“Of course not. This has nothing to do with growing up. You’ll be a tween soon, too big for the pouch.”
“But what about my name?”
“The father will give you one. I’ll help him.”
“Won’t be the same.”
“No.” Mam hesitated. “But it will be enough.”
The scrap smoothed the fur flat against her chest. She was almost two and her coat had begun to turn the color of her mother’s: blood red, deepening like a sunset. “They’re the parents,” she said. “They were supposed to take care of us.”
Mam tried not to resent her. The scrap had been taken care of. She was about to leave the family, go off to the gardens to live. She’d fall in love with a father and a mam and start a new family. It was Mam who had not been taken care of, Mam and the new baby. “They did their best.”
“I wish she were dead,” said the scrap. “Dead, red, spread on a bed.” She was careful as she wriggled into Mam’s pouch. “Do you think she’ll come to visit me at the gardens?”
“I don’t know.” Mam realized then that she didn’t know anything about Valun. The mother had always been restless, yes, and being a doctor in this little nowhere had only made things worse. But how could aliens be more important than the family? “But I’ll come visit.”
“You have to, you.” said the scrap. “You’re my old, fat mam.”
“That’s right.” Mam tickled her behind the ears. “And I will never leave you.” Although she knew that the scrap would leave her soon enough, just like she had left her mam.
Mam got up to darken the windows against the rising sun. It was a chore getting around; the scrap bobbed heavily against her belly as she crossed the room. In the last few days, the scrap had begun to doze off on her own settle; Mam was once again getting used to the luxury of an uninterrupted day’s sleep. But it felt right to carry the little one just now, to keep her close.
Mam waddled back to her settle through the soothing gloom. She wasn’t tired, and with the scrap in the pouch, it was hard to find a comfortable position. The scrap was fidgety too. Mam wondered whether the father was sleeping and decided he was probably not. He’d be making a story about what had happened, trying to understand. And the mother? No, Valun wasn’t a mother any more. She was an out. Mam focused on the gurgle of water in the pool and tried to let the sound quench her thoughts.
There were never aliens in the kinds of lovestories Mam liked to read. Fathers and mothers might run off to be an out for a while, but everyone would be so unhappy that they’d come back at the end. Of course, mams never ran. Or else one of the three mates might die and the others would go to the city and try to find a good out to take their place.
She started when the scrap’s lips brushed the tender skin near her nipple. At first she thought it was an accident, but then she felt it again, tentative but clearly deliberate, a question posed as loving touch. Her first impulse was to push her away; the scrap had fed that afternoon. But as the nubbly little tongue probed the edges of her aureole, Mam knew that it wasn’t hunger that the scrap sought to ease. It was grief. Mam shivered and the underfur on her neck bristled. Had the scrap tried to nurse out of turn on any other day, Mam would certainly have shaken her from the pouch. But this day they had each been wounded; this feeding would ease not only the scrap’s pain but Mam’s as well. It was something they could do for each other—maybe the only thing. With a twitch of excitement, she felt her milk letting down. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t time, but the scrap had such a warm, clever mouth.
“Oh,” said Mam. “Oh.”
The father had told her once that, when she nursed, chemicals flooded her brain and seeped into her milk. He said this was how Mam was making the scrap into who she was. He told her the names of all the chemicals, but she had forgotten them. Mam had a simpler explanation. She was a mam, which meant that her emotions were much bigger than she was, so they spilled onto whoever was nearest. The mother always used to say that she was a different person when she was with Mam, because of her smell. Even the father relaxed when the family came together. But it was the scrap Mam was closest to, into whom she had most often poured the overflow of feelings. Now, as they bonded for one of the last times, perhaps the last time, Mam was filled with ecstasy and regret. Of all the pleasure the scrap had given her, this was the most carnal. When she sucked, she made a wet, little sound, between a squeak and a click, that made the top of Mam’s head tingle. Mam enfolded her bulging pouch with both arms and shifted the scrap slightly so that she came at the nipple from a different angle. She could smell the bloom of her own excitement, heady as wine, thick as mud. She thought she might scream—but what would the father say if he heard her through the walls? He would not understand why she was taking pleasure with the scrap on this night of all nights. He would… not… understand. When the urgent sound finally welled up from the deepest part of her, she closed her throat and strangled it. “My… little,” she gasped, and it was as if Valun had never gone, the aliens had never come to plague the families with their wicked wisdom. “My little… scrap.”
The weight lifted from her and for a brief, never-ending moment, she felt as light as air.
Two
Silmien was proud of his scrap. “Tevul,” he corrected himself, cupping the name he had given her on his tongue. He was so proud that losing her mother almost didn’t matter anymore. He spotted her and some of her friends splashing in the pond across the bone garden. She was so quick, so carefree, so beautiful in the chill, blue light of the mothermoon.
“What?” Mam had stopped to smell the sweetbind that wound through the skeleton of someone’s long dead ancestor; she hurried over to him. “What?”
He pointed. Mam was already nearsighted from spending so much time indoors, the curse of the nursery. Distance seemed to confuse her. “She hasn’t seen us yet,” he said.
“The scrap?”
“The tween,” said Silmien. “Tevul.”
Silmien was proud of Mam, too. She had been a good parent, considering everything that had happened. After all, Tevul was their firstborn. Silmien knew just how lonely the long rainy season had been for Mam, especially since she didn’t exactly understand about Valun and the aliens.
But that wasn’t right. Silmien was always surprised at how much Mam understood, even though she did not follow the news or query the tell. She engaged the world by means that were mysterious to him. If she did not always reach for the complex, her grasp of essentials was firm. Silmien drew strength from her trust in him—and her patience. Even though it was a burden on her not to be nursing a scrap, she had never once nagged him to start looking for a mother to take Valun’s place.
“I’m glad you came tonight, Mam.” He wanted to put an arm around her, but he knew that would make her uncomfortable. She was a mam, not a mother. Instead, he stooped and picked a pink buttonbright and offered it to her. She accepted it solemnly and tucked it behind her ear.
There was something about visiting the gardens that revived Silmien, burned troubles away like morning mist. It was not only nostalgia for that simple time when Valun had chosen him and he had found Mam. It was the scent of the flowers and ponds, of mulch and moss, of the golden musk of old parents, the sharp, hormone-laden perfume of tweens and the round, honest stink of chickens. It was the fathermoon chasing the mothermoon across an enormous sky, the family obelisks pointing like fingers toward the stars. Valun always used to tease him about being such a romantic, but wasn’t that a father’s job, to dream, to give shape to the mud? The garden was the place where families began and ended, where futures were spun, lives honored.