aliens and the big words

I’m 5 and she is 13. We swing on the swings in our backyard, eyeing the sliding glass door, knowing bad things are happening inside the house. We can’t stop them, so we swing instead. It's a Sunday and Sundays are always bad.

The talk at the meeting that day was on ignoring the Devil’s attempts to get us to believe in aliens. Why? I wasn’t totally sure, but apparently to lure us away from God and the promise of eternal life on a paradise earth. It was a concept that, like everything else, was vague.

Obviously, according to the speakers, Satan the Devil had some plans, but I was always bad at guessing them. Plus, the Devil didn’t seem that scary anyway. Not when what was inside the house was inside the house. When it’s like that, invisible scary things are just kinda interesting and kinda boring at the same time. Satan was a Tuesday.

She was better at guessing what the Devil’s plans were. A guru of sorts, and just the right amount of older than me to seem infinitely cool, wise, and full of answers. Plus, her stacked pink and green leg warmers were just. so. rad.

“But…” I start, and she lets out a sound like my aunt’s old lab when she is turning in circles then finally plops down. I am in no way discouraged.

“But do you THINK there’s aliens?” I try to drum up a mental visual of a green, wonky little alien, but it barely flickers, staticky into my brain before it's gone again, no different than anything else I’ve never seen.

I watch the side of her face tilted up to the sun as she pumps her legs and swings full, big, high lifts into the air, her long black hair, wild and frizzy. She stops pumping her legs, slows slightly and looks at me.

“What do YOU think?”

I don’t know. I never know. I tell her that.

“You do know what you think,” she says, annoyed, frustrated. Now I’ve made her mad too, so for 30 seconds I let it go. Only for 30 seconds. I’ve got shit to discover, after all.

“But…”

She drags her white sneakers in the dirt and slows to a stop. “Do YOU think humans are the only living things in the entire –“ She waves her arms around and gives me the crazy face I love so much. “The whole, huge…whatever.”

The universe. But we can’t use that word. It’s too full of science and logic and cold, hard facts. That won’t do at all, not in a cult, not for girls, and not in this backyard. Not today, Satan. It will be 10 more years before I realize the universe is the coolest mystery that requires the most faith with the least concrete answers, but that’s for a different time.

I squint up at the California sky, huge, blue, cloudless. I don’t know what’s up there, so I focus instead on looking down at the grass sprawling out in a sod patch in front of us. I know what’s down there, and I like knowing that I know for sure.

Bugs. Roly polies, my favorites. Earthworms. Slugs. The tomato caterpillars with the red horn. Little brown blind moles like the one we found in the winter. And somewhere, our turtle that escaped. He ran to the wild, and we just let him go. At least one of us could be free.

“I can’t see any roly polies,” I say. “Buuuuut…they’re in there.”

She smiles the close-lipped smile that means she’s happy. Proud of me.

“Exactly. Now shush time.”

“Beep. Boop.” I give her my robot shut-down consent to shush time.

But I’m a robot girl who needs concrete answers in an abstract crazy human world. Everything about my life at 5 is confusing, fascinating, and foreign. I have more questions than I will ever be able to write down. This thought worries me on a daily basis.

Just to be sure, I run down a quick daily list of what I need to remember to ask:

 What happens to the windmills when there isn’t any wind?

 Why is Luigi faster and the better jumper but always Player 2?

 What’s an Oklahoma?

 What’s a politic?

 What’s a Hanukkah?

 Did my baby doll actually poop its diaper? If so, why did it look and smell like a melty Snickers bar if I only give her fake milk?

 Do dogs get sunburned or does their fur block it?

 How come black is a bad color?

 What’s a law?

 Is Kokomo a real place we can go visit?

 Can we set all the puppies in the real pound loose at night if we’re quiet?

 Why do Tums help my bellyaches but not my bloody noses?

 What’s a heavy metal and why is it Satan’s tool and does he wear a tool belt?

 Is Flight of the Navigator going to happen to us? If it does, will she know me even though she’ll be a grown up but I'll look the same?

 Who paints the line on the roads? How come some roads don’t have them?

 Is the one sock sad when the other sock is lost?

 What’s an eff word?

 Does Satan eat food or people or both?

 Do cranes feel lonely at nighttime? The metal ones, not the bird ones.

I’m learning to write in kindergarten so I can ask them alllll in a list, folded neatly and slid under my sister’s door, and then finally start making sense of everything. But it’s slow-going in Mrs. Furlong’s class. Circle time takes up the whole day it seems, and she barely even lets us practice letters. So far, I’ve got my own name, Mom, God, Jesus, love, cat, and Oreo down pat.

So, it’s just asking with my voice for a while, I guess.

“But do YOU think there are?”

She sighs. She can’t give me science answers that contradict what we are taught. It’s against the rules. But she always gives me the truth. She’s been badass like that since forever. The sighing is the key to almost-answered, and I bounce twice in my seat because I know the truth is coming.

“I think it would be really stupid and full of yourself to believe we are the ONLY things in the ENTIRE world. It’s just…statistically improbable.”

Big words. The kind I need. I repeat them aloud twice, try to commit them to memory, because I have no idea what they mean but I just KNOW they will be important some day. I collect little and big words, like a crow finding shiny things, greedily scooping them up and building my nest with all of my treasures. I can’t write yet, but I know – I just KNOW – that someday I will use them all.

“Just think for yourself,” she says, kicking off again, the swing chain jangling. “Just ask yourself all the questions. You can answer them, Salena.”

I’m silent. I never know how to think of answers myself, that’s why I always barge into her room and disrupt her Boys 2 Men songs and ask whatever I need to know. Well, that’s only partially true. I can figure out answers, but I can’t believe them. Not if only me is saying them. It will be 30 years before I understand what gaslighting is, what coercive mind control is, what having no faith in your own judgment means to your identity.

“I’ll just ask you,” I say happily, pumping my legs and getting nowhere without a push. “Can you push me?”

“NO!” She yells. “Push off with your legs. Ughhhh! I. Wanted. Dogs!”

I’m laughing hysterically as I cockeye try to push off with my too-short legs on the too-high red banana seat, swinging sideways, getting no higher, and reveling in her irritated sounds.

And so it went, for three and a half decades. Big sisters. They’re statistically improbable.