Jenny runs after the balloon, but I catch her before she reaches the end of the driveway.
The oncoming car swerves and the driver shouts from his open window. I cover the child’s ears, although she’s overheard that word before from her father’s lips.
The balloon swells and swells and swallows the mailbox across the street. Jenny laughs, bending over double to free herself from my protection as her small body shakes.
She is such a pretty girl, with tiny body parts meant to grow as time passes. I hope I am here to watch this phenomenon unfold.
“Nan!”
Jenny runs back into the yard and calls to me from the swingset. Her mother stands inside the house at the kitchen window, waving her hand with an encouraging smile, but the girl laughs with her bright little face towards me. The mother backs away from the glass, scowling.
“Make another balloon, Nan. Make a pink one.”
Her demand is couched in the sweetest voice, pure and light. Some of her storybooks mention angels and fairies, and I wonder if I can apply these names to her when she looks at me in this way. Other times, she is tired and anxious, or fearful and whiny.
She is no fairy then.
“Only white ones, Jenny. They come from the sky, where everything is either blue or white.”
This is not quite true. Sometimes the sky is gray or lavender, but she doesn’t question my claim.
“That’s okay, Nan. I only want to hold it. They escape so fast.”
These times, when we are alone together and the moon is visible, are the only ones during which I have the privacy to conjure the moonlets. The first time, I thought Jenny was asleep on a soft blanket I knit during the winter, as the spring breeze tickled the fine hair of her ponytail.
But she woke as the moonlet seared, its burning silence audible at a threshold she could hear, too. The parents never mentioned it, however, and I was relieved by their deficiency.
Now, Jenny wants to catch the balloons as they jolt into being, as I call them from their homes in the sky-silence, but they are afraid. Afraid, and hungry.
The mailbox will be difficult to explain. Perhaps I won’t have to concoct a tale about its disappearance, since it did not belong to this family but the neighbors. It is a small thing to worry about, and I am not programmed to worry as a habit.
In spite of this, I believe I do.
“I’m hungry, Nan. Is dinner ready?”
The mother cooks, as it is not part of my work distinction as a child caregiver, but sometimes I help with small tasks she assigns. If she shows me the process once, I can manage the outcome again and again without further prompts.
If only the moonlet conjuring worked in the same manner.
The first time I saw the moon from the child’s bedroom window, I stared so hard my eyes grew dry. The body oil, sticky and thick, was a bothersome remedy, but my distaste was dim in light of this magical discovery.
For the moon is truly a magical creature.
My processor, my innermost core, lurched inside my chest, like the heartbeat of a human. I found myself perched at the window sill, the frame pulled up so I might leap towards the glowing beacon above.
“Nan,” the mother interrupted, bustling into the room as Jenny changed into her pajamas. “I have a meeting in the morning, so be sure your alarm is set early.”
I do not have an alarm inside me as she believes, but I nodded in agreement. It is best to keep my mouth shut if I want to stay in this arrangement.
And I do. The way this house is situated, with the child’s room positioned in such a manner that most nights I can view the moon in whichever way it chooses to present itself, is worth whatever demands are made of me.
“The moon is magic,” Jenny told me that night. “It grants wishes.”
She was earnest in her declaration, and while I know that children do not have all the mental and emotional capabilities to distinguish between fact and fiction, I believed her.
A wish.
The mother does not know or does not understand that my hearing extends beyond that of humans, because she speaks of me in annoyed tones to the father.
“Jenny is too attached to her,” she whined last night as the two of them conversed behind their closed bedroom door. “And she’s moody, like a teenager.”
When the father laughed, the mother growled in a low tone like a disgruntled animal.
“Isn’t that what you wanted? For Jenny to leave you alone, so you could focus on your work? Besides, the Nan can’t be moody. She doesn’t have feelings like we do, so it’s silly to say so. If she’s a problem in another way, one you aren’t making up, we can bring her back to the lab. She’s the first and only, so there are bound to be glitches, although I can’t say I’ve noticed any yet.”
Today, we walk to the park, where a playground with swings and a plastic slide tempt Jenny into activity. I document her movements so a report will be ready for her parents to view, if and when they have time and interest. It is not for me to judge them if they do not.
Something fades in the pale blue sky above the wooded area beyond the playground. I stand and stare, unsure if I am imagining the splotches of translucent white.
I don’t imagine; it is not part of my programming.
First and only.
“Nan!”
Jenny shouts behind me as I curl my fingers into loose fists.
A wish.
My processor slows to a frequency only the moon can hear, without my direct intervention. Could my body, this forged collection of pieces parts, be acting on the will I am not meant to have?
I have conjured before, but with thought, with effort. It has not happened before my express direction.
Until now.
A moonlet burbles from the clouds, soft and succulent, its filmy skin a silvery glint under the wary late afternoon sun.
A wish.
First and only.
Jenny screams behind me, her excitement palpable in the cooling air.
She has many toys and books, in multiples. Her parents own several cars and household items in duplicate. Why am I singular?
I open my mouth to tell the moonlet my wish. To tell it to bring forth another like me, another who is not moody, who is the object of a child’s attachment. Who will knit blankets in the winter, and watch the moon shuffle in and out of clouds in the summer night sky.
The moonlet rushes to the child, who reaches out with her arms wide and welcoming.
When the explosion is over and the fine white dust glitters in the empty space left behind, I turn and walk away from the park. Tonight the moon is full, and I will conjure another moonlet from Jenny’s room to explain my wish again.
No Rest for the Wicked
The tire service shop is busy today, and I stare out of the grubby window, watching cars and old pickup trucks huddle together in a haphazard line on the street as the stoplight takes its time to change. The flat waiting for me this morning when I opened the garage door was a nasty but not unexpected surprise, not when my husband whispe…
November Flash Fiction
echo My grandfather pushes me towards the swings on the playground, mumbling as he lights a cigarette. When the echo burbles along the cracked asphalt, I shout, dancing away from the willowy streak.
I don’t drink coffee anymore but I adore matcha. You can buy me one or just click over and take a look at some random photos and snag a free black cat lined notebook page PDF to print or use with any PDF annotation app.
This is beautifully written. The voice comes across with a subdued intensity that fills me with resonant heartache. Thank you for sharing this.