Trinity Sight

by Jennifer Givhan

  “My neighbor. Her parents are missing.” She motioned for Eunjoo to join them and introduced her to Amy.

  Eunjoo stared Amy up and down, like she was sizing her up, then said, “You’re coming with us, right? You’re supposed to.” Her bird’s voice insistent, pragmatic.

  Amy raised her eyebrows at Calliope, who shrugged.

  “Where are you heading?” Calliope asked.

  “My family’s in Cruces. You?”

  “My tía’s hacienda in Silver City.”

  “That’s on the way,” Amy said, hopeful.

  If the pumps were out of gas, could Calliope make it all the way to Tía’s hacienda? Not if she detoured for Amy. Though Las Cruces was less than two hours out of the way, and she’d rather have another woman with her on the trip, she wasn’t sure she should risk it. Maybe she could drop Amy off near Truth or Consequences, the closest town near the turnoff that would take Calliope into the Gila Mountains toward Silver City. Aloud, she said, “You can hitch a ride with us.”

  “You’re a lifesaver. Last night was the scariest, loneliest of my life. And that’s saying something.” She flicked her cigarette to the ground, scuffed it out with her boot.

  “Do you have anything with you? Backpack?”

  “Nothing. I just jumped on the bike and took off.”

  Calliope wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been thinking properly. At least she’d managed to pack. “Come on,” she said. “Hop in.” The way they all piled in made Calliope think of a road trip.

  “You have any water? I’m dying.”

  Calliope handed Amy the precious liter bottle she’d found at Susana’s. “Only this.”

  She watched as Amy gulped the water, her mouth on the rim, drinking almost half the bottle before stopping for air.

  “Slow down. I don’t know where we’ll get more.” Calliope reached out and Amy handed the bottle over, but the way she stared after it, Calliope knew she needed much more. But so did she and Eunjoo.

  Amy wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Listen, I didn’t want to do this alone, after what happened at the gas station, but now that we’re together, I think it’ll be okay. We’ll break into a store or something.”

  “I thought of that. I didn’t want to leave Eunjoo alone, or take her in with me. Nothing feels safe.”

  “We need a plan. I’m starving. And I stopped needing to pee hours ago.”

  “So did I,” Calliope admitted, driving away from Amy’s dead bike.

  “Shit. Doesn’t dehydration cause labor or something? You’re not about to give birth?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good.” She put her helmet on the passenger floor. “Is that blood on your clothes?” Amy stared at Calliope’s tunic, her eyes wide, forehead creased.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice catching.

  “Is it yours?”

  Calliope shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about Susana. Not in front of Eunjoo.

  Amy didn’t persist.

  They passed a chain of fast-food restaurants.

  “Do you think we should try any of those?” Amy asked.

  “A convenience store would be better. Packaged food keeps longer. The power’s been out a day, right? Fast food could be spoiled.”

  “I doubt it. That stuff’s like cardboard. I saw this YouTube video about a McDonald’s cheeseburger left out for weeks that didn’t go moldy, not even a little. That stuff’s not real food.”

  They passed the dim gold-and-red arches. Even the twenty-four-hour drive-throughs were dead. Calliope realized the ubiquity of chain restaurants and their neon night-lights across major cities and small towns alike had been a source of comfort. Strange what a person misses when it’s gone. Had Andres brought food along on his journey, with their son? Was Phoenix hungry?

  Daylight shone iridescent between smoke swirls, drifting in from the mountains to the east and the Sisters to the west; soft white ash sifted across the windshield like snowflakes. Calliope turned on her windshield wipers. This wasn’t snow. It was the leftovers of her home.

  “You okay back there?” she asked Eunjoo.

  “Just thirsty.” Although Eunjoo’s small voice was not a whine, Calliope felt a tugging between maternal protection and irritation.

  “We’re gonna stop soon, chica.” Her head throbbed despite the water she’d had back at Susana’s. “That one,” she said, pointing toward a gas station convenience store. “We’ll break in there. We need gas anyway. We’re below a quarter tank.”

  “You think these pumps will work?”

