“You see?” she said. “It’s there. Just like it’s supposed to be. Now isn’t that a wedding present to remember? I only hope it stays there.” She chewed a moment on her lower lip.
Zoe thought about what Tabitha had said. It was true. Mom needed medication. Maybe she needed more than that. She wasn’t acting normally, healthily. Being with Jude’s parents made her see her own parents and her childhood differently.
“I wish so much I could have been there,” Zoe’s mom whispered in her ear before she let her go on her way.
Zoe wiped at the wet spot on her gown and was glad the pictures were finished. Her mother in a wetsuit would not have been an improvement over no mother at all.
It happened gradually that next year, as Zoe and Jude and Tabitha all worked together to persuade Mom that the medications were important, that she would feel better if she took them, and that the universe would survive without her constant intervention.
Zoe had just found out she was pregnant when she had her first vision of Io careening into Jupiter and the resultant chaos.
She talked to Jude about it, and he said it was probably subconscious guilt about her mom’s change. She talked to Tabitha about it, and she said that Zoe shouldn’t worry about dreams during pregnancy. She’d read they were all weird and they didn’t mean anything at all.
But the dreams kept coming back. Sometimes twice in a week, sometimes twice a month. And when the baby was born—a little girl she named Luna—the dreams intensified. She would wake sweating in the middle of the night, her heart pounding, a black feeling pressing on her body.
Until she went to talk to her mom.
“It’s your turn now. Your turn to save the universe.”
“Mom, is this what happened to you?”
Mom looked her in the eye, which she had trouble doing for long on the medication. “When I was fourteen. That was when my mother saved the sun for what she said was the last time. She told me she’d rather it explode and kill us all than have to get into it with her hands again. She told me how hot it was, and how it burned her, even if she had protection on. It wasn’t worth it, she said. But when the dreams came to me, I decided it was worth it for me. You’ll have to decide for yourself, I suppose, Zoe.”
Zoe looked at her daughter, the little arms and legs kicking. She would give anything to ensure that the universe was safe for her daughter to grow up in. Even if she couldn’t be there to see her herself.
“How do I do it?” she asked.
“Oh, you’ll know. That’s not the part that’s hard.”
“Tabitha will think I’m crazy,” Zoe muttered.
Her mother put a hand on each side of Zoe’s face and pressed hard enough that Zoe made a sound of pain. “Do you remember the moon on your wedding night?” she asked. “Do you remember that?”
“Yes. I remember,” Zoe gasped.
“It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And that’s what you will be giving to her, every day. She will not know it is her gift, not when she is young. Maybe you will choose never to tell her. But a mother is the one who does what must be done, no matter the cost. There are things you will miss and times she will hate you for it. And you will bear her hatred as you bear everything else.”
I took a picture of the moon that night and put it into my wedding album.
Then I went and saved another moon. Maybe one day I will learn to save ours.
STOLEN HEARTS
I walked up the steps to the trailer home. There was no lawn around it, only the weeds that could grow with the minimal water in the desert here. The ground itself looked red and cracked, a thousand lines like veins in the dirt. The siding had once been white, but was peeling around the door and windows.
I lifted a hand, but let it drop after a moment. Why was I here? Mom had asked me to come, but Mom was dead. I had never heard anything good about her sister Joy. Never heard much of anything really. But the look on Mom’s face had told plenty. She was afraid of her, and Mom wasn’t afraid of much. She’d lived through all four plagues, had outlasted three husbands, and had buried six children. I could remember her shouting at holographic politicians and beating the programmed debate modules when no one else did.
I didn’t believe in an after-life.
I didn’t believe Mom was watching me from above, that she would haunt me if I didn’t do what she asked or send me karmic bonus points if I did.
But I was holding this box and I wanted to get rid of it. There was no great courage in that, but it was what drove me. I was tired of going through Mom’s things. Papers and files and codes. I had to get one last thing on the list and then I was done. I could let her be dead.
So I went back to the steps and this time, I knocked on the door.
My heart seemed to knock as loudly against my ribs as my knuckles on the wood.
I waited, then heard a shuffling, squeaking sound from within. After several minutes, the door opened and a woman stood framed in darkness.
She did not look like I expected. She did not look like Mom at all. She did not look like the few pictures I had seen, stowed away here and there, none of them digital, because what happened between them was before that time. Fifty years ago and more.
She was tall and straight, her face wrinkled but unmarked by sun spots or plague scars. Her nose was wide and flat and her skin was a fine olive color where Mom’s had been pinkish pale. I could see teeth ridged beneath her lips and her eyes were small and very green. Green like the ocean, green like the sunset, green like a cat’s tongue.
“I don’t know you,” she said, her voice very formal, very old-fashioned, with none of the slurs or abbs that younger people used. Her hands were like sticks, thin and misshapen. She put one up toward me away.
I held up the box.
She put her hand down and her mouth dropped open. I could see her tongue inside, mottled grayish and green, like the rest of us, like Mom. It seemed strange to me for some reason, that she was human, after all. Not above all the other changes that the years had wrought.
