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The first social situation to which the Colonel and Mom took me was church.
I'd seen church buildings on car trips. The Jackson Purchase, the land between the Tennessee River and the Mississippi River where Paducah lies, has church buildings on about every corner. When I'd asked what the buildings were, Mom told me that they were houses where God, Who had created the heavens and the earth, was worshiped.
"Is God the same as Lus Im, Holy Light?" I said.
Mom and the Colonel looked at each other. "Some would say one thing, some another," the Colonel said to me. "You must decide for yourself."
The Colonel and Mom bought me a book of illustrated Bible stories, which I read cover to cover. The stories filled me with wonder, terror, and puzzlement in about equal measures. If I understood what I was reading, the point of the book was that God had created earth-humans good, but they'd gone bad, hurting each other in ways that shocked the innocent Desert-child that I was. God, though, out of love for the earth-humans, had come to the earth as one of them to save them.
Why didn't God come save the Tani? I wondered.
I hoped to learn the answer to that question when the Colonel and Mom took me to church. Mom took me first to Sunday school, where she left me with a cute, perky young woman named Miss Cindy. She, who'd somehow learned my cover story, introduced me to other six-year-old girls as a war-orphan whom Colonel Gordon had adopted. The other girls looked at me with wide eyes that seemed to me impressed.
I stared in turn at two of the other girls, who had fair skin, reddish hair, and sea-blue eyes much like mine. The girls did have freckles, which, as you know, I don't, but back then I thought that I might get them. Later, when I got home, I'd ask Mom whether those girls were somehow related to the Tani.
Mom shook her head. "Those girls look like you because their ancestors came from Ireland."
The Colonel, overhearing my talk with Mom, chuckled. "It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Irish are related to the Tani."
It took me a while to get the gist of his humor. I doubt that I've ever truly grasped it.
But to our tale. Miss Cindy had us girls bow our heads while she said a prayer; then she led us in a song. Afterwards, she used cloth figures on a board to tell us of Daniel in the Lion's Den.
This story had fascinated me in the children's book, as I'd seen lions at the Cincinnati Zoo and read on them everything at home. I found it hard to grasp creatures that hunted and ate flesh with no human help. On Ul, the lex-i had eaten flesh, but only what we Tani had given them. For that matter, at home, Major ate only what the Colonel and Mom gave him.
Miss Cindy's lesson was that we girls should be brave and always tell the truth. As a Desert-child, I wondered what there was besides the truth. The earth would teach me.
When she finished her lesson, she showed us part of a movie in which vegetables played the parts of Daniel, King Darius, and his evil advisors. The earth-humans' imagination astounded me. We Tani had talked to plants, but we'd never dreamed of their talking back.
When Sunday school ended, Mom came to take me upstairs to sit with her and the Colonel in morning service. A choir sang, and everyone sang, and a preacher prayed, and the preacher taught. His lesson that morning was that Christ was the light that came into the world. I was excited, thinking that he was saying that God was Holy Light, Whom we Tani had served seven thousand years. When the preacher said how the Light could save the lost, and invited anyone who believed to come forward to profess faith in Jesus and be baptized, I almost went.
Something that the preacher had said made me pause. I resolved to wait till I could ask the Colonel of it. Finding him alone later at home, I said, "Colonel, the preacher said that Jesus can save anyone who's a son or a daughter of Adam. Am I a daughter of Adam? I don't recall that name from the tale of how the Tan came to be. I guess that what I'm asking is, 'Am I human?'"
The Colonel gave me a look of inexpressible sorrow that I didn't then understand. "Belle, that's another question that you must answer for yourself."
The second social situation to which the Colonel and Mom introduced me was the Girl Scouts. The Colonel, comparing the Tan calendar with the human calendar, determined that I was about to turn seven, so I started as a Brownie Scout.
The den mother of the troop to which Mom took me was Miss Cindy, my Sunday-school teacher. Most of the girls in her troop were members of the church to which the Colonel and Mom took me, including the two Irish girls, Kendra and Millie. They and I, we learned, shared a fascination with Disney characters, Animal Planet, tales of super-powered, super-smart girls, and computers. We became fast friends, along with a cute, perky Korean girl named Emily, who shared our fascination. The four of us became known as nerds and geeks, but were proud of the titles.
Did I tell my friends that I was super-powered and super-smart? I didn't have to; they were smart enough to figure out on their own that I was. I was good at hiding my speed and sharpness of hearing as I grew, but my strength and resistance to injury came out. The Colonel came up with a new condition called tetany to explain why my muscles were so tight. Given that he was the one saying the word, everyone in Paducah bought it. It pays to be known as a war hero in a conservative countryside.
