Sands Rising

by H M Wilhelmborn

  “By not making a point,” I muttered. “Now, you’ve killed your daughter and your grandkids!”

  Mauru squeezed my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Mauru, “but I just don’t like her. She makes us look bad. I, I honestly just can’t even.”

  Mauru laughed uncomfortably, and he shook his head.

  “What happened next, Eleena?” Anton asked.

  I was getting annoyed at Anton now for asking stupid questions that tried to give the impression that the interviewer had to be disinterested. Anton could have raised his voice at Eleena and reminded her that she had killed her daughter by dabbling in politics when she should have minded her own business. He could have told her that someone had to speak up for her daughter, Mable. Wasn’t he supposed to be from the new morality party, the California Water Party?

  “Guilty,” Eleena said. “They’re going to make an example of me.” Eleena tried to force a smile. Her attempt to smile failed because she cried instead. “You understand that we either stand or fall on principle, don’t you, Anton?”

  Eleena dropped her head and buried her face in her hands.

  “Did you ever consider that your sabotage would be considered an act of treason, Eleena,” Anton asked, “and, more than that, a cruel act because people died in the Lowveld when that water convoy didn’t make it? You said The Hatred prompted you to act. What if a cure is found? Why not wait for a cure, Eleena?”

  Eleena, who appeared erratic now, burst out laughing.

  “She’s crazy,” I told Mauru. “Who laughs after they kill their own child?”

  “You’re talking about a cure, Anton? They can’t even find a cure for the common cold, and you expect them to find a cure for the latest disease, which destroys adolescents? Let me paint a picture of what will happen. They’ll never find a cure. There isn’t even a vaccine that provides full immunity against malaria. Do you know how many people die of malaria each year? Two million. Do you know how many people are infected with malaria each year? About half a billion. And do you know, Anton, how old malaria is? About 70,000 years. A cure!”

  She laughed as if she had just encountered a teenager sure of his genius, and the best response to his arrogance was to laugh at him in public.

  “Boys are going to suffer, Anton, and they’ll probably become a, a, what do they call it? A commodity. They’ll become a commodity because they will become scarce. It is disgusting, it is terrible, and it is evil, but this is where this road leads, and we needed to get people’s attention. At some point, none of the boys—the children you might have—will reach adulthood because all of them will be infected, so they will do all sorts of terrible things to them in the name of saving humanity. We acted. We had to.

  “The greatest love is not to die for someone, Anton. It is to save people from their own stupidity. I’m not a martyr, and I’m not a hero. Can you see that, Anton?”

  “Are you afraid of what comes next, of the consequences of your actions?” Anton asked.

  “They will hang me,” Eleena said as she dropped her head again. “You and Jeremiah got the court’s permission to interview me here in prison, and you have my permission to film my death—not that you need it. They’re making an example of me. The president’s wife has seen to that. Would you have found me guilty, Anton?”

  Eleena stared into the camera. More humming now as she closed her eyes and the tears streamed down.

  “I really did love Mable. You do see that, don’t you, Anton?”

  Eleena paused.

  “They write letters to me now. They call me . . . The angry public from all over the world . . . Anyway, who cares now?”

  She paused again and sniffled.

  “Nirav and I had a dream, Anton. We had a dream, my late husband and I. We had planned to go to Australia one day. Have you ever seen swans take off on a river, Anton?”

  Eleena closed her eyes and sighed as if she were someplace else with Nirav.

  “Let me take you where Nirav and I wanted to go, Anton. Swans on a river, well, they raise both wings into the air at once. Their wings strike the air so strongly that the movement lifts their bodies off the water while their feet skim the surface of the water almost like they’re running, yes, running, Anton, and propelling themselves forward and upward as they get faster and even more angelic.”

  Eleena sighed again, and I found myself thinking of how shaken she appeared both in speech and appearance.

