Niagara Motel (18 page)

27

We went inside the shop next door which had a red and blue sign out front that read
KOREAN GROCERY
. Noodles and packages of crackers were scattered everywhere. Glass jars of stringy red stuff lay broken in the aisles. Huge sacks of rice lay split open in front of us, spilling their guts out onto the floor. A chubby black teenage girl stood in the first aisle holding a wire basket. She picked a package of noodles off a shelf, turned it over, then politely put it back. A Korean man stood behind the counter and pointed a shotgun at us.

“Get out,” he said. “We no want you here.”

We put our hands above our heads. Meredith dropped the hatchet and it clattered to the floor.

“She's having a baby,” I said, pointing at Meredith.

Meredith held her belly and moaned. Then a Korean woman popped up from behind the counter. Her black hair was glossy and fell to her shoulders. She wore a cream-coloured blouse. From the way she looked at Meredith, I knew she would help us. She looked at the man and said something to him in Korean. Then he said something to her that I didn't understand but sounded kind of harsh. Then she yelled at him. Then he lowered the shotgun and shrugged his shoulders, and she stepped out from behind the counter and came toward us.

“Come, come,” she said, motioning for us to follow her to the back of the store.

We followed her to a door that read
EMPLOYEES ONLY
. She opened the door and led us into a tiny back room. There was a yellow bucket and a dirty mop dripping into a drain in the floor. Shelves filled with cleaning supplies and other junk lined the walls. Beside the door was a desk covered in ashtrays, receipts, spiral notebooks, calculators, and Jolly Rancher wrappers. There was a computer on the desk, and
even though it was turned off, it seemed to be staring at us with its square, unblinking eye. A short, grey sofa was pressed up against the side wall and the woman took down a blue and white checkered tablecloth from a shelf above the desk. The plastic crinkled as she unfurled it and spread it over the sofa. Then she motioned for Meredith to lie down.

Meredith turned away from us and slid her pants off. She took a grey hoodie from her backpack and used it to cover herself. She sat sideways on the sofa and leaned her back against the arm, putting her legs into a diamond shape in front of her. Her face was squeezed up tight like a fist.

“Oh,
God
,” she said. “This wasn't supposed to happen.”

“Are you having a boy or a girl?” the woman asked.

“I don't know,” Meredith said.

“I have three boys,” the woman said. “All born in America. Oldest one seventeen now,” she smiled. Her teeth were white and square as Chiclets. She took a green plastic bowl and a white rag down from the shelf. She filled the bowl with cold water and soaked the rag in it. She wrung out the rag and folded it into a rectangle and carefully placed it on Meredith's forehead. Meredith's face became smooth again.

“Thank you,” Meredith said, reaching out her hand.

The Korean woman took Meredith's hand in her own and squeezed it. “You're welcome,” she said. “My husband call 9-1-1 for you,” she said.

“They won't come,” Meredith said. “There's too much,” she waved her hand toward the door.

“They'll come,” the woman said. “They don't give up on people in America.”

Meredith moaned. I watched as thick red ribbons of blood snaked across the tablecloth. I looked at the woman and her dark eyes flashed with something I couldn't know.

“They'll come,” the woman said. Then she filled a white plastic kettle with water and plugged it into the wall. I wondered who could want a cup of tea at a time like this.

Meredith cried out again and another gush of blood slid around the tablecloth. Her face was as pale as the moon. She dug her nails into the tablecloth and screamed. More and more blood came, but still no baby.

The Korean woman left the room for a few minutes and while she was gone, I went into the far corner and took my pee-stained jeans and underwear off and changed into new undies and my Adidas trackpants. I wadded up my jeans and underoos and stuffed them into the garbage bin beside the desk. I knew Gina would be mad because they were my expensive Bugle Boy jeans, but I knew I wouldn't be able to find a laundromat anywhere, and plus, I didn't even know if pee ever washed out of clothes. Sometimes, throwing things away is the best thing you can do with them.

I pulled a chair over and sat beside Meredith. I made sure the cloth on her head stayed wet and that she had whatever she asked for. She never asked for anything, so I wasn't really much use. Except for once, she asked for her mom. And I couldn't do anything about that, either.

After about two hours, Meredith was surrounded in a pool of her own blood. It dripped onto the floor and crept toward the drain. I closed my eyes and saw Brian, bleeding on the floor of the TV room at Bright Light, losing everything. Meredith jerked and screamed and kicked her legs. She needed help, anyone could see that. The Korean woman sat on the edge of the desk. She drank a can of iced tea and looked worried.

“I'll be right back,” I said, then I left the little room and ran out the back door to find someone. A nurse, a doctor, a veterinarian, anyone. The air was smoky and garbage littered the streets. The sun
was gone and the sky looked bruised and hollow. There were only angry people around, no cops, no ambulance, no doctors. I climbed the fire escape to the roof of the store so I could get a better look. Maybe I could see the hospital and somehow get her there. Maybe I could signal to a helicopter to come get us, or send help. I stood on top of the roof and looked out over the city of Los Angeles.

