“Yes,” Mom said, “it’s people like that who’ll probably cause the end of the world. But I don’t think it’s the end yet.”
“No, not yet,” Gabrielle agreed. “But it will be a glorious day when it arrives and we can all be wed to God.”
Mom gave her a polite nod.
“But then you already are wed to God, aren’t you? The virgin mother?”
The question was so ridiculous that Mom didn’t initially notice the thorn of jealousy embedded in the woman’s voice. “Well, Adam can be a little angel at times,” she said, “but calling him the Son of God may be a stretch.”
“The son of whom, then?” Gabrielle asked, reaching out to awkwardly pet my head. I moved away from her, and Mom guided me to her other side.
“I guess that’s a question, isn’t it?” Mom admitted. “The son of his clone-father? The son of his clone-father’s parents? My son? Nobody’s son? But I don’t worry too much about his scientific classification – just so long as he lives a good, long, happy life. Probably the same as all mothers want.”
“Indeed,” the woman said. “That’s what all us mothers want.” She clenched her fist tighter in her lap, and we both saw a trickle of blood roll down her hand.
Mom stood up. “I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
“I’m sure we’ll meet again,” Gabrielle said, staying put and studying us over her blood-splattered lap.
Her eyes locked with Mom’s for a moment, and then Mom pulled me away.
Table of Contents
5
On July 15, 2038, I woke to the soft, clear morning of the fourth year, fourth month, and fourth day after my birth.
My mother took me to the beach at La Jolla Shores, a short walk from our house. Gabrielle followed us there.
We set out our blanket on the sand, stripped down to our swimsuits, sprayed on our Detox Sunblox and walked down to the water. As one of the last local people-safe beaches, and with only a narrow strip of sand to its name, La Jolla Shores was packed towel-to-towel that morning. But it didn’t matter to Gabrielle if there were witnesses to the assassination. She didn’t pretend to know what God had planned for her after she fulfilled her mission. Perhaps she was to be despised as a child murderer, or perhaps she was to be protected and even revered by people everywhere as God opened their eyes to the prophecy she was fulfilling, saving them all. It didn’t matter. The most important thing was that she would have performed God’s will, and would be rewarded with her own child by God himself.
As we made our way down to the water, God’s brilliant plan sparkled ever clearer. Christ had washed away the sins of the world through baptism. God needed the entire Pacific Ocean to wash away our sin. Gabrielle followed us to the water’s edge and waited.
Mom and I stopped when the water reached my waist. Holding hands, we awaited the next wave and jumped as it struck us, laughing as it swept us a little toward the beach, then preparing to do it again. The return water sucked the wet sand from under my feet, tickling, and looping some seaweed around my ankle. I tried to shake it free before the next wave came.
As we waited holding hands for the oncoming wave, my mother inexplicably turned toward the beach. A tall woman slightly older than herself and wearing a long white skirt and blouse was calmly walking through the water, only ten feet away, dark eyes fixed on us with an expression of jubilant peace. Walking into the water fully clothed. Coming directly toward us. Then mom recognized her – the disturbed woman from the park. Shouting something about “the finger of God.” The sun reflected off an object in her hand. A silver knife.
All that happened in a couple seconds, but by then Gabrielle was upon us.
The wave hit us, I jumped into it, and suddenly it was pulling me a few feet towards the shore. My mom had let go of my hands. She never let go of my hands! I floundered and spat out some seawater, my hands sunk into the muddy bottom. Then I heard my mother scream for help. I stood up in time to see her struggling with the woman in white.
As they fell over into the water, a couple of men splashed out to our rescue. One of them disarmed the woman and pinned her down while the other helped my mother to the shore. A lifeguard was sprinting over with a first aid kit. There was so much blood. The woman was screaming something about the “Whore of Babylon.” I ran clumsily out of the water to my mother’s side.
“Don’t worry, son. She’s gonna be fine,” said one of the men who had rescued us.
I was too scared and confused to take it all in, but my mom gave me a comforting smile as they tied a tourniquet on her upper arm. Soon an ambulance was on the scene, and they helped us into it.
“Don’t let them get away!” screamed the woman. “Can’t you see them?”
As the paramedics gave me a seat next to my mother’s gurney, a patrol jeep stopped near the shore and collected Gabrielle Burns. Her eyes found me through the ambulance window. I turned from her and watched as the paramedics worked on my mom.
“I’m okay,” she mouthed to me, and smiled.
I tried to nod, but couldn’t return the smile. It did reassure me. I believed she’d be okay. But not because of me. I had just stood there in the water as she had fought with the woman. She could have died. And I’d just stood there.
Table of Contents
6
The hearing that followed revealed the details of Gabrielle’s life and her obsession with my mother and me, but found her mentally incompetent to stand trial. She was sent to the psychiatric ward at Standley Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.
