First to Dance (24 page)

Etana
wondered now why he never told
her
that he agreed with them. She gave Aaron a gentle hug and kissed him on the cheek.
If your father really loved me,
she thought,
he’d warn me so I wouldn’t lose you.

The computers had no information on who arrived and left,
only on where they came from and where they were going. Most of the planet names meant nothing to her. The only one she cared about was Earth.  She wanted to go back and find help, somehow—bring other people here who would step in and take charge in a positive way. They needed other personality types to be here to balance them out, or things would only get worse. Maybe she could bring enough reinforcement that everyone Dr. Azias had scattered could be brought together on one planet as they’d originally been promised.

Then she had another thought: if she planned to leave, how could she take Aaron with her? There was a bathroom on the spaceship, but nowhere to wash clothes and nowhere to put trash except for the compartment that accepted the empty food
packaging. There would be no way to keep up with a baby’s diaper needs on that spaceship. The only possible way would be for them to endure the filth for the journey, but three months was a long time, and they could easily get sick being surrounded by that kind of bacteria all day. What if he fell ill and died halfway there and she had to spend the rest of the flight with her dead child only a few feet away? She couldn’t bear the thought.

So she could wait until he was potty trained, then, o
nly by that time he would be moving around enough that he could quickly cause trouble on the spaceship by pressing buttons or touching the computer interface. He would want to play and there would be nothing to play with.  And, what if by then he’d already been taken from her? How would she get him back to bring him with her to Earth?

She could wait until he was school-age: old enough to know not to touch certain things and to follow her instructions, but again, by then he might no longer be in her custody, and even if he was, he might not want to go with her. He might fight it. He’
d have friends by then, and Zozeis would be all he’d known. If he fought it, the others would surely find out and this place would definitely be destroyed. Or they might find it on their own before then and destroy it before she had a chance to leave.

So she decided that she would have to go alone, but she wasn’t going to give up
all hope on her son. When Matthew wasn’t home, Etana would write letters to Aaron and hide them in the basement. If it was meant to be, she knew he would find them. The secret library would be the inheritance she left for him. It was the best thing she had to give.

Aaron
started to fuss and she knew he would need his diaper changed soon. It was time to go home. Etana let him nurse while she carried him. As she started walking, she wondered where she would come out of the forest if she went straight up the hill instead of back the way she came around the side. She tried walking this way instead and eventually emerged into the park. Thankfully, no one was there to see where she’d been. Aaron was sleeping in her arms now despite his wet diaper, and she took him home to change him. Matthew was not home when she arrived, so she took Aaron up into the bedroom and fell asleep with him beside her.

Matthew startled her with yelling when he returned home and found her. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you and Aaron!”

Aaron woke up too and started crying.
Etana tried to comfort him before she responded to Matthew.

“I’ve been looking all over for you. We’ve had
everyone
looking for you! How dare you scare us all like that! I thought you’d run off with our son!” As soon as he said that last part he realized he shouldn’t have.

“
Why would you think that?” Etana asked him. She knew why. She knew what he’d said to the others, plotting ways to keep their baby if she had to be separated from him.
He’ll be planning on that even more now,
she thought.
He’s suspicious of me. He doesn’t trust me, and I don’t trust him.

Matthew calmed himself down and sat beside her on the bed. “I
was just worried,” he said. “I didn’t know what happened. Where were you?”

“Aaron wouldn’t sleep. I went for a walk. I was out longer than I planned to be, but we’re okay.”

“But where did you
go
? We looked everywhere.”

“I was in the park,” she said.

“I looked there, Etana. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. I walked around other places
, went to the park, and then I came home.”

“You didn’t hear us yelling your name? Calling for you?”

“No,” she said. “How long have you been searching?”

“At least a couple of hours.”

Etana
yawned and looked out the window. “I must have gotten home shortly after you went looking for me. I’ve been here napping for at least that long.”

“You really scared me,
Etana. We searched all the houses. We searched everywhere. Everyone was looking for you. If I hadn’t found you just now, we’d probably be heading out through the forest in every direction to find you.”

Etana
shuddered at that last thought. She didn’t want them to find the space center. Thankfully, none of the people here seemed to be the outdoors type, so they probably wouldn’t walk five miles through trees unless they had to.

“I better go tell everyone I found you,” he said. “Then I’m coming back, and we need to talk.”

Etana planned to stay awake, but she was so tired from her long night that she quickly fell back asleep. When she woke up it was dark, and Aaron was no longer beside her.

Etana
started to panic looking for him, but a hand reached out and held hers.

“He’s fine,” Matthew said.

“Where…”

“In his bedroom, sleeping.”

She calmed her breathing and tried to relax. Aaron wasn’t taken from her, yet. Matthew lay beside her and put his arm around her waist. He let out a heavy sigh, and then he told her what she already knew.

“
Etana, love, everyone is suspicious of you. They remember that you were one of the few people who adamantly wanted to teach your children about our past, about Earth.”

“And you were one of
the few who agreed with me. It was part of why I agreed to marry you.”

“What I think is neither here nor there. The point I’
m getting to is that if you give them a reason not to trust you, such as disappearing at odd hours, they will follow through on their threats.”

