Cynthia claimed that the only way to get the space lady to land was to signal to her with a flashlight from the top of a big hill. Our house was on the edge of a development. Just behind us was a big hill where range cattle still grazed. Cynthia thought that this hill would be perfect for the space lady’s landing. “You can come with me when I go to signal her,” she told me graciously.
“As I sweep away the leaves and debris, I can look from the garage roof and see the big hill. It is still free of houses: in an area prone to mud slides, the land was considered too steep for construction. The hillside looks a little mangy; new growth, watered by the early autumn rains, sprouts in irregular patches among last year’s golden brown grass. Near the hilltop, a cluster of coast live oak trees provides a spot of shade. On the steepest slopes, I can see dusty brown streaks where bicycle-riding kids have worn trails through the vegetation.
I clean the rain gutters, dragging out matted tangles of leaves and branches. “That’s great,” my mother says as I finish the job. “Just great.” She looks weary and a little frazzled, an expression that has become habitual over the years. She has always been an active woman, but now her energy seems somehow unhealthy, almost feverish, as if she continues to work only because her body will not allow her to rest. She holds the ladder steady as I climb down from the roof, and I notice her hand on the metal. Just below the skin, thick blue veins snake across the back of her hand. The skin is wrinkled and spotted. She has grown old, and her body betrays her.
“I need your help moving some things in the garage,” she says. “I want to get out one of the steamer trunks so I can pack the linens inside it.”
The trunk is nearly hidden beneath cardboard boxes, stacks of yellowing newspapers, paper bags filled with rags and scraps of cloth. With great effort, I move the boxes and extract the trunk, a heavy black chest large enough to hold a body or two.
“I’ll clean it out later,” my mother says, but as I stand there, she lifts the lid and pokes idly through the contents: old papers, books, clothing that’s long since out of fashion.
“Here,” she says, pulling out a large book bound in dark green fabric. “You should take that to your father. It’s his college yearbook.”
I accept the yearbook reluctantly. I saw my father rarely, and I’m not eager to drag this book around until the next time we get together for dinner. “Why don’t you mail it to him.”
“I’m not mailing it,” my mother says irritably. “I want nothing to do with him.”
“All right, all right.” They started divorce proceedings the year after I graduated from college. They had stayed together for the sake of the children, but it had never been a good marriage. In all my memories, I can’t find a single moment of spontaneous affection between my mother and father: I can’t remember a casual hug, a kiss, a joke. I remember only arguments: about money, about my father’s drinking, about where to go on vacation, and then, while on vacation, about where to stay and what road to take. My father always drove and he would never stop to ask directions. Yet somehow, it would always be my mother’s fault when we got lost. Little things—they argued incessantly about little things.
The arguments finally drove Cynthia out. That summer, we kept talking about going to the hill to signal for the space lady, but we always put it off. First, Cynthia wanted to wait until after her Girl Scout troop went for their overnight camping trip. Then I insisted we wait until after the Fourth of July, so we could watch the fireworks. Then we waited until the neighbor’s cat had her kittens—I didn’t want to miss that.
As the summer wore on, I found one excuse after another. I was hoping that we might make it to the beginning of school without having had a chance to climb the hill in the night. I didn’t want to admit to Cynthia that I was scared: afraid of the dark, afraid of the teenage boys who rode their old bicycles around the hill all day and smoked cigarettes in the shelter of the oaks, afraid of the cows that grazed in the dying grass, afraid of the space lady herself. I hoped that autumn would come early and the weather would turn cold and wet. Even Cynthia would not insist on climbing the hill in the mud and the rain.
But one week before the first day of school, my parents had a fight that lasted for hours. We could not make out the words for the most part, but sometimes a phrase would penetrate the walls of our bedroom.
“You’ll wake the children.” My mother’s voice, high and anxious.
“Damn the children.” My father, a subterranean rumbling, blurred by drink.
