Vimbai nodded. “I’ll check on him first. See you in an hour or two.”
She tiptoed past the forest of what looked like coat hangers and fishing poles and hat racks, and across a brand new meadow, sprinkled with white and pink flowers, that hadn’t been there this morning, on her way to Felix’s room. Thankfully, he remained unmolested, and asleep. Vimbai thought of waking him but decided against it—there seemed no point in exposing him again to the shock of his transformation, to the realization that his parent universe was gone forever, his umbilicus to his home world, however tentative, severed with unnecessary brutality and machine-like efficiency, and that the effluvia of the dead universe were dumped onto the ocean surface. Vimbai wondered if it would affect marine life at all, or if they would be able to surface through the ghastly space remnants with no problems. Maybe waves would disperse it, she thought; maybe it was the sort of thing only people noticed, like time. No, it was better to let him sleep—perhaps his dreams would help him when he woke up.
Vimbai reached her room and curled under the blankets. She thought idly that she probably should hang up her wet clothes from earlier today so that they could dry properly, but dismissed the thought as something best left for later. Now, she had to concentrate on the strategic dreaming—she had to dream of something that would help them to retrieve Peb’s tongue. Vimbai closed her eyes and, before uneasy and fitful sleep claimed her, pictured the grotesque body of Peb, with many arms and hands and feet bristling from it in every direction, and the empty hole of its black crying mouth.
Vimbai’s dream felt strangely sedate, even ordinary —she dreamt of being a petulant twelve-year-old, shopping for shoes with her tight-lipped mother. It was important for some reason to get new shoes right before the school started again, and Vimbai’s mother was determined to make this experience as stressful as possible—even worse than the rest of obligatory back-to-school nonsense.
First, there was the issue of the overall effect malls had on Vimbai’s mother—there was something about the sheer volume of the superfluous consumption that put her in a foul mood as soon as she parked her car. Wherever they went afterwards, there were more and more irritating things, and the stream of muttered commentary never ceased; it eventually grew in volume, causing the shoppers nearby to look at them. Vimbai felt embarrassed and hissed at her mother, and she snapped back. And it went downhill from there.
Second, there were the shoes themselves. Vimbai, being twelve, liked them square-nosed and funky, with chunky heels and bright colors; her mother tended toward more demure and practical styles, preferably of the Mary-Janes variety; lime green and three inch wedges or platforms were out of the question.
Third, there was the political side—it took them forever to find shoes that were not made in a sweatshop, and made by those who were either the US unionized workers or at the very least fair wage workers in China or elsewhere in the world. That took forever, and it drove Vimbai insane—nothing she liked could possibly meet her mother’s approval, and if by some miracle it did, there was almost no chance that it would pass the fair labor test. Vimbai thought that it wasn’t fair that her shoes had to be a political statement by her mother, but there didn’t seem to be a way around it.
In the dream, Vimbai saw herself as if looking on from the outside, hovering disembodied and invisible, and looking with her adult eyes at the sulky and young version of herself—was she really that chubby as a kid? Young Vimbai scowled at the brown shoe that enclosed her foot like an ugly polyp. Her mother kneeled before her, tying the laces with uncalled-for vigor, as if she were trying to strangle Vimbai’s foot.
“It’s ugly,” Vimbai said. “I hate it.”
Her mother looked up—one of the very few moments in Vimbai’s life when her mother was looking up at her. “Vimbai, sahwira, please. These are the only ones in your size.”
“Mom, this is ridiculous. There are tons of shoes here. And some of them are not even ugly.”
“You know why we can’t get these,” her mother said, exasperated, her pupils narrowed into needle points, her voice so taut it was ready to tear into a scream at any second. Dangerous, dangerous, not the woman to toy with or to piss off just now.
Vimbai rolled her eyes. “Mom, buying a pair of shoes is not a political decision. It’s just shoes. It’s not fair to put it on me, you know? There are countries and governments and all these people in the world who could make sure that there are no sweatshops or child labor, so I can just get a pair of fucking shoes without drama and without you telling me how everything is my fault.”
