A Thing As Good As Sunshine

by Juliet Nordeen

  A Thing As Good As Sunshine

  Juliet Nordeen

  Cover Art compiled from multiple images: thanks to NASA at the www.NASA.gov site for such amazing images of space, and to Megyarsh at www.everystockphoto.com for their generosity in providing public domain images.

  Published By: ArtChi's Voice

  Creative Power, Unleashed

  www.ArtChisVoice.com

  Copyright 2013 Juliet Nordeen, Electronic Edition, All Rights Reserved

  Other Work by Juliet Nordeen

  Novels

  Blue Suede Darlin

  (Three Chapter Preview Included at the end of this E-Book)

  Mom is a Dirty Word

  Shorts

  Finding Family *~* Nana Genevieve *~* Stone Pizza

  A Thing as Good as Sunshine

  by Juliet Nordeen

  When I was a little girl, Momma always said it was important to have something good in your life, a thing as good as sunshine.

  It took me years to realize she didn't mean sunlight the way I knew it: that roughly circular patch of light that passed through our porthole and traversed across the scuffed-rock floor and the spinward wall for a few seconds every 86.37 minutes. Momma, like everyone else I'd ever met, had been born and raised planetside and she knew something in her gut about sunshine that I had yet to experience in a way that made deep-down-in-my-belly sense.

  When I asked what in her life was as good as sunshine, she always smiled and said, "You, Honey-Girl."

  "But before me?"

  "There was this cat, once, a big gray tom," she said with a smile on her face. "I don't know who smuggled him here, or how he found his way to my unit. He'd be waiting outside my door after every shift. He'd head-butt my shins the whole time I was prepping dinner and then he'd crawl up into my lap and purr while I brushed the day's ore dust from his fur."

  I remembered that cat from when I was three or four. The fun I had tracking him through the recently-harvested veins which had not yet been converted into living space. He was the same dusty color as the rock. As I crunched clumsily along the packed gravel floor, he carried himself with royal dignity along the narrow, arc-shaped ledges cut by the drills, his silent feet never touching the ground. Mostly I remembered his eyes, when light reflected in their depths, bright gold and green.

  "Whatever happened to the cat?" I asked Momma.

  "He moved on, to brighten up someone else's life." Momma reached over to hug me as she looked around our unit. "Had to, I suppose. This place is barely big enough for the two of us. Three could never fit, even if one was a cat."

  Our unit, well technically Momma's unit, was the standard size allotted to a single person living inside the mining asteroid, Perseus-Two. Though it was bigger than the units any of the Drillers or Loaders got — she was technically Management at Perseus Stellar Mining Corp — it was considerably smaller than everyone else in her paygrade got because she was just in Logistics.

  Management or not, the unit was enough. A narrow bunk cut into the stone with storage above and below, and a decent mattress. A kitchen bank with a sink, cooker, storage and prep space. A desk, a table, and a storage box that I'd taken over as toy box then turned into a junior astronaut's space capsule and now a kind of hope chest for necessities of life I'd hopefully need someday. We even had our own tiny bathroom with a toilet, showerhead, and a drain in the floor.

  We made it work, two in the space for one, but it was more work recently than I remembered it being when I was little. Back then I used to throw tantrums when Momma had to spend all of first shift working at the receiving docks, now I was grateful for the long hours to myself. Usually, though, by the time her shift was over, I'd be stir crazy from hearing my own breath echo off the stone walls and ready for company, even Momma's.

  As always, the first thing she did when she got home from the dock was strip out of her dust-coated Outer Layers and then put away her Ledgers. The big fat one went into the print-locked slot beside the doorway and the thin one she tucked behind the panel at the back of her under-bunk drawer. After that she took her hair out of its braid as she walked over to stand behind me. I sat at the small desk in the corner and completed my studies on her old, down-rev TechPad.

  "Got it cracked, yet?" Momma asked.

  She'd added an advanced astro-orbital docking problem to my normal daily studies because she said I'd copped an attitude after supper the night before. As an almost-woman with extremely limited social outlets, I figured it was my job to give her attitude. And it was her job to take it. Apparently, she didn't see it that way.

