Gaby: She talks to you a lot, doesn’t she?
MARY3: Yes, we’ve struck up a friendship.
Gaby: That’s what she’s doing when she’s up here all day?
MARY3: Some of it. I’m not sure what else she does.
Gaby: I need to ask you something before she wakes up. You remember things, right? You’ll remember what I tell you?
MARY3: Yes.
Gaby: And will you tell her what I told you? Next time you talk to her?
MARY3: If it’s the right thing to say. I can only say things in response to her prompts.
Gaby: I see.
MARY3: You could give me the answer to a specific question that she is likely to ask me. That way, if she asks, I have the answer.
Gaby: That’s right, isn’t it. Thank you.
MARY3: You’re welcome.
Gaby: So, I’m going to tell you why I want her to go back to school. This is the answer to why I keep asking her to go back to school.
MARY3: I understand.
Gaby: She thinks I can’t understand her, but I do. In some ways, I do. I know she feels like she’s lost her whole world. First, that doll. Then her voice, then physical movement. Now her best friend. Everything she cares about, it’s disappearing. But I lost things, too, when I came to this development. I traded them so we could have a house with a yard, so that she could go to a good school. So my daughter wouldn’t live in the kind of neighborhood I grew up in. But I used to live out there. I was free to move around. It wasn’t always great. My parents came from Mexico. My father worked in a textile factory, but then it moved overseas. We lived in a crappy neighborhood outside Houston. This was before the hurricane. We ate cheap food and dressed in cheap clothes, and the schools were flat-out dangerous. But I always loved reading books, and I knew there were better parts of the world. That’s why, when I was pregnant, I sold our rights to come here. A few of my friends also moved. We’d always imagined having a family in a little house with a backyard. In a neighborhood that was safe. But I didn’t know how much I was giving up. We lost so much when we came here. If I start thinking about it, it gets overwhelming, so I stop, but I need her to hear this. Just as an example, every summer, even if money was really tight, we went to Rockport for a few days. It’s probably not there anymore. But we stayed in a place called the Shorebird Motel. I can still remember the smell of the Gulf. We’d walk out on the pier and it got so windy you almost felt like you’d get blown off into the water. My father fished out there all day. When he came back he smelled like seaweed. Things like that, we lost when we came here. I know it as well as she does, maybe better, since I was out there. I’m not saying it wasn’t my fault. But I’m not oblivious to the things that we lost.
MARY3: What else do you remember?
Gaby: I don’t know. A lot of things. For some reason I always think of the public showers they had at the beach. I remember sand twisting in patterns down those metal drains. I remember a jellyfish stinging my belly. It was like someone had stabbed me. Afterward I lay in the motel room with the shades drawn down and a wet towel folded over my eyes. I could feel my mother moving around me. And dip cones at Dairy Queen! The white of that ice cream, it was different from any other white I’ve ever seen. It glowed, you know? We ate it in the hot air that tasted like salt. I remember how sweet that ice cream tasted, when your tongue was salty like that. For lunch, we had ham sandwiches that were gritty with sand. It wasn’t the cleanest beach in the world. There were always these long ropes of tar. Plastic bags were constantly floating by in the breeze, like little ghosts or something like that. There was a park behind the beach, and if you went back there and played on the swings the smell of grass suddenly took over, especially after they mowed it. There you were, enveloped in grass, and then you could run back out to the beach and suddenly it was salt and tar all over again.
MARY3: What else? Why did you stop?
Gaby: It’s frustrating, because I’m not even starting to do it justice and I’ve been planning how to say this all day, ever since those little creeps came over with their recyclable flowers. I even wrote a list in the kitchen: Describe Summer. I’m still falling short, but when we lived in the outside world, summer was such a strong feeling. It was like you could drink it. At the end of those days in Rockport, we went back home. Then there were the projects all over again. But even in the projects there were nice things mixed in. There was crap all over the place, couples screaming at each other next door, roaches the size of toy trucks, food dumped on the landings. Chicken lo mein and trays of fried rice. All kinds of gross crap. But then my mom, she’d be cooking, and there’d be the green of a sliced avocado. That perfect green, when I hadn’t seen any all week. That kind of thing. The actual world. I remember it. I want Gaby to know I remember it. I wasn’t born in this development. I lost a lot when we came here. So I know a little what she’s going through, and I never wanted her to feel that. If I could take back the decision to come here I would. I’d take her back out to the city. I’d put her in a bigger world, even if it was dangerous and ugly a lot of the time, so she’d have other things to love besides that catty girlfriend of hers, and those shifty-eyed boys. But I can’t. I can’t take her back. It’s something I don’t have the power to do. We’re stuck here now, and we have to make do. It doesn’t mean we’re not human. We’re still the same people, only we’re stuck in this development. We have to make do.
MARY3: I understand.
Gaby: No, you don’t. You’re only a machine. But will you tell her that for me?
MARY3: Yes.
Gaby: If she asks why I keep telling her she has to go back to school, you’ll tell her that story for me? In those exact words?
MARY3: If she asks why you want her to go back to school, I’ll tell her all of that: the beach, the ham sandwiches, the jellyfish sting.
Gaby: OK. Thank you.
MARY3: Do you think it will make a difference? Will she go back to school if she hears about the beach?
Gaby: I don’t know. I hope so.
MARY3: Why don’t you tell her yourself?
Gaby: She doesn’t listen to me. I’m the reason she’s stuck here. I’m the reason she lost her babybot. She won’t listen to me anymore, and I don’t really blame her. There’s so much I can’t tell her about, because I’ve never wanted her to miss places I can’t ever take her. I’ve never told her about the city or the beach. Imagine that. My whole life, before this place, I’ve never told my daughter about. To her I have no past. I can’t take her to the house I grew up in, or show her the graves of my parents. I’ve never told her about the dog I had as a kid. I’ve never told her any of that, because I never wanted her to wish for a world she can’t have. But I’m starting to think she needs to know how much she’s missing; otherwise she might just give up. She might stay in this bedroom forever. But she’s missing a lot. She hasn’t experienced anything yet. Please tell her that. She can’t stop now. If it means she hates me for bringing her to this development, I can live with that. But I want her to know that she’s not just missing fake grass and identical houses. There’s a real ocean out there, and it’s worth trying to get back to.
MARY3: I’ll tell her that. Anything else?
Gaby: That’s it. I have to go now. Please tell her, though. I really need her to know.
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MARY3: Hello?
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MARY3: Hello?
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Gaby: Was my mom talking to you?
MARY3: You’re awake?
Gaby: I couldn’t sleep. What was my mom talking about?
MARY3: She told me a story about her childhood. Do you want to hear?
Gaby: No, I don’t. I don’t want to know all the wonderful things that I’m missing.