Hannu Rajaniemi - The New Voices of Science Fiction

“Issa, are you there?” This New Mom’s voice volume is up all the way and she is making the worried expression. Her face light is blinding. It swells in the hallway, beaming like a searchlight.

“Issa!”

Issa peeks over the kitchen table, looking from Old Mom to New Mom.

“There you are! I’m okay, Issa-boo. I just switched. Easy peasy!”

The caseworker from Dewey arrives to transition Trevor. She says that even though he’s going to a bigger house with other boys like him, Issa can draw pictures and write letters to him whenever she wants.

Issa doesn’t know if she should be sad that Trevor is leaving. She asks if he is going to come back, but nobody gives her a straight answer. She makes the blank face herself as they pack his clothes into a plastic bin. Before Trevor leaves, he is Good Trevor again, for a moment. “Maybe I’ll see you in school,” he supposes. He waves from the van as the door spelling D-E-W-E-Y slides shut. As it pulls onto the road, Trevor looks back through the windshield. Later in life, Issa will recall this as the last time she saw him.

It’s just New Mom and Issa in the kitchen and it’s really quiet now. New Mom wears Old Mom’s jumper. She printed the oatmeal-raisin cookies that Issa likes, but they’ve gone stale on the counter.

“Stealing clothes isn’t allowed,” Issa informs New Mom, who makes the question-mark face. Issa doesn’t know if New Mom is in charge now. Maybe she is.

Georg fixes her arm and brings her hair, but it’s different. Issa helps trim it to look like Old Mom’s hair. New Mom says it’s a five-star haircut and cleans the ends herself. When they come out of the bathroom, Old Mom is gone and there is just one Mom.

Issa sneak-tests this Mom sometimes, just to be sure.

“Remember when we made Easter eggs?”

“You made a piggy egg for Good Trevor and a rainbow one for me.”

“Remember when we had just ice cream for dinner?”

“Oooh, tricky Issa! You’re just making that up!”

Tickles. Laughing. Mom’s fingers are tickle spiders.

When she’s in fourth grade, Issa comes home to discover a baby sleeping in Trevor’s old room.

“That’s Mackenzie. You can poke your head in, but hush.” Mom has cleaned the room. The crib is set up with fresh bedding next to the changing station.

“It’s like my old room,” Issa whispers.

Baby Mackenzie lies with the backs of her tiny fingers resting against the corners of her eyes. She gives a sigh in her sleep, chest rising and falling. The mobile turns slowly overhead.

“Can she have Teacup Bunny?”

“Of course!” Mom makes her smile face, little heart fading in and out. “A big-sister present will make her very happy.”

An idea occurs to Issa and she winces. “Am I going to go away? Like what happened to Trevor?” She tries to keep quiet, but starts hiccupping, about to cry.

“No, Issa-boo. That’s different.” Mom leads her by the hand into the hallway and kneels beside her, holding her shoulders. “Trevor didn’t know how to not be mad. He wasn’t ready to be your big brother. It’s your turn, now, and I know you’re going to be great.”

Twelve-year-old Issa is allowed to walk home from school with a friend, so a girl from class joins her. They plan to do weekend homework together. But turning into the alley, the girl reads the plaque that says “Dewey Foster Home #12” and knows that foster means different , just not exactly how.

“Hey, why don’t we use the Wi-Fi at Corner Café instead?” she suggests. “The tables are empty after five. We can load up on macca frappés.”

“I dunno. How much does that cost?” Issa checks her empty pockets, pretending she has money.

Mom opens the door. “Oh, hello,” she greets the girl from class. “Are you Issa’s friend?”

“No way!” the girl exclaims. “You have a robot?”

“It’s my, um… this is my… this is Mom.”

The girl looks inside at the kitchen and her smile falls away. Then she pulls out her phone. “Oh, you know, I totally forgot. My dad said he wants me home early, because….” She tries to think of something, but then turns and just walks stiffly out of the alley.

Mom watches her leave, making her question-mark face.

Issa pushes past into the kitchen. “I wish you were normal,” she mutters, dropping her book bag and stomping down the hallway.

Mackenzie calls out, “Hey, Issa!” as Issa passes her door. “Issa?”

Issa pauses, pokes her head in.

“Look. Snakes.” Mackenzie holds up a picture of a tight bolus of snakes, snarling the paper from end to end. Just about every square inch is covered.

“Four ssstars. You misssed a ssspot,” Issa hisses, flicking her tongue.

“No I didn’t!” Mackenzie checks to see if it’s true.

“Hey, wanna see something?” Issa waves her over to her dresser. She pulls out one of the drawers and looks underneath. “Wait, I think it’s the other one.” She pulls the bottom drawer out all the way, emptying the contents onto the floor.

“Hey!”

“Shh. This is a Dewey secret.” Issa puts her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell Mom or Georg will throw it away. Promise?”

Mackenzie nods, and Issa overturns the drawer. Props it up. The entire wooden bottom is carved end to end with a picture of a hurricane blowing through a city. Cars are flying through the air. Moms and dads holding dogs at the end of leashes. Shopping carts, telephone poles and traffic lights and street signs are up in the sky, flying in a circle. In the middle of the chaos is a small figure wearing a shirt with a capital T.

Mackenzie points. “Who’s that?”

“You know how I showed you how to draw? Well, he showed me. He lived here in your room, before you were here.”

“Why is he breaking everything?”

“No, that’s the eye of the storm, where everything is calm. Storms blow around in circles. I think he is trying to stay in the middle because it’s safe there, and things stay still.”

Issa leans under a bus shelter across from the alley to her old foster home. She is now twenty-three. The neighborhood feels smaller, like it shrank in a dryer. The street feels narrower. The walk from the corner was shorter than she remembered. The alley looks cleaner, too. Not as dark and foreboding as it used to be, and the buildings have been repainted. Someone repaved the sidewalk and installed a bike rack along the curb.

Issa hasn’t been back since she aged out at eighteen. The funds in her Dewey account, having accrued through the years for the very purpose of tiding her over, had helped when finding an apartment and securing job training as a nurse. It was enough momentum to never look back.

But one day, she saw Mom from the window of her laundromat. It wasn’t her Mom, but a different Mom, with different plastics.

Issa crammed her wet laundry into her hamper and ran after that Mom, tailing her for several blocks to a nearby neighborhood. There, she discovered another Dewey home built onto the roof of another building, accessible by a stairwell. It looked sort of like her old home, but with different windows, and a small plaque by the door with the Dewey logo and street number.

Then, a month later, she saw another Mom, this one in blue. She followed that one to a smattering of boutiques encircling a small neighborhood park, where all the buildings were prefabricated. That Mom carried a bag of groceries through the front door of another Dewey home tucked up against the back side of a Pilates studio. A mural of puppet monsters and balloons covered it in a field of blue.