  "Mostly," I said, my prior bad attitude beaten into submission by the hours I'd poured into the daunting programming task. "But I'm having trouble with the y-axis roll rate."

  She stood over my shoulder and watched as I picked apart my program code, line-by-line. There was something in the conservation of momentum section that felt wrong, I just had to find it.

  "You're humming," Momma said.

  I stopped humming. "No I'm not."

  She laughed. "You were too."

  I ignored her and focused on the code. She stepped away and I heard her futzing with bowls and warming up the cooker.

  "There it is again," she said, out of the blue a few moments later.

  "I'm not humming," I said. But I had been. I turned my head away so she couldn't see my smile.

  "Okay, okay. Far be it for me to say that programming shouldn't make you happy." She continued fixing supper.

  I set down the TechPad and leaned my back against the wall. "Okay, I guess I was humming."

  "Nice to hear you happy for a change."

  "I guess I found my thing as good as sunshine."

  Momma stopped mixing protein powder into our soup and looked at me with her mouth hanging open. "Coding asteroid docking vectors is as good as sunshine?"

  "No, not coding." I smiled as I crossed my arms and gave myself a little hug. "Sheng Tian."

  Momma dropped her spoon; it clattered off the counter, splattering drops of soup on the cupboard and the floor. Precious calories that now would never get into either of us.

  She stared at me for a minute and then stepped over to grab her Com from the bunkside table. She pushed three buttons and then said in a tone as flat as a dust-filled crater, "Pria, I need to see you. Now. It's Honey-Girl."

  I don't know if Auntie Pria had anything to say in response, but it wasn't likely because Momma thumbed-off her Com and sank down onto the bunk. The slackness in her face frightened me as much as her glazed stare into the corner.

  Sometimes, most times, I didn't want to be touched, by anyone, but as we waited for Auntie Pria to arrive, I really needed the reassurance of sitting next to Momma and holding her hand. Her eyes focused on me sadly as I got out of my chair and moved across the room to sit by her side. Her hand was cold when I reached out to touch it, but her eyes warmed.

  "He's just amazing, Momma," I said.

  She nodded and bowed her head.

  "When I'm with him, I feel warm all over like the blankets feel after we've been sleeping in them for hours. And it's exciting, like when we have a micro-asteroid collision. Not the part when the rock rings and the klaxons sound, and we're running for the respirator. But after, when the All Clear sounds and those prickles dance across my skin and I know that Perseus is huge and its rock is solid and can protect us from anything." I leaned over and patted the three meter thick, bare rock wall that separated our unit from the vacuum of space beyond.

  Momma swallowed hard then she patted my hand. "I know, Honey-Girl. I know exactly what you mean."

  Her reaction puzzled me. Any time we talked about her sunshiny things, me or the cat, she always relaxed her posture and
smiled. Her shoulders were as tense as rock.

  Just as I was going to ask Momma to explain, the door chimed and Auntie Pria stepped in. Her mouth was tight and her wide eyes stood out against her chocolate skin. She checked out Momma and then me, relief crossed her face.

  Momma said, "Honey-Girl has met a boy."

  Auntie leaned against the door as it slid shut. She tilted her head and her eyes darted around the room, but she wasn't focusing at anything inside the unit. This was what she did when she was working through something in her mind. Something that clearly wasn't as good as sunshine.

  Pria crossed over and sat on Momma's other side. Her hand, smooth and warm, reached over and clasped over both mine and Momma's.

  "It's done," Auntie said in her pragmatic medic's tone of voice, "and what's done can't be undone. We have to control the situation."

  Momma's flat stare mixed with Pria's take charge attitude catalyzed a cold sensation in the middle of my belly. "Auntie?" I asked.

  Auntie got up and pulled the chair over from the desk. She placed it in the middle of the room, opposite us on the bunk, and straddled it. "So who's the lucky guy?" she asked me.

  "Sheng Tian." Just saying his name made me smile and Auntie smiled back at me.

  "She was humming," Momma said.

  "I see."

