It was the end of middle shift, so I figured I’d find Mother at the cart, selling. Eventually I rounded a corner and saw her ahead: a lean, proud woman in an old jumpsuit. Worn, but laundered. Shoulder-length hair, with an air of fatigue about her as she served a wrap to a worker.
I froze on the walkway, uncertain how to approach. I realized right then that I hadn’t visited enough. I missed my mother. Though I’d never really been homesick—my scavenging trips as a kid had prepared me for long times away—I still longed to hear her comforting, if stern, voice.
As I hesitated, Mother turned and saw me—and she immediately dashed over. She seized me in a powerful embrace before I could say anything.
I’d watched other kids grow taller than their parents, but I was much shorter than her—and when enfolded in her arms, for a moment I felt like a child again. Safe, snug. It was easy to plan future conquests when you could retreat to those arms.
I let myself be that girl again. Let myself pretend that no danger could reach me.
Mother finally pulled back and looked me over. She took a lock of my hair between her fingers and raised an eyebrow—it had gotten long, and now tumbled past my shoulders. The DDF haircutters had been forbidden me for the first part of my stay, and after that I’d just gotten used to it long.
I shrugged.
“Come,” Mother said. “That cart won’t sell itself.”
It was an invitation to a simpler time—and at that moment, it was what I needed. I helped my ever-practical mother work her way through her line of customers, men and women who looked baffled to be served by a pilot cadet.
Odd, how my mother didn’t call out, like other street vendors would. Yet there was almost always someone at the cart buying a wrap. During a lull, she mixed some more mustard, then glanced at me. “Will you go back to getting us rats?”
Go back? I hesitated, only now realizing that she didn’t know I was on leave. She . . . she thought I’d been kicked out.
“I still have the jumpsuit,” I said, gesturing—but her blank stare confirmed she didn’t know what that meant. “Mom, I’m still in the DDF. I was given leave today.”
Her lips immediately turned down.
“I’m doing well!” I snapped. “I’m one of only three pilots left in my flight. I’m going to graduate in two weeks.” I knew she didn’t like the DDF, but couldn’t she just be proud of me?
My mother continued mixing the mustard.
I sat down on the low wall running along the walkway. “When I’m a full pilot, you’ll be taken care of. You won’t have to sit up late at night rewrapping food and then spend long hours pushing a cart. You’ll have a big apartment. You’ll be rich.”
“You think I want any of that?” Mother said. “I chose this life, Spensa. They offered me a big apartment, a cushy job. All I had to do was go along with their narrative—say I knew he was a coward the whole time. I refused.”
I perked up. I’d never heard that before.
“As long as I’m here,” Mother said, “selling on this corner, they can’t ignore us. They can’t pretend their cover-up worked. They have a living reminder that they lied.”
It was . . . one of the most truly Defiant things I’d ever heard. But it was also so terribly wrong. Because while my father hadn’t been a coward, he had been a traitor. Which was worse though?
Right then, I realized that my problems went deeper than Jorgen’s pep talk could fix. Deeper than my worry about the things I’d seen, or my father’s treason.
I’d built my identity around not being a coward. It was a reaction to what everyone said about my father, but it was still part of me. The deepest, most important part.
My confidence in that was crumbling. My pain at losing my friends was part of it . . . but this fear that there might be something terrible inside me . . . that was worse.
The fear was destroying me. Because I didn’t know if I could resist it. Because I didn’t know, deep down, if I was a coward or not. I wasn’t even sure what being a coward meant anymore.
My mother settled down next to me. Always so quiet, so unassuming. “I know that you wish I could celebrate what you’ve done—and I’m proud, I really am. I know that flying has always been your dream. It’s just that if they were so callous with my husband’s legacy, I cannot expect them to be careful with my daughter’s life.”
How did I explain? Did I tell her what I knew? Could I explain my fears?
“How do you do it?” I finally asked her. “How do you put up with the things they say about him? How do you live with being called a coward’s wife?”
“It has always seemed to me,” she said, “that a coward is a person who cares more about what people say than about what is right. Bravery isn’t about what people call you, Spensa. It’s about who you know yourself to be.”
I shook my head. That was the problem. I didn’t know.
Four short months ago, I’d thought I could fight anything, and had every answer. Who would have thought that becoming a pilot would end with me losing that grit?
My mother inspected me. Finally, she kissed me on the forehead and squeezed my hand. “I don’t mind that you fly, Spensa. I simply don’t like leaving you to listen to their lies all day. I want you to know him. not what they say about him.”
“The more I fly,” I said, “I think the more I’ll know him.”
My mother cocked her head, as if she hadn’t considered that.
“Mom . . .,” I said. “Did Father ever mention seeing . . . strange things? Like a field of eyes in darkness, watching him?”
She drew her lips to a line. “They told you about that, did they?”
I nodded.
“He dreamed of stars, Spensa,” my mother said. “Of seeing them unobstructed. Of flying among them as our ancestors did. That’s it. Nothing more.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You don’t believe me.” She sighed, then stood up. “Your grandmother has a different opinion from mine. Perhaps you should speak with her. But remember, Spensa. You get to choose who you are. Legacy, memories of the past, can serve us well. But we cannot let them define us. When heritage becomes a box instead of an inspiration, it has gone too far.”
I frowned, confused by that. Gran-Gran had a different opinion? On what? Still, I hugged my mother again and whispered my thanks to her. She shoved me off toward our apartment, and it was with a strange mix of emotions that I left. My mother was a warrior in her own way, standing on that corner, proclaiming my father’s innocence with every quiet sale of an algae wrap.
That was inspirational. Illuminating. I got her in a way I never had before. And yet, she was wrong about Father. She understood so much, yet was wrong about something fundamental. Like I had been, up until that moment I watched him turn traitor during the Battle of Alta.
I walked for a short time, and eventually neared our boxy apartment building.
I stepped through the large arched gateway into the apartment grounds—and as I did, a couple of soldiers returning from shift parted for me and saluted.
That was Aluko and Jors. I realized after I’d passed. They didn’t seem to even recognize me. They hadn’t looked at my face; they’d simply seen the flight suit and stepped aside.