Exactly One Month Later

I remember how I was sitting on the windowsill of my bedroom smoking a cigarette when my mother barged in. She startled me so bad that I nearly fell out of the window. Her eyes locked onto the cigarette between my fingers, so I frantically tried to put it out on the side of the house.

“Honestly, you’re an adult now. I don’t care,” she said, holding up her hands and shrugging.

“Still treat me like a child though…” I mumbled, trying to relight my semi-crumpled cig.

She walked across the room and sat on the edge of my bed, then held out her hand like a royal asking me to kiss the ring. I put a cigarette between her fingers. Mom brought it to her lips, and I lit it for her. She took a long drag, then exhaled.

“I heard your sister is on the rag now,” she announced bluntly.

“That’s right. I taught her how to use a pad." I blew my smoke out the window.

“You’re a good sister,” she said, nodding. Mom took another drag off the cigarette. “Now, aren’t you glad moving out was a wash?”

Not this shit again.

Trying to get away had been a flat-out disaster. After graduating high school, I moved a couple hours away to the city to give college a try, only to fail out after my first semester. But I wasn’t ready to go back home yet. I still had money saved up from working my ass off back in my hometown, so that helped set me up when I moved in with a friend.

Through a friend-of-a-friend, I landed a waitressing gig at a nice French restaurant. It was okay at first since those people tipped well, but it was never enough. We lived fast and loose in those days, so between the alcohol and drugs, partying added up quick, and I burned through my savings.

I knew I was up shit creek when this guy I knew through partying offered to help me sell my body to cover rent. Too bad for him, though, I still had a sense of self-respect. So in the end, I came scurrying back home with my tail between my legs.

Of course, I never told Mom about all of that. Just the version where I decided college wasn't for me, and that I ran out of money because I wasn’t getting enough shifts at the restaurant. Still didn’t stop her from gloating and holding it over my head ever since, though.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Mom held up a hand. Her way of telling us kids, ‘Shut up, I have something to say.’

“Linda missed you so much while you were gone. I don’t think you realize how overjoyed she was when you came back in May.”

I snuffed out my cigarette against the windowsill and got up. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty or something for wanting some freedom?”

Mom looked at me, frowning. She took a long, long drag, then just blew the smoke in my face. If it wasn’t for Linda clamoring up the stairs to our room at that exact moment, I would have exploded on her.

“They’re…on the moon!” she said, trying to catch her breath.

Mom and I looked at each other slack-jawed for a second before we scrambled after Linda down the stairs to the living room.

Linda, who was running ahead of us, plopped down next to our dad on the sofa. He put his arm around her and gave a little squeeze without taking his eyes off the TV. He was literally on the edge of his seat. Johnny and Billy were sitting so close to the TV that their faces were practically touching it.

“Boys, don’t sit so close to that thing or you’ll go blind,” Mom said, joining Linda and Dad on the sofa without taking her eyes off what was happening on the TV screen.

In the corner of the room, on our little black and white TV, was footage from the moon. It was so dark in the shadow of the lander that I could barely tell what I was looking at. Yet there was Neil Armstrong’s voice as he descended to the moon’s surface.

“That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

I watched it all from the doorway. I didn’t dare step into that room. I wanted to keep that comfortable distance between myself and the unknown, even as it was unravelling before me.

When Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon some time after Armstrong did, he described it as “magnificent desolation.” Something about those words gave me chills. It was a sense of déjà vu, as if I’d seen things from the same perspective once before.

I placed my hand on my stomach. There could be other explanations for the late period. Maybe it would come soon, and I could forget about the whole thing. Write it off as a weird abnormality.

As much as I wanted to deny it and pretend like that blip in my memory where I woke up in a ditch nearly ten miles away never happened, I still made a doctor’s appointment the next day. From a payphone, of course. Otherwise, my mother would have seen it on the phone records and started asking questions.

That night I had a nightmare. It was the first of many to come.

I dreamt that I was floating away from the ground. As I drifted upwards, I tried to latch onto whatever I could to keep myself from going higher—the windowsill, the telephone wire going into the house through the roof, the roof itself, and lastly the little iron weather vane mounted on the peak of the pitched roof.

The house got smaller and smaller as I got farther away from it. The higher I got, the harder it was to breathe. When I started gasping and choking, that was when I woke up.

It was nearly pitch black inside and outside, with just the tiniest amount of light coming from the crescent moon, so I clicked on the lamp next to the bed to check the time. It was half-past two, but this time the clock didn’t seem to be malfunctioning.

When I heard Linda start to stir, I quickly shut off the light and rolled away from her.

“Janet…? Are you awake?”

“Yes. I had a bad dream.”

“Oh…” Linda let out a yawn. “What was it about?”

“I don’t even remember now. Just go back to sleep.”

“Okay… Nighty night.”

I stared at the open window while I listened for signs that Linda had fallen back asleep. When I was sure she was asleep, I got up and shut the window. I didn’t care if it was going to make that attic sweltering as a result—there was just no chance in hell that I was going to be able to fall back asleep with it open that night.