First to Dance

by Sonya Writes

  It startled her when she looked up and saw that Timothy was still there. He’d been so quiet and still that she forgot all about him, and now for the first time ever she felt gratitude toward him, because he didn’t interrupt her first moments with her child.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded his head and formed half a smile. For the first time in a long time, she thought she couldn’t read him.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’m glad you had the birth that you wanted.” His eyes looked sad, which was strange because his eyes never looked sad, and he stood and went out into the living room.

  She felt disappointed when he left, though she wasn’t sure if it was loneliness that wanted him to come back or curiosity about his expression. The thought quickly fled her mind as her attention returned to the baby in her arms. Then she felt a sharp pain once more and she lifted herself up slightly to birth the placenta. She wasn’t bothered at all by the mess she sat in, and the aches she felt in her back could have very well been gone for all she was aware. There was only one thing on her mind at this time: the infant boy in her arms.

  Timothy came to check on her several minutes later, and asked her if she would like his help getting to the bathtub so she could wash the blood off her body. They cut the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors he’d sterilized, and she handed the child to him. He gently wrapped the baby in a blanket and set him on a clean place on the floor. Then he helped Etana stand up and walked her to the bath tub, which he’d already drawn full of warm water. While she was in the bath, he cleaned up all the birth mess that was on the bedroom floor, and Etana wondered what to think about it. He didn’t have to do all this for her. She also wondered what she should name this child. Her mind was drawn to the name of her husband, Matthew, and she went back and forth about it in her head. It would not be a kind gesture toward Timothy, and it was hard to act hatefully toward him right now as he was being so kind to her. Still, the name stuck in her mind no matter how she tried to think of another name for the child.

  Etana climbed out of the bath, but her body felt very tired and weak. She was not sure she could walk back to the bedroom, so she wrapped up in a towel and sat on the floor. She felt dizzy. She closed her eyes and tried to rest her head.

  Timothy seemed concerned when he saw her sitting there, and she told him what was wrong. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, where he lay her down and then brought their son to lay in the bed beside her.

  “I’ll make you a cup of soup,” he said. “You’ll feel stronger after some rest and nourishment.”

  The soup was delicious, and after sipping on it for a while she was ready for sleep. But as Timothy shut off the light and was about to leave the room, suddenly she didn’t want him to go.

  “Timothy,” she said weakly.

  He stood in the doorway and smiled at her. “Yes, Etana?”

  “Will you stay with me tonight?” She didn’t know why she was asking this or why she wanted him here. She knew that her feelings toward him were the same as always. But she wanted to hold on to an illusion of him being a good man for one night, so she could rest in his embrace and fool her mind into being comforted. She felt so needy and vulnerable right now; she wanted him beside her, even while she hated him.

  He hesitated, which surprised her very much, and then he nodded his head and walked around to the other side of the bed. When he lay down, he didn’t touch her, which surprised her as well. It surprised her so much that she turned over and touched him. He closed his eyes. He was ignoring her.

  “What’s going on, Timothy?” she asked. Then she remembered the sadness she saw in his eyes earlier. “Why are you sad?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up into a very slight smile. “I’ve seen the way you look at our son. You view him with so much joy and love in your eyes. I’m sad because you’ve never looked at me that way. You don’t want me here, and you’ve only invited me to lie beside you because you don’t want to be alone.”

  Etana almost told him that she did want him here, but she didn’t because she knew he was right. She wondered if the reason Matthew’s name was on her mind so much was because she longed for him to be with her. He was the one holding her hand when she had Aaron, but that was before she knew he would betray her. That was back when she thought she could trust him to some extent. She didn’t want Timothy here; she wanted to have Matthew back, or at least, the person she thought Matthew was before she found those dreadful history logs. She missed that brief period of time when she was married to a man who she thought had loved her.

  Still, she thought, Timothy used her body for himself so many times that she didn’t feel particularly bad about using him just this once. She desperately wanted to feel a loving touch, and though she knew that ultimately, the touches would be empty, tonight it didn’t matter. So she asked him if he would put his arm around her and gently rub the sore spots on her back and shoulders. He did, and she soon slept peacefully in his arms.

  The next morning Etana thought about his words and the kindness he showed her all through her labor and afterward. She thought of his hesitancy to sleep beside her and hold her in his arms. She tried to make sense of it. Has the man changed? Is he really through with his games? She felt like she couldn’t read him anymore. She watched him skeptically and didn’t invite him to sleep beside her again.

  He stayed a few more days to make sure she would be fine on her own, and by that time the snow had melted enough that he could make the trip back to the space center. He cleaned the whole house for her and re-filled her cabinets with food before he left, and when he left, he did not bother to hug her or try to kiss her cheek; he simply said “Goodbye” and walked out the door.

