by Sharon Heath
I shuddered at the myriads of ways a child’s innocence could be destroyed and prayed I could protect my own girl from every single one of them. “What’s the little creep’s name?” I asked.
“Hector,” replied Makeda. “But don’t you think it’s cruel to call a child a ‘creep?’”
“Don’t you wish you could wring his neck?” I shot back.
She favored me with a guilty grin.
Hector, I thought. Of course. The name of the boy who’d called me Linda Paloma before pretty much raping me in middle school. At least I think that’s it’s called when someone gets you drunk on your very first taste of beer and then inserts his member in your tweeter before you even know what’s happening. The act had had awful consequences, culminating in my father’s final disowning of me for the murder of my first bun. I prayed every night that Callay wouldn’t be punished for her mother’s folly. You never know what the Furies will take it into their heads to do.
Just in case, I decided to call on my better self. “The poor child must be suffering his own set of insecurities to be a bully at so young an age.”
“It’s true, it’s true!” said Makeda, with enough emphasis to reveal she’d been going through her own inner battle.
“Listen,” I said, “do you want to invite him over for a playdate?”
She drew back. “What? Why would I? Yes, I can have compassion for him, but I hardly think that Melesse would relish it.”
“Yes, I can see that, but if you were there? And maybe I could be, too. But not Sofiya. Her protectiveness might make him more scared, and then he might get nasty.”
Makeda rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “But what would they even play? You know Melesse—she’d rather bury her head in a book than play with anyone but her sister, let alone someone who has been cruel to her.”
“I get it. But don’t you see? It might actually defuse the situation. Help get them on a new footing.”
I could tell Makeda wasn’t convinced. She promised to think about it, but her voice was flat, her expression worried.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, either, but I did mention it to Sammie on the phone later that day.
“No, you’re right. It’s brilliant. They could write a little play together, then perform it. I went to this amazing talk at a Jungian confab near Belsize Park the night before I met Amira. A lovely man, I think his name was van Eenwyk, gave a talk about healing children from the traumas of war through art and imagination. They’ve evidently been doing it for ages at a place called the Butterfly Peace Garden in Sri Lanka. What if I bring over some art supplies and maybe even some costumes and we let Melesse and Hector have a go?”
Personally, I thought the whole thing might end up a disaster, but, as was often the case with Sammie, my friend’s enthusiasm proved to be a powerful engine. It was she who finally convinced Makeda, and the following weekend, Mother watched Callay in my room while Sammie and I converted our large-ish den to an improvised little theater.
When Hector’s rather harassed-looking mother deposited him with unseemly relief at our front door, Melesse hid behind her mother’s skirts. The boy wasn’t at all like the miniature Hector from Walter Reed Middle School that I’d imagined. This Hector was a carrot top with Tom Sawyer freckles and drooping blue eyes and a slightly recessed chin. Nor was he the dummy I’d assumed. He explained earnestly that he had exactly three hours and fifteen minutes before his mother came to pick him up.
The boy asked to see the backyard, as he’d heard Sofiya bragging that we had a better swing set than the Children’s Center. Makeda was able to persuade Melesse to let go of her long enough to be leveraged into a swing next to her tormentor. The fact that she was comfortable going much higher than Hector seemed to give her sufficient confidence to suggest they play one of her favorite Ethiopian games, acoocoolu. I’d played it with the girls myself and knew it was a version of what I’d grown up calling hide-and-go-seek. Nana and Sister Flatulencia would occasionally play the latter with me when the saved babies were napping. In its Ethiopian form the game had rituals that had to be observed before the “chicken”—acoocoolu being the operative chicken sound—could be declared free. They had to touch the original wall where the seeker had first shielded her eyes and kiss their own hands for good luck. The seeker, in turn, had to identify the hider, reach the wall before her and kiss her own hand to win the right to hide the next time around. During the hiding phase, the seeker called out, “Coocoolu,” and if not yet hidden the hider shouted, “Anelgam” (“it is still not day”) and if hidden, “Nega” (“the sun rises”). We’d already established that Hector was a bright boy, and he caught on just fine, but for some reason he had a devil of a time pronouncing the unfamiliar anelgam. Makeda and I exchanged glances as Melesse took great pains to help him learn to say it properly.
“Again-am,” he’d say, and Melesse would repeat, “Anelgam,” The poor child was nothing if not determined. He tried over and over, making it even worse with permutations of “Alengum,” “Agelum,” and even—accidentally, I presumed—“Alaikum.”
I felt a bit worried that Hector would feel too much shame to absorb the kindness that Melesse was offering him—particularly ironic, since his bullying had focused on her speech impediment—but instead they both began making up preposterous variants of the word, laughing so uproariously that they initially missed seeing Sammie enter the scene in a flowing, sequined purple robe and a star-strewn wizard’s hat crowing her auburn head.
Hector saw her first and let fly a loud, “Wow!”
Van Eenwyk proved to be right on target. The children decided to stage a play about “King Chicken,” who uttered curses on anyone he didn’t like. “Alengum!” “Akeedum!” “No-Like-Em!” And when someone did pass muster, Melesse would cry, “Anelgam!” and Hector would chime in, “I-Like-’Em!”
