Infinity's Daughter

by Laszlo, Jeremy

  Now that they were gone, two years after, the part of me that went missing with their loss felt numb. Like an empty pit where things vanish that you were sure you knew where you had left them. They had made me stronger, they had taught me everything I needed to know. And I loved them. They had both moved on peacefully, which I was so grateful for, and I was sure they were in a wonderful place. But my own selfishness, and the unbridled torment of the past decade left me feeling weak without them by my side.

  Whenever I was alone, I felt like I was swimming through time. A vast sea of alternate realities, some of which I had the key to, and others remained unknown, taunting me with their probabilities. I watched them all roll past me, knowing it was not my place to judge, not my place to make choices, and not my place to grieve. My relationship with time had been jaded. Allowing me the benefit—or burden—of seeing into my future and knowing the fate of history, but being unable to forecast my own fate within that future was incredibly taunting and emotionally straining. I wanted nothing more than to be able to prevent the woes of my family and loved ones, to help the world settle its suffering. But I was cursed with the knowledge that I could not share, and could not act on what I knew. At the same time I felt cursed in my inaction and my own silent feeling of being misplaced in time.

  And so 1938 became the year for me to withdraw. I drew inside myself to reconcile my feelings of guilt and confusion in my own inaction and insecurity about my belonging in this era. It seemed that since the financial collapse, I had been unable to escape the paradox. It followed me around, whispering accusations and taunting me with regret and remorse. I had to talk it down, and bring myself up.

  Everything else aside, ignoring the phantoms of the past, 1938 was the year when things felt like they had finally gotten back to some sense of normalcy. The unemployment rate was still considerably high, but our own family was stable once again, and FDR’s policies had helped alleviate much of the population’s suffering through civilian corps and national public works projects. However, I knew what was around the corner, globally, and tried to sit tight without losing my mind from the fear of the war to come. The only thing to look forward to was our final move out of the Depression when the war would finally begin.

  So, in my spare time, I began to spend more time alone, trying to ease my mind in some cathartic sense. Susan was working full-time again, and Todd had been given his full salary back. Sam’s energy had grown again, seeing his daughter and son in law successful once more, and he found solace in his job, doing his best to help New Yorkers find their own sense of normalcy, and remove the criminal element that had grown strong during the city’s fall. In my family’s triumph, I moved towards self-reflection, going on outings and walks by myself, as I had done before Susan was born, and now without the company of Adelle and the dissolution of the reading group to aid me in my loneliness.

  I remember vibrantly that it was that year, that Walt Disney’s first full length, animated film was released. Oh how I adore Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When I heard about it on the radio, I was absolutely elated. I kept the news to myself, planning to go see the film as a matinee when Sam was at work. After a decade of tight finances, supporting ourselves as well as Susan and Todd, Sam and I had finally returned to a level of comfort where we could enjoy the extra luxuries of life once again. I put on one of my chic dresses that I hadn’t worn in years, feeling slightly too old but happy with my figure nonetheless, and headed out to the cinema.

  It was a lovely winter day, in February. I bundled up my dress in my only remaining fur coat, wrapping myself tightly so as to not let the winter air creep into my bones. As I aged, I found it surprising how much more susceptible I became to illness. I thought again of the future, where I could have been protected with a simple trip to the drug store, to a CVS, or a Woolworths. Woolworths was around today, but the home remedies that it offered were not of much value, or were somewhat shocking to me still, even after having lived without modern medicine for so long. Some days, I thought that my memories of cat-scans and x-rays and physicians in scrubs surrounded by hordes of divine technologies were nothing more than figments of my imagination.

  Walking to the theater, I thought of the progression of film, too. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would become the best, animated feature film of all time. No one knew it yet, but it would shock everyone despite the Depression, producing record ticket sales of any movie yet in this history of film. I thought back to my childhood as best as I could while I walked, far more excited than I was to see Mickey Mouse on his steamboat. This was Snow White, a film that had substantially influenced my childhood. I recalled my days dressing as Snow White, with Becky, while we would each take turns playing the role of the evil queen trying to feed her the poisoned apple.

