John Adams - Lightspeed - Year One

She doesn’t answer, just prepares her rat for the maze.

Of course, hers finishes first. Mine gets stuck in a corner and goes into shock.

But what does it matter that her rat’s the smartest? The girl doesn’t have any common sense. She forgets her shoes all the time, puts the toothpaste in her mouth instead of on the brush, and doesn’t close the stall door behind her when she goes to the bathroom. No one wants to see how Jupitarians pee. Actually, everyone was interested, but once they saw it, they didn’t want to see it again.

Around the third week I finally get a look at her schedule. It’s in one of those ugly-ass Trapper Keeper things. As it turns out, Bibi is enrolled in my classes. Hers too. She’s taking nine at once. I didn’t think that was allowed. Bet they make exceptions for Jupitarians, figuring anyone from another planet is more intelligent than us. Bibi is pretty smart actually, gets perfect scores on the tests even though she says absolutely nothing in class.

And to top it all off, even the boys are into her. That guy Skippy won’t stop hanging around. He’s a complete dork, a grade-A loser. He stands outside our door like he’s the king’s guard. At night he brings Bibi ice cream and Popsicles. He follows her to dinner and leaves flowers outside our door, nasty weedy ones with ants. Bibi hangs them from the ceiling and the flowers die because there’s absolutely no light in the room. She won’t let me open the blinds, not even a crack, on account of her condition. So now we’ve got all these ants crawling across our ceiling between brown crusty root systems. And Skippy’s become this stalker. I find him in my closet behind my shoe rack and Dustbuster.

“Just playing hide-and-seek,” he says, and winks.

“Hide-and-seek, my ass,” I yell. “She doesn’t even have a vagina!”

I call my mother and tell her about Skippy and the icepacks and the ants. My mother tells me to be patient. She reminds me about Martin Luther King Jr. I tell her she shouldn’t send Bibi presents anymore. She puts something in all my care packages for Bibi. Cookies. Statuettes from the dollar store. Soup - for - the - Soul books. I tell her, “Bibi doesn’t need presents. You should see this girl’s checks. The government gives her plenty of money.”

My mother says presents are different. Bibi doesn’t have parents. She tells me to be mindful of that. I tell my mother no one on Jupiter has parents. She says that doesn’t sound right, and I agree. I mean a whole planet full of orphans. That just seems too sad to be true. She’s probably lying. Going for the sympathy vote. I could press the issue, but I don’t. I think about Martin Luther King Jr., and when Bibi comes back, I give the roommate chitchat thing another try.

“So who do you have the hots for?” I ask.

And she says, “Nobody really.”

I’m not quite sure how it works for Jupitarians, since they can self-germinate. She seems asexual, never mentions boys.

I say, “What about Skippy? He wants you bad.”

“Oh, him,” she says, as though she hadn’t noticed. She gets her shower caddy and heads down the hall. I stare at the door after she’s gone.

Maybe she’s bisexual. Maybe she’s gay. I wonder if she masturbates when I’m out of the room. It seems like genderless people don’t care about anyone but themselves. They might, but Bibi could give two shits about me.

By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, I’m getting pretty sick of my roommate. I mean how many times do you have to tell a person, “Put on your shoes,” before she gets it right? There’s snow on the ground, and she’s prancing in it like some leprechaun. She walks around in her bare feet, leaving these monster frog prints. Did I mention Jupitarians only have three toes? It’s like she needed to show them off. You’d think she at least would have tried to fit in. I think she liked being different. Everyone was always stopping by our room to see what the space alien was up to. I was happy to have a week at home without her.

But there was no place for her to go, and my mother offered our house, insisted, really, said, “Angela, if we were dead, I would hope someone would be nice enough to take you in for the holidays.”

I guess she was right. Bibi couldn’t very well go back to the moon. The least I could do was share my goddamn turkey with the girl. My turkey. My gravy. My family.

Bibi stayed in the guest room, and wouldn’t you know it, she got along great with my mom. Better than me. The two of them bonded like bears.

My mother showed her how to cook cranberry sauce and corn bread from scratch and, of course, how to pull the guts out of a turkey. Bibi was fascinated, watched my mother tear the bird’s insides out of its ass, leaving this hollow pink part in the middle. Bibi couldn’t stop staring at it, until finally I said, “It’s only a turkey. Gobble, gobble.”

Bibi didn’t answer, just looked at me like I’d threatened to cut off her head.

And my mother said, “Angela, why don’t you help your father clean the garage?”

Things went on like this for days, my mother acting like Bibi’s her new adopted daughter and treating me like chopped meat.

Then Thanksgiving Day, we sit down for dinner and, of course, my mother makes us hold hands. We do this every year, even though we’re a family that doesn’t go to church. Even though we’re a family that doesn’t pray. My mother insists we still believe in God.

She starts out as usual with, “Thank you, Lord, for the food before us.” Then she goes off on this new part, says, “Thank you for bringing this space child into our lives. May our civilizations be as peaceful as those of the Pilgrims and Indians.”

I want to say, “God, Mom, does everything have to be about Bibi?” Instead, I grab the nicest piece of turkey and dump gravy all over, a little extra in case Bibi helps herself to more than her fair share. But she doesn’t. She takes some potatoes and squash, a little cranberry sauce and corn bread, really small portions. My father tries to pass her the turkey.

“Don’t you like meat?” he asks.

My mother says, “Bill, maybe she’s a vegetarian.”

“No,” Bibi says. “It’s just that the turkey reminds me of my mother.”

I want to ask Bibi what the hell she meant at dinner, but she goes to bed early and shuts the door. The next day my mother takes us to the mall. I’m thinking she feels bad about the turkey thing because she tells us to buy any outfit we want. But Bibi doesn’t want clothes. She goes to the cooking store and buys a turkey baster. And now I’m really confused.

We go to the food court for lunch. We get Sbarro’s, chow mein, and Arby’s. My mom’s sucking a slushie. She gives Bibi a sip, says, “Tell me about your mother.”

Bibi says, “I never had a mother. No one does. She died before I was born.”

It’s been three months and this chick still hasn’t explained the “no parents” situation. So I say, “What’s the deal? No parents. No fathers. How exactly do you make babies?”

My mother gives me this look like I’m being rude.

“What?” I say. “You started it.”

Bibi swallows the rest of her egg roll, asks, “You wanna see?”

“What? Here?” my mother says.

She lifts her shirt, and there’s this hole where her belly button should be. It’s the size of a nickel, but it scoops in and up like the inside of a funnel. She does this right in the middle of the food court. People turn and stare. My mother tells her to pull down her shirt.

“So it’s like a vagina,” I say.

“Except you put your own pollen up there, push it in deep instead of flushing it.”

“What a relief,” my mother says. “I thought you couldn’t have children.”