I didn't, though, tell my friends that I was an alien from lost Ul. All of them, I think, would've believed me, been delighted to have an alien as a friend, and kept my secret, but the Colonel counseled me not to tell it. When they asked me of life before I was adopted, I told them of Ul, but was careful to call it Afghanistan and crystal-ships helicopters. When I read up on Afghanistan in the encyclopedia and in National Geographic, I saw that parts of that land were enough like Ul for my stories of it to work there.
In any case, Emily, Kendra, Millie, and I went to troop meetings and on field trips together, and cooperated and competed intensely to earn badges. It amazes me how useful what I learned in earning these has been to the life that I now live.
In time, school, the third social situation to which the Colonel and Mom introduced me, began. It delighted me to go to it, as I'd loved studying on Ul. Studying on the earth made this world seem homelike.
Before I began school, I had to take tests. When I finished these, the Colonel and Mom met in a closed office with persons called principal and counselor. Sitting outside the office, I looked at a book on wildlife of the Serengeti. You smile. Yes, again, a closed door didn't keep me from hearing.
"Belle is a gifted student, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon," the principal said. "She already reads at a sixth-grade level. Granted that her math skills are average, I'd recommend getting her tutored with those and skipping her to a higher grade."
I felt sad, as I guessed that skipping grades would part me from Emily, Kendra, and Millie. The Colonel and Mom, though, put their foot down on my skipping grades. They wanted me to develop normally --
You laugh now, but it seemed possible to me back then.
When I began school, I almost wished that I had skipped grades. The work bored me out of my skull.
As the Colonel's daughter, though, not to mention Dor-Sad's granddaughter, I dared not get less than an A in any subject. I grew expert at gazing raptly at a teacher and listening to her or him with half an ear while I recalled Ul, wondered what the rest of you were doing, and daydreamed of what I'd do when I came of age and fully into my powers. When the teacher called on me, I knew the right answer; when she or he asked general questions of the class, mine was the first hand up.
One of the first four hands. Emily, Kendra, and Millie were just as competitive as I was. The rest of the second grade, and of every grade to come, resented the four of us; but we didn't mind resentment as long as we had each other.
Shortly after I'd begun school, I saw Dr. Ventnor the second time. While the Colonel and Mom shopped for antiques, Dr. Ventnor gave me my physical.
At its end, I smarted off to him. "So, Doctor, are my albinism, scleroderma, and tetany improving?"
He made for the
first time in my hearing the rich, deep laugh that I loved. "They're doing just fine, Belle."
"Mom makes me wear sunglasses and sunscreen when I'm outdoors. Do I really need them?"
"Maybe not, but everyone else as pale as you are wears them to avoid sunburn and damaged eyes."
"Why are all of the Tani pale?"
"Because of the color of Ul's sun. The earth's sun is a yellow star that puts out a lot of ultraviolet light. That can cause skin and eye damage. The dark skins that most humans have or can develop give them some protection against UV, and those who can't produce dark skin need sunscreen. Wolf 1061, though, is red and produces little UV. Living seven thousand years under a red star, the Tani either never had dark skin or lost the ability to produce it."
I saw a chance to get Dr. Ventnor to talk of things on my mind. I'd asked the Colonel of them, too, but I hoped that Dr. Ventnor would tell me what the Colonel wouldn't or couldn't.
"Are there aliens other than Tani on the earth?"
Dr. Ventnor blinked. "Why do you ask that question, Belle?"
"I keep hearing of superheroes, flying saucers, crop circles, cattle mutilations --"
"Where do you hear of such things?"
"On TV, in magazines, on the Internet --"
"Ah. You're a busy girl, Belle. Well, superheroes are just myths -- stories that humans make up to tell of their hopes and fears. As for flying saucers, besides the crystal-ships in which you Tani came here, there's been nothing like them on the earth in the lifetime of anyone now alive. Any crop circles or cattle mutilations are the works of human pranksters."
He'd distracted me from my original question, you'll note. Maybe, though, I distracted myself. "How can you say that there are no superheroes? Don't I have some of their powers? I'm strong and fast. When I grow up, I'll have the crystal-shaping gift."
"So you will. On the other hand, you won't be able to fly, or shoot webs from your hands, or see through walls..."
He went on quite a while with a list of things that I wouldn't be able to do. The list didn't impress me. Even at seven years old, I knew that not everyone can do everything, but I could do more than most.
"Not many earth-humans know of us Tani. How did you and the Colonel learn of us?"
"Ah. We believed that ones like you might come. When you came, we knew what to look for."
In time, I learned that he'd told me the truth, but not all of it. Just then, I asked him how you others were doing, and when I could see you, and he told me fine and someday. To make a long story short, I asked the same questions and got the same answers for many years to come.