  “I don’t know. We have to try. Water first, then gas.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “I’ve never robbed a store. I have no idea.” She’d never been much of a wild child and sensed Amy was more suited for this kind of venture.

  “We could throw something into the window, break it.”

  “If an alarm goes off, oh well. It’d be a miracle if the police appeared.” Calliope turned toward Eunjoo. “Chica, you stay in the car.” She had no idea if Eunjoo would listen, but if there was a lunatic at this gas station, she figured the girl would be safer locked in the back seat. She thought of breastfeeding Phoenix during an electrical storm when the power had gone out. Calliope feared the dark storms and loud noises. She still slept with the bathroom light on most nights. But that night, nursing him, watching the way he suckled by candlelight, undisturbed, tucked between Calliope’s breast and the pillow, she’d felt calmed by him. The baby boy, comforting his mama just by his being there. She mostly hated breastfeeding. It hurt, chafed her nipples, kept her awake at night. She’d developed mastitis three times, always with a high fever and rash. It was sheer bullheadedness that kept her at it. But that night during the storm, she loved it. Eunjoo’s presence now comforted her too.

  The parking lot was eerie with no lights or people, but no chains or closed signs either. Only empty buildings. Only whistling through the trees. Calliope stepped out, holding her belly below her abdomen. Amy watched her waddle around the front. “You’re gonna pop any minute, huh?”

  “Not for two months. It’s just like this with twins.”

  “Yeah, my aunt had twins. She was huge too.”

  “I’m a cow.”

  “You’re brave.”

  Calliope smiled briefly. She didn’t feel brave, but she’d take it. She searched the ground. “Could you throw whatever it is we’re going to throw through the window? I’m brave but not strong.”

  “Sure thing, momma,” Amy replied, and Calliope cringed. That was the third time she’d called her that. Calliope hated when anyone said it. She thought of big momma, fat momma, old momma, and a whole stream of your-momma jokes she’d heard when she was a kid. But she couldn’t afford to alienate Amy, so she held her tongue.

  Nothing on the ground immediately stood out as throwable.

  “We could try throwing the keys?” Amy suggested.

  “I don’t want to break them.”

  “Do you have one of those window-shattering tools?”

  Andres might have stored one in the glove box, for emergencies. That sounded like him. But she didn’t want Amy to know about the gun. “No, I don’t have anything like that.”

  Amy shrugged, then chucked rocks from the median. They didn’t make a dent. “Not heavy enough. We need something bigger.”

  “Trash can?” Calliope asked, nodding toward the metal can in its cement casement. “We could try pulling it out. It should be heavy enough.”

  Together they lifted and it slid right out of the concrete, a small box from a larger one, like a Russian nesting doll. Calliope helped Amy drag it toward the window, until they were standing less than ten feet away. And though she shouldn’t have, she helped Amy raise it over her head, and at the count of three they heaved it toward the glass. Nothing happened.
The metal scraped against the glass, then landed on the sidewalk with a thud, spilling garbage everywhere. Eunjoo squealed from the car in fear or delight, Calliope couldn’t tell.

  “It’s bulletproof or something. Jeez. What the hell?” Amy was panting.

  “I’ll look in the trunk. My husband’s a paramedic. He may keep a toolkit back there.”

  They pulled the bags and suitcases from the trunk.

  “You don’t pack light,” Amy said.

  A red flush speared Calliope’s cheeks. She’d filled the car with things they wouldn’t need and didn’t bring anything useful. Except when she found Phoenix—he’d need his stuff.

  Her mouth had grown stickier and dry. The girl had gotten out of the car and was staring blankly ahead, her eyes sunken. “Eunjoo? You feel sick, chica?” The girl nodded. All the ash and smoke didn’t help; the water Eunjoo drank to wash down the peanut butter wasn’t enough. Calliope had to let her drink more of their water, almost gone after Amy’s gulping. She fetched the liter bottle from the car, handed it to the girl. “Here, chica. Sip this.” When was the last time she’d felt the twins kicking?

