Woman on the Edge of Time

With Martin she had been proud with a tremor like the drug withdrawal now, proud of his love but fearful of losing what she could not deserve. He felt lent; always she had expected his loss to another woman who would not come to him stained. But she lost him to the street.

In this odd moment she recalled him peacefully, her young husband. How he would stare to see her now, used and battered. If he appeared before her, he would seem as young as Jackrabbit. Of all she had lost, he was the sweet one she could least afford to call back from the dead, from the garbage bin where the poor were cast, for she was no longer a mate for him. But once, Once she had held him supple and sinewy and hot in her arms, she had trembled under him, shy and shaken. Long ago. She had loved him well. As she should have loved her daughter.

When Luciente came back, walking lightly on the needles, she greeted her: “I wish we could have Dawn with us.”

Luciente frowned, sitting down. “Afraid to try. Afraid for per … I don’t like to disappoint you.”

“Just a little while. One hour. Half an hour. Who can bother us here in the woods?”

“Ummm. It makes me nervous.”

“We’ll be careful! I want to see her so much. Let her come through to us. Just for a little while.”

Still frowning, Luciente mumbled, “I’ll ask her.”

A few minutes later Dawn stood under the pines wearing blue overalls. Her hair had been cut shorter, her skin was toasted brown, and she wore a neat bandage that looked somehow sealed to the skin of her arm.

“What happened to your arm?” Connie asked her.

“Oh, that!” Dawn held out her arm importantly. “I did that diving.”

“Diving into the river?”

“No, in the bay. My study group went visiting the fish herds. Then we did free diving and I scraped myself.” Dawn stared all around her. “It looks just like a regular woods. I thought there’d be cities and accidents and smokestacks and beggars and pollution!”

“There is a lot of pollution,” Luciente said. “There’s a paved roadway near here with internal combustion engines running on it, and it’s lined with dangerous refuse.”

“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.