by Ashlyn Chase
Shocked, all Aaron could do was repeat himself. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Ruth said. “She came over yesterday. Right after I got here in fact, and we had a delicious cup of tea together. I never knew she was our neighbor. She seemed familiar, but I don’t recall meeting her.”
“No, I don’t suppose you have.”
“She’s beautiful but in a truly unique way. I have no idea how old she is… You must admit she’s gorgeous. That long white hair is amazing, but she has a completely unlined face. And the way she dressed!” Ruth chuckled.
Oh no. Did she show up in her toga? “How did she dress?” Aaron asked as innocently as he could.
“She looked like Jackie O. She wore a beautiful powder-blue suit and a pillbox hat, of all things.”
“Oh, right. These days, that’s unique, I guess.”
“So anyway, I was blubbering my head off when she got here, and after one cup of tea, I was fine. I should show you the interesting tea leaves she brought.”
Aaron cleared his throat. “Yes, I’d like to see that.”
Ruth retrieved the satchel and pulled out one of the leaves he had been introduced to in Puerto Rico. Gaia had obviously brought his cure to Ruth. But to experiment on her without any kind of prior clinical trials? Unthinkable! He hadn’t even broken it down to its components yet. Nobody knows what’s in it! How could she? And his daughter being pregnant… He rose suddenly, almost tipping the table. Ruth grasped her drink before it sloshed.
“What’s the matter, Dad?”
Aaron gritted his teeth, then took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “It’s nothing, baby. I’m just tired. I need to grab a nap.”
“Oh, I hadn’t even thought about how tired you must be after your travel. Why don’t you go ahead and nap? I’ll run out to the store to pick up more food. Now that you’re home, I should get two of everything. I was just getting portions for one, not knowing how long I was going to be here by myself. You didn’t need to rush home. I’m really sorry if I cut your vacation short. You can go back if you want…”
Aaron raised a hand. “No, sweetheart. I’m perfectly content to stay home now. I had a nice visit with your sister, but I’d like to keep an eye on you, even though you seem okay.”
“I’m really okay, Dad. I can’t explain it. But I seem to have recovered from a broken heart in record time.”
A broken heart… Suddenly, he realized the miscommunication or misunderstanding he’d had with Gaia. He was talking about damaged hearts. She must have taken that to include the sadness that feels like a broken heart. But still, testing this tea on his daughter without his knowledge or hers? Gaia had some explaining to do.
“Okay, honey. Going shopping for two of everything sounds like a good idea. Why don’t you do that while I take a nap?”
“Okay, Dad. Is there anything special you want?”
“No. Whatever you select will be fine.”
“I’ll see you whenever you wake up.” She kissed his cheek, grabbed her purse, and sashayed out the back door.
As soon as she had pulled out of the driveway, he stood in the middle of the kitchen and yelled, “Gaia!”
* * *
Gaia was tending a shepherd’s flock while the lazy boy was sleeping. She thought he could use the rest in a war-torn land, but with a shout like that, Aaron must be in huge trouble and had a greater need of her help.
What could have happened to Aaron? Did he change his mind about leaving Puerto Rico? There were all kinds of dangers for those unfamiliar with her tropical island. Had he fallen into quicksand? Was he being chased by a shark? Was he battling one of her caimans? Perhaps he fell off a cliff. Perhaps he was adrift at sea or lost in the mountains. Maybe he was even swallowed up by a sinkhole! That could happen, as Puerto Rico had the largest subterranean river in the world, and the caves were gradually wearing the surface thin. All this worry took place in a nanosecond.
She kicked the kid’s ankle to wake him and disappeared into the ether before he opened his eyes.
She quickly located Aaron’s energy back in Brookline, Massachusetts, and appeared in his kitchen.
“You bellowed?”
Aaron jabbed his hands on his hips. “Yes, I bellowed.” He took a deep breath and said through gritted teeth, “Gaia, you may be a goddess, but I can’t believe you tried a medicinal cure that had never been analyzed or tested on my daughter. My pregnant daughter!”
Suddenly alarmed, she gasped. “Is she all right? Did something happen to her?”
“No. Not yet. But I won’t be allowing her to have any more of your ‘tea’ in case something shows up later.”
Mother Nature crossed her arms. “You screamed for me because nothing is wrong with your daughter?”
“Of course not. It was your audacity that made me scream. Do you know what could have happened?”
“No. What?”
“Side effects, that’s what! Have you never heard a TV commercial for any medication, ever?”
“No. I pay no attention to commercials or TV. Why? What are side effects?”
“Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, blindness, shortness of breath, cardiac arrest, liver damage, kidney damage, brain damage! There are many possible side effects, and almost all medications have them. So tell me, why? Why would you do that?”
Gaia threw her hands in the air. “She needed it. If anyone was suffering from a broken heart, it was her. I simply gave her the cure that you wanted. And it worked. She was calm and downright happy when I left. Did that not last?”
“Oh, it lasted, all right. But it’s unnatural.”
