Goodnight, Boy

by Nikki Sheehan

  Are you ever scared, Boy? I mean really scared.

  I know you are.

  I remember when it was Christmas and he walked downstairs dressed as Santa Claus, and when you saw him you froze, and then you peed on the carpet.

  Melanie made him take off the suit so you could see who it was, and you grabbed the beard and ran away with it into the backyard. We never found it again.

  She was so proud of you. She said you had buried your fears, and she didn’t even complain about the stain that never quite faded.

  It’s because she loves you.

  When you love someone they’re never a nuisance.

  Even when they are.

  When I realised where I was and what had happened, it was like encountering a thousand Santa Clauses.

  Reality was confusing, and the darkness that I slipped in and out of felt more real somehow. I understood dark, but I didn’t understand weight and pain. Not in those quantities. So I tried to stay asleep.

  But I kept waking again and then I would remember where I was and, in a panic, I would try to push the rubble off my body until my brain did me a kindness by sending me to sleep.

  The final time I woke up –

  Boy, move over. You’re squashing me again. Why do you creep closer and closer when I’m not looking? You would crawl on top of me if you could.

  I’m going outside.

  I need to breathe.

  I’m sorry. The doghouse is so small and suddenly you seemed so big.

  It was good to see the trees filtering the light and taste the clean air.

  What was I saying? Oh, yes. The final time I woke it was because I was choking.

  Choking is not a good way to die, Boy. And I must have used my terror at the thought of such a death as an energy because, without thinking how futile it was, without remembering that I was small and weak and the stones weighed more than I did, without admitting the certainty that I was going to die under there, I pushed and pushed at the rubble again and again, until finally I broke through.

  I emerged like a chick from an egg.

  That was when my life began again. Because although the earthquake was terrible – it destroyed large parts of my country, and killed thousands – it changed the direction of the wind that had been blowing me.

  Now I was heading for you.

  I didn’t know that then.

  I thought, as I pushed my way out, that everything would be as it had been before; that there would be someone to look after me, to bind my injuries and put me back to bed.

  But when I came out there was no one there.

  No one.

  Just piles of broken grey bricks and nothing above. Nothing.

  Even the moon and stars had gone.

  There had been twenty children in that room. I should have searched around to see if I could drag some of them from under the layers of stone and glass.

  I should have called out and listened for voices.

  I should have done something.

  But I was just a little boy. I was weak from years spent in bed, I was in pain, the blackouts threatened to pull me under again and the dust was still clogging my mouth, my throat, my lungs.

  Besides, I could see nothing. The air was as dark as it had been when I was buried. I didn’t want to put my hands between those broken bricks and find out what was beneath.

  So I stumbled around in the black until I felt something with my bare feet that I recognised. The front door.

  Until that moment I had thought I was inside the building, and then I realised that there was no building anymore. So, I walked in what I hoped was the direction of the exit to the street that I had seen every day from the window, but never stepped through.

  I was certain that someone would stop me, but there was no one there, just the guard dog, a black shape, visible through the gloom. He had survived because outside there was nothing to crush him. His half-hearted growls and barks were muted, and his mouth was too full of dust to bite.

  I knew that the dog would die if I left him there, so I untied the end of the rope and I followed the route that he took until I couldn’t see him anymore in the black.

  I didn’t understand that there been an earthquake. I thought that the hospital had exploded. So I kept walking, expecting to reach clean air and normality.

  But, when I got there, the street had gone too.

  It was like I was on the moon, Boy. But it was worse because the moon is a quiet place, and the further I walked the noisier it became and I almost wished for the eerie silence of the hospital.

  Wailing alarms

  Glass popping from car windows

  Screaming

  So much screaming

  Shouts of Help!

  Most of all

  people calling to God.

  Soon my ears and brain were as full of noise as my eyes were of dust.

  Sometimes I can hear it still.

  I had nowhere else to go so I stumbled down what had been a road minutes before.

  On one side the houses had collapsed in a long straight line, like a giant wrecking ball had been swung from the sky.

  On the other the homes that still stood were misshapen, slanting, missing a front or a side, or with the roof sitting inside the rooms.

  Then I came to a group of people, their faces like skulls washed with blood. They were standing by a pile of rubble shouting for help.

  ‘You, do you have a flashlight?’ one asked me.

  Couldn’t they see that I was just a little boy in night-clothes? I didn’t even have shoes.

  So I continued to wade barefoot through the blanket of dust and smoke, hardly able to see enough to avoid the rocks and bricks in my path, still searching for the edge of the chaos.

  At some point I decided that I would head for the Sweet Angel Orphanage. It was much closer than my home and, now that my spots and scars had gone, I hoped that they would let me stay.

  I didn’t know where the orphanage was, but I kept going as if I were sleepwalking.

  Sometimes the road would disappear beneath the remains of a house, so I would have to climb over teetering, sliding mounds just to move a few feet further toward I didn’t know what.