  Underneath the luggage in the trunk, they uncovered the first aid kit and a box of clothes, a flashlight, a blanket, but no water. Calliope pulled the boxes out, uncovered the spare tire. “We could use the lug wrench,” she said, surprised at herself, as she lifted the fabric veneer from the trunk that covered the spare and its parts. She had never changed a tire in her life.

  Amy took the L-shaped metal rod from her and pounded it on the convenience store’s glass, cracking fissures with each strike. It didn’t immediately shatter, the way Calliope had seen on movies, but after several hard hammers, it gave way, chinks of glass splitting. No alarms or sirens sounded. No one inside came to see what was happening. Nothing but glass on the ground. Even Eunjoo was silent. Amy stepped through the glass, her black boots crunching. Inside the store, she pushed on the front door, exclaiming “What the hell?” when it swung open. She pulled it shut again, calling to Calliope, “Try opening it from your side.”

  Calliope pulled on the door. It opened wide.

  “It wasn’t even locked,” Amy said, exasperated. “All that work for nothing. We’re brainless.”

  Calliope didn’t care if they were brainless. She needed more fluids now, and so did Eunjoo. From the refrigerator, she pulled two 32 oz. bottles of Gatorade and took one to the girl beside the car before she began drinking the other bottle. “Don’t gulp it or you’ll get sick, chica. Just sip.” She watched Eunjoo’s small sips and tried following her own instructions. She felt vomity and dizzy despite the relief in her mouth and throat, so she sat down in the driver’s seat, trying to regain her energy. She felt like she’d been running for hours.

  Amy emerged from the broken window instead of the door holding a bag of white powdered minidoughnuts and a Pepsi. “I wanted chocolate milk, but it smelled gross.”

  “You should drink more water, Amy. That’s all sugar. You’re probably dehydrated, too.”

  “Nope, I go days without water. At school, I lived off junk food.”

  Calliope wondered how Amy stayed so thin then remembered she danced for a living. She chastised herself for comparing herself to another woman, here in the middle of an apocalypse (Amy’s words, not hers). She glanced away from the white girl toward the glass shards littering the sidewalk, a crackling hole in the window. “We should gather supplies and keep moving,” Calliope said, scanning the landscape that surrounded the gas station. They were near the Río Grande; cottonwoods and other trees of the bosque only grew near water. There was a Starbucks in this town where she’d stopped for a coffee and chocolate milk the last time she’d driven down to her tía’s. Andres had teased her, You and your Starbucks addiction. She drank decaf mochas daily, all through both pregnancies, pointing out the safe caffeine levels and defending her right to drink coffee. Give me this small comfort, at least. Humans might someday evolve like seahorses—and men will bear the children. She reminded him that seahorse fathers went through childbirth and labor and were the ones physically distressed. She had asked, Where, pray tell, does the biblical story of Eve figure into that? Her mother hated when she disrespected God, but Andres never minded. Although he was devoutly Catholic, like her mother, and attended church every Sunday without Calliope—who preferred to spend her mornings sipping mochas and researching or hiding out at the planetarium—Andres always listened to her hypothesize without censure or judgment. Where could religion meet science? Answering that question had consumed her since Bisabuela’s death. And not just religion but belief. Bisabuela’s belief, for instance. At what cliff, what burial site, what meteor in the vaulted dome of sky did God, the Ancient Ones, and science coalesce? Could her family be there now? Andres, Phoenix, and her mother? They couldn’t just be gone. It didn’t make sense.

  Her stomach twinged, the twins kicking. She choked back the taste of bile. She couldn’t allow herself to linger on the possibility of their deaths. They had to be alive. There was no other way. She didn’t have faith. She just knew. No bodies. No blood. No signs of struggle. The evidence said keep searching.

  Though she wanted to ask Amy what she believed in, they’d wasted enough time already. Calliope still felt lightheaded, but they shouldn’t stay in one place. They had to move. There weren’t any volcanoes this far across the river, but whatever else the earth could conjure up to scare or break them, she didn’t want to imagine. Storms atop storms had swept the country the past few years, hurricanes and tornadoes where they didn’t belong, in states unaccustomed to such weather, leaving millions without power for weeks. If this was a global warming catastrophe too, where was the government relief? The helicopters? The Red Cross?

