Part 4 (1/2)
”Come in,” she says. ”You want me to squeeze you some orange juice?”
She's not talking to me, of course. Well, me, but not me. She's in the prepaid time loop, living the same stretch of her life, over and over again. It's only an hour, which is what she can afford. I told her I'd help her upgrade, maybe ninety minutes, but she just patted my hand and said she would let me take care of her when I made it big. Whatever that means.
She goes over to the counter, heaps food onto a plate, and sets it down in front of my chair. She looks up, like she's remembering something, almost as if she could sense me here.
”Hi, Mom,” someone behind me says, and she turns to look out the window. It's my hologram me, coming up the fire escape, the way I just did.
”Get inside,” she says. ”It's cold.”
”Love you,” hologram me says.
”Scoop the rice.”
I watch my ghost-self eat as she continues to move around the kitchen, the whole time, never really looking at hologram me, just as she never really looked at me, either. She just wants someone to take care of, something to worry about. That's all. That's enough. I'm watching her idea of me, who is, in turn, watching her. She's just going about her business.
After a while, my ears and nose are cold enough that it occurs to me that I should check my watch. Twenty-eight minutes, right on time.
She clears all the plates, washes them, and starts cooking again. I recognize this part. The loop is about to end. Before it can reset, I tap on the window, lightly so as not to scare her, but she nearly falls down in fright anyway.
She snaps out of her time loop, groggy. Not quite happy to see me. It's been so long that it almost hurts her more that I'm here. This brief visit is just a reminder of how long it will be until the next one.
She opens the window, doesn't invite me in.
”You never call. You should call more often.”
”I know, I know.”
”I don't like it in here. Why did you stick me in here? Can you please take me out? I don't like it in here.”
”I didn't stick you in there, Ma.”
”I know, I know. You're a good boy.”
”No I'm not.”
”Okay, you're not.”
”I'm sorry, Ma.”
”It's okay.”
”You don't want to know what I'm sorry for?”
”You never call.”
”That's not it.”
”Then what are you sorry for?”
”Forget it, Ma. I don't know. Forget it.”
”You're a good boy.”
”I better get going, Ma.”
”I know, I know. You have a life. It's okay.”
”I'll call more often. I will.”
”No you won't,” she says. ”Wait here.” She turns and walks out of the kitchen.
I learned grammar from my mom, who knew it well, considering she was not a native speaker, hadn't even learned English until she immigrated here. She, like my father, had come from that little island in reality, where they spoke their language, a home language, a private, family language, as well as the mainland language taught in schools by the nationalists, and so this language that I speak, the only one I know how to speak, was actually her third language, and a distant third at that.
And yet she speaks it well, well enough, considering all that, even if she is always translating in her head, even if she never became fluent like my father, never quite able to think fluently in English, and who could blame her? The tenses are so complicated, had never quite made sense to her, as they didn't work the same way in her language, one based largely on the infinitive.
When my mother taught me grammar, me at the kitchen table with a worksheet and blanks to fill in and verbs to conjugate, she was doing the dishes, cooking dinner, mopping the floor, I was six years old, I was seven, eight years old, I was young, I was hers, still her mama's boy, I hadn't yet entered the fatherson axis, the continuum of expectation and compet.i.tion and striving, I hadn't yet left the comfortable and snug envelope of the mother-s.p.a.ce, I hadn't gone outside these parameters, out into the larger, free-form world of science fiction. My first understanding of grammar came from her, which is to say, my first understanding of chronogrammatical principles, of the present, the past, the future. I fall/I fell/I will fall. I am a good boy. I will always be her boy. I don't know what I would do without you. I don't know what I will do without you. I learned about the future tense, how anxiety is encoded into our sentences, our conditionals, our thoughts, how worry is encoded into language itself, into grammar.
Worry was my mother's mechanic, her mechanism for engaging with the machinery of living. Worry was an anchor for her, a hook, something to clutch on to in the world. Worry was a box to live inside of, worry a mechanism for evading the present, for re-creating the past, for dealing with the future.
After a few minutes, my mother comes back into the kitchen holding a box. She brings it over and sets it on the windowsill between us.
”I found this yesterday, in your closet.” It's roughly the size and dimensions of a shoe box, wrapped in brown parcel paper. There don't appear to be any seams or folds in the paper.
”Yesterday? Why were you out of the loop? Why were you going through my stuff?”
”You don't live here anymore. You have so many clothes you never wear.”
”Ma, those are from, like, fifteen years ago.”
”So? They're not good enough for you? You don't remember, you asked me to buy those clothes. I bought them for you. See, I'm wearing your sweats.h.i.+rt now. See? Fits. You have so many comic books. They are probably worth a lot now. Can you sell them? You should sell them. I will find them for you and you can sell them. Such a waste.”
”You didn't answer my question.”
”What's that?”
”Have you been living outside the loop?”