The kids made such a racket that Mother marched downstairs on behalf of Callay to demand they quiet down. Later, when she and I relaxed in my bedroom with Sammie while Makeda and Melesse went off to fetch Sofiya from her own play date, I mused, “Isn’t it funny that animals figure in different versions of the same essential game?”
Mother raised her head from admiring her granddaughter, “What do you mean?”
“Well, in English it’s ‘Olly olly oxen free.’”
Sammie jumped in, “You know, you’re right. It must be an archetype.”
I laughed. “With you, everything’s an archetype.”
She chucked me on the shoulder. “With you it’s all black holes.”
“Touché,” I cried. “Well, if it is an archetype, at least it’s a tasty one. I’ve heard it called ‘Sardines.’”
“Oh, but that’s a different game,” chimed in Mother. “I played that one as a girl. There’s just one hider, and each consecutive finder crams into their hiding place with them until the last one becomes the loser.”
Gesturing towards Sammie, lazing beside me on the bed, I laughed, “Then you’d better get over here quick, Mother.” She happily piled in, plumping the pillow between us before laying her head against it with a satisfied, “Ahhh.” Then she sat up again. “But no, that makes Callay the loser.”
As if on cue, the baby gave a lusty cry and I fetched her up onto the bed with us, the object of three sets of admiring eyes as I unhooked my bra to nur
se her.
At that moment, Adam poked his head in the door. “Did I hear a baby crying?”
We three giggled, though I hated it a little when Sammie murmured in my ear, “Should I tell him he’s the loser?”
He wasn’t, of course. But something had gotten hold of me ever since the hour before I’d gone into labor with Callay, and I confided it in Mother once Sammie went home to call Amira.
It took me a while to get there. We were again cushioned against the mound of plump European pillows while my baby slept. I turned onto my side to face Mother, clapping my hands cozily inside my thighs. “I feel like I’m spending most of my life in bed.”
Mother smiled, brushing a lock of hair away from my eye. “The fate of the young mother. Though I must say,” she added with a tinge of melancholy, “I drew that phase out way too long, hiding out in my room from your father.”
I considered her face, noting that the twin furrows between her perfectly penciled brows seemed to be deepening by the day. It killed me when she was sad. “You hated him, didn’t you?”
She bit her lip. “I’m afraid I did. Is that awful?”
“I hope not. I did, too.” I paused. “I know you were still a teenager when you met him, but did you love anyone before him?”
“I didn’t, Fleur. Not really. He was my first.” She gave a cynical laugh. “Though I was hardly his. It wasn’t just him being so much older. I found out soon enough that he couldn’t keep his hands off other women. And as a senator, he had his pick.”
“But, in the beginning, do you think he loved you?”
Mother considered the question. “No. Frank was a narcissist. I don’t think he was capable of love. Of any kind. I think I was just another conquest. The trouble was, as soon as we found out I was pregnant, your grandfather wouldn’t let him adopt you out, the way he did with his other children.”
“All the saved babies,” I said.
“All the saved babies,” she affirmed dryly. But then her face brightened. “At least Callay is the daughter of her father’s true love.”
It was a quaint way to put it. It should have cheered me, but instead, I was overcome by a great wave of sadness. What did it mean that I wasn’t the daughter of my own father’s true love? Or my mother’s, for that matter?
“Do you think it’s possible to have more than one true love?”
“Darling, what a question. How in the world would I know? I’ve had such an abnormal life.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s never been anything about me that’s been normal. And here I am, loving Adam and Callay like crazy, but fantasizing that my daughter will have a little bit of Assefa in her.”
Mother raised an eyebrow. “It’s like that, is it?” Then she added gently, “It’s been disproven, you know.”
“What?”
“Telegony. The theory that babies carry genetic material of the men their mothers have been with previously. I think the word is etymologically rooted in the stories surrounding Odysseus’s son Telegonus.”
I had to hand it to Mother. She was up on her Greek mythology. I supposed it came of having been a librarian all those years.
“But isn’t that a butterfly?”
“If it is, I hadn’t heard of it.”
“With gorgeous turquoise wings.”
“Well then. But what’s this about Assefa? I thought you were long over him.” She gave me a searching look. “Are things okay with Adam?”
I nodded reassuringly. Truthfully. “Way better than okay. He’s the sweetest, kindest, most tender man I could ever hope for. I adore him. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Ever since Assefa came back to L.A. I’m not sure it’s possible to be ‘over’ someone you’ve loved. I mean, have you gotten over the loss of Grandfather? Or Nana?”
Mother gave me the point with a shake of her head.
I was still unsettled. I couldn’t leave it alone. An emotional hangnail. But not, I hoped, too much like Assefa’s Hanging Man. “Were you the daughter of your father’s true love?”
She nodded vigorously. “Oh yes. They had a hell of a love affair, your grandparents. It was why he pined so hard when she died.”
I shut up then, asked if she’d mind if I took a little nap. I’d tired myself out. Maybe it was the talk of Grandfather or maybe it was my breasts, their nipples sore from constant suckling. I’d been sleep deprived for what felt like forever. But as I fell asleep I curled inside this increasing sense of closeness with Mother. She might be a little taken aback by my words about Assefa, but she wasn’t judging me. I could tell.
