Forgotten Country

It was just regular growing up, of course, the kind everyone does - but it still hurt him, I know, like the memory I have of the time he dropped me off at the train station when I was going back to Chicago. I could see him through the window of the train, but he couldn't see me through the tinted glass. I waved, trying to get his attention as he walked up and down the platform trying to figure out where I was sitting. From up in the train, he looked so small. If he'd seen me, he would have smiled and waved, but he didn't know I could see him, and the sadness on his face was exposed to me then. He looked lost. He stood there on the platform a long time, even after my train started pulling away, still trying to catch a glimpse of me waving back.

My mother did not want to go to America: this much I knew. I knew it by the way she became distracted and impatient with my sister, by the way she stopped tucking us into bed at night. I knew it from watching her feet, which began to shuffle after my father announced the move, as though they threw down invisible roots that needed to be pulled out with each step.

Each life contains as much meaning as all of history.

My father told his acquaintances about that for years, even though both Hannah and I had given up on wormholes and the Child Genius series very soon afterward. That must have made my father sad, as it had made him sad when we stopped being excited about family vacations, when we stopped being open about our interests, and left home and pursued lives of our own. It was just regular growing up, of course, the kind everyone does, but it still made him sad, I know, like the memory I have of the time he dropped me off at the train station when I was going back to Chicago. I could see him through the window of the train, but he couldn't see me through the tinted glass. From up in the train, he looked so small. If he'd seen me, he would have smiled and waved, but he didn't know I could see him, and the sadness on his face was exposed to me then. He looked lost. He stood there on the platform a long time, even after my train started pulling away, still trying to catch a glimpse of me waving back.

Together they flew, in all their bright colors, streaming toward the inevitable cliff: leaping like deer. Their stride broke, almost at the edge. And then in a rush they strained against their clothes, against their own bodies, and broke free into flight. They burst into the air as silently as the beating of wings, like so many scattered leaves: each falling maiden with her skirts blossoming through the rush of air, opening like a fan as she flew toward the ocean below. Together they fell like a downpour of brightly colored rain, each petal suspended in air before drifting down to the crashing of the sea.