ecbenvolio

[ecbenvolio]

So Long Mother Earth

“What’s the one thing you’ll miss about Earth? And you can not say your family or friends,” Zeon’s face fills the comm screen. They have a mischievous smile on their lips.

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Jules responds, “Ice cream.”

Zeon’s smile morphs into a look of confusion. “Ice...scream?”

Absently Jules twirls a finger around one of her locs and tries to hide her smile. “No. Ice cream. It’s an Earth dessert. I know I’ve told you about it, Ze.”

Zeon’s species has this quirk. When they are embarrassed or feel any type of strong emotion, the crest across their forehead blushes a strong cyan hue. Jules notices that ever so slightly Ze’s forehead has changed color. They’ve always prided themself on their stellar memory. It’s funny how an innocent sentence can be interpreted a certain way in another culture.

Jules continues on “I won’t go into specifics on how it’s made. You’ll probably find it a bit gross anyway.”

Zeon leans forward. “Why will you miss it so much?”

Her eyes stray from the communicator screen toward the window in the terminal. It’s winter on this side of the Earth. She traveled down here as it was the location of the soonest shuttle to the space station. But if she was home right now, she’d be with her friends hanging out in the city, getting ice cream from her favorite stand in Stratford, walking along the boardwalk by the ocean. She’d learned to fall in love with that sensation of sweet vanilla on her tongue, and the feeling of her best friends’ arms around her shoulders. The sand between her toes.

“There’s no ice cream on Egeon. Or beaches for that matter.” Zeon points out. “Are you sure you’ll be happy here?”

Jules eyes snap back to the comm screen. Ze’s brow is knit together with worry as if the two had not spent the better part of a year discussing this trip. As if Jules hadn’t already gone through months of space training and other classes prior to getting on a plane and coming closer to the Antarctic than she dare to imagine. As if her shuttle didn’t leave tomorrow.

She smiles. “I’m sure, Zeon. Earth may have many things I’ve learned to enjoy, but I’m sure Egeon will too. Besides, there is one thing that Earth has always been missing that I’m looking forward to seeing…”

“And that is?” they ask seriously.

“It’s you, silly.”

………

That would be the last time Zeon and Jules would be able to talk for a while, but that was the least of her worries.

Comm access was expensive but not unattainable on Egeon, a planet that acted as a communication hub for half the galaxy. It was of Egeon that instantaneous communication was discovered decades ago. It was the only reason that someone like Jules, a 29 year old microblogger, could even get in contact with someone like Zeon, a communications major a million-something lightyears away.

While Earth could receive communications from Egeon and other planets from the outskirts of the Milky Way, it was costly. It would not be a problem once Jules was on Egeon. The problem was the five-year journey to get there. What would seem like six months to Jules during lightspeed travel would be a half a decade in the eyes of her friends and family.

Jules left the comm terminal reluctantly and walked back down the path to her hotel room. One more night before take-off. There were many things that she could do one her last night on Earth, but at the moment there was only one thing she wanted to do.

The hotel room was small but a warm welcome from the cold. She immediately gets onto the bed, wraps herself in covers, and pulls out her phone. There’s a moment of hesitation but she selects a familiar contact.

The phone rings and rings but no one picks up. It’s not unexpected. They didn’t make any plans to call each other, but Jules was sure she’d at least want to get the last word in.

She hangs up with a sigh and sits there for a minute. Five minutes. Ten.

Then Jules makes a decision. She turns one the phone’s camera and switches it to video mode.

Here’s the thing: Jules doesn’t enjoy looking at her reflection. She rarely takes self-portrait photos. As a result, it’s a bit disorienting to see her face in the camera lens. Brown skin, big brown eyes set slightly too far apart for her liking, but Zeon thinks are gorgeous because the color doesn’t exist among Egeonians. Her hair is in fresh locs ready for a hassle free six month journey. There’s a deep scar on her forehead that she doesn’t remember getting but will stay with her for the rest of her life.

She takes a deep breath and hits record.

“To my dearest mother,” she says, “ I’m usually not one to record myself, but I figure since you won’t be seeing me for a while it was okay to make an exception.”

She pauses, licks her lips, and thinks.

“It’s my last night on Earth and I thought it would be nice to hear your voice? The last time I heard it you were angry and maybe a little confused. You called me too young and a fool and selfish and...well a lot of things. I think I understand where you were coming from. Maybe. Maybe if I was in your position I’d feel the same way. Your feelings are valid. But your accusations are wrong. I’m an adult. I’m being pragmatic. And that selfish bit? Let’s not throw stones from glasshouses.

“I’m not mad at you, but I am disappointed. I’ve found joy in my life and wanted to share it with you. Instead, I’m having a one-sided conversation in the middle of the night with my smartphone.

“Egeon is over 90 billion lightyears away. Once I’m settled there, I should be able to hook you and granddad up with lightspeed comm access so you can watch the wedding in real-time. If you want. It’ll be five years from next month, so plan ahead. You’ll be retired by then, right?

“...I’ll miss you. And granddad. And tell Mia I’m sorry for missing her first day at college, and her graduation from college. I wish I had something profound to say, but I don’t. So...talk to you later. Love you. And so long Mother Earth.”