It meant the world to me.
Chapter Eight
IT WAS ON a bright and (for SoCal) rather freezing day—temperature, sixty degrees Fahrenheit; humidity 35 percent—that the physics team found the time to join me in visiting Gwen.
Gwennie was looking heartier by the minute. That awful yellowish tinge to her skin was giving way to a pinker hue, and her skeletal appearance had been supplanted by increasingly visible amplitude to her upper arms and the welcome hint of a double chin.
Gwen barked a loud laugh when I brought them all in. “Oh my goodness, I had no idea when you asked if I was up for visitors that I’d get the whole kit and caboodle. Except for that monkey, of course.” She burst into an off-tune rendition of “The Gang’s All Here” from The Pirates of Penzance, holding her encircling fingers up to her eye to mime a pirate’s patch.
Predictably, Amir interjected, “Not a monkey. A chimp. Lord Hanuman is a chimpanzee.”
“Actually,” Tom commented dryly, “He’s a god. Only you would name a lab chimp after a character from the Ramayana, bro.”
“Rescued lab chimp,” retorted Amir. “He’s hardly a lab chimp these days. At Gombe, he’s always on the move. Free. Strong. You’d barely recognize him.”
“Ramayana? Best spectacle I’ve ever seen since my mor and far took me to see Die Walküre as a kid,” rhapsodized Gunther non-sequitorishly, a faraway look in his mismatched eyes.
Katrina waved a hand sideways. “Oh, Wagner. So depressing.” And then she blushed.
The room fell silent. Katrina had violated our unspoken agreement not to mention depression in front of Gunther. He seemed to carry the classic Scandinavian gene for it.
“No,” objected Gunther, “it’s a good story. The cruelty of the gods. To have control over who will live and who will die. Wotan condemning his favorite daughter to a rocky isolation. I remembered falling speechless when I saw Brünnhilde surrounded by a magical fire onstage.”
Katrina shuddered. “It makes me think of cremation.”
Gwennie, who was listening to the back and forth with shining eyes, jumped in. “Did you hear how the Vatican ‘clarified’ their rules about cremation? They condemned the practice of scattering of ashes, along with ideas of death as the definitive annihilation, or as part of a death-rebirth cycle, or even as a reconnection with the universe. I read that and thought, ‘Well, goody for them. I’m glad they’re so sure what happens we die.’ What do you think, Stanley?”
We all looked to the corner of the room where Stanley had silently recessed himself. I wondered whether he was troubled by the conversation about dying with a sister who’d barely escaped it.
“What do you think about that, Stanley?” Gwen poked again. “You think the Church is onto something?”
She wasn’t the sister of a physicist for nothing. “What do I think?” he croaked, hopping into the fray. “It’s all about the molecules, isn’t it?”
I turned to Gwen. She’d brought it up. Maybe it was relieving for her to talk about it. “What about you, Gwen? What do you think?
“I think this American obsession with staying Perky Polly healthy in the presumption you can fend off death forever is just ludicrous. And frankly, boring. If I can’t have a couple of scoops of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey before bedtime, then what’s the bloody point of being alive?”
Stanley issued a pla
intive, “Does that mean I can eat my McDonald’s again?”
Everyone laughed. Gwen had been fiercely vegetarian since long before I’d come to live with them and was a strict enforcer with her junk food junkie brother.
It was Tom who reminded the team that they needed to get over to the lab. I felt a slight pang, wishing I could join them. But Callay was due for a feed, and Mother was still anxious she might not accept the bottle of pumped milk I’d left in the fridge, even though she’d chugged down every ounce the last three times she’d babysat for her.
We were approaching a moment of high drama for Dreamization. We’d made significant progress following the standstill forced upon us by a know-nothing Congress’ ban of our research for several years. Somehow slipped into a back-room deal between Democrats and Republicans—over, of all things, drug testing for drug task force officers—was an agreement that we could pursue our research, funded solely by private resources. They’d given us six months before congressional representatives from both parties would review the results for suitability. We were eager to take anything we could get and fortunate enough to obtain full funding from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, with the caveat that his support would go nameless. An anomaly, we soon learned, as most people of wealth seemed to be interested, these days, in advertising their “brand.”
Following up on groundbreaking work by Oriol Omero-Isart and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, we’d already managed to use two laser beams to create optical cavities where water bears could exist in two places at the same time. Water bears, or moss piglets, are tiny little tardigardes that can curl up into dry husks called “tuns” in a seeming dead state for decades. Ironically, it takes only water to re-animate them. (If only I’d been so lucky with Grandfather.) Employing the insights of cell therapies used in the treatment of various diseases, we found a way to issue instructions to a key “trigger” cell that signaled all a moss piglet’s cells to simultaneously exchange its light matter for dark and then reverse the process, effectively throwing the water bear into a cellular black hole where it actually dematerialized from one of its two places and rematerialized into the other. But quantum mechanics was, by definition, most reliable when applied to subatomic particles. Moving a moss piglet from one place to another was a far cry from moving humans.