by Chris Baron
she can’t stop.
My grandfather and Mrs. Li
wipe tears away.
Her parents are watery-eyed, too.
The applause lasts for a whole minute.
5:01
Malia walks backward
off the stage waving, smiling,
eyes bright,
shining,
even as she bumps
into William
holding onto his wig
for dear life.
5:03
Malia hugs me tight.
Did you hear it!
And I can tell
she’s crying
into my shoulder,
then she pulls back
and launches her fist
into the same shoulder.
My parents are out there!
Did you know? Did you?
I don’t know what to say.
How can someone be so happy
and so angry all at the same time.
She punches my shoulder again.
Tell me, Etan!
5:04
Somewhere
deep inside
the earth lets go.
Fifteen Seconds
I fall.
The ground is not the ground.
We fall
against the wall of the rec room,
the windows shatter,
the sound of applause
turns to shouting,
hundreds of grown-up voices
swirling together at once
into a trumpet of confusion.
The ceiling explodes,
plaster and dust
rain like water
on our heads,
we are covered in white.
The ground is shaking
for fifteen seconds;
it won’t stop.
We try to get up,
but it’s moving too fast,
and the air is made of sounds
from everything we can’t see.
Words, skin, clay,
nothing matters
except trying to find
something solid to hold on to.
We crawl
to the snack table
and get underneath,
dragging
everyone we see
until we are bodies
overflowing
in a too-small box.
Some grown-ups
come in through the wings,
falling into broken plaster,
the ground throwing them
every which way.
Their arms reaching for us.
We hold on to each other
until the earth
exhales
a low rumble,
until everything
is finally still.
5:06
The shouting
starts.
Malia’s skin
is white with plaster dust,
her face like a ghost.
Grown-ups
pour into the room,
scoop up kids,
and disappear.
Etan, we need to get outside.
Malia pulls me up
and we step over
what was,
just a few seconds before,
a table with juice and cookies.
We step between twisted light fixtures
and broken glass.
5:07
Near the door
is the little ballerina,
the top of her tutu ripped,
standing in the middle of window glass,
her thumb in her mouth,
her hand bleeding a little.
Malia lifts her up,
looks around,
then reaches for my hand
and pulls Blankie
from my still-clenched fist.
She shakes it out
and wraps the ballerina
in a messy cocoon.
5:07
There are people running
in all directions,
some trying to get out,
some trying to get in,
all of them yelling,
and the sounds of sirens in the distance.
Outside, the light is pale.
Somewhere on Main Street
a fire is burning.
We breathe,
something like clean air.
Malia looks around,
carrying the little girl,
her head pressed against
her shoulder.
5:08
A silver-haired woman
sobs so much
she can’t talk.
She wobbles over to us,
reaches out,
takes the girl in her arms.
We look
for my grandfather,
for her parents.
I think of my mom,
so far away,
and my dad.
Maybe where he is
it wasn’t so bad.
5:09
Lines of fire trucks
peel down the street,
create a wall of spinning lights,
red metal against the sky.
No power.
We push against families making their way outside,
toward the front of the rec center.
Every light fell from the ceiling,
fluorescent bulb glass
and metal wires webbed
across turned over chairs.
Momma! Malia screams.
I try to yell, but nothing comes,
and then I see my grandfather.
He’s still in his chair.
Mr. Agbayani is kneeling next to him.
Just breathe, Jacob, breathe.
But he’s coughing,
like all the dust in the air
went straight down his throat.
Mrs. Agbayani is talking
to a mother and daughter;
Mrs. Li walks a woman by the arm.
We rush to the front.
Mr. Agbayani throws his arms around
his daughter, looks her in the eye.
Can you get water? She runs off.
Etan … my grandfather coughs. You’re all right, he says.
Etan, he grabs my wrist,
squeezes with all his strength,
and I feel his hand closing
around my arm
like he might never let go.
5:11
He looks me in the eye
and smiles, coughs.
Etan, it’s all right.
And then,
every word that’s hidden away
turns into one giant yell.
Grandpa!
Grandpa.
He coughs and coughs.
Malia hands a cup of water
to her dad, and he pours
it down Grandpa’s throat.
The water gurgles
out, over his chin.
Malia looks at me.
Etan …
She reaches into her pocket,
pulls out her Tic Tac container,
pops open the top.
The clay inside
smells like the forest
and the pool,
like my grandfather’s shop
and the ancient box.
She scoops it out with her finger.
What do we pray?
And then I think of Yom Kippur,
that THIS CAN’T BE GRANDPA’S TIME.
She reaches for his neck.
Malia, what is that?
Mr. Agbayani puts his hand out,
but she stops it.
It’s okay, Poppa. It’s okay.
Malia spreads the clay
on his throat
while he coughs.
Water tries to make
its way down and back up again.
She smears the clay,
> and I pray near his ear
until
at last
the coughing stops.
5:12
BOOM,
BOOM,
BOOM!
In low rumbles,
something is exploding
near and far away.
5:12
Grandpa breathes,
opens his eyes,
but they circle
in his head,
a man
not himself,
looking
through time and space,
trying to find where he is,
finally settling on Mrs. Li
and Mr. Agbayani, and me.
We get to our feet,
shuffle through broken
tables, plaster bits,
shattered glass,
purses, cameras
smashed in pieces.
5:14
On Main Street
fires burn
in different buildings.
Everything is broken.
