Home is the Star you Wish Upon

My little sister didn’t speak to me for fourteen years. I can’t blame her. I know she saw me as a traitor, as weaker. I was weaker. Part of me, ever a coward, even wishes she’d kept her silence to the end. I don’t know. Is it really better to see disaster coming at you? It’s not like you can truly appreciate your final moments of peace when you feel the hangman’s door ready to drop beneath your feet.

My husband knew - I told him as soon as he came home from work that night. We talked in hushed whispers over cooking dinner, checking to make sure the kids were still distracted by the TV in the next room. It was sheer selfishness on my part. As I said, I know myself to be a coward. I would never have had the heart to face this all by myself.

Lila was no coward. One of the fiercest people I’ve ever known, of course she’d love a world as tough as herself. I had no love for that planetary jailhouse. It wasn’t fair, what they did to us. We were third generation prisoners, our grandparents were the criminals. Why, then, were we the ones who had to pay? Why did it take so long for them to let us, innocents, come home to a world that was more than dust and dry, aching heat?

I started saving when I was a child, so desperate for a chance at something, anything more. When I was fifteen, Earth lifted the travel ban, and a ship came to take anyone born on the planet who wanted to go back to a home we should’ve had all along. I didn’t ask her to come, and she didn’t ask me to stay. She didn’t even come to see me off. I took my dirty jar of coins, and left my sister and the rest of my family in the dust.

I fell in love with Earth through ripped paperbacks and outdated magazines that had long lost their gloss. I didn’t know until I arrived how badly they’d failed to capture just how bright everything was. The cities were lights stacked on top of lights, children’s blocks in glowing towers with fireflies dancing in between.

As a poor immigrant, I ended up in the outskirts of the city. My jar of money bought me a single room apartment with a window that didn’t fully close, and crisp air swept over me all night. With no curtains, the light spilled in when I was trying to sleep.

Somehow, I never did get around to buying any.

It was the best place I’ve ever lived, and I mourned it when I moved in with my eventual husband, into his more middle-class apartment with multiple rooms and functioning heating.

My sister’s call came through while I was putting away groceries, and I sat next to fresh vegetables wilting in the summer heat as she spoke. She asked me if I could get out of the city. I told her I couldn’t, not on such short notice. She was quiet for a long time, and I watched a bird peck at the pots on the window ledge that already needed to be watered again. She said she was sorry. She asked me if I was okay. I told her I was married now.

Does he treat you well? She wanted to know. I said he treated me very well. Brought me flowers once a week, even when we both knew there were better things we could spend the money on.

I told her about my children, my boy and my two little girls. I told her the youngest one reminded me of her, absolute in everything she decided, no matter how nonsensical. This made her laugh. She said she’d never had children. She had other things to occupy her, all her love and time poured into training instead. We never spoke the word “revolution”, but it was there. We never said “war” either, but I think the word sat bitter on both of our tongues.

We said “goodbye”, though. I didn’t tell her I loved her. The words rose on my tongue, hot as a candle flame, but to speak them aloud and light the air felt like an admittance that we were in darkness. And I could not bring myself to face that. So I said goodbye, and listened in silence for her end of the line to click. It took awhile.

My children came home soon after. My son from school, picking up the younger ones from the neighbors. I made them sandwiches, and I cuddled with them on the couch to watch a movie instead of paying the bills as I had planned to do that evening.

When they begged for another hour up at bedtime, I said okay, to their delight. I even made them cocoa, and my husband and I sipped coffee.

I told him I loved him, and he kissed my forehead.

My daughter, the little one, was the one to call me over to the window.

“Mommy! Look! The stars are moving!” Her eyes sparkled with awe.

We all went up on the roof to watch. I leaned against my husband, and gripped my daughter’s hand. The children thought it was beautiful. I hope that's what they remember, that it was bright and beautiful.

I wondered with every distant explosion whether that was Lila’s ship, shot from the sky.

There were many, many ships. More than I’d anticipated. I suppose I should have seen it coming. I was not the only one bitter, and not everyone was able to look past it and make their jailer’s home their own.

They filled the sky, blasts of shining gold and the glint of rockets, guns firing like distant rumbles of thunder.

The summer heat wrapped around us like a blanket.

If I just closed my eyes, the blazing ships could have been the red morning sun. I tasted dust on the wind, and it was my sister’s warmth against my side.

I wondered if when I opened them, I’d still see a world that shone.