Page 40 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH AFTERMATH

Kayla had become a little bit famous—though not the kind that makes money—in the six weeks since the photo of her handcuffed to the president’s gate. Twelve thousand people subscribed to her blog.

She threw herself, harder than ever, into long posts that referenced “decolonial ways of being” and “food sovereignty.” She posted photos of her art, but also an increasing number of herself, gathering roots and berries while being beautiful.

The baby napped in a cradleboard strapped to her back.

In one of the photos, Kayla—topless in December—breastfed a fur-wrapped Felicia in the woods behind the dining hall.

Our mother had spent four days on the road round-trip, with two days in the middle to see the baby before she had to return to work.

In those two days Kayla had taken many, many black-and-white film photographs of our mother and herself and Felicia in traditional clothing, the three generations together.

The series was popular on the internet. I wasn’t asked to be in it, maybe because my haircut wasn’t old-world or maybe because I had no descendants.

Kayla worked long shifts with the townies at Dominic’s Pizza Kitchen, and every three hours I had to carry the baby to the back alley for her to nurse.

It was hard, on both of us, but Kayla and Jason were struggling to make rent after the administration had evicted her from Jason’s dorm room.

They’d had to move into a small, dark bedroom in a shared house off-campus.

There was one window, looking out on an aging yellow billboard across the street.

The billboard said Teeth in Six Hours! —which Kayla and I thought was funny, but that Jason said depressed him.

He’d hoped to provide nicer things for his daughter.

He’d been raised rich, it turned out, by parents too focused on having grown up poor.

They said they intended to help, though not anytime soon, lest he not learn to hustle.

(Now that I could trace his service back to that, not to the GI Bill but to his once-poor parents’ belief in the hustle, I was appalled.)

Jason was never with Kayla, always studying, always coming home late night from whichever part of the library I wasn’t in.

Sandra told me there was no way he was studying that much, that she was actually really concerned , and I told her to quit spreading rumors that would only hurt my sister and niece.

Sandra seemed to feel genuinely bad about this, and in the morning I found a set of silk pajamas, new with the tags on, in a wrapped gift box outside my door.

I gave them as a hint to Kayla, who had been boobs-out full-time since late October.

Jason was learning to hustle. He was doing his best to graduate early so he could move his surprise new family to law school and earn a salary within three years.

He’d devoted his fall semester to the LSATs, which left one semester to get in somewhere and finish college.

He seemed dazed whenever I talked to him, like he’d turned around and a woman and child were just, there . None of this made it into Kayla’s blog.

When Della broke up with me, I didn’t want to talk about it.

I spent all my free time taking care of the baby, burying my heart in the miracle of my niece.

Kayla and I were obsessed. We could sit side by side in her horrible firetrap of a bedroom for hours, silent, watching Felicia sleep on a towel on the floor.

I tried to support my sister. I stayed on campus for winter break and watched Felicia while Kayla was at work and Jason fulfilled credits at the community college that could be transferred over. I heard from other people that Della spent Christmas with Sam. I didn’t know why and I didn’t ask.

Life with my niece was slow in a way I had never experienced. I had time to sit around looking at her, and to think. I thought less about being good enough for Della, and more about going to space.

I stared at Felicia and thought about her smallness—our smallness—in the larger universe.

How that idea had once taken me aback, across from my TA in her basement office.

But now it was okay. Felicia had come to us from a single weekend trip to Connecticut, from one of hundreds of arguments between my mother and sister.

Before Connecticut, there had been Oklahoma.

There had been Texas. My mother would reach back to loss, to the Trail of Tears, as a kind of origin to hold on to.

My sister would reach still further, to the orderliness of families connected by the traditional clan system. Everyone in their place, accounted for.

It was Brett who first explained the Big Bang theory to me when I was very young. Not just what it was, but the evidence that had led us there. Many people and many years of work, reaching for a story in the dark.