Susan Pfeffer: This World We Live In

“Nothing,” I said. “I saw a field with a lot of fresh graves. The Beasley boys were there. That’s who I meant when I said the boys were there. But Mrs. Nesbitt probably isn’t. I hope not anyway.”

Mom nodded. “There must be graves like that all over,” she said. “All over the world. Come on, Miranda. Change into something warmer, and I’ll make you some soup.”

I did as she said. I even ate the soup. But I saw what I saw, and I know—with a cold, cruel certainty—that someday, somewhere, we’ll be part of a mountain of bodies reaching up toward the sunless sky.

“Matt and Jon will be home tomorrow,” Mom said, as though saying it often enough would guarantee it would actually happen. “And we’re going to need a place to store the fish.”

“You really think they’ll have that many?” I asked. My fantasies, when I’ve allowed myself any, are shad poached in white wine, a stuffed baked potato, and sauteed green beans. With a salad beforehand and chocolate mousse for dessert. And a hot fudge sundae.

“Let’s hope so,” Mom said. “I hate to think they’re spending all their time in the cold not catching anything.”

“Except cold,” I said, which Mom might have thought was clever a year or so ago.

A year ago. May 18th is the anniversary of when the asteroid hit the moon. May 12th a year ago, I had no idea of how my life, how everyone’s life, was about to change. A year ago my biggest problem… Well, a year ago I didn’t have any problems. Maybe I thought I did but I didn’t.

“I think the cellar would be best,” Mom said. “It should be cool enough, at least until we salt the fish.”

I don’t like cellars. I don’t like ours and I don’t like Mrs. Nesbitt’s. Friends of mine had basements that were converted into family rooms or used for storage, but we have an old-fashioned dirt cellar. Toadstools grew there in the summer, but Mom was afraid they were poisonous, so we never ate them.

Mushrooms. I added them to my imaginary shad dinner. Feeling virtuous, I also added a chocolate peanut butter pie.

Mom grabbed our biggest flashlight and opened the cellar door. I followed her, to prove what a good daughter I am. After yesterday she still needed some convincing.

“Oh no,” she said, shining the light onto the floor. Not that you could see the floor. The reflection of the light shone right back at us. The cellar was completely flooded.

“I guess we’ll have to find someplace else for the shad,” I said, unconvinced there’d be enough to worry about. “Maybe the garage?”

“The shad’s not the problem,” Mom said, which could have fooled me, since the shad had been the problem thirty seconds earlier. “We’ve got to clear the cellar out. We can’t let it stay flooded.”

“I guess the sump pump stopped working,” I said. “All the snow melting and the rain and not enough electricity. Why can’t the cellar stay flooded? At least until Matt and Jon get home?”

“Don’t you think they’ve done enough for us?” Mom asked.

Actually I didn’t. As far as I was concerned, they were having a wonderful adventure, away from home, away from Mom and the sunroom and mounds of bodies.

“Mom,” I said, trying to sound mature and reasonable and not like a whining crybaby. “That’s an awful lot of water for us to mop.”

“We’ll use the pails you brought home,” Mom said, because sure, it was fine for me to break into people’s houses just as long as I stole pails and crossword puzzle books. She walked down a few steps, then turned to me and said, “Get the folding yardstick. It’s in the hardware drawer in the kitchen.”

I found the yardstick and brought it to her. Mom climbed down the rest of the stairs and stuck the yardstick into the water. “Six inches,” she said. “The water is six inches deep.”

“We can’t clean up all that water ourselves,” I said.

“Why not?” Mom said. “Do you have anything better to do?”

Suddenly Romeo and Juliet seemed very appealing. “I’ll get the pails,” I said, “but I don’t know how we’re going to do this.”

“Me either,” Mom said. “Bring all the pails and that big pot we used to make soup in. Oh, and the mop. We’ll need it eventually.”

“How about boots?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Mom said. “And another flashlight we can leave on the steps.”

So I searched the house for anything that could hold water and anything that could keep it off us.

“I’ve done this before,” Mom said when I returned to her loaded with everything I could find. “Once when the sump pump stopped and another time when the water heater burst. A little water never hurt anyone, but it’s not a good idea to let the cellar stay like this.”

“How are we going to empty the pails?” I asked.

Mom paused for a moment. “It is going to take forever, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ll fill the pails and you can empty them outside. Tell you what. Open the kitchen window and lift the screen up and throw the water out. It’s not the best method, but it’ll save us time.”

“We’ll be better off with six containers,” I said. “You can fill four while I throw out two.”

“Good thinking,” Mom said. “Get the biggest pots you can find.”

So I did. And while I was looking for them, Mom put on her boots and started filling the pails. By the time I put on my boots and walked down the stairs, Mom had all three pails and the soup pot pretty much full. I took two pails, carried them from the cellar through the kitchen, and flung the water out. As I walked downstairs, I thought that this was the stupidest thing I’d done in a year, maybe in my entire life.

On the other hand, it kept Mom from staring at the door, willing Matt and Jon to come home. And it was a distraction from thinking about piles of dead bodies.

It didn’t take more than a half dozen trips before my legs and back began aching. And I knew, after a half dozen trips, that if we’d stuck the yardstick back in the water, it would still register six inches.

But Mom kept at it, and her body had to be aching every bit as much as mine, from bending with the pot, filling it with water, and dumping the water into a pail.

We worked silently for a half hour, the only sounds the water sploshing around and my footsteps up and down the cellar stairs. I thought about saying how ridiculous this all was, but I knew better than that. I went for the lighthearted approach instead.

“It’s a shame we can’t let the water freeze,” I said. “I could have an indoor skating rink.”

Mom stood upright and stretched. “Do you miss skating?” she asked.

Compared to what? I thought. Food? Friends? Dad? But all I said was “A little bit. I liked skating on the pond this winter.”

“I used to love to watch you skate,” Mom said. “Don’t tell Matt or Jon, because I enjoyed their track meets and baseball games, but I liked going to your skating competitions the most. It broke my heart when you had to give it up.”

“Mine, too,” I said.

“Sometimes I think of all the things we had and lost before,” Mom said. “Your skating. Lucky, our cat before Horton. Even my parents, dying when I was so young. Maybe we lost the things we loved then so we could survive losing every thing else.”

“We haven’t lost everything else,” I said, taking the pails from her. “We still have each other and the house and Horton.” And a flooded cellar and a backache.

“Isn’t there some kind of Greek myth about this?” I asked on one of my return trips. “Some guy who has to empty out the ocean with a spoon and by the time he finishes, it rains for forty days and nights?”