Memory

       Gail Porto, a woman of late middle-age, pulls her carry-on onto the moving walkway in a struggle not to be too late to her Gate again. Having happened more than once, she elevates her regiment of rushing through airports now. It is better that way for her. She is so sure of this much but not much more. Her life is spent now going to environmental design conferences. Sure, that this is her chosen career, but now puzzled all the time about why it didn’t fulfill her heart.

             She mouth-breathes, looking at her feet, shoulders hunched. She has no idea where she is at this moment in her effort, only that it won’t be until the last moving walkway that she reaches her Gate. She wears comfortable sneakers now no matter where she’s going now. She feels turning sixty soon will allow her to go not cute, not sexy.

             “Excuse me, excuse me,” she declares as she forces people to move to the side. As she is passing through an open space on the walkway, she turns her head and sees a young woman with a backpack walking on the regular path. They look into each other’s eyes as Gail passes by. Gail’s skin tingles as she thinks she sees the young woman has eyeballs that are black. Eyeballs! She stops on the moving walkway and looks back over her shoulder. The young woman blinks several times and regular blue eyes show. Gail smiles and shakes her head, turning back to rushing.

             She bumps into the next person, lost in thoughts, “Oh, I’m sorry!”

             He wears a black business suit, clear blue eyes and seems to be looking at everyone he passes. He squints at Gail, then smiles broadly, “No worries, my lady.”

Gail laughs at his reaction to her and thinks she could slow down for that smile. In her head she curses her slouch and sneakers, she may be feeling old, but she is certainly not numb to the sight of a handsome man. His dark skin makes those blue eyes pop! She finds herself staring, and her skin tingles again, but she is quite sure she knows why. She wonders how old he is.

             Suddenly, she sees a big strike of lightning and the thunder gets everyone’s notice! She thinks it wasn’t even cloudy when she got on the walkway. Now dark clouds are rolling in. She passes the man hoping the airline didn’t cancel her flight already. The walkway ends and she walks, dragging her carry-on, on the regular floor. She hopes she hasn’t hurried for nothing. She looks up at the display board and sees her flight hasn’t been delayed yet.

             Pulling her carry-on into the seating gate she walks to the windows to look out. The plane hasn’t arrived yet. The sky proceeds to become more menacing! Scrambling through her purse, she finds her phone to see if there are any messages, but her battery is dead. Behind her that young woman drops her backpack on the floor and slumps into a chair putting her head between her knees.

             “Honey. Are you all right?” Gail sits next to her, “What’s your name?”

             “Mary,” the young woman says between her knees, “I get terrible migraines with the weather changing up here.”

             “Up here? Oh, oh, Colorado altitude will get you.” Gail chuckles, "Well, Mary, hopefully, we’ll get out of here soon,” and out of the side of her eye she notices the lights on the tarmac have turned on.

             “What do you mean ‘hopefully’?” Mary looks up at Gail. Her eyes and eyeballs have gone black again. Gail gasps. Mary blinks furiously. Lightning strikes, quickly followed by thunder.

             “Mary, you don’t look very well. I think I’m going to go ask for help.”

             “No, no. Don’t leave me.” Mary grabs Gail’s arms, “I can explain.”

             Then the handsome man walks over to them, and says, “Mary?”

             Mary turns her head to see, and starts to get up, but he puts his hand on her shoulder and sits down on her other side. She turns her head back to Gail, with a sort of worried panicky look, “Mom, I was just saying – this is Jack.”

             Gail closes her mouth for the first time, and sniffs. He smiles at her again.

             “Hel-lo, Jack.” Her skin tingles. Thunder booms. Her heart starts to beat a little bit harder.

             “Have we met before?” he chuckles.

             Now that she sits nearly next to him, she feels like there is something familiar about them both, but she knows it can’t be possible. Smiling she shakes her thoughts, looking away from them. The Gate doesn’t seem to be filling up. No doubt the planes are delayed. She resists looking back trying to think of how she may have met them before. Little flickers of memory seem to try to move into her thoughts without much success. She sucks her teeth and looks back at them.

             “You are familiar, I have to admit, but I don’t know how it is possible.”

             “Jack, you promised I’d have more time with her.”

             “How do you know that you won’t?”

             Mary sniffs like a teenager. She sees Gail is watching them with concern now.

             Gail starts to get up, but Mary grabs her sleeve. Gail looks back at her and sees her eyeballs have changed back to black, and wants to scream, but finds she just can’t as the young woman blinks her eyes back to blue.