“Lovey,” she whispered.
“I’m her daughter, Brucken,” I said.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, as if to send away bad dreams. Then she looked back at me. “You look like her a little, in the eyes.”
I knew that I looked more like my father than my mother. It was something that had always bothered me. He had left us when I was only a few days old. He had gone off to an island to have fun, had taken the money Mom had saved up to pay for the bills. And he’d killed himself while he was there, drowned having fun by all accounts. A happy death.
I’d grown more and more angry at him during the months of Mom’s final illness. That he should die like that, and that she should die like this. Unfair. He should have left nothing recognizable behind, but I was a walking reminder of his broad shoulders, thick torso, coarse black hair, and sturdy legs.
I had brown eyes like him, too, but I think the shape of them was more like Mom’s.
“Are you going to invite me in?” I asked.
“Should I?” she responded. “Are you a thief, like your mother?”
I bristled. I didn’t like to hear my mother described that way. But what did I know of the story? Mom had asked me to take the box to Joy when she was dead, but she hadn’t told me what was in it or how she had come by it.
The box itself was stained a reddish brown and was well made. It had two sides intricately carved with thorny vines and snakes with fangs showing. The other two sides were carved with the name “Joy,” and I suppose that it was perfectly innocent, but it made me cold when I touched it. There was something—dead about it. And I knew dead all too well these days.
“I came to bring you this box. If that is all that you want, you can take it and I’ll be on my way. But I thought you might be interested in hearing what I have to say. Hearing about your sister.”
“My sister,” said Joy, spitting just past me.
I stared at her. Maybe she didn
’t deserve to know that Mom was dead. Would it hurt her to wonder? Did I want to hurt her?
I thrust the box at her.
She took it as if it were a clawing cat, or some dangerous explosive. Then suddenly she went still, and put a hand on the lid, caressing it as if it were a child. A long-lost child?
And I was curious. I waited to see if she would open it.
“She sent you with this?” said Joy. “She could not bring it herself?”
I nodded. That was literally true.
“Well, I thank you then. It is no fault of yours what your mother is, and you have done nothing to me by virtue of your existence.”
It was a cold apology, but it was one nonetheless.
She looked at me a moment, then sighed and took a step back. “Come in, then. If you wish it.”
When she moved aside, I was overcome with the smell of the trailer. It was sour and moldy, and heavy. I had to press past it to move into the door, as if it were an invisible wall in my way that I could cut through if I were persistent enough.
The inside was not dirty, but it was filled with things. Boxes, newspapers, books, blankets, and trinkets. I was first struck by how little room there was to move through, only corridors of light. I thought that I could see the outlines of a kitchen behind her, but the stove had been boxed in, and there was no refrigerator or cupboards still recognizable.
I peered into one of the boxes that was open and discovered that they were neatly sorted, but of no value at all. One box was filled with what appeared to be ticket stubs to a local amusement park. Another had pickup sticks. Toy cars. And toothbrushes. Bits of string cut and worn.
Joy led the way through the passages to a corner where there was room for two to stand together. Her hands shook as she pulled at the lid of the box. It had not been opened in my memory. Mom had told me it was in the vault at the bank and I had to find the key hidden under her desk before I could retrieve it. It was not heavy, so I could not imagine that there was jewelry inside.
“You don’t know what it is, do you?” said Joy.
I shook my head.
She looked at me. “And I can see that you loved her. You knew nothing bad of her.”
“Of course I did,” I said.
“Oh?” She waited, and I felt obliged to come up with a list.
“She hated animals,” I said. “She would not let me have a pet when I was younger and begged her. She did not pretend to have allergies, either. She simply said that animals bothered her. Their warm bodies, demanding attention, touching her things, eating her food.”
Joy’s eyes narrowed.
“And she would not eat anything that she did not make herself. She would not take me out to eat. She would not go to social functions if she were made to feel uncomfortable about not eating. She would not admit that she was afraid of food poisoning, but I think that was what it was.”
“You think so.” Joy allowed a brief smile to flutter across her face. It made me shiver.
“She could not stand a messy house,” I added finally, looking around the space that Joy had created for herself. Mom could not have come inside here for more than ten seconds. Did she know it? Was that why she had stayed away and sent me instead?
“Interesting. She was the one who would not clean up her room when we were younger. I teased her about it. Told her that she would regret it one day.”
“I suppose she listened to you, then,” I said.
Joy said nothing. She stared at the box. She dug a fingernail in the crease.
I reached a hand out, ready to offer to help her if she needed it. I could see a vein popping out at her temple and I thought suddenly of what I would do if she died while I was here. I could not bear to witness another death, not so soon. I could not bear to deal with the aftermath it left.
The box lid made the low sound of a seal breaking and flipped over on its hinge. There was a puff of black smoke and then—Joy put her head close enough that I could see nothing but her. She was staring straight down, and the look on her face was awestruck.
