583495793235

INFECTED
CARLA SCREAMS AND covers her face when she first sees me.
“Are you a ghost?” She grabs my shoulders, squeezes me against her bosom, rocks me
side to side, and then squeezes me again. I don’t have any air left in my lungs when she’s
finished.
“What are you doing here? You can’t be here,” she says, still squeezing me.
“I’m happy to see you, too,” I squeak.
She pulls away, shakes her head as if I were some kind of a miracle, and pulls me back
in for more.
“Oh, my girl,” she says. “Oh, how I missed you.” She holds my face in her hands.
“I missed you, too. I’m so sorry about—”
“Stop. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“You lost your job because of me.”
She shrugs. “I got another one. Besides, it’s you that I miss.”
“I miss you, too.”
“Your mama did what she had to do.”
I don’t want to think about my mom. So I look around for Olly, who’s standing off in
the distance.
“You remember Olly,” I say.
“How could I forget that face? And that body,” she says, definitely loud enough for him
to hear. She marches over to him and pulls him into a hug only slightly more restrained
than the one she gave me.
“You taking care of our girl?” She pulls away and pats him a little too hard on his cheek.
Olly rubs it. “I’m doing my best. I don’t know if you know this, but she can be a little
stubborn.”
Carla looks back and forth between us for a long second, noting the tension between us.
We’re still standing in her doorway.
“Come inside. Come inside,” she says.
“We didn’t think you would be awake so early,” I say as we enter.
“You stop sleeping when you get old. You’ll see.”
I want to ask, Will I ever grow old? But instead I ask, “Is Rosa here?”
“Upstairs, asleep. You want me to wake her?”
“We don’t have time. I just wanted to see you.”
She takes my face into her hands again and re-examines me, this time with nurse’s