There is a River in Space Above Earth

Laughter came from a little boy all the way down from faraway Japan. After that, there hadn’t been much left empty cities lie vacant, and the animals that scrape them come from nightmarish fevers of poisoned families and the aftermath of a crossfire war that shook entire countries and rooted a seed of radiation underneath our feet. There are not many rivers left, except: Capilano.

When I was a child, it had been my dream. I had read it in a children’s science magazine, in a country named Canada. Clean water sounded nice. A river seemed so big.

I used to dream that I would carry buckets of water to the house my parents would build, and I would pour the water into the bathtub that we would have. At six, I decided I would take a bath; it had been my biggest, most selfish dream, and it would be all mine. I would close the door with chairs and lock it with the safe; my brother would not be allowed to get in with me, not my mom, nor my dad, just me.

I would hide the cover-wrinkled magazine underneath my side of the bed, and once Mom had taken Feliciano to the bathroom, I would get it out and read it again and again:

“Capilano is one of the biggest potable water rivers in the world; it's the primary source of potable water for Vancouver's people…”

I think, despite my secrecy, my parents knew. I am glad. My parents dyed my birthday cakes light blue, and Mom dressed my brother in his blue clothes. She would wear her light-blue dress.

For my birthday, I got yet another book; my dad got it for me. It had black soot on the clover, and oil on the sides, but it talked about space:

“Nothing can console us for the earth save the starry heaven.” I think I got doomed that second.

I wanted to save us all, my little brother who walked silly, and my mom who wore her prettiest dress just because she thought it would remind me of the river, my dad who gifted me this book, the cat who my brother named Felix, and Capilano. My beautiful Capilano.

My dad would carry me on his back to the library while he went to work; Mom would tend to my little brother. I told my parents that I wanted to study. My brother was ten, I would teach him all I learned; I told them. Library, university, home. Rinse, repeat.

I grew up. I met your dad.

We met at the library. He sat beside me and told me he was traveling to all the universities and libraries we had left, looking for something he would not share, yet. I was studying for my entrance exam.

“I am going to be an astronomer,” I told him, “I am going to work at Plesetsk Cosmodrome” My dad works there, worked nearly all his fifty-four years of life, a chore boy grown simple mechanic, “I want to be in the Space program” I told your father one night.

“I am going to be a cosmonaut,” he replied.

I took him home the next day. And the next, and the next.

He taught Feliciano how to drive a car and how to drink. He fixed what my dad could no longer do. My mother adored him.

On my twentieth birthday, before my first week at the Cosmodrome, with what he got from his work there and the money his parents had left him, he took me to Vancouver, Canada. It did not look like the beautiful coffee-stained picture on my folders. The sky was gray, and the water muddy, but when he got on one knee and pulled a box with a simple ring, I swear I knew what life looked like before us.

Capilano, despite all, was still the most beautiful river we had. He knocked on someone’s door and asked if we could stay for one night. “She said yes,” he repeated over and over while flaunting my hand and the small and fragile ring he placed. Accent voice, he begged for a room and a bath. The wife asked about our travel; I think I heard you say: “It's her dream.”

Stupid man.

I worked at the Cosmodrome, lived in a small apartment, got married and grew twenty-seven years from the second I was born.

My beloved made me a mother; in between sickness and cables and the impending doom of earth, I wondered if I should have said no.

“He will be salvation,” my love was right.

My brother wrote a letter. He did not tell us what it said, but got in his car and traveled the week up to the sea. One day, he told us he grabbed one of Dad’s empty liquor bottles, placed the note inside and threw it into the sea. He was a man now, one who could handle himself around alcohol and wheels and tires, with my added weight on his shoulder. He cried when I told him you would not get to meet your own son.

Your father made me a widow.

You were born six months and twenty-seven days after your father’s death, with his hair, blond like gold.

My hands cradle your head from the second we get on the airplane to the second we get down. We are moving cities.

“I got accepted into the space program,” I tell you when the car ride turns bumpy. You’ve been hearing those words for the past weeks. I wonder what your first word will be. I tune down the surrounding noise; it’s silly, the world is dying, there is not much noise. It’s silent as it is.

