DEVI
Thick white clouds full of snow and heavy with life rolled in over the skies of North Philly. The bubble-pop bass of freestyle music rippled through the speakers on my ’87 Casio boombox. It still worked and had all my old sticker tags on it. Thirteen-year-old me spent a whole summer tagging LA LUZ in thick black Sharpie everywhere. I put “Diamond Girl” all the way up; that was my momma’s jam. She’d play it on full blast making eggs and chorizo on Saturday mornings.
Back when she still used to dance. Freestyle. It was an eighties baby Bori thing, least that’s what she used to say.
I’m Deviana Ortiz. I was born right at the start of IMBALANCE. My momma nicknamed me La Luz because she needed to believe in something, and the warmth of the sun and its bright endless light was the thing. And when all the bodies piled up, and cities like New York and our very own Philadelphia crashed under the weight and death of a plague never before seen, the only light left was the one in my name.
So, I’m here, trying to make things right or at least better.
Better for Orion and Mala.
Better for O.1.
The snow flurried past my window like tiny butterflies. They landed where they pleased, gently. And thankfully, the fuckers weren’t sticking. They were melting right into the concrete. We needed the distraction without the footprints. I didn’t wanna lead anyone to my momma’s old house, especially not the Federation.
Focus. Say your prayers.
Protect life.
Offer it gentle entry into the chaos of the universe.
Honor mothers. Honor birth.
Bless all families in spirit and reality. For all deserve to be fed, cared for, raised to thrive. Provided with housing and education, embraced as full and free people.
May the infants be the light and the joy
And the doula be the guide.
That last line always reminded me of her. My vibrant rebel mom, the one who, while she was pregnant with me, organized all the Free Mothers and secured housing and medical care for pregnant humans during IMBALANCE. She was at the ready, always putting moms and babies first.
That included ten-year-old me, surrounded by Free Mothers, babies, families. The world was crumbling and we got to work. I held hands with moms grieving their husbands, and breathed with them. Mom taught me to pack her black doula bag: essential oils, crimson rebozo, rice socks, Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. Sometimes I even threw in my own raisin packs cuz, like, what if she needed a snack?
I wanted to be her.
Why didn’t I ever say that to her?
Like, when she was still alive?
When she passed, I got deliberate and unafraid tattooed on my forearms. I needed to feel closer to her legacy somehow. As if being her only child, and an Aries and Puerto Rican like her, wasn’t enough.
She got me ready for the all-encompassing work of being a steward to the people, to mothers and children; she knew about Orion before they even met Mala. Jenny Ortiz needed me, her baby, Deviana “La Luz” Ortiz, to be ready for a world on fire, reeling from plague.
I’ve got her black medical bag now. And I’m gonna save the world with it tonight.
And hopefully the Federation will mind its business and let me be a steward to the people, like my momma taught me.
Cuz right now, the whole damned world is watching and they’re aching for a baby.
For life. For the promise that we will survive, that our atoms can replicate and be free. After a full decade since that last human birth—and all the egg-stealing and sperm-harvesting and kidnapping that came in the desperate years after people realized that IMBALANCE took the greedy rich and left the rest of us neutered—we’re sucking at the marrow for hope. Who knew it would feel like this? I’ve never wanted kids and now all I can do is dream about one baby.
Which is so much better than all the damn nightmares I’ve had about Mom’s stroke, you know?
I’m thirty now and I feel her even stronger. Time to plant my feet firm in her tracks and dig my hips into birth work.
Momma, I hope you can see me. We’re taking over your house.
A baby was on its way. A secret fucking glorious the world just might be worth saving baby.
When the Federation assigned me to O.1, I was as skeptical as the rest of the Free Peoples. A couple was pregnant? Yeah, okay. But then I met them, Mala and Orion.
Their parents had been members of the Free Mothers. And they’d known my mom and even had some freestyle music playing when I went to go see them. It was fate and all the other beautiful universe crap that kept me rooted to birth work. That first night I offered them my life and they accepted.
I dropped to my knees when I got home and gave thanks, babes. My heart was full for the first time in forever.
I packed my black medical bag:
essential oils
Mom’s crimson rebozo
peppermint sticks
ink pad
hot-water bottle
pocket-sized notebook
ballpoint pen
Vaseline
I was as ready as I could be to deliver this baby. And defend it, this beautiful half-black Puerto Rican and half-Filipino baby.
Y’all, the first baby born to the Federation of Free Peoples was gonna be one incredible brown-ass baby.
The snow fell in thicker swaths, like sheets of gold-star stickers. My arms rippled with gooseflesh.
A Channel 32 news van sidled down my street. North 8th with Butler on one end and West Erie on the other. “Fuck,” I whispered.
In one swift move, I grabbed the medical bag and moved the key so soft in that lock there wasn’t even a click. I was out and not about to suffer these fools. And if they were watching me, they’d see my commitment to duty, to the lives of people of color trying to have a damn baby in this wild, unforgiving world.
No Federation was greater than that. Especially not when life itself, for all peoples, was on the line.
