John Adams - Lightspeed - Year One

“What the hell’s going on?” I say. “I thought I told you not to touch my stuff.”

She jumps off her bed and dances this little jig. She looks so goddamn ridiculous I have to laugh.

“Did you find some solution to Jupiter’s baby problem?” I ask. “Is your research going well?”

“No,” she says. “I’m pregnant.”

“You’re not,” I say. “I thought you couldn’t.”

“Well, it’s not like I had proof it was impossible,” she says. “I guess it is. I’m pregnant with a half-human baby.” At this, she bursts out laughing. Pollen puffs out her ears in yellow clouds.

“Who?” I say. “Whose baby is it?”

“A boy’s,” she says. “A human boy’s.” And then she’s surrounded by pollen again. She swirls it around with her hands. “Can you believe that?”

“Are you going to keep it?” I say. “If you give birth, it’ll kill you, right?”

“I’m giving birth to the first half-human, half-Jupitarian baby ever!” she screams. She rips the panties off her head and twirls them in the air.

“Can’t you get an abortion? Those are common here. They’ll get rid of it. You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t want an abortion,” she says. “I want to be eaten alive.”

I didn’t know what to say. She’d turned ten types of crazy. It must have been that euphoria she told me about. I began to wish I had a normal human roommate I could take to the abortion clinic so things would be better. I’d never had a friend with a life-threatening illness. Only grandfathers and uncles. And they died. There was nothing I could do. Bibi had lost it. Her condition was terminal, and she didn’t even care.

In the weeks that followed, Bibi stopped seeing the boys. I moved my futon back into our room, and we started talking again. I became Bibi’s bodyguard, shielding her from all the male scum on the floor. Boys would stop by and say, “I’m here for some alien sex.”

I’d say, “Fuck off, asshole.” And they’d go away.

By March, Bibi had given up her studies. No more stem cell research. Instead, she starts holing herself up in our room making sculptures out of dining hall silverware. She hangs them from the ceiling where the ants used to be and opens the windows to watch the dead flowers blow in the breeze.

We start having parties in our room every weekend. Everyone brings beer and fills up our fridge. The RA doesn’t give a damn because Bibi got her through chemistry first semester, and she hopes she’ll get her through physics next fall.

I call my mother and tell her we’re getting along great. I tell her Bibi is the best. My mother’s glad we’re back to being friends, says she knew we’d work it out. I don’t mention that Bibi is pregnant. My mother would be disappointed. She wouldn’t understand.

Finally, Bibi and I do everything together like roommates should. We order pizza at midnight, rate the guys on the hall, redecorate the room. We move the beds against one wall and scatter huge pillows on the floor. Bibi finds these red Christmas lights on sale at the hardware store and hangs them up. She turns them on and lies under her swaying spoons, pretends she’s watching hot liquid hydrogen swirl around Jupiter from the moon. She says, “Angela, come lie with me. We can watch Jupiter together. Better enjoy me while you can. Pretty soon, this baby will eat its way out.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I say.

“Like what?” She dangles her three-toed feet in the air, says, “It’s okay. It’s only death.”

By April she’s really showing. She’s got this great green hump of a belly, draws faces on it with finger paint and calls it Skippy Junior. Every day she plans something different. She says, “Let’s take Skippy Junior to the zoo. Let’s take Skippy Junior ice skating. Let’s take Skippy Junior for parachute lessons.”

I say, “Bibi, I’ve got classes.”

She says, “I’m going to be dead in a few months. You can study then.”

So we go ice skating and snorkeling and rent lots of porno and drink slushies. Bibi does this thing with her turkey baster, fills it up with slushie and lets it volcano into her mouth. Half goes in. Half gets all over, which makes the ants come back. But this is kind of great, just like before when we hated each other and Skippy was a stalker. Back when Bibi studied all the time and didn’t care about parties or drinking or boys.

The new Bibi is completely different. She dances all over the room, begs me to go with her to clubs, says, “You gotta teach me that booty bounce thing.” She puts on a sparkly shirt and lipstick, a short skirt and heels. She tapes a paper bow tie to her stomach and says, “Skippy Junior’s ready.”

So that’s what we do. We go to the only dance club in town, Freaky Willy’s. And I teach her to dance the American way. I show her how to grind like a skanky ho.

We run into Skippy at the club. He’s there with some guys. His acne looks a bit better. He buys us both drinks, Coronas all around. You’ve got to give him credit. At least he got us good beer. Then he wants to dance with Bibi. He seems genuine enough. Anyhow, there’s no way he can get sex with her funnel closed up. One of those really bouncy songs comes on with the flashing lights, and Bibi drags Skippy to the dance floor and rocks it out.

I sit at the bar and watch. She’s picked up the booty bounce, no problem. She looks kind of sexy gyrating her tiny hips, her shoulders bopping with the music. In this light, she doesn’t even look green. Skippy puts his hand on her back and tries to shake his pelvis too. But you can tell he’s not the dancing type.

Later, he walks us home, and Bibi invites him in. I go to Emily’s room until he leaves.

When he’s gone, I ask, “So does he want you back? Is it his baby?”

“It’s nobody’s baby,” she says. “On Jupiter, no one belongs to anyone else.”

That was the last time I saw Bibi. When I woke up, she was gone. There was a note on my desk that said, “Thanks for teaching me to dance. Thanks for sharing your family.” Most of her stuff was still there. I assume she went back to Jupiter, but who’s to be sure. I don’t like to think of other possibilities.

After that, there were lots of policemen and school officials who wanted to know where Bibi went. I told them I didn’t know. Word got out to the papers. Skippy came by our room and put a bouquet of weedy flowers by the door.

He said, “I really loved her. I don’t know why she had sex with all those other guys.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sure it was your baby.”

I invited him in. We sat on Bibi’s bed real close, and it felt better, that warmth, being next to someone who understood. We stayed like that for hours, shoulder to shoulder, not even talking. When it got dark, we slid under the covers. I was wearing those sparkly panties, the ones Bibi tossed on the floor that first night, the ones that were Jupiter. Skippy slid his hand down the front, brushed his fingers against what I imagined to be Bibi’s moon. I didn’t even mind when he aimed his boner at my belly button. I guided it lower, and he found the right hole.

“What if she comes back?” he asked.

“She’s gone,” I said, and kissed him hard.

He moved his hips back and forth and buried his head in my neck. My eyes locked on the turkey baster on Bibi’s dresser, and I tried to imagine that she had never been here. That she had never existed. That I had gotten here on my own.

Eliot wrote: Picture your brain as a room. The major functions are like furniture. Each in its own place, and you can move from sofa to chair to ottoman, or even lie across more than one piece of furniture at the same time. Memory is like air in the room, dispersed everywhere. Musical ability is a specific accessory, like a vase on the mantle. Anger is a Doberman pinscher halfway out of the door from the kitchen. Algebra just fell down the heat duct. Love of your sibling is a water spill that evaporated three weeks ago.