The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters(30)

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Mom’s Kiss


Jacques Antoine


“Eww, ew, ew, Mom,” Nero squealed. “That’s gross.”

Maia stood up from the stream where she’d been trying to catch one of those fish with the pink gills and a yellow tail. A glance up at her little brother clued her in right away.

“The little weasel,” she thought. “Spying again.” Of course, she envied his climbing ability. He scrambled up and down the lower branches as though he were running along the ground. Creeping silently through the foliage was nothing to him… and he couldn’t be more than five or six years old, all pink and fleshy, barely any hair on him. Maia could climb too, but in her case it involved using hands and feet to wrestle herself up the trunk and through the branches.

She turned to see what he found so disgusting. Her mom had her face pressed up against the hairy face of the guy they’d met the day before yesterday, her hands pressed his cheek and the back of his head. His hands held her waist and pulled her hips into his. She pushed him gently away, whispered something in his ear, and watched as he wandered off into the woods.

“Come down here, young man.”

Nero scampered along the branch until he could hop to a large frond hanging below and slide down into his mother’s arms.

“Now what have I told you about spying?”

Nero’s face turned a brighter pink than normal, and he buried his head into the hair on his mother’s neck.

“He’s right, Mom. That was gross.”

“Oh, Maia, there’s nothing wrong with showing affection.”

“That guy was so hairy and ugly. How could you let him touch you? And his face…”

“He’s not ugly, sweetheart.”

“And how did you know he wouldn’t hurt you? Is that what Dad was like?”

Maggie rubbed her son’s head, gave him a squeeze, and set him down on his feet. He scampered back into the tree.

“I’m not sure there’s anyone left like your father… well, except maybe your brother. And he was hairy, too.” Maggie reached out for her daughter’s hand, and pulled her close. “Do you really not remember him?” she asked, with an arm draped over Maia’s shoulder.

“Oh, Mom…”

“Sweetheart, unless we can open up to our own kind we’ll never recover what we lost.”

“But, Mom, why can’t we just be like we are? I mean, how do we know this isn’t better?”

“Not this,” Maggie exclaimed with a self-deprecating gesture. “This isn’t better. We can be so much more. We used to be so much more… before they came.”

“But how can you be so sure? That was before you were born, and your mother, too, right?”

“Because your father believed it, and I saw the truth of it in his eyes, and every time I look at your little brother.”

“Yeah, right,” Maia snorted, “because he’s like so evolved. Besides, when have we ever met anyone like him?”





*


It was already two years since Nero died, and her mother’s words still rang in her ears. But without him, what was the point? She’d fought so many battles, against the stragglers from the ships that finally fell to Earth, against the wild animals that had grown accustomed to eating people, and especially against others of her own kind. They were the worst of all, the most vicious, the fiercest… but then, they’d have to be. How else could they have prevailed?

“Keep him safe,” her mother told her. “He’s the best hope for the future.” But she failed at that one task. A mere moment’s inattention in the heat of passion—she took her eyes off him just long enough to slash through those hunters and their beasts, and when she turned back, he was gone. She found his body a few hours later, saw the telltale signs, and hunted down his killers over the next few days, relentless, cruel… aggrieved… ashamed.

“Maia, come back,” he whispered in her ear. “We’re safe. It was just the wind.”

“That’s the problem, Noah. It’s like I hear him in the branches.”

“You’ve got to let him go.”

She pushed his arm away and stalked off into the jungle, then turned to glower through the undergrowth at him. “He can’t understand,” she muttered. “Stupid knuckle-walker.” Her eyes felt wet. “It’s time to move on, before he starts to think I belong to him.”

She turned and ran, not as fast as she could, just as fast as she could sustain for as long as it might take to get away from him. “Don’t look back. I don’t care if he’s following.” Her machete rattled inside the sheath slung across her back, the rifle on her shoulder bounced with each stride, only three bullets in the clip, one in the chamber. She always kept track.

The jungle refreshed her sense of the possibilities. Lush, vibrant, life everywhere, bursting at the seams… on a good day, the filtered light caressed her face; on a dim day the shadows beckoned, offering a safe harbor. The meadows her father used to speak of—she remembered that much about him—with the sun bright in her eyes, and smaller insects flitting about, they formed so small a part of her experience, as if they were merely some fading dream of a lost world. How could a world so alive be sick? If she wanted to see the big sky, all she had to do was climb up to the canopy and stick her head out.