The streets are quiet, and the day is orange.
Elena holds Dove’s hand tightly as they make their way down 52nd Street, their footsteps the only sound as soot drifts down from the sky.
“Stick close,” Elena tells her daughter. “And don’t let go.”
Her voice is muffled against the red and green scarf wrapped around her mouth. Dove prefers the brown one because it’s less scratchy, so Elena carries Christmas wherever they go.
Dove doesn’t speak, just nods and continues jumping over cracks in the sidewalk. Flecks of ash dust her strawberry-blonde hair.
It’s February in New York, a month that should be frigid, a quartet of weeks now warm and dusty. Elena imagines they’re walking to Central Park for sledding instead of picking up their rations for the week. Brushing the ashes from Dove’s curls, she pretends they are snowflakes instead.
“Silly us,” Elena laughs. “We left your hat at home! Now you’ll catch a cold!”
“Silly mommy,” Dove giggles. “It’s not cold out.”
Dove keeps hopping, her childlike wonder refusing to be extinguished; Elena keeps thinking of snow, remembering seasons when flames offered comfort, not chaos.
Then: Memory.
Of childhood winters in Ohio, perched carefully on a warm brick hearth, warming up after snowball fights with her brothers. Of the strident pop of splintered wood, how the fire’s sunset flicker could mesmerize her for hours. Of leftover graham cracker crumbs licked off lips, sticky marshmallow fingers pressed together like a prayer, her stomach twisted in happy knots from too much afternoon sugar.
In times like these, the newscasters said, their faces masked with manufactured cheer, find joy wherever you can.
The smoke showed up almost two years ago, but its arrival didn’t seem to surprise anyone. It was as if the last wheel had fallen off a bus they’d lost control of six exits back.
The media, of course, had to name it something, lest they be chided for not capitalizing on catastrophe. They penned it The Great Smoke Out, but this ruffled the feathers of many churchgoers, who claimed the name made it seem like God was to blame. The U.S. Forest Service and The American Cancer Society took issue with it, too, claiming they didn’t want their ad campaigns synonymous with an apocalypse.
People take comfort in numbers in times of chaos, appreciating the order they seem to bring. So when Pantone picked the 2029 Color of the Year as Coral Haze (16-1329), that’s what it became known as: CH 16-1329.
Dove is the age where she’s learning numbers, where curiosity wakes her up in the morning, where everything becomes a song. She found a box of cassette tapes a few months ago. Today’s melody sounds like Tommy Tutone’s 1981 runaway hit.
“Sixteen thirteen twenty-nigh-ei-i-ei-iiine,” Dove sings softly.
A screech cuts through the orange, and Elena instinctively pulls her child closer. Dove’s breath quickens. She gasps into soft sepia yarn, her face buried into Elena’s side.
“Mommy?” Dove whispers. “What was that?”
The scream echoes out again, paired with the sound of flapping above. They lift their heads and see a large bird perched on a barren, black branch of an empress tree.
“It’s a hawk,” Elena tells Dove as it stretches its wings wide. “Red-tailed.”
They aren’t supposed to be outside for long, but Elena can’t help it. She sits down on a nearby bench and pulls Dove onto her lap. Elena hasn’t seen a bird in over a year.
The hawk’s edges are blurring into the haze. Was the bird of prey real? Or was it just a figment of imagination?
“So its feathers are like papa’s hair?” Dove asks. “Did he send the hawk to find us?”
The hawk cries again, lonelier than before: Kee-eeeee-arr.
Aiden left last Tuesday, but his departure wasn’t sudden.
Darkness descended in him long before skies turned tawny, before oceans started overflowing, before viruses spread like spiderwebs.
Elena remembers her legs open wide, her primal wail indecipherable from Dove’s haunting first cries. She remembers laying with Dove in the witching hours, wishing for just a few minutes of uninterrupted sleep, for a few moments of help. She remembers sitting in the shadows of playground equipment, her eyes watching Dove slide and swing, her womb aching from the loss of their second child.
Then there was Aiden, missing from Mt. Sinai Room 213, roaming the halls instead. Holing up at hotels, insisting he had work deadlines and needed quiet to concentrate. Running on treadmills at the gym, his music played loud enough to silence a deepening despair.
With any sign of suffering, Aiden disappeared.