Everywhere, everywhere, fires burned.

In the distance, I saw a red fire engine and fire fighters spraying water at a huge building that must have been a shopping mall. It was hard to believe my eyes, but people were actually
attacking
the fire fighters while they worked. Launching rocks and bottles at them and jumping onto their backs as they hosed down the blaze. “HELP!” I screamed out over the city. “
HELP US!
”

I screamed until I lost my voice. I took off my sweater and waved it over my head in the shape of S.O.S. so that the news helicopter would see me and send help. It paused for a second, the propeller driving dust and ash into my eyes, then it took a hard right and buzzed away. I don't know if it saw me, I didn't know if it would do anything, but it was all I had.

I was eleven years old. I didn't know anything. But I knew enough to see that this was probably the end of the world.

When I got back to the room, the pool of blood around Meredith was even bigger, and she was clutching a bundle of rags to her chest. But then the bundle of rags made a mewling sound like a kitten, and I realized what it was.

“You had a baby,” I said.

Meredith looked up at me, her green eyes shining with tears. “A girl,” she said.

“Wow.”

She tilted the bundle a little so I could see it. The baby was reddish-purple, and her face looked like a raisin.

“Wow,” I said again.

“Tucker,” Meredith grabbed my shirt. “If I don't make it, you have to look after her.”

“You're going to make it,” I said. I looked down at my shoes. They were covered in blood.

“But if I don't,” she said.

I looked at Meredith. She was a whiter shade of pale.

The Korean woman stood at the desk, holding a phone to her ear. I could hear the busy signal. She hung up and redialled, again and again.

“Take good care of her, Tucker. Teach her everything you know.”

“But I don't know anything!”

“You do. You're good.”

I shook my head.

“Teach her how to be a good person.”

I swallowed and snot strings reached to the floor and I realized I was crying. “What's her name?” I asked, wiping my face.

Meredith closed her eyes for a moment. “I was thinking … Relvis.”

I stared at her.

Her lips cracked as her face broke into a smile. “Just kidding,” she said.

I laughed a tiny little laugh.

“What do you think of Angel?”

“She's born in City of Angels,” the Korean woman said, nodding. She handed Meredith a glass of water.

“It's nice,” I said and thought of Gina.

Meredith thanked the lady and sipped the water, then closed her eyes for a while. The baby's eyes were grey like the ocean before
a storm. She had a downy patch of black hair and see-through fingernails. She was smaller than the rabbit we had buried in Arizona, which seemed like a gazillion years ago, but was only the day before. She nuzzled into Meredith's breast, and I felt like I shouldn't watch, but I couldn't look away.

Then there was a smashing sound from the front of the store and we could hear people yelling. The Korean woman left the room, closing the door behind her with a click.

“When you get home, take her to see Steve,” Meredith mumbled. “My brother. He'll know what to do.”

“Meredith, you're going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay.”

“All shall be well,” she said quietly. “And all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” She closed her eyes.

“That's right,” I said.

Then we heard a blast of gunshots from the front of the store.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

Meredith shuddered. “Come here,” she whispered, looking at me with her beach-glass eyes.

I leaned my face in close to hers. She turned her head and kissed me softly on the cheek. The moment lasted a sweet forever. Then, she was gone.

28

I couldn't remember what anything meant.

There was a riot outside.

My best friend was dead.

There was a tiny newborn baby wrapped in rags and J-cloths.

I had to get the heck out of Dodge.

I took everything out of Meredith's backpack and made a nest for the baby inside it with the softest T-shirts she had. Then I wrapped the baby in my extra sweater so she would stay warm, and I put her inside the backpack and left the zipper open a bit so she could breathe. I got my plastic bag of special stuff out of my backpack, untied the knot, and took out Charlie, my little dog. I gave him a pat on the head and put him in Meredith's palm and closed her hand around him. I left Charlie with Meredith because he was the best thing I had. And because then, I knew that when I left, she wouldn't be alone.

I put Meredith's stuff in my backpack and put it on my back and strapped the baby-backpack to my front, and walked out of the room.

I didn't see anyone in the store.

I didn't see the Korean man lying behind the counter with a bullet in his forehead.

I didn't see his wife, who had helped us the best she could, bleeding from the stomach behind the magazine rack.

I didn't see the young black guy seizing on the floor of the candy aisle with his hand over his heart.

And I didn't see the dark-haired guy, lying face down beside the
cooler with a hole the size of an egg in the back of his head.

I didn't see any of that. I just walked through the store and out onto the sidewalk and into the angry L.A. night.

