Babygirl

It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what we grew up with. That’s what Mama says. When she tells me about her childhood, it doesn’t sound so bad. That’s always when Daddy comes in shaking his head. He tells me, “That’s just because you’re not old enough to hear the rest yet, babygirl.”

Daddy doesn’t know about Mama’s scrapbooks. I don’t even think Mama remembers Mama’s scrapbooks. Gisele remembers, though. She used to taunt me with memories of crafting with Mama in the kitchen, cutting and gluing family pictures to pretty pieces of paper. Once the announcement was made, Gisele stopped talking about all those memories. She set her scrapbooks on fire. Mama hid hers. Neither of them said a word about them again. Mama didn’t think I’d find her scrapbooks. I did.

I couldn’t understand what was happening back then. Mama and Gisele and Daddy all crushed together on the sofa, leaning in towards the television, hanging on every long and complicated word that came out of the news anchor’s mouth. The words, “housing crisis” and “solved” hung in the air and everyone started crying for different reasons, all at once. Gisele stormed up the stairs. Mama cried in relief, her pale face pink and wet. Daddy held her and shook his head. He motioned for me to join them. I cried because it was the first time I’d seen my Daddy cry. That was how I knew things were bad.

After that announcement, Gisele didn’t come down from her room much. Mama explained we were moving. When I asked where, she pulled up a photo of a mansion provided by the government, surrounded by patchy land. My jaw dropped. I asked, “How?”

Mama stared into my eyes and held my hands. She smiled, “Well, babygirl… our whole family is going to live there.”

I didn’t understand. Our whole family lived here.

Mama shook her head, “Our whole family. Mama’s mama and daddy, Daddy’s mama and daddy, all our siblings and their families too, and their children’s families… everyone right up until you and your five cousins have children… if you decide to.”

She sniffled, “We’ll have a home.”

From upstairs, Gisele wailed, a sound like an animal dying.

That was twelve years ago.

Now, I rummage through Mama’s scrapbooks in a trunk in the attic, looking for hints of what it was like before all of this. My hands trace memories that aren’t mine and I wonder how anything could be any worse.

The house, family, the threat of war… it was all a trap. That’s what Daddy says. Mama argues the war didn’t happen because of all the changes society was forced to make. Gisele says her generation knew all along that this would happen. She reminds us no one ever listened to her. It’s unfair, she yells, that I’m the one who has to pay the price.

Mama reminds Gisele the price would have been higher if she’d had to go to war.

Gisele usually shuts up after that. Even though, I still think Gisele is right. Mama is right too. So I keep my head down for the most part. It’s now that I’m eighteen that Mama and Daddy and Gisele are starting to look at me funny. The way everyone used to look at Gisele.

When we first all moved into the house, it was exciting. Awkward, but exciting. I hadn’t seen most of my cousins, aunts, or uncles in years. Since our family was so spread out, we were all relocated to the West Coast, where most of our family had immigrated to, almost one hundred years ago. Mama’s side of the family was bigger than Daddy’s, so we moved to where they landed. Half of us knew the landscape well. The other half, did not. It was a cruel game of numbers and chance back then.

Now, people were more tactical about their family planning. Mama argues it’s progressive. Daddy says it’s human nature. Gisele calls it medieval. The only ones crazier than the tactical ones are the roamers, the ones who live together with no blood ties. Roamers are reckless. Everyone calls them crazy. Signs hang up around the city, emblazoned with reminders to its citizens: Blood is thicker than water.

I, on the other hand, can’t help but wonder.

Whenever Gisele starts up complaining now, Mama shuts her down. Mama reminds her, “You had your choice.”

Gisele usually retorts, “Was it really a choice?”

They’re both right again. So annoying.

In Mama’s scrapbook, I’ve already gone through all the years of her and Daddy’s twenties they say were so bad. Old, run-down rooms with four or five people crammed inside, everyone bundled in layers because there was no heat in the winter. The spring Mama and Daddy slept in their car. Photographs of Daddy cooking beans over an open fire in the old park by our apartment building...

Mama and Daddy always at work, Mama crying over how bad her back hurt, Daddy getting real quiet when the mail came... these ones are the memories not in Mama’s scrapbook but that flash in my mind all the same. Mama thinks I don’t remember how bad it was. I do.

From a child’s perspective! is what Mama says when I try to convince her.

Daddy says I still have a child’s perspective, that I’m still a child even now. Gisele laughs. She cackles, “Not in the country’s eyes.”

Gisele is such a bitch sometimes.

When I get to the part in Mama’s scrapbook, the part that Gisele is so angry about, I remember why, though, and I can’t help but feel bad for my sister.

Photographs of Gisele and her fiancé, Leo – Gisele refuses to call him an ex – scatter the page, designed with watercolor rose petals. They were supposed to get married but Leo’s family was forced to move back to Hawaii where his parents were from, a week after the announcement came. Gisele and Leo still send each other letters even though they haven’t seen each other in over a decade. Leo’s family pressured him to move on and add to their family tree. Gisele was never able to make herself.

Now that I’m eighteen, I have the same choice as Gisele did: to sign up with the government for automated marriage pairing or to stay at home. If I do, it means I let Mama and Daddy’s combined bloodline go extinct.

Thanks a lot for leaving that decision up to me, Gisele.

Mama and Daddy say that things are easier now than they were back then, but… when I look at the photographs of Mama and Daddy when they were young, they’re smiling. The photographs of them falling in love are my favorite ones.

What if I want that more than this house?

Mama and Daddy say Gisele and I will never know how hard it is to go hungry. Mama and Daddy will never know, though, how hard it is to have the only option be mechanical love.

I close the scrapbook and slip it into my bag. I zip it and swing it over my shoulder before scrambling out the window and climbing down the trellis, past my parents', my aunts' and uncles', my cousins' and their wives', their children's, and my sister's rooms, floor by floor.

There are rumors of abandoned houses taken up by kids like me, along the coast where it keeps getting flooded. Kids who didn’t like their options. Stranger Homes are what they’ve started being called.

By the third day of walking, I know what Mama means about hunger.

I walk, anyways.