  I recall sighing then, my breath blowing up like a cloud of smoke in the cold, wrapping itself in circles around my head. I could hear Becky’s voice, her small, six year old figure creeping up on me in the black cloak, dangling a ruby red apple in front of me. Where did these memories come from? Were they all but waking dreams? Haunting me and confusing my mind and my memories? I felt a chill in my heart, and an ache in my soul. Whatever they were, their reality stayed with me. I could feel their presence and held their emotions inside of me, feeling everything play out again and again in my mind. A part of me wanted to go to the movie to bring that back, bring me closer to the future that I had left, to the world that I once knew but was now so far from. To bring me closer to Becky. Perhaps she was somewhere, in a concurrent dimension, watching Snow White for the first time as a little girl, before she had ever met me. This idea of an interconnected world, with overlapping universes appealed greatly to me. As I walked to the theatre, I imagined little Becky walking beside me, smiling.

  The theatre was just a few blocks away. I didn’t need to take the subway, and preferred to walk anyway, regardless of the cold. My shoes were slippery on the icy sidewalk, but I managed, shaking my fist in age’s face as I approached the shinning lights of the cinema’s marquee.

  “One for Snow White,” I said quietly. Speaking the words out loud was so strange. It was like teleporting back into the sunset of the twentieth century, into the land of televisions and VCRs. As the man passed me the tiny paper ticket through the slot in the stand, I could feel the plastic rectangle of my videotape copy of Snow White, could see the little reflections on the shiny film that was round through its thick shell. I rubbed the ticket between my fingers and clenched my throat, swallowing tight, and holding my emotions in my stomach.

  I hadn’t seen a film by myself, ever. I didn’t go by myself when I was in high school, because I had always gone with Becky or Brad. Even my mother and I would have movie nights, going out on the weekends to see one of the new Beethoven movies, or the next of the Disney animated films. And now I was here. Alone, in solitude, at the release of first ever full-length animated film, when Walt Disney was no more a household name than a spaceship was a distant vision brought to life in the imagination of H.G. Wells.

  I was surprised to see how crowded the theatre was, until I realized what a sensation the movie would become. I tried to find a seat to myself, not situated too close to the groups, or couples who were attending. I succeeded, and sat down in the small, wooden folding chairs, resting my hands in my lap. My palms were sweating, and my face grew hot as I fully appreciated how nervous I actually was for this. It was bringing me closer to the future than I had been since 1900. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it.

  The film was everything I could have imagined and more. Not only was it more fantastic than I had remembered it from my childhood, but it brought out the most incredible reactions from the crowd. Sitting next to persons who had never seen something like this in their entire lives, and could only imagine it, was astonishing. Men and women alike gasped in horror at the evil queen, and laughed out loud at the dwarfs. When the movie first opened, everyone exclaimed at the wonder of the images, at the incredulity of the animation, whispe
ring to one another how something so amazing could have been produced like that. I sighed and exclaimed with them, enjoying the movie as if I had never seen it before. It was exceptional, being transported forward through time, while simultaneously living the moment in the past, for the first time.

  Leaving the theatre, I recall feeling rejuvenated. There was a magic in reliving that moment, that movie that had touched so many lives across the decades that cannot be put into words. And it was only something that I could have experienced for myself. Not with Sam, not with Susan, not with any of the ladies from the book club. It took me to a place within myself that I hadn’t visited in a long time. Not truly. It took me back to my roots, and helped me know that everything that had happened to me was real, or at least, that my knowledge of the future was indeed justified, however and wherever it came from.

