John Adams - Lightspeed - Year One

“I can,” Bibi says. “But I won’t. Anyone who has a baby ends up dead.”

“Childbirth used to be risky here,” my mother says. “Thank God for modern medicine.”

“No,” Bibi says. “Procreation is suicide. Babies can’t come out the bottom. There’s no hole. To get out, they gnaw through your stomach. They eat the other organs on their way out.”

I sit there, shocked, my fries turning to mush on my tongue. “My God,” I say. “Why would anyone want to get pregnant?”

“They say it’s wonderful. Like being on heroin for nine months. The best euphoria there is.”

“Christ Almighty,” I say, “that’s some mad kind of population control.” I ask her if she’s heard of the one-child law in China, but she doesn’t answer.

“You’re in good hands now,” my mother says and gives her a hug, rocks her back and forth in her arms. Right there in the middle of the food court like she’s five years old. I just sit and stare at my food. As though I could eat after that.

My mother drops us off at school on Sunday, tells Bibi if she needs anything to call. We carry our laundry upstairs. Under our folded clothes, we find notes from my mother on matching stationery taped to bags of Hershey’s kisses. Mine says, “Loved having you home. So nice to spend time with you and Bibi.”

“Your mom’s really cool,” Bibi says. She props her turkey baster and note up on her dresser.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

Now that she likes my mom, she wants to be friends with me. Go figure.

I curl up on my futon with a piece of leftover corn bread. “So did you ever think of doing it?” I ask. “Just to see what pregnancy’s like? Don’t you think you will eventually?”

“Why would I do that?” she says.

“Don’t you think you’re missing out? You said it’s like drugs. I’d try that.”

“I don’t want to die,” Bibi says. “That’s why I’m here.”

“How does your planet feel about stem cell research?” I ask.

“They don’t understand why things should change.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of the same in America,” I say. “Stem cell research is a sin. Better watch out. They might throw you out of the country.”

She empties her chocolate kisses into the porcelain bowl my mother gave her.

“I think you’ll do it,” I say. “That’s what the turkey baster’s for, right? To stick the pollen all the way up?”

She just stares at me with her black eyes bugging out, and for a second I think she’s going to throw the bowl at my head. Either that or she’s going to cry. But she just turns and walks out of the room.

She didn’t come back that night. I wasn’t sure where she went. And frankly, I didn’t care.

Bibi didn’t speak to me for weeks. We gave each other the silent treatment and slammed the door a lot. I called my mother and told her I wanted to switch rooms. She said, “Angela, that’s not how we deal with our problems.”

I went to the RA and asked how long it would take to get a new room. She said I could file a complaint, but room changes were rarely approved.

It looked like Bibi and I were stuck with each other, at least for six more months. I started thinking I should muster up some sort of reconciliation. I thought about apologizing. Maybe she’d apologize for being such a bitch. I had a plan, was going to do it after my last class the Monday before finals. I swear I was going to.

But then I get back to my room, and Bibi’s in bed with Skippy. He’s straddling her stomach. His schlong’s way up in her belly, shoved up there real good. He’s riding her like a madman, and Bibi’s arching up so her belly keeps hitting his balls.

I slammed the door behind me and slept in the lounge.

Who did she think she was having sex with a human boy, and one from our floor? It’s not that I liked him. He was too pimply for me. But she’d been lying to me all semester, pretending she didn’t understand my crushes, and now this. She loses her virginity to Skippy. She loses her virginity before me. I couldn’t believe a Jupitarian had beaten me to it.

Still, I figured I’d be the bigger person. I figured we should talk. The next day, I get back from ballet, and she’s sitting at her desk reading chemistry, taking pages of notes, pretending like nothing happened. So I sit on my futon and sigh this huge sigh, hoping she’ll get the gist we need to talk. And when that doesn’t work, I say, “If you’re going to be one of those kinds of girls, we need a system.”

She says, “Skippy told me to put a bra on the door. I don’t have any. Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” I say. And then, “So what’s the big idea? I thought you were genderless. Were you lying about the self-germination?”

“I can’t get pregnant the human way. It’s got to be my own pollen. You’re not even the right species.”

“A girl who can’t get pregnant,” I say. “The boys are going to love that.”

She shrugs. She doesn’t even care that she just lost her cherry. It doesn’t even faze her.

“So did you orgasm all over good ole Skippy?” I ask. “Was he good? Can Jupitarians even get off?”

“You’re so stupid,” she says. “Would a species survive if they couldn’t orgasm?”

“Screw you,” I say. I grab my towel and shower caddy and slam the door behind me. Emily, our next-door neighbor, is just leaving for class.

“God,” I say, “that Bibi is such a whore. I wish she’d warn me before she fucks guys in the room.”

Emily says, “Really? Bibi? I didn’t know she could. We were wondering about that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “She’s a little bitch.”

“Didn’t she go to your house?” Emily says. “I thought you were friends.”

“Not anymore.”

I pound down the hall as hard as I can, though flip-flops don’t make much noise. I slam the bathroom door to let the whole floor know Bibi’s a skank. I let the hot water wash over my back. “Slut,” I say under my breath. And then a little louder, “At least I’m not a slut like you are.” I say it as though I’m talking to someone in the opposite shower stall. “You’re such a slut,” I say again and imagine Bibi across from me. I say it once more, almost shout it, “You’re the biggest slut in the galaxy, and I wish you’d go back to the moon!”

I’m not sure if it was Skippy who spread the word or Emily. It might even have been me, proclaiming loudly from the shower stall that day. Whoever it was, my bra ended up on the door an awful lot the next month. I left a note on her desk that said, “Stay the hell away from my underwear drawer.”

Bibi did a different guy nearly every day. I saw one of those little black books on her desk. She had all the boys on the hall penciled in. There were even some names I didn’t know. She really had turned into a whore. I wondered if they paid her or if she did it for free. I missed the old Bibi. The Bibi who forgot her shoes. The Bibi who studied all night. The Bibi who didn’t know jack shit about boys.

We didn’t talk anymore. We just came and went as though we didn’t know each other. I moved my futon into Emily’s room and slept there most of the time. I wondered what would become of Bibi. I figured her grades would plummet, and she’d get kicked out of school. But when I got back from Christmas break, her marks were posted to the wall, nine A’s. She’d completed a whole year of college in four months.

I’m not sure how she kept it up, the sex and the studies. Her second semester she upped her course load to ten. They even let her into a graduate class. Like I said, if you’re not from America, they let you get away with that shit.

Then around February she starts looking greener. I wonder if she has that seasonal depression thing. Then one day, I get back to my room, and Bibi’s jumping all over her bed. She’s got the music cranked as high as it goes, some god-awful Broadway crap, and she’s singing, “I feel pretty. Oh so pretty.” And she’s wearing this outfit that’s half her clothes and half mine with my sparkly panties around her head.