Soon After Christmas
Two practical neon green bags, heavy and ripe with folded clothes, watch with clear plastic tag eyes as she helps her baby dress. Leia's surprised she managed to fit everything in those two small bags. When she was younger and traveled alone, even if she didn't need everything she brought them along with her. Everything used to fit perfectly in six large, sleek leather suitcases that smelled of lavender when opened. Now most of everything has to be left behind due to practicality.
The two green bags are sitting on a hotel bed. The bedspread is ugly, a drab dark blue covered with thick golden tangles of stylized vines and flowers. The hotel room itself is ugly. The eastern wall is one big sliding glass door. She'd drawn back the matching drapery and tied it back with the red-tasseled cords. She stares out.
Outside it's barely morning. Wan streetlight and blackish-purple dawn spill in tentatively like grape juice. It's winter. Mariemeia has never seen snow before. She herself has never seen snow before.
But the weather forecasts said no snow for today. They'll just have to come back to Earth someday, when Mariemeia's old enough to build snowmen. And maybe he'll help-
She unties the knotted cords and lets the draperies fall back over the window. She turns back to Mariemeia, to pull on lacy cotton socks on clammy baby feet.
Mariemeia is running a fever. She knows she shouldn't have taken her daughter with her, but there's nobody else willing to watch her. Her father's busy, and her brother's missing, as always.
She holds on to her daughter's wrist while she straps on tiny patent-leather shoes with one hand. Her daughter's feet bump against each other. She can see her face in Mariemeia's shoes. She doesn't feel well at all. She needs sleep. She'll have to sleep on the shuttle instead.
She slides the straps of each bag over one shoulder and picks up Mariemeia. Leia teeters for a bit, and then manages to steady herself. Mariemeia holds on too tightly and her shoulders hurt. She kisses her daughter's smooth forehead, and smells baby shampoo. She herself smells rancid under the scent of lemony cologne. Mariemeia smiles wanly, and holds on to her hair with painful fists, her fingers curling through her hair like such delicate barrettes.
She thinks about simply walking out of the room and leaving her daughter and the two bags behind. She'll walk out into the streets, and nobody will look, or see anything amiss. She'll be just another young girl playing at being a young woman in her stylish clothes. But then where else will she go? This is her most terrible thought of all. It's too possible.
She carries the bags and Mariemeia out of the ugly room and into a dark blue corridor of shut doors with their watchful peepholes, feeling so breathless with their weight.
Stations
In the warm airport restroom smelling of spilled pee and toxic cleansers Leia glances in the mirror and tries to fix her hair. The bobby pins in her mouth taste oily. She takes off her coat. It's a lurid pea-green under the fluorescent lights over the mirror, making her want to grit her teeth. When she bought it, at first, she thought it looked just lovely, like the bottoms of ponds. The round black buttons gleam like spat seeds. Mariemeia sits on the counter, clicking her heels together. Her head, shiny and red as cherries, bobs up and down as she plays with the faucets. She gets the edge of her skirt wet. The blue turns darker and borders on purple.
Leia tries not to scold Mariemeia. She picks at the glittering strands of shed hair on her coat instead. She dots concealer with her fingertips on the grayish half-circles under her eyes. She feels ugly. The lighting in this place doesn't help at all. She sighs, exasperated, and washes her hands. There is water all over the sink. She doesn't remember spilling drops of water from her wet fingertips.
The woman beside her looks at her dirtily and takes paper towels to blot up the water, complaining loudly. She ignores her, and scoops up Mariemeia. Mariemeia clings to her tightly, as if someone drowning. No, not drowning, how horrible of her to think that, to wish that- Leia is reminded of koalas instead. She tells Mariemeia about them before the little girl takes a nap. They have painful-looking toenails.
Mariemeia's left foot and her handbag bump against her right thigh. Leia can feel the bruises forming, colored like terrestrial twilights. Mariemeia is sucking her thumb, face buried in the sweaty crook of her neck. Mariemeia's stiff eyelashes feel like toothbrush bristles, her little mouth drooling as she sleeps.
Leia still has one more hour to wait for her flight. She sets Mariemeia down in the chair beside her, and takes out paper napkins to dab at her neck discreetly. The waiting area is only half-full. She sits, legs crossed delicately, one foot arched out. Her hands clutch at her purse, leaving whitish fingerprints blooming on the shiny black leather.
A young man glances admiringly in her way, his appreciative glance following the line of her legs. Leia smiles and says nothing. The man tells her that her sister is a pretty little girl as he settles in the seat across from them. He leans forward, expectantly.