  But I carried on, starting and stopping, blacking out and waking again, and eventually the dust began to rise into the air like a plume.

  Now I could see where I was going, and I could see other people walking like they were in a dream too, and I followed them until somehow, hours later, I arrived at North Street.

  I had expected that, whatever had happened to the rest of the city, the orphanage would be untouched. It was a big, solid building with a wide, blue front door, not like some of the flimsy constructions I had seen, which had returned to their parts without a fight.

  But I recognised it from the furniture.

  The front of the building, which had peeled away, lay on the road, opening up the rooms I remembered like a dolls’ house. The office where I had been left that first day still had a desk and seats around the edge, but now it was covered in a layer of pale grey, like the ashes from a terrible fire.

  On the first floor, a light swung in the corridor.

  The front dormitory still contained the rows of beds many still in the right place, but part of the roof had collapsed down onto the back.

  I didn’t want to look closely, and anyway it was too dark to see much. But someone was up there, crying, the whites of his eyes the only parts of him not camouflaged by dust.

  I remembered my friends and it was as if I woke up. The horrible dream didn’t go away, but I knew then that I could help; that although I was small and injured and in shock, I was strong enough.

  ‘You can climb down,’ I shouted to the boy. My voice was so rusty that I don’t know if he could hear, but he had seen me. So I pointed and mimed and talked to him as calmly as I could until he understood what I was saying and then, hanging onto a beam that groaned and creaked, he let his legs dangle from the first floor and, with me still encouragin
g him, he dropped and fell, unharmed into the ground floor.

  He didn’t speak to me. He didn’t even look at me. As he stumbled away from me into the gloom I could see how small he was.

  He must have thought he was dreaming.

  I was so happy I had helped someone that I continued, copying what other people were doing all around; calling out, listening for answers from inside the rocky catacombs and pulling away the stones until my hands bled.

  Then doing it all again.

  My body hurt and I was exhausted, but there was no time to rest. Every twenty minutes or so there would an aftershock and each time I would mistake it for my own legs wobbling, until I heard more masonry clatter down. Then I would fall myself, and realise that it was the earth, still shaking off its anger.

  I thought it would eat us all.

  More and more people joined me pulling at the rocks that buried the orphans. There were no emergency services; no ambulances, no doctors. Not then. There was just us, digging and pulling, our tears blending with the dust when we arrived too late.

  We worked into the night. Someone brought a flashlight and shone it deep into the piles of rubble each time we heard a response to our calls.

  We took out eight children.

  The last one was Oskar. Do you remember I told you about him? The boy who was always hungry. My best friend.

  I recognised him straight away, although it had been years, and he was as white as bone with dust and shock, and an arm that twisted out at an angle.

  Even then I couldn’t stop, but Oskar waited, lying on what had been the sidewalk and watching us work.

  When morning came and we had heard no more shouts from under the rubble, I helped Oskar to stand and we walked away, looking for somewhere the world hadn’t ended.

  Are you asleep, Boy?

  Good.

  I wish I could sleep like you. As soon as you’re comfortable you just seem to go drift off into dreams.

  Yesterday I dreamt of the day Melanie and I had ice creams. Mine melted before I had a chance to eat it all, so she bought me another.

  Mint with little pieces of chocolate.

  It’s her favourite, so I tried it, just for her, although the strawberry looked nicer.

  Sometimes I dream of the earthquake day. I dream that me and Oskar are still walking, but I can’t remember where we’re going.

  Now I know where I was going. I was coming here.

  We just walked, hungry and thirsty, hoping to reach the end of the destruction so that we could find shelter and treatment for Oskar’s arm. But no matter how far we travelled, we never arrived.

  People gave us water, sometimes bread or meat. A man tried to straighten Oskar’s arm by hitting it with a brick, but that didn’t work; Oskar fainted and his arm remained the wrong shape, and the man stole my water.

  The scenery never changed. Day after day after day, the buildings were crumpled and flattened just like the hospital had been.

  But now people were everywhere, desperate to bring order, to dig out the last survivors, and then to remove those who’d died before they began to rot.

  They had to lay them on piles of burning tyres.

  But no matter how fast the bodies were burned, the smell was everywhere, so strong that I could taste it.

  I tasted death, Boy.

  And all the while the aftershocks continued, knocking us off our feet, raining bricks and tiles, and snowing dust down onto anyone who was outside, which was everyone who was alive, because inside was more dangerous.

  Each time it made me pee my pants with fear.

  I was so tired and afraid. I was used to living in the hospital, which was horrible, but predictable. I wasn’t used to danger.

  And I had never been so hungry before. At the hospital food came three times a day. It wasn’t enough, and it tasted of nothing, but it kept me alive. There was water, and even at night there was always a weak light coming from somewhere so that I knew I still existed.

  In those days I learnt what darkness really is.

  It’s terrifying.

  I hope I didn’t make you sad, Boy. My story will be happier from now because I’m going to tell you about when I met Melanie.

