Woman on the Edge of Time

Slowly other people came drifting toward the hangar from the cornfields, the intensively cultivated gardens, from the fooder and brooder, from huts scattered among the gardens, from the free-form buildings they called just-grews. From the river docks where she could see a variety of conventional and odd, high-in-the-water fishing boats, diving gear, nets and winches, more people strolled toward them. They embraced Bee, Otter, and Luxembourg, they waited for Innocente to leave prowling over the machine so they could greet her. Luciente remained with Connie up on the rise, a little apart. This day had the feeling of a slightly formal but familial occasion, of a great big clan saying goodbye to someone going off to the army or getting married. Of course they were far too many for a real family. Not even her own Comacho clan back in El Paso, with additional strength up on a visit from Chihuahua, could muster such numbers to see them off when they left in their old Ford for Chicago and the promise of work in the steel mills, the last time she had seen gathered in one spot so many people related by blood.

Except of course they weren’t. Nobody here knew what that meant. They just acted as if they were. They were kissing and hugging and Otter was beginning to weep. Innocente finally turned from her perhaps embarrassed fumbling with the floater to let people greet her. Even she did not seem to find the embraces or the tears upsetting. Luciente had left Connie to hug Bee, and both of them were crying. Big fat tears rolled down Bee’s broad face. Imagine Claud crying! Even when they sentenced him, he had grinned and shrugged and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Shit, could be worse. Time’s hard, but you do it, and it’s gone.” Once again they reminded her of children, even the men. Only Innocente did not weep, stubbornly eager.

Blowing her nose on a big multicolored handkerchief, Luciente clambered back to her. “Ah me, ah my,” she was sighing as she came. Bee and Jackrabbit were embracing now, that skinny rambling kid who was Luciente’s lover too.

“Luciente, sometimes a child must have to do without mothers. If someone dies? If someone goes away? What would happen to your child if suppose you went to California? Is there still a California, or did it fall in the sea? Are you allowed to go, or do you have to stay here? Anyhow, could you take your daughter, or wouldn’t your comothers let you?”

“Ay, so many questions! Fasure I can go if I want to. How would I work well, how would I contribute to my village if I didn’t want to be here? We try not to leave when we’re mothering. But if I comped I had to go, Dawn would stay. Because to leave would be a terrible uprooting. Then if the child was old enough, person would choose a third mother. If not, we’d volunteer. Every child has three. If we die, the same.” Luciente blew her nose again, emphatically, in the handkerchief of complex and gaudy pattern (a gift handkerchief, Connie thought: I bet people still give each other handkerchiefs when they can’t think of anything else).

The drifting to and fro, the greeting and well-wishing, the embracing and weeping, the patting and hugging and hand clasping, rose to a frenzied peak and Bee, Otter, and Luxembourg in their finery climbed into the floater with Innocente. Luxembourg was piloting. They all waved and shouted. Baskets of lunch were handed in and what looked like a bottle of champagne. “Come back with a strong name!” “Till when, Innocente! I’m going next week!” “Take care!” “Have a powerful dream!” “Don’t fix on lonely!” “See you in a week!”

At last the floater, painted with a swirly design in pastels, put out a bag apparatus above it and rose slowly, gracefully, and quietly. It soared to perhaps a thousand feet and then sailed off, with another device turning and twittering on it. Smoothly it paddled off through the air silent as a balloon and was soon gone. Once again Luciente blew her nose in the handkerchief of many colors and stuffed it in a pocket of her shorts as Jackrabbit strode from the eddies of leavetaking to hug her. Yes, they were not like Anglos; they were more like Chicanos or Puerto Ricans in the touching, the children in the middle of things, the feeling of community and fiesta. Then, after all that carrying on, everybody walked away cheerful enough, serene. Jackrabbit sauntered with his hand cupped on the nape of Luciente’s neck.

“Luciente, that handkerchief—was it a present?” Connie asked.

“This one? Fasure, from Dawn for Mothers’ Day. Dawn made it p’self!”

“Mother’s Day?” She laughed. “You still have Mother’s Day!”

“We have tens and tens of holidays,” Jackrabbit boasted. “For famous liberators. For important events, like the domes-ticking of corn and wheat. The turning of the sun north and south. Famous struggles … Didn’t your society use rituals to body what you thought good? Like your football games, parades, public executings—”

“We didn’t do that! That was the old times, way before.”