Note from Holly: I’m running guest posts and cross posts for the rest of August while I handle two legal messes I didn’t create — one with my landlord, one with Verizon — and try to keep my planned trauma recovery retreat on the calendar. For now, my Substack and art print income are going toward legal and moving costs. If you’ve been thinking about subscribing or picking up a print, this would be a great time.
It’s 11:01pm, I’m pushing a roadcase full of cable towards the truck when my phone rings in my back pocket. It’s my mom.
She knows I’m working, and probably just needs to leave me a message about something, so I promptly send the call to voicemail and continue doing my job.
Load outs are busy, hectic, and a bit disorienting. There are trucks backing up, forklifts driving around, there’s overhead work, not to mention tired stagehands pushing cases that outweigh a human at least ten-fold, and an occasional groupie that distracts the said stagehands to the point of being dangerous.
The phone rings again.
WTF, mom, you *know* I can’t talk when I work – I say under my breath, and send the call to voicemail again.
The cacophony of beeps, voices, of bangs and dudes yelling is a constant background, one overtop of which I need to hear the directions someone shouts to me.
The phone rings again.
I’m severely annoyed now. If it wasn’t my mom on the other side of the phone, I’d be pissed. I excuse myself, leave the cases I was pushing precariously sitting in the middle of a loading dock, and walk to a spot where I am less likely to be injured when someone doesn’t pay attention.
I’m about to pick up the phone with some kind of a ‘WHAT?!? I CANNOT TALK RIGHT NOW, MOM!’ version, when two things happen simultaneously.
First – after ringing too many times, the call goes to voicemail again, and
Second – it dawns on me why she’s calling, which immediately evaporates my anger.
He stands in front of a burning pile of rubble, one that used to be his home, smell of explosives and years of life under the brickwork, nighttime May air not cool at all.
It’s the middle of the night, lit up by the red of the firetrucks and the fire. It should be quiet, yet the water hitting the burning inferno, the rescue teams yelling directions, the crunch of the glass underfoot won’t keep the quiet.
He was at work when his neighbour called, when the words on the other side of the call pierced his eardrums with the unthinkable. ‘Your house was struck by a missile.’
He ran home, denial ringing in his brain, his daughter and wife having been home, sleeping.
He can feel the rescuers trying to subdue him, the onsite psychologists pushing against him – all to keep him from digging at the bricks of the 70’s soviet apartment block with his calloused bare hands, to prevent him from throwing himself on where the entrance to the apartment building used to be.
People, some well-meaning people are trying to console him, but how do you console someone whose entire life is somewhere in that flaming rubble?
He sits on the curb, tears burning his face, hot and caustic. He pulls out his phone.
He dials. In his earpiece – a series of ringing tones, the ones we all hear before a loved one picks up with a ‘hello’. ‘Pick up pick up pick up’ he mutters. The call goes to voicemail. He hangs up and stubbornly dials again. ‘Pick up pick up pick up’. This time it’s a scream. ‘Goddammit, Sveta, pick up!’, but no luck. Hang up. Dial. ‘Pick up pick up pick up’. No answer. Hang up. Dial. ‘Pick up pick up pick up’. No answer. Hang up. Dial. ‘Pick up pick up pick up’. No answer.
I’m lucky – I watch this horror from my birth city unfold on a tiny screen from the comfort of my home on the other side of the planet. I cannot tear myself away, so I watch him. I don’t know him, but he reminds me of my grandfather – his mannerisms, the way he carries himself, the way he so desperately cares about his family. I went on walks with my grandfather not far from there. My grandpa could have walked here from his house, this bombing is that close.
It’s 11:04 when I miss my mom’s third call. The concert I am loading out was supposed to be the first tour stop of the triumphant return of Guns ‘N Roses after years of childish rockstar behaviour on the part of one Axl Rose. They had been rehearsing in Vancouver for the last week.
Well, at least the band was.
Axl didn’t bother to show up.
But it was assured that he would make it for the show. Pinky swear!
LA isn’t that far from Vancouver, air travel-wise, so in theory, had he gotten on the plane as late as when the first opening band went on, everything would have been fine.
But he didn’t.
The two opening bands played as the audience took full advantage of the bars in the venue. And so, when the show was finally cancelled, the crowds responded as drunk crowds are expected to respond – by promptly trashing the venue — and the surroundings — before going home.
I was there to load the tour gear into trucks after the crowds went home. The newscast that night called it a riot. It was breaking news right at the top of the newscast, with the scariest footage they could muster, too.
The newscast that my mom diligently watched every night at 11pm.
It’s a couple of hours after russia bombed yet another apartment building in Ukraine, and the atmosphere is alive with firetrucks, rescuers, therapists, ambulances. And burning rubble where only a short while ago stood a building that was home to hundreds.
Everyone who can is helping. Anyone who cannot is being helped. There are people bandaging and people being bandaged. People crying and others hugging them. There are news crews too, filming yet another atrocity and seeing if anyone wants to say anything on camera.
Some people talk, some curse the russian government and anyone who supports them, some are looking for loved ones, and one woman is full-out ugly crying because her cat — one she thought was under the rubble — just wandered up to her.
And then…
The camera pans to a small makeshift headquarters in the middle of a large yard. It shows a row of bodybags, about a dozen, full of what used to be someone’s loved one.
The body bags – they aren’t silent.
In the cacophony of the rescue operations, the body bags ring a symphony of phone rings.
You see, if you have your phone in your pocket when you get killed in a missile blast, you’ll get put into the body bag with your phone in your pocket. Your parents, kids, or spouse might be trying to reach you as what’s left of you lays inside black plastic, and the rescuers won’t have time to silence the phone, let alone pick it up.
So the body bags keep ringing. They go to voicemail, pause, and ring again, this awful dance until the battery runs out. The people on the other side of those rings would give anything just to hear someone pick up that call, to hear ‘yes, yes, I’m okay’
What my mom saw in the split second on that newscast was a riot at the very place she knew her child was supposed to be. It understandably didn’t take long for her to sprint to the phone and dial my number. I didn’t pick up. Riot footage still flickering on TV, newscasters looking properly and professionally concerned, she called again and again.
At 11:05, in the quiet-ish corner of the loading bay, amidst the noises of trucks, and forklifts, and cases, and dudes yelling, I speed-dial my mom.
‘ARE YOU OKAY?!?’
I hear the worry, almost terror in her voice, the tone of which I’ve come to appreciate ever so much more since becoming a parent myself.
‘Yes, yes, mom, everything’s fine. The crazy behaviour finished long before I got here, I gotta go back to work, I’ll fill you in when I see you. All’s good, I promise!’
Her heart still in her throat, but assured of no harm to her daughter, she hangs up and I go back to work.
You can find Masha’s Substack, The Show Must Go On, here.