42 The Meadow There was this older woman in front of me, suddenly, with dreadlocks and a black jumpsuit, holding a gun. I looked at her. “Your mother hired me,” she said, holding out her hand, not to shake mine but to touch my shoulder. “No, she didn’t,” I said flatly. I let her, Juniper, push me upright. I looked into her eyes. “My mother’s dead,” I said but did not feel. “I know,” she said. “Last year she hired me in the instance of her death. But I see you already took care of the business I’m here for.” I stared. I didn’t understand. Then I did. “Do you have someone you can stay with?” she said. “I’ll take you wherever you need to go. If you have nowhere to go, I have a bed. I may also have a proposal. We can talk about that later.” Her eyes were warm and brown and they took me as I was. The rage went deep and still inside me. I felt calm in her presence. Just moments before, my father’s life had bled out of his body. I’d felt my strength grow in inverse ratio, as though his blood were entering me, all that hate and emptiness flowing into me, now my curse and my gift. “I don’t have a place to stay,” I said. I fairly vibrated with a new predatory energy. Juniper held my hand, not cringing at the blood at all. She led me down the stairs. The street was empty. I got into her van. I never looked back. Two weeks later, after my naming ceremony, there was a fire going in the townhouse in which all six of us girls under twenty lived, orphans and runaways and homeless, scarred, abused, ferocious. We each carried a supernova of rage within our chests that Juniper promised we could fashion into a tool. The world was unkind to women. No one was safe. We were proof of how bad things had gotten. Juniper addressed us as she did every night. “You are dam-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQ3NA==