The smell was worse when Nayima leaned over Gram to inject her crushed pill. Nayima’s throat locked. How would she clean her and scrape away Gram’s dead skin later if she could barely stand the smell now?
Gram’s eyes were flickering again, ready to close.
“Are you hungry?” Nayima asked.
Gram’s lips moved, but she didn’t say anything Nayima could hear.
Nayima didn’t smell feces, so she would postpone the rest—the changing of the urine-soiled bed pad, the gentle sponge cleaning, the bedsores, the feeding. All of that would wait until they had moved to Mr. Yamamoto’s flea-free home.
He always had been meticulous, Mr. Yamamoto. Even his roses were still on schedule.
“I love you, Gram,” Nayima said, and kissed her grandmother’s forehead. She allowed her lips to linger against the warm, paper-thin skin across the crown of Gram’s skull.
Gram’s breath whistled through her nose. She whistled more now, since the smoke.
Luckily, the cancer wasn’t in Gram’s lungs, so breathing had never been a problem. But breathing would be a problem for both of them soon. It hadn’t occurred to Nayima to ask Shanice for oxygen, not back then. She hadn’t known the fires were coming. Even the dust masks Nayima wore outside had just been in a box left untouched for years in Gram’s garage. She wore them until they fell apart; she only had twenty-two more.
When Nayima fitted a new dust mask across her grandmother’s nose and mouth, Gram didn’t even open her eyes.
The first scream didn’t come until they were well beyond the front door, when Nayima had lulled herself into thinking that the move might not be so bad. One of the wheels wandered off the edge of the driveway, rattling Gram’s bed. Her scream was strong and hearty.
“Sorry,” Nayima whispered, her mantra. “I’m sorry, Gram.”
Gram’s eyes, closed before, were wide and angry. She glared at Nayima, then turned her gaze to the sky. Even with pain lining her face, Nayima saw Gram’s bewilderment.
“It’s smoke,” she said. “Brushfires.”
The bewilderment melted away, leaving only the pain. Most of Nayima’s life with Gram, there had been wildfires every other summer. They both had grown accustomed to the sirens and beating helicopters that were still Nayima’s daily and nightly music. She heard a far-off helicopter now, and a choppy, angry voice from an indistinct loudspeaker. She braced for popping gunshots, but there were none. Not this time.
“Mr. Yamamoto took a trip with his grandchildren, so he said we could use his house,” Nayima said, trying to distract Gram, but a bump elicited a shriek. “I’m sorry, Gram. I’m sorry.”
At the edge of the driveway, it occurred to Nayima that she could pull the car out of the garage instead. She’d packed the passenger side and trunk solid, but she’d left the back seat empty for Gram, layered with blankets. She could wash, dress, and feed Gram right outside and then carry her into the car. Would the screams be any worse? What difference would it make if Gram was screaming in Foothill Park or screaming somewhere down the smoky interstate?
Nayima’s tears stung in the smoke. She had to stop to wipe her eyes dry with a section of her thin shirt. When she looked at her clothing, she realized she was only wearing a black tank top and underwear, the clothes she slept in. And white socks. She had so much laundry to do.
Gram’s shriek melted to a childlike, hopeless sob.
Nayima gave Gram’s hand another squeeze and then carefully, very carefully, pushed the rolling bed across the bumpy asphalt, toward the beckoning yellow rose blossoms.
“Look, Gram,” she said. “Mr. Yamamoto’s roses are blooming.”
Gram coughed a phlegmy cough behind her dusk mask. And screamed in pain again.
Gram was crying by the time Nayima finally brought the bed to rest in its new home beside Mr. Yamamoto’s black sofa and artificial palm tree.
Nayima cursed herself. Why hadn’t she found a way to kill the fleas at Gram’s house instead? What had possessed her? A fierce headache hammered Nayima’s temples, bringing paralyzing hopelessness as bad as she’d felt since the 72-Hour Flu took over the news. Nayima remembered how much she had hated riding in the car with Tango when Gram took him to the vet, the way the cat cried so plaintively from his cage, with true terror. And it would be so much worse with Gram on the road, facing whatever might jostle the car outside.
So they were both crying while Nayima pulled Gram’s bandages away to reveal the black and red angry stink of her wounds, the yawning decay that cratered her back. Nayima could nestle a golf ball in the cavern that grew above her grandmother’s right buttock. Infection had found the sores despite Nayima’s steady cleanings.
“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck.”
Her hands were shaking as she debrided the wound in a clumsy imitation of what Shanice had tried to teach her—the cruel, steady scraping of Gram’s most tender flesh.
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 beer 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 her the wall.
The man who climbed out of the car was stocky, not much taller than she was, with su
n-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 thirty-eight?” 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 now 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 absence 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.
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 i
n 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 nearly 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. Yamamoto’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.
Ghost Summer, Stories Page 28
