us to spend time with her real children, everyday, she would write a quote on the small scratched-up blackboard next to the light switch. Everyday, I would jump out of bed, before all the other boys, to read what was written on it.  Everyday, I would pull out my yellow notebook (which used to be white), one of the only possessions I brought with me when I got here, and write down every single quote on there. From the one Mama wrote the day I got here three years ago, “There are no unwanted children. Just unfound families – NAC,” to the one she wrote just for me, the day Danny was chosen to leave, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened – Doctor Seuss,” I have every single quote in my notebook. Even the one Mama wrote the day she left: “Hope.”

I know that Mama told me to write at least a paragraph every night before I went to sleep, but for the past few days, I hadn’t been able to because I left my book here. Amy said that things were getting dangerous here too, so we had to leave home. So for one week, we stayed under a huge dark bridge and lived next to a dirty wide river that I started calling Drowsy River (The first day we got there, Amy and I saw a lot of people lying by the river. I never got the chance to talk to them because they all left while I was sleeping). We got hungry, so I suggested eating the food we brought with us, but Amy didn’t let me. She said that we had to eat slowly so that we won’t run out of food right away. She separated the food into two bags, and we each got one to keep, but I finished mine on the second day. I remember secretly crawling over to Amy’s bag, which at the time seemed bigger than mine, to borrow some of her food, but her bag had a lot of air and barely any food.

So the next day, I apologized to Amy for finishing my food and she told me to stop crying because she was going to get more food for us. She gave me the rest of her food, and ran back to our house as fast as she could with her extra skinny chicken legs. I remember waiting for her to come back, which felt like forever. And after a few painful hours, she finally did, with bread, apples, corn and a lot of scars. She said that she tried to bring a watermelon (my favorite fruit), but she tripped while she was running. I remember being really worried about her because the cut on her forehead wouldn’t stop bleeding, but she acted like it was fine and said that a nap would heal her. It’s been five days since that day and she’s still sleeping, just like the people who were next to the river when we first got here.

While Amy was healing, I went to for food for her. Amy told me not to go back to our house, so I decided to the city instead. Finding food was a lot easier than it used to be, because all you had to do was go in a store, pick something, and then go out. All you had to do was avoid the broken glass. I stayed away from buildings because occasionally, huge things would fall down from the sky like huge drops of ice cubes, and make a huge “thud.” But just like ice cubes, by the time I reach the “thud,” whatever had fallen has already separated into a million pieces, making the object unidentifiable.

After a week, I finally came back here. The quote Mama wrote that day was erased, replaced by an ilegible word. The whole place looks like a mess, and it’s awfully quiet here. I walked out to the courtyard and stared at the sky. Then I looked down shortly afterwards. Everything seemed different, yet nothing was different. “Everything was empty anyways.”

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Photo: Dmitry Ratushny