Chapter 10

That morning, if you looked outside the window, you would see an average spring Sunday in the south. The O’Malleys, who lived next door to Abuela, were busy as usual. The O’Malley children were running around playing tag in the driveway in front of their picturesque white house.The eldest of the four, a girl, was talking on her phone emotively. She had one of those new flip phones that she probably had to beg for. The children were wearing pastel clothes that were only taken out for Sunday Mass, which is where they were headed.

It reminded Jessica of her own childhood; she herself would put on her favorite salmon-colored dress and khaki sandals. Her mom would put her hair in tight, blue ribbon braids. Her family of short brown haired Latinas would pack into the old white van and journey on to church. Jessica, being the youngest of the bunch, would never get shotgun. It was the same every week. Jessica missed her simple southern life.

Jessica distanced herself away from the window; she was in her Abuela’s parlor room, which was the term for a room that wasn’t very commonly used anymore. Then again, Abuela was far away from the current time, 1995.

When the family came over and blasted the Spice Girls, Abuela would angrily turn it off and turn on Louis Armstrong or Frank Sinatra. Her grandmother would waltz around the living room and pretend that her invisible partner was really Abuelo, who had long ago let go of the grass and flown away. Jessica’s mother would then get up and put her hands in Abuela’s; they would dance together for what seemed like hours, and when they were done, both Abuela and Mom would have happy tears in their eyes. The entire family sitting around them would applaud, and Abuela would bow and blow kisses to everyone, her smile reaching from ear to ear. Coincidentally, these little dance parties would happen on Sunday, right after Mass. It was one reason more that Jessica missed her simple southern life.

The Parlor was very vintage looking. There were floral designed couches that were pulled up against walls covered in striped paper. A few features in this room were striking to the naked eye, like the fireplace which was adorned with tiny souvenirs, or the huge grandfather clock creeping up in the corner of the room.  And the huge family photo that was proudly framed up over a table with a bouquet with fake roses and purple lilies.

Abuela sat on a rocking chair in in the middle of the room, and she remained stagnant, her feet on the wooden floor. She rocked forward and then backwards at a painfully slow speed; she gazed up to Jessica and asked, “So, when will you be leaving for California, Dear?”

Jessica nodded, then looked down. She wasn’t really sure how to answer her Grandmother with complete honesty. If someone were to ask her this same question a few weeks ago she would gladly answer instantly with “In about a month!” Then she would ramble on details of how exciting her life was going to be after the move.

Then scenes of the previous week played in her head. The sounds of terror and sirens. Newscasters coming over to her to ask her about the impact this event had on her life. They dubbed the entire thing “The Oklahoma Bombing.” This entire ordeal was the cause of her simple southern life slipping away from her.

Jessica lived a very simple southern life for her entire life. She was born into a loving family; her Padre, an Ecuadorian lawyer with growing arthritis that wasn’t so bad for him when she was growing up had gotten really bad for him as Jessica got into college. He was in a wheelchair now, but he still had a knack for debating on current issues. Mother was an Irish accountant; she had met her husband at an Elvis Presley concert in the 60’s.

She watched Abuela slowly trudge up the stairs to go to her room for her afternoon nap. Jessica looked for something to occupy herself with for a while; she found a new CD player sitting on a shelf next to the rocking chair. She lifted up the CD player and carefully sat on the rocking chair, knowing that the chair was an old piece of furniture. She hit the silver “play” button and hugged it like a family treasure. For her, it didn’t matter what song played, she just needed something for her to relax and reflect.

Music was one thing that was very prevalent in the family. First they were hippies who loved Janis Joplin and occasionally grooved to ABBA, then they became die-hard Michael Jackson fans who pranced around in power suits and loud colors. Recently, her parents had slowed down a bit, mainly due to old age and her father’s declining health. But sometimes they would ask Jessica what was trending and what the hottest fashions were.

She looked at the shelf where the CD player had once sat. West of where it once was, there was a small standing photo of herself wearing a black gown and cap, gratefully  holding a scroll in her right hand. The photo was a perfect representation of the happier times in her lifetime, and the happier times weren’t too long ago.