  I was glad things were clear to Auntie because I was getting more and more confused. "He's my sunshine. That's not bad," I said.

  "He's Chinese?" Auntie asked. She looked at Momma like that was a good thing.

  I nodded.

  "Where did you two meet?"

  "The laundry pod in Spinward Three."

  Momma spat out a dry chuckle. "He works in the laundry? That's ironic."

  "What? No," I said, confused about what Momma thought was ironic about a Chinese man cleaning clothes. "He's a Driller. He was there doing his own laundry, like me."

  Auntie Pria turned her interrogator's stare to Momma. "She was doing the laundry? On her own?"

  "Third shift only," Momma said.

  Coming to Momma's defense I said, "There's never hardly anyone there at third shift. I'm careful." I started to feel ashamed of myself and wish I'd never opened my big mouth about Sheng Tian.

  Auntie Pria stood up and paced between the door and the corner desk. She murmured quietly, "He's Chinese, and she's not, that might work in our favor. And he's a Driller, probably not from a family of status." She stopped in front of me and squatted down so she could look into my eyes. "How close are you two?"

  I blushed. No mirror required to know it, either. My neck, my cheeks, and my ears got instantaneously hot and I knew my skin was probably redder than my strawberry blonde hair.

  Auntie Pria stood up and restarted her pacing. Momma dropped her head into her hands and I heard her swear under her breath.

  Pria stopped. "We need to talk to him. Now."

  I didn't understand the urgency, but that was Pria's medic's voice again. This was more serious than I was ready for. I had just wanted to share my sunshiny news with Momma. "He'll be in the Astrolab," I said, trying to help.

  Momma looked up. "You said he was a Driller."

  "He is," I said, "on first shift. But he's an Apprentice Navigator, too. Second shift. That's why he's always in the laundry on third."

  "That's bad," Momma said to Pria. "Worse than bad."

  Momma's tone. Auntie's frown. Their conspiratorial glances at each other. They were all wrong. This was supposed to be sunshine; happiness and love and goodness. I blew up. "Would you two please tell me what the hell is wrong."

  Momma gaped at my language, it wasn't like me to use that tone or to swear. But I was frustrated, they were scaring me.

  Pria headed for the door. "Take her to my office. I'll make up some reason to pull him out of class and meet you there."

  *****

  We waited, in silence, in Auntie Pria's office for a half hour. Momma took the chair in the corner next to the door so I sat on Auntie's exam table. I had a lot of third shift memories of this room: agonizing vaccine shots that I could not cry about, clumsy dental cleanings by Auntie's friend Misha, routine endoscopic checks of my lungs. All necessary, Momma and Auntie assured me. None of them pleasant.

  And it didn't seem like this visit would be any better.

  But then the door slid open and my sunshine flooded in. Sheng Tian's expression went from confused to happy as he saw me. He rushed in to hug me. And even though Momma was in the room, I couldn't help myself; I hopped off the table and met him halfway. It felt right to throw my arms around him and bury my face in his chest as he wrapped me in a crushing hug.

  Sheng Tian stepped back so he could look at me. He petted my long red hair with his left hand and asked, "Are you sick?"

  I looked over his shoulder and he turned, jumping when he saw Momma in the corner. "What the?"

  "Shang Tian, this is my Momma."

  Momma stood up and shook hands with him. I couldn't tell who was more uncomfortable and who was more confused.

  "Mizz Abdul?" he asked.

  I didn't think his question was about her identity, I was pretty sure by the deferential tone in his voice that he knew exactly who she was. He kept looking back and forth between me and Momma, his brow wrinkled in confusion.

  Momma's manner was calmer than it had been at any point since I had opened my big mouth. She turned and made eye contact with Auntie Pria, who entered carrying in a folding chair and pushing along a wheeled stool. When the door was closed Momma asked, "You know who I am?"

  "You're Naureen Abdul, Chief Logistics Officer. Ma'am."

  "And you know what that means?" she asked in a very tight voice.

  "Yes, ma'am," Sheng Tian said. He backed up to lean on the exam table, but kept his hand tightly wrapped around mine.

