Author spotlight. Published in Mar. She had spent the first half-day realizing what death was, the next half-day grieving, the following morning waking and feeling reverent if somewhat nauseated, and trying to decide what to do.
It was three in the morning when she finally did it, and it was almost the season of electric rains. There had been one already, fitful and slight, harbinger of spring and the season of avoidance. Once the weather warmed in Washington, D. Ella was twelve, and had grown up knowing that she could not let the rains, or the rare snows, touch her. But Ella had to take Nana home. Besides, she was beginning to smell bad.
Night was a good time, the time least likely to rain. In the end it was easy. The old lady had an electrical setup but used it only for cooking and powering a space heater in the most bitterly cold weather, hooking up big sparking clamps, which scared Ella. There were people who kept the grid alive, down by Anacostia.
Engineers, and those whom they taught, people who had escaped the first electric rains, like Ella and Nana. By now, the body was very stiff. Ella was not surprised to find that the tiny old lady was not terribly heavy. She shoved the table on its clawed wheels to the window. Grunting, she pushed up the reluctant sash. Paint chips flurried in the moonlit air, and the gust of wind took Ella by surprise: It was warm.
She leaned out the window; sniffed the air. It smelled too warm, like sudden spring. Perhaps it was. And the stars were obscured by cloud. She looked up and down the length of the street, waited until a lone car stopped at the light and then moved past, low, prowling beams of light ahead. She leaned out further, saw a few ragged shapes curled on the sidewalk. She swallowed. But sometimes. A middle-aged man used to visit, and talked to Nana blusteringly, with wide frantic gestures.
