I miss her. I imagine she misses me even more. Years will pass before I hear her voice again, and years before she hears mine. By the time we speak, the recording of me she listens to will already be years old, and the real me will be so far away, alone. I keep my sanity through numbers each message, I tell her how long she has to wait. "In six years, you'll hear from me." I love her.
When I left, we were both twenty-six. It felt like a lottery win insane. I was off to a distant moon. She never understood any of it, no matter how many times I showed her graphs, charts, or playful sketches of where I was headed. "This is Butler," I’d say. "And this is Butler’s moon, Lilith. There’s evidence of life there." I explained oxygen levels, plant growth, even microbial life, long before I thought I'd ever actually go.
And she never fully believed I would. She thought I wouldn’t get chosen, and she let me sign up, assuming I wouldn’t make it. I hadn’t planned on being the one selected either. I was ready to stay behind stacking boxes at the shop, handling the finances. The sound of her calling me from the worn-out computer at the front desk. "Can you figure this out?" Her laugh. "You're the one with the head for numbers." Even when I applied, when I trained, I never believed I’d be the one they’d send. I never thought I’d really go.
She had a mind for ethics, for the way things should be, while I was lost in numbers and dreams. She knew where everything came from, how much people earned, the stances of CEOs. She managed all the purchasing, all the marketing, all the decisions, while I spent my time arranging, dreaming. Maybe she thought I didn’t love it, I did. I loved the shop, our turtle, and the girl with her afro tied up in a scrunchie, always so carefully arranged. I wasn’t running away. I was running toward something.
Space. And space-time. "So you'll be younger than me?" she asked, and I said, "Sort of." I explained special relativity, lines of simultaneity, charts showing how time would stretch and bend. "Just look at the numbers," I told her, "and don’t think about what it really means." She sat through it all, then said, "I don’t get it." Neither did I. I understood the data, the predictions, but not what it would feel like what it would mean to be up there.
"For you, when five years pass, I’ll be four years older than when I left," I said. "But for me, when four years pass, you’ll only be three years older than when I left." She paused, thinking. "So which one is true?" she asked. "Both. Neither," I answered. I explained how we’d both see the other as traveling and growing younger, how the messages would take time to reach us, and how eventually, it would all catch up. I'd end up younger only a few years.
"I don’t get it," she said again. "How does it look like I’m traveling away from you? I’m not going anywhere." And I heard it in her voice, I’m not the one leaving. I knew she wanted to say more, but she didn’t. Instead, I said, "Do you know that we’re traveling around the universe right now? At incredible speeds? We’re moving, too. We just don’t feel it because we live here."
She looked at me, from the couch, and said, "Okay, come travel with me." And I did. She knew she couldn’t keep me. No one could, not my mother with her incense and memories, not my grandpa with the old willow tree, and not her. No one could keep me on Earth.
But we’re not done with this planet. She used to say that all the time, even before I signed up to leave. "Our favorite fight," she called it. "You’re going to leave us behind? Start a new life up there when this one’s falling apart? We need you here to help fix this place."
Maybe she was right. Probably, she was right. I used to sneak up behind her while she was lost in her work, teasing, "Are you painting? I could use your help right now." When the trash overflowed, when it was time to feed James the turtle, I’d ask, "Hey, where are you going? You’re leaving me behind?" And I’d tickle her until she collapsed, laughing in my arms. "Where are you going?"
When I left, I set one rule: "Don’t argue with me, and don’t make me want to argue with you. I don’t have time for that in space. I can’t think about fighting with you when I can’t even hold you." I told her this, and so far, she’s respected it. Neither of us has brought it up. And it doesn’t feel real.