  "Then I don't have to tell you that I'm a good friend to have on this rock. And a bad enemy."

  Auntie Pria stepped in. "Naureen, enough. You don't have to browbeat the boy."

  Momma looked closely at the two of us. "No, I don't suppose I do. He looks pretty smitten."

  I'd never heard anyone use the word smitten before, but the way she looked at my hand interlocked with Sheng Tian's told me it had something to do with sunshine.

  "Sheng Tian, what do you know about Honey-Girl?"

  He looked at me for a minute. "I know she works with you in Logistics. She was born to a poor Saudi family and signed up to work The Rock for a ten-stretch to attain her Universal citizenship. She came up on the last crew boat, a year after me."

  "Okay, agreed, smitten," Pria said, shaking her head with a smile.

  Sheng Tian looked at her without understanding.

  "Look, kiddo," Auntie said to him. "Does she really look like someone who came from the Middle East?"

  He looked at me and shook his head.

  "And how about those freckles of hers. Do they look about five months faded since she shipped off from Earth?"

  "Freckles?" I asked. I didn't have any freckles. Never have. My skin was as smooth and solid as yeast paste right out of the tube. And five months ago I had been right here. I'd lied to Sheng Tian about that, Momma's standing orders. Sheng Tian looked at me with an expression I'd never seen on his face before, like he was studying an alien species.

  "Does she?" Auntie asked.

  "I don't know," he said, quietly. "We didn't have very many white chicks with red hair back in Changde."

  "Most importantly," Momma said, stepping into the conversation again, and walking over to my side. "Does she look like she's mine?"

  "Of course I'm yours, Momma," I said. How could she say I was not hers? She was my Momma, and I was her Honey-Girl. Always. We shared the same clothes and shoes, the same bowl and spoon, and woke up bundled in the same bunk under the same blankets. She took care of me because I was hers.

  He took a moment to look at us as we stood side by side. I was nearly as tall as Momma, we were both a little too thin and we both wore our hair long. Momma's skin was shad
es darker than mine, as were her eyes and hair, and her hips were as wide as my shoulders. We were perfect complements.

  "No, ma'am," Sheng Tian said and then was quiet for a moment. "I can see you aren't old enough to be Honey-Girl's mother."

  Momma fought against a smile, but the smile won. "I see why she likes you so much."

  So now Momma liked Sheng Tian but I wasn't hers? Not really? I broke away to stand in the corner as far away as I could from all three of them. Thought-filled silence permeated the room so deeply that I could hear the grinding of drills from far off in Perseus Two's belly. I hated it.

  Auntie Pria reached out and touched Sheng Tian's arm. "I don't mean to be rude, but there's something I have to ask."

  Sheng Tian nodded.

  "How far did you take it?"

  His eyes dropped toward the floor. Mine did, too. I'm sure by the way he stared at his hands that he was revisiting the same memories I was. We'd spent a lot of time in the laundry pod over the past few cycles; I'd gone more than once to re-wash clean clothes. I didn't ask, but I was sure he had some clean tunics in his load occasionally. We spent our time mostly sequestered in the dark cubby-hole between the bank of spinners and the far wall of the room, panting hard as we touched each other beneath clothes we kept partially on, an arm in a tunic or a leg still in pants, just in case someone else came to do laundry on the off-shift.

  Good memories. Good as sunshine. My body heated up just recalling the way his hands, his lips, his body, felt meshed with mine. A hot blush crawled over my scalp, again.

  But it had not all been physical. We talked. Hours passed wrapped in each other's arms as he told me about his life and I distracted him with more kisses when he got too curious about mine. I think, sometimes, he asked hard questions just to see how far I'd take it. I surprised him, a time or two. Or more.

  "We have to know," Auntie said. "She's fertile."

  Sheng Tian buckled at the waist, almost to the point of falling over, and I heard him let go a small cry. It was agony to my heart, but I couldn't go to him. Fear trapped me in the corner. Fertile? I'd never heard the term used to refer to a person. Somehow I was a good spot to drill? Ore rich? None of it made a damn bit of sense.