We haven’t been outside all day and the girls are getting antsy, but also upset at the prospect of having to put on coats and shoes. I convince them, finally, getting a text from my husband asking what we’re up to and wanting to say, truthfully, that we’ve been outside. The elevator takes too long and we climb down the stairs, both girls with a toy and book, still fighting over who got what and why. We pass a man standing on the landing and they stop crying to wave and smile at him and I laugh, remembering how quickly they can switch.
* * *
That night, I’m back looking at Sasha, the computer whirring too close to my face, and I hear something outside our door explode. I jump up to wake the children, who have been asleep for hours after the afternoon spent in the park.
I smell the smoke. The fire alarm.
Sprinklers run and the air is filled with smoke. I hold both girls to my chest and carry them quickly down the stairs, phone and keys and wallet in my hand and their blankets wrapped around their backs.
What’s going on? the four-year-old asks me.
Her sister is wide-eyed, the two of them looking at me, then one another, their cheeks still hot and red with sleep.
I don’t know, I say. It’s fine.
The two-year-old cries off and on and asks for her father. Daddy, Daddy, she says, delirious still with sleep.
Everyone’s outside—so many of us, but we’re never together all at once. Our building is half rent-controlled and half gentrifiers who can’t afford renovated apartments. It’s old and brown and black and young and white and the groups all clump together. I look around for the handful of neighbors I know from the elevator, start searching for Josslyn.
The firemen come to check us and I ask them if they’ve seen her.
6C, I say to no one. Check 6C.
It’s cold and they bring a city bus to store us. Many of the tenants are old and need their medications. Many of us aren’t wearing coats. The cops bring us rough dark-blue wool blankets that I cover myself and our girls in as the bus runs and I hold them and stare at all the neighbors whose names I do not know but whom I have smiled at for years. Seven floors, each with four apartments. Some of the apartments hold two or three families.
Another woman, a newer tenant, also a young, white mother, leaves her husband to come ask if we’re okay.
I want to call my husband but am not sure what to tell him, not sure what has happened. I don’t want to scare him, make him feel worse for having to leave us to go work.
I go up to the Dominican man who gave my husband cigars the week after both girls were born with a card that said Congratulations, a single flower from the bodega across the street for me. We’ve mumbled at one another over the years, held the door open. I ask if he knows where Josslyn is. He speaks only Spanish, and I look to the older woman standing next to him and ask her if she knows Josslyn.
No se, they both say, shaking their heads at the crowded bus, as people stand, talk, sleep. The girls don’t sleep but are quiet, eyes wide open. They wear mismatched pajamas; the two-year-old has hearts on her pants and Santa on her long-sleeved shirt. The four-year-old has trucks and bunnies.
We watch out the window as the firemen file out, then back into the building. The smoke comes from the sixth floor, our floor. I finally call my husband once the girls are back asleep. He asks if I want him to come home, but if he doesn’t stay we won’t be able to pay this month’s rent; we’re trying to save enough so that I don’t have to teach at the high school in the fall. I tell him it’s fine, I’m fine, that he has to stay. That whatever has just happened, there isn’t any way that he can help.
A police officer comes onto the bus and says he needs us to account for one another. Another officer comes on and repeats, I think, what the first said in Spanish, then in Mandarin. We go floor by floor. Slowly, everyone on one and two and three and four and five is counted, relief slowly seeping through the bus; Fine, we’re fine, we all say. When they get to us, the Dominican man and I stand up. The older couple that lives next to Josslyn is not on the bus and the Dominican man calls out for them. The Spanish-speaking police officer stops him, asks him a question. She speaks to her partner, who looks down at a list.
They were sent to a hospital, he says. Smoke inhalation.
Josslyn, I say, Josslyn isn’t here, I say.
I don’t know her last name. Six years, and I don’t know her last name.
6C, I say. Have you been in 6C?
The girls stare up at me with that wired, crazy look of far past tired, far past going to ever sleep tonight.
Sixty-something woman? Black? the cop says.
I walk toward him. Yes, I say. Where is she?
Ma’am, can you come with me? he says.
The Dominican man is behind him, asking the policewoman in Spanish, as frantic as I am. I grab the girls. They lead us off the bus.
Did Josslyn live alone? the cop asks me.
Someone’s found an iPad on the bus for the girls and they watch Dora. Someone’s found a bag of Cheetos for them and they sit entranced, orange powder covering their faces and hands.
I think so, I say. Where is she?
I run my hands up and down the girls’ arms and legs. It’s cold out and they don’t have sufficient clothes on. The big, rough blanket sits awkwardly around the three of us.
Is she okay? I say.
The cop looks at me, then smiles at the girls without responding.
Would you be able to identify a photograph? he says.
The female Spanish-speaking cop is talking to our neighbor and he grabs my arm as they lead us to a cop car. I grab hold of his hand.
They show us a blurry black-and-white photo of Josslyn. It looks paused, a screenshot. I nod, crying, though I can’t say why I’m crying.
