The Only Ones (15 page)

As far as I heard, she wouldn’t be the only one. But I did not say that. I mean, I got no idea how these mothers got theirs.

One of them peeked outside. The cops was gone. The mothers left one by one, with their kids. I was the last to go.

After that, I walked all the way back to this same cemetery toilet a few times to see if these regular mothers were there. I don’t even think it’s to compare. I just wanted to see them. They never showed.

Two months old. Still alive.

Here is what I worry about now. Should we get the Check Up? Ani was alive and all but cried so much.

Here is what I worry about next.

What if they make her take a shot?

She’s a Sylvain hardy, come on! She is not getting Stealth or any kind of virus.

It could work the other way though. Hardies don’t get anything if we don’t have a shot. What if we do?

I had a shot when I did vaccine trials. I wasn’t a baby when I took the shot though. I was thirteen years old. That I heard.

Ani is two months, one week old and crying night and day.

When she is two months, one week, four days old, and crying so hard I almost thought one of us is going to pop, I put her in my shirt and walked to Ridgewood. You have to go on Grandview Avenue. The trip took like one hour, and you pass a lot of empty houses, most of them not even burnt, and when I finally get to Myrtle Avenue, so many mothers is lined up I could hardly even believe my eyes, though with the Hygiene thing, they are so wrapped up you could not see them or the kid. The nurse at least just wears a mask when she calls out, “Ladies! Behave!” because they are all pushing and shoving. “There is a pile of free Process, just hand in your swipe and your child’s swipe for ID check,” and I’m like, ID check? I’m not doing that. I just squeezed through the line, grabbed Process from the pile and ran. Another mother did too. We ran to Grandview Avenue. The other mother sat down on a curb, pulled her wrappings off and fed her kid green Process with her hand. I did too. Ani stopped crying. She slept all the way home.

She cried again when we are back in our unit. I gave her more Process, with my hand. It wasn’t hard at all.

She cried again.

I gave her more.

Cry. More. Cry. More.

This time it didn’t work. She wouldn’t take green Process. She just cried. I mean, she really cried. It is late now, night. She didn’t stop crying once. I just walked right out in the night with her crying, all the way back to the Center. It was closed. I walked around the whole building with Ani crying and thrashing till somebody comes to the door. I don’t even know who she is. She says her name is Sonia and she is a nurse. I don’t even know if she is. She puts her hand on Ani’s head, then stomach, says, “Wind,” and goes off to get something for wind. So this is wind. So Ani got wind. Sonia comes back, puts something in Ani’s mouth, and Ani conks out. Sonia didn’t even ask to see ID. I don’t know why she didn’t. I don’t know how Sonia knew it’s wind. I don’t know if they all get wind, all babies. They had to get it sometimes, or Sonia wouldn’t know.

So that is one thing Ani had in common with regular babies. She is a Sylvain hardy who got wind.

She is a Sylvain hardy sleeping all the way back to Elmhurst and when I put her down on the floor she keeps sleeping, and I am so tired from two trips to and from Ridgewood, I could hardly keep myself from crashing beside her but I’m pretty sure if I lie down, here we go again, but I must of done it anyhow because I woke up in broad daylight. We slept the whole night through. It is the first time in two months we slept the whole night through.

Everything seemed different when we woke up. Like, look at the sun! Look at the dirt!

Ani already woke up and didn’t even cry! She is lying in sunshine staring at me really hard, like, look at I! Like, whoa! I never saw anything this interesting before. So that is something we had in common. I thought she was interesting too.

Her face is three, four inches from me on the floor with sun all over, and her eyes popped really wide, so wide her lips popped open too. Pop!

She never made that noise before.

Then she gave me a look, like, oh! You think I didn’t do this before? Well that is one more difference between us. Come on. I do this all the time. She gave a kind of wink.

It was very cute.

Then she did it again. Pop!

It was so cute.

She did it again. Wink!

It was so cute, I had a thought I never thought before.

If she got wind, she has that in common with regular babies or how else did Sonia know what it was? So she could pass for regular.

But just the same time I thought that, I felt a, like, squeeze? Like how I felt when Rini said she’s not coming back for Madhur?

