Carole Maso - Mother and Child - A Novel

The mother, rose-laden, having done what she has come to do, drifts off. The smell of roses is overwhelming. German scientists say that the scent of roses perceived during REM sleep leads to the most astonishing of all dreams.

JUST LIKE ALL children, the child would leave before too much longer. The electronic world, shining and mysterious with its bleeps and trills, beckoned.

The mother would pack a little bundle for the child to carry there. In the sack she would put a pinecone, an acorn, a branch of berries, beeswax, an evergreen sprig.

WHEN THE GRANDMOTHER from the North Pole gets back into the boat for a moment and lies down under a blanket of roses and closes her eyes and rests awhile and smiles, she is really paying homage to the mother; she is really saying that she thinks it’s okay — the person her daughter has become.

IT WAS REALLY all right: the mother was lost, but to what no one knew — to her daydreams, or visions, or whatever it was, as the child too would one day be lost to the glyphs floating past on the blue screen. The Grandmother from the North Pole beckons her daughter to join them in the next room on that cool electronic field, but the mother, sparkling in her own right, demurs, and gently closes the door.

For the mother, there is no obvious way out of the labyrinth.

PERPETUAL READINGS WERE being held in the hopes of setting off a Memory Chord. On the second day of the readings there seemed to be some eye flickering that signaled recognition. Photographs had been placed on an altar, and the elders stared at them. Once I could see birds, but now simply the presence of birds is enough, one of the elders, the bird-watcher, had once said.

All stood on a veranda and looked out onto an indefinite field. In the near distance, a figure could be seen sitting under a fig tree.

How beautiful is the aging process, the Grandmother from the North Pole thinks.

WHEN THE GRANDMOTHER from the North Pole becomes suddenly woozy and falls to the floor, the mother far off in the Valley rises automatically from her bed and lifts the window sash where snow has begun to fall. She looks for her where the medians of longitude converge.

The mother’s hair stands on end. She is something winged now as she leaves the window. She is iridescent.

THE CHILD PULLS at the mother’s sleeve. They had fallen asleep in front of the giant screen. Except for the mother and child, the theater has been vacated. She points to the dark stage as if something is about to happen. And suddenly before them. Mother, look!

THE EARTHQUAKE IN GinGin Province killed over ten thousand children. Mothers rushed to the sites. Most of the schools were too flimsy to hold children in the event of a catastrophe. The wreckage is filled with the bodies of children. On top of the findable children’s bodies, small branches of pine, evergreen sprigs have been left. Many of the children’s backpacks remain even now, and books are everywhere.

Too many of the dead are children in a country where families are allowed to have one child, and one child only. Some parents are digging with their hands for their only children, but many of the only children are now dead, and even if permission were granted, some of the parents are too old to have another.

THE SCHOOLS WERE among the most flimsy buildings in GinGin. The GinGin mother is not flimsy, but she is at the mercy of the Flimsy World she has placed her child in. Schools are a keystone in any community. Schools are relied upon in a society to fulfill one of the most important missions of all. The schools should have been greatly bolstered and fortified.

The bodies there had turned to vapor, and the city was enveloped by ghosts. If the GinGin government acquiesces for a time and allows people to conceive another child to replace the one under the rubble, this time the people of GinGin Province vow they will build a better child. Instead of waiting for the schools to be upgraded, they will take matters into their own hands. The people are determined that next time they will build a fortified child, a child with an astounding rebar structure and reinforcing rods. A guard against disasters and further tragedy.

The government, for once in accordance with the parents, thinks that instead of retrofitting the buildings, it would be better to come up with a way of retrofitting the children, seeing as they are such precious resources to their parents. In the future, the goal of the government as well will be to build a better child. An indestructible child. A child with a more solid armature — an earthquake-resistant child. Concrete slabs might replace the thighs, and they might be reinforced with steel rods and supporting braces. Iron rods in concrete could boost the resilience of the child’s central columns. As an early warning system, their blood would be designed to detect the motion of magma, the bubbling and broiling from a distance moving toward them. Children then might walk with ease through the Trembling World, and there would be no long banners with dead children’s names written in their parents’ blood. A child fifty stories tall might be the norm. A child like no child anyone has ever seen before.

BUT FOR STRUCTURES and children to withstand an earthquake, the ground itself must hold together, and so along with building a better child, it will be necessary to build a better earth. When loose or wet soil shakes, parts of the soil rotate, and the soil then acts like a liquid or a gelatin.

A foundation firmly connected to solid rock, deep in the ground, is required. Beams and columns of child must be strapped together on the rocks with metal, and the floors and tops of the child must be securely fastened to the walls. Then the child must be sprayed with liquid concrete and reinforced with steel brackets. The brain must be bolted to the skull.

A certain amount of swaying and flexing must be built in. The future is a swaying motion. A tall girl who does not flex and sway might crack or collapse.

THE SOUTH TOWER was the second tower to be hit, but it was the first to fall. She watched it buckle and sway and warp. Firefighters who reached the crash zone before the building broke up described seeing two pockets of fire. This is what she knows: that buildings should be able to withstand disaster, that mothers once standing should continue to stand, that children should never perish. A plume of smoke appears behind the mother’s head.

OUTSIDE THE SCHOOLHOUSE amidst the rubble, a mother from GinGin Province was weeping. I hope God will give my daughter a chance to survive. I can lose anything in this world — except my daughter.

THE SCHOLAR CHONG Heng invented the first earthquake detector in the year 132. On a bronze vase, eight dragonheads and toads were arranged to work like a pendulum, and when the earth shook, a brass bell would pass from the mouths of the dragons to the mouths of the toads.

A mother sits next to the rubble of what once was her child’s school and waits. She refuses to move. Weeks pass, months.

In addition to the fortification of the children, the mothers’ hearts must be replaced next time with stainless steel hearts.

THE SOUL DOES not adhere to the bones of the deceased but flies up and is free, this the mother believes. The Egyptians thought the soul was placed in an eternal chamber, and a sheep was sent to guard it.

THE PRODIGY PLAYS a black cello made of carbon. In fact, all the instruments are carbon for the occasion, as carbon fares better in frigid temperatures and there is now the question of the unseasonable cold to consider. There are no flowers here today, only carbon and cold. A carbon cello has a flooding, deeper sound than a cello of wood.

GIRLS ARE GATHERED together and held for one more afternoon in the light of the schoolyard. The next time you see them, they will have disappeared, and young women will have taken their place. The girls ride their horses, talk their talk, giggle, sing loo-loo and la la la. This is the day when childhood becomes irretrievable, though no one will realize it until some time after. Though we could not have predicted the moment in advance — all had changed, as if in an instant.