“There鈥檚 no moon, but we can see very well. The sky is full of stars.” The Milky Way in the Atacama desert Alamy Stock Photo
Chapter One
All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
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The only lasting truth Is Change.
God Is Change.
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Saturday, July 20, 2024
I had my recurring dream last night. I guess I should have expected it. It comes to me when I struggle 鈥 when I twist on my own personal hook and try to pretend that nothing unusual is happening. It comes to me when I try to be my father鈥檚 daughter. Today is our birthday 鈥 my fifteenth and my father鈥檚 fifty-fifth. Tomorrow, I鈥檒l try to please him 鈥 him and the community and God. So last night, I dreamed a reminder that it鈥檚 all a lie. I think I need to write about the dream because this particular lie bothers me so much.
I鈥檓 learning to fly, to levitate myself. No one is teaching me. I鈥檓 just learning on my own, little by little, dream lesson by dream lesson. Not a very subtle image, but a persistent one. I鈥檝e had many lessons, and I鈥檓 better at flying than I used to be. I trust my ability more now, but I鈥檓 still afraid. I can鈥檛 quite control my directions yet.
I lean forward toward the doorway. It鈥檚 a doorway like the one between my room and the hall. It seems to be a long way from me, but I lean toward it. Holding my body stiff and tense, I let go of whatever I鈥檓 grasping, whatever has kept me from rising or falling so far. And I lean into the air, straining upward, not moving upward, but not quite falling down either. Then I do begin to move, as though to slide on the air drifting a few feet above the floor, caught between terror and joy.
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I drift toward the doorway. Cool, pale light glows from it. Then I slide a little to the right; and a little more. I can see that I鈥檓 going to miss the door and hit the wall beside it, but I can鈥檛 stop or turn. I drift away from the door, away from the cool glow into another light.
The wall before me is burning. Fire has sprung from nowhere, has eaten in through the wall, has begun to reach toward me, reach for me. The fire spreads. I drift into it. It blazes up around me. I thrash and scramble and try to swim back out of it, grabbing handfuls of air and fire, kicking, burning! Darkness.
Perhaps I awake a little. I do sometimes when the fire swallows me. That鈥檚 bad. When I wake up all the way, I can鈥檛 get back to sleep. I try, but I鈥檝e never been able to.
This time I don鈥檛 wake up all the way. I fade into the second part of the dream 鈥 the part that鈥檚 ordinary and real, the part that did happen years ago when I was little, though at the time it didn鈥檛 seem to matter.
Darkness.
Darkness brightening. Stars.
Stars casting their cool, pale, glinting light.
“We couldn鈥檛 see so many stars when I was little,” my stepmother says to me. She speaks in Spanish, her own first language. She stands still and small, looking up at the broad sweep of the Milky Way. She and I have gone out after dark to take the washing down from the clothesline. The day has been hot, as usual, and we both like the cool darkness of early night. There鈥檚 no moon, but we can see very well. The sky is full of stars.
The neighborhood wall is a massive, looming presence nearby. I see it as a crouching animal, perhaps about to spring, more threatening than protective. But my stepmother is there, and she isn鈥檛 afraid. I stay close to her. I鈥檓 seven years old.
I look up at the stars and the deep, black sky. “Why couldn鈥檛 you see the stars?” I ask her. “Everyone can see them.” I speak in Spanish, too, as she鈥檚 taught me. It鈥檚 an intimacy somehow.
“City lights,” she says. “Lights, progress, growth, all those things we鈥檙e too hot and too poor to bother with anymore.” She pauses. “When I was your age, my mother told me that the stars 鈥 the few stars we could see 鈥 were windows into heaven. Windows for God to look through to keep an eye on us. I believed her for almost a year.” My stepmother hands me an armload of my youngest brother鈥檚 diapers. I take them, walk back toward the house where she has left her big wicker laundry basket, and pile the diapers atop the rest of the clothes. The basket is full. I look to see that my stepmother is not watching me, then let myself fall backward onto the soft mound of stiff, clean clothes. For a moment, the fall is like floating.
I lie there, looking up at the stars. I pick out some of the constellations and name the stars that make them up. I鈥檝e learned them from an astronomy book that belonged to my father鈥檚 mother.
I see the sudden light streak of a meteor flashing westward across the sky. I stare after it, hoping to see another. Then my stepmother calls me and I go back to her.
“There are city lights now,” I say to her. “They don鈥檛 hide the stars.” She shakes her head. “There aren鈥檛 anywhere near as many as there were. Kids today have no idea what a blaze of light cities used to be 鈥 and not that long ago.” “I鈥檇 rather have the stars,” I say.
“The stars are free.” She shrugs. “I鈥檇 rather have the city lights back myself, the sooner the better. But we can afford the stars.”
Extract taken from by Octavia E. Butler, published by Headline, the latest pick for the 51动漫 Book Club. Sign up to read along with us here.
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