Page 55 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH BEST PRACTICES FOR GROUP COHESION

It was Adisu’s turn to pull a block from the tower, and he was taking his time.

He had long fingers, surgeon’s hands, his nails always trimmed.

There was no rule to keep them like that on the mission, with hardly any latex gloves to rip, but he said it was a habit.

A comfort, even. Like his wedding ring, which he still pinned to the inside of his scrub pocket each morning.

Jed said, “ Today , Adisu.”

Adisu paused, centimeters from the wooden blocks, and held his hand perfectly still. It was like a magic trick. He wiggled an eyebrow at Jed.

The five of us sat in a circle on the gray rug in the hab living room. With the exception of the bathroom and the storeroom, the entire downstairs was one open round area. The bottom of the dome.

We called this the living room for normalcy, but it was just a couch, a rug, and a television.

A clear plastic box of ten DVDs, which we hated and knew by heart.

Behind the couch was the cooking area. Behind that were six portholes with a small desk and chair below each one.

Beside the tarp-covered door, six hooks held six yellow hazmat suits.

Then a small washing machine, a drying rack, one more porthole, and a treadmill.

A whiteboard listed names and running times, with “NADIA!!!!!!!” circled several times over.

On top of the N in her name, Aziz had drawn a small yellow crown.

The month of Ramadan, soon coming to a close, was the reason for the new Jenga routine.

After a later and nicer-than-usual dinner, we now played it most nights.

Aligning our meal schedule with the end of Aziz’s fast each night, and being more generous with the rations, had been Allison’s idea.

She’d gone full force on Operation Make Ramadan Meaningful, not because it was a religious crew—Aziz called himself a “Ramadan-only Muslim” and Nadia called herself “raised atheist, with Irish-Catholic and Moroccan-Muslim grandparents who hated each other.” Rather, Allison said celebrating our diverse cultures would allow us to recognize the collaborative nature of our mission, which was in fact a best practice for group cohesion.

In space, she said, this could mean the difference between life and death.

I hated Jenga, but liked the extra time with Nadia. Even in a group.

Adisu pulled a block out of the tower and placed it on the top. He danced the tips of three fingers across the side without making it shake, just to make us crazy.

“Honestly,” said Allison, “we oughta put Jenga in the same category as Operation! Can y’all really put up with this showboat six more months?”

Jed dragged a hand through his hair. He leaned back against the foot of the couch. “ Six months ,” he said. “Fuck.” He was struggling. The divorce was final now, his house sold without him and his stuff moved into a storage unit. The hab, in the meantime, was a hard place to start over.

“Jed, would you find that comment helpful to group morale?” Allison said.

Aziz perked right up. He, like me and Nadia, needed that letter of rec.

Outside, the protesters started to sing. None of us moved to look.

“Sorry. I’m just tired of this shit,” Jed said.

He could say that. He wasn’t an ascan. For Jed and Adisu and Allison, two non-ascans and a NASA commander, the hab was part of a prestigious fellowship to fund and complete a year of research and writing. They didn’t have to impress NASA.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” Nadia said. She was trying, by impressing Allison, to impress NASA. “So long as they don’t interfere with our hab, which they haven’t? If this were Mars, we’d be lucky to have such interesting human neighbors.”

“You think they’ll be a security threat?” Adisu said. Almost hopefully.

He was ready for disaster, desperate to be helpful even if he had to dream up the trouble himself.

Only days ago he’d taught us how to tie tourniquets at the dinner table.

I understood wanting to be useful. I carried my new tourniquet with me everywhere, purple and rolled up very small in my pocket, and had already resolved to continue this practice after the mission.

“At ease, soldier,” Allison said. She left the circle and came back quickly from the storeroom with a chocolate bar. She threw it at us, dangerously close to the Jenga tower. “I’m not telling y’all where I’m hiding these,” she said, “but I think we could use a treat.”

The protesters outside quieted. Inside, we looked at one another.

Then they started to chant. Focus on Earth! This planet has worth!

A new one. Nadia snorted. Across the circle, she smiled at me.

“Hey, hey, it’s not so bad,” Adisu said. “Don’t you remember? This isn’t even Mars! We can still put you behind bars! ”

We laughed. Adisu beamed. He seemed to care the most about genuinely being liked, to invest the most into group cohesion even when he didn’t have to.

When we blew through our alcohol rations in February, which had been just two cases of beer to begin with, Adisu figured out how to sub in commercial yeast for a plant found in Ethiopian grocery stores but not on Mars.

Then he fermented a kind of honey-based wine that only Jed and Allison liked, but that everyone found impressive.

Allison reminded us that the real mission would be sober, but looked the other way because we were “celebrating our diverse cultures.” This was true, but Nadia thought it had more to do with Allison being raised in her family’s distillery in Kentucky.

Nadia passed out the chocolate. Her fingers lingered on mine, maybe, just for a second?

It was my turn. I bent over the tower.

I was thinking carefully about which block to move and what to do about Nadia.

Almost every night now, I went to her quarters at lights-out.

We whispered, shared stored-away snacks, laughed quietly with our hands over our mouths.

I’d somehow graduated from my old place on the floor, and we sat facing each other on the two ends of her bed.

Matching, stupidly, always in our crew-mandated collared pajamas.

At some point Nadia stopped wearing a bra under hers.

I couldn’t decide if that meant she was, or was not, keeping things professional.

Within half an hour or so, without fail, she’d send me back to my quarters.

We were real friends. I already knew that would be one of my biggest takeaways from the experiment.

I was ready to tell the psych team that Nadia had made a big difference in my morale, and that it went deeper than my initial hope of having someone to sleep with.

To be clear, I still wanted that. But Nadia operated differently than me.

I felt totally out of practice with people like her—people like the physicist and Della—who believed in the long-term.

I reached for a block at the bottom of the tower.

The chanting had died down, replaced with a round dance song.

This was new for the camp and not Hawaiian, likely brought in by visitors from the mainland now that Standing Rock had people all riled up.

I could picture it, dark-haired boys and hand drums, the words of a love song changed to meet the moment.

Baby I’m getting called to the front lines / in my heart I’ll be seein’ you / don’t you leave me / please believe me / I’ll come home to you / heya heya hey.

“Steph?” said Jed.

“Hmm?”

“I can’t believe I’ve never asked you—as a Native American, what do you think about the protest?”

“I don’t think about it much.” There was a slight tremble in my voice. What if my sister did something? After I’d come this far?

Jed gestured at the door. “Really? The rest of us think about it all the time.”

“Best practices,” Allison said, the words singsongy and stretched out. A warning.

Jed lowered his voice. “Sorry. I know they’re not Native Americans. I didn’t mean to assume a connection between, um… different varieties of aboriginal peoples.”

“This is fun!” Aziz said. He and Nadia smiled at each other, holding back laughter.

“I’m calling it,” Allison said. “Bedtime.” She gave Jed a look, the one she gave us when we’d have to have a talk with her later in the storeroom.

Jed opened his mouth, like he had more to say. I tapped my finger against the tower and watched it fall.