             “Mary, are your eye lenses acting up again?” Jack asks casually, looking at his hands proudly.

             “Jack!” Mary cries.

             “Eye lenses?” Gail asks, “Are they some sort of contact?”

             “Something like that,” Jack smiles at her. He blinks his own eyes and then his eyeballs turn black, and then he blinks once more, and they are back to blue.

             Gail really wants to scream, but she laughs casually, “Are you like ‘Men in Black’?”

             Jack chuckles. Shakes his head no, then nods his head yes.

             Gail gasps. Mary sinks into her chair, “Jack.”

             Gail looks at Mary carefully. There is something so familiar about her, “All right, Mary. Who are you? Why do I feel like I’ve known you for a long time when I’ve never seen you before.”

             Mary rolls her head towards Gail, and stares at her like she might burst into tears, “You really don’t know, do you.”

             Gail hesitates but shakes her head.

             Mary looks back and Jack, and then back at Gail. Her eyeballs go black, and she doesn’t try to change them. Air sirens blare. Gail hears them but the other two don’t seem to hear at all.

             “Uhm, maybe they want us to seek some cover or…”

             Jack shakes his head as he waves his arm dramatically around the concourse. It is empty. There is no one, not a janitor, not a shopkeeper, not an airline attendant dragging her carry-on.

             “Where are we?”

             “Now, that—that is a most intelligent question.”

             Suddenly the storm sounds calm to silence, as the windows are black for a long moment and then turn into a view of Earth from beyond the Moon. Gail gasps. Mary takes her hand and holds it tightly. Gails eyes turn to Mary’s eyes slowly, and besides the blackness of them, finds her face kind. She looks at her features that seem almost human. Her flesh is fresh, Gail can feel that, though she does notice her fingers are longer, gracefully longer. Gail swallows hard and blinks her own eyes wondering if they are going to go black, “How did I get here?”

             Mary smiles, “Always practical.”

             Gail looks at her, hopelessly confused.

             Jack pipes in, “Just a little alien technology.”

             “Oh, puh-lease,” Gail huffs, “I don’t want an explanation any more obvious than that. Obviously, I’m not who I am, and you’re going to tell me.”

             “Uhm,” Mary looks at Jack, and back at Gail, “Well, uhm, you’re my mo-o-ther.”

             “What?” Gail shakes her head, “I could never have children. It ruined a marriage.”

             “Oh, but you have many children, Gail,” answers Jack.

             “I’m your baby, uhm, I mean your youngest child,” Mary adds.

             “My youngest?” Gail snarks, “Did I start having children at 12?”

             Jack thinks about it and shrugs nodding, “Sort of.”

             Gail looks horrified at him.

             “Jack, we’re going for a walk. My time!” Mary guides Gail out of her chair in the apparent Concourse Gare area and leads her back towards what Gail thought was a walk in an airport. “Look, I know this is a shock. I didn’t intend for you to find out this way, but Jack has no patience. Let’s just explore and see if you recognize anything.”

             Gail stops in her tracks, “Wait. I’ve been here before?”

             “Yeah, you’ve even lived here if you can believe it. It is just that time is not the same off Earth. You’ll get it. It has been natural for you before.”

             “Why did I need to come up here with you? Why didn’t you come to my home or something?”

             They walk along the outer hallway lined with windows looking at Earth and the Moon. There are doors and windows into rooms looking inward. Mary stops at a bank of windows with Mary. In it is a classroom full of children sitting in a circle and a young man sits in the circle, too, looking to choose one of the raised hands. All the children are human-looking but have black eyes.

             “Why do you all have black eyes?”

             “Well, Mom, it is because we live without an ozone to protect us from the star’s light. Some stars are even brighter than this star. The black lenses come from our father’s lineage because he is from the larger galaxy.”

             “Ah. And who is your father?” Gail blushes.

             “Oh, we don’t know specifically. We come from a sort of pool of genetics, but because we were born here, we know our mothers.”

             “You do?”

             They walk through a door into a room of women taking care of infants and some of them look up and smile. All of them have regular Earth eyes – with whites. Gail looks back at the windows and notices they are black. Mary nods at her.

             “We can’t let our mother’s continually look at the star or you would all go blind within a few hours.”

             “Our mothers?”

             “Oh, yes, you see you’ve all come from Earth, and we think of all of you as our mothers. But you are really my genetic mother.”

             Gail nods and smiles down at a cradle, and touches the baby’s skin like silk, “How many children have I had?”

