The basement was intact, and so was the cold cellar that would be our home continuously for at least a few days until the radiation dropped enough to venture into the actual basement. The basement would give us room to walk, move and not feel so cramped. Freedom to go topside or aboveground was hindered by my knowledge that radiation would drop to tolerable levels. The human body could only take and repair so much, stand only a limited amount of exposure. Two weeks was always the theoretical safety frame I had learned.
After finishing the basement windows, I examined the ceiling for structure problems. Not that I would know if there were any, but common sense told me since nothing looked as if it were crumbling, we were fine. What lay above our heads was not my concern at that time.
Davy had lit the emergency light. Small, round, battery operated. It was one of many I had purchased from a discount store. I never intended the life of those lights to last very long, one per day was what I figured.
They worked, that was a good sign. Something that always stuck in my head was the Electro-Magnetic-Pulse effect, or EMP. The theory that anything that was running when the bombs fell, would cease and never run again. So Davy had an idea, one he took upon himself to implement. About six months earlier, Davy had dug a small hole in the dirt floor of the cold cellar, and he buried our batteries. Sealed in plastic bags, he pulled out what was needed and covered the rest up with loose dirt.
I watched him put a battery in the back of an alarm clock. He showed it to Simon, “So we know what time it is.” He winked. “Hey, Mom, what time do you have?” he asked as he prepared to set the clock.
I glanced to my watch. “Shit.” I brought it to my ear. “It stopped.”
“It stopped?”
“Yeah, at Ten-fourteen.”
“Good thing we buried the batteries, huh?” He smiled.
“Good thing.”
“How long you think it’s been?”
“No more than twenty minutes.” I answered.
“Thanks.” As if he were showing a toy, Davy set that clock in front of Simon.
Simon.
He had finally calmed down, stopped crying and probably assumed it was some sort of game Davy was playing with him. Davy always teased Simon, and I guess in the three-year-old mind, this was just another one of Davy’s tricks to make him cry.
“Done.” Davy set the clock on a small box. “See, Simon, now we know the time.” Brushing off his hands, Davy stood up. “Mom, can we sit on the mattress?”
I only nodded.
Davy grabbed the mattress we had used for shielding us and laid it on the floor. “Is this OK here, or do you want me to put this somewhere?”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’ll be fine.”
“Maybe me and Simon can organize in here. Something to do.” Davy said. “You wanna do that, Simon, huh? After we take a rest?”
Simon excited, nodded his head.
“We’ll help out Aunt Jo, that way it won’t be so dirty.”
“It’s dirty,” Simon said.
“Yeah.” Davy made a crinkled face. “Let’s take a rest first, OK?”
Taking Simon’s hand, Davy led him to the mattress. Both boys sat, and Simon seemed to mimic Davy, leaning against the wall, crossing his feet at the ankles and closing his eyes, right after Davy did.
I sat across from them on an old folded winter coat. All I could do at that moment was watch them. They were perched upon one of three mattresses I went out and bought at a discount store. A two hundred dollar expense my husband Sam didn’t bat an eye at. Of course Sam didn’t say too much about what I bought, or did regarding our little survival world. He went along with it, no matter how outlandish or expensive. Labeling everything as something you never know if you would need.
Who would have thought the need would be there. I certainly didn’t, despite what I did. I peered around the small cold cellar. A dark, dingy room that I used mainly for storing my supplies. Sure, I said it would be the immediate protective shelter, but I never prepped it. My boxes of food, supplies, and water took up so much space we barely had room to sit. I hadn’t a true clue on what all I had. Davy’s post-rest reorganization plan would be a much needed activity. Not only to give us space, but to give us something to do. I had spent so much time planning, creating checklists, schedules, and charting what we would do in the days and weeks following the attack, I forgot to plan what we would do in the immediate. How crucial the ‘immediate’ was.
Time stood still. The shock of what happened left my body with a tremendous inability to move. My mind wouldn’t think. My body ached in the painful silence of the aftermath. The brass balls I displayed on my sleeve rolled off somewhere in the confusion of what happened. All that I expected myself to be, all that I projected, I wasn’t. Truth be known, even more than feeling scared, at that moment, I felt totally useless.
“Hold it steady,” I instructed Davy, who aimed the flashlight for my benefit.
“I am.”
“I know.” On my knees I fiddled with the yellow tin box I purchased from an auction at a really cheap price. A steal I bragged about. My affordable Geiger counter. But at that moment I wondered if I only paid for a box with some neat little gadgets. To my right was a brochure. I lifted it.
“Aunt Jo?” Simon called.
From the pages, I glanced to Simon who lay belly-down on the mattress. “Yes?”
“Can I have one more?”
“Um… sure.” I knew he was referring to the beef jerky. I had given him only one to hold him over while he colored.
“Should he have one more?” Davy asked.
“Yes, we have plenty. I’m positive of that. Why don’t you get it for him, please?”
“OK.” Davy took a step away.
“The light. The light. Don’t move the flashlight.” I snapped.
“Mom, I can’t go get Simon beef jerky and hold the flashlight on you.”
I grumbled softly. “You’re right.” I looked to Simon, “Simon, give us a few minutes. Finish coloring.”
“OK.” Simon returned to his book.
The battle with the Geiger counter was growing tiresome. I pulled and pulled the top. “Fuck. How do you get this thing open to put the batteries in?”
“Isn’t it in the manual?” Davy questioned.