To her surprise, her mother’s lips relaxed and her shoulders sagged, as if the tension wire had just been pulled out of her, leaving her without the ringing terrible support she relied on all these years. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I never said anything was your fault—why would you even think that?”
Vimbai shrugged and nodded at the ugly hoof on her foot.
Her mother laughed, unexpectedly. “I suppose it feels like punishment, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Vimbai kicked off the shoe, now that she realized that argument and screaming had been miraculously averted.
Her mom sighed and stood. She took Vimbai’s hand and pulled her along, away from the imitation leather benches and the low mirrors on the floor, away from the shelves crawling with mismatched shoes, away from the smooth hardwood floors and the restless children and annoyed mothers. “We’ll find you something,” Vimbai’s mother said. “Just understand one thing for me, all right? It’s not your fault, but sometimes we have to do what we can to correct wrongs done by other people. Sometimes those who committed them are dead or they don’t care or they don’t see it as a wrong. But this is what makes us human, this—the fact that we are able to fix other people’s mess. Even when it’s not fair.”
Vimbai nodded that she understood. “You can just get me canvas sneakers,” she said. “Now let’s go get a pretzel.”
Her mother smiled, nodding, and her firm warm hand squeezed Vimbai’s in unsaid gratitude. When Vimbai woke up, it was dark outside, and she felt like crying.
Maya woke up before Vimbai. She sat in the kitchen, darker than a storm cloud. “We’re out of coffee,” she announced as soon as Vimbai came downstairs.
“Bummer,” Vimbai mumbled, unwilling to meet Maya’s eyes. “Any tea?”
“Just loose green tea that’s been sitting in the cupboard since the previous tenants,” Maya said. “Whoever they were.”
Vimbai sniffed at the yellow paper package with green lettering, and laughed. “That’s not tea, that’s mate.”
“What’s the difference?”
“It has a better kick than coffee,” Vimbai said. “Only you have to drink it through special straws, otherwise the leaf debris would get into your mouth.”
“I don’t care,” Maya said with a suddenly renewed enthusiasm for life. “How do you make this thing?”
Vimbai put the kettle on and poured boiling water over what she judged to be sufficient quantities of a substance that resembled dried grass in appearance and smell.
Maya drank greedily. “Yuck,” she said. “Then again, it does have a kick.” She looked at Vimbai and stopped smiling.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “You look bummed out.”
Vimbai heaved a tremulous sigh and sniffed, all the while aware that it wasn’t really fair to Maya who did not have any family left. “I miss my parents,” she said. “Especially my mom.”
“I thought you fought a lot.”
“We did. We do. But it doesn’t matter; I still miss her.”
Maya nodded. “I suppose families are like that. Anything you want to talk about?”
Vimbai considered the offer—it was tempting, to tell Maya about her mother’s obsessive social consciousness and the liability it brought to her teenage daughter, amplifying the usual embarrassment every offspring had suffered while interacting with their peers in their parents’ presence. Vimbai suspected that her social status suffered doubly—for her mother’s insistence on responsible consumption and her accent. Even though she was a college professor, her accent and her color marked her as an immigrant, a first-generation, and Vimbai preferred to downplay her mother whenever possible—which was not often. Yet, all these complaints seemed petty now, especially in Maya’s presence. Maya, who did not have any parents, did not deserve to listen to Vimbai’s unsubstantiated bitching. Instead, she said, “I just regret that I never invited my mom over to this house. I think she would like it, and she would love you.”
Maya laughed, took a hasty sip of her mate, and coughed, her face turning dark purple.
Vimbai patted Maya’s back, trying to dislodge whatever renegade maté leaves had lodged in her throat. “No, really, she would. She would try and adopt you, of course. And then she would drive me nuts telling me how I should be more like you.”
“Why would she say that?”