29

I walked and walked and walked and walked. When I got tired, I kept walking. When I got thirsty, I kept walking. When I got scared, I kept walking. Everywhere people were looting and breaking things, setting fire to whatever they could. Lots of people wore T-shirts and shorts, but I was cold, and I shivered as I walked. A thin, white layer of ash covered everything, and everything was so loud. All of the noises put together made the worst sound. People screaming and smashing things, the crackle of fires, the crunch of buildings collapsing as they burned, the crash of glass as it shattered, the pop-pop of gunshots, and the
ca-thunk
of cars as they were flipped over. It was the sound of a city tearing itself apart.

The baby, Angel, started to cry, so the next time I passed a grocery store, I went in and took some stuff. I knew it was wrong, but there was no other way to get it since no one was working. I went to the baby aisle and took a bottle, four cans of formula, and I looked and looked for diapers, but all of the shelves where the diapers should've been were empty, so I took a roll of paper towels instead. I went to the check-out counter and took the baby out of Meredith's backpack and put her down on the conveyor belt. I unwrapped the J-cloth from around her butt and put it in the garbage can behind the till. When I saw the purply stub of her umbilical cord, I got dizzy, because I knew that only a few hours before, that same cord had been connected to Meredith. The Korean woman had tied a green piece of string around it, and the knots were so tight, they could never be undone. I unwound a big roll of paper towels and wrapped them around her in the shape of a diaper. I took a bottle of water out of the cooler beside the till and then I opened the can of formula with the can-opener on my Swiss Army knife. I poured some formula into the baby bottle and mixed it
with water like the directions on the side of the can said to do. I took a pencil from a cup of pens and pencils that sat on the drawer of the till and stirred it up with the pencil. Then I picked up the baby and held her in my arms the way I had seen mothers do. I tried to get her to drink from the bottle. At first she turned her head away and spat and gurgled and cried a bit. But after a while she let me put the bottle in her mouth and she sucked on it and took some formula. People were coming in and out of the store, loading up carts and bags with cereal, ice cream, cheese, pepperoni sticks, whatever was left. Nobody noticed me and the newborn baby. I wrapped her up in my sweater again and put her back inside the backpack and nestled her in there so she was warm and comfortable. On my way out, I grabbed a Coke and a Kit Kat and put them in my backpack for later.

I was on a main road and a bunch of cars passed me, and I thought about sticking my thumb out and asking for a ride, but I didn't really want to ride in any of those cars. What I
really
wanted was a ride in Doc Brown's DeLorean. Then I could go back in time to before, when Meredith was alive and everything was okay in the world. We never would have come to L.A. We never would have left Niagara Falls. I would still have a best friend, and her baby would still have a mother.

I realized that it was my fault that Meredith was dead, and a wall of glass broke inside my chest. My throat lumped up, and the edges of everything got blurry.

Then a black man in a white Ford Bronco cruised up beside me and rolled down his window. “Where're ya headed, kid?”

“I don't know,” I said, wiping my eyes.

“I'm going to the airport, if you want a ride,” he said.

“I don't know,” I said.

“Well, tell you what
I
know,” he said. “Sometimes, you gotta get the hell out of L.A. This is one of those times.”

I nodded.

Then the man gave me a little wave and took off. I watched the white Bronco as it headed down the road; it seemed to be going in slow motion. But everything was going in slow motion, so I couldn't be absolutely 100-percent sure about anything.

I walked for a long, long time and didn't think about anything except that I was leaving Los Angeles. I walked toward the bright lights of the planes I could see coming in to land somewhere in the distance. I passed a woman with grey hair leaning in the doorway of a camera store.

“Hey!” she called out to me.

“Hey,” I said.

“Do you know what's going on?” Her face was pinched and tired, and her eyes looked like someone had knocked the light out of them.

“Not really,” I said. “There's a riot.” I shrugged and felt the baby jostle against my stomach.

“It's those pigs, I'll bet. The police in this city are goddamned animals.” She spat onto the sidewalk.

“Do you know which way the airport is?”

“Sure, yeah,” she said. Her head twitched twice to the side. “Just stay on this street for quite a ways, then you'll want to take a right onto Century Boulevard. Then you just keep going straight until you get on a plane.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Got any change?”

I gave her what I had in my pocket, a couple of ones and a few quarters.

“May God bless you,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, and kept walking.

When I got to the airport, the first thing I did was use the washroom. I hung the baby-backpack on the hook on the back of the door and Angel didn't cry or fall out or anything. The second thing I did was call Gina. There was no answer in her room but I let it ring about a thousand times anyways. Then I hung up. Then I went looking for money. I carefully took Angel out of Meredith's backpack so I could have a good look through it. She stayed wrapped inside her sweater-nest on a chair beside me and didn't even cry. I found $200 safety-pinned inside a secret pocket in the top flap of Meredith's backpack, plus another $187 in her wallet. And I still had a $130 of my own. I thought that would be enough to buy a plane ticket to Buffalo, and then I could hitchhike the rest of the way back to Niagara Falls. I took off Angel's paper-towel diaper and wrapped a new one around her, then folded the sweater around her again to keep her warm. I zipped Angel back inside the backpack leaving only a little air hole open and went up to the ticketing counter.