Gaia bristled but was trying so hard to change her behavior that she took three deep breaths before answering. “You’re telling me she’s fine. It worked. And something I invented is unnatural? I’m Mother friggin’ Nature, for frig’s sake!”
Aaron folded his arms and stood with his feet apart. “I didn’t mean the substance was unnatural. I meant her reaction is unnatural.”
“You’d rather she be crying her eyes out, emotionally devastated, blaming herself, perhaps becoming suicidal or homicidal with all the hormonal changes on top of her already upsetting situation?”
“No! I would not, but…” Aaron pulled out a kitchen chair and slumped into it. After a long pause, he said, “I think we had a miscommunication back in Puerto Rico.”
Gaia took the seat opposite him. “We did? What would that be?” She was really trying to imitate his reasonable communication style. She liked how he usually spoke to her in a respectful tone and hoped it would return soon. Perhaps if she tried using the same type of voice, it would calm him the way his gentle tone calmed her.
“I just didn’t realize you were talking about the heart as an emotion. I was talking about the heart as anatomy.” Aaron scratched his head. “Did you think I was talking about a sad heart rather than a blocked blood vessel?”
Gaia shrugged. “I really didn’t understand half of what you were talking about. I just know you were concerned about people’s damaged hearts. To me, that meant you needed something to fix desperately sad or broken hearts. Was your daughter not heartbroken?”
“Yes. She was. And I’m glad she isn’t wallowing in it.” Aaron let out a deep breath. He looked her in the eye for the first time since they had begun this conversation, and she could tell his mood was changing, mellowing. At last, he smiled. “I have to admit it’s rather exciting that we…no, you discovered something new. It could potentially be a huge discovery.”
“I want to give you credit. I wouldn’t have even thought of it except that you suggested it to me. A lot of what I’ve created has been forgotten or overlooked. In the beginning, I just did what I did and thought ‘Well, that’s nice’ and kept moving on.
“What humans did with my inventions didn’t concern me until they began to hurt my precious planet and everything I placed up
on it. There are so many of those instances now, and that’s what steals my focus. Pollution is rampant. I can barely counteract it anymore. Cities have what people call smog, and they don’t put a stop to it! They just wear masks and keep polluting! My oceans, once completely self-cleaning and full of food, are now full of garbage, plastic, and oil spills! Plus destroying the fresh drinking water by poisoning it with chemicals…” She shook her head. A tear shimmered just thinking about those things.
Aaron reached across the table and took her hand. Surprised, she straightened her posture but let him hold onto it. His hand was warm and soft, not the hand of a laborer but the hand of an academic.
“I’m sorry I bellowed,” Aaron said.
“I understand. You were afraid for your daughter. I’m sorry I caused you concern.”
“So what do we do now? Is there an antidote?”
Mother Nature dropped his hand and leaned back in the chair, aghast. “You wish your daughter to go through the pain and suffering she was experiencing before I gave her the cure? What are you, some kind of sadist?”
Aaron’s jaw dropped. “How dare you! Of course not. I love my daughter.”
“How can you say that and wish pain upon her?”
Aaron’s lips thinned. He took a few moments before speaking his next sentence. “I think you should leave before this escalates into a larger argument.”
Gaia rose. “Fine. By the way, you’re welcome!”
She left in a whirlwind and stayed in the ether for a few moments while she composed herself. How could he be so ungrateful? And worse, a possible sadist! What a total surprise this man turned out to be. She’d treated him as a friend and thought he was a good human being, but he must be terrible. The man was cruel! He wished heartache on his own daughter. What a horrible, horrible person!
“How did I not see this before?” She shook her head. Perhaps it was time to visit her sister. Not Fate. She was too kind. Something should be done about this, and Fate would just give her some namby-pamby philosophical shit, like “if it’s meant to be, it will be.” But she was sure Karma would know exactly what to do.
* * *
“Karma!”
Gaia’s redheaded sister showed up in black stilettos covered with spikes. Her short red leather skirt and vest contrasted with the white T-shirt she wore. The message imprinted on the shirt just said I’m watching you.
“Yeah? What do you want? I’m busy.”
Gaia took in her sister’s outfit and looked her over from head to toe. “You look like you’re ready to do some serious damage.”
“You would too if you had just heard what I just heard.”
“Are you watching the news again? I told you not to do that.”
“No. I was simply doing what I always do. Waiting for someone to say my name and checking out what’s happening from the ether. Do you know how many calls I get from high schools every day?”
“More than India, where people still believe in you?”
“A lot of people believe in me. They just think I’m an idea, not a deity.”
“I can imagine. So high school, eh? Are kids saying ‘what goes around comes around’ and wishing you would pound the daylights out of their nemeses?”
“Exactly. Don’t people realize other individuals have their own points of view? Usually, no one is all right or all wrong. A combination is more likely. Or sometimes they want the same thing, but they just want to go about it in different ways. It’s hard to determine whether or not somebody is truly in the right and someone else is truly in the wrong.”
“Is that what you have to do?”
Karma laughed. “Gaia, what did you think I did…just made this shit up on the fly?”
Gaia shrugged. “Pretty much.”