  The years flew by on Adonia. After a few days of thinking about it, she chose the name Haven for her son, a word meaning ‘safe place’, because she hoped that when he married his wife’s heart would be safe with him. She watched him grow from infant, to toddler, to child, to man. Timothy came to visit about once a year, during the winter when they stayed in the houses, and Etana tried to be courteous but she also made it clear that she did not want him around. His presence was an interruption to the life she built here and an unpleasant reminder of the hurt he had caused. Still, he came for a visit every year, and he brought with him a supply of clothing and empty diaries. There were more clothes and books here than the people needed now, but he reasoned that one day they would be needed, and the people weren’t taking any steps toward produce these things themselves.

  Timothy was trying to win her heart. He was trying, but failing. She had already hardened her heart toward him so that every act of kindness he gave, she viewed with suspicion, and any time when he seemed uncaring it was only further proof to her that indeed he was.

  It wasn’t long before Etana was older than Timothy. When they met she’d been about ten years younger than he was, but because he spent so much of his time traveling through space and she was living the normal pace of planet life again, she was aging much more quickly. Every year when he visited, he had only aged a couple of weeks, and she’d grown another year older. By the time Haven reached adulthood, she was almost fifteen years older than Timothy, but he never stopped coming to visit them.

  They lived an odd life on this planet, being the only two people who could remember the details of anything, but the people became their family, and Haven liked it here. He soon found a woman he loved and started having children by her. As his life moved forward, he noticed more and more that while his mother was content with her life, she wasn’t really happy.

  “Mom,” he said one day, “why don’t you go back out there? You can travel the galaxy and visit us on a regular basis, but in the meantime you can also make the difference that you want to make. There might still be hope for your children on Zozeis.”

  She sighed. So many generations had passed on Zozeis since she left that she wondered if she could even call the descendants she had there her children anym
ore. She almost felt that she had no ties to them at all. Besides, she was getting old, and if she wanted to start traveling again she would have to spend time with Timothy and act as his friend; but she wasn’t his friend at all. She left Zozeis to avoid dishonesty, and his every requirement of her involved it. “I will not give him that victory,” she said.

  Haven knew she was talking about Timothy, his father. “Don’t think of it as letting him win. He only wins if you give up. Go back to doing what you love to do.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Mom, I love you, and I will miss you if you go, but I think it would be good for you. To me it will be months at a time that I don’t see you, but to you it will be only days and weeks at a time. You can keep visiting even after I’m gone, and my children and grand-children and great-grand-children will all grow up having you as a part of their lives.”

  “Why should I out-live my son?” she asked. “Humans weren’t designed for that. I have already lost so much.”

  “Mom, I grew up here on this planet. I’m used to everyone’s forgetfulness, and it seems natural to me even though I have a mind like yours. But you grew up around people like yourself, and I don’t think you’ll be happy until you’ve changed the way things are on Zozeis. It shows on your face every time you talk about it, that you feel like you’ve failed them. You’ve stayed here and raised me, and I’m grateful for that, but I’m a grown man now with a family of my own. I know you love me, but…would you show your love for me by leaving. Please? I love you too much to watch you grow old here, sitting around feeling like you’ve failed your people.”

  “These are my people now, son. The people on Zozeis rejected me. I no longer claim them.”

  “You don’t fool me for a minute, Mom. You might not claim them in words, but you still claim them in your heart.”

  She thought about this for a long time. She finally told him a few days later that he was right, and that she would go. She hugged him and held his children for one last time, and then she departed to the space center and flew to the planet Azias.

  When she landed, Timothy was waiting for her. He had built quite an empire on Azias. It was a bustling city like she imagined it would be when she first left Earth. None of this was here when they landed so many years ago. Timothy had a large home built on the planet, a dream house, and he showed it to her but she was not interested. She only wanted to gather supplies and leave again.

  Etana spent the rest of her life traveling back and forth between the planets Azias, Zozeis and Adonia. She went first to Azias, loaded up items from the factories that Timothy had built, next went either to Zozeis or Adonia to drop the items off, then back to Azias. Timothy traveled with her, and while she didn’t like it at all, she learned to deal with it. Every time she came to Adonia she would stay for a few weeks to spend time with her family and it was during this time that Timothy would take private trips to the other planets he was monitoring.

  She watched as Haven grew old and eventually surpassed her in age, then watched as his children grew, his grandchildren, and so on. It unsettled her to watch so many of her family dying before she did, but at the same time she felt blessed to know so much of her family. She attended their births when she could and encouraged older siblings to remember their new baby brothers and sisters. “You stay close to your sister and protect her,” she told a young boy named Ziyad during her most recent visit. “Everyone is your family, but she is your blood.”

  Over time Etana started to sleep beside Timothy again whenever they spent a night in one of the space centers. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but less uncomfortable than sleeping on the floor would have been, and she surely felt she was getting too old for that. They were growing old together, which seemed odd to her because she never thought he would be the one she grew old with. He always wanted and seemed to enjoy her company, even though she reciprocated nothing for him. She no longer understood the game he was playing. What did he want from her?

