Babel

Opening.

Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

That familiar iPhone ringtone goes on and on and on and on and on.

Mildly unpleasant. Not quite irritating.

I would turn my phone off, but it’s not under my pillow like it usually is.

Mildly irritating. Not quite anxiety-inducing.

I turn to my right and push the gray comforter off. Why so hot? It’s only early spring. Whatever. Fine fine.

I hope for a fine day with a fine breeze that lifts my hair ever-so-slightly. A breeze that says: Close your eyes… listen to the fluttering flags and inhale the budding blossoms.

The thought makes me smile, lifts me out of bed. I unfurl, and become aware of a dull ache in my right shoulder.

Oh. Must be bad posture.

I get up and walk towards the scratched dorm mirror on my door. I wonder how many other students have looked into their faces before me, in this same mirror. If they liked what they saw. I look at my ungroomed brows, dark spots, puffy lips.

I would kill for a facial.

Funny how to people I look a distinct way. You like my nose or you don't — you wish you could move that, tweak that, fix that. You might find me odious or perhaps passing. I bring a hand to my face. A patch of skin drifts off to the ground, revealing delicate, inky capillaries. Like someone took a superfine needle filled with charcoal to my face and injected, watching the black spread by blood.

I hardly have time to consider the state of my face before I catch a glimpse of the old New Hampshire pine tree outside my window. The evergreen leaves are gone, revealing a charred skeleton.

RADAR.

My phone grows more insistent. Now it’s a sound like an Amber Alert or a Flash Flood. Loud.

Fuck’s sake, where is it?

I bend down to look for it under my bed and yelp out in agony.

Holy sh-

Now I realize. It was a dream within a dream, the kind your mind concocts to keep you unconscious, trying to steal more sleep for your body. My vision slowly comes into focus, blurred from the pain of my shoulder.

No. I’m not in my dorm room. The whole student body, or what was left of it, was evac-ed on whatever vehicles could be found. I remember why my shoulder throbs. Like myself, it’s been freshly relocated. A med student put it back into place. I try not to think back on how I got the injury, but I dry heave as I remember the smell of charred bodies, of people who’ve soiled themselves, of people grabbing at me for help. People I know. Knew.

R A D A R.

I remember.

Oh no. Oh God. That was the radar that sounded the first ti-

Phonephonewherethefuckisit

⚠️EMERGENCY ALERTS now

————————————————————————————

Emergency Alert

BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO NEW YORK CITY.

SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

I must have passed out. My face stings, and I see blood on the inside of my face-shield.

I remember. I’m in Mount Sinai hospital. I’m in a blue biohazard suit. More panic as I remember that I came up from the basement, the Annenberg Building. It’s 4:02 a.m.

Zaria? That’s your name right? Please, get anything, anything, a wide-eyed nurse had begged me. That must have been an hour ago.

Zaaaa riiii aaaa

What a funny name. I wonder why my parents gave that to me.

Za rii aa

Who looks like a Zaria?

ZARIA!

Someone — Michele — is screaming my name. I jump up. I gag as I remember the Annenberg, the smells of death, of fear, of illness. The sights of bodies torn, gazes dissociated… I would do anything not to go back down, but that’s the only place I know to go. I seize the grab-bag of food and medical supplies I assembled before I passed out and run after Michele.

Fuck. I hope I’m going the right way.

From the corner of my eye I see it again, that white light against the dawning dawn.

As if the Earth has been thrust out of orbit.

As if it’s hurtling towards the sun.

As if God has tired of this planet and sent hellfire.

As if the Great Flood hadn’t been enough.

I don’t look at it this time, remembering that I only have minutes.

SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.

I pull a little boy away from the window, drag him with me by the hand. He’s unaware of my larger force pulling on his body, transfixed by the billowing mushroom cloud over Central Park. Others who’ve been sent up are already ahead of me, running back down to the Annenberg.

RADARRADARRADARRADARRADARADARRRRAAAAAAADDDARDRDADRADRRA

The hospital emergency alarm and the phones are overwhelming my already overstimulated brain. My vision swims.

Radiation sickness, I remember.

