And, of course, Gram screamed the whole while.
But Nayima carried on despite the lump clogging her throat, despite her smoke-stinging eyes. Then the infected flesh began to disappear, the smell turned more sterile, the ointments began their healing, the bandages sealed the mess from sight.
And Gram stopped screaming. Stopped whimpering. Only moaned here and there to signal she needed a moment to rest, and Nayima let her rest whenever she could.
Nayima retrieved her jug of boiled water, dipped her sponge in it, and gently washed Gram between her legs, water running in streams down the wrinkled crevices of her thighs. Washed Gram’s downy, thin patch of pubic hair. Checked her for signs of skin irritation from urine, and was thankful to find none. That, at least, was going right.
Then it was time to feed her, so Nayima checked beneath the surgical tape that affixed Gram’s gastric tube near her navel. No infection there either, nothing out of place. Then she filled a bag with Ensure, hung it from the waiting hook on the bed, and watched the tube fill with nourishment as it crawled toward Gram’s stomach.
By then, Gram was already sleeping, as if the day had never happened.
The smoke seemed to clear from the air.
“Thank you, God,” Nayima said.
Mr. Yamamoto had running water, and a state-of-the art grill on the patio, if only she could find food worthy of it. He had cleaned out his kitchen cabinets before he left, she remembered; he hadn’t left a mess. No rotting odors from his fridge, no toilets left unflushed.
And no fleas. Mr. Yamamoto’s house was a vacation.
Nayima checked on Gram regularly, turning her every two hours. She moved her car to Mr. Yamamoto’s pristine garage, which looters had overlooked. She even found a flashlight and an empty gas can, which she squeezed into her trunk. She turned and fed Gram again.
The sky was dark long before sunset.
The coyotes were fooled by the dark skies and the sirens. Just before five o’clock, a coyote chorus rose, sharp through the house’s walls. There were more coyotes all the time. Maybe some left-behind dogs had joined the coyotes, howling their grief. They sang all around her, as if Foothill Park were ringed by wilderness.
Nayima decided she wasn’t afraid. Not yet. Maybe one day. Maybe tomorrow.
She sat on the front porch of Mr. Yamamoto’s house with a warm beer, her only indulgence, one of her last six in an eighteen-pack she’d found in a neighbor’s rec room. She’d rather have weed, but it still helped her forget what needed forgetting. A little. For a time. Nayima stared back at Gram’s narrow two-story townhouse across the street. Their jacaranda tree had showered the driveway with purple buds. Would her tree survive the fires? Would she come back and find beauty in the ruins to show her children one day?
She was ready to go back inside when a siren squawked close by, and a police cruiser coasted in front of her, so mud-caked she could barely see its black and white paint. Unnecessarily, the red flasher came on in a light show against the wall.
The man who climbed out of the car was stocky, not much taller than she was, with sun-browned skin and dark hair. She was glad when she saw his town police uniform, which seemed friendlier than a soldier’s. He looked about her age, as young as twenty-one. She had seen him before, perhaps during the evacuation. Like most cops, he wasn’t smiling. Sanchez, his name-tag read. Yes, he had been here before.
She expected him to say something about her sitting outside in her underwear, but he didn’t seem to notice. Maybe he saw people half naked on a regular basis.
“You cleaning this place up?” he said, incredulous.
A week ago, fast food wrappers and debris had covered the grass in the green belt, where she and Shanice and their friends had played until they were too old to play outside. She hadn’t meant to clean it all, but a little each day had done it, her therapy. She hadn’t risked hurting herself to climb the palm tree to take down the flapping shirt and jeans. But she might one day. Trash still hugged the fence around the pool. She hadn’t gotten to that.
“I grew up here. I want it to look right.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” he said.
“My car is packed with everything I need.”
“Then why are you still here?”
She suddenly remembered meeting him before. He had come with the team from the hospital that examined Gram to make sure she only had cancer and not the 72-Hour Flu. Mr. Yamamoto and other neighbors had reported that Gram had been sick for a long time. This cop might have said his grandmother had raised him too. Nayima couldn’t quite remember. Her memories that day had been frozen out from her terror that they would take Gram away.
