Chapter 18 Cora
We buried Mara on Easter Sunday morning.
The kitchen tent's rosemary bush had been planted in year four by Crystal in a small clay pot Mara had given her, propagated from a cutting Mara had sent in a salvage exchange between Urbana and Mojave in year three.
The cutting had taken. The pot had become a row of three pots within a year, and three pots had become an in-ground bed by year six, and by year eleven the rosemary bed was four feet long and a foot wide, the green spike of it visible from the gate, the smell of it on the morning air every time the kitchen tent was open.
The bed had been Mara's bed. The camp had called it Mara's rosemary for seven years without ever telling Mara about the name.
Mara had been told now.
Crystal had been at the rosemary bed for two hours at dawn.
Mark was beside her. The grave had been dug at the south end of the bed, where the rosemary had room to expand around it.
The grave was shallow. The camp's burial protocol was the shallow grave with the marker stone, the way that worked in the high desert with the slow erosion.
The marker stone was a piece of pale Mojave sandstone that Tomas had found at the perimeter in year five and had been keeping at the back of the supply tent for a marker that did not yet have a name. Mara had given the stone its name.
The camp assembled at oh-eight-hundred.
The whole camp.
Two hundred and fourteen humans. Eleven Vampyren.
One half-Vampyren adult. Seven Lucian. One six-year-old returned.
Eleven Urbana children added. Nina, Jet, Saul, three new adults at the camp.
Sebastian three weeks. Auriel six months.
Elena upright on her own two feet, leaning on Cassi, but on her own two feet.
Two hundred and fifty-seven people stood around the rosemary.
The number did not divide by seven. The number was the number. I had stopped checking.
Crystal stood at the head of the grave.
Mark stood beside her.
Drew stood at the edge of the camp, with the team. Cruz, Renn, Veron, Sylvia, and me. The team had kept the close-grouping we had had on the road. We had not figured out yet how to be in the camp without being a unit. The figuring would come.
Crystal spoke.
Crystal had a piece of paper in her hand. She had written it last night. She had read it twice to Mark and once to Tess and once to me, and the three of us had nodded at her and had told her it was the right paper. She held the paper.
She said:
"Mara was my friend for thirteen years. She was my friend before the invasion.
We met in Hyde Park at the back of a Trader Joe's checkout line where she had been bagging my groceries because she had been the only checker working that day and she had been doing the bagging and the scanning and the receipt-printing at the same time.
She had been twenty-seven. I had been twenty-five.
We had become friends because she had spilled three of my bags into the parking lot and had laughed about it and had carried the spilled groceries to my car with me and had told me her name was Mara and I had told her my name was Crystal, and we had had coffee the next week, and we had had coffee every week for six years until the invasion. "
The camp was quiet.
Crystal said:
"Mara went into the Urbana enclave in year two.
She had been one of the people who walked into the Urbana creche in year two with three other women and had said, we are starting Free the Children, we are getting the kids out, we are doing it because the kids cannot do it themselves.
She had been twenty-nine. She had not been a fighter.
She had been a grocery-store checker who had bagged groceries.
She had not been a fighter and she had built a Free-the-Children safehouse and she had run the safehouse for nine years and she had taught the kids in the safehouse to read, to count, to garden, to grow rosemary, and to hold a blade if the blade was the last option.
The blade was the last option. Mara taught the blade as the last option.
The kids who came out of the safehouse came out knowing that the blade was the last option. "
Crystal's voice did not waver.
She said:
"Mara died at the southwest gap of the Urbana enclave on day eleven of our convoy's outbound trip.
She held the gap for forty minutes. She killed five of Hess's cell.
She killed two Vampyren and three humans.
She was running a fever of a hundred and three when she went down.
She knew she was sick. She had told Nina at the safehouse door, before the raid hit, I am sick, get the kids to the boiler room, do not come for me.
Nina did not come for her. Mara held the gap.
Mara died on her terms. Mara bought Nina an hour.
Mara bought the kids the boiler room. Mara bought Deedee her life.
The eleven kids who came home with the convoy came home because Mara held the gap.
The kids who died, two of them died of the fever in the boiler room, but the kids who lived, lived because Mara held the gap.