             “I should first say that you only had me physically because I was your last one, and you asked to try. It isn’t always successful. You conceived of twenty-seven and carried all but four into 6 Earth months.” Mary takes her to another door and pushes her into an interior hallway that is not bright at all.

             Silently Gail does the math, and then bursts out laughing. “You must be kidding that would have made me pregnant every year between the ages of 12 – 39, half of the year! That is impossible. I was living my life on Earth. You’ve got the wrong woman, Honey. Besides that, I have no stretch marks, and I was a virgin until I was 21 years old.”

             Mary shakes her head, “Remember what I said about time? It doesn’t work the same way out here. Out here you could live feeling a complete year had passed, and rewind back until the moment you were picked up and be placed back into your life. Or you could live 20 years and be placed back into your life to the moment you were picked up and live all 20 years as if you had never been here at all.”

             Gail walks ahead thinking. She now has more memories of being here pouring in, and she needs somewhere to sit down. As if reading her mind, Mary leads her to a comfortable room with sofas, and glasses with pitchers of water. There are a group of teenage girls all pregnant sitting and comparing their bellies. They don’t seem unhappy at all. They are all glowing. Gail touches her own cheek and wonders if she’d ever glowed like that.

             Mary pours her a glass of water. Gail glugs it down as if she’s in a desert. She thinks of the altitude and concludes she may as well be in a desert at night, “Do you have a blanket? I don’t know where my carry-on has gone, and I find I’m chilled.”

             Mary jumps up and walks over to a cabinet and takes out a sparkling blanket. She unfolds it and places it over Gail’s lap and pushes the back of the couch and a foot stool folds up under her feet. Mary wraps the blanket under her feet.

             “Oooh. This is nice and warm,” and Gail smiles at Mary as she sits next to her and takes her empty glass, “Tell me. Why have you brought me back up here?”

             Mary clears her throat and pauses before speaking.

             Gail guesses, “I suppose it is because of the radiation, isn’t it?”

             Mary looks at her and smiles, and wipes a tear and her blue eyes show up again, “So you know?”

             Gail pulls up the blanket over her chest and nods.

             “I wouldn’t want my life to have caused you any pain, Mom.”

             Gail suddenly has a gush of tears well up as she recalls chasing her daughter when she is younger around their quarters, sitting with her at their meals as Mary vomits up broccoli onto her plate, and watching her grow into this young woman. It is so confusing. Why did she have memories of a completely lonely life, too?

             “I’m so confused. Now I remember us, my darling girl who hates broccoli.”

             Mary throws her arms around her mother’s neck and kisses her cheek. Tears stream down both their faces.

             “I really wish they had not made me go back and live through all of that shit!”

             “You can only stay out here for 20 years. You know that. Then your body needs a good long break from the radiation, so you’ll heal. That’s why they don’t let most women carry children to term and raise us.”

             “Yeah, yeah. I remember now.” Gail sighs, “So, what can they do for me if living down there is supposed to heal me?”

             “We’re going to do our best to treat you physically, but it is your spirit that must want to live longer. You know they haven’t connected cancer down there yet to the soul. The soul must process a great deal of anger and fear to overcome those cells’ desire to let you out of your contract. Do you understand?”

             “Sure. They are always telling you that you’re going to war with those little buggers.”

             “Yeah. Hmm. No good deed left unpunished.”

             “What? Cancer is not a good deed cell. What are you talking about -- contract? You’re confusing me.”

             “Mom let’s go home and first get you some rest. It isn’t that complicated, the physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies are not separate.”

             “And I suppose the thinking body is left out on a dock somewhere?”

             “No, of course, not. But there is a ‘switcheroo’ as you say, between the lasting quality of the thinking body and the emotional body. They should be more equal, but their equality was cast off by, oh, so many things we can discuss at length later. So let go of the thinking and flow with the emotions,” Mary lifts her mother’s feet down to the ground and puts the blanket around her shoulders, “Lean on me, you’ve gone through a lot lately.”

             When they arrive at their living quarters, Gail’s heart wells with gratitude to be home. She shakes her head at how long she was gone. How long she felt lost. As they enter, she throws the blanket off her shoulder and swirls with joy losing her balance. Mary catches her and leads her to her room and unties her sneakers and slips them off as Gail crawls into her freshly made bed.

             “Mom, we’re going to get you feeling better before you know it.”

             “I’m not going back there. I’d rather die.”

             “Mom! Contract! We’re definitely going to have to work on this.”

             “Jack can find a clause.”

             Mary laughs, “Oh, so, you remember him now?”

             Jack appears at the door, peeking in, “Hi, Honey, I’m home!”