Daughter,
On my application forms they asked me to describe myself. Age, ethnicity, country of national origin . . . religion. At the intake interview a smartly dressed woman tapped her finger against the words I’d scrawled.
“So you call yourself Jewish,” she said.
I shrugged. “My mother was. But I’m not observant. Will that be a problem?”
“The Asherah is owned by the Post-terrestrial Jewish Preservation Society.”
“A religious group?” I asked, surprised. I’d heard that the orthodox of most religions had hunkered down to wait for their messiahs to come. The woman gave her head a shake.
“No. Secular Jews. Mostly American. A few Israelis. A few European Jews. Committed to the continuation of Jewish culture even after Earth—” She hesitated, unable to say it. But she didn’t have to. I knew what she meant. She added, “There are other groups. Humanist ships. Nationalist groups. But they have waiting lists. We can’t guarantee that you’ll be given a spot. The Asherah is looking for passengers like you. They have a quota to reach before liftoff. Seventy percent of their passenger list must be of Jewish descent.”
“The Asherah sounds fine,” I said quickly, recalling the dimming light of Annie’s eyes, the way she’d grabbed my hands, suddenly alive again, when she’d told me I had to live on. “Would have made my grandmother proud, I suppose. She could hardly ever get me to go to synagogue with her.”
The woman was not amused.
“The contract specifies that the governing council is committed to two missions: the first, to ensure the survival and unity of the passengers of the Asherah at all costs. The second, the survival of Jewish traditions and culture even in the diaspora of space.”
At all costs. I hadn’t thought it through, what those words meant. I clutched my hands between my knees, sat straight, looked resolute.
“Where do I sign up?” I said.
But I soon learned.
Tradition dictated that only men and women be married. Survival meant that all of us would. They matched me with your father. They checked our bloodlines, had us sign the marriage contract. The Council told us that our compatibility made us soul mates. He was my bashert, my destiny.
Hogwash.
Please don’t be mistaken—I’ve come to have some affection for your father, an old man with soft laughter and kind, gray eyes. But at first our home was a silent one. Perhaps we were both grieving for what we left behind the day we boarded. Our families, our homes . . . our planet. We were strangers, and we had nothing to say to each other. I had never even loved a man before. But soon friendship blossomed between us like a timid flower, poking its head up through the soil. I called him the Professor, which had been his title back on Earth. He called me Mary Ann, a reference to an ancient TV show I’d never seen. It wasn’t love, but it was fondness and friendship, and in those first long, dark nights in space, that was enough.
When the ship was five years out, we were told to procreate. On Earth I had known about the artificial wombs that were popular with younger, wealthier women, women who feared they would otherwise lose their figures. But then I felt certain that I would never use one, would never be a mother.
The Council made sure I knew how life on board was tenuously balanced, precarious. Every woman who chose not to be a mother and every man who turned his back on fatherhood would represent a job that would one day go undone and a precious bloodline that would one day die. You were our duty and more, our purpose. We would be parents because it would be so very wrong to be everything but. I did what they said. I became a good Asherati. After all, I’d agreed to it—signed on the dotted line not once but twice, at boarding and on the day that I was wed.
We made your brother first. I picked his name, one that fit with the growing tradition of the ship—the strong, masculine ending—but one that honored what I had lost, too. Anson. Because I wouldn’t have known him if it hadn’t been for Annie. Because he was, in a way, her son as well. Because no matter what the Council said, I knew that I’d met my bashert years ago—and lost her.
Four years later, before you were even born, your father named you. He pressed his gloved hand to your egg, saw the mass of cells, the flutter of a heartbeat moving within, and said one word: “Terra.”
That’s when I knew the truth about your father, how the seeds of discontent grew within him as they did me. He, too, was always looking back—over his shoulder to everything we had left behind, even when we both should have been looking forward.