There are empty buildings and a frozen river. A stone bridge and fast walking people that I can count on one hand. The sky is gray and white, and there is no wind, but some trees rustle, and I am walking, dragging a bag, and I am holding a carrier.

I got into the space program. I can’t stop thinking about where you will grow between cables and scientists, and the ghost of a cosmonaut who never sailed, but you will grow. We will make sure the rain doesn't burn your skin, that you can breathe. I will show you the stars, and I will hope it’s enough.

“We are working on something. The world is dying”

We need to know if outside was a viable answer. “Outside” the same name I called our new house’s backyard, and the same name I called the streets, and the bridge, and the river. Outside seemed to be an ever so close thing, not something so far away from us; it’s odd. Soon, we’ll launch our first satellite, and we won't be so lonely anymore. Your dad used to draw it. I wish for the beeping to soothe you to sleep, its steady rhythm reminding you of me.

Capilano, you are the baby of the station. Not many can have children anymore; kids are becoming less common. They pamper you and give you small horses made with loose screws and nuts. Teach you to braid with cables and copper. When you are three, they carry you while dozing off, and they show you the space. Sputnik is almost your size from when you were two months old. They tell you stories of a small cosmonaut bringing us a sun on Sputnik’s whiskers. They teach you that the sun is another star, and stars are for wishing; they asked you what the cosmonaut wished for: you said you wanted a puppy.

I could not say no when they brought a month old mutt from the streets. She was healthy, as much as one could ask for nowadays. On the trip back to the station, they told me they named her Laika because she was loud; it was true, but you squirmed and screamed more than her. You loved her the second you met her.

When you were seven, I took you on one of the last airplane trips there would be. We flew all the way over to America so you could see the river where your name comes from. It's dried, and small, but it's ours. It's quiet now.

You were fifteen when we got the message, a fax that read: “Earth is dying. We have five years”, and we knew it. It was really all gone. And then it got into the news, and I was glad the school was closed, because I could not phantom you coming back home, blood drained from your face, more books to submerge yourself in. Your father named you salvation, I wish I had never shared that last message with you, but I am sure you would have seen it spelled in the way sputnik beeped when it passed above our house, sometimes, I swear, you spoke to it, and it spoke back.

We spent the night on the roof of the house, we could hear the weeping of those who were still here, you carried Laika with you, got your chair, we ate dinner and talked.

“I want to be a cosmonaut”, you said, “before I die” you did not, but I knew you were your father's son, and perhaps I cursed you when they let you see the stars so close and so young, perhaps it's not something you should have seen at all. Did I pass misfortune through the milk that nourished you when you were a babe? I do not know, beer in hand, I think in the way the stars linger above us: they are mocking me.

They keep saying “We’ve got five years” to you while you sleep, and I am sorry.

I keep trying to dig every moment I think there is no turning back. I want to believe this was my fault, that you had a chance of something else.

“We've got five years,” I should have never had you.

It all comes down, as much as it can. The world is emptier than ever, and I worry if we will be enough to see the end. We've got five years until resources become less than enough.

Four years, and you tell me you want to study astronomy. You make me find my old physics and science books, the people at the program, your aunts and uncles all give you what they've scourged all these years, one of them gives you his bible too, one gives you a cross and a kiss on the forehead.

Three years, and we go to a funeral, I am sorry you are going to start getting used to this. At the end of it, you are looking at the sky and you say, “I am going to be a cosmonaut, the first one,” and I curse your father. I would dig his grave and shake his shoulders, yell at him for what he has cursed you with. I rage at his memory, I want to push him away as much as I need his shoulder to cry on.

Two years and we are running out of time, cities empty, and communities are shortening. You are so young, everyone looks at you and calls you their little cosmonaut. You are as tall as your father, you have not grown in our eyes.

One year and you are pushing yourself harder, sometimes I fear you are going to rip yourself apart. I also fear one day I will wake up and there will be another star in the sky. Laika follows you like it's her duty. It's like she is training too, I am scared, I keep working.

We need to get out of Earth.

It's been more than five years, and the loneliness of space is nothing but a warning of what awaits us.

