Rain gathers along the edges of flat rooftops, pooling in the depressions, sheeting along the slick flashing until it overfills the bead along the bottom edge and trickles onto the building face, seeping down the freshly-painted surface like a slow waterfall, like time running down, like the red pool spreading on the pavement around another accident. Memorial murals of our departed children, fifty feet, a hundred feet tall, dwarf us. Their stuccoed walls and dedicated lighting are the only new construction here for years. Our children, made famous by bits of quick metal, gaze to the left or right of us, no matter where we stand, at something just beyond us that we never saw coming and could not have prevented. The local way to put it is it serves the kids right for being born here. And it’s surely criminal to live like this. They have no business being here, and nobody can make a case for wanting to. In their memorial poses, the new celebrities are rendered with doomed but hopeful looks like the faces of martyrs. Mural artists compete for the top commissions, not just big walls with clear views but the best stories, too, the subjects who were most vulnerable and haunted, like the children selected for milk cartons. What serious child of these streets could see those serene images lit from above and not think they might be the best shot at a legacy. We tell our children to make their own opportunities, but they know exactly what they have coming. They only hope to be worthy of their walls. In my nightmare they make deals to audition for them. Behind the drugstore, broken streetlight, wear your black cap backwards. My brother will do you after you do me. They’ll paint us a city block.
Copyright © December 4, 2006
Very Short Novels 
5 comments
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December 5, 2006 at 10:07 am
red dirt girl
mmmm . . . this makes me think back to visiting in Oklahoma City the memorial dedicated to the victims of the federal building bombing . . . the heartbreaking reality of children lost depicted not as forlorn faces, but rows of kindergarten chairs, growing in fields of grass . . . is it any wonder we want to keep them safe inside our bubbles for as long as we can??? when the real world begins to seep in . . . we feel helpless – for them . . . and for us.
Thanks for the comment, rdg. What dismays me is that memorializing those innocents keeps alive the memory of the bomber and his unfathomable act.
–David
December 5, 2006 at 2:26 pm
M. Shahin
This is a very important message here. Thanks for sharing, David.
Thank you, mshahin. I hate to think which message you might mean. They’re all frightening.
–David
December 5, 2006 at 2:55 pm
red dirt girl
mmmm . . . interesting point, David. However, I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forget the unspeakable evil that exists in this world, within each one of us . . . I don’t want to forget the disappeared ones in Argentina, Darfur, the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Oklahoma bombing, 9/11 . . . I want to remember so that when I am faced with the choice to do good, or not . . . I will remember and choose light over dark. That bomber resides in all of us David . . . and so do those innocent children. Me, I choose to remember.
Yes, rdg. I’ve waited six days to reply and I still don’t know what to say. You must have said it just right.
–David
December 6, 2006 at 1:00 pm
litlove
I think a lot of what you are saying is about the way we don’t like to be reminded of all that’s wrong in our world, either in the form of the mural, or of the homeless children. That our feelings of shame then become projected onto those displaced but somehow vibrant elements of our society. Both the mural and the children represent, or memorialise in their way, our failings and our negativity, and as such they can be hard to bear witness to. But children, as your piece suggests, are more tuned in to objective reality, less duped by illusions, than adults, and they force us to recognise uncomfortable truths.
They are shameful, these memorials to the children we’ve failed. As for the children, are they any better off for being dis-illusioned?
–David
December 9, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Annelisa
Phew! So true, so true!
I lived in a very run-down area whilst in Scotland, where often the break-ins were for food from the refridgerator! It was hardly worth locking the doors, because locks were no object. I remember seeing the faces of these kids day in, day out… there was a cockiness to them, but so much of it was bravado…
Then, in London, one of the places I stayed in for a year was the sort of place you looked at the ground as you hurried through and hoped no-one noticed you. Where the walls of flats were so paper thin, all you could hear was argueing… from several sides at once. The first day I moved there, I saw these kids outside, leaning against the wall, smiling and laughing. In my innocence, I thought how lovely it was the kids could live in a crap place like this, and still look happy. I opened the window (admittedly to let the happy voices in 🙂 ) and all I heard until I closed it again was effing and blinding (swearing blue murder) as they ripped this other kid apart verbally! 😦
Anyway, point is, that look of not exactly being ‘resigned’, but knowing your place in the world…. that was there!
Thanks, annelisa. I should come to you for background. You have so much to share.
–David