c. l. bledsoe : “the orphan”

America is wearing a new hat. It’s a pretty hat her grandmother bought her because America is an orphan. But she’s not sad.

 

Every time America mentions her parents, her grandparents buy her something. They were driving down the street on the way to school, when America asked her grandfather if he used to drive her mother to the same school. America’s grandparents exchanged looks and pulled over. Her grandmother got out and went into the first store she found and bought the first thing she saw and brought it back for America. It was a hat. It was round like the hats America had seen the people in the band wearing in New Orleans. Her parents had taken her there one time before they died. It was where they died, actually. The plane bringing them all back had crashed. America had survived. She’d been asleep through the whole thing. She woke lying on the ground, covered in smoke and other people’s clothes from the luggage that had come open. There were fires and people were lying around in a big mess. Some of the fires were people and she couldn’t hear anything, which was just as well, the lady at the hospital told her later. She wouldn’t have wanted to hear any of that anyway.

 

A few days later her grandparents showed up with a teddy bear and when they took the bandages off America could hear again.

 

She told her grandmother how the hat reminded her of New Orleans, and they pulled the car over again. Her grandmother returned this time with a little statue of a bird. She showed it to America and then put it in the trunk, which was almost full. It was a cardinal, like the baseball team. Her parents had taken her to a baseball game once. America decided to let them get to the end of the street before she told them this. They were getting close to the school. They’d been driving for six weeks, now, ever since the morning after leaving the hospital. America wondered what it would be like at school, what new things would be given to her there.

{ issue zero