Closing the Loop
Maura stepped up to it without hesitation, touching the glass. “So, this is the portal to your world, the world you come from, Mama?”
“Lord! It’s so austere, Althea! Are those racks of colored glass?”
“What are you talking about?” Kali said. “I just made this. No one’s seen it.”
“Yes,” the I that looked younger but was older said, “this is it. This is what I stepped into to get back to my world. That’s a relief. Now, all you have to do is find a blank spot in the wall to set it into and go back. Then this loop will be closed and we can move forward.”
“Didn’t you listen to what Carmen said?” the I that looked middle aged but was younger in time asked. “I think she’s on to something. You’re the messenger. So, you go back. Get Pintor and Anches up to speed. Meanwhile, we work here. Think about it. You can keep traveling back and forth between the worlds, communicating. You’ll remain as a girl. I’ll stay here as my older self. Nothing has to be lost with Oliver and our kids. If you think about it, it makes the most sense.”
“The map…” I started to say.
“Draw me the map. If you’re the messenger, you’re going to have to get used to communicating. Maps, words, places, images. You’ll have to figure out how to transfer the information to us. That’s the only way we can make the most of working as a team.”
“Who’s going to learn astrophysics?”
“Theo.”
“Theo? You sound so sure.”
“Yes, Theo. It makes sense. Think about it.”
My little girl self looked around the room. Everyone was listening to our rapid fire conversation with big eyes. Me in discussion with myself. Physically. You don’t see that every day. I knew that the middle-aged version of myself was right. Why did we all have the tendency to believe that we had to do everything ourselves for it to be done right? She was right that it needed to be a team. And she was right that it was an advantage to keep a connection with the home world. I could keep going back and forth, continue learning what I could in the Library and returning with information while they did the work to find the worlds. It was logical.
“Okay,” I said. “But before I go back, I’ll need to make the map. Kali, do you have more colored glass with you?”
Kali didn’t answer, but kept staring at the little girl me, still holding up the stained glass window she’d made. Was she in shock?
“I can get some colored glass,” Carmen said. “I know a place. Just tell me what colors you need and I’ll get it for you tomorrow.”
“And a frame and leading and a scoring tool and –”
“Why don’t you come with me, Althea. That’ll be the easiest.”
“Who are you?” Kali finally asked.
“I’m a version of your mother, Kali. That glass painting you made and gave me for my birthday, if you put it up to the wall, it becomes a portal to the world I come from. You remember? I told you about how Carmen taught me English and gave me a place to live. That stained glass becomes a portal to that world. I went back there and returned. Time is different where I come from, so I became a little girl again in the world I come from and so that is also how I came back. We’re still figuring out how all of this operates. And we’ve just decided to divide and conquer. I’ll go back and forth between the worlds because I can and remain the same. The other version of your mother over there will remain here where you’ll all work together to find where I come from and find a way to Mars where my brother, Pintor, your uncle, will be. There’s another world in this, too, the one my friend Anches visits and it may be that this world is important somehow, so we’ll try to find it, too. I don’t know much about it, so going back and finding out more once he gets back from his next trip there is definitely a good idea. Then, I’ll return to you and fill you in and we can go from there.”
It was a lot to take in. No one moved. As usual, Carmen came to our aid.
“I don’t know about all you all, but I’m hungry and I think we’ve got a birthday to celebrate. Do you want to go out to eat together? Or do you want me to order in and we can watch old movies?”
“Definitely the ordering in and old movies,” Maura said. “That’s my favorite memory visiting you when I was a girl. Can we order pizza from Giordano’s?”
And so, we put our energies into kinds of pizzas and drinks and movies we wanted to watch and setting up the living room with pillows and blankets. It was an elaborate slumber party with all the women who mattered most in my life. Relaxing, eating, reacting to black and white drama and romance, gave us all a chance to take all those things in that weren’t so black and white.
Kali sat very close to my middle-aged self and after some pizza, between movies, she asked more questions.
“So, this girl is you when you were a girl?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but she’s got all your memories and life experiences?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know she’s telling you the truth? Maybe she’s some kind of spy from your old world.”
“That’s an imaginative idea, Kali. I know it’s me.”
“How?”
“In my gut.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I know it’s difficult to take in. You’ve always known that I came from somewhere else, but that world has always been very far away. You haven’t had to get close to it until now. This is going to take all of us working together to figure out where my home world is and how to find my brother, your uncle. Maybe, if all goes well, you’ll get to meet him.”
“How did I imagine your world without knowing it?”
“How did I imagine your world without knowing it?”
We looked at each other.
“Touché?” I asked.
For the first time that evening, Kali smiled, “Touché, Mama.”
“I love you, Kali.”
“I love you, too, Mama.”
Movies, pizza, sodas, wine, and laughter. It was a shared evening we would never forget.
Carmen set us up in her guest beds and couches for the night. Happily tucked in, we had trouble sleeping. All we could think about was that other world, how it got there, where it was in the universe, and what it meant to travel through a portal made of glass. Our dreams were strange and we passed in and out of sleep so much that it was difficult to separate dream and reality.
We woke to the smell of bacon and coffee from the kitchen where we slowly gathered for the treat of Carmen’s special pancakes.
“Where’s Kali?” Maura asked.
“I’ll go look for her,” I as a middle-aged woman said. I as a girl quietly followed.
I looked at the beds and couches and in the bathrooms and didn’t see her. I went downstairs and there was the stained glass painting Kali made only it was affixed to the wall.
Kali must have gone through it.
Now what?
I stepped toward the glass. I’d have to follow her in. She’d be lost in that Library. I reached out toward the glass.
“No,” I as a young girl said. “Not you. Me.”
“But she’ll be lost there.”
“You know that I know that. I’m not just some other person. I’m you. I have the same feelings, the same background. Don’t ever forget that. Now, go get a piece of paper and a pencil or pen. If Carmen’s got some colored pencils or markers, that would be great. Go. Quickly.”
I as a middle-aged woman ran upstairs and Carmen had some colored pencils and paper and I told her I’d explain everything when I got back and I ran back down and my girl self drew the map that looked like a duck with a red star eye.
“Actually, that’s pretty accurate, I think,” I as a girl said, relieved. “Show this to everyone you can. Put the collective minds on it and see if anyone recognizes it. Look at maps in atlases, too.”
“And if I find it?”
“Then get as much information as you can about it. I’ll be back.”
“And Kali? You’ll bring her back?”
“Of course. Now, go enjoy some pancakes. I’ll be back.”
How strange it was to see myself from outside myself.
With that last thought, I stepped once again into the colored glass Kali made and back into the Library.
Next: Finding Kali
This is the fourteenth part in a series of stories. Following are the previous installments starting with the first:
1. The Library
2. Listen, Move, Hide, Repeat
3. A Necessary State of Alarm
4. Anches
5. A Question in Colored Glass
6. How a Lifetime Friendship Began
7. In the World I Created
8. To Make Things Right Again
9. Escape from the Library
10. Pintor’s World
11. Vincente
12. What I Didn’t See Coming
13. First Person Binary