  You want me to continue?

  Yes?

  Thank you.

  So, gradually help arrived. People with tools and water. Well-fed people who hadn’t just lost their families. They came in teams from other parts of my country, and from overseas.

  That was when I met her.

  This ground we’re lying on feels cold and solid, doesn’t it, Boy?

  But if we dug and dug you know what we would find right at the centre?

  FIRE

  I’ve been thinking, Boy, where would we go if we could just walk out of here? If he wouldn’t let us back into the house, I mean.

  You’d run to the park, I know you would. You’d find another dog to play with or search the ground for a ball or dropped food.

  But then what?

  We’d have to go somewhere to wait for Melanie.

  I didn’t expect to see people who live on the streets in this country, but there are a lot, and some of them are really old.

  Melanie gave a man ten dollars once because he was sleeping outside the 7-Eleven and he looked like Granddad. It made her angry and upset to see an old person with nowhere to go. I tried to tell her then that living on the streets isn’t really so bad.

  You understand what I mean, don’t you? You like the fresh air. Remember how you lie by the kitchen door with your nose underneath sniffing at the outside.

  Well, being homeless means there are no doors. At all.

  You like being with your friends, and hunting for your food too. I don’t mean with a bow and arrow or a gun; you like scavenging, and that’s a really useful skill when you’re homeless.

  In my country, after the earthquake, there seemed to be a lot of dogs around. They were good at running over the piles of stones without disturbing them. The dogs soon disappeared though.

  I wish you’d been there with me.

  I had Oskar. He was sick at first. His arm – did I tell you how bad it was? The lower part, just above his wrist, was a wet mass of red where a stone wall had crushed it. But it was worse than just the open wound – pieces of white bone and sinews were visible where there should have been skin. He asked me over and over, ‘Where’s my skin?’ And I told him, it’s at the orphanage, under the rubble, and we can’t go back for it. He would think about that, then he’d seem to forget and he would ask again, ‘Where’s my skin?’

  I thought he would die, but I tried not to show my fear, and instead I told him that I’d seen worse, and I begged people for strips of clean cloth to bind it. I knew that the wound was already full of dust and dirt, and that it was sure to become infected, but at least when it was covered neither of us had to be reminded of that.

  Oskar was brave. The pain made him too dizzy to stand, and he vomited a lot, and the food I gave him ended up on the street for the dogs to eat, but I didn’t really mind.

  Looking after Oskar, finding him somewhere safe to sit and wait while I joined in the looting of the shops or fallen-down homes for whatever we could grab, gave me something to do. A reason to live, I suppose.

  We were begging when Melanie found us.

  After the first few days, when the worst of Oskar’s pain had subsided, I would walk him slowly to a street where more of the buildings were still standing than had fallen into piles. I helped him to sit outside the least damaged places because I thought that people who had suffered less would be more generous. Then I would carefully unwrap Oskar’s mangled arm, peeling the cloth away from where it had begun to stick, and Oskar would take over. Even though he was now used to the pain, when we begged he wailed as if the injury had only just happened. Maybe he saved all his sobbing for then, because it didn’t sound like acting.

  That day we were sitting in front of a hotel that was still standing. It was the hotel where Melanie and the other doct
ors were staying.

  They saw us when they came back, tired and dusty, from their day’s work. Melanie stood out as the only one in the group with deep brown skin, and her softly crinkled hair was tied back with a scarf. She was also the only one who smiled at us.

  Oskar’s injury probably looked mild compared with what they had seen that day, compared with what they saw every day, but Melanie came over.

  She crouched down and took a look. Through an interpreter, she asked if she could help him.

  She said that Oskar needed medicine or he could die of blood poisoning.

  I told her that I was looking after him, and that we were likely to die of starvation sooner. She smiled at this and told me that I was a good friend. I liked how it felt when she smiled at me. Like she could see me. Then she took a half bottle of water from her bag and some cassava bread spread with peanut butter, and she gave it to me.

  It was her dinner, but she exchanged it for permission to treat Oskar.

  So I said yes.

  Melanie gave Oskar an injection that made his arm tingle and play dead, and began to clean out the grit. While she worked she told us that she was from America and she had been in my country to help set up a hospital when the earthquake struck.

  I asked her, ‘Are there no sick people in America?’

  She smiled and said, ‘Yes. But this was my father’s homeland. And your need is greater.’

  ‘Don’t your children and your husband want you to be at home?’ I asked.

  She paused and then said. ‘This is my job. But I will go back in a few weeks.’

  The wound was clean now, and she began to wind bandages around Oskar’s arm.

  ‘So, my turn to ask a question,’ she said. ‘Why are you living on the streets?’

  It was the first time that someone had wanted to know, and although I didn’t tell her the truth, I enjoyed her listening to my answer.

  I had been invisible for so long, Boy – for all my life really – and it was like being seen and heard for the first time.