More words, lost in the distance. My father was saying something about how stupid and impossible my mother was. My mother, desperate and shrill, was defending herself. I hid my head beneath the covers, but I could still hear their voices. I covered my ears, but even when I could not hear, I could feel the tension in the air. An invisible wire connected me to my parents. The wire carried messages, like the blurred voices that traveled along the string of a tin-can telephone. The sense was lost, but the feeling was conveyed: pain, anger, frustration, and fear. They weren’t arguing about money; they were arguing about broken promises. The messages came through the floor, through the walls, and I could not escape.
Finally, I heard my father leave the house, start the car, and drive away. For now, the argument had ceased, but I knew that it wasn’t really over. It did not end—it never ended. The anger was hidden beneath the ashes, ready to flare again when someone stirred the fire.
I heard my mother come upstairs. Quietly, she opened the door to our room. Both Cynthia and I pretended to be asleep, breathing softly and evenly, our eyes lightly closed.
Through my eyelids, I could see the light from the open door, see my mother’s shadow cross the room. She leaned over my bed and tucked the blanket under my chin. Then I heard her footsteps move away, heard the door close.
Several minutes later, Cynthia whispered to me. “Janet?”
I thought about pretending to be asleep, but decided that I wouldn’t be able to fool Cynthia. “What?”
“I’m going up the hill tonight. You coming?”
“I can’t,” I said. “Don’t go.”
She didn’t reply. I heard her getting dressed. The beam of her Girl Scout flashlight flickered across the walls as she searched for her sneakers. I wished that she would say something, but Cynthia wasn’t about to dare me to do something I didn’t want to do. She didn’t call me chicken or tell me that I was stupid. “I wish you wouldn’t go,” I whispered.
“I’ve got to.” She stood beside my bed, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She carried her sneakers in one hand and her flashlight in the other. “Good-bye,” she said. “I’ll say hello to the space lady for you. Promise you won’t tell them where I’ve gone.”
“I promise,” I said. And she slipped out the door.
I imagined her walking down the stairway, stepping on the edge of each tread so that the boards wouldn’t creak. As quietly as I could, I opened the bedroom window and climbed out on the garage roof. It was scary going out on the roof alone, but I wanted to wave to Cynthia. From the end of the driveway, she waved back.
I watched the sky for a while, waiting to see the spaceship land. I guess I must have fallen asleep. When I opened my eyes, the moon was down and I was soaked with dew. I crawled back inside, into my own bed.
In the morning, Cynthia did not come back. When my mother asked me where Cynthia was, I said I didn’t know.I said she must have left while I was asleep. My mother called the police and they searched for her. There were pictures of Cynthia in the newspapers and flyers posted in the windows of the supermarket: Have you see this child? Missing: Cynthia Jacobs, Age 9. The flyers showed a solemn-eyed little girl in a Girl Scout uniform, staring steadily into the camera.
My parents did not fight as loudly after that, but the tension between them grew stronger. I felt it, and their silence did not fool me. I understood why Cynthia had gone. During dinner, my mother would talk to me and my father would talk to me, but they would never talk to each other. I felt torn
and confused and I wished that I had gone with Cynthia.
My mother and I finish cleaning the garage and I spend some time going through the boxes in my closet, sorting my old possessions into three piles: one for the garbage, one for the Salvation Army, and the smallest one to take with me. It is late when my mother and I sit down to a dinner of hastily prepared hamburgers. We don’t talk much over the meal; I don’t have much to say to my family. So much was always left unspoken. But somehow, this night, I feel there are things that I must tell her.
“You know, looking through all that stuff in the closet reminded me of Cynthia,” I say.
My mother gets a wary look, haunted around the eyes. She has pushed the memory of Cynthia away. She does not want to hear this, but I have to tell her. “I think that wherever Cynthia is now, she’s happy,” I say. “I really do.” I don’t tell her that I can still feel a connection with Cynthia; a tenuous thread binds us together. I know Cynthia is happy. I would feel it if she were sad.
