Every superhero ever; I one.

I can hear it. I can hear everything. I can’t control it. Would you help me please? I just want to be free. Please, help!

I couldn’t talk. I heard my mind say everything while I watched cynical of what comes next for me. I lay on the concrete at the edge of the sidewalk and no one could hear me. They couldn’t see me either. I felt trapped like a severe sleep paralysis has overtaken my whole body. I did not understand any of it. Sunset soon came and I could stand up and walk again. My body appeared in the glass window of the store opposite where I lay. The light of the city was still dim and people no longer flooded the streets. It was as though nothing happened to my body as I walked to my apartment complex hysterical and confused. I pass Mr. Calvin’s kiosk in haste and walk through Annie’s and every landmark of my neighborhood till I reach my house. I stared at myself in the mirror and looked extremely bloodshot. In panic I decided that I’d visit my mother in the morrow and get answers to what’s going on with me.

I set out by dawn, that way, the sun wouldn’t affect me in any way since it seemed like everything went wrong under it. There was no portrayal of anything like this happening and even the new development of radio broadcast didn’t tell what this could be in its entertainment story. Stories on it were triggered by the revolution in the instance. As I spoke to the watcher of the buggies, I only thought about how long it would take before sunrise. My pocket clock read 4:26am; my mom lived in Harlem, one hour away on a fast buggie. I handed the watcher two pounds and we soon set off on the way to my mother’s. During the ride, the driver decided to engage me in a conversation I found rather displeasing. There was so much to think about so it didn’t matter anyway.

“What’s some ‘ole maiden on her way to Harlem for this dark sky?” The driver asked.

“I am visiting me mother in the city,” I replied softly hoping he’d say nothing more.

“She sick or somethin’, I hear the city getting plagued with the devil’s disease,” he continued. “Yous could never tell what’s next these days in this decade. Hell, my ‘ole neighbor didn’t come back from the war as we’d have it.”

“I believe my mother is fine.”

“Yous a really ‘ole maiden, how ‘ole would you be? Twenty-five? Have you got a baron, I seen your clock earlier in the station, vintage,” he pestered.

“I ain’t married.”

“Oh Gadzooks!” He exclaimed. “Yous one of they ‘ole maidens who match to do the hard work of a man, ain’t you? Yous ain’t no loathy lady, yous got charm, yous got no problems. Even my ugliest daughter got herself a baron.”

“I ain’t,” I just said unaware of what question or statement of his I was referring to. He continued to talk through the ride, and I being only half aware of what he said only replied shabbishly. We soon reached Harlem and I was prepared to walk in the courtyard of my parent’s old house. The effect of the revolution was apparent in the city.

My mother was a different kind of woman. She was the kind of woman the old driver was referring to. She went for those matches and held placards for the right to vote. She is well educated in science and medicine from reading old books in her fathers’ library, and she had learnt divinity from a black woman in the middle of a surge. However, she was married at seventeen to an Earl who supported her in her whit. She had all the answers and always found solution to everything. As I approached the steps leading to the door, in the dark, I knocked at the door. My overly heavy dress seemed to put a stain on me as I waited for the door to open. I assumed my parents will be asleep. Five minutes later, I hear footsteps approaching the door. As it opened, my mother pulls me in for a warm hug without asking any questions.

“Say mama,” I started narrating to my mother as we both sit on the dinner table. “I get fully paralyzed in the side walk of the street and no one help me, and I feel like I vanish because no one seemed to look me way, I don’t even see me reflection in the glass of the shop opposite where I lay. Oh mama, I could hear the sounds of every persons thought, I heard the birds too. Then the evening come and it dark, I recover and walk again likes nothing happen.”

“I do not understand this Missy, yous speak as though yous disappeared and entered a realm of thoughts,” my mom replied puzzled, but not as puzzled as I’d imagined.

“Say mama, I am still there. I do not disappear to nowhere; I still feel the breeze of the town and get hit by the dust of the shoes. What do I do, I think the sun is hurt to me.”

“Yous look fine now, but we must test it out when the sun comes out. If what yous presume happens, then yous will have me take ya’ out of the sun,” my mom said determined to fuel her curiosity in this quest.

After random discussions over tea with my mother, it was soon sunrise. My father, being the same man I’ve known since birth was locked up in his study till whenever he got visitors or had to leave the house. My mother and brothers were the only ones that really ever saw him. He provided all the teachers needed for my sister Maura and me to learn how to be ‘good’ women. My mother didn’t object to the entire training, rather she said, “It’s good for a girl to have a skill; she would be useful to herself even though it consists of mediocre barely worthy skills.” She didn’t think any of her daughters were like her and could fight for what she fought for. However, we still got a French, Latin, English, art, and History teacher. Girls didn’t do mathematics. Now my siblings are all married and in business. My brothers being Lords have taken wives from noble backgrounds and my sister Maura was married to the Marques of Southland. She was always more proper of a girl than I was. It was the decade of the revolutions and with the outbreak of this widespread disease, no one visited anymore. I soon set up to join my mother in the sun to test what exactly was happening to me.