"But she isn't my little sister," Leia says, smilingly still. "She's my daughter."
The man laughs a startled laugh and mumbles an apology as he leans back. He takes out a book from his bag and starts reading. More passengers are filing in. Mariemeia continues sleeping.
Thirty minutes before their flight Mariemeia wakes up. They go to a souvenir shop, where her daughter clutches at a toy koala and refuses to let go. Leia buys it, laughingly. The cashier smiles at her shyly, his pimples red and tight like rosebuds.
Her head feels so light. Mariemeia tightens her grip around her neck. The koala's plastic eyes and nose gleam shoe-leather black.
She buys an overpriced bottle of cherry soda pop for herself from a vending machine. She lets her daughter take tiny sips as a treat, since she has been so good lately. She herself is tired. The soda doesn't taste of cherries at all, but of saccharine chemicals colored artificially red. It makes her slightly sick.
A beautiful young man stops her and asks if she'll all right. She blinks, head heavy and thick, and stares at him. His face is familiar. Mariemeia's grasp is strangling her. She disentangles Mariemeia's arms, those fragile and slippery eels.
She says, "I know you. You're his friend." Mariemeia tries to twist towards her, but she loosens her grip. She hands Mariemeia to him, unceremoniously, the blood rushing to her head. He doesn't protest, but he stands uncomfortable with Mariemeia.
"Here. Watch her, please. I'll be back." Mariemeia looks up at him and starts crying. Her fingers catch at Leia's hair.
Leia runs into the nearest restroom, not even looking at the signs. She enters an empty stall and throws up into the toilet bowl. Red chemical smell, fake cherries. She hasn't been feeling well lately.
She washes her mouth out with chlorinated water afterwards. She's worried now. What was she thinking? What made her leave Mariemeia with him? What if he takes her? She hurries out, half-sobbing and worried so sick. When she finds him outside of the restroom with Mariemeia in tow she's so relieved she snatches her baby out of his arms. Mariemeia is still crying, her face a furious red.
"I'm so sorry," she says, to him or Mariemeia, it doesn't matter. "I don't know what came over me."
He says that it's all right, awkwardly, and then leaves. Before he walks away he hands her an address book. Mariemeia clings to her coat. She flips the address book open. There are only two people entered in it.
"Don't you need this?"
He says he has everything memorized already.
Une has three entries- three different address in three different colonies. As for Treize, she knows these phone numbers and addresses already. She slips the address book into her handbag and scoops up Mariemeia, whose tears have dried. Leia's still terrified. Her heartbeat slows down, finally, as Mariemeia's weight settles in her arms, where it should be.
CQD
On the shuttle Leia slides gleaming discs into the tiny portable video player. Their undersides reflect ribbons of rainbows on the white plastic walls and on the other passengers' faces. Her daughter stares open-mouthed as they rest in her hands, briefly, before sliding away like polychrome fish. How can she ever explain the mechanics of light to little Mariemeia?
Her hands tremble. Mariemeia is singing along with her videos and clapping her hands delightedly. She tells Mariemeia to quiet down while she keeps her eye outside. Distant galaxies are far too close. She's far too aware of what will happen when galaxies collide with each other.
In science fiction such collisions create comforting or frightening parallel universes. In a parallel universe they won't be on this shuttle at all. She probably won't have Mariemeia. For the second time today she's tempted to leave her daughter. Is she bad for wanting to do this? She uses her youth as an excuse, her irresponsibility. She's only nineteen.
Probably it would've been a far softer life for both of them.
But to whom? This is what always bothered her. Mariemeia, sedate in her navy blue dress and black patent mary-janes on somebody's doorstep with all of her belongings packed up in two neon green bags. Her doting father, while fond of Mariemeia, is not-
Not trustworthy at all. Her brother, the perfect candidate, is never there. And as for him, as for Mariemeia's father, she won't be able to do it. Leaving Mariemeia with him will be so final. His phone number, his e-mail address- she can't bear to look at them. She has nobody to leave Mariemeia with. She imagines going to one of the addresses listed under Une. God knows who she'll find when that door opens.
And so she will stay, no matter how briefly.
They are both chewing sugarless gum. She feels sick again. Mariemeia spits out the wad of gum in a paper napkin and hands it to her, and then turns back to her videos. Leia gives her another stick. She points out the wreckage of a galactic accident- perfectly spiral galaxies turned into mutilated nebulae with broken arms, but still they glow with their wounded light, the true difference between galaxies and human bodies.
-March 12, 2005