  Etana was growing weary with life, and she felt sure that her life would soon end. She was on Zozeis and reading what the people were up to now. Despite all the books she’d left for them and every effort she made to turn their minds toward the truth, the people lived in fear and either hid the books or destroyed them. They never discussed them with other people, and the few who did were promptly taken out of the community. But there was something new, something interesting that happened. A young man, one of her own descendants who was newly married and had a child on the way, he’d found her books and her letters to Aaron in his basement. After all these years, her room had been uncovered. She wondered what would become of it. She couldn’t help but hope that, somehow, those letters she’d written so long ago might still make a difference.

  As she went to bed, she realized that the man who found the letters might even come here to the space center tonight, to see if what the letters said was true. She smiled at the thought. Perhaps I should have given away this location a long time ago. The people might have destroyed it, or maybe not. Hopefully they will at least be curious enough not to. Maybe they will stop thinking that the books about Earth are lies. She knew she would not be dropping off any more books for them. Carrying books back and forth through the forest was too much for her this time and she didn’t plan to do it again. She wanted to go back to Adonia to live out the rest of her days. She sighed and silently hoped the man who found her books would do something about it. In her mind, it was possibly this planet’s last chance to preserve the truth.

  Timothy climbed into bed beside her and started stroking her arm. He nuzzled her neck, which annoyed her and distracted her from thinking about things she found important. “I feel cozy beside you,” he said. “You bring comfort to these old bones.” Then he asked her a question that had long been on his heart. “Etana,” he said, “was there ever a time when you thought that you might love me? Was there ever a time when you thought that, had things been different, had we been two normal people living normal lives on one planet, you might have wanted to marry me, spend your life with me, and be my friend?”

  “No,” she said. “There wasn’t.”

  16

  The record stopped. There was no record of her returning to Adonia. No record of her death. No record of anything beyond that point. “What happened to her?” Ayita asked herself aloud. What happened to Dr. Azias? But when she searched his name, there was no record of him at all. Of course not. He set up this system; why would he use it to keep track of himself?

  Ayita had been here for several days, but it was snowing outside, so she couldn’t go back yet. She promised Ziyad that she would not leave without saying goodbye, and she would keep her promise, but after reading Etana’s story she knew without a doubt that she had to leave. She had to finish what Etana had started. She had to bring freedom back to Zozeis. And somehow, she knew that leaving books for them to find would never be enough. They needed to face the truth head on in a way that everyone saw it and no one could deny it. Etana worked in the background, but Ayita would show them the truth straight to their face, and even if they locked her up because of it, no one would forget the day she returned.

  When the snowfall ended and she finally made it back to the town, she came across Panya walking down the street, and there told her goodbye.

  “So, you mean you’re really leaving? Like, really leaving, as in, I’ll never see you again?”

  Ayita nodded. It was a hard thing to say.

  “What about Dakarai?”

  She tried to shrug it off without showing her hurt. “He’s forgetting me,” she said. “No, he’s forgotten me.”

  “He’s only forgetting because you’re not spending time with him.”

  “My life is meant for something bigger than this,” she said.

  “And tell me, what in the universe is bigger than love?”

  “This isn’t love,” Ayita said.

  “Then what is it?”

  Ayita felt tears coming to her eyes. “It’s just a shallow friendship,” sh
e said. She choked on her words.

  “I don’t believe that,” Panya said. “I don’t believe it for a second. Don’t give up on him. Maybe he gave up on me but you better not give up on him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you see? He was the one. My child’s father. I didn’t tell you before, but I’m telling you now. You’re his only chance. He can’t start a family with anyone else without forgetting and being forgotten, but you…you’ll remember what he forgets. You won’t let it happen again. You won’t break his heart.” She sighed. “Like I did.” She took a deep breath and tried to hide the tears in her eyes. “Unless you leave,” she said. “Because if you leave, then he’s going to be alone for the rest of his life, and I don’t think he’ll ever let anyone in.”

  “And Kesi?” she asked.

  “She’s just a distraction,” she said. “When I broke his heart, when I forgot our child, she filled in as a distraction. But it didn’t last then and it won’t last now. I know him—he won’t let himself get close to her, not heart close, the way he is to you. She’s too forgetful, and he hates that. He moved into the forest because he hates it. He hates that we forget. He hates that he forgets. He puts up with it over the winter because he has no choice, but as soon as the summer starts, he’ll be back to his lonely spot in the forest, and Kesi won’t follow him.”

  “Panya,” Ayita said, “you still love him.”

  Panya started crying. “I do,” she said. “And that’s why I need you to stay. For him.” She gestured to the houses around them. “For all of us. We need you. We need you here to help us remember. You’ve done so much for us. For the children, for me.”

  Ayita took a deep breath. She wanted to reach over and wipe the tears from her friend’s eyes. She looked over at the house where she’d caught a glimpse of Dakarai entering a few moments earlier. “You go,” she said, “and start over, fresh. He doesn’t remember you. He won’t know what happened before. It won’t matter that you disappointed him once; you can start fresh and make things right. You can go to him in the summer, and stay close to him in the winter.”