Enders In Exile

just pooled
on the plate, and the pepper barely helped make it possible to swallow
the mess. She kept her eyes on her book and her paper as she ate, and
swallowed mechanically until finally the bite in her mouth made her gag
and she got up and spat it into the sink and then drank down a glass of
water and almost threw the whole mess back up again. As it was, she
retched twice at the sink before she was able to get her gorge under
control. "Mmmmm, delicious," she murmured. Then she turned back to the
table.
    Mother was sitting
there, picking out a single piece of pasta with her fingers. She put it
in her mouth. "What a good mother I am," she said softly.
    "I'm doing homework
now, Mother. We've already used up our quarreling time."
    "Be honest, darling. We
almost never quarrel."
    "That's true. You flit
around ignoring whatever I say, being full of happiness. But believe
me,
my
end of the argument is running through my
head all the time."
    "I'm going to tell you
something because you're right, you're old enough to understand things."
    Alessandra sat down.
"All right, tell me." She looked her mother in the eye.
    Mother looked away.
    "So you're
not
going to tell me. I'll do my homework."
    "I'm going to tell
you," said Mother. "I'm just not going to look at you while I do."
    "And I won't look at
you either." She went back to her homework.
    "About ten days into
the month, my mother calls me. I answer the phone because if I don't
she gets on the train and comes over, and then I have a hard time
getting her out of the house before you get home from school. So I
answer the phone and she tells me I don't love her, I'm an ungrateful
daughter, because here she is all alone in her house, and she's out of
money, she can't have anything lovely in her life. Move in with me, she
says, bring your beautiful daughter, we can live in my apartment and
share our money and then there'll be enough. No, Mama, I say to her. I
will not move in with you. And she weeps and screams and says I am a
hateful daughter who is tearing all joy and beauty out of her life
because
I leave her alone and I leave her penniless and so I promise her, I'll
send you a little something. She says, don't send it, that wastes
postage, I'll come get it and I say, No, I won't be here, it costs more
to ride the train than to mail it, so I'm mailing it. And somehow I get
her off the phone before you get home. Then I sit for a while not
cutting my wrists, and then I put some amount of money into an envelope
and I take it to the post office and I mail it, and then she takes the
money and buys some hideous piece of garbage and puts it on her wall or
on a little shelf until her house is so full of things I've paid for
out of money that should go to my daughter's upbringing, and I pay for
all of that, I run out of money every month even though I get the same
money on the dole that
she
gets, because it's
worth it. Being hungry is worth it. Having you be angry with me is
worth it, because you do not have to know that woman, you do not have
to have her in your
life.
So yes, Alessandra, I
do it
all
for you. And if I can get us off this
planet, I won't have to send her any more money, and she won't phone me
anymore, because by the time we reach that other world she will be
dead. I only wish you had trusted me enough that we could have arrived
there without your ever having to see her evil face or hear her evil
voice."
    Mother got up from the
table and returned to her room.
    Alessandra finished her
homework and put it into her backpack and then went and sat on the sofa
and stared at the nonfunctioning television. She remembered coming home
every day from school, for all these years, and there was Mother, every
time, flitting through the house, full of silly talk about fairies and
magic and all the beautiful things she did during the day and all the
while, the thing she did during the day was fight the monster to keep
it from getting into the house, getting its clutches on little
Alessandra.
    It explained the
hunger. It explained the electricity. It explained everything.
    It didn't mean Mother
wasn't crazy. But now the craziness made a kind of sense. And the
colony meant that finally Mother would be free. It wasn't Alessandra
who was ready for emancipation.
    She got up and went to
the door and tapped on it. "I say we sleep during the voyage."
    A long wait. Then, from
the other side of the door, "That's what I think, too."
After a moment, Mother added, "There'll be a young man for you