Though my mother urges me to spend the night, I leave that evening. I tell her that I have things to do in the city and that I like to drive at night. Both excuses happen to be true. I take a box filled with souvenirs from the closet and I wave good-bye to my mother as I drive away.
A few blocks from the house, on a cul-de-sac where there are few streetlights, I park my car. A dog barks in a nearby house, and then falls silent. Crickets chirp in the grass and I can hear the rhythmic hiss of a lawn sprinkler in the distance. The air smells of wet grass, the aroma of the suburbs. From the car, I take a flashlight and a shoe box filled with things from the closet.
Climbing the hills is easier now than it was when I was a child. My flashlight beam picks out urban detritus on the grassy slope: a broken plastic water pistol, discarded in the weeds; a red reflector, fallen from someone’s bicycle; a crumpled cigarette pack.
At the crest of the hill is a flat granite stone. I sit on the stone and unpack the box. One acrylic pebble, stolen from the World’s Fair and more valuable because of the dishonesty required for its acquisition. One charm bracelet that says HAWAII. A medallion in the shape of a four-leafed clover. A troll doll with orange hair and green glass eyes, dressed in a clumsily stitched felt tunic I place these things on the rock and lie down beside them, looking up at the stars.
I can pick out a few constellations: Scorpio, the Big Dipper, Draco. Staring at the stars and the sliver of a moon, I drowse off and dream of the shooting stars that fell when I was a child. Each one was so bright and magical; each one, a visitor from another world. One is brighter than the rest: it slashes across the darkness, leaving a blue-white streak that lingers in my eyes and makes me blink. When I open my eyes, my sister is with me.
Cynthia is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and she is still just a kid. “You’re the same age you were when you left,” I say.
She explains that the space lady’s ship travels faster than light. Cynthia has been all over the galaxy and yet she is still just a little over ten years old. She has remained still while the rest of us moved on, frozen in time like an insect in amber.
“I brought some things for you,” I say. “I found them in the closet back home.”
She smiles at the collection on the stone beside me, then picks up the acrylic pebble and rolls it from hand to hand. “Moon rocks,” she said. “That’s what I thought these were. I know better now.” She set it back down on the stone. “You keep them. I don’t need this stuff where I am. Keep it for me.”
“Where have you been?” I ask her, and she tells me about the caverns on the moon, about colonies on other planets, about distant stars. She says that she named a constellation after me, but it’s only visible from a planet orbiting Vega.
She says that I can come with her when she goes, but she says it sadly, as if she knows my answer before I speak.
“Mom thinks you’re dead,” I tell her, and she nods. “I can’t go,” I say. “But I’m glad you’re happy. I’m really glad.”
We sit together for a while. I put my arm around her shoulders and she seems so small and thin. My big sister Cynthia, just a little kid now.
I wake just before sunrise. My back is stiff from lying on the rock; my clothes are wet with dew. I gather up the bracelet, the pebble, the medallion, and the troll doll, and I put them back in the shoe box. I walk down the hill and the light of the rising sun brings tears to my eyes.
Prescience
KATHERINE KNEW THE future: she read it in the tarot cards, in the lines on a person’s palm, in tea leaves, in horoscopes, in the way a man sat in a chair, in the way a woman placed her money on the counter when she paid for the fortune. She kept a dream journal, and her dreams, all too often, came true.
Though her predictions were accurate, her customers were usually dissatisfied. The futures that Katherine saw were never happy. In calm and measured tones, she told them of coming disasters: broken marriages, lost jobs, spoiled vacations, disappointments in love. People rarely returned for a second reading.
It was just after noon, and Katherine sat on a high stool at the counter of the occult store where she worked. The shelves behind her were filled with the paraphernalia of magic: vials of graveyard dust, bottles of holy water, canisters filled with mandrake root, powdered bone, and incense. Her boss had gone out to lunch and she was eating a container of low-fat yogurt.