  “They reach a certain speed,” Eleena said, “and they’re gracefully airborne—swans in flight, Anton. There’s a river in Perth, Australia, called Swan River, which goes to the ocean. We have the Indian Ocean here, but in Australia the ocean goes right up to the Great Barrier Reef. They say you can still see kangaroos near Perth, koalas, you can drink wine, you can meet people from everywhere, and you can walk everywhere.”

  Eleena looked like she was talking to Nirav now, delivering the news of the end of their dream. She dropped her voice to a whisper.

  “But they say Swan River’s also in the part of Australia hardest hit by The Hatred, Anton. So, it might not be a place to visit for much longer. Swan River might be no more, and Nirav is dead now. Is there anything left to inspire hope?”

  Mauru turned the TV off, and we took a shower and went to bed.

  We found ourselves looking at each other strangely over the following weeks as if we’d both witnessed something inexplicable, which posed a troubling question that we’d never contemplated.

  Was Eleena asking what we were willing to do for our family and our country?

  It’s not that we’d follow her example—the very thought of sabotage was repulsive—but, strangely, I found my anger at Eleena waning over the following weeks. My anger evolved into something akin to pity for someone so defeated by life that she made a choice that probably seemed all too reasonable at first, but it turned out to be devastating in the aftermath.

  Pity for Eleena turned to horror as I thought of Mable, her husband, her friend, and the people in the Lowveld who died without water. What kind of parent did that?

  I looked at Jon and Nate, my sons.

  I thought of our kids. We’d just found out that we were pregnant with twins.

  As if we knew Eleena personally, as if her actions on a different continent were a personal affront to Mauru and me, we found ourselves saying, “I can’t forgive Eleena.” It was as if a stranger had come into our lives and had asked us to consider what we’d do in these times.

  I wondered about Eleena’s backstory. Whom had Eleena known, besides Nirav, whose story had pushed her to react in such a dangerous manner? No doubt, the previous televised interviews over the years had answered that question and many others, but I wasn’t really willing to commit myself to finding out why a mother had inadvertently killed two generations of her family in the early hours of the morning because, she said, of global warming.

  I thought of what my mom once said.

  “Who knows,” Mom said, “what burdens people carry? It’s not for us to judge them, Janet.”

  It was an odd thing for Mom to say, especially when she relished calling people “glib.” And yet, Mom’s comment characterized the world in which I lived, filled with contradictions, asymmetries, cross-cultural antagonisms, and anomalies that brought together both the old and the new, the foreign and the familiar.

  I was especially grateful for one part of my life.

  My parents and Mauru’s really liked each other, even if they couldn’t have been more different from each other. As I’ve shared, Dad was a lawyer, and Mom was an accountant. Mauru’s dad was a college professor and Civil War historian, and his mom worked for the state as a child psychologist. Mauru’s parents kept their marriage together by swinging, and my parents kept theirs together by never airing out their private lives.

  We envied each other’s parents.

  I always wanted to know what swinging was like, though I’d never try it myself, and Mauru always wondered what it was like to have gr
own up in “a normal family.”

  Anna and Giulio, Mauru’s parents, were refreshingly honest about their sexuality, their marital problems, and everything else about their family. Mauru hated this because the candor was new. His parents always fought when he and Elisa were kids. His dad drank a lot, and his mom yelled and apologized days later for losing her temper.

  His dad had also blacked out a couple of times while drinking, and he’d woken up on the front porch of their home up in Sacramento. He’d even embarrassed the family on a flight when he asked the flight attendant to tell the pilot that he didn’t like turbulence, which terrified him, so could the pilot please “elevate the plane and make it fly higher to avoid the turbulence, please. That should be possible.”

  Then came twelve-step groups, and when Anna and Giulio hit their sixties, sexual liberation.

  I remember the first time we visited Anna and Giulio after sexual liberation came to them. Mauru and Elisa refused to look at their parents. They’d been raised to believe that it was either monogamy or divorce, and now the people who had taught them that had thrown it all out and had found happiness by sleeping with strangers in each other’s company.

