Portholes
Aidan Hendrickson '14
Today we learn more about things back on Earth. Mrs. Jackson shows us pictures of the things they built there. Cole tells me how they’re wrong, how they really had eight wheels, not six, and so forth. His father is a mechanic, so he knows these things, he says.
So much back there was clear, the trains and busses and houses all filled with portholes. Mrs. Jackson says it’s because the views were always changing. There was so much to see. I ask why they left such a nice place behind. She says don’t ask silly questions, sweetheart. Cole says that when Mrs. Jackson says don’t ask silly questions, it means she doesn’t know the answer.
There’s only six portholes here. I guess it’s because the view never changes. Always the same black, and the same stars going past, four times an hour.
Cole says there used to be lots more portholes, but they closed them all up, one at a time. Someday they’ll close these ones up, too. He doesn’t care. He says stars make him dizzy.
The stars never change, even though Mrs. Jackson says that we move fifty thousand miles every hour. They keep on rolling past, four times an hour, and they’re the same every time. Mrs. Jackson says that they looked a bit different when I was a baby, and they’ll look a bit more different when I’m old. Back there they only went around once an hour or something. They couldn’t see the stars move. They were too slow.
Mrs. Jackson says they had a star up real close, where they could see what it really was: a great big hot ball. It was very bright, and people couldn’t look right at it or their eyes would hurt. It must’ve been hard, to always remember not to look wherever it was.
I ask Mrs. Jackson where we’re going, if we’re going fifty thousand miles an hour. She tells me not to ask silly questions. Mrs. Jackson doesn’t like silly questions.
So when class gets out, I go to porthole number four. It’s not the closest one, but it’s the quietest. I crawl up against the pane and look out at the stars, six inches from space.
There are stars outside. They don’t look how you’d think they would, though. Mrs. Jackson says the stars are great big balls doing something called fusion that makes them glow, somehow. They don’t look like that at all. They look like little specks of dust. Mrs. Jackson says that’s because they’re so far away, miles and miles. Anything looks like a speck of dust when you’re far enough away.
There are smudges on the glass, fingerprints, some of them mine. They stay still, forever, while the stars go past. That must’ve been what the stars looked like back there, as still as smudges.
If I lay there long enough in the quiet, watching the stars, I can imagine that I’m outside, flying past them and it’s not just us who’s rotating, four times an hour. There are so many stars. Maybe we are going to one of them. That’s what I would do, if I were out there.
I watch the stars for a long time. Then I go outside, and fly and fly until I reach a star, a little blue one.
Mrs. Jackson is holding my hand, leading me away from the porthole, away from my star. She says she was worried sick about me, a porthole is no place to sleep, I must be sore, I’m not getting enough rest. She takes me to the dormitory. Everyone frowns when I come in. They got to stay up late, but now it is bedtime.
We learn about organisms in class today. I don’t ask Mrs. Jackson questions, because I might ask a silly question, and I don’t want her to feel bad. I ask Cole instead. He knows these things. His father had an organism once.
I go to the porthole again, to look for my star. I look and look but I can’t find it. There are so many little blue ones. It’s in there somewhere, hiding in all the dust.
Mrs. Jackson takes me away. She tells me I spend too much time at the porthole, and it is not healthy. I need to be playing, and sleeping, and doing everything the other children do. She tells me that she doesn’t want me looking out the portholes anymore, ok? Can you promise me you’ll stay away from the portholes? I say yes. She pats me on the head and takes my hand and leads me to the park where the other children are playing ball.
I don’t look out the portholes anymore. I don’t need to. I can see the stars in my head, floating past whenever I close my eyes. Even all the little blue ones. My star’s in there somewhere. We’re going there. Someday we’ll get there.
Cole says we’re not going anywhere. But I think he’s wrong. Why would we be going, if we’re not going anywhere?