If she got wind like regular babies, what else does she get?

I threw Ani under my shirt and rushed out to message Rauden from the Roosevelt Avenue Board. It crashed. I ran all the way home and when I got there put her on the scale and weighed her. I don’t even know why I did. Three point eight kilos. Still alive.

I laid her on the floor, on a cloth. She went pop.

She followed me with her eyes when I walk one way by her. When I walked the other way, she followed me with her eyes the other way. When I stopped walking and looked down to where she lay on the cloth on the floor, she went pop.

It was so cute.

What I’m saying is, she is a Sylvain hardy and it is going to work for her the way it worked for me because it’s in the genes. But when did it start working for me? When I was two months, one week, five days old, was I a hardy yet?

How would I even know? I was inside Cissy Fardo’s basement. Inside, what was there to get?

I was in the basement a long time, too. All the kids were. It was the Big One. People kept their kids inside until it is safe. Even post Big One, it was Luzon or some other Epi, or they are afraid someone will give their kid a shot or steal them. Cissy Fardo was so old and scared, she kept me inside more than most.

What I’m saying is, Ani’s a Powell’s Cove hardy, a Sylvain hardy. But she is three point eight kilo. When I was three point eight kilo, I was inside.

She is a three point eight kilo hardy on the street.

Should I keep her in?

Well that is really going to work. I have to bring her out to even ask Rauden if I should keep her in? I’m not leaving her alone.

I make a burki from some nylon and wrap us up—at least now we look like everyone else, but it is really hot and took a really long time to find a working Board and message Rauden what to do. He messaged walk around. See what happens. So I walked around. I saw what happened. What happened was, we didn’t get anything. I don’t know what that proves. It could prove she’s a Sylvain hardy. It could prove I am a bad mother. Maybe I am.

On the street, they show posters, here is what happens if you do not give your child the Mumbai shot. It is a dead baby. It has turned blue.

Three months old. Still alive.

She had the little blue vein beside the eyebrow. I guess it is ok.

On the street, someone has crossed out “not” on all the posters, like, here is what happens if you do give your kid the shot.

Fourteen weeks old. Still alive.

She ate green Process. She sat up.

She fell over. It was so cute.

It hits me, when Cissy Fardo found me on the bus that wasn’t a regular bus, I was outside then. I was outside the whole walk from Kissena, where she found me, till Corona, where she lived.

So it could be ok to take her out to forage.

When we foraged, we saw no one out at all, even though Mumbai is not confirmed. Elmhurst is looking as empty as Queensbridge. On Roosevelt Avenue, they have the caution tape. They have the posters of the baby who is blue over a whole wall.

Fifteen weeks old. Still alive.

She had the really round head, the little bug eyes. Her eyebrows went up in the middle, like—surprised! She was so cute.

She didn’t look like me at all. Maybe she never would. Things happened to me that didn’t happen to her. I got scars. I got hair. She got me.

What else would she get?

Rini said the child would not be me, don’t worry. Like it is a bad thing, if Ani is. Well, of course I don’t want her to be me. And I don’t even know what it means.

But here is one thing I did think I knew. If she’s me, she won’t get Mumbai and die.

Her mother will die though, if she’s me. That was the birth mother though. I wasn’t the birth mother. I was the Original. I didn’t know what that means. I didn’t know what most of this means.

All I’m saying is, if I don’t know if she is me or exactly like me or a Sylvain hardy or what, when it turned out Mumbai did hit Queens, and everyone started to panic so bad they just do things that made no sense? I did something that made no sense. I had that in common with everyone. I panicked too.

iv

I heard a noise out on the street one very hot night. A crowd is in the street, shoving, pushing, carrying bags. I never knew so many people lived here.

Next morning, they didn’t. Nothing is on the street but what everybody dropped. There was a lot of food. MREs, Beverage, cereal, water in jugs. I tied Ani to me with a cloth and forage, forage, forage. There was clothes too. On Dongan Avenue, I found baby things in plastic bags. Sheets and little stretchy suits and dydees. I brought them home, put Ani in one little suit. It was so cute.

In the middle of the next night, I woke up, pulled everything off, and scrubbed Ani so hard she went nuts. I threw the whole bag out. I took it a block away and left it on the street. Then I came back and scrubbed her again. So that did not make sense.

