The weight of history (moodpost)

"We all grow up with the weight of history on us.  Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies."
-Shirley Abbott

*** *** ***

4 October 2010, Chicago, IL

"I still don't see why she's asked me.  You, I understand.  You're your father's son; you've always been the level-headed one. I'm half a world away and rarely likely to be closer."

There was a short delay on the line before he answered.  It was often like this.  They'd gotten used to it many years before, when it was not just a faint distortion and a slip of time but pervasive white noise and words that clipped in and out at odd intervals.

"Because you're family, and because you would do anything in your power to see he was raised right.  That's all she's looking for, Emily."

"But she has sisters."

"But she asked you."

"I don't know what I'm going to tell her."

"That you've booked your tickets, and you're coming home, and you'd love to be Christopher's god-mother."

"You don't understand, Gregory.  My life isn't simple anymore.  I can't take something like this on lightly."

"Emily?  Your life never was simple.  And that's probably part of why she asked you."

"Because Rhee likes complications?"

"Because you don't take something like this lightly."

"What if I'm not any good at it?  What if I screw him up irreparably?"

"That's why we have each other.  And I wouldn't worry about it too much. You're half a world away, right?  How much harm can you do?"

"Cheeky."

"You walked right into that one..."

*** *** ***

27 October 2010, Chicago, IL

Not three days have passed since she walked onto Mercy's ICU ward and found a familiar Orphan broken and battered with the shadow of a Singer haunting his bedside.  Emily hasn't slept well.  She's not really stopped moving since.  In the past seventy-two hours, she's learned the word for metaphysical death taint; she's rediscovered a haunting, hollow weariness.

The headache starts somewhere near the base of her skull, it wraps around through her teeth, crawls up her jaw and into the narrow place between her eyes where it resonates, thrums toward a fever-pitch she cannot push away.  No appropriate amount of alcohol seems to make a dent, no analgesics, no manageable dose of caffeine -- trying these things in conjuction is contraindicated, she has to remind herself. 

And there's a kitten to look after.  An adorable, blue-eyed monster to terrorize her grading assignments and sleep in her shoes.  If An had not been so insufferably cute, Emily would have evicted the house-pet shortly after bringing her home but somehow, somehow the fluffy, cable-destroying Menace of Knit Blankets was permitted amnesty.  Thus far.  Probably for moments like this, when she's fallen asleep in Owen's chair, and is batting lazily at some unseen annoyance in her sleep.

There is no one in the vast, wide world that Emily Littleton actually wants to talk to, just now, and yet she picks up the phone when her father calls.

It is a mistake. In her haste to get off of the ill-fated telephone call, she ends up verbally committing herself to Christopher's christening, and dinner with her parents in New York in the long layover of her return flight.

And Christmas in Provence.  She cuts off the call before they speak for her New Year as well.

She sets her phone down a little more soundly than she'd meant to, and the sound echoes off the coffee table and startles An awake.  The kitten opens one eye, then the other, and sinks her tiny, savage claws into Emily's favorite throw blanket before yawning and drifting off again.

*** *** ***

22 November 2010, Chicago, IL

It is a busy night at O'Hare when Emily makes her way through baggage check and security.  Usually the hustle of an airport has died down by the time that the evening and red-eye flights are all that's left on the books.  She carries very little with her into the terminal, checks everything else in her slim case.  Emily has traveled so often for so long that she has no need for superfluous trappings.

Not so with the other travelers.  This is the season of casual travelers and their odd sense of entitlement.  They will fight like gladiators over over-head bin space.  She watches a mother of two wrangle her children, their duffle bags, her carryon and a stroller through security.  An old man takes three times to get through the metal detector before he remembers the pocketwatch he carries.  Much to her surprise, people still try to bring water bottles through the checkpoints.  The pair immediately to her left, thankfully in a different line, have hiking boots that must be laced up and down to climb into or out of them.

She slips her laptop from her carryon and lays it flat in one basket.  She steps out of her shoes and sets them in the next, atop her jacket; their weight holds it down into the tray.  Emily puts her bag in the third and slides it all toward the x-ray.  She holds her passport and boarding pass in one hand.

She looks bored.

They wave her through without blinking.

It takes almost as little time to collect her things as it did to lay them out for inspection.  To her left, the pair are still struggling with their shoes.  The stroller, which had to be folded down and put through x-ray, stubbornly will not open again.  A toddler is dismantling his duffle bag and spreading his toys and clothes throughout the screening area.

When she reaches her gate, by way of the coffee shop and bookstores, there is a red-faced woman talking loudly at the gate attendant about their fifteen minute delay.  Which morphs into a forty-five minute delay while she is still yelling.

In over a year of Awakened life, this is one thing that has not changed at all.  A mother walks up and down the hallway, bouncing a baby in her arms, willing it to sleep with her own weariness.  Someone talks to their loved one on the telephone, stealing a few more minutes of togetherness before the plane boards.  A businessman writes emails on his Blackberry, while checking the evening news on the overhead TV.

There is nothing about Emily's presence that belies she's going home to bless a child, to do His will, to celebrate another life annointed to His work.  Only the maroon cover of her passport and the terminus of their flight suggest she's going home at all.  And though the people around will be her companions on this long journey, this soul's flight, they are not her family and they are not her tribe.  Yet she knows them, fussy toddler through nonchalant jet-setters as if they were her own.  She is just as familiar and equally anonymous to all of them.

The Singer runs her fingertips through her hair, leans back in her chair, and eyes the Estimated Departure Time on the red-lit board.  She closes her eyes.  She waits.