Free Going Over by Beth Kephart

lost and we were coming home and it was late, almost dawn, I think—really late, but dark still, and snowing, and the bike wasn’t liking the snow—and suddenly this lady appeared out of nowhere, like some big rubber shadow, and it was Savas’s mother, and they were gone.”
    â€œJust like that?”
    I snap my fingers, or I try, at least. I didn’t realize that this flu of mine had stolen the strength from my hands.
    â€œHow do you know?” Arabelle says, very slowly, like I’m still too sick to understand, like I’m a little kid or someone stupid. “How do you know it was his mother?”
    â€œSavas,” I say. “Savas told me.”
    â€œGod,” she says, standing up abruptly. “Goddamn.”
    â€œYou’re freaking me out, Arabelle.”
    She paces the room, her hands at the small of her back.
    â€œCould you, like, give me a clue?”
    â€œCan’t,” she says. “I’m thinking.”
    â€œThink out loud.”
    â€œThat wouldn’t work,” she says. “Wouldn’t work at all.” She plonks down on the couch, a wave bucking through. “We’re forgetting about it,” she says, “for now, okay?” She turns toward the window, and it’s loud out there with snow.

FRIEDRICHSHAIN

    When it snows your scope is silent. There’s nothing to see but white dust. You stand on the balcony with the stuff to your knees. White then gray. Silent collapsing to hollow.
    She calls your name over the test-pattern hum of the TV. She says, “Get back inside, Stefan. You’ll catch your death of cold.” She only says it once. She doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t mean most of what she says. She is afraid of flowerpots and thin umbrellas, formal jackets, new lapels, buttonhole pins, books that rattle when you touch them. “The Stasi are listening,” she whispers. “The
inoffizielle Mitarbeiter
.” Thrusting her finger at every corner of the room. She looks like a very old man, and not your grandmother. “We will be accused of
Hetzschrift
,” she says. “Or of that other thing:
Schmähschrift.”
Any word she can think of for the crimes she might commit: smears, libel, aiding, abetting. They have won their battle against her. She is afraid. She has been voided.
    Sometimes you forget and you think that your grandfather is still coming back, and that when he does—when he clomps in from the street and climbs up the stairs and opens the door, takes off his hat, rubs at the shine on his head, puts his roots in and his arms out like a big old chestnut tree—he will not recognize her, will think somebody else moved in. You think that probably he won’t recognize you either; and why should he, what’s to say you’re the same?
    You’re eighteen now. Your hair’s grown thick, stayed curly. You’re tall enough and brave enough to look him in the eye, to say,
I’m sorry
. You think you’ll teach him the stars; that’s how he’ll know it’s you. You’ll show him what you have taught yourself to see. The gas tail of an asteroid. The boot prints on the moon. The razor whisk of arced blue. A distant pulsar. Antique starlight. The twin tricks to the telescope that he entrusted to you: aperture and ratio. You were going to be a cosmonaut, you will tell him. In honor of him, you were. You studied for it. You swam. You leapt. You did everything right, but they wouldn’t let you. There were eyes everywhere, and their eyes accused you. Here are some terms that you’ve heard before:
Border jumpers. Deserters of the Republic. Grade one relative
.
    â€œDid you really think that they’d let you into the skies?” your grandmother asked you, when you told her what it was you had wanted and what you would never have and how they had chosen your next day for you, your next month, your life: apprenticeship at the ice factory.