Trina shrugged. She was too tired to lie. “So?”
Deeba exhaled. “I love you, Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka. Thank you for the sweetest years of my life.”
“Please. Please, please don’t leave me.”
Deeba smiled sadly. “Go figure out who you are without me, babe.” She gave her wife a sweet, short kiss. “I hope you find some joy in this weird new world. I really do.” And then she left. Trina didn’t know if Deeba turned back for one last look. She was too busy crying.
It felt akin to coming home one day to find that your wife had become a hawk, with dusty talons and a great golden eye. Your hawk-wife can’t live with you anymore. She wants to live in the sky and eat smaller birds, not drink coffee and read the newspaper in bed with you. There were tons of stories of these kinds of transformations, and the grief experiences of the loved ones left behind. They flocked to churches built around worshipping the past. Trina never went to church—not before the aliens came, and certainly not after. Instead, she became weirdly obsessed with this gum from what was once Japan. She gathered all of the remaining packages left in the world. When the gum was over, Trina decided, she would find a good way to disappear—death, or whatever came closest to it. Five years after Deeba’s passing, Trina only had one twelve-piece package left. She popped one in her mouth and started chewing. She ignored the messages from Peaton and Allie, from Emma and Mariam, from coworkers and former classmates and well-meaning nosy neighbors. She also got an old handgun from some spaced-out magician living in a van on Fishmerman’s Wharf. He had called it a “destroyer of worlds,” an epithet Trina found corny but secretly thrilling. She liked touching the cold metal. It made her feel in control. With her gun and her gum, Trina decided she didn’t need any other kind of company. After Deeba left, Trina forgot her old life and went to the bar instead. She attempted to drown, slowly, from the inside out. These were the things The Seep gave us, and what it took away.
PART TWO
So, Your
True Love
Has Become
a Baby
5.
So, Your True Love Has Become a Baby
The Seep is very sorry for your loss. We recognize that you are feeling an incredible amount of pain right now. We want you to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE, unless, of course, you’d like to be. The Seep cherishes all emotions, even sadness and grief! Just because you’re not happy, that doesn’t mean you’re living life wrong! But if you’d like to feel better sooner, please check the index of your pamphlet to see the different kinds of counseling available to you at this time . . .
Trina pressed the console next to her bed. A clock appeared, but she couldn’t seem to register the time, or whether it was night or day. A small light flashed in the corner of the screen, notifying her that there were messages for her on the Electric Spirit. She ignored them. When was the last time she had eaten? She could starve in bed like this, rehashing the irrevocable past.
Pulling a well-worn bathrobe over her sweatpants, Trina found slippers and slouched over to the kitchen. The water feature in the middle of the floor was slick with algae; the poor fish were probably dead. Trina pulled the sleeve of a shirt out from the water, but as she balled it up, she realized it had been Deeba’s—a really ratty shirt she wore for gardening. Trina clutched it to her chest. The hollow ache was back. She felt nauseous, light-headed, sick. She needed to eat something. Trina threw the shirt back on the floor. It landed on a pile of old magazines. She picked up a few dirty dishes as she made her way toward the kitchen. The days-old food crusted around edges of plates and bowls was beginning to stink. She loaded up the sink with soapy water and crammed as many dishes in as she could. She’d wash them after she ate.
Trina made a bowl of oatmeal and sprinkled it with a little cinnamon, congratulating herself on putting in the effort to season the food. She was out of fruit, fresh vegetables, and milk for her tea, but the thought of leaving the house was too much to bear.
Go figure out who you are without me.
Trina pushed the oatmeal away. Easy for you to say, babe. Before Deeba, eating was one of those annoying things you had to do because you started to feel light-headed from inhaling paint fumes for too long. But Deeba had loved eating; she took great pleasure in preparing food and sharing it. It felt like those early dinner parties were from another lifetime, or perhaps someone else’s life. When they’d first gotten together, Trina had to be trained to fit into Deeba’s health-conscious, food-oriented lifestyle, to be housebroken like a puppy. In the beginning, Deeba would send her a text that read, please get unsweetened organic non-gmo almond milk, original flavor. After a few weeks together, Deeba simply wrote, get milk.
Trina took two bites of the rapidly cooling oatmeal. She looked toward the sink full of soapy dishes, then to the algae-covered water feature, back to the countertop speckled with dried food and spilled tea and goddess knew what else. She’d clean up tomorrow. She was too tired right now. She would go back to bed, maybe turn on an old movie just to hear people talk and allow the familiar sounds to soothe her to sleep. Then, in the morning, she’d get up and really make a dent in all this mess.
She closed her eyes. Certainly there were messages from the hospital on the Electric Spirit. Who even knew if she had a job anymore. She thought about her unlimited credit stick, about how all of her needs and wants were provided for by The Seep. It wasn’t like she needed a job, anyway. When Deeba first passed over, Trina had thrown herself into her work. But every healing assisted by The Seep reminded her of Deeba, how she’d chosen to leave Trina and their perfectly lovely life. She couldn’t bear the platitudes of the people at the hospital—time is the only healer, it gets better, blah blah blah. Time did not make it better. Time made it worse, just like it made everything worse. Most horrifically of all, people expected her to be over it by now, as if her grief had a neat expiration date like the carton of milk she had left on the counter a week ago. Trina glanced into the carton, holding her nose. The milk was yellowed, congealing into little chunks. It stared at her, daring her to act. Later. She’d take care of all of it later. Tomorrow, certainly. She yawned. She needed to go back to sleep.
The bell at the front of the house rang. Trina stiffened. She wanted to hide, to lie down on her own floor amidst the empty cans and piles of books and jumbles of shoes, just so no one on the outside could glimpse her in her miserable state. Then she saw the unmistakable flash of blue outside her front window. Anger flared up, smothering her embarrassment. Trina ripped off her pajamas and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt from a clothing pile in the living room. She opened the door.
“What the hell is this?” she said to the sweaty-looking white person shuffling on her step. He was holding a folder of blue notices in one hand and the handle of a red wagon in the other. He dropped the wagon handle and made the sign for masculine pronouns overhead. His animal familiar, a small river otter, snoozed in a shallow pool inside the wagon. “What do you think you’re doing with that?” Trina asked, pointing at the blue notice. “That’s not for me, is it?”