Wonderless - A Gen-Z Odyssey

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Led by 16-year-old street-smart, science prodigy, Little Man, the kids of Wonderless ride the currents of dark energy on an epic cross-country journey, pausing only to unravel, or undo, American culture, and the final threads that tether them to it.

Chapter 1

When I was twelve, my mother sank into a deep depression and I sat up with her at night, making tea, talking. That was when I pieced together the date of my conception, September 10, or more likely, early morning, September 11, 2001.

“Our last night together, we went to a late movie at the Bronx Plaza,” she told me, “came back to my room, drank wine and ate pizza. The next morning, he headed off to the West Village to sell his jewelry off a blanket, and that afternoon, as I sat watching the footage of those buildings coming down, he called from New Jersey, saying he’d seen the plane hit the first tower, hopped the train to Newark to pick up his Aerostar, and was heading to Florida.

“He’d served in Iraq,” she said, “and when the war came chasing him to New York, all he could do was run.”

For a long time, she said, she mistook his running for fear—of his past, of her, of being a father—but only because she herself was afraid, of losing him, of being left with a responsibility, a child, she knew she couldn’t handle.

“When buildings start falling, Little Man,” she said, “and you’re already living on borrowed time, you’d be a fool to stick around.”

 

The next winter my mom and I moved again, like reverse underground railroad refugees, white mother and child (my dad was Colombian but more white than brown) being sheltered by a network of tias and aunties and amoos, this time to Tia Munello’s apartment on East 141^st in the Bronx where we slept on air mattresses in a corner of the living room behind sheets hanging from a clothesline.

            The following fall, we moved to Morris Avenue, into a bedroom with a standing partition we shared with Amoo Feeren, a silent thickset woman from Iran who took in laundry, washing it in a machine in her kitchen and hanging it to dry on four lines with pulleys extending out the back window. The first week, my mom rose early, sent me off to my new school with a girl who lived below us, Josephina, but by the second week was again sleeping in, looking for jobs in the afternoon, the third week not coming home till the next day, saying her job-hunting was going late so she’d been staying at a friend’s house, Amoo Feeren wordlessly sending me off to school each day, wrapping a cheese sandwich and juice box in a dish towel and stashing it in my backpack.

            When my mother found a job as a cocktail waitress in Queens, which came with our own bedroom in the owner’s apartment, I ran down the stairs to tell Josephina the good news.

            “You can always come back and stay with Feeren,” she said.

            “Why would I come back?” I said.

            “If you have problems,” Josephina said. “If it doesn’t work out.”

            But I didn’t understand. I mean, I understood having problems, we always had problems, but I didn’t understand how things could not work out.

 

 My mother lasted three solid months working as a waitress, and the apartment was excellent, my mom’s shift ending at five, the two of us eating dinner and watching movies, the owner spending evenings at the restaurant, till one day my mother came home early, agitated, saying the owner was running a morgue not a restaurant, too cheap to even invest in a few potted plants, and I knew the job was history.

Later that night, it came out that Social Services had tracked her down, each school I’d left reporting me as truant, and, unable to provide either paystubs or lease, she’d agreed to send me to Hell’s Kitchen to live with my father’s brother, Lanny, also a veteran of Desert Storm, who’d lost half a lung and collected disability, and also had a side hustle making hats. When once or twice a year my father came to visit, he’d stay with Lanny, my mom putting me on a train and sending me down for sleepovers, my dad taking the guest room, leaving me the sofa beside the dummies wearing hats.

“What about you?” I said to my mom. “Where you going?”

            “Back to Feeren’s,” she said. “Help her with the wash. And if I agree to meet with a case worker, they say I can get Assistance.”

            This was the first time I’d ever seen my mother go back to anything, and I could see she wasn’t pleased. I packed up my duffel bag with clothes, skateboard, and the science book series she’d been adding to over the years—Primates, Geology of North America, Space and Time, Marine Life, Dark Energy.

My mother walked me to the subway and, seeing the light of the approaching R train, turned to me. For a moment, I thought she was growing sad like the mothers in the movies we’d been watching and was going to say something hopeful to make herself feel better.

            As the train barreled into the station, she stood before me, placing a hand on each of my shoulders. Then she took a step back, pressing her hands together at her chest and gazing at me a long moment. Finally, she drew her hands apart, as if opening a great set of curtains.

            “Go,” she said.