“How to put the batteries inside is on page three. How to open it…” I grabbed the manual. “Is nowhere to be found.”
“Maybe you should have read the manual before.”
“I should have. I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Christ, Davy, I don’t know. Maybe because I didn’t think we needed to.” It was pointless to argue with Davy; my mind was on that box. Finally, I succeeded. “Ah. There.”
“Was all you needed to do was flip that latch?” Davy pointed.
The glance I gave said more than any words.
“Just asking.”
“Hold the light steady.” I grabbed the battery from the baggie.
“Will it work?” Davy asked.
“I hope.”
“We never tested it.”
“I know.”
“We should have tested it,” Davy said.
I looked up at him. He had to be kidding. “How were we supposed to test it, Davy? It measures radiation.”
Davy shrugged. “I don’t know. An X-Ray place or something. Because you know, what if it doesn’t work and it tells us the wrong thing.”
I closed the lid to the Geiger counter. “You know what? Forget it. We’ll do it later.”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t need to measure right now.”
“How come? Don’t we want to know what the levels are?”
“They’re high.” I stood up.
“But what if…”
“Davy.” I barked. “It doesn’t make a difference what the levels are, we aren’t fuckin’ going out there anyhow.”
“You don’t have to yell.”
“I’m not…” I took a second to calm down. “I’m not yelling. I’m… “ I inched across the shelter. “Just getting a beef jerky for Simon.”
Even though he looked busy coloring, Simon was eavesdropping. He called out a, ‘Thank you.’
The flap to the box was open, and I reached in, pulling out a sandwich bag filled with small strips of beef jerky. I took one out, sealed the bag again and moved to Simon. “Here you go.”
Simon scooted to his knees. “Thank you, Aunt Jo.”
“You’re welcome, honey. But no more for a while.” I laid my hand on his head, fully intending to walk back over to that Geiger counter.
“We have to save some for Matty, huh, Aunt Jo?”
I froze. I literally froze while my insides felt like they dropped to the floor. A lump formed in my throat with a squeaked out a ‘yes’, then I just sat down, bringing my knees to my chest to hug in comfort.
After a moment, Davy made his way over, exhaled heavily and sat next to me.
Leaning just a tad, I placed my head against his arm. “Oh, Davy.”
“I’ve been… I haven’t wanted to ask.”
Nodding, I looked up and was startled, Simon was right there extending his beef jerky to me as if that were the reason for my being down. “No, thank you, Simon. You eat it.”
Then as he had done for the previous four hours, Simon imitated Davy. He let out a Simon size exhale and sat on my other side. I couldn’t help it, emotional or not, I smiled. I took a second to gather my thoughts. “OK. Here’s what I think.” I glanced at Davy, then at Simon. “We’re fine, right? The house is fine, at least partially. The school is four blocks away. It has to be at least in the same shape. Plus, they would have known about the attack before we did. We were watching a movie.”
Davy caught my thought process. “They would have moved the kids.”
“Exactly.”
“Will they keep them there? They won’t just send them out, will they?”
“God, I hope not.” I swallowed and thought again. “No. No,” I said with certainty. “No, they wouldn’t. I may have hated Mr. Shep as a principal, but he’s not a dumb man. He ran that grade school like a boot camp. And we know why.”
Davy nodded. “He was in the Army.”
“Exactly. He has to know. Those kids will go nowhere until he figures out what to do. And if God forbid, something has happened to him, well… Mrs. Donnor is there and she’s smart too. I’m confident.”
“Are you confident that Matty is all right?”
Before I answered, I asked for assurance from my heart. “Yes. Yes she is.”
“So what do we do? I can go get her. Let me go get her.”
“No, Davy I will. But, hating to do so, I’m gonna wait just a couple days. Just a couple. If I go out now, or even tomorrow, I may be out too long and end up sick. I won’t be any good if I’m sick. And I need you well too.”
“Plus, Matty knows, Mom. She knows to wait. We both did. You taught us.”
I reached out and put my hand on Davy’s head as my thank you, then I reached for Simon. “We’ll get her home.”
“What about Sam?” Davy asked. “You think…”
“Sam’s fine.” I chuckled and tried to make light. “Come on Davy. You think I’m getting off that easy. Nah, your stepfather is gonna be back too.”
Like before, like Davy, Simon had questioned. “What about Daddy?”
My brother. A barrage of guilt hit me at that very second because I hadn’t even thought of any of my other family members. “Simon.” His name was all I could speak. How is it possible to explain to a three-year-old that I didn’t know where his father was or even if he would return? Just when I was about to evade the question, Simon asked another.
“What about Mommy?” he asked. “Is she coming for me?”
“Simon…”
“I’m going home now, right?” he waited impatiently for an answer. “Huh, Aunt Jo?”
How to tell him? What to tell him? Davy had explained as best as he could to Simon why we were in the basement, but I don’t think Simon understood. So how was he to understand me telling him the uncertainty about his parents? I couldn’t tell him, ‘no’, and I couldn’t’ tell him ‘yes’. His big brown eyes peered up to me waiting to absorb the answer I would give him. Sorting through my loss at what to say, I chose honesty. “I don’t know, Simon. I just… don’t know.”
I pulled Simon close, and kissed him on the head. It may not have been an answer that would satisfy Simon and stop his questioning, but it was the best I could do. It was my ‘stock’ inner reply to everything. If asked about what happened, what became of my family, what we would do next, would everything be all right. I would answer the same. I just didn’t know.