Woman on the Edge of Time

“How come you wanted me to come?” Dawn asked Connie. “How come you look at me the way you do?”

“I’m silly.” She found herself apologizing. “You remind me of my daughter. She was taken from me.”

“Daughter? What’s that?”

“My child. You look like my child. She was called Angelina”

“Magdalena says I can only stay a few minutes. I can’t go back without seeing something! Mama, isn’t there something to look at?”

“Okay!” Luciente sighed, “We’ll creep, quiet and stealthy as ancient Wamponaugs, over to the highway and I’ll show you a real autocar.”

“Really!” Dawn hugged herself. “That’s running good! I can’t wait! They’re fasure dangerous, aren’t they! I mean, they killed millions of people!”

“But quietly,” Luciente cautioned.

Dawn babbled with excitement. “I studied about them. I saw them on holi. How the whole society was built around them, they paved over the earth for them to run on and sit on right in the middle of where they lived! Everyone had to have one. And they all set out in their private autocar to go someplace at the same time and got stuck in jams and breathed poison and got sick. Yet people loved their autocars like family. They drove fast in them till they wore out and ran into each other and got broken and burned and mangled and still they would rather drive in their autocars than do anything! Now can I see one?”

“But it felt good to ride in them,” she said to the child, not daring to touch her. Small brown arm with the bandage where she must have hurt her tender flesh. “You could get into a car and go riding in the country anytime you wanted.”

“But there were so many of you. How could you go riding at the same time without running into each other?”

Martin’s golden Mustang. “Sometimes when you’re young, oh, just riding in a car, a convertible maybe with the top down and the radio turned on, a song with a beat … You feel on top of the world. You feel so … alive, so beautiful!”

Mother and child surveyed her blankly. “Often we feel good,” Luciente protested, “but it usually has to do with work, as when I found the bug in our experiment. Or when we’re together in the fooder talking and in the morning telling dreams. Or after the critting session with Bolivar, when you feel others love and care and we live connected and must struggle to do better together. When Bee was with you, you were pleased. What does that have to do with objects?”

They wriggled through the bushes close enough to the highway so that Dawn could peer out. “Ooooh!” she said when a truck thundered past. “It stinks!”

“Shh.” Luciente dropped a warning hand on her finely turned shoulder.

“How could they hear us, making so much noise?” But Dawn whispered.

“See, there’s a car,” Connie said. “The red one. It’s a Chevy Vega.”

“How come person inside has the windows all the way up when it’s so hot? Is person scared of something?” Dawn asked.

“He probably has the air conditioning on–a machine that makes it cool,” Connie said, studying Dawn’s hair and ears.

“Only one person in that whole machine! So much energy spent! The sadness of it, the loneliness!” Luciente blew her nose.

“Don’t cry, Mama,” Dawn said, kissing her cheek. “Why sadden? It just seems stupid.”

“All those people in metal boxes, alone and cut off!” Luciente shook her head. “How could you start to talk? Make friends? Once when I was returning from visiting my childhood family, I took ill suddenly. My fever rose and I felt dreadful. A person helped me lower my fever and the dipper rerouted to a hospital for me … . Traveling I always meet people I exchange pleasure with–a meal, a conversation, a coupling, interseeing, a making of music, drumming to their slide playing … . Locked in a metal box, how I could make contact? The accidents they had were bumping of metal on flesh. Our accidents are bumping of flesh against flesh, the brushing of lives–”

“Shhh!” Connie thrust herself flat. A police car went by at less than usual speed. Sinister in its lazy patrol. She cringed against the ground, clammy with fear. When it had gone, she began to crawl back from the highway. “Let’s get out of here.”

When they reached her tree, Luciente had already sent Dawn back. Luciente took her hand then and held it. “Dawn is too young to comprend why you love per. But welove you back.”

Connie wanted to speak of the night with Bee, but could not. She looked down, sorry she could not say her feelings. “I … I,” was all she could stammer. “I … pues … I want you to know …”

Luciente beamed. “I found water and also rumcherries and blackberries. The water is unclean. Has residues of lead, cadmium, copper, and strontium ninety. But the water you drank in your space was also unclean. The bacteria content of this water is little higher than that. Will you drink it?”