WE, THE FREE PEOPLES
2076–03–001
51::50
KEY
“…We’re here at South 52nd Street in front of the empty home of Orion and Mala Lafayette-Santana. The scene is fraught with emotion. Citizens all across the globe are asking, ‘What happened to the Lafayette-Santana family?’ And most important, ‘Where is Baby Free?’ Neighbors broke down the door this morning, fearing the worst, and found that Mala and Orion were gone. Our crew in North Philly has confirmed that Deviana Ortiz, their birth worker, is also missing….”
Click.
Ayima sat in the navigator position, guiding us through the snowy backstreets. Trent scanned the sidewalks, using enhanced scope. They both looked at me. I shut off the broadcast screen, leaned back into the MBW’s leather seat, and rubbed my temples.
Our vehicle switched into cruise mode as both Ayima and Trent signed their plea to me. Why are we chasing them and not offering our support?
I signed back, frustrated. They know we support them and still they ran. We must protect O.1.
The fate of humanity was out in a snowstorm, nowhere to be found, and we were still disagreeing over the correct way to save everyone.
We, as in the Federation. All three of us Desmonds: twins Ayima and Trent, and me, Akilex “Key” Desmond. Yes, there are dozens of leaders throughout the world, and together we all make up the Federation of Free Peoples. But we Desmonds built the Federation.
No longer divided by borders and politics, we insisted on being Free People. Everyone who agreed on their own, without coercion or blackmail, signed our pact. Formally known as the 2066 Pact of the Free Peoples. It was originally a pledge between me and the twins. We promised each other compassion, the type that shares food, resources, and provides care for all.
We
turned chaos into unity.
IMBALANCE reduced all of society, all of us, to pain-numb orphans scavenging for survival.
It wasn’t easy. Our father, Hector Caraballo, once the borough president of Manhattan, tried to gain control during the wake of IMBALANCE. Our entire lives he’d been disgusted by having queer black children, two of whom were born deaf, and me, the one who according to him would never be a real man. He refused to marry our mom, Shirley Desmond, or let her receive care from the Free Mothers.
She didn’t survive the birth of Ayima and Trent.
But that didn’t break Hector Caraballo, Mr. Light-Skin Puerto Rican (papi chulo to the women in the Lower East Side) and everyone’s favorite conservative politician. Nothing did. He rallied surviving men of color to snatch the power left by the 1 percent. My father thought he’d outsmarted the plague, convinced it only killed greedy white folks.
He refused the only known treatment for IMBALANCE: comparation treatments. It would have realigned the way his brain processed empathy and compassion. But no, he would not accept it, same way he refused to call me Key, to use male pronouns. He kept hold of his internalized white-supremacist capitalistic values till his last breath.
The headache forming behind my eyes throbbed. I signed to them, Enough. We have a job to do.
Ayima and Trent reviewed their digital map of Central Philadelphia.They’d circled all areas in and around Mercy Hospital and the homes of Mala and Orion and Deviana Ortiz. Somewhere in this fifteen-mile jawn was O.1, and their safety was the main priority of the Federation.
Baby Free must survive. But first they had to be born. And, dammit, there’d been a whole plan, developed in conjunction with the birth family and the Federation. The entire Federation was predicated on commitment to agreements, and if at the first sign of newness that commitment faltered, well then, how? How were we supposed to remain calm and not start an inter-Federation person hunt for O.1?
HOW?
I popped a Xalance, hoping these questions and all the anxieties they stirred in me would ease up.
The night we found out about O.1 was wild. Nurse Reece Jones made the frantic call to the Philadelphia Federation of Free Peoples. She’d only had an hour left on her shift, and it took me about that long to fully understand what Nurse Jones was saying. The words made sense: pregnant, non-binary human, Orion, Mala, family, pregnant, pregnant, with child, someone here is with child.
All those words made sense, but my head, my mind, my brain, everything, all of it was firing away. Every synapse, every concept of the New World of the entire Federation of Free Peoples, each individual article of the 2066 Pact of the Free Peoples, all the names of Lost Consumers on the IMBALANCE memorial wall, the complexity of the DRNA of IMBALANCE—every symbol and word that I’d spent my life memorizing fluttered through my consciousness, and then I was outside of the office and floating past the atmosphere of the Free Globe. I saw Mom there and she was covered in sunrays.
I didn’t register Ayima and Trent shaking me and signing my name. I didn’t feel it when Ayima shook me by the shoulders or when Trent took control of the frequency and completed the call with Nurse Jones.
Cuz it couldn’t be. Ten years. 3,650 days. No births.
And here came Orion and Mala and O.1.
Once I snapped back to reality from that call with Nurse Reece, it was all O.1. We took on O.1 and their parent citizens, Orion Lafayette and Mala Amalia Santana, on the ninety-second day of Orion’s reproductive cycle. We quarantined them. It made so much sense at the time. The Lafayette-Santana quarantine made Federation headlines. It was the first sequestering of Free Peoples since the days before IMBALANCE.
Our duty was to protect O.1 and their parents with the most support and care possible. We provided the family with everything they needed, according to the guidelines set by the Free Mothers: Round-the-clock medical care was specifically designed to meet Orion’s individual needs as a non-binary parent of color; their fridge was stocked with the freshest nutrients, proteins, and minerals and everything else the Free Peoples’ guidebook utilizes to promote well-being and physical health.