“That flight doesn't leave until five a.m. tomorrow,” the man behind the counter said. He was blond and fat and had crumbs stuck in his moustache.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll take it.”

“It's sold out,” he said.

“Oh.”

“The next flight to Buffalo is at eleven-fifty a.m. and it is …” he checked his computer, “also fully booked.”

“What about Toronto?” I said.

“Canada?” he said.

I nodded.

He clicked some buttons on the keyboard. “The next flight to Toronto leaves at seven thirty-five a.m. Unfortunately, it is fully booked as well. Over-sold, actually.” He gave me a thin smile.

“I just need to get home,” I said.

“I can put you on stand-by,” he said.

“What's that?”

“If someone doesn't show up for their flight, you'll get their seat.”

“What if everybody shows up?”

“Then … you don't get a seat,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Can I stand up on the plane?”

“No,” he said.

“Oh,” I looked down at my shoes. I didn't like looking at my shoes though, because they were stained with Meredith's blood. So I looked back up at him and his stupid, crumby moustache.

“How old are you?” he said.

“Eleven.”

“And you're flying alone today?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a letter of authorization from your parent or guardian?”

“No.”

“I'm afraid we'll need to see some sort of documentation before—”

“Look, my mom is in the hospital in Niagara Falls. My best friend just died in the back of a Korean grocery store. I don't know where my father is, and Los Angeles is on fire. I need to go home
now
.”

He looked at me for a few seconds then pressed his lips together. “I see,” he said. He looked at his computer screen and clicked some buttons. Then he sighed. “Well, we can just keep trying to get you on stand-by for the next available flight to Buffalo or Toronto.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I can't guarantee that you'll get a seat though.”

“So, I'll just have to wait and see?”

“That's right,” he said, eyeing the TV screen that hung from the ceiling, showing the zillions of fires burning across L.A.

“I just want to go home,” I said.

He nodded and checked me through. “You can pay at the gate if you get a seat,” he said.

When I went through security, I put the baby-backpack on the conveyor belt, and Angel zipped right through the X-ray machine. Nobody said anything about her. Maybe they thought she was a doll. Maybe the person who was supposed to be looking at the X-ray machine was actually watching the TV that hung across the room. Everyone in the airport kept watching the TVs, then looking at each other and shaking their heads.

I found a quiet corner near my departure gate and leaned against the wall and drank my Coke and ate my Kit Kat. Then I took Angel out of the backpack and gave her some more formula. She gurgled and it gooped down her chin in little white rivers. I wiped her off with a paper towel and tried again until she drank some of it. Then I wrapped her in my hoodie and put her back in the backpack and lay down so that I could see her. She looked at me with her big grey ocean eyes.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered.

She blinked at me a few times and screeched a little bit, but she didn't cry. After a while she closed her eyes, and so did I. The tears came hot and fast, and I was glad for it.

Everyone showed up for the five a.m. flight to Buffalo. Everyone showed up for the seven thirty-five a.m. flight to Toronto, plus some
extra people who couldn't get on and were upset about it. Everyone showed up for the eleven-fifty a.m. flight to Buffalo. Everyone showed up for the afternoon flight to Toronto. But I kept trying. I went back and forth between the two departure gates all day. It was a long way to go because one was in the International terminal and one was Domestic. Sometimes I had to run between the two to get there on time. But all of the people with tickets showed up for their flights. I guess everyone thought it was a good time to get the heck out of L.A., just like the guy in the Bronco said. I even asked a few nice-looking people if they would sell me their seats. One guy said he would, except that his mom had just died and he had to go to her funeral. One lady said she would, but her apartment was burned down in the riot and she had no place to stay so she was going to stay with her cousin in Buffalo. One guy just looked at me and said, “Not hardly, pal.”

I didn't eat anything because I was afraid if I spent my money on food I wouldn't have enough left for the plane ticket. I just drank water and kept feeding formula to Angel every couple of hours. Angel was really good and didn't cry or fuss at all, she just slept and slept, but I was afraid to go to sleep again in case I missed a flight I could get on. I made sure her paper towel was always dry and that she stayed warm in her little nest. The backpack started to smell like cottage cheese, but she looked happy enough. I tried calling Gina a few more times but there was still no answer. I watched the live news footage of the riots that played on the TVs and saw that it was still going on and getting worse, and when I remembered the things I had seen people doing, I wanted to upchuck all over LAX.