Our neighbor keeps a hand around my arm. He goes three times a week to get dialysis. His skin is sallow.
The female cop is speaking to him about the photograph.
Where is she? I ask the male cop.
Did she have children? he says. A boyfriend?
She has three kids, I say. She talks about them to me. I know they’re grown up but she talks about them as if they’re as small as mine.
He shows me another picture. Another screenshot. The man is on the landing between the fifth and sixth floors. He wears a tank on his back.
I get queasy. He was there today, I say. I walked by him.
He was standing on the landing and I’d smiled at him. The girls had stopped fighting to smile at him. He’d kept his eyes angled toward the floor.
They nod toward me. Another screenshot, my back, hunched over, both girls holding my hands, their books and toys clutched in their free hands.
That’s you? the woman says. I don’t realize at first that it’s a question. Obviously it’s me. I look at them. They’ve frozen the screen. The girls are looking at the man, his head still down.
I nod.
Had you seen him before?
I look back at our neighbor, who is staring, shocked, at the screen before us, his face even more sallow.
I don’t think so, I say. I’m not sure.
* * *
On the security camera, which I watch, hours later, in the interrogation room with the overly apologetic cops, I see the man in the exterminator’s uniform. The girls are in another room with a female cop, more junk food, the same iPad. On the screen, I smile at the man, my lips move. I must have mumbled something. Hi, hello, good afternoon, trying to be polite, but my mumbling often isn’t loud enough and goes unheard.
He smiled back at me, can slung over his shoulder, the wand for spraying in his hand. So that’s— I say. He pushed her into the elevator and she stood there, mouth agape, talking, maybe. She screamed or talked or begged. The wand popped up, although he was out of the camera’s line of vision. The wand waved past the screen three times and it feels certain in this moment that she’s screaming. He threw something small and round in the elevator, the wand disappeared, door slid shut, the
screen went black.
They caught him within hours of the explosion. They have him on tape. There were burn marks on his fingers and his face.
I confirm the time they already have on the bottom of the camera screen. I confirm I saw the man, that he was standing in the stairwell.
Had you seen him before? they ask over and over.
I shake my head. I don’t think so, I say.
Josslyn lived alone?
I think, I say.
The Dominican man, whose name I now know is Luis, has told me, through a combination of hand motions, English, and Spanish, that they think the man who killed her might have been her son.
* * *
I leave the girls with their iPad and with Luis and I call my husband to tell him what’s gone on.
Jesus, he says.
I think I’ll start to cry but I stare straight ahead, wishing he were here, waiting for him to tell me what to do.
Did someone call her family? he says.
I think.
How are the girls?
Watching Dora, I say. I’m so grateful for the straightforward ways that comfort can be given to small children. Eating junk food and being doted on.
How are you? he says.
I stay quiet because we can’t afford for him to hear me crying. If I start to cry he might come home and then we’ll have no way to pay our rent.
* * *
The explosion makes the news and three of my friends call.
You have to move, says my friend who is quadrilingual.
We can’t move, I don’t say.
* * *
At the apartment, the burned smell is everywhere—the scorch of the explosion and the remnants of the water that they’d sprayed to make it stop, antiseptic smelling, bleachlike. It’s proof, each time we walk up the stairs, that the memory of violence that runs through my head a thousand times a day is real. The girls’ legs are small and squat and they’re exhausted by the walk up six flights to the apartment. Carry me, they both say. On the third floor, I scoop one into each arm and keep going.
* * *
Three days straight, I call in sick to work: I pick them up early from school. I take them to the park and pack loads of snacks and we run around and have a picnic. The fountains at the playgrounds have been turned on and they get soaking wet, still in their clothes, and then fall asleep in the stroller as we walk home.
The four-year-old is too big maybe for the stroller, but with the stroller, I can run them, and we go all over town. I push them uphill, leaning forward, arms stretched straight and legs digging in.
We loiter at the bookstore and sit on the floor and I read to them. They ask to buy books but I explain this is the books’ home and that they have to stay for now. They pile on top of me, one and then the other, each with a stack of books beside them. Our legs all stick together until someone’s leg is taking up too much space and then there’s fighting, and then both of them get up and my legs are wet from sweat. I ignore the emails from work. I think maybe I’ll never go back and we’ll tell the landlord that we’re not paying rent until the apartment doesn’t smell like smoke any longer, and then I think about Josslyn and I cry and then stop crying so our girls don’t get scared.
I keep trying to fit it into my brain. We sat outside together drinking coffee, all the hi hello kiss the girls how are yous. She was a human who was loved and living. She died in this awful, thoughtless way. Like with nearly every other tragic thing I scroll through, in all the scrolling, I feel wholly ill equipped to digest it properly. I force myself, each time we climb the steps, to think about her, to attempt to mourn her, grieve her in some way. I try to hold, each time we walk past her door, the fact of her, and then I try to hold inside my head the fact of her being gone. I don’t know, though, what to do with this fact. The specific shape this sadness takes is knobbed and awkward. We did not know her, really. The violence she experienced is almost unfathomable to me.
