I rip open a protein bar and take a bite. It’s chewy like caramel, but not nearly as delicious. Chocolate, I think. Chocolate mixed with cardboard. It sticks to my teeth. Feels filmy on my tongue. But I keep eating because I know it will give me the strength I need.
I walk through the gray morning mist of the marine layer and anxiously await the bright streaks of sunshine to burn through. They’re arriving slowly but surely, sputtering to a start. The sky goes orange with beginning.
I look up at the dangling sign of a freeway overpass. Take note of the next exit written on the sign. It’s one I know from traveling on school buses to water polo games. I’m inland. I’m closer to the foothills than I am to my mom’s office. I need to head west.
I change course. Walk on.
By the time I come upon a makeshift shelter in the middle of the grass field of a park a few blocks later, my stomach is begging for another protein bar. I sip water instead. Watch the people. They’re living in tents or out of their cars, their belongings stuffed into laundry baskets and trash bags. The energy is restless. Furtive. Most people gather in circles of trust around their stuff. I stick to the fringe to let them know I’m a stranger. A few feet from me, a disheveled woman hunches over a hibachi grill. No food. Just heat. Three small kids huddle behind her. One of them is an infant, not even walking yet. He isn’t wearing pants or a diaper, only a dirty T-shirt. Another is a little girl, probably five years old, with uneven ponytails and stained pants. Her brother, next to her, is younger and wearing stripes. The kids look hungry. Cold. I wish I’d looked for more things around that table in the hospital parking lot. Maybe there were diapers. Blankets. Toothbrushes. Food. Soap. Things I could give to people who need them.
“Hello,” I say to the woman. Testing the waters. The fact that she’s a mom makes her seem safer to approach than the other strangers. But then she looks at me. Narrows her eyes. Gathers her children behind the protective fold of her back.
“What?” she says, firm with warning.
I hesitate. “I wanted to tell you, there’s a table back at the hospital. There’s food. Water. There’s help.”
I take a step toward her and she angles her body closer to the grill. Too close. I’m afraid her hair will catch fire. She grits her teeth. Looks at me hard.
“I have a gun,” she says, but doesn’t make a move for it.
I falter. Put my hands up. “I don’t want anything.”
“Everyone wants something.”
“I don’t. Really. I just want to help.” But that’s not entirely true. Because I do want something. I want information. I want to know what she knows about getting to the parts of town beyond here. Back to Pacific Shore. Back to home. “I’m trying to find my mom.”
Her face softens. I think it again. She’s a mom. She knows. But in an instant she stiffens her shoulders again. Precisely because she is a mom. Her own kids come first.
I get it. I do.
My mom would do the same for me.
The baby peeks out from behind her back. Shivers. She pulls him in front of her. Gathers him in her lap. Tries to warm him by rubbing her hands up and down his bare legs. I remember the cold of the rubble. The way my teeth chattered and my fingertips froze. Her baby is cold like I was. And right now I’m almost too warm in all these layers.
“Do you want my sweatshirt?” I ask.
She studies my filthy team sweatshirt, crusty with dried blood. “You keep it.”
I shake my head. “No, no. Not this one.” When I walked into the laundromat, I was thinking about quitting water polo. I gave my championship ring to Charlie, but I hung on to my sweatshirt. It stopped the bleeding in my arm and told Nurse Cathy where I’m from. I wouldn’t give up this sweatshirt. I empty the pockets and line the protein bars and bottled waters at my feet, along with Charlie’s journal. I unzip my dirty team sweatshirt and point to the soft gray sweatshirt from the hospital underneath. “But you can have this one.”
Her baby shivers in her lap. The little girl behind her sneezes. I pull the clean sweatshirt off, still warm from my body heat, and hold it out to this mom while I stand in the 5K T-shirt. She hesitates. Until her baby whimpers. And then she quickly grabs the sweatshirt from me and wraps him in it.
She nods. “Thank you. That’s. . . incredibly generous.”
I zip up my dirty sweatshirt. Tuck Charlie’s journal underneath. Bend to collect my food.
“Mommy, I’m thirsty,” the older boy says, eyeing my water.
His words send me straight to the rubble. When I got water and Charlie didn’t. I tried to direct it his way, knowing he was as thirsty as I was, but it never got to him. I hold tight to one of my water bottles. I couldn’t help Charlie. But I can help this little boy now. I hold the bottle out to him. He looks at his mom, asking permission to take it. She looks at me.
“Are you sure? Don’t you need it?”
“You need it more. I just need to find my mom.”
“Go ahead,” she says to her son. Then to me, as her eyes glisten, “Thank you. Again. Thank you.” She untwists the cap. Rations their gulps so there’s something for everyone.
“I need to go. I need to figure out how to get back home.”
She points right. “If you walk about five blocks that way, you’ll be on the main drag. You’ll have better luck finding help to get you where you’re going.”
“Five blocks?”
She nods.
“Thanks.”
I turn to go.
“Hey,” she calls out to me after I’ve taken a few steps. I stop. Turn back around to face her. “There’s been looting over there. Arrests. If you were my daughter, I’d want someone to tell you to be careful. So for your mom, I’m saying it. Be careful.”
“I will.”
I walk five blocks. Round the corner. See the police cars. Hear a police officer shouting from a megaphone.
“This street is closed,” he says. “Use alternate routes or risk arrest.”
It doesn’t feel safe here. There’s almost a palpable crackle to the air, telling me to turn around. I know there’s been looting because entire televisions are in the middle of the sidewalk. Dropped. Broken. And then the more necessary things like boxes of diapers, baby formula, and empty jugs of water. On top of that is the trash and discarded remnants of the things that became too much to carry. Chairs. Laptops. Plastic crates full of treasured belongings. Things from home.
Where was everyone going? Where are they now?
I recognize the hollowed-out storefronts of this main street. My mom and I have taken weekend day trips here to shop and have lunch and see a movie. The places I know are hard to recognize now among the broken windows and debris.
A siren sounds, and about ten people come running toward me. My heartbeat amps up as I get caught in the tangle of them. I turn and run with them to avoid whatever they’re fleeing. Tear gas? Guns? I run three blocks, trying to escape the chaos, then stop at the corner, bent over and dragging in air. Like Charlie in the rubble. Like the old man in the hallway. I should sit down and rest. Figure out a plan.
My mom’s office is at least a thirty-minute car ride from here. There’s no way I’ll have the strength to make it on foot. What parts of me will I have to abandon along the way?
I duck into a doorway when I see a police officer with her back to me on the sidewalk ahead. I hold my breath. Wait until she goes away.
It feels good to stop moving, so I sink to the dirty ground. I unscrew the top off a bottled water and down it in one take. I tell myself five minutes. A little time to rest and regain my strength.