“My grandmother’s got cancer,” she said. “Remember?”
Gunfire crackled east of them. Sometimes the rounds were from soldiers, sometimes random rage. Looters might come tonight.
“You have a gun?” he said.
The earnestness in his voice made her anxious. “Of course.”
“What kind?”
“A .38?” She tried not to say it like a question. It was Gram’s Smith & Wesson she bought in her old neighborhood, where Nayima’s mother had lived and died. A world away.
“Ammo?”
“A box. And what’s in . . . the chamber.” She’d fumbled, trying to remember gun terms.
“You know how to shoot one?”
“Is this a test?”
She was sorry as soon as she’d said it. His face deflated; maybe he thought they’d been having a friendly conversation. “A gun’s no good if you can’t use it,” he said. He ripped an orange page from his pad, stuck it to Mr. Yamamoto’s window. Ugly and permanent.
REMOVAL ORDER, it read.
“Forty-eight hours,” he said. “Anyone still here . . . it won’t be pretty.”
“Are they burning J next?” she said. The county had divided neighborhoods into lettered sectors. Foothill Park was in Sector J, or so all the notices kept saying.
“Yes. Anyone in J better be gone in forty-eight.”
“Is it working?” she said. “Does burning stop it?”
“If it lives on things we touch, why not?” he said. “Don’t ask me. I pass out stickers.”
But that wasn’t all he did. She noted the handgun strapped around his waist, the semi-automatic slung across his chest.She wondered how many people he had killed.
“I listen to the car radio,” she said. “People say it’s not working.”
“So we should sit on our asses and do nothing?”
“Maybe you could teach me,” she said. “How to shoot.”
He stopped and turned slowly, profile first, as if his body followed against his will. A sneer soured one side of his face, but it was gone by the time he faced her. “Does it look like I have time for private lessons?”
“You brought it up.”
“Are you playing rich princess out here?” he said. “None of the rules are for you?”
He’d been fooled by the mountains close enough to walk to and the estates lined up a quarter-mile up the street. He’d been fooled because Bob had made sure everyone kept the detached townhouses military neat, with matching exterior paint. But Foothill Park had been home to some of the county’s poorest residents, the few who had dark skin or spoke Spanish at home. She and her friends used to call it “Trailer Park,” although she couldn’t understand why.
“This is my grandmother’s house,” she said. “She moved into a tiny little two-bedroom she could barely afford so I could go to school here. I was her second chance to get it right, and she changed my life. Gram bought this house when they were cheaper. She never went to college, but I’m in grad school. When Gram got sick, I took a year off to move back in. Plain old cancer—nothing fancy. Old-fashioned dying takes time. So here I am.”
He stared at her with pale brown eyes, the color of the houses’ walls.
“Hold on a minute,” he said.
He went back to his car, ducking out of sight. His sudden abse
nce felt menacing, as if she should run and lock the door rather than waiting. But Nayima was not afraid of the cop, though she probably should be. What scared her more was the tasks waiting for her: the tedium and horror of her days.
He returned with a plastic shopping bag, heavy from its load. When he gave her the bag, she found two packages of whole chicken parts, frozen solid.
“Do you have electricity where you live?” she said.
He shook his head, a shadow across his brow. “Nah. Bunch of us were sweeping some houses on the hill. Guy up there had a generator and a subzero freezer. Food’s hard as a rock.”
The magnitude of the gift suddenly struck her: She had not had meat in a month, except a chunk or two in canned soup. She hoped the man on the hill had given up his food voluntarily, or that he had left long ago. But if he had left, why would his generator still be on?
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m Nayima. What’s your name? I mean . . . your first name?”
He ignored her question, just like he ignored her underwear.
“Don’t ruin it,” he said. “I don’t have time to cook. I’ll be back tomorrow for lunch.”
