a fig tree named angela

In the light of the sun, warm and swollen through the fabric covering the window, Angela is attempting to be consciously aware of every square inch of her body at the same time; she knows she doesn’t have much longer to memorize this complicated map she’s inhabited for the past 101 years. She aligns her breathing with the rhythmic clink-smoosh-clink sound of Mara working over a few sprigs of lavender in a mortar and pestle.

“It works, you know.”

“Hm?” Mara looks up, eyes lucid—nervous.

“The lavender. It relaxes me.”

“That’s good, Ang, you deserve to feel relaxed now.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I do.” Mara continues mashing the purple flowers. “Listen—do you hear that? They’re singing for you out there. They’re celebrating you. You deserve it.” Angela turns her focus outwards and hears dozens of voices in a scattered chorus; it’s a song she’s heard sung time and time again (she’s the last of her generation). Never a song of mourning, always a song of celebration. She hears laughing and conversing and dancing. She smells squash roasting in the air. Everybody is gathered for her.

“I am lucky that my time is in the harvest season.”

“You are.”

“Do you know what I’m going to ask?”

“I think so, Angela.”

“Can I go to them? Can I join them?”

“Yes, I’ll take you to them; they want to see you. Can you walk?”

“No.”

“Arthur?” Moments after Mara calls, a man around her age pushes aside the curtain that acts as a door made of the same heavy red-orange fabric as the window curtain. Angela watches, passive, as Arthur slips out of the lively bubble of the larger room. He picks her up bridal style, very carefully, and she continues trying to feel every single square inch of her body (her legs have never felt so useless, so lifeless). He carries her to an armchair in the room he just came from, at the head of a long table, sitting her before a massive feast. Piles of roasted potatoes and squash, beans, corn, fresh greens and fine cuts of pork, beef, and veal are stressing the legs of the dining table. There is enough for everyone to eat their fill and then some. A heaping plate is placed before Angela, but she doesn’t seem to notice, and instead looks out at her people.

“Hi, my friends.” Strength has found its way back into her voice. Her heavily wrinkled face forms a smile. “I have raised you. I have raised your parents. I have raised your grandparents, and I was raised with your great grandparents. I know you and I love you four lifetimes over, and because of that I need to fulfill my duty as the last one who remembers both worlds: I need to remind you all how lucky we are.”

Mara nods. In the fugue of Angela’s last few days on the earth, this point has been reiterated over and over, through bed baths and hand-fed soup dinners and herbal cigarettes for the searing pain in her joints.

“When I was nine the first city burned up to nothing. Everyone, all seven billion of us, we thought we were gonna kill the earth with our carelessness, and we were probably right—we would’ve if we’d all stayed. Before that could happen, though, the ones who called themselves our 'leaders' our 'politicians' our 'celebrities,' they left on big trillion dollar ships because they only knew how to run away from the disaster they’d created. Even the ones that gave some of their millions to 'combat the climate crisis.' They left us here to die—but oh no no—we are the lucky beneficiaries of the beautiful Earth. She saw those masses of us, left behind, unable to even continue inflicting our damage on Her, and She decided to show us how to live. She has been healing for my entire life, and She continues to allow us to take. I may be the only one who still remembers the old world, but you must remember it too—for Her. Those who left are, no doubt, living in luxury on the far-off planet they spoke so much about, but I am not jealous of them. We have one another, and we have our Great Mother whom we brought back from the brink of death. She will always thank us for that, as long as we continue being Her stewards. They left us broken and deeply alone, but we’ve found each other through Her. All you have in this world is your love for each other and Her love for you. Let forgetting that be the very last thing you do.”

As she looks down and begins to eat, voices around the room begin to hum and sing fragmented melodies. Work-worn hands begin to clap in scattered isolation; then build intention and begin to structure a beat. Angela starts to clap her hands, and once she manages the strength to stand up, the din builds until the room is bursting with vitality: everybody is up and dancing, hearts beating in unison. Shouts and vocalizations fill the air, for the love of Angela and each other and all that exists and all that doesn’t.

“Are you okay?” Mara asks, she’s supporting Angela’s frame as the old woman sways back and forth to the beat of the room. Tears have begun to stream down Angela’s smiling face.

“I can feel it all, Mara, I can.”

“What can I do, how can I help you?”

“I did it, I’ve done it. I have it memorized.”

“Okay, Ang, do you want to go to bed?”

“Yeah. Yes, I’m ready now.”

Mara nods and, with the help of Arthur, walks a limping Angela back to her cot. The lively crowd follows, en masse, and files into Mara’s work room to be with Angela in these moments; those who can’t fit into the room gather outside the doorway.

Angela lies there on the bed, as Mara sits beside her carefully dissecting an overripe fig. Angela wiggles her toes, and she focuses every last bit of her energy on remembering that feeling. Remembering the way her brain can command each cell under her skin. Remembering that she is a body. She is a map. A body is a map. A body is a map of a brain. She is sure that she will remember this, as the warm, red-orange curtain blocks her sight one final time. She feels Mara place the tiny fig seeds on her tongue, and she makes sure to swallow every last one of them before drifting off to sleep.

Somewhere very far away, in a spaceship that probably once had a very important name, shrill alarms are sounding (as they have been for quite some time now).

CAUTION: LOW OXYGEN LEVELS. ENACT EMERGENCY PROCEDURES NOW.

CAUTION: LOW OXYGEN LEVELS. ENACT EMERGENCY PROCEDURES NOW.

The ship is wandering aimlessly through space, unmanned. Inside, directly next to vast stockpiles of space-optimized sustenance and water, bones and body remnants lay rotting in varying states of late stage decay. Some of the wrist bones appear to still be wrapped in expensive watches, now putrefied by the decomposition of the watch owner’s flesh. Each of them probably once had a very important name. Nobody will remember, though, because each map has dissolved and rotted into the next map, largely uncharted.