Karma shook her head, then took her sister by the hands. “Why don’t you come with me and see what you think.”
Gaia was going to tell her Aaron needed a good swift kick, but what her sister had said about high-schoolers made her stop and think. Was she being immature? Was she expecting someone else to feel the same way she did about everything? That would really suck.
“Okay, I’ll go with you. But I’ll hang back in the ether. No matter what happens.”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do. And try to keep a lid on your temper. You may see some crazy stuff.”
Gaia bristled. “My temper? What’s wrong with my temper? I’m usually in a very good mood.”
Karma burst out laughing. Finally, when she could compose herself, she waved away the last of the giggles. “Sorry, Sister. I just…well, you… Have you met yourself? Who are you trying to kid? You’ve been in a pissy mood for a long, long time.”
“I have not. I was in a very good mood until just recently. I was going to tell you about it, except it seems like… Well, never mind. Let’s go see whatever you want to show me.”
Karma nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Chapter 7
Gaia followed Karma’s energy to what looked like an old brick building in a city. The building was four stories high, and the brick wall around it was covered in graffiti. Small windows looked like they only partially opened. Over a doorway with wide steps to the outside were the words Woodrow Wilson High School and the numbers 1926. Okay. It was old but not falling down, so there were probably still students in there. “Why are we here?”
Karma pointed out a young girl sitting on the steps crying. “See her? She was just bullied.”
“Bullied? How?” Gaia really didn’t like bullying, especially when someone accused her of being the bully. That just wasn’t true. She was a parent after all.
“The girl’s mother isn’t well-off, and the other kids know it. They live on social security and have to budget every penny to go to rent and food, so the girl goes without new clothes and niceties the others have. She hasn’t been to a stylist in over a year, and one of the mean girls just decided to give her a haircut—not a good one.”
“Well, that seems pretty mean to me. What are you going to do to those girls?”
Karma’s eyebrows rose. “The girls? I’m not going to do anything to them, and I’m not going to do anything to the mother. This girl is the one who needs to learn the lesson.”
Gaia crossed her arms. “Are you nuts? Hasn’t she suffered enough?”
Rolling her eyes, Karma said, “You really don’t know anything about my job, do you?”
Gaia jammed her hands on her hips. “What do you mean I don’t know anything? Anyone can see you’re blaming the victim. What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to help this girl learn what she needs to do to take care of herself. It’s the only way. Her mother is not going to get a well-paying job, and the kids are not going to stop being mean. The only way this girl is going to make it in life is if she toughens up and takes care of her own needs.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s not all up to her. I’m also going to give her some help.”
“Oh! I didn’t know that. You didn’t say…”
“Look, I don’t have to tell you everything. Do you tell me everything?”
“Probably not. You take care of your thing. I take care of my thing. Fate takes care of her thing—whatever the hell that is. Anyway, it all seems to work together, and it’s better if we don’t meddle or get in one another’s way.”
“I agree. So stay here and watch this.”
Gaia waited in the ether as her sister appeared down the street and strode up to the school, pausing on the step below where the girl was crying.
“Hey.”
The girl looked up, recoiled, sniffed, wiped her tears, and said, “What?”
“Are you sick of being pushed around, taunted, and made fun of?”
The girl leaned back and eyed her suspiciously. “How did you know?”
“The clues are obvious, but I didn’t really know. You just told me.”
The girl heaved a heavy sigh. “Okay, yeah. I’m a loser. So what?”
Karma crossed her arms and looked at the girl carefully. After a few seconds of sizing her up, she asked, “How old are you, sixteen? Seventeen?”
“Sixteen. I’ll be seventeen in a couple of months,” the girl said.
“Perfect. You can get a job. You can help your mom, you can get new clothes, and you can put these girls out of your head, because you’ll be too busy doing other things. They don’t deserve your peace of mind. I don’t want you to toss and turn all night and then come back tomorrow feeling even worse.”
“Where am I going to get a job?”
“What is it you need?”
“Huh?”
“What do you need that your mother can’t afford to give you?”
“Oh. Just some new clothes. Maybe some haircare stuff.”
“Has it ever occurred to you to work at a store that sells clothes? Or sweep up hair from a salon floor? If that’s what you really need and it will give the girls less ammunition, you should go after it like a lifeboat in the ocean.”
The girl looked down at herself. “Nobody’s going to hire me.”
“Stand up. Let me help the hair situation a bit, and then for goodness’ sake, march into someplace with your chin up and show them why they should hire you.”
“Okay…” She rose and brushed the chopped strands of hair off her old skirt, which was plaid and pleated and looked like it had been somebody’s school uniform at one time.
Karma reached into a long pocket inside her leather vest and withdrew a comb and pair of scissors. Before the girl could object, she combed the frazzled hair into a style and cut away the strands that didn’t belong. “There. Done.”
The girl glanced at the cars parked along the sidewalk and rushed over to look at herself in a side mirror. “It’s cute!”
“Of course it’s cute. Did you think I’d do to you what those a-holes did?”
“I—I didn’t know. I’ve never seen you before. I just figured you couldn’t make it worse. Do you go to this school?”
