A Thing As Good As Sunshine (2 page)

Momma
gaped at my language, it wasn't like me to use that tone or to swear. But I was
frustrated, they were scaring me.

Pria
headed for the door. "Take her to my office. I'll make up some reason to
pull him out of class and meet you there."

*****

We
waited, in silence, in Auntie Pria's office for a half hour. Momma took the
chair in the corner next to the door so I sat on Auntie's exam table. I had a
lot of third shift memories of this room: agonizing vaccine shots that I could
not cry about, clumsy dental cleanings by Auntie's friend Misha, routine
endoscopic checks of my lungs. All necessary, Momma and Auntie assured me. None
of them pleasant.

And it
didn't seem like this visit would be any better.

But then
the door slid open and my sunshine flooded in. Sheng Tian's expression went
from confused to happy as he saw me. He rushed in to hug me. And even though
Momma was in the room, I couldn't help myself; I hopped off the table and met
him halfway. It felt right to throw my arms around him and bury my face in his
chest as he wrapped me in a crushing hug.

Sheng
Tian stepped back so he could look at me. He petted my long red hair with his
left hand and asked, "Are you sick?"

I looked
over his shoulder and he turned, jumping when he saw Momma in the corner.
"What the?"

"Shang
Tian, this is my Momma."

Momma stood
up and shook hands with him. I couldn't tell who was more uncomfortable and who
was more confused.

"Mizz
Abdul?" he asked.

I didn't
think his question was about her identity, I was pretty sure by the deferential
tone in his voice that he knew exactly who she was. He kept looking back and
forth between me and Momma, his brow wrinkled in confusion.

Momma's
manner was calmer than it had been at any point since I had opened my big mouth.
She turned and made eye contact with Auntie Pria, who entered carrying in a
folding chair and pushing along a wheeled stool. When the door was closed Momma
asked, "You know who I am?"

"You're
Naureen Abdul, Chief Logistics Officer. Ma'am."

"And
you know what that means?" she asked in a very tight voice.

"Yes,
ma'am," Sheng Tian said. He backed up to lean on the exam table, but kept his
hand tightly wrapped around mine.

"Then
I don't have to tell you that I'm a good friend to have on this rock. And a bad
enemy."

Auntie
Pria stepped in. "Naureen, enough. You don't have to browbeat the
boy."

Momma
looked closely at the two of us. "No, I don't suppose I do. He looks
pretty smitten."

I'd
never heard anyone use the word smitten before, but the way she looked at my
hand interlocked with Sheng Tian's told me it had something to do with
sunshine.

"Sheng
Tian, what do you know about Honey-Girl?"

He
looked at me for a minute. "I know she works with you in Logistics. She
was born to a poor Saudi family and signed up to work The Rock for a ten-stretch
to attain her Universal citizenship. She came up on the last crew boat, a year
after me."

"Okay,
agreed, smitten," Pria said, shaking her head with a smile.

Sheng
Tian looked at her without understanding.

"Look,
kiddo," Auntie said to him. "Does she really look like someone who
came from the Middle East?"

He
looked at me and shook his head.

"And
how about those freckles of hers. Do they look about five months faded since
she shipped off from Earth?"

"Freckles?"
I asked. I didn't have any freckles. Never have. My skin was as smooth and
solid as yeast paste right out of the tube. And five months ago I had been
right here. I'd lied to Sheng Tian about that, Momma's standing orders. Sheng
Tian looked at me with an expression I'd never seen on his face before, like he
was studying an alien species.

"Does
she?" Auntie asked.

"I
don't know," he said, quietly. "We didn't have very many white chicks
with red hair back in Changde."

"Most
importantly," Momma said, stepping into the conversation again, and
walking over to my side. "Does she look like she's mine?"

"Of
course I'm yours, Momma," I said. How could she say I was not hers? She
was my Momma, and I was her Honey-Girl. Always. We shared the same clothes and
shoes, the same bowl and spoon, and woke up bundled in the same bunk under the
same blankets. She took care of me because I was hers.

He took
a moment to look at us as we stood side by side. I was nearly as tall as Momma,
we were both a little too thin and we both wore our hair long. Momma's skin was
shades darker than mine, as were her eyes and hair, and her hips were as wide
as my shoulders. We were perfect complements.