Was it very valuable?
I leaned in, and then Joy picked the treasure out with a hand and held it out for me to see.
It was about the size of a large egg, but black. Then I looked more closely and realized it was not black, but dark red. The color of dried blood. And it was not an egg, because an egg was symmetrically shaped and had a hard shell over it. But this was soft, like a piece of raw meat. It jiggled in her hand slightly as she held it. I could see a hole in the top of it, and realized that it was a ventricle.
I began to choke.
It was a heart. A long dead heart held in a box for what could only have been years, and it was my mother’s gift to her estranged sister.
“I’m sorry,” I babbled. “So sorry. I will leave. I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me.”
“It’s mine,” said Joy. She put it close to her chest. “She took it years ago. Pulled it out of my chest with a magic spell.”
“You can’t believe that,” I said, transfixed at the sight of the heart next to her chest.
“Oh, I didn’t. Not when she talked about it. I thought she meant it as a joke. A Halloween trick. It sounded spooky and she loved to manipulate me. I hated scary stories and she knew it, so she always enjoyed the fun of making me wince or scream.”
“But—you—a heart—you’re still here,” I said.
“She said that it wasn’t what kept me alive. She said that it was truly only for emotions. She would take mine and I should be glad of it. No more heart break when a man left me. No more stirring of emotions at a song. No more wishing to be more than I was. She said that it was a gift, taking my heart from me.
“Afterward, when I was screaming with terror, she took me to the hospital and they found nothing wrong with me, except that I had no heart and was still living. They could see no sign of how my chest had been opened and they concluded that I had been born this way. They had no idea how I had survived so long, but suggested that I should go home and prepare to die. That was what she did to me.”
This new vision of my mother was so startling that I felt as if my own heart had been taken out of my chest. There was no pain, only the sensation that something was missing, that I had had something stolen from me and that it would never be returned.
“And now she is dead,” she guessed.
“Yes,” I got out in a hoarse whisper.
“All these years, I have tried to fill myself with other things.” She waved at the boxes around us. “I tried to make a heart outside my skin. It was the best I could do.”
I could not think what to say then.
She slipped the heart back into the box and closed the lid once more. She tapped it once with the tip of her index finger. “I will think on this.”
I do not remember leaving the house, but when I found myself outside again, I could feel a terrible emptiness in my chest. I clutched at it and gasped for breath, and realized that my heart had been taken, too.
She had learned the spell my mother had used, it seemed, and had used it on me. My mother’s gift to her sister was now her gift to me. I felt nothing. No pain, no sadness, no joy, either. Perhaps one day, I will come back and ask for my heart to be returned. Perhaps not.
THE ONE WHO WAITS
The preacher said I would see him again when this life was done. He said my baby boy was too pure for this world, but that he would be waiting for me, that I would hold him in my arms and see him make his first smile and laugh his first laugh. I would watch him take his first steps, and he would put out his arms and call me “Mama.” I would not miss a thing, because all was returned to the faithful, as it was to Job. He lost ten children and was returned twenty.
He had no name. He was small and come too early, and his face was blue and wrinkled. Not a pretty baby in truth, but I told myself it was another thing that would be recompensed. I wrapped his bloody body in the blanket I had made for him, with the embroidered vines on the sides in green, against
the yellow fabric bright as the sun. I put him in the cradle Joe made for him, just that once. I pushed him and let him swing.
Then Joe came and took him away and buried him behind the barn, where he’d buried the cat that died choking on a bone and that twin calves born together with only six legs between them.
But I would have him again, and so it didn’t matter.
I asked the preacher if we could give him a name, but the preacher looked at Joe and I could see Joe shake his head out of the corner of my eye.
“No need for that just now. You’ll know the right name for him when you see him again, in his true glory. Now you only see the mouldering remains of mortality, and that is not who your boy is.”
Joe was eager for me to have another baby, and so she came, less than a year from the boy’s birth. I wrapped her tight, then stared at the tiny veins in her face and neck that proved to me that she was living. But when I lifted her to put her in the cradle, I saw him. The unnamed babe, swinging on a still day, his eyes closed in death, his body smeared with blood. Unchanged, untouched by the year that had passed.
Did he mean to come to bring his sister to death with him?
I would not put her in the cradle. I kept her close to my breast each night, the cradle close by our bedside, for I could not bear to tell Joe what I saw in it.
At last the day came when Joe took her from me as I slept, and placed her in the cradle himself. The other baby was banished then, exorcised perhaps because it was Joe’s work had gone into the wood. Or because Joe did not believe in him.
I admit I was relieved that he was gone, that I had only one baby to worry over.
But he came back again when I was heavy with a third child. The cradle was too small for our little girl, and so we had put it away for a time, but now that my delivery was near, it had come out again, by our bedside.
He did not make a sound, though the cradle creaked when I turned to look at it. He was as he had been before. Not a whit changed, his face empty of life, dusky with death, a streak of dark on his head where he had been pressed as I birthed him.
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