It’s burned in Elena’s memory, the image of Aiden walking away, smoke swallowing him whole. But she finds it hard to cry when there’s so little oxygen, to waste time looking back when there’s not much of it left ahead.
What was once SONNY'S GROCERY is now SONN ERY.
The village bodega has four doors: security, glass, two made of PVC plastic. Vida’s behind the counter, a well-used N-95 mask covering most of her face.
Vida turns back toward the shop to assess her stock.
“I give you four can veggies, two can beans, one can soup, one can chili. And one loaf bread.”
Elena shakes her head and holds up two fingers. Understanding crosses Vida’s gaze.
Vida flips open a small notebook and scratches pen across paper.
“Okay, then. Two veggies, two beans, half a loaf. Chili or soup?”
“Chili, please.” Elena is grateful for the choice.
“Birdie girl, look what I find,” Vida tells Dove, pulling something small from her sweater. “Here, hold out your hand.”
A foil-wrapped chocolate drops into Dove’s palm.
“What is it?” Dove asks curiously.
“Chocolate. A kiss.” A muffled smacking of Vida’s lips, masked by layers of meshed polymer.
“But you carry it?” Vida warns, “It melts. Put it in your pocket and tonight, half for you, half for mama bird, okay?”
Back on 52nd, though the hawk has left and cinders still fall, Dove’s gray irises shine.
In times like these, the newscasters said, their smiles masking deep fear, establish safe routines.
At home, they unwrap their scarves and take off their shoes. They shake off their sweaters and sweep away the soot. Dove hangs up the keys and Elena rolls a towel to press against the bottom of their door.
After splitting the can of chili, they pull out construction paper and an old box of crayons. They start with the sky. Elena selects Sky Blue, Dove grabs Atomic Tangerine. Elena draws the birds—hawks, sparrows, warblers, pigeons, blackbirds, and, of course, doves. Dove colors them in with whimsical hues, filling their striped sky with rainbows.
They put on Billy Joel, hold hands, and dance. They raise their fists to the ceiling and insist they didn’t start the fire.
Afterward, when pink fades to ink, Elena lights candles. Dove pulls Vida’s gift from her sweater pocket. She places the kiss on the table and unwraps it slowly. Elena cuts it with the sharpest knife she can find, but the chocolate collapses into crumbles.
Dove begins to cry: Kee-eeeee-arr.
“Hey now,” Elena says gently. “Don’t worry. It’s still sweet.”
She wipes away her daughter’s tears with her fingers, then presses one into the crumbs.
“Stick out your tongue.”
Elena’s fingerprint taps Dove’s tiny tastebuds.
“What do you think?”
Dove is too young to remember decadence; her tongue knows only salt and soot. She squeezes her eyes tightly, then blinks them open after a few moments.
“Happy,” Dove answers. She climbs out of her chair in search of her mother’s lap. “It tastes happy.”
Elena sits at the edge of the tub and washes Dove’s hair with murky bathwater. She dries her off with a tattered towel. She rubs Dove’s throat to help her swallow the last lung pill; they won’t have fresh water until Wednesday. She throws away an empty orange bottle. The label proclaims NO REFILLS.
“It hurts, Mommy.”
“I know, baby.” Elena hugs her tight. “I’m sorry.”
Elena reads Dove her favorite book and tucks her into bed. After a forehead kiss and a wish for sweet dreams, she closes the drapes and blows out tiny flames.
She curls up next to Dove and puts on her sleep mask, thinking of the other ones she wears. During the day, she is the keeper of Christmas, jolly and bright. She is a 1980’s pop hit, playing on repeat. She is a wife, forced to face a vanishing future alone. She is a mother, holding small fingers, clinging to fragile beauty. She is Coral Haze, sixteen, thirteen, twenty-nine.
It is only when the day tips toward a dream that she can take them all off.
In sleep, Elena is perched in a charred tree in Hell’s Kitchen. Smoke tickles her nose; fire licks her toes. She cries into a scorched sky, waving her arms in frustration.
Then: Wings.
She is a bird, she is Buteo jamaicensis, she is a red-tailed hawk.
She soars high above the orange in search of salvation. She swallows fresh air and screams into the unknown.
Kee-eeeee-arr.
Elena wakes up, gasping for breath.
Outside, the sky still burns.
Corey Greenlee is a writer and artist based in Colorado. She holds a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University and is at work on her first novel.