My mom was far more nervous from then on, especially as the year progressed. Gabrielle Burns wasn’t the only fanatic out to rid the world of clones. Possibly emboldened by Gabrielle’s attack, seventeen clones would be murdered by the end of 2038 alone. A member of the Cassandra Society sent mail bombs to four families with clone babies, killing eleven people, and then martyred herself when the police came to arrest her. Allen Fisher killed eight clones in widely publicized ritual murders that included torture and cannibalism. We rarely left the house by ourselves for a long time to come.
Reverend Al Lewis, who lived nearby, began picking us up for church, contending that we were less likely to be attacked if we were in the company of a minister. But his wife and their son Jack, who was a few months older than me, began driving to church separately. I realized much later that Reverend Lewis was still afraid we would be attacked, and he didn’t want to place his family in harm’s way. He knew he was risking his life helping us get to church.
I wish I’d known so that I could have thanked him.
During the weeks that followed the attack, Mom and I would often stay after the sermon and chat with Reverend Lewis in his private office. They were therapy sessions, but that was never mentioned, and I thought we were doing it because he had some office work to do before driving us back to our house. He shuffled papers around as he talked, like he was casually chatting with me as he got some filing done.
“Do you still feel scared about what happened on the beach?” he asked one Sunday.
“Sometimes,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Do you know why Mrs. Burns did it?”
“She said it was because she was a Christian,” I answered, focusing on the Bible on his desk.
Reverend Lewis nodded. “That is confusing, isn’t it? What’s important to understand is, just because a lot of people call themselves ‘Christians,’ they don’t all believe the same things or treat people the same way. No sir.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because everyone’s different, and we all have different ways of looking at the world and other people, and we’ve all got different ways of interpreting what we read in the Bible and what we feel in our hearts. One person can read the Bible and believe that God wants you to seek out possible sinners and stone them to death, while another person can read the very same Bible and believe that God doesn’t want you to judge others, and that He wants you to love and respect and forgive everyone
and treat each other like equals, even your enemies. You can believe in a god of love and charity, or a god of hate, greed, and fear, or something in the middle. In the end, the kind of god you believe in probably reveals much more about your own nature than it reveals about the true nature of God.”
I just stared blankly. He tried to clarify.
“You see, some people, like Gabrielle Burns and those who support her or who hate you because of the way you were born, they read the Bible and think that you’re evil, and that God hates you for it, and that they should hate you as well. Although some of them might call that hate ‘love’ so it sounds like they still love their neighbor. You know, just because someone says they’re doing something out of love doesn’t mean they’re not really doing it out of hate.”
I didn’t know that, but before I could say so, he went on.
“Those Christians look for differences and for sins, and believe it’s their duty to root out such things and label them as evil. But other Christians think that’s not what God wants. When they read the Bible, they see a loving God who wants people to be good and kind to everyone, and who wants people not to judge one another but to treat everyone like equal neighbors worthy of respect. They think it’s a sin to be cruel to another person when that person isn’t doing anything cruel to them. Jesus says so again and again. He reached out to all the people that his society scorned – the outcasts like the poor, the sick, the tax collectors, the Samaritans, the Roman soldiers, and the prosti—,” he interrupted himself before continuing. “He loved all his neighbors, not just the popular ones. So how would have Jesus treated clones?”
He paused for my answer, but I didn’t know it.
“He would have loved you,” he answered for me, smiling, and making me feel surprisingly comforted. “And if Jesus was wrong, if God wants us to be hateful and cruel to one another, then why would any truly loving person even want to go to that God’s heaven? I surely wouldn’t want to go to some heaven ruled by a mean God who wanted me to treat clones like they were bad people. No sir.”
He conversed the same way he sermonized, a bit long-winded.
“Do you think being a clone is a sin?” My voice shook as I spoke, fearful of both the nature of his answer and its potential length.
Reverend Lewis stopped his filing. “I can’t believe being born is ever a sin. No sir,” he said. “It’s what you do with your life that matters to God, so long as God is truly good.”
A sigh of relief on both counts. Then I pressed my luck. “Do you think cloning is a sin?”
He hesitated with that one, probably not wanting to hurt me but not wanting to lie either. “First of all,” he began, and I cringed, “you always have to remember that just because someone says something is a sin doesn’t make it so. No sir. That said, I personally believe it’s wrong, but from a Christian perspective there’s nothing specifically about it in the Bible and, of course, only God really knows for sure. Regardless, I can’t believe a loving God would punish us for doing it since he didn’t leave any clear instructions on the issue, it promotes life rather than death, it doesn’t hurt anyone, and he made it physically possible for it to happen.”
I was a little hurt that he thought my being cloned was wrong. But I felt better knowing that God and everyone who called themselves Christians weren’t out to kill me. No sir.
Table of Contents
7
Besides limiting our freedom of movement and creating tension whenever we went out, the beach attack had the additional unfortunate effect of prompting Grandma Lily to come over more often. If such a thing was possible, she seemed even more paranoid about my safety than Mom.
“He’ll be completely home schooled, of course,” Lily said to Mom one day as she hugged me too tightly in her lap. My Clone Ranger coloring book lay on our old oak dining table, mere inches out of reach, but it may as well have been in another galaxy.
