Chloë winced, drawing her limbs in to hug herself. “I can’t. I know I should… but…”
Kath thought that might be the case. “No worries. We’ll work on it now.” She read to them, following with her fingers, showing Chloë the words. She wasn’t going to teach the girl to read in one sitting. But they had to start somewhere. The little ones were rapt.
They went through the books she’d brought, went through them all again at the little ones’ insistence, and Kath asked them which were their favorites and why. They finally seemed normal. Acted normal, engaged and talking. Then they lost interest in the books and ran off to chase a grasshopper. Kath let them; they couldn’t get into too much trouble around here.
Chloë was still suspicious.
“They your siblings? Brother and sister?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are your parents?”
She shrugged, shuffling through the books, brushing fingers on the covers. “What’s the point? I mean, does anybody still read?”
“We still have books. We have a whole library inside. It’s still a good way to learn things.”
“I guess.”
Kath wanted to draw her out. “Do you remember anything from before?” She was old enough; she might, unlike her siblings. Or depending on how bad things had been for her, she might have blocked it all out. “I remember a lot. I definitely don’t want to forget how to read.”
Chloë stared out at the barricade of junked cars. Kath didn’t think she was going to talk, and was going to let it go. Suggest they go in and find some lunch. But then the girl said, “I remember Disneyland. We went when I was really small. Got my picture with Ariel. She’s my favorite. Wish I still had the picture but it got lost somewhere. I guess it’s still there? Disneyland? What’s going to happen to it?”
Honestly, Kath couldn’t remember the last time she’d even thought of Disneyland. But the question suddenly filled her. What had happened to Disneyland? Another stab of grief followed. Another thing to mourn, or lock away and forget.
She said, “It must still be there. Some of it, at least. But the lights have probably gone out.”
“I wish I was there. Even with the lights out.”
“Yeah.”
Kath looked up; Maggie stood at the corner of the building, arms crossed. Her face was screwed up in the way it usually got when she was thinking of crying. Holding it in so hard she seemed to be in pain. Then, the look was gone.
Maggie said, “Hey there! Anita’s got soup cooking. Chloë, why don’t you take the others around and get yourselves fed.”
The girl nodded, clambering to her feet and going to fetch the others, who’d been playing some kind of tag. She didn’t call out to them, and Kath wondered about that. That she didn’t feel safe, raising her voice.
Kath stood and watched them go, and Maggie watched Kath.
“You’re good with the kids. They’re comfortable with you.”
“Yeah, I like them too.” She didn’t worry so much with the kids. She didn’t think about the future so much. Kids were easy: keep them fed, keep them clean, do everything to keep them safe. Simple. If she could teach them to read, then she’d really have accomplished something.
Maggie seemed to draw even tighter to herself. Her shoulders were rigid, her hands in fists.
Kath’s brow furrowed. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s just… you looked like… you don’t want to have your own kids, do you?”
She hadn’t thought about it at all. Food and security, that was what she thought about these days. The question startled her, and she had to think a moment, but that moment was too long for Maggie.
“Oh God, you’re already pregnant, aren’t you? That’s why you like the kids, you’re practicing—”
“What? No! What gave you that idea?”
This didn’t seem to help. “But you’re having sex. Tell me, are you having sex?”
Kath glared. “I’m twenty years old, of course I’m having sex!”
“And you’re pregnant.”
“No, God no!”
“But have you been using protection? How do you know?” Maggie seemed desperate.
Kath paused, then shot back, “Because I’m sleeping with Melanie!”
Maggie drew back, and Kath wondered what she was going to rant about next. It wasn’t that she and Melanie had been hiding anything. It just made sense to double up on tents to save space, and they hadn’t actually announced anything when they became more than friends. It wasn’t being gay that Kath thought would upset people. It was being… adult. She wasn’t growing up. She was grown.
Now, Maggie did cry. Or laugh. Something that came from tension releasing, and causing whatever was holding her together to collapse. She slumped against the wall, both hands covering her face. “I’m sorry, Kathy. I’m sorry. It’s just… we can’t feed everyone, and people keep having babies and we can’t do anything, we can’t feed them—”
Kath put her arms around the woman and just held her.
“God, look at me,” Maggie said around sobs. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you and just look at me.”
“You don’t have to take care of me,” Kath said. “You have enough to worry about, just let me… be me.”
They stayed like that awhile, hidden in the shelter of the building where Maggie could lose it in private, and Kath stayed to make sure she was okay. The older woman had been right at the edge for such a long time.
Maggie finally pulled away, scrubbing tears off her face and chuckling at herself, a strained and painful sound.
“So, you and Melanie, huh? I think I knew that. Yeah. Oh God, I’m so messed up I can’t see what’s right in front of my face. I promised your mom I’d look out for you and if you turned up pregnant in this mess—” She took a shuddering breath, rubbed her face one more time. And like that she had put on a new mask, and was smiling. “I’m sorry. I forget sometimes, that you’re grown up.”
Kath offered words, a gesture of comfort, though it might hurt as much as it helped. Kath wanted to say it. “I never got to come out to Mom,” she said softly. “I mean, I sort of knew, I was starting to figure it out. Figuring out that I didn’t just put those pictures on my wall because I liked beach volleyball so much, you know? But I never told Mom.”
“Oh, hon. You know she’d be okay with it, right?”
“Yeah, I know. But I wish…” She shook her head. They all wished.
“You should be in college,” Maggie murmured, running a hand over Kath’s hair.
All the adults said that to her in their most maudlin moments. She should be in college. Not staying up half the night with a gun under her arm. Kath herself had stopped believing anything would ever change. This was just what life was now. There’d never be somewhere else.
“Where would you be now?” she asked Maggie.
She looked around at the wide-open compound that used to be part of a pleasant street, the modest building now crammed with solar panels it didn’t used to have. “I’d be here, I think. But it’d be a lot different. Can you do a watch shift tonight? Mike’s come down with something.”
“Bad?”
“No, just a cold.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“Thanks. Just… thank you.”
Kath’s watch shift started late afternoon and went into the evening. She covered about half the perimeter, walking on top of the barricade, stepping from car roof to truck hood to trailer and on. They’d bolted on sheets of metal and spikes, fencing, and other odds and ends to the basic framework over the years. Occasionally she’d come upon a loose bit, a piece of sheeting that moved under her feet, a car roof that was rusting out, and the next day someone would come to repair it. Used to be, they’d have four or five people covering the barricade, especially during the night watch. But since the fire and clearing the line of sight, they needed fewer people watching and could save the effort for other chores. The long approach gave the watchers plenty of time to spot trouble and raise an alarm.