[ecbenvolio]

Antique (Affectionate)

“This is all junk,” says the man I presume to be Lev of Lev’s Pawnshop and Antiques, a man who buys junk for a living.

My heart drops.

I’d rounded up my most prized possessions in hope of collecting enough money to make the month’s rent. This was my last resort.

....

GiGi was a bitter old soul, but I loved her I guess. A trained concert pianist, she lost a good deal of her hearing in the war. I was never sure which war. Or how she ended up in a torn-down rural town like this one, produced my mother and uncle before becoming a thrice-divorced widow.

When I was young, she took care of me while Mother worked the night shift. We watched game shows on a fuzzy screened television and she fed me microwave meals. I would complain that they were cold in the middle and she would throw her hands up in frustration.

“These are not the hands of a cook,” she would tell me and I would silently agree.

GiGi tried her best to teach me piano, but with her hearing the way it was it was a difficult task. And she was not Beethoven. After several frustrating attempts, she would push me off the bench and begin to play her old favorites from memory: Mozart, Debussy, Elton John.

At this point, it would be late at night and the neighbors in the apartment would bang on the walls in protest.

“GiGi,” I’d yell “Quiet!”

But I think she took that as a challenge because she would play louder and louder. I learned to fall asleep with my head in her lap and Clair de Lune ringing in my ears.

Then one day, GiGi fell and everything I knew started to crumble. Mother and Uncle decided they didn’t have time to take care of GiGi and put her in a senior home. Senior homes are expensive, I guess because they sold the piano to make it cover the cost.

That was the first time, I’d seen GiGi cry—after she tried to strangle my uncle.

....

“So here’s the deal,” Lev says, “I’ll give you 10 for the TV and 15 for the microwave. Everything else is worthless. But I can take it off your hands for a disposal fee of 25.”

I decided I did not like Lev of Lev’s Pawnshop.

“I’m not a fool,” I say “That leaves me with nothing”

“It’s the best I can offer you” he leans on the counter.

My hands tighten around my bag, and I feel the shape of my tur last resort beneath the fabric. I look at Lev, if that even is his real name, and wonder if he really robs people for a living or if I just look that vulnerable, that lost.

I sigh. “You’re sign says you also buy antiques. Well, I have an antique.”

I pull the item from my bag and Lev’s eyebrows rise.

A music box.

It’s an intricately designed piece of art, not a box in form but more of a stout cylinder. On the outer layer are carved stars and moons encased in their own frames. The top is designed with a golden model of the summer starscape. The inside is layered with the mold of an angel. In the bottom piece, another metal figure of an angel stands straight in the center, its head tilted toward the heavens.

I wind up the lever on the back of the music box and let go. There’s a slight pause, then the notes of Clair de Lune fill the shop.

The shopowner’s dull eyes light up and he snatches the music box from my hands. He pulls the pair of glasses that were sitting on the top of his head down to set on the end of his nose. Unlike the previous items, he handles the music box with care.

“Now this,” he says, “This is beautiful. Don’t tell me—you found it at an estate sale? Another pawnshop?”

“It’s none of your business where I got this from” I cross my arms and tilt my head, “You seem pretty interested.”

“What can I say? It’s a decent piece of junk,” says the man that sells junk for a living. “Pre-war, ya’know?”

I want to ask which war but that question would really steer things out of my favor. Don’t want to sound young and unknowledgeable.

“It belonged to a concert pianist.” I explain “She played in grand performance halls in the city. Until one day, during a concert, they were bombed.”

Lev scoffs, “Who plays a concert in the middle of a war?”

“Who attacks civilians in the middle of a peaceful gathering?”

“Ah. So it was that war.”

...

“It was absolute chaos,” GiGi tells me as I sit at the foot of her bed in the senior home. I’ve heard her account of the bombing of the Grand Hall dozens of times. I could recite it by heart. It doesn’t get less distressing. Yet it’s the only story she tells these days.

“I barely made it out alive. But I did. And you the song I was in the middle of playing was—”

The nurse aide knocks on the door, interrupting to bring GiGi’s lunch. Which means I’m about to get lunch. It’s a silent arrangement between GiGi and me. The home staff thinks that she only eats when I visit. But truthfully, I choke down the bland sandwich and mushy vegetables and leave her to drink her tea and eat cake in peace.

“I lived on less during the war,” GiGi would complain loudly.

(“If she doesn’t start eating better, we’ll have to set up a feeding tube,” They told the family. Mother shrugged “Do what you have to do.”)

When the nurse aide returns, GiGi is nibbling on her cake and receives exaggerated praises for how well she’s eating.

We share a look.

She’s frail. That’s a fact. Somedays, I wonder if I’m no better than my mother and uncle in how I treat her. But every time, before I leave, GiGi takes my arm, looks into my eyes, and says “You are my heart. Don’t forget that.”

And that’s how I know I’m doing something right.

...

“Great story,” Lev says, “Your execution could use some work, but I’ll tell you what: forget the microwave and the tv. I’ll give you 75 for the music box. Cash.”