I just thought, why not leave Elmhurst and move to Flushing? I don’t even know why I did. I just packed our bag and took Ani out on the street, carried her all the way to Flushing and found a unit with a balcony a lot like the Elmhurst one, but no wheels, no nylon. I wished I brought the nylon with me. I almost went back for it. Then I thought, better not.

A few people were out lugging bags in Flushing too.

Now, supposedly Mumbai is related to Luzon Third, the one that killed Rini’s original daughters? So some say people who didn’t die from Luzon could be Immune to Mumbai. So maybe Mumbai won’t be so bad. On Board News, they say the numbers are only like twenty thousand, so far. We all seen worse, in Queens. Well, when there was more people alive, to start, more people died. Anyhow, I didn’t really panic. Not yet.

I went to message Rauden what to do. The Main Street Board kept crashing and the line of people waiting in sheets or robes or plastic is so long it is the middle of the night before I reached Rauden. He was still awake. I think he had been drinking. What it came down to was, he didn’t know. I didn’t panic though. Even though the crowds are getting bigger and louder, and people are yelling back and forth, whatever numbers they heard. Eighty thousand!

But that is counting Brooklyn and the Bronx too. We all seen worse in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Even when the numbers keep getting higher, and the crowds on Main Street are bigger, lugging bags and yelling and pushing, I didn’t panic.

I didn’t panic until they are in bags, themselves. Then I took Ani in my arms and our bag on my back and the nylon burki over everything, joined the Main Street crowd, and started walking.

There was a lot of people walking. All this time, they were inside, so you could never know how many people there are alive? Now they just fled to the street and walked.

Why do we even do this? What is the point? We’re better off inside. It is the panic.

They wore sheets and burkis, parkas, hoodies, raincoats, saris, and they carried bundles. Sometimes the bundle is moving.

They had sealed the bridges and the tunnels that were not already closed. We headed east, to the Nassau County City Line.

There were bodies of people who just died walking on the street. They weren’t blue when I passed them. Maybe they were blue before. Bubble suit squads came to take these bodies off in bundles and melt them. They piled them on shaws. Every size of bundle. Some were small.

Not as small as Ani.

They made us stop at a Zone. They put us in a room. They let us go. We had to stop at a Zone further out. There was a doctor here. She never saw us. They put us on a truck.

Then someone came on the truck and told us, “Get off, get off.”

There were a lot of bodies now. It was hard to walk, and then you saw they had sandbags, because they made a fence, chicken-wire, with barbwire, so you couldn’t get across. It was the City Line. It was vigilantes from Nassau County, who piled up all this stuff and stood on top with sticks to hit us if we try to cross. They want to stop the Exodus at the City Line.

Some people tried to flee by water.

They have cruiser policeboats off College Point and, I don’t know, nets. I mean, people was jumping into Powell’s Cove. What am I, going to jump in Powell’s Cove? I can’t even swim, let alone with Ani and the bag.

They try to flee the other way, to the Manhattan Dome, but they have vigilantes waiting at Manhattan, on the waterside, at the east side Lock, with sticks in case we try to come over in boats.

They put us in trucks to the Flushing General quarantine. Then they took us away from there.

We are in triage.

A doctor is doing intake. Name. Age. Symptoms. Then she looked hard at Ani. “Where was she born?”

I told her in the sticks.

She looked hard at me. “A rube?”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t say anything.

“Full term? Nine months?”

I said I didn’t know.

“Who is the father?”

I just said something stupid. It is the panic. “There is no father,” I said.

She didn’t get it. “No, no. For the genetic history.”

I repeated, “There is no father.”

“I see,” she said. But she took a quick look at Ani’s face. She took a quick look at mine.

Finally I just said, “I don’t even know if I’m the mother.” Then she did look at both of us hard. I don’t even know why I told her.

Remember they used to do that me/her thing back at the Farm? She did that now, looked at me really hard, at Ani fast. Then she looked, I don’t know, inside her own mind. Then she just looked tired. She shrugged. Like, whatever. It was none of her business. Maybe she’s better off if she doesn’t know.