  No one was coming. She must have known this already. But the realization wormed through her stomach, unsettling the fluid she’d just poured down. They were on their own.

  She leaned against the car for support, dizzy again.

  Amy cleared her throat. “You should make the kid pee now if you can,” she said. “We’ll be on the road a while. Might have to sleep in the car.”

  Calliope nodded, opened the door for Eunjoo. “You heard her, chica. Let’s go.”

  Amy followed them into the store, filling her mouth with the two remaining doughnuts and leaving a trail of powdered sugar on her chin and tank top. “While you ladies relieve yourselves, I’ll finish stocking up,” she said. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  After Calliope and Eunjoo finished in the restroom (the toilets wouldn’t flush), Calliope sent Eunjoo back to the car and grabbed a box of matches, canned vegetables and meat, a can opener, magazines which she figured she could use as kindling if necessary (how hard could it be to start a fire?), and packs of chewing gum to keep their mouths moist to help preserve water. She wasn’t sure it was true but Andres had told her that a person could survive longer by sucking on a button to create saliva, and then drinking that. The thought of surviving on spit churned her stomach, but sugarless spearmint seemed all right. She carried her items to the checkout counter then laughed at herself. Habit. She didn’t want to be a thief, but she didn’t have her wallet anyway. It had burned with everything else.

  She was dragging a five-gallon jug to the front door when she heard Eunjoo screeching. Calliope dropped the water and scuttled through the doorway. Outside, Eunjoo was cowering on the ground, Phoenix’s backpack still on her back like a tortoise shell, her arms covering her face. In front of the girl, just a few feet away, a pack of coyotes, their reddish-brown fur bristling against their rawboned bodies, their teeth bared, muscles tensed. With all the people gone, maybe they’d been out dumpster diving, a gluttony of garbage-eating, but there must’ve been plenty of food not yet rotten. Why attack a child?

  “Scare them,” Calliope hissed to herself or Amy or Eunjoo, she wasn’t sure, momentarily frozen in panic. “They’re afraid of humans.” She looked over t
o check if Amy was seeing this, but she was still inside stockpiling junk food. “Amy,” she shouted, snapping out of her immobility. “Help!” Calliope raised her hands above her head, waving them wildly.

  Amy jerked her head toward the parking lot, and yelled, “What the shit!” Then she grabbed a rack of magazines and threw it out the glass hole toward the pack, but the coyotes didn’t budge. “Shit-shit-shit!” Amy shouted, continuing to throw things.

  Calliope dropped her load of groceries, ran in front of Eunjoo, blocking the coyote’s path to the girl. Bile snaked through Calliope’s throat and her chest pounded, but she kept yelling. The coyotes were growling but didn’t move. Calliope scanned her mind for everything she knew about coyotes. They didn’t hunt in packs. They only banded together if they were investigating, curious about something new. They didn’t usually approach humans. They were afraid—unless they’d lost their fear because a human had fed them. Had Eunjoo fed them? She yelled louder, waving her arms frantically, Amy still throwing things—now six-packs of beer bottles. The coyotes howled, an eerie, otherworldly sound in the early morning light. One grizzled dog skulked forward from the pack, hackles raised, and Eunjoo began backing away. Amy finally hit one with a full quart-sized glass bottle, shattering against its flank, and the animal retreated, yelping. The distraction allowed Calliope time to edge backward, close enough to Eunjoo to snatch her up and scramble her into the car. As Eunjoo climbed over the front seat, Calliope turned the key, revving the engine. She threw the car into reverse and drove straight toward the pack, honking the horn. The dogs scattered, trotting toward a clearing of trees. Calliope drove to the front of the store, away from the glass. She got out to help Amy finish loading the car with groceries, but Eunjoo was crying, striking that hysterical pitch children reach when they’ve hit their emotional wall or are hurt badly.

  “What is it?” Amy asked, coming up behind her. “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Calliope said, checking whether the coyotes were still nearby. She didn’t see any. She held the girl’s shoulders. “The coyotes are gone, chica. You’re safe.”