Oh. Well. Seventy-five is exactly what I needed to make rent. It was just what I needed except—

“That’s a pre-war family heirloom. Two hundred.”

Lev laughs. We don’t do negotiations here, but I’ll humor you: 85.”

“One hundred seventy-five.”

“Ninety.”

“One sixty.”

“Eighty-five.”

“You’re going in the wrong direction!”

“Tell me who you stole this music box from and I’ll give you 150. Cash. Best offer.”

“I didn’t steal this,” I huff, “It’s mine.”

Lev isn’t convinced. “Take the offer and I’ll tell you where music boxes like this come from.”

“I don’t need you to tell me. It’s from my GiGi.”

“Your...GiGi…?”

I throw my hands up, “My grandmother!”

Lev’s face morphs into a sneer, “Now I know you’ve been lying. Take the offer or get out of my shop. We’re closing soon.”

He sets the music box in the middle of the counter with a resolute thud.

There’s a moment where I think about it. I consider taking the offer. But I shake my head. No. No.

I snatch up the music box, shove it in my bag and go, leaving the rest of the items that I’d brought to sell.

“Goodbye, Lev, if that’s even your real name.”

....

“Are you happy?” GiGi asks me.

She’s staring out the window of her room at the senior home, absently stirring her tea. At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her. It’s odd. Normally, GiGi is very loud. It was as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to my question.

I fidget from my spot at the foot of her bed. “I’m...ok,” I answer. Because why would I burden her with my problems? I’m not the one whose children forced them into a home and sold away my most prized possession.

“Ok?” she spits back. “I don’t know what that means. OK. I asked: are. you. Happy?”

I look away. “Are you happy, GiGi?”

She laughs. It’s a deep sound, full of sarcasm.

“Your GiGi is as happy as she’ll ever be these days.”

“Well, then so am I,” I answer finally.

“That’s no good!” She sets down her tea, then grabs her walker and moves to stand. I tell her to sit down. I’ll get whatever she wants but she swats me away. GiGi slowly makes her way to the dresser on the other side of the room and pulls open the top drawer. From the drawer, she retrieves a bundle of cloth. She takes it and hobbles back to her chair.

“Here.” She thrusts the bundle at me. For a moment, I stare in disbelief, thinking that she had just thrown her laundry at me. But there was some weight to the bundle. Something is inside.

I carefully unwrap it to find a finely detailed sort of container. The outside is enveloped in the raised designs of suns and moons and stars. I slowly turn it around in my hands and run the tips of my fingers over the beautiful lines and curves. Then, gently I open the container to find a just as colorful and detailed inside. There’s a figure of an angel at the center of it all rotating as music starts to play.

It takes no more than a second for me to recognize the song as Clair de Lune. It’s a much softer and sweeter melody that I remember from my childhood.

I look at GiGi expectantly, but her eyes are closed, hands stretched in front of her and fingers playing along with the notes of the song.

I’m happy as I’ll ever be, she had said.

The music box slowed to a stop, but she kept going. Humming the notes along and playing her own personal concert.

....

I found myself humming the notes of Clair de Lune on as I made my way home. The music in my mind did nothing to keep out the anxious thoughts that bombarded my mind. What was I going to do about rent?

Asking Mother was out of the question. Uncle barely had a dollar to his name and he wasn’t going to share it with me anytime soon. If only life was simpler. If only it was like it had been in the past when I was young. All I had to worry about was going to GiGi’s for the night and picking through cold microwave meals.

As soon as I got home, I went to bed. I grabbed the music box and settled under the covers on my futon. I wound up the music box as far as it would go and set it by my head. The familiar notes of moonlight pull me into a deep sleep.

GiGi was a bitter old soul, but she loved me, I guess.

A former concert pianist, a war refugee, a mother, a grandmother. GiGi was many things. She lived to instill in others a love of music and survived each time someone tried to take music away from her.

She always said she’d leave everything to me when she passed. When she did, I inherited a music box.

I inherited the music box.

...

In hindsight, I should have known. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening closely.

In the middle of the night, I get out of bed only to hear a loud thud followed by a few unmelodious music notes. In a panic, I turn the light. At the sight before me, I close my eyes and sigh.

The music box is laying broken at my feet. I gather the pieces in my hands. The hinge popped off leaving the lid detached and the angel figure is bent at 90 degrees.

“No, no, no” I mutter. My sleep-clumsy fingers attempt to force the contraption back together. Slow disjointed notes of Clair de Lune curl into the air.

It was hopeless.

Even the bottom was falling out of the thing. A sort of morbid curiosity makes me pull at the loose piece until the bottom of the music box is completely removed. As one would expect there are the guts on the music box. But shoved in next to the playing mechanism looked like folded paper?

I pick at it with my fingertips. Could it be a note? A letter?

No.

I drop the music box again. This time though, it lands on the futon along with the paper I pulled out.

It’s...money. Bills. Cash. I counted it up, hands shaking. There was enough to cover rent and more.

Your GiGi is as happy as she’ll ever be these days.

And maybe it’s time for me to be happy, too.

[ecbenvolio]

[ecbenvolio]