The string of bells that hung on the doorknob jingled and a man walked into the store. She glanced at him, then returned to her yogurt. Generally, the customers did not wish to be observed too closely. This one prowled among the bookshelves for a time, then finally approached the counter.
“Hello,” he said. “I’d like to have my fortune read.”
She looked up and met his eyes. Of course, she remembered his face. Last night, she had dreamed exactly this: he came into the shop, she read his palm, and then he asked her out for coffee.
“Can’t be done,” she said briskly. “Our fortune-teller’s gone. She ran off with the carnival.”
“Don’t you read palms?”
“Nope. Sorry. Can’t help you.”
He didn’t look like a bad sort. But already, she knew too much about him. By the way he held his shoulders and the tilt of his head, she knew he was lonely and a little nervous about being in the shop. He had nice eyes: dark and a little wistful. But she knew better and she refused to be drawn in. She didn’t need to see the lines on his palm to know that he was trouble. She could see the clouds and predict the coming storm. Going out with him would be a disaster.
“Sorry,” she said again. “It’s really too bad.”
She looked down at her yogurt, not wanting to know any more. “Awfully sorry,” she said, and kept her eyes down until she heard the bells jingle and knew that he was gone.
After lunch, she had a cup of jasmine tea. When she placed the cup in the sink to wash it, she thoughtlessly glanced in the bottom, where the loose tea leaves had accumulated. His face was there, plain enough for anyone who knew how to see it.
Her boss was a toad of a man, a squat Hungarian who burned incense to gain power over women. He read palms, and whenever he could, he grabbed Katherine’s hand and examined, the lines of her palm. His hands were sweaty and he always held on a little too long.
“You’re afraid,” he said. “Your heart and your life lines cross—a sign of uncertainty.” She peered unwillingly into her own palm. It seemed to her that there were more lines each day, crisscrossing her palm like bird tracks in the sand. The lines made her nervous: too many decisions, too many choices, too many fates. “I think you are afraid of men,” he said.
She snatched her hand away and went to tidy the canisters of herbs. She saw him staring at her from across the shop, but she ignored him. He was harmless enough.
She never saw him in her dreams.
Two in the morning: she woke up and scrambled for the light, for a pen, for her dream journal. It was important to note the details quickly, before they blurred and lost their definition. She wrote
, “A coffee shop on Haight Street. The dark-haired man across the table takes my hand and asks me something. I can’t hear him because the pounding of my heart is too loud. I am terrified, overcome by panic.”
She hesitated, groping for more details. With details, she can protect herself.
“I am wearing my favorite silver bracelet and a peasant blouse. There’s a cup of coffee on the table in front of me. He strokes my hand gently; I like his touch on my skin.”
She scratched out the last line and got out of bed long enough to put her peasant blouse on the floor beside the door. The next day, she would give it to the Salvation Army. The bracelet, she would send to her sister in Texas as a present.
Even so, she lay awake for a long time before she could sleep again.
Katherine peered at the lines on her customer’s palm. This woman had beautiful hands, with well-manicured nails. Compared to Katherine’s, her palm was wonderfully clear: the lines were beautifully defined, expressways with highway markers and street signs to tell the way. On Katherine’s palm, the lines resembled the trails left by rabbits in a meadow: faint tracks where the grass was beaten down, crossing and recrossing one another in nonsensical fashion Katherine followed the woman’s love line and said that she would soon fall in love. The woman smiled, but Katherine tried to talk her out of it.
“I hate being in love,” Katherine said. “It’s like some kind of disease. It grabs you and turns your mind to jelly. Love always makes me stupid. Frankly, if I were you, I’d try to get out of it.”
Katherine caught her boss watching her from the other side of the shop. He was frowning.
The woman blinked at Katherine, startled by her vehemence.
“Your heart line is strong,” Katherine said, returning to the reading and dispensing with further editorial comment.
After work, she walked down Haight Street, heading up to the post office to mail the bracelet to her sister. She hated to give the bracelet up, but she knew better than to play games with fate.