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The Girl from Everywhere

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Heidi Heilig

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“Most people who survive a devastating disaster want the opposite of a clean slate: they want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed; they want to reaffirm their relatedness to the places that formed them. 'When I rebuild the city I feel like I'm rebuilding myself,' said Cassandra Andrews, a resident of New Orleans' heavily damaged Lower Night Ward, as she cleared away debris after the storm. But disaster capitalists have no interest in repairing what was. In Iraq, Sri Lanka, and New Orleans, the process deceptively called 'reconstruction' began with finishing the job of the original disaster by erasing what was left of the public sphere and rooted communities, then quickly moving to replace them with a kind of corporate New Jerusalem - all before the victims of war or natural disaster were able to regroup and stake their claims to what was theirs.”

“The thought breaks my heart a little for my parents. For my dad, who worked nearly every Monday through nearly every Friday at a job he didn’t like enough to ever talk about, and I understand that something was stolen from him and he accepted it. Because we needed him to, or because he believed we did. And for my mom, who left behind one home to follow him and never quite found another. I duck into the shop and buy four bottles of campfire maple syrup. One for Parth and Sabrina, one for Cleo and Kimmy, and one for each of my parents. I want them both to have every drop. I want them to have everything they’ve ever wanted.”

“[...] But sometimes love is poison, and it drips in our ears until our blood runs with it.” “Bring pain,”he said again, suddenly insistent. “You. Pack. Everyone. I go, he stays away.” “Do you want to go?” [...] He said, “Thump, thump, thump.” “What’s that?” “Heart,” he said. “Carter’s heart.” “You hear it.” “Yes.” “It speaks to you.” “Yes.” “What does it say?” He looked stricken. “Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. Not poison.” And then he went to her, his head bowed. He pressed it against her chest, his arms hanging at his sides. He breathed heavily and shuddered when my mother reached up and put her hands in his hair. “There you are,” she whispered to him. “Hello, hello. You’re home. So, no. No, Gavin. You aren’t to go away again. We are stronger together than we ever are apart, and this is where you belong.”