Mara held the gap because Mara was Mara.
Mara was the grocery-store-checker who became the safehouse lead.
Mara was the rosemary. Mara is now in this ground.
Mara's name is now here. Mara's name will be here forever. "
Crystal stopped.
She did not cry yet.
She looked at me.
She said: "Cora. Tell them about Talia."
I had not expected the ask. The ask was Crystal's. Crystal had decided. Crystal had decided that Mara's funeral was the time to say the name. Crystal had decided this last night and had not told me.
I came forward.
I stood at the head of the grave with Crystal.
I said:
"There was a six-year-old at the Urbana enclave in year three, when Drake's raid hit.
Her name was Talia Ramirez. She was sick on the morning of the raid.
She had hidden in the bathroom on the second floor of the dormitory.
I had been the day-staff lead. I counted heads twice during the evacuation.
The count came up fifteen both times. Talia was the sixteenth.
The protocol was to check the stalls. I did not check the stalls.
Drake's warriors came into the corridor.
Talia died in the stall. She had loved me.
Nina has told me. Talia had called me Maestra.
In Spanish. Teacher. I had not known. Nina told me the name two weeks ago in the bathroom on the second floor of the dormitory at Urbana.
I had not been able to say Talia's name out loud in three years.
I said her name in the bathroom three times.
I am saying it now. Talia. Talia. Talia.
She was six. I miscounted. I am sorry. I love her.
I have loved her for eleven years. I will love her for the rest of my life. Talia."
The camp was very quiet.
Elena stepped forward. Elena.
Elena, who had been getting better in two-week increments, who had spoken in single words for a year, who had said her first sentence on day fifteen of the convoy's outbound trip, my daughter brings them home, stepped forward at her own daughter's funeral-for-a-friend.
Elena said:
"Cora King. You came back."
I said: "Yes, Elena. I came back."
Elena said: "You said her name."
"Yes."
"That is good. The saying is good."
"Yes."
Elena stepped back.
Cassi held Elena's arm.
The camp was very quiet.
Crystal looked at me.
Crystal nodded.
Crystal said: "We bury Mara now."
We buried Mara.
Mark and Renn and Drew lowered the wrapped body into the grave.
The tarp had been replaced the night before with a clean piece of canvas Crystal had sewed last night.
The canvas had Mara's name embroidered on it in red thread, with the words the rosemary lead under the name, with the dates 2058 - 2069.
The canvas was the canvas Crystal had not made for anyone before.
The canvas was the canvas a person made for a friend they had loved for thirteen years.
The body went into the grave.
The camp filled the grave with the dirt that had come out of the grave.
The marker stone was placed.
The marker stone said: MARA
ROSEMARY LEAD
2058 — 2069
"the blade is the last option"
The camp stood around the rosemary bed.
Nobody said anything for a long time.
After a long time, Crystal said:
"Thank you."
The camp dispersed.
* * *
Drew came to find me at the rosemary in the afternoon.
I was on my knees at the bed. I was trimming the rosemary into the shape that Mara would have wanted, the rounded bush, not the squared-off-row that the camp had let it become over the last year.
I had been trimming for an hour. The trimmings were in a small pile.
I would use the trimmings for the kitchen.
Drew came up.
He sat on the ground beside me.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"You said her name."
"I did."
"In front of the camp."
"Yes."
"How does it feel."
I thought about it.
"It feels like grief. It does not feel like verdict.
The shape is grief now. The shape is the shape it should have been for eleven years.
The shape is the right shape. The grief is going to be with me for the rest of my life.
The grief is the way it should be. I am okay with the grief.
I am not okay with the loss. I will not be okay with the loss.
The loss is its own thing. The grief is mine to hold.
The loss is. The loss is what we live with.
We live with the loss. We hold the grief. "
"Cora."
"Yes."
"That is a lot of words."
"You taught me how to use them."
"I did not."
"You did. You read me the Joads. You taught me how to use the words. The Joads taught me how to use the words. Steinbeck taught me how to use the words. You taught me by reading aloud."
He was quiet.
After a while he said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"Tomorrow I start with Brecca."
"I know."
"The medical work."
"I know."
"I want to be useful in a way that does not require a fight."
"Drew."
"Yes."