I start to think about all the things that are lost. Clean, pretty breezes, fluttering flags, budding blossoms, evergreen trees. I don’t know where my parents have been evac-ed to. I haven’t gotten enough supplies. I didn’t get to say sorry—

I stop. I don’t have the luxury of contemplation right now. Physical world, physical consequences. I have to get my body, and now this little body, underground. As we get downstairs we feel a rumbling. I hope I’m dreaming.

40 days and 40 nights of wandering.

I’ve spent most of that time in a daze, holding the hand of the little boy I grabbed at the window. His little hand probably comforts me more than mine comforts him.

Noah.

23 days ago, 23 days after seeing his mother die, he spoke for the first time. A question.

What’s your name?

I started out of my reverie. A little voice I’d never heard before.

Huh?

What’s your name?

Zaria.

Oh. That’s pretty.

Thank you.

He stares out of the window again. I already knew his name. It was on one of those HELLO! My name is… tags with a little cartoon bear in the corner. They must have given them to all the kids in his class before he got here. I imagine a teacher carefully pinning these tags to her students, making sure the world knew who they were in all this madness, wherever they might end up.

He’s a first grader. Was a first grader. There’s no such thing as the first grade anymore. There’s no such thing as middle school, high school, college. Like they were the faintest fairy tales that just evaporated with the blasts. I shudder as I consider that people evaporated too. Pink mist, they call it, when someone dies like that.

Against my will, I start to think about my last days at college. We were blissful, ignorant. Not even the slightest idea that something like this would happen. The news was as it always was, the little notification rectangles on my phone about celebrities, the stock market, the Tesla cybertruck, whatever, et cetera. There was one rectangle, though, that we all should have been paying more attention to. About some theoretical physicist, Julia R. Pope.

I sat in the courtyard of my dorm’s housing complex, and took a deep breath for the first time that day. I tilted my head up and closed my eyes for a moment, taking in the noon sun. It was a comfortable April heat, one of the first few weeks of spring. I had opened my eyes, mesmerized by the unreal blue of the sky, cut into even rectangles by the white lattice canopy I was sitting under. Beautiful, buttery marigold flowers blossomed next to me, and their scent intoxicated me. I drew my legs up to my chest and rested my elbows on the stone panel behind me. Perfect peace.

How could we know? It was only one rectangle about one woman living out in the middle of the desert in Arizona. A theoretical physicist. Something about her desire for population control. Eugenics. That kind of thing. I had rolled my eyes and closed the page after a quick skim. I had bigger things on my mind.

pingpingping

I looked down at my phone. Frank. He sent me pictures of the prettiest pink and purple flowers blooming back in New York. I was happy to hear from him, but opening up my phone reminded me of the messages from my mother that remained unanswered. We had fought earlier that week. I wanted to spend spring break with Frank and my friends instead of with her and Dad. Stepdad. But the only Dad I’d ever known.

Selfish!

After all I’ve done for you, you can’t even spend a week with your mother?

I never thought you’d turn out like this.

I rolled my eyes, remembering the tirade of insults meant to guilt me into coming home. I was exhausted after my short lifetime with her. It felt like I’d lived two.

Leave me alone! I’d shouted at her, before hanging up.

Snippets of our old life came back to me, spoiling the burst of spring I’d been enjoying. I remembered living together in a refugee camp in Sudan. The way she’d ration our water, scrape together food, try to find books for me to read. Pain. Lack. Humiliation. The only thing that made me happy were the marigolds she would turn up with from time to time. I never knew where they came from or what she traded to get them.

I never knew what to do with these feelings. I was angry at the world, and I took it out on my mother. I knew this. I would apologize.

Later. Not now.

I got up, stretched, and looked across the courtyard. That second time, the sky of the next town over was covered by a curious cloud.

***

I look down at Noah, now asleep in my lap. Maybe this is some kind of karma. Here I am, rationing our water, scraping together food, reading to him. I have no idea how to do this.

23 days ago, I’d found out I would never have children. That day, with the curious cloud, I had been sterilized. At 22 years old. Pregnancy had always been something Frank and I had joked about. Something we understood was a lifetime away.

I itch idly at my face; the pain of the healing radiation burn is something else to focus on.

Om. Mom. I need you.