I even planted extra ginger roots in their garden, for the people’s sake. We asked ourselves, How would we have wanted Mom to be treated? We did it the right way.
But a movement rumbled among the Free Mothers, and they declared that we were being unjust to our fellow citizens. They said that families deserve to blossom without eyes above and below. Their signs made it seem as if chaos should be honored, as if the life of Baby Free should be left up to fate, all things that kept me lying awake at night mourning a generation that hadn’t been born yet and could possibly die if we didn’t intervene. But no one saw it like that, at least no one on the Free Mothers’ airwaves.
And when the people pushed, we asked Orion and Mala if they wanted to go back home. They were packed and ready before we gave the official okay. I should have noticed then that something was amiss. I should have remembered who I was before IMBALANCE and the Federation, back when I had my own thoughts and didn’t carry the weight of all people on my shoulders.
The agreement was that we’d allow Orion and Mala to return to their home. We continued offering food, medical, spiritual, all of it. At one point, Ayima and Trent learned to bake pie, just in case Orion needed another one.
And every night I sat with Mala, offered my care and attention. Documented every moment of her day and inquired into her well-being, mental health, happiness. She taught me how to distill lavender and turn it into an essential oil. We’d dab some on our wrists during sessions. I showed her photos of me and the twins as kids. Even shared the one picture I had left of us with our mom.
This whole situation was different. There was love between us.
But we both knew that I was still Federation.
We, the Federation, bargained for rights to the birth. We agreed that the birth would be broadcast to the Global Community. We decided that it would take place in a secure location in the presence of Federation-authorized medical personnel.
And when we presented our plan to the Lafayette-Santanas, they agreed too.
We all gave our word.
That’s what the Federation runs on, that’s how we live as Free Peoples united in this Global Community.
Because we trust each other.
We have to. IMBALANCE isn’t over. It lives within us now, waiting for corruption and greed to resurface in each of us. It will forever spread through the saliva in lies, the venom in greed. We were all immune as kids, but now…who knows how its power has grown?
That’s why we’re here, tracking this family within an inch of our own lives. The future of civilization is here right now, and we cannot for one second allow it to try to “outsmart” IMBALANCE.
“There,” Trent signed.
Her surveillance screen popped up and began zooming in through the swirling snow. Ayima pointed to the right, all the way toward the back of a brick building: faint footprints in fresh snow. Their hands worked a mile a minute signing, switching gears, and making adjustments to our course. I slammed down the window and hurled half my body out of it to check those footprints.
Two sets, both leading down the alley.
ALL FOR O.1
2076–03–001
55::50
ORION
In dreams you appeared to me, round like your mother and gloriously black like me. The depth of your gray eyes and the spiraling contours of your footprints filled my nights with peace.
You must know that, mi vida. I knew you before the weight of you was placed in my trembling arms. Your fingers found the softest spot in my neck, and that heart of yours beat for all of humanity.
You were six pounds and eight ounces of revolution.
And the second we spotted Deviana’s flashing lights, you kicked me twice in the gu
t. They were quick little thrusts full of energy and attitude. That was you, telling me that everything was going to be radiant.
And we’d be wrapped in the rays again.
That’s all I needed to run arm in arm with Mala toward Deviana’s car. I’d always wanted to go to the Philly Zoo, couldn’t have imagined that I’d be running past it, pregnant with anything, all in the name of evading the Federation. And of course, giving birth to you.
The second Mala shut the door behind us, Deviana took off. I snapped my seat belt shut and held on tight as the second tremor quaked through me. The veins in my forearms bulged; my eyes rolled back. Bright white light flooded my consciousness and there you were again. Waiting for me.
I ran to you, but you faded away. And, bam, I was back in that cramped car, holding on to all the pieces of myself that I could as we cruised up Girard Avenue. Mala wouldn’t let go of my hand for anything. Through each new tremor, her love anchored me in place.
As we merged onto Route 76, Federation vehicles screamed past us, headed in the opposite direction. Mala whipped her head around. Devi barely increased her pressure on the gas pedal. In fact, she clicked the stereo on, and that “Let the Music Play” freestyle song bopped from her speakers. It helped. The song gave me something to focus on, some extrasensory thing along with Mala’s hands to keep me here.
Sweet babe, it was like you needed to split me open to be free.
None of us noticed the other MBW, cruising two car lengths behind us. Otherwise, we would have switched course and kept driving. We wouldn’t have led them to us.
No, we wouldn’t have done that.
But you were ready to meet the world, and that final tremor catapulted me out of my fear and into the present. I gripped Devi’s shoulder from the back and she floored it to the exit. We hit the boulevard going sixty-five. I was flying, roaring with this adrenaline. It was all new, all you.
We’d make it. And even though neither Mala nor Devi told me where we were going, I knew. You showed me. That home in North Philly away from all the prying eyes and well-intentioned Federation agents, that home where the Free Mothers held meetings full of policy change and home-cooked meals—that was all yours.
A People's Future of the United States Page 24