The Great Altruist (31 page)

       
    
"Fine!" his mother screamed. "Have it your way!" She turned and left the room, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

       
    
When the door closed, Genesis flew out from her hiding place.

       
    
"Genesis," he whispered, "I don't care where we go or who I become, please get me out of here right now!"

       
    
"What did you say?" his mother shouted from inside the bathroom.

       
    
Genesis looked at the bathroom door, shook her head disapprovingly, and turned back to James. "Hold on to something."

       
    
They disappeared a minute later, leaving only a confused man alone in his apartment with a young girl cursing him.

Chapter 7

           
"Am I still alive?" James said.

       
    
"Yes, you are," she said, sounding relieved.

       
    
“When are we?”

       
    
“Back home.”

       
    
“Oh.” He looked around his room for the first time in what felt like weeks. It took him a moment to readjust to the sight of his bedroom walls, as they were now clear of all the pictures of Katherine. "You're not mad at me, are you?" he asked Genesis, who was floating above him with her arms folded over her breasts. She did not look pleased with their situation.

       
    
"No, I'm not mad."

       
    
"Then what's that look for?"

       
    
She shook her head. "You just don't realize what you're putting me through, James. What you did back there was so..." She hesitated, fearful of telling James what she felt right now. "It scared me. I shouldn't have put you in this position."

       
    
"I put myself in this position, Genesis. You just got me here."

       
    
"Look, I'm not mad that you didn't tell me what you were going to do. In a way, I understand why you did it."

       
    
"Then what's wrong?"

       
    
"I'm just mad at myself for going through with this again. I know you love your parents, and you've shown that. But maybe it's time to call it quits before you really get hurt."

       
    
It wasn't difficult for James to see the wisdom of her advice. He
did
want to stay home. He wanted to stay with Genesis and he loved her dearly for her sacrifice. He also received a wealth of knowledge about his family, not to mention the chance to go back and learn from his mistake with Katherine. But for James, all this wasn't enough. He now knew something about his family that he could not sit idly by and watch. Maybe preventing his mother from being molested would change the outcome of her future marriage. Or maybe it would change whom she later married. And maybe it would change everything, even whether
James
was born or not. Undoubtedly, changing something as emotionally deep as child abuse would change the direction of her entire future. His very existence depended on her life course continuing down the path it began. He saw now why Genesis had discouraged him from doing this to begin with: it was too hard to make the right decision once you knew all the facts. It was even harder once you knew that your own life was in the way of making things right. The only way to make his mother's life better was to sacrifice his own. But James knew that option was hardly the way to repay Genesis, the woman he loved. "You're right," he said.

       
    
"I know this isn't easy for you."

       
    
"How would you know how hard this is, Genesis? I know you're trying to be empathetic with me but somehow I doubt you know how much this is hurting to have to give up on my parents."

       
    
"Why do you think I’m so against this? To deny you happiness? I do know how you feel. I had to give up someone very precious."

       
    
"Tell me what happened."

       
    
Genesis at first said nothing, but only shook her head. Soon, she spun around and landed on the nightstand beside James’s bed. “Jadzia was nineteen and just freed from a concentration camp when I met her. She was pure, kind-hearted, and completely self-sacrificing in a way I couldn’t understand. All she wanted to do was see her parents again. But then she made a choice: to prevent World War II. I let her. I used my powers to fill her head with knowledge of the war and it killed her. I lost the only family I had because I was too careless with my powers. I gave into her because she was important to me, and she died anyway.

           
“I loved Jadzia like a sister, but James - I love you so much more. I’ve never felt this way before. Call me selfish, but I cannot risk losing you. I can’t go through that again.”

       
    
“So what do I do now?” he asked. “Go back to my life here, where my family has crumbled and I’m all alone?” He looked away and stared out the window to the yard below and imagined what the future would be like if his parents divorced. Behind him, a tear fell down Genesis’s cheek and she disappeared in an instant. He turned around, but she had already reappeared.

           
“Come with me,” she said. “There’s something I need you to hear.”

           
“What are we going to do?” he said.

       
    
“
You
are going to listen.”

       
    
Moments later, James awoke in a room that was the strangest yet. Judging from the wallpaper and carpet, he concluded it was from a time long before his own. The room looked strangely familiar though: it looked a lot like a room in his grandparent's house.

       
    
"I'm almost afraid to ask, but who and where am I?" he asked Genesis, who was sitting on a nearby windowsill watching the clouds collect. His voice sounded young when he spoke. After a quick glance at his reflection in the window, he could see he was a very small boy.

       
    
"We're in your Uncle Thomas's room. You're three years old," she replied, never taking her gaze off the clouds.

       
    
"Why am I here?"

       
    
"You need to listen to something," she said, turning from the window
and
flying over to him.

       
    
"I don't know want to learn anymore, Genesis. I've seen enough. I want to go home."

       
    
She touched his face gently and looked consolingly into his eyes. "We will go home. I promise. This is the last thing you need to hear."

       
    
"I'm afraid to ask but where is my mother this time? I guess she'd be around five years old."

       
    
"Yes," Genesis said. "In fact, she's next door talking to your grandmother."

       
    
"How do you know that?"

 
          
She said nothing more.

       
    
James crept slowly into the closet and pressed his ear up to the wall adjoining his mother's bedroom:

       
    
"...but why does he do that to you?"
James heard his five-year-old mother ask his grandmother.

       
    
"Because I didn't do what he told me to do,"
she answered her daughter.

       
    
"I don't like when Daddy gets mean!"
she cried.

       
    
"I know you don't, Becky. And if we never got married, he wouldn't hurt me like this."

       
    
"But don't you love Daddy?"
the little girl asked.

       
    
James's grandmother took a deep breath and let out a disquieting sigh.
"No, I don't,"
she said plainly.

       
    
"Then why did you get married?"

       
    
James heard nothing through the wall for a brief moment as his grandmother seemed to be thinking of a way to answer.

       
    
"Because, Becky,"
his grandmother began,
"I was pregnant with you."
The young girl gasped.
"So, you see, if I didn't have you, then Daddy wouldn't hit me like he does. And we wouldn't be married, and I would be happy."

       
    
Through the wall in his uncle’s room, James cried. When his grandmother left the room a moment later, James heard his mother's gentle whimper echo through the closet alongside his own.

       
    
He stumbled out of the closet and threw a toy against the wall, shattering it. "I hate my family!" he yelled in his three-year-old voice.

       
    
Genesis could only look at the young boy and offer what little comfort she could. She sat on his shoulder and nestled herself against his neck as he collapsed to the ground and cried.

       
    
"Why did you bring me here?" he cried to Genesis. "To show me how messed up my family is? I get it now! I don't want to see anymore!"

       
    
She flew off his shoulder and landed directly in front of him, looking deep into his eyes. "You know why we're both here," she said calmly. "You wanted to know why your parents divorced and now you know everything! The plain and ugly truth of it."

       
    
"I take it back! I don't want to know!" he shouted.

       
    
"It kills me to see you hurt like this. But can you see now where your parents’ problems began? The demanding grandfather, your father's insistence to
put
his own desires last; the predator stepfather; not to mention the grandmother that tells her five year-old daughter that
she
is the source of her husband's abuse. No wonder your mother hated every man in her life! They were all jerks!"

       
    
He took a deep breath and calmed himself. He realized what he should have all along: that his parent's divorce was a lifetime in the making. "Is there anything you think I can do to save them?"

       
    
"That really depends, doesn't it?" she said while shaking her head.