The kids on the street look at you and ask you what you will find up there. You say hope, they run to their mothers and tell them you will bring us hope. Hope for the dog, the cat, the little sister on the way. And hope for grandpa sleeping three feet underground, but no hope for me.

Earth reached its limits, from now on, we are on our own.

We recorded tapes, and we reached out as close as we could. America, Asia, Europe, whatever it's left of them, people. It's a clear vision, we are building something big. We bring false hope.

I am sorry, but you are happy, I tell you it's a death sentence, and you say it's salvation. I spit on your father's grave. And I destroy Sputnik's replica. It's suicide, but you are the only one who has trained for this, I could not stop you, they did not try, but no one ever said anything.

“A man one mission to the stars” printed out in splotchy ink and re-used paper, the world tilted towards your blond hair. I felt sick, I kicked your father's grave.

Before I know it, they start telling me a story of what will happen to the little cosmonaut on his little cosmonaut Sputnik. He will get in and with a fun sized lighter they will light him up like fireworks, he will fly above the moon and kiss it goodbye, he will wave to the sun and it will wave back. He will go out to see if we can survive. I said get the damn dog inside, she whimpered and I slapped myself before they continued the story, it has been the little cosmonaut’s dream, that it was better than dying here of poisoning and hunger and sickness, and said, he was hope. I cry and say: “Send the damn dog!” They tell me this is bigger than that. In the old world, they would have sent the dog. In this one, they needed a pilot. They needed my son. I say bring someone else.

You grab my face, beg for forgiveness, “Mom, there is no one else. Earth is dying. It's empty,” I know. I know.

I see you climbing inside while I hold on to Laika as she trashes and bites and barks, I think I screamed too. I saw you wave me goodbye. It's the last time I saw your eyes.

My son has died. Or will die soon, we can’t tell, they can’t tell me, but they are making funeral arrangements. The flashing lights hit us red and yellow: “The astronaut has died”.

My son is dead, or will die tomorrow, in five minutes, or never and has found his father in Sputnik’s dead beeping.

I really hope it's never, it will be a close casket.

I was not on your bed, it had not been intimate. I stood before something that could not understand the scream I wept, and before something I could not comprehend. The computer only dared to say that the connection was lost. Cargo not coming home.

Your last month on Earth had gone in between diners with families and scientists, and everyone on the team opened their doors for us two. You carried their children on your back and played with their dogs. They fed you sugary treats and meals that escaped your regimen. Their wives hugged you, and I could see they cried when we left their home.

You passed between screens, no one in the world would live another day without knowing who you were, but I wonder if they got the angle of your nose right, and the slight crook of your teeth, the moles you carry on your skin, I wonder if they all got the exact tone of your skin tone, I wonder if they know about the mark at the back of your shin.

I should have taken away those books, closed the windows with planks of wood, hidden you in the basement, told you only about rivers and plants. Perhaps I should have not talked at all, you would have tried to save them all.

My son lives with me in every corridor of this house. It's haunted. I can see the tips of your fingers on every corner of this house, on the roof of the doors, I see it below the switches. There is dust in your room I'll never clean because you never did either. Our family sometimes confuses our voices, they call me by the name you picked for yourself, I miss you. I open a cabinet and something falls and hits my head. I told you to not throw in things like that, my head throbs in a pattern, it's Morse code: I miss you.

There are math books in the library, physics, old school diplomas I made, university records, numbers varying from zero to hundred. I'll find a new book sometimes, it doesn't fit, but I make no effort to find it a place anymore, it lays outside of the door, I'll sit at the side of it and read on the floor, I keep it closed nowadays, I think it helps me pretend you are studying again, that I get to worry over you, waiting for the door to open from the other side, headphones dangling on your neck, and there is charcoal on your lip for passing your hand over your face so many times. I've gotta confess, I eat besides the door too sometimes, if you don't open up soon I'll eat it all and there will be nothing left for you to dine on, so please, open the door, I am tired and I have work tomorrow, empty plates pile up by the wall on weekends, nothing you do inside that room is that important I have found I don’t like the stars anymore.

My brother had a daughter, she carries the name Parhelion, sun dog. I cannot tell you goodbye, Capilano, for I can hear you laughing behind the curtains every time I hear her laughter.