  It brought me closer to my family in a way. It helped me feel them and touch them and remember the smells and sounds of our living room, sitting between my mother and father, watching the film in the darkness with the smell of microwave popcorn filling our small kitchen and living room. It brought me closer to reality, and back in touch with who I was. I walked in the setting sun, on my way back to our pleasant brownstone in the city, my shadow long and lanky in the shallow angle of the sun. I wondered how many more things I would relive, and the memories they would attract from within.

  1941

  Although I had heard about Pearl Harbor, and the horrible accounts of its events in history classes throughout my schooling, seeing it and living through it was something else entirely. The events didn’t seem real when I was learning about them in my own time. They almost seemed too terrible to have actually happened. I knew this wasn’t true, but living through it removed the haze of illusion, and brought the reality to light, surging into my mind on the morning of December 7, 1941.

  Sam stayed at work late that day, the officers and detectives were mobilized in case of fighting or protests in the street. But the city stayed quiet. People were shocked and a sense of solidarity and grief washed over America. But soon, very quickly, that feeling fueled the fire for hatred and anger, and we were on our way to entering another war. I sat in front of the radio, my little handkerchief clasped between my fingers, twirling it over and over. I didn’t believe that it had happened. Susan brought over the paper, and we sat together, reading it back and forth, in disbelief over what was to come. I held her tight, and we looked at the images on the page, touching the smoke with our fingers, and feeling sick inside with anger and grief over the thousands of American lives lost. But in my heart, I felt even worse. I thought of the torment that millions over the world would endure, the death and destruction that would be the course of the next half decade. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  In the following days the papers released edition after edition as new information came in. I felt sick with horror and grief from my constant inaction, caught in the web of time, and found myself glued to the papers, taking the reality of everything in, and searching for a way to help. I learned a lot. It was all in the details. And it was painful and abhorrent.

  I would have walked to the park if it hadn’t been freezing out. The cold wore on my joints, reminding me of my aging body. The burden of guilt was overwhelming. I couldn’t help thinking that this was my responsibility. This was my doing. Everything began to blur together in a strange haze of indiscernible memories and worries. My tumble into the past, my childhood, my knowledge of the future and the confusion that I had, all just might be a dream. A very strange, fictional apparition that came to me every night and every day of the world I used to live in. For some reason, World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back on this emotional load. It was the event that made me lose all feeling that I had been doing something right by standing by and staying quiet, and made me question everything about myself as a person, my reality, and what the hell I was doing with my life. Nothing made sense.

  I left Susan’s comfort and when Sam was away at work, I went upstairs, back to the closet where I had considered taking my life all those years ago. I sat in the corner, putting my frail body between the racks of clothes, the smell of decades past washing over me, the confusion of time, the guilt of the paradox, and the delusion of my life taunting me with wave after wave of mystery and horror. It gave me no answers and only left me more disoriented. I touched the clothes and felt their weight, wondering if they indeed were real. Wondering if any of it had been real, and wondering what I would do next, what I could do and what I should do. I questioned whether or not I should go on. For what reason did this horrible dream come to me? It truly did begin to feel more like a dream, my delusion that I was from the future, and in that moment there in the closet, I truly did not believe that it had happened. I imagined that I was victim to some horrible mental ailment, working on my mind and swirling my consciousness, confusing me and feeding me facts that would seem plausible enough to explain my knowledge of the future. But it didn’t make sense. None of it did. And I didn’t want to bear the burden anymore. There had been enough death, and there was just more to come. I brought my knees up to my chest and put my face in my hands, the hot tears streaming down my face and running rivers into the little creases of my knuckles. I cried harder than I had since Edward had left me, all those years ago when I collapsed on the floor of the same closet, wielding Sam’s pistol. When he came home from work he found me, asleep, eyes swollen from weeping, amidst the memories woven in fabric.