  Mauru shook his head and spat.

  Elisa yelled at her parents and said it was all a terrible example for the grandkids, who’d grow up thinking it was OK to break up marriages and destroy homes by sleeping with whomever they wanted.

  As his sister yelled, Mauru took Jon outside and held Nate, who’d just been born.

  “It’s about community,” Anna told her daughter, Elisa. “We’re part of a community of liberated people, who have fun together. It’s just sex, Elisa. We all do it, anyway, and your dad and I like doing it with others. Who cares? We take all the precautions we need to. We’re finally happy, and we genuinely like each other now. We’re friends, and we’re lovers again, like when we first met—”

  “Mom!” Elisa yelled. “We don’t marry for love or friendship. We marry for martyrdom. There’s nothing wrong with some misery and suffering in a relationship every now and again. Trust me, it does wonders for the libido. It’s an aphrodisiac.”

  “What your mom is saying, Elisa,” Giulio interjected, “is that we’re safe, we’re clean—”

  “Clean! What do you mean you’re clean, Dad! Now you’re even using hippy-dippy language. Who says they’re ‘clean’ anymore? What does that even mean?”

  “We’re regularly tested for diseases and bugs, and we’re clean,” Anna said. “Being sixty-one doesn’t mean your sex life dies, Elisa. I had a thirty-year-old man last night, who made me feel wonderful—”

  “Mom, eww, stop—”

  “And your dad had his thirty-seven-year-old wife, who was a—”

  “Mom!” Mauru shouted from outside. “My kids are here!”

  “I’m just saying,” Anna explained, “that when you get to our age, and your kids are all grown up, and one of them has a family of his own, and the other is still finding herself, you want to reward yourself with a little fun every so often. Janet, you do understand, don’t you? You’ve always been reasonable, which is why we just love you to bits. And you’ve given us grandkids.”

  “Um, I plead the Fifth, Anna,” I said. “Why don’t I just mosey on over to the fridge and put the kids’ food in there?”

  “Anyway,” Giulio said, “it’s our lives, and we’re not asking for permission. Case closed. Please bring my grandkids here.”

  “I hope you wash your hands first, Dad, before hugging your grandkids,” Elisa said. “Who knows who or what you were touching last night. Just . . . eww!”

  “Elisa!” Anna shouted. “Stop! Enough! We don’t prevent you from seeing felons and deportees, so you leave us to our swinging.”

  I coughed and almost laughed, but Elisa gave me one of the looks her brother occasionally shot at me.

  I loved my husband’s family.

  When Mauru and I started dating, he introduced me first to Anna because if she approved of me, no one would oppose her. Anna stared at me, said, “A strong woman is what my son needs to whip him into shape,” and she asked if I wanted a glass of Tokay.

  Giulio apologized for his wife’s directness.

  Anna then asked Mauru if we intended to get married or if he was still intent on “sowing his wild oats.”

  “Jesus, you’re direct!” I said to Anna. “Mauru and I have only been dating for like six months.”

  “Six months?” Anna cracked up. “In my day, that was still called ‘shacking up.’ So, how serious are you about each other?”

  “Serious enough to bring Janet home, Mom,” Mauru said.

  “When’s the wedding?” Anna asked.

  “Wedding?” I responded. “It’s not even a year and . . . I’m sorry, I’m delighted to meet you all. You seem like nice people and all that, but I’m still dating around—”

  “Dating around?” Mauru asked. “What do you mean you’re dating around?”

  “I’m dating around. Like a-round. I’m seeing a really nice guy who’s talking about moving in and getting married.”

  “Oh,” Elisa laughed. “This is good. My brother, Mr. Sow-your-wild-oats, Mr. I’m-not-settling-down-till-I’ve-had-my-fun has finally met his match. I like you, Janet. You’ll fit in here.”

  “I’m staying out of this,” Giulio said as he retired to the living room.

  “So,” Mauru said, “who is this other guy you’re dating a-round?”

