Welcome to the Universe

Chapter 2

He wakes up and sees the stars. They spin like the fair lights did when he was five and his mom sat him on the merry-go-round. This time, however, he doesn't have a painted white stallion to clutch on to. He's falling out of a plane with no parachute. He's sinking into the ocean with no life vest. The vertigo is unending until it becomes normal.

He can't tell if he's clutching at his head or heart with his formless arms and fingerless hands. He doesn't know anymore.

"Finn, darling?" A voice he hasn't heard in years cuts into him from across the dancing galaxies, and suddenly, he remembers himself. He's human, and that voice belongs to his dead mother. He looks up his eyes, and sees her standing before a nebula. It would be symbolic, he thinks, except he isn't - can't be - a star.

"Finn?" She's in a blue nightgown, the soft one he loved to snuggle into when he was scared of sleeping alone. Her arms are open.

Fuck it, he thinks. It doesn't matter if she's another depression-born hallucination; he runs as fast as his weightless legs can take him into the embrace he's craved for half his life. Her arms close around around tightly and it clicks. The piece of him missing. Home.

"My silly boy," she breathes into his hair. Just like she did when he asked for more paragraphs from The Hobbit before bed; just like she did when he asked "Does daddy still love us?" and she replied without hesitation, "Of course, darling." Her small body still seems to encompass and protect him, even though he's so much bigger and taller.

He remembers her crumpled figure, collapsed in a pile of spilled morning laundry, vulnerable and exhausted even in death. She was preparing for the day that morning; first, breakfast and a packed lunch for Finn, then laundry, and then cleaning and errands for the stupidly rich Garner household, and at night, when everyone was asleep, cleaning the community library. And then, when she came home, she worked endlessly on her community college Computer Science degree.

Finn Barnes remembers feeling unsure of a lot of things when he was eight and staring uncomprehendingly at the work-broken body of his mother, but he knows unerringly that he never hated anyone more than his father. The rich piece of shit who got Finn's immigrant mother pregnant and squirreled her and Finn away from his high-society socialite friends like they were badges of shame deserved none of his mother's endless love and forgiveness.

Her funeral was attended by a few work colleagues and an acquaintance from community college who would no doubt forget her existence in a few weeks. The Garners sent a fruit basket and a card. His father, face a blank mask during the proceedings, held out a cold hand towards a sobbing Finn.

"You're living with me now."

Finn doesn't know if the bastard even bothered to contact his mother's relatives in China. All he knows is that the next nine years of his life are a special hell filled with his father's cold avoidance and his step-mother's hateful glares and his step-brother's and step-sister's incessant racism and bullying. And so he becomes the ghost of the household, living in the limbo of a house without a home.

His pain somehow ceases to exist when he's enfolded in his mother's thin arms. He smells the cheap dollar store shampoo in her hair and clutches her to his chest. "Mom," he says wetly, "I missed you so much."

His shoulder is suspiciously wet when she replies, "I know. I'm so sorry for leaving you, baobei."

He smiles at her accented english and shakes his head and holds her.

It could have been an eternity or a second when she pulls away. She rests her small, calloused hands on his face and thumbs away the tear tracks on his cheeks.

"Stop crying, you," she says.

"You're crying too," Finn says. They break into slightly hysterical giggles.

"I suppose we're both entitled to chopping some onions," she says. She smooths back some of his hair and Finn can't help but lean into her touch like a touch-starved cat. "I'm so happy that I could be with you again, even if it's only for a short while. I love you so much, my beautiful boy."

Finn chokes off a sob when she leans their foreheads together.

"I'll always be with you, baobei. When you're happy and sad, and when you do great things. Never forget that."

Finn falls forward into smoke. His mother is gone, yet the ever-present knife in his chest doesn't twist.

He's content.