Creep

My mother had another child, and I did not know him. How could I? They lived on the reservation together, and my father wouldn't allow me to visit.

This child is was not actually a child. He was a young man. He was probably my age. He was not even really her child, but he looked after her and she looked after him and on the reservation, they're all each other had.

She told me about him in one of the first letters. She told me he was young and handsome and like her, when he became infected, he was torn from his family. They found each other, I don't know how, and with their combined incomes, they got a house, and a nice one. She sent me a picture.

In the picture, she showed up. He wasn't in it. I didn't want to see him.

I asked my father if I could visit. He said no. I could have disobeyed him; I was twenty-one years old when I first asked and living on my own, but he was my father and he seemed like the only family I had left, and so I obeyed and I stayed in the city.

St. Vincent, the reservation, was only ten miles away. The closest reservation to any city, but I wasn't allowed. It was legal for me to step foot on the reservation, but at my own risk. In turn, if an infected person were to step off the reservation legally, that meant that had gone through the rigorous process to obtain a permit, and usually that was only for a short amount of time.

I imagined maybe they had someone to visit, but then I remembered: To us on the outside, they were as good as dead.