• • • •
After Nayima had cleaned and fed Gram in the morning, she grilled chicken on Mr. Yamamoto’s patio Grillmaster instead of washing clothes like she’d planned. The chicken had mostly thawed overnight, so she started cooking first thing. She retrieved the spices from Mr. Yamamoto’s gift box and rolled the chicken pieces in sage, garlic, and paprika the way Gram had taught her. She spent an hour looking for salt—and found it in a hidden, unruined corner of Shanice’s kitchen. She’d had a memory of Shanice’s mother keeping a box of salt in that exact spot. She could almost hear her friend’s laughter.
Nayima hadn’t had much practice on the grill—meat had disappeared fast, even before the supermarkets shut down—so she hovered over the chicken to be sure she didn’t burn it. The patio smelled like a Fourth of July cookout. She didn’t mind the new smoke, since it carried such rich, tasty scents.
She tested a wing too soon. It was too hot, meat bloody near the bone, but her mouth flooded with saliva at the taste of the spices. Such flavor! She wanted to eat the food half raw, but she waited, turning carefully, always turning, never letting the skin burn black.
At noon—the universal lunchtime—he still had not arrived.
Nayima’s stomach growled as she turned Gram from the left side to the right, pulling her higher in the bed beneath her armpits, supporting her against the pillows. Gram moaned, but did not scream. Nayima changed the bag for Gram’s feeding tube and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Gram,” she said. But Gram was already sleeping.
By one o’clock, Nayima stopped waiting for the cop. She ate three pieces of the chicken: a thigh, a leg and a wing, sure to leave plenty in case he brought friends.
He came alone at three-fifteen, coasting up to her curb in the same filthy cruiser. In brighter daylight, earlier in the day, his face looked smudged across his forehead and cheeks. He might not be bathing. All of him smelled like smoke.
“The chicken’s ready,” she said.
“J gets burned in twenty-four,” he said, as if in greeting. His voice was hoarse. “You understand that, right?”
“I’ll fix your plate,” she said.
They ate at Mr. Yamamoto’s cedar patio table beside the grill. Nayima offered him one of her precious beers, but he shrugged and shook his head. She had found paper plates in the kitchen, but they ate with their fingers. It might have been the best chicken she’d ever cooked. She had another leg, stretching her bloated stomach. They studied their food while they ate, licking their fingers even though all the new protocols said never to put your fingers in your mouth. She hoped it wouldn’t be too long before she would have chicken again.
“What’s going on out there?” she said.
“Bad,” he said mournfully. “All bad.”
She knew she should ask more, but she didn’t want to ruin their meal.
The question changed his mood. He wiped his fingers across his slacks, standing up. She wondered if he would try to make a sexual advance, but that thought felt silly as she watched him stride toward the glass patio door to the house. She was invisible to him.
“Be right back,” he said.
“Bathroom’s the first left.”
She decided she would explain herself to him, present her case: how a jostling car would torture Gram, how anyone could see the dying old woman only needed a little more time.
A gunshot exploded inside the house.
Nayima leaped to her feet so quickly that her knee banged against the table’s edge.
Looters. Had looters invaded the house and confronted the cop? Her own gun was far from reach, hidden beneath the cushion on Mr. Yamomoto’s sofa, where she’d slept. Her heart’s thrashing dizzied her.
The glass patio door slid open again, and Sanchez slipped out and closed it behind him again. He did not look at her. He went to the grill to pick over the remaining chicken pieces.
“What happened?” Nayima said.
Sanchez’s shoulders dropped with a sigh. He looked at her. His eyes said: You know.
Nayima took a running step toward the house, but her knee pulsed with pain. Instead, she plopped down hard on the bench. She held the edge of the table to keep her balance when the bench teetered, nearly falling.
Sanchez sat on the other side of the bench, righting it beneath his weight. He planted both elbows on the table, stripping meat from the bones with his teeth.