"No,
ma'am," Sheng Tian said and then was quiet for a moment. "I can see you
aren't old enough to be Honey-Girl's mother."

Momma
fought against a smile, but the smile won. "I see why she likes you so
much."

So now
Momma liked Sheng Tian but I wasn't hers? Not really? I broke away to stand in
the corner as far away as I could from all three of them. Thought-filled silence
permeated the room so deeply that I could hear the grinding of drills from far
off in Perseus Two's belly. I hated it.

Auntie
Pria reached out and touched Sheng Tian's arm. "I don't mean to be rude,
but there's something I have to ask."

Sheng
Tian nodded.

"How
far did you take it?"

His eyes
dropped toward the floor. Mine did, too. I'm sure by the way he stared at his
hands that he was revisiting the same memories I was. We'd spent a lot of time
in the laundry pod over the past few cycles; I'd gone more than once to re-wash
clean clothes. I didn't ask, but I was sure he had some clean tunics in his
load occasionally. We spent our time mostly sequestered in the dark cubby-hole
between the bank of spinners and the far wall of the room, panting hard as we touched
each other beneath clothes we kept partially on, an arm in a tunic or a leg
still in pants, just in case someone else came to do laundry on the off-shift.

Good
memories. Good as sunshine. My body heated up just recalling the way his hands,
his lips, his body, felt meshed with mine. A hot blush crawled over my scalp,
again.

But it had
not all been physical. We talked. Hours passed wrapped in each other's arms as he
told me about his life and I distracted him with more kisses when he got too
curious about mine. I think, sometimes, he asked hard questions just to see how
far I'd take it. I surprised him, a time or two. Or more.

"We
have to know," Auntie said. "She's fertile."

Sheng
Tian buckled at the waist, almost to the point of falling over, and I heard him
let go a small cry. It was agony to my heart, but I couldn't go to him. Fear
trapped me in the corner. Fertile? I'd never heard the term used to refer to a
person. Somehow I was a good spot to drill? Ore rich? None of it made a damn
bit of sense.

"I
didn't know," he said.

Pria put
a hand on his back and helped him sit down on the chair next to Momma. He
looked at her, sadness and fear on his face. "I'm sorry. I didn't
know."

Momma
bowed her head, seemingly unable to look at him. I'd never seen her back down
like that before. "It's not your fault. We hadn't told her, yet." She
shook her head. "I thought we'd have more time."

Sheng
Tian looked up in surprise. "How old is she?"

Momma
was quiet.

Auntie
Pria answered him. "Fifteen." Sheng Tian's mouth dropped open. "Maybe,
sixteen. We're not really sure."

The
silence stretched more than I could handle. "Would someone please talk to
me?"

The
three of them looked at me and I swear I didn't know any of them. Auntie had
lost the softness in her round face. Momma looked at me the way she sometimes looked
at her thin Ledger before she stuffed it into the back of the bunk drawer after
shift. And Sheng Tian, he looked at me like he'd never laid eyes, or hands, on
me before.

"Sheng?"
I begged him to explain, to cut through the confusion and just be the best
thing in my life again.

He
smiled, but there was no sunshine behind it.

"I
need you to keep this between us," Momma said to Sheng Tian. "I need
time to get ahead of this situation. Do you understand that I'm asking you for
a personal favor?" she asked, emphasizing the last two words in a way that
confused me.

Sheng
Tian shook the sad smile off his own face. "I'm not looking to trade
favors, ma'am." He looked up at me. "I love her."

His
words worked like a magic spell, cutting my bonds of fear away and releasing me
from the corner. I went to him and sat on his lap, wrapping my arms around his
neck. "I love you, too."

"Then
do it for Honey-Girl," Auntie Pria said.

Sheng
Tian smoothed my long hair out of his face. "I won't say a word to anyone.
On my honor." He paused and buried his face in my hair. "Such as it
is."

Momma
reached a hand out to Sheng Tian. "This isn't your fault. You behaved with
honor, a man of your place and your station. You could not have guessed what we
did not want you to know." I'd never seen a deeper frown on her lips.