  He picked me up and carried me to bed. He was still so strong. His love was the only thing that justified my presence there, his love and the creation of my family. Lying in bed with Sam next to me, everything felt more clear again, and something within me began to shift. I could feel it all throughout my body. I still had not a clear sense between what was real and what was not, anymore, but I began to resolve that nothing could be done about it anyway, and that I had to stay strong and pull myself together for my family. I grabbed Sam and pulled him close and he wrapped his strong arms around me. For once, I felt like I had embraced the power of time travel and had drifted back myself, with Sam, to our honeymoon. His body was aging, but his career had kept him fit, and his arms were still strong and protective. Despite my delusion, regardless of whatever was real, I was going to live through the war, and the events to come afterwards.

  It seemed to me that little more than after opening my eyes, the nation at once became unified after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sweeping it quickly into action. Any fear and skepticism, along with my own, became washed away with anger and resolve to remember those who had died in the atrocious attack, and a new feeling of strength to defend the nation and prevail in the face of tragedy, for those who had lost their lives. I remember Sam reading me the papers, the whispers across the nation that the attack by Japan had awakened the ‘sleeping giant’ that was our country, bringing us and our fury into the war to eventually defeat the horrible enemy. For this, I felt better and less trivial about my aging mind and memories, delusional or not. Perhaps it was all meant to be, perhaps the men in Pearl Harbor had died in order to stop the war, and save the lives of millions across the world, dashing the Nazi regime to pieces. No one knew it at the time, but I did. I kept quiet to myself, and hoped that my inability to act on my knowledge had kept everything in check, and the fate of the world was contained in solidarity and safety, as it would have if I had somehow been able to warn the nation of the coming attack. But I would never know. Instead, as I had done during the Great Depression, I began to volunteer to help support the war effort.

  As I continued to open my eyes to the happenings, I became more and more exposed to the reality of war on the home front. I vaguely remembered learning about the intense war propaganda during World War II, but was shocked once I actually experienced it. Compared to any propaganda that had taken place during the wars I had experienced as a child—Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield—it was far more invasive and publi
cized. You couldn’t seem to escape it. Everywhere you went, Uncle Sam was pointing his finger at you, coercing you to stand up for your country, and support the troops at home. I must say, even though I wanted nothing more than to support the war, and become a part of the force to aid our soldiers and help end it, the propaganda felt very intrusive and sometimes threatening.

  But nevertheless, it worked. The propaganda was supposed to increase support for the war, make us loathe the enemy. It was publicized through a variety of media, including radio, public campaigns and postings. One of the most shocking things about it, which I found rather frightening, was the way that it was geared towards generating hatred for the enemy, and support for our nation and the Allies. I just remember the images being incredibly derogatory, racist stereotypes and bigoted. I must say though, as much as I disagreed with the imagery, having grown up in a more tolerant world, it was hard to have any sympathy for the men who were leading an international slaughter and destruction campaign.

  The propaganda worked to encourage greater efforts among the people of our country for war production and victory gardens. Once again, Sam and I started our own Victory Garden, which I was very proud of, and we even bought some of the war bonds touted by government war salesmen. Susan and Todd did as well. The campaigns boosted morale across the nation, from what we heard on the radio, and we could even feel it in our neighborhoods and across the streets. It made us feel like we were all in it together.

  In the land of women, there was an entirely different beast. There were suddenly a whole new host of things that I had to learn and become proficient in. Women’s magazines doled out various tips for housewives regarding thrifty purchasing, how to gain a knack at rationing, and coping during such a time of limited supplies. Cookbooks came brimming with wartime recipes, many of which Susan enjoyed trying out on Sam and me, while others explained the need to ration in order to share the supplies with enlisted and fighting troops. There were other bizarre facts that these pieces of literature contained that I never would have known. For example, sugarcane could be made into explosive devices. Thus, sugar would be rationed. This may have been good for me, to help keep the extra pounds off in my increasing age. Everywhere you went, there were advertisements to ration, to be a patriot, and to help your soldiers fighting for you overseas by saving everything you could, and using less. It was inescapable, and incredible, a complete about face from where I had begun in a time of purchasing and eating excess.