The smell of his sweaty days, the smell of the smoky sky and the cooking bird, the smell of Gram’s hair on hers from Gram’s hairbrush, made Nayima feel sick. Her food tried to flee her stomach, but she locked her throat. Her grasping fingers shook against the picnic table’s rough wood. She could not breathe this thick, terrible air.
“It’ll be dark soon, so it’s best to get on the road,” Sanchez said. “The 210’s pretty clear going east. Then you’ll want to go north. They say the Five is still passable, for now. You don’t want to be anywhere near here tomorrow.”
She wanted to float away from his voice, but every word captivated her.
“Where?” she whispered.
“Anywhere but San Francisco. My family headed to Santa Cruz. I’ll be going up there too when all this is done.”
He reached into his back pocket and laid a smudged index card on the table, folded in half. She didn’t touch it, but she saw a shadowed Santa Cruz address in careful script.
Then he ate in silence while Nayima sat beside him, her face and eyes afire with tears of rage and helplessness.
“Where’s your car keys?” he said.
“In the car,” shewhispered past her stinging throat.
“You need anything in the house?”
The question confused her. Which house?
“My backpack,” she said.
“Your gun in there too?”
She shook her head.
“Then where is it?”
She told him.
“I’ll go get it,” he said. “Thanks for the chicken. Real good job.. I’ll get your stuff. Just go around and wait in front of the house. Then I’ll open the garage, and you can get in your car and drive away. One-two-three, it’s done.” His voice was gentle, almost playful.
Nayima was amazed when she realized she did not want to hurt Sanchez. Did not want to lunge at him or claw at his eyes. The index card on the table fluttered in a breeze. The air was so filled with smoke, she could almost see the wind.
“No,” she said. “Just go. Please.”
Any sadness in his eyes might have been an illusion, gone fast. He left her without a word, without hesitation. He had never planned to stay long.
When he left, Nayima ripped up the index card into eight pieces. Then, panicked at having nowhere to go, she collected the pieces and shoved them into her back pocket.
When a coyote howled, setting off the chorus, she heard the ghost of Gram’s scream
s.
A sob emerged, and Nayima howled with the coyotes and lost dogs and sirens.
Then she stopped. She thought she’d heard a cat’s mew.
A scrabbling came, and a black cat bounded over the wooden patio fence. The cat had lost weight, so she would not have recognized Tango except for the V of white fur across his chest. The sight of Tango made her scratch her arm’s old flea bites.
Maybe it was a sign. Maybe Tango was a message from Gram.
Tango jumped on the patio table, rubbing his butt near her face as he sniffed at the chicken bones. Nayima cleared the bones away—chicken bones weren’t good for pets, Gram always said. Instead, Nayima grabbed a chicken thigh from the grill and tossed it to the patio floor. Tango poked at it hungrily, retreated from the heat. Mewed angrily. Poked again.
“Hey, baby,” Nayima said in Gram’s voice, scratching Tango behind his ears. He purred loudly. Nayima stroked Tango for a long time while he ate. Slowly, her thoughts cleared.
Nayima went into the house, took a blanket from the sofa, and draped it over Gram in her bed. Nayima kept her face turned away, so she did not see any blood, although she smelled it. She wanted to say goodbye, but she had been saying goodbye for weeks. Months, really. She would have the rest of her life, however long or short that would be, to say goodbye to Gram.
Instead, Nayima gathered the remaining chicken, her gun, and her backpack. She didn’t need the meds now, but they were in the car. They would be valuable later. She also had endless cans of Ensure, which would soon be her only food.
Tango followed Nayima to her car; she left the back door open for him while she packed the last of her things. If Tango jumped in, fine. If he didn’t, fine.
Tango jumped into the car. She closed the door behind him.
As she pulled out of the driveway, she took one last drive around the green belt, although she purposely did not look at Gram’s house and the jacaranda tree. The pool’s blue waters were as placid as they’d been when she and Shanice lived in chlorine all summer, with Bob yelling at them to keep the noise down. She noticed a flat basketball at the edge of the court. The shirt and jeans still flapped in the tree.
The End is Nigh (The Apocalypse Triptych) Page 12