* * *
My husband comes home two days later. He got in a fight with his clients. He was desperate to come home and they refused to pay him because the job wasn’t done but he still left. Fuck them, he says, when he talks about it, but he looks down. Our funds are dwindling. Later, after we’ve put the girls to bed, after they have hugged him, kissed him, climbed overtop him and he has cooked us dinner, we click through the spreadsheets we’ve been keeping to keep track of our income and our spending. His student loans weren’t covered by the bankruptcy; we have piles of letters from creditors, one of whom is contesting the bankruptcy, and we have to pay the lawyer more. My husband says: How is it we do everything so wrong?
* * *
We have to dress up and get a babysitter.
We can’t afford a babysitter, I say.
We can’t afford not to go, my husband says.
We also can’t afford this dinner if we have to pay our share. This man for whom my husband built six walls of bookshelves on the Upper West Side wants to talk to him about some other opportunities. We have seventy-two dollars in our bank account. Once we pay the babysitter we’ll have none. We have to go because my husband has begun to think that maybe he should opt back in to the systems we decided to opt out of, and this guy might offer him a job, might offer him a way back in.
* * *
I put on mascara and a dress, then take it off and put on a black turtleneck and black pants and wash my face. I’m warier of looking like I’ve tried too hard and failing than I am of seeming like I don’t care what they think. The children play in their room and I go in and read them books while my husband gets dressed.
The sitter comes and I hold the children’s faces, kiss them. The baby quickly nurses. They’re fresh from the bath and their hair’s wet and they pile overtop me. I don’t want to go, I say to no one. Come on, my husband says, from the hallway by the door. The building still smells like smoke. We walk down all the flights of stairs.
* * *
Who are these people again? I ask on the subway.
He has a start-up, says my husband. I think maybe it’s my fault for saying all those years ago that he should do the thing he wanted. I think the thing that he was proud of, we were, his not being like them, has begun to feel less like what he wanted. We’re both tired of being broke all of the time.
Right, I say.
Fuck start-ups, I say. After, we’re quiet for a while.
The ads on the train are for a freelance website that I’ve never been on. They espouse the power of working nonstop, entrepreneurship. Before I got this job at the high school, I had five jobs and my husband had two and that’s when we went a hundred thousand dollars in debt.
I hate this fucking ad campaign, I say to my husband.
I’ve said this before so he just nods.
Try not to swear this much at dinner, he says.
* * *
The people that we meet are our age. It takes me a minute to place her, but she sat next to me at the party on Long Island, held the baby’s foot while I nursed her, months ago.
The guy says my husband’s name but only part of it, like they’re buddies. It’s the same name my husband’s friends from college use when we have awkward dinners with them at our house so we don’t have to split the bill.
The woman goes in to kiss me, but I realize too late and pull away from her and she looks down. I’m sorry, I say. She’s pretty. She has long, dark hair and dark-red lipstick, large earrings, and her eyes are lined.
She’s a corporate lawyer, I remember.
That’s so wonderful, she says, when I tell her I teach at the high school.
I really love the kids, I say.
Of course, she says. As if it is so generous of me. Of course you do, she says.
I wonder if this is all we’ll say the whole night.
How are your little girls? she says.
Good, I say. Magic, I say. Relieved she brought them up.
We’re still trying, she says, leaning close to me. I like her better up close. I s
ee her want in the way her eyes dip closer to her nose; I smell it, desperate and sour, on her breath and lips.
On the menu I see that there is not a single meal that costs less than all the money we have sitting in our bank account.
I get a gin martini and my husband gets a whiskey and I register that, if we have to pay for our half, we are already close to having spent too much.
I talk about our kids while our drinks are delivered. I love talking about our kids and I show her pictures of them on my phone. My face heats up as I drink more and I’m sorry for her as she leans close to me.
How long have you been trying? I ask.
She touches the rim of her martini glass with a manicured finger. Two years? she says.
I touch her elbow and then wonder if I shouldn’t.
I’m thirty-five, she says.
I’m younger than her but don’t say this.
My best mom friend had her first kid at forty, I say. This is true, and she smiles, holds her hand over her mouth.
We get a shared plate of hors d’oeuvres and now we officially cannot afford this dinner. I drink more quickly. My drink is empty and we all get another round. I’m drunk already because I never drink because I’m still nursing.
I watch her stare at my husband as he talks.
You live in Brooklyn? she says. I tell her the name of our neighborhood. Nice, she says, nods.
Someone was murdered in our building, I say without thinking. She looks confused, then shocked, then scared. I tell her the whole story, thrilled, somehow, to watch the shape of it on her face. I feel both more separate and closer to both her and Josslyn as I go on.
Did they catch him? she says. Will you stay there?
We can’t afford to move, I say, and shrug.
She drinks more and I tell her that they caught the guy within hours of his fleeing the building. They know now he was a stranger, not her son.
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