I'm about the last person you'd expect to end up in Gotham. One minute I'm chillin' at a roadhouse, minding my own business, then the universe says "YEET". Also, I was dead. And blond. I was kind of... perfect. I was like looking in a mirror. I have...
We are driving late at night. Mum and Dad and me and Daz. We're three.
It is late and I am so tired. I am crying.
The night's dark.
Something is scaring me.
I don't know what it is.
It's bigger than a monster, wider than the ocean.
Outside me.
Inside me.
I'm crying and Daz is asleep, but he won't be for long if I keep this up. "Gita, darling, it's okay," my mum says. "Please stop crying. You're going to wake up your brother."
She tries to tell me the story of my birth, which I've always liked. How I was seven minutes older than Daz. How I was named after Gita Sokolov, a survivor of Auschwitz. Nonna said she must've been a brave woman, so I must be brave too.
But I can't stop crying.
I'm too scared.
Mum has Dad pull the car over. She climbs into the back between our two booster seats.
"It's okay," she says. "It's okay."
She picks up my sippy cup and says my name into it. "GISELA." She's trying to get through to me, to have me hear her in a different way, and it almost works. I stop for a second. But the fear is still there, and I start to cry again.
Mum keeps saying my name, very gently. She doesn't lose her temper, she doesn't put the cup down. She starts singing into it.
Edelweiss, edelweiss Every morning you greet me Small and white, clean and bright You look happy to meet me Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow Bloom and grow forever Edelweiss, edelweiss Bless my homeland forever
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