The Air Will Catch Us

Rajiv Moté

My granddaughter Nisha bounces on the tips of her toes, with flutter kicks in between, a hummingbird barely touching the sidewalk. I adjust the rebreather plugged into my nostrils and push myself forward. Keeping up with her has gotten harder, not just because of my age. Walking is different now. The air resists my habitual gait. Little hops lift me into the thickened atmosphere that slows my return to Earth. It’s undignified, but it’s past time I got used to this. I’m not that old. I bob along after her.

“Not too far,” I call. Talking is different too. It takes more effort, timing it with the rebreather. The sounds distort, vowels overwhelming consonants in the heavy air. I have to listen carefully to understand people. Nisha, considerate of my limitations, gives me a thumbs-up. The playground is close, but I grew up not trusting the world. I’ve watched it change along apocalyptic predictions, down to the air getting hotter, wetter, and thicker every year. And stranger changes, that no one predicted, overwrote the science I learned in school. It’s literally a different world than the one I grew up in. I won’t trust it with Nisha, unsupervised. While my son and daughter-in-law are at work, the responsibility is mine.

Plots of kudzu line the sidewalk, taller than Nisha. She turns the corner. I quicken my bobs, sucking air through the rebreather with the hollow sound of a patient in a hospital. The kudzu of my childhood was engineered into a kind of terrestrial kelp, with broad leaves undulating in the thickened breeze. Tiny creatures like fish dart among the fronds. The kudzu still tries to spread over everything, but it traps pollutants in nodules that bud like cancer along its stalks. Rebreathers kept the cancer from my generation’s bodies. Kudzu keeps it from Nisha’s. Maybe I don’t need a rebreather now, but I’m susceptible to pneumonia and a panicked sense of drowning when the viscous air enters my lungs. My son calls the dry, thin product of the device “nostalgic air.” He doesn’t care for it.

Privately, I spend some time every day inhaling the unfiltered atmosphere, training myself not to choke. Sometimes I succeed. It’s a trust fall into the world. I’m trying.

The playground’s plastic and metal equipment is not much different from my own childhood’s. Nisha has a routine. Even before greeting her friends, she scrambles up a ladder and crawls the monkey bars, skipping every other bar. From the last bar she launches herself into space. The air will catch her. I don’t wait underneath like I used to, but I don’t sit down on a bench until she lands on the web of ropes and climbs to a platform.

“You have kids here?” the young mom next to me asks kindly. An unused rebreather is clipped to her shoulder. The kids don’t need them, their parents have them “just in case,” and their grandparents suck on them like life support. Fashion across the generations.

“Granddaughter,” I say, gesturing to Nisha.

“Those two are mine,” she says, pointing at a pair of boys, a few years older than Nisha, doing their best to hurl each other, and all comers, off the highest platform. “We used to go to a different park, but this one’s actually closer.”

I correctly guess they go to Nisha’s school, and we talk about homework, teachers, and activities. She’s patient as I time my words with the rebreather.

I hear shouting from the playground equipment as if through water. A boy sails over a platform’s railing. I can’t tell if he was thrown by my bench-mate’s boys or jettisoned himself. All the adults watch. None rise to their feet. Kids fly now, but I’m the only one still with a helicopter instinct. I grip the bench and keep my seat. The hiss of my rebreather is fast and shallow. The air will catch him. It’s like a prayer. The boy somersaults in slow motion, somehow landing on his feet. He bounces and is airborne again, climbing the ropes onto the platforms.

“I’ll never get used to that,” I say.

“My mother says one never stops worrying.”

Her mother says that. I suppose it’s true. Maybe every generation looks askance at the wonders of the next, afraid to trust them.

I’m embarrassed and irritated by the sound of my breathing. I’m no invalid. As casually as I can manage, I pull the rebreather from my nostrils. I inhale a thick, wet deluge, and manage not to cough. My chest expands. I’m not drowning. I let it out, and bring it back.

Nisha isn’t roughhousing. She’s talking with girls her age, their voices distorted by the atmospheric soup. But at any moment they could fling themselves from a ladder.

Would you jump off a roof if your friends did? My parents asked me that.

I would if it looked fun, I didn’t dare reply.

How the world has changed.

And it does look fun.

I’m on my feet. I don’t remember rising. I step onto the ladder rung and pull myself up. This movement is familiar, easier than walking. I’m not as strong anymore, but now I’m buoyant. The strange science that resists me walking also holds me up. The young parents watch with amusement, not worry. They’ve learned to trust the world. Can I?

I crawl the bars like my granddaughter, every other one, building momentum in slow motion. I grip the last bar with both hands and kick as though swimming, which I haven’t done in years. My body remembers.

I launch myself into space.