  “Are we having this conversation now?” I asked him. “You really want to have this conversation now?”

  “Yeah, why not? I mean, just go right ahead and embarrass me in front of my family, why don’t you, Janet? Cut my balls off right here in front of my dad. Yeah, that’s been like my lifelong dream, Janet, to have my girlfriend tell my family she doesn’t want to marry me because she wants to marry some guy.”

  “I’m staying out of this, too,” Anna said, walking away. Elisa followed her.

  “Give me a break,” I said to Mauru. “When we started dating, you told me that you weren’t ready to settle down. You were just looking for fun—”

  “So were you, Janet. So were you—”

  “Yeah, but things change. I developed feelings, and I wasn’t about to make a fool of myself by saying three stupid words that wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway, so I found myself a guy that those words mean something to, and he tells me those words—”

  “I thought we were exclusive—”

  “Exclusive? We never had the conversa—”

  “Who needs a conversation when we’re together three to four times a week for like five months now?”

  “I do, Mauru. I need the security—”

  “And by the way, when did you have the time to meet this dream guy when you’ve been spending all your time with me—”

  “Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” I said. “This is the problem with men. You think that just because I see you a few times a week I want to spend the rest of my life with you because you’re that good, you’re that special, you’re that hot. Well, there are billions of you, and there’s only one of me, and I have choices. That’s right. I have choices, and you’re a choice I have to make—or not.”

  Mauru looked at me, folded his hands across his chest, turned away, put his hands on his head, and then dropped his hands to his sides.

  “So, I’m, I’m asking you to be with me, Jan. Forget this other guy—”

  “I won’t be exclusive with you until I know that you’re marriage material, Mauru. I’m not marrying someone just because they ask. Where’s the sense in that? I will not be exclusive until you prove yourself to me. You say you love me? Show me.”

  I heard Anna and Elisa laughing inside.

  “She’s a keeper, Mauru,” Elisa shouted. “The best one you’ve dated yet, and the only one who’s refused to wait for you. You’ve met your match.”

  I went inside and apologized to his family. I thanked them for welcoming me to their home and left. As I walked out, Giulio
said, “I know you’ve just met us, Janet, but no matter what you and Mauru decide, you’re always welcome here.”

  I didn’t see them again for a while, and by then Mauru had wined and dined me. We’d talked about everything from holding hands in public (I didn’t like PDAs, but he did, so I’d do it for him) to whether our kids would be raised Catholic or Protestant (I didn’t want my kids being forced to be anything, so they would choose whatever religion they pleased whenever it suited them).

  Mauru asked if I’d take his name (I would not unless he also took mine), and I asked if he would give up pork, which I didn’t eat at that point since my parents had raised me to reject it for religious reasons (he wouldn’t because he loved bacon and pancetta, which I accepted).

  We both wanted to know how much debt we’d bring to a marriage (about $3,000 each in consumer debt), and where we’d spend holidays (we’d play it by ear). He asked what marriage meant for me (well, being his equal), and I asked how we’d deal with the cultural differences between us (we’d be equals like we’d always been).

  He took my name when we got married, and I took his.

  Janet Whitaker Virdis & Mauru Whitaker Virdis.

  My parents, Gazelle and Derick, initially didn’t like Mauru. Mom said he was “glib,” and Dad said he was “smooth like butter,” which meant he was untrustworthy.

  I took most things Mom said with a grain of salt because she called her sisters “glib” when they aged better than she did; when their kids went to law school and medical school and I did not; and when her sisters traveled the world on vacation with groups of women from their churches and we did not.

  “Lucy,” Mom complained in private about her elder sister, who’d just returned from Machu Picchu in Peru with some sisters from her church, “is one glib cow now that she’s back from Tijuana checking out those Mexican ruins. And that daughter of hers, Monica, is one glib heifer now that she’s at Condorvine. Just because she’s at the top law school in the country doesn’t make her special. Who does she take herself for?”