We shuffle through streets
holding each other up,
block by block,
Mr. Cohen’s bakery,
Mrs. Li’s market,
people wandering
in all directions.
5:15
Malia walks
with her head down,
leaning on her mother’s shoulder,
scratching her arm.
I want to pull her hand away.
5:16
Along Main Street
people sit in their cars,
radios on,
there are voices
in the air
with street names and instructions:
Bay Bridge Broken
Jefferson Street Marina On Fire
The Gape
In front of the bakery,
the crack in the earth
is a gaping mouth.
The earth has opened
and the stones
that make the street
have fallen in,
straight down into some
unknown place.
The crack stretches
to the alley
where the names
of the people
from the Calypso
are listed.
I wonder
if they’ve fallen in, too.
5:18
The world is not itself.
It feels held together
by a huddle of people.
Somewhere out there is my mother;
somewhere out there is my father.
5:19
Did you hear?
The whole stadium
was shaking
like a bomb went off.
Mr. Dimitri
is walking from the park
holding baskets of rock candy
and lollipops, handing them out.
The Bay Bridge, too—collapsed!
Mrs. Agbayani gasps.
The whole thing?
Don’t know, he says.
My grandfather coughs.
5 …
We open the shop.
Screws and metal pieces
are scattered across the floor,
every cup is spilled.
The window is unbroken
but the trophies and medals
are piled on the floor,
shelves turned over,
broken, flat.
I see the treasure box
perfectly together
like an island
in a rough sea.
The Agbayanis help my grandfather
sit in his big chair near the back.
He grabs Mrs. Li’s hand.
Your store?
Then so many things happen
all at the same time.
Mrs. Li goes outside,
looks at her store,
where the wood shelves
full of fruit have given way
and apples fill the street.
Mr. Agbayani tries the phone,
but the lines are all busy.
Malia folds her arms around her body.
I’m sorry about Blankie, I say.
She looks at me with something like a smile.
Our bikes! she says. And your notebook?
I picture everything buried
beneath a fallen ceiling.
I wish I had my green stone.
We feel for the ghosts of things
that once made us feel safe.
Darkness
Mrs. Agbayani sets up candles around the shop,
gives us all glasses of water.
We’ll know more soon, she says.
I picture my mother
at the hospital,
my father at the stadium
or in his truck,
trying to find his way
to us.
He’ll be here.
I hope.
Home
For the first time
I think of our apartment.
Is the building still standing?
Is everything on the floor?
Then, quietly,
people wander into the shop,
carrying food and other things,
setting them on the workbench
or near the window.
Asking if they can rest here.
It is one of the oldest stores in town.
Maybe they feel safe here, with us.
Soon there are families
sitting together in picnics,
like the park in the summer.
My grandfather calls me over,
pointing to everyone.
Like Shabbos, right?
Mr. Dimitri tunes his radio in,
7.0 on the Richter scale,
and we know that’s a high number.
Buddy
In the doorway
we see the sniffing nose,
the furry little body.
Isn’t that—
I look—
Buddy?
His tongue out,
he jumps
into Malia’s lap.
And then I remember. Grandpa!
Mrs. Hershkowitz!
He looks at me,
puts his heavy hand on my shoulder.
You have to check, Etan,
can you do that?
Mrs. Agbayani and Malia
agree to come,
and the three of us
and Buddy go out into the street.
Mrs. Hershkowitz
On our way
we see a group of boys—
Jordan holding his broken guitar,
and Martin, and his brother.
I look at Malia,
but she doesn’t care.
Mrs. Agbayani stops.
Are you boys okay? Can you help us?
They nod,
and we rush to the building.
The glass doors
at the front of our building
are shattered into pieces.
I see her window open,
the basket on the street below it.
We step carefully over the glass,
flashlights beam
through dark hallways,
and the cluster of us
walk stair by stair
slowly, along creaking wood.
Buddy stands at her door
at the end of the hall,
where light fixtures have fallen,
broken onto the carpet.
He barks, sniffs
at the five-inch crack in the door.
I push on the door
but it’s stuck.
Malia pushes next to me,
still stuck.
Mrs. Herskowitz? I call out, nothing.
Malia presses her face against the door.
There’s something blocking it.
Then Martin steps right between us,
with his
brother and Jordan.
They pile on the door and push it slowly open.
Buddy leaps in,
darts between fallen
bookcases,
the same one that fell before,
its books spread out everywhere,
and Mrs. Hershkowitz
close to the window,
a broken teacup near her hand.
I kneel by Mrs. Hershkowitz.
Mrs. Agbayani presses a wet rag
against her forehead,
snaps her fingers
in front of her eyes,
and slowly she wakes up.
Buddy licks her face.
The boys move bookcases
out of the way.
Malia and Jordan
stack books against the walls.
Then, like the world getting up,
the sudden whir
of the refrigerator going on,
the static of the TV, the blink and shine of the lights
like we’re waking up from some strange dream.
The Things That Happen Next
When Mrs. Hershkowitz
is all set in her chair
and she’s kissed us all on the cheek,
and the neighbors give her a glass of water,
with Buddy happily coiled at her feet,
we head downstairs.
By now I can’t stop thinking about
my parents, but every phone line is busy.
When we get outside,
Jordan comes over,
and then,
all of a sudden,
he wraps an arm around me.
Sorry about everything, Etan.
The boys start to head up the street
but just before, Martin looks over
like he might say sorry, or something else,