“I didn’t disappear,” she said. “I went for a walk. And from what you said earlier, it sounds like I probably came home and went to sleep right about the time that you left looking for me.”

“That was a long walk,” he said. “I was awake when you left. I thought you were just going out to sit on the porch like you’ve done before, but when I woke up and it was morning, I have to say I was quite surprised you weren’t back yet.”

Etana
counted her breaths as the time passed. How could she explain being gone for almost six hours?

“I know where you were,
Etana.”

Her heart started racing.

“You were meeting with the others—I know you were. They weren’t home when I knocked on their doors to ask if they’d seen you. I know you were with them somewhere, and whatever they’re planning, please don’t involve yourself. Stay out of it. For the sake of our family, stay out of it.”

Etana
wondered what she should say, whether or not she should deny this false accusation. If she did deny it, how would she explain her long absence? Then she wondered if she
should
get together with the others who wanted to preserve Earth’s memory and tell
them
about the space center.

“Don’t try to teach Aaron about Earth,
Etana. I forbid it.”

“I didn’t know that I married a dictator.”

“If you teach him about Earth, you’ll lose him, not because I’m a dictator but because that is what the people have decided.”

I will only lose him because you’ll tell on me
, she thought.
We could teach him about Earth together. We could have children and grandchildren and teach all of them, and one day there would be enough of us to turn this around. All we have to do is teach them to keep it a family secret until the time is right.

“And you won’t only lose
him
; you’ll lose me as well.”

Etana
wondered if that would really be a bad thing. She didn’t have room in her life for someone she couldn’t trust.

“You’ll be alone,
Etana. Life already feels lonely enough on this planet, but it will be worse if our family is torn apart. I’ll miss you, Aaron will miss you, and I know you’ll miss Aaron. I’d like to think you’ll miss me too.”

Etana
closed her eyes and wished Aaron would wake up. She could go tend to her son instead of have this conversation with his father.

“Please talk to me,
Etana. Tell me what you’re thinking.” He lightly touched her cheek with his fingers the way he often did when he wanted to kiss her.

“I won’t talk to him about Earth,” she said.
I will write him. I will write dozens of letters to him, and one day, when he’s older and has played at all his friend’s houses, he’ll realize that our basement is smaller and he’ll wonder why. He’ll find my room and my letters to him and he’ll know that I didn’t want to abandon him but that I left because I loved him enough to fight for
his
children’s future.

Matthew squeezed her hand. “Thank you,” he said. “Aaron thanks you, too.”

Ten
months passed, and though Etana frequently went outside to look at the stars, she didn’t see any spaceships coming or going again.  Aaron was old enough now that he could survive without nursing, and she had slowly worked on weaning him. She’d also frequently taken him to other women to hold him and play with him. She hoped that if he developed strong relationships with other people, perhaps it wouldn’t be as harsh of a sting when she was gone. Two other babies had been born since he was, and there were three women pregnant. He would grow up with friends to surround himself with. This was a small community and because of that they were forced to be close and work together.
I’ll miss you
, she thought,
but hopefully for your sake, you won’t have to miss me.

Etana
went back and forth between trying to wean herself from her own son and wanting to spend every second with him so she would have memories to cherish when he was no longer in her life. It was on days like these that she started doubting her plans to leave. She often fantasized about staying, but that would mean never telling her son about Earth.  She could never tell him about her parents and how they moved from Paris to America just a few months before she was born. She couldn’t tell him stories about her college days or the time she traveled to Macchu Pichu.  She couldn’t tell him about the Egyptian pyramids, or that on Earth the years are longer. She couldn’t tell him about anything they had on Earth that they didn’t have here—movies or waterslides or elephants.

She would have to watch her tongue constantly, which was easy around
most people but how could she be that distant with her own son? What kind of relationship would they have if she couldn’t talk to him? How would she explain why he was the oldest child on the planet? How would she explain why half the houses were empty, and that no, none of us here were the ones who built them?  The two options she saw were to either lie to him or refuse to discuss those topics, and she didn’t find either option acceptable.

She watched Aaron play on the floor, and she knew that someday he would have a lot of questions that no one would be allowed to answer
honestly.
I’ll never lie to you
, she thought,
and that means you can’t always have me in your life.
She felt the tears running down her cheek and quickly wiped them away.  One way or another she would be gone from his life: either by leaving voluntarily, or by being taken from him for refusing to lie. At least if she went back to Earth she had a chance at improving the future of this planet for her grandchildren.

Instead of laying Aaron down for his nap, this time, she held him. She held him and stroked his cheek and kissed his forehead. She whispered to him over and over that she loved him and would miss him greatly. “You’ll be an old man when I come back, but I will hug you all the same and kiss
your grandchildren the way that I kiss you now. I’m doing this for you, and for them,” she said.

That night, when Matthew and Aaron were asleep,
Etana slipped out through the front door and walked quietly to the park. No one else was outside and she didn’t see any lights on inside the houses. She checked behind her several times to see that no one was following her, and she entered into the forest toward the space center. She determined as she walked that she would not think about what she was leaving behind, only what was ahead. She wasn’t going to second-guess herself tonight—she’d already spent ten months doing that. Tonight was the night: no going back. She entered the space center with confidence, ready to prepare the spaceship and leave before morning.