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The City Orphan

What Comes After

By Randi O'Malley SmithPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
1
Necklace designed by author

The sun hung low in the sky, as it had for, I think, the last two days. It could have been more, or less, than that – it was hard to tell anymore. I restlessly snapped open the heart-shaped locket that I wore around my neck. The catch was worn from the constant opening and closing that had started as a nervous habit and was now an almost constant tic. I looked at the photograph of my parents, faded and dusty, like my memories of them. They looked happy. It must have been before the war, maybe even before I was born. Nobody was ever happy after the war. Those who were left, anyway. After the bombs fell, clouds of dust hung in the air for months. Most of the people who survived the initial blasts got sick. Crops failed, but there weren’t that many left to feed by then anyway, so it didn’t matter as much. I was younger when it happened and whatever adults I happened to find myself around would usually make sure I got something. Now, at nineteen, I mostly kept to myself. Only a few hundred people were left camping in the buildings surrounding the massive crater that used to be New York City. I knew a few that were ok to trade with and a few that had to be avoided at all costs. Most of the rest were practically zombies, as hollowed out as the crumbling brownstones they occupied. They just kept moving day after day as though they were already dead and hadn’t realized it yet. Click. I snapped the locket shut again. Click. Open. The photo of my parents was still there, as faded as before. I tried to remember what they were like. Click.

Click. I’m nine. My mother is driving us into the city. It’s very rare that we do anything exciting. She spends all of her time working to keep us in our tiny apartment. I have to be a big girl and not whine about having to fix my own meals or wash my clothes. It’s not easy for a woman to raise a child on her own, she tells me. People don’t want to hire her to work for them. There must be something wrong, that she doesn’t have a husband to take care of us. She wears a ring and tells them that he died. He didn’t have enough insurance, so she has to do what she can. She always tells them that he died a year ago, but she’s been saying that as long as I can remember. We move a lot, so the people don’t know she told the same story the year before and the year before that. We don’t have any pictures of him. We don’t have any pictures of us, either. Mother says we can’t afford such luxuries. We have our little apartment and her old car and enough clothes to only have to do laundry once a week. Click. We’re in the city. I’ve never seen such tall buildings, and there are so many of them. So many people. How do people know which building they live in? They all look the same. All stone and concrete and metal and glass. Not like the little house we live in, three floors, two apartments per floor. All the houses on our street look like that, but they’re all painted different colors, so we know which one is ours. It’s yellow, like the sun. We live on the middle floor, right hand side, the one with blue-checked curtains in the kitchen. The kitchen is the second room from the front, you can see it above the driveway. The car slows and my mother points to a man selling newspapers on the corner. She hands me money and tells me to go buy one – she needs to see the job listings in case we can find something better here. I get out of the car, turn back to see which one she wants, the Times or the Daily News, but the car is gone. I wait. There were so many cars, she must have had to drive around the block so as not to cause a traffic jam. Click. It’s nighttime. The man with the newspapers has gone. My mother is still somewhere, driving around a block, but not here. I am alone. She has to come back, so I can’t go too far. I make sure no one is watching me, and find a doorway where I haven’t seen anyone go in or out all day. I wrap my jacket around myself and try to sleep. She never comes back.

Click. I’m thirteen. I’ve been living on the streets since my mother dropped me off on a corner near Times Square nearly four years ago. It’s not easy, but I’m resourceful, and I haven’t had to resort to turning tricks or dealing drugs like some kids I know. I know all the train schedules at the major stations and the bus routes at Port Authority. I know which cab drivers can be trusted and which ones will take tourists on the “scenic route” for a higher fare. I know which restaurants are open late and which ones offer more than what’s listed on the menu. I volunteer my information to travelers who look like they need some help, but they usually tip me. A couple dollars here and there if I’m useful to enough people and I can have a place to stay for the night. If not, I’ve slept on the street before and I’ll do better tomorrow. Suddenly, though, there’s a lot more anxiety in the streets, and the flood of travelers turns to a trickle. People are talking about Russia or Iran or China but nobody seems to really know anything, and this isn’t my bag. I know people, I know the city, I don’t know politics. I don’t know who pressed the buttons, but one day there were sirens and people shouting to get into the tunnels, and then the bombs fell. I didn’t know where I was or who the other people were that were there. I remember waking up with a headache and everything was terribly loud but also I couldn’t hear, and there were bodies. I waited half a day, or half the night, but nobody else moved and nobody came to see if we were ok. Click. I’m picking my way out of wherever I am. It was funny but not funny, how everyone there seemed to be dead but nobody seemed to be injured, no blood, no missing limbs, like you’d expect after however many megatons fell on the city. Was that even possible? I guess it had to be. As I stepped over one woman, something shiny caught my eye. She was wearing a heart-shaped necklace. I looked around, but there was no one to tell me not to take it. The necklace was pretty, and unlike anything I’d ever had. There was a hinge on one side and a catch on the other. Neat! I opened it. There was a photo of a couple inside. It looked old and dusty. The woman in the photo had almost the same color hair as I remembered my mother having, but a much older style. The man looked nice, and they were smiling. I guessed they were probably the parents of the woman who’d been wearing the necklace, judging by her age and the appearance of the people in the photo. She must have loved them, to wear their picture wherever she went. It made me feel better to think that maybe since there was nothing that could be done for her now, they might somehow watch over me if I wore it instead.

Click. I hadn’t seen the sun in two months. Click. Six months. Click. The sun never went down, then finally it was night again. Click. Six years had gone by since the bombs fell. I wasn’t really sure about that, but that’s what people said, when I ventured uptown. I’d started a rooftop garden, and went out to trade my tomatoes and green beans for paper and pencils and clothing. I tried to check off the days, but it was hard when a day wasn’t twenty-four hours anymore. At least we hadn’t had a winter since that first year after the war, so it was easier to grow food. Click. I looked at my parents’ photo again. I mean, it was almost my mother and may as well have been my father for all I knew, so didn’t that make them mine? I sighed, closed the locket, and slung my bag over my shoulder to head uptown.

Fantasy
1

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