Radiation Children

5

Candles don't last forever, so I only lit half the candles for what I guessed to be four hours before switching out to light the other half. I based time on Lucia's hunger, because Mom was very strict about what times Lucia ate (eight, eleven, one, three, and five-thirty). Lucia and I played and read and sang songs to pass the time. We relieved ourselves in the far corner of the shelter (which was not far enough) and by the fifteenth time Lucia told me she was hungry, which I guessed was five-thirty on the third day, the pile of waste in the corner smelled incredibly sour, so sharp and rotten that I had to breathe through my mouth and make Lucia keep her nose covered with her shirt. 

As I unpacked her some crackers and goldfish for dinner, she asked, "Where's the toilet?" 

"There's not a toilet in here."

"Why didn't Mommy and Daddy put a toilet in here?" 

I shrugged. "Good question." 

"They should have put a toilet in here." She wrinkled her nose and laughed. "They made me use the potty but now I can't and that's silly." 

I couldn't help but giggle along with her as I passed her the goldfish and began to unfold some mixed nuts and an apple from my backpack. After several moments of watching Lucia pluck out all the goldfish with deformities and push them to the side, I said, "So I think that, um, we should try to go outside." 

Lucia looked up at me. In the candlelight, her face was a mask of orange and black. She looked a lot older than four, and she sounded a lot older when she said, "Is it safe?" 

"I don't know." I reached over to tuck a black curl behind her ear. I was getting good at this comforting-thing. "But I'm gonna protect you from anything that isn't safe." 

"You sound like Mommy." Lucia smiled, showing two rows of tiny white teeth and a mouth full of mushy goldfish. 

I reached over and stole one of her discarded goldfish, then turned it over in my fingers. If today was the day that we were leaving the shelter, then that meant today was the day we'd see our new world. What would it look like, this Earth where everything was freshly destroyed? 

I popped the goldfish in my mouth, then began to pack up my backpack and Lucia's bag. As I was pulling everything together, Lucia asked, "Why didn't your friend come?" 

"He just...I don't know." I didn't want to talk about it. 

"Why not?" 

"Because I just don't." I missed Markus like a person misses a heart; I'd given up on him after that first day, when the silence following the explosions was so loud it was violent, and my stomach couldn't take the hope of knowing he was out there somewhere, alive. 

He was dead. He'd blown up in the bombs. He didn't make it here in time. 

It was numbing and I was exhausted from crying for him. The thoughts about him were exhausting. There was no more time to cry, anyway. 

I filled my backpack with extra water bottles before tying Lucia's bag to it, then turned around and put my hands on my hips. "Are we ready to do this?" 

"We have to blow out the candles." 

"I don't think the candles are important right—" 

Lucia stood up and put her hands on her hips. She stuck her butt out pursed her lips—this pose was often a precursor to whatever sassy thing she was about to say. It would've been laughable if we weren't stuck in a storm shelter that smelled like piss. "If we don't blow out the candles, then Mommy will get mad at us and the shelter will catch on fire and it's going to be all your fault." 

I opened my mouth to argue, then sighed and crossed my arms. The last thing I wanted to do was argue with a four-year-old about practicality in the middle of a nuclear apocalypse, so I blew out the remaining candles. We were plunged into thick darkness; I found Lucia's hand and pulled it into mine. She gasped, "I can't see anything!" and I scoffed, "You wanted the candles out," as I led her up the ramp that led to the exit. 

"Are you ready for this?" I asked her. 

"It's better than smelling pee and poop and candles." 

"Yeah. Definitely." 

I shoved the door open—

—and was immediately gutted by intense, overwhelming grief for Markus. As Lucia and I emerged from the shelter, I saw the skeleton of the home I'd grown up in—not just my actual house, which was completely flattened to a pile of gray ashes—but the comforting familiarity of the woods to the right and the tobacco fields on either side of the gravel driveway. Everything was monochromatic, leveled, dusty. The sky looked a hundred layers thick with a cloudy film of black, and everything else was gray. 

Dust and wind and nothing, nothing. 

Lucia pressed herself into me, trembling, and I let the door to the storm shelter slam shut behind us. My chest constricted as the lifeless, dead Earth in front of me rustled in the wild gusts. I balled my hands into fists. 

You're done. You're family's done. 

There's nothing for you out here. 

Everything's gone. 

Dust and wind and nothing, nothing. 

Perhaps, if I had been by myself, I would have retreated back down into the storm shelter and pulled one of the rag quilts over my head. I would have slept off the anger, cried out the fear, and hurled books and water bottles and whatever else I could find through the small space. I would have screamed at Markus through the radio, begged him to answer even though I knew that he wouldn't because he's—he's dead. I would have collapsed against the couch, cold and stripped bare, until my blood froze in my veins or I died of starvation. 

But there was Lucia, her tiny body shivering against mine, her chin inclined, wide eyes watching me for a response to copy, so I pressed my lips together and unclenched my fists. I knelt down so that I was at eye-level with her and said, "We're not gonna give up on our family." 

The words were hard to say, and it was harder to watch Lucia's strained reaction soften into relief, because living and breathing and walking and speaking felt impossible. It would have been so much easier to give in to the paralysis of cold fear. 

Lucia reached up and pressed a sweaty hand to my cheek. Mom did that to me sometimes before I took a big science exam. "Don't be scared." 

I covered her hand with my own palm. It was comforting to know that in our empty, cold new world, Lucia was here, and she was worth fighting for. 

Our family was worth fighting for. 

"Okay," I said.