After the Rain | Page 4

The power to the elevators was almost always out.
Valentine hugged her father's leg. "My Popa will fight for the city," she
said. "He's a hero."

He was. He'd fought in the revolution, and he'd been given a medal for
it. Sometimes when no one was looking, Valentine took out her parents'
medals and looked at their tiny writing, their shining, unscratchable
surfaces, their intricate ribbons.
The woman from the city gave her father a look that said, You see, a
child understands, what's your excuse? Valentine couldn't quite feel
guilty for taking the woman's side. Leeza's parents fought every day.
"I must leave a note for my wife," he said. Valentine realized that for
the first time in her life her parents were going to leave her all on her
own and felt a thrill.
#
Two weeks and one day after the siege began, her Mata came home,
and the city came for Valentine.
Mata was grimy and exhausted, and she favored one leg as she went
about the flat, making them cold cereal with water -- all the milk had
spoiled -- and dried fruits. Trover looked curiously at her, as though he
didn't recognize her, but eventually he got in her way, and she snapped
at him to move already, and he pitched a relieved fit, pounding his fists
and howling. How that little boy could howl!
She sat down at the table with Valentine, and the two of them ate their
cereal together.
"Your father?"
"He said he was digging trenches -- that's what he did all day
yesterday."
Her mother's eyes glinted. "Good. We need more trenches. We'll fortify
the whole city with them, spread them out all the way to their lines,
trenches we can move through without being seen or shot. We'll take
the war to those bastards and slip away before they know we've killed
them." Mata had apparently forgotten all about not talking to Valentine

like a grownup.
The knock at the door came then, and Mata answered it, and it was the
woman from the city again. "Your little girl," she said.
"No," Mata said. Her voice was flat and would not brook any
contradiction. She'd bossed her nine brothers -- Valentine's uncles, now
scattered to the winds -- and then commanded a squadron in the
revolution, and no one could win an argument with her. As far as
Valentine knew, no one could win an argument with her.
"No?" The woman from the city said. "No is not an option, comrade."
Mata drew herself up. "My husband digs. I fight. My daughter cares for
our son. That's enough from this family."
"There are old people in this building who need water brought for them.
There's a creche for the boy underground, he'll be happy enough there.
Your little girl is strong and the old people are weak."
"No," her mother said. "I'm very sorry, but no." She didn't sound the
least bit sorry.
The woman from the city went away. Mata sat down and went back to
eating her cereal with water without a word, but there was another
knock at the door fifteen minutes later. The woman from the city had
brought along an old hero with one arm and one eye. He greeted Mata
by name, and Mata gave him a smart salute. He spoke quietly in her ear
for a moment. She saluted him again, and he left.
"You'll carry water," Mata said.
Valentine didn't mind, it was a chance to get out of the flat. One day of
baby-sitting the human tantrum had convinced her that any chore was
preferable to being cooped up with him.
She carried water that day. She'd expected to be balancing buckets over
her shoulders like in the schoolbooks, but they fitted her with a

bubble-suit that distributed the weight over her whole body and then
filled it up with a hose until she weighed nearly twice what she
normally did. Other kids were in the stairwells wearing identical
bubble-suits, sloshing up the steps to old peoples' flats that smelled
funny. The old women and men that Valentine saw that day pinched
her cheeks and then emptied out her bubble-suit into their cisterns.
It was exhausting work, and by the end of the day she had stopped
making even perfunctory conversation with the other water-carriers.
The old people she met at the day's end were bitter about being left
alone and thirsty all day, and they snapped at her and didn't thank her at
all.
She picked Trover up from the creche, and he demanded that he be
carried, and she had half a mind to toss him down the stairs. But she
noticed that he had a bruise over his eye and his hands and face were
sticky and dirty, and