Jessica’s simple southern life continued on to college. She made her father proud and went to the state university, majoring in computer science, which was a generally new field. She learned about all the new technology, from hardware to software and all those doo-dads. Jessica graduated with honors, and she could see the joyful tears in her old man’s eyes on graduation day.

Soon, maybe too soon, a letter came in the family mailbox. A letter for Jessica, a job offer from Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley was located in good old California, where all the new computer stuff was happening. It was a dream come true for Jessica; all her life she thought about escaping her simple southern life in tiny Oklahoma and moving on to somewhere bigger, where she could see her name in big, golden LED lights. It was a job offer to work on a new project from Microsoft, something revolutionary; it would be called Windows 95. The final project was to include a brand new application called Internet Explorer.  Jessica wasn’t sure what it meant, but she was keen on finding it out once she reached California. Little did she know that this is when the happy times ended.

Then, Jessica experienced the events. Driving up to her Mom’s office, which just happened to be a government building, the sound of the bomb descriptively ringing through Jessica’s ears followed by her sudden instinct to get out of the 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Everything that happened after that was a blur now to her, nothing but numbed feeling. All she remembered was carrying the little bleeding girl back to her parents. That would remain a core memory.

More blurred memory continued after that, rushing to the hospital to bad news. She remembered the waiting room. Seeing the President of The United States, Bill Clinton, on TV. He had a look on his face that Jessica had never seen before; there were deep creases on his eyes and he looked more like a common man than a president.“Will she be okay?” she asked the doctors frantically as they approached her; they had no real answer for her and would constantly rush back and forth from room to room. This was understandable; so many other people needed treatment. Jessica found that watching the news somewhat distracted her.

When seeing the nightly news with her Aunt Josephine, she always saw news of mass murders, bank robberies and all terrible things that could happen to modern society. But she never thought about how the people felt or whatever they were going through; the concept almost seemed foreign to her. Now, it was hard to think that she was one of those people; now she had to swarm through news reporters reporting for the taped nightly news whenever she drove to the grocery store. Oklahoma was once a state that most people couldn’t even recognize, and today it was probably the most recognizable state for the wrong reason.

People that she hadn’t talked to for years called her. Her old elementary school friend Stephanie called her.  Stephanie worked a high society job at the Twin Towers and bitterly joked, “The place where I work is a historic building too, thank the heavens they didn’t bomb it!” Jessica had immediately hung up, and she decided to never talk to her ever again.

She rocked back and forth, mimicking what she saw her Abuela do for years. There was a peaceful atmosphere created from both her rocking and the music that filled the room. Jessica had helped Abuela navigate her new PC before she let her go on to nap; she wondered if she had actually understood anything she taught her. Jessica was now just about ready to leave soon, but thoughts flooded her head which cracked the peace.

In her mind, Jessica saw herself in the middle of a road. The left side of the road pointed to California.  Jessica could get away and leave her southern life and no longer have to worry about reporters. She would make money and meet new people, have new experience and obtain an independence she had never had before; this excited her, but at the same time worried her.

The right side of the road pointed to where she currently was, Oklahoma. Her father no longer had his wife to take care of him, and his health was worsening. Her Abuela didn’t have any grandchildren in Oklahoma either, and all of her other grandchildren had themselves moved on from simple southern life; she would be lonely. And the people of Oklahoma, they would also need Jessica, but in a different way. This was a time that the people of Oklahoma had to forget their differences and come together as a community to rebuild and get back to normal life. They couldn’t mourn forever, and the reporters would eventually have to leave.

A very weird thought came into Jessica’s head, a thought that she would never have thunk, one that surprised her. Jessica wondered, Does California really need me right now?

Jessica laughed it off because she knew that she would have to take this job. She slowly and very carefully got up from the rocking chair, wiped off the dust and walked to the front door. Then she slowly opened and walked into the porch. She was about to shut the door, but something stopped her for a few minutes.

“Bye, Abuela!” she said.  She waited for her Grandmother to answer but concluded that she was probably still sleeping.

She then used all of her strength to close the door and walk to her new car, a 1995 Chevy Malibu.

-Suhani Iyer