I step out of the shadow of the house into the sun and I was still fine. I continued walking through the yard to see what triggers it. As I get closer to my mom, I begin to hear her as though she was speaking but she wasn’t. I begin to go stiff as I heard everything around me. I fell on the ground and suddenly my mother couldn’t see me anymore. She seemed startled but since she was watching me the entire time, she went ahead to feel the ground till she found me. She could feel me and as soon as she touched me, she seemed to go invincible too. However, she was still present just like I was. She decided then that I have acquired powers. She’d only read about this in one book in her entire life, while she considered the possibility of any of it impossible. Holding me, she could now see me. She felt my heartbeat as I couldn’t talk and decided that I was in the state of septic shock and panic attack, nothing more was wrong with me.

“Missy, it seems like yous acquired foreign divine powers, ya’ can hear thoughts and go invincible, along with anything ya’ touch,” she said. “Yous try to breathe, dis is something miraculous, and ya’ can control it.”

I tried breathing through and she held on to me and encouraged me as I was breathing. I soon began to feel my legs move as she further instructed me to clear my head and not think of anything negative regarding my current condition. She looked worried and hopeful at the same time. As I continued breathing, it seemed like the sun gave me strength and was the source of the energy I had to go invincible. I feel my body mutate and my insides turned slowly. It was a good feeling. When my mother let go of me, she seemed to be visible to the world again and could no longer see me. Soon I was still in the sun but with a clear mind free of worry, I stood up and my mother was able to see me once again. I could still hear everything.

“Say mama, I looks fine now, but I can still hear ya’ mind and everything,” I said and actual sound came out.

“Poor Missy, concentrate,” she urged. “Focus on what ya’ really want to hear. What is me thinking of?”

“Breadcrackers!” I curse and tried to focus. Everything is loud and sound like torture. I close my ears but I can still hear it. I hear my mother try to talk to me with her mind. She was saying “Find my voice” on the inside. She kept on using her own thoughts to try and find my focus and as she repeated the one thought, I could only hear her. I found focus. We would continue the practice for the next two weeks. I have discovered my powers included going invincible and walking soundless along with everything I touched, and hearing and controlling the thoughts of everything I will. Sitting on the dinner table with my mother after a day of training my newly developed strange powers, I was ready to go back to my home in South Antioch where I would live normally in control of my powers.

“Missy, I been thinking, and considering the world is how it is now, would ya’ mind staying and helping around here,” my mom chipped in.

“What will I do around here?” I asked puzzled. She walked towards the cabinet and brought out a large file.

“Come, look at dis,” she said pointing at data from the file and laying several papers on the table. “These are locations in Harlem and few moments out of Harlem with underground bunkers and shelters for Nigga and Jewish ladies and babies.”

“Mama!” I exclaimed. “Ya’ want to me to join yous secrete movement and rescue Nigga and Jew babies? Do papa supports dis movement of you? He’s in the government.”

“Missy, silence at once,” she whispered. “Yous could use those powers of yous for good things. The Nigga and Jews ain’t got nowhere else to go. They is being killed by the Red men. They is innocent of life dear Missy. Yous can help them.”

After a long moment of contemplating with my mother, I gave in and decided to help with her movement. In the morning, I’d drive buggies full of Black and Jewish women and children from their hide out before they got raided, to my mother’s underground bunkers and other secrete locations. I’d make the buggies invincible and I’d listen to see if anyone of bad intent was approaching. On the first day, I was reluctant being rather callous at the fact that there was no help for these people and all that was their fate was being killed by the Red soldiers. My privilege made me oblivious to the fact that they were people with different problems far worse than being called an unmarryable whore. I had started a rumor and spread it through the city when I was sixteen, that I had let four common boys defile me, so I’d not get approached at the balls I was dragged to. The rumors got worse and I decided to lay it to bed as I moved to another city when my father wouldn’t have me no more despite believing it was only a rumor. These people’s fight was nothing compared to my struggles of being labeled. These people were in danger of getting killed because of who they are that cannot be changed. The women lived in fear for their lives and their children’s.

“Ms. Missy,” a little girl named Maryanne I had unwillingly got attached to, said. “Will I be likes you? Could I have powers and save all the little girls from the bad men?”

“Yes Maryanne, yous will,” I replied, stroking her cheeks. “Yous can do anything yous ever will to do.” It was a fallacy but it worked well in motivating children. My mother had a doorway through the basement where she accessed the underground bunkers and supplied food for the refugees. As the disease ruled and the Red soldiers killed more, we were able to rescue three thousand, four hundred, and ninety one women and children from getting killed.

In the morning of November 24th 1921, it was the end of the revolution. The disease had ended a year before taking out four hundred of our refugees and one of my brothers. I had faced three years of near death experiences every day I set out on a rescue mission. The radio broadcasted news about the disappearance of several Blacks and Jews from their hideouts being empty or almost empty when the Red soldiers arrived. We were targeted, but they never saw us. They couldn’t predict how we drove in plain sight and no one could see us. At the end of the day, superheroes were not real. On November 25th, with all the refugees we kept gone to the reparation homes, and the four kids I kept whose parents were killed in the war, I and my mother would laugh over a small cup of tea. I’d set out on my own never to know the source of my powers.