Future Home of the Living God(73)

“Punk?”

“Yeah. Imagine. Me at nine months and neon-yellow mohawk. Rings and studs everywhere possible. I was still decked out when you were born. The delivery nurses kept coming in to take our picture.”

“Do you have a picture?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t in the album, it was in a little envelope I tucked in the back. Wait a sec.”

She slips back in the house and is back before I can panic about the picture—a new possibly upsetting piece of story. She holds it out, carefully. The edges are soft and frayed. I realize that she’s looked at it many times. This wrenches me, but in a sweet way. The photograph makes me laugh. Weirdly, it also makes me happy. Young Sweetie sits in a hospital bed against a backdrop of white pillows, pink carnations, rosebuds, and baby’s breath. Lots of flowers! There are a couple of pink Mylar balloons almost out of the frame. I am a nondescript newborn, a doll bundle in her arms, and Sweetie in a hospital gown is smiling shyly, her face glinting with silver jewelry. Septum, nose bridge, medusa, labret, eyebrow piercing, even angel bites. Her bright yellow-green hair has flopped over and her eye makeup’s smeared.

“You’re so pretty,” I say.

“Yeah, pretty weird I guess.”

“No, pretty. And I do look like you. I see that now. Did you ever have doubts, I mean, about having me?”

“Nah. It was meant. At the time, I loved your father a lot. I wanted to have you, but I didn’t live with Grandma then. I had my own path to follow. I couldn’t bring you with.”

“Your path led to Eddy and to Little Mary.”

“Eventually. And it led to Saint Kateri. And because of her, I’m sure of it, my prayers were answered and my path led back to you.”

Sweetie gives me a big funny eyebrow-raised grin that tells me the path was crooked and wild.



November 6

Mom’s working on the dishes, cleaning the kitchen in that absorbed and militant way she has—working left to right she methodically wipes down each item and either puts it away or cleans beneath it and sets it back into place on the counter, properly aligned. She has taught me to clean the way she cleans and I have recognized it as one thing given to me through nurture, a tool I can use to stave off despair. I’ve soothed anguish and fought madness by minutely scraping at a stain on the counter or a burnt-in bit of soot on the side of a pot. I go inside, and for a while work alongside my mom, without speaking. At last, I get up the nerve.

“We’ve got to talk about this, Mom.”

She puts down her rag and leans against the counter, frowning at the floor.

“What this do you mean? There’s a lot of this.”

I decide that I am going to use Sera on Sera. I’ll pretend to be her. “Maybe we should assess the situation,” I say. “Glen hasn’t gotten in touch. We don’t know if he has a place for us. There doesn’t seem to be an actual plan other than getting this far. So I’d like to stay here.”

“There is a plan,” she says.

“What is it?”

She looks at her softened, soaked hands. Presses on her ragged nails. Sometimes I wish I could see my hands in her long thin fingers. My hands are more like Glen’s hands, strong with big knuckles. We sit down at the kitchen table and she reaches for my hands, holds my fingers.

“Look, Cedar. You’re right. We haven’t heard from Glen. But if he were in trouble, I’d feel a vibe. So I am sure he’s okay, working on a safe place for you. Things change constantly. I think we’ll stay put for now, but don’t get too comfortable. You’ve got seven weeks left. So much could happen, right? The Church of the New Constitution has split the military. They’re calling in drone strikes on the basis of voice and facial recognition, so people are holed up anywhere there is a tunnel system. There is a whole city underneath St. Paul now, in hospitals, universities, old convents, the state capitol, all connected underground. And the drones are so artful, so small, that we have to be careful.”

“What do they look like?”

“Bugs. And there are Listeners out there.”

“What do they look like?”

“Dust. Leaf mold. Seeds. And some are transparent floaters, people call them Ears.”

“What do they look like?”

“Ears.”

“For real? They had to be literal?”

“Maybe the snoops have a sense of humor. Some are soft, almost invisible. You catch one you can squish it like a slug.’’

“Were these things around before?”

“I guess they were being developed? Some corporation could be trying them out. They like to hang around the tribal offices. Eddy nets them. Puts them in this box with the recordings of the tribal council meetings going back thirty years.”

“Ha. I hope somebody really bad is on the listening end. Someone who deserves thirty years of tribal council meetings.”

Mom doesn’t actually laugh, but she does smile.

“Weird, isn’t it,” she says at last. “How people just dumped the phones, the screens.”

“As far from where we lived as possible.”

“There are piles of them in the landfills and reclamation centers, all smashed and waterlogged.”

“I miss the phones.”

“I miss them too. Anyway, Sweetie’s fired up the vintage radio.”