"Time
to go, before somebody happens upon this secret counsel of ours," Auntie
Pria said.

I clung
to Sheng Tian, but he stood up and set me on my feet. I could feel his honor
growing between us like a shield. Those invisible hard edges nearly sharp
enough to cut.

He
looked to me, then to Momma, then back again. He finally turned to Momma and
asked, "When can I see Honey-Girl again?"

It felt
so odd to hear him asking permission to see me. I teetered on the edge of fury.
I knew my life was not entirely my own: a lifetime of keeping out of the way,
sharing rations, and hoarding secrets could not be dismissed. But that's not
how it had been between Sheng Tian and me. With him I'd always made up my own
mind, made choices without having to ask permission. It had made me feel
grown-up, and now I felt like a toddler screaming to please, please be allowed to
run just one more lap around the deserted tubes before bedtime.

When Momma
looked at me I saw my Momma in her face again; tender, smart, loving. But there
was a new thing, too. I saw some of the respect she showed when she and Auntie
talked in hushed tones, late into third shift when they thought I was already
asleep in our bunk. She reached over and touched my flushed cheek. "Can't
stop the sun from rising, now, can I?"

"No,
Momma." I knew it was horrible to think such untrustworthy thoughts, but
in my heart I knew if she forbade us from seeing each other I would disobey her
and find Sheng Tian as soon as I could.

"Give
me a few shifts to figure this out," Momma said. "We need to answer a
few more questions. I'll get word to you when it's safe," she said to him.

"You'd
better get back to class," Auntie Pria said as she tugged at his shoulder.
"I'll be in touch. In person, no Coms."

Sheng
Tian kissed the top of my head and let Auntie lead him away. When the door slid
shut Momma turned to me and said, "There's a chance that young man is even
better than sunshine."

For some
odd reason that made me well up. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around
Momma, grateful for things I'm sure I didn't even understand. She hugged me
back and said the most shocking thing: "I'm sorry, Honey-Girl."

"Sorry?"
I asked; face still buried in her shoulder.

She
pulled back. "This isn't going to be easy."

When I
looked into Momma's eyes I saw strength battling with doubt. I wanted her to
know everything was going to be okay. "I'm good at keeping secrets,"
I said. "The best."

She sat
me down on the folding chair and rolled the stool up in front of me. "How
much of all that did you understand?"

Thanks,
Momma.
I knew that I wasn't the smartest person on the Rock, but I didn't
like being reminded of how little I'd really understood in their exchange. I
rolled my eyes at her and she stepped away from me, angry.

After
she took three deep breaths she said, "I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at
me." But her pointy finger shook at me. "But right now I can't handle
you acting like a little punk."

I knew that
voice, it was her dealing-with-little-punks voice, and she was dead serious.

"You're
a smart girl — but book smart, not people smart. Your time to be a child is over.
There's more than you can guess riding on every choice you make from here on
out."

Book
smart, not people smart.
I felt shame that Momma saw me that way, but I grudgingly
agreed. I'd really only interacted with a dozen real people in my whole life, but
Momma's TechPad had always been there. Most of what I knew in life had been
conveyed by electrons.

For the
first time it occurred to me that I had done something really wrong by falling
for Sheng Tian. I knew engaging in conversation with him in the laundry pod was
the opposite of the agreement I'd made with Momma when I convinced her to let
me go out on my own. The way my body reacted when he touched me told me there
was a chance it was actually bad. But bad like the things in Momma's thin
Ledger were bad, not bad like Perseus Two had been knocked out of orbit and was
about to ground itself into Saturn bad. But that's how solemn Momma's face
looked.

Frustration
at not comprehending things fought inside me with the fear of what it might
mean to understand. My instinct was to let the fear win; to bury my head back
in Momma's shoulder and let her take care of things. But Momma said my time as
a child was over, and I knew in my belly that meant no more hiding from the
truth.

I
climbed back onto Auntie's exam table as Momma re-settled in the corner chair, and
we waited. This time Momma's silence wasn't angry. I couldn't put my finger on
it, but I sensed a bit of inevitability mixed with excitement and an
undercurrent of resignation in the way Momma picked at her fingernails.