I saw my mom roll her eyes as she crushed some garlic cloves in the kitchen. Lily always had a lot of free advice to offer, and I’m sure it got on Mom’s nerves. Especially since they had significantly different ideas as to how I should be raised.
“He’ll go through virtual classes for the standard subjects,” Mom said, “and use the Hill Creek Junior Academy for group activities.”
“Group activities? But we can do group activities right here!” Lily responded.
“No we can’t, Mom. We can’t play baseball here or start a band or form a chorus. At the Junior Academy he’ll be able to play sports and get involved in the arts and socialize with other kids at lunch and do group science projects and stuff.”
“He doesn’t need all that crap!”
I think she was so livid she forgot I was on her lap. Grandma didn’t usually talk like that.
“Yes he does, and he’s going to get it,” Mom said calmly but firmly. She had a lot of patience with Lily, but I don’t know where she got it.
Lily pouted. “But we don’t know what kind of kids go there. Kids can be very cruel, you know.”
“I know,” Mom said, nodding heavily. “But there are plenty of cruel adults as well. Unfortunately, Mikey will have to learn to deal with cruelty.”
Lily put her face right in front of my nose. The smell of her heavy makeup suffocated me. “You don’t want to go to some nasty old school, do you Adam?”
It’s the question almost every kid dreams about getting asked, but most kids don’t have a Grandma Lily in their face. I didn’t really know what the school thing was all about, but I knew it could get me off her lap and in reach of my coloring book.
“I want to go to school,” I stated as firmly as had Mom.
Lily looked shocked, but Mom grinned. “Well then, it’s settled.”
To my relief, the stratagem worked. Lily dumped me from her lap. “We’ll see what father says,” she said, checking her bejeweled wristwatch while avoiding eye contact with both of us, spoken with a coldness I rarely heard from anyone but Lyle.
Mom stiffened. Like me, she was always uneasy around Lyle. It would be a long time before I knew why. Before I read about the night of her molestation. And how Lyle threatened to kill her and her father if she ever said anything.
Did that memory go through my mom’s mind as she considered her response? Did that memory go through her mind every day of her life?
“Grandfather has no say in the matter.”
“How dare you?” Lily said. “You’re just trying to take Adam away from me like you always did!”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. You stole Adam from me as a child, and now you’re doing it all over again.”
“You think I stole Daddy from you?”
“You know you did, but you won’t get away with it this time, Sarah.”
Mom was silent a long time. I stopped coloring and looked at her. Saw her eyes glistening like they did when she was sad, trying not to let herself cry. It would be another fourteen years before I fully understood the tension between my mother and grandmother. My c-father’s journal made his preference clear:
The little bit of home life I afford myself is more tolerable than I expected, as I’m able to spend most of the time doting on Sarah. She’s another type of immortality – the type that nature has been providing for hundreds of millions of years. She reminds me of my mother. There’s an actress’s vibrancy about her, and her face has the soft, rounded, girl-next-door features instead of Lily’s chiseled beauty.
In Sarah’s eyes I see my mother, and even my own self, before my parents’ deaths. She loves out of an inner light that radiates from all people who have a true passion for life and the world around them.
I don’t share that passion for the world, but I guess I’ve always been drawn to those who possess it. I often take her alone to places where I can see that passion at its greatest, to the Zoo and Wild Animal Park – places I wanted to go to as a child. And I’ll never forget the trip to Scotland to honor the tenth anniversary of the d
eath of Dolly, the first cloned sheep. Watching Sarah’s eyes brighten with discovery as we shared the sights and novelties of Scotland and Edinburgh and Dolly. She’d get so excited by the world that she’d laugh out loud in delight.
That was something I’d still see my mom doing more than twenty years later.
Lily was never close to her daughter. She was understandably jealous of Sarah for the true affection Adam showered upon the girl. The Dolly trip was one that especially rankled Lily, as the tenth anniversary of Dolly’s death was also Valentine’s Day. Adam not only forgot to give her a gift – he only remembered to wish her a Happy Valentine’s Day that night after giving Sarah a card. Fortunately for him, it took little for Adam to re-charm his wife. He made love to her, and all was forgiven. Or so it had seemed to him.
I put my crayon down, slipped off my chair, and walked into the kitchen. Mom saw me, smiled a little, and stopped crushing the garlic to pick me up. I felt her head lean against mine.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom,” she said, “and I’m sorry if you think I stole Daddy. But Michael is not Daddy, and no matter what you think, he is going to school, and I don’t want to hear another word about it from you or Grandfather. Is that understood?”
And apparently it was. As far as I knew, Lily never said another word about it to Mom.
Grandma Lily did, however, have a few more words to say to me. It was just a couple weeks after the school argument. Mom had gone out for something and left me alone with Lily. We were sitting next to each other at the dining table doing some preschool math games. Suddenly she grabbed both my hands in hers and leaned over for greater secrecy, despite the fact that we were alone.
“Tell me, Adam. Do you have any memories from before?”
I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I wondered when Mom was coming back, and prayed it would be soon.
“Before what?”
“From before you were born again. When we were together.”