Esther’s Dystopian Days.
By
David Heath
Episode: The Saga of Queen Ruth
Ruth Goldbaum let herself into the apartment she shared with her adult daughter having just finished a long and grueling shift at the hospital. Her body ached,; she only wanted to take a bath, maybe grab a glass of wine read a bit of the trashy romance novel she’d picked up at a thrift store until her mind relaxed, so she could get enough REM sleep, and not feel exhausted when she dragged herself back to work the next day.
The TV’s volume was so low that Ruth nearly mistook the droning voice of the shopping channel’s pitchwoman for random white noise. The dead sky gray of the television’s glow mingled with the kitchen’s light cast an eerie glow. Over the darken room. That was the first sign something was amiss.
This seemed confirmed when she spotted her twenty-one-year-old daughter, Esther, lying motionless on the couch. She was so still that Ruth panicked, her heart racing. It was like when her baby girl was a newborn, when Ruth would stand over the cradle gripped by constant fear that her precious child might stop breathing or simply cease to be. She had once thought she was the only one to feel this, but since graduating nursing school, Ruth had spoken with over a hundred new parents who shared the same fear.
Esther hadn’t moved an inch since Ruth left for work nearly twelve hours earlier. Ever the nurse, Ruth reached down to check for a fever. Esther batted her hand away like a lazy cat. A blanket draped her body, and Ruth could tell she wore the same threadbare robe and Las Cuatro Chichas concert t-shirt three sizes too large her frame that she used as pajamas. Ruth perched on the couch’s overstuffed arm, ready to lean over and examine her daughter if. Not for the first time, she realized where Esther had inherited her habit of sitting on things not designed to place human butts. Fighting ti remove the sound of exhaustion from her voice, she asked “Are you OK?”
The college student let out an incoherent grunt. “Esther, did you even get up today?” her mother asked.
The kinky haired girl nodded, raised two fingers on one hand, and replied in a deadpan tone., “Twice… Bathroom… Didn’t want to urinate on… couch…”
“Well, that is considerate of you. Okay I’m going to get a thermometer.” Ruth began to stand
“No,” Esther said meekly, shaking her head. “Not physical.”
Ruth shifted her weight settling, back onto the couch’s arm. She studied her daughter, trying to diagnose her alignment. Esther’s eyes were slightly red, to enough to suggest drug use. Crying? Perhaps? No fever. Depression? Ruth took a cleansing breath to push out the exhaustion and rising frustration out, asking as softly as she could, ”want to talk about it, Babygirl?”
Esther didn’t look at her mother instead, she stared at the ceiling. “Everything sucks.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“They’re dropping bombs on children… Pulling dark –skinned people into unmarked vans… The government lies to us and doesn’t care that we know that they are doing it… I can go on, if you want? I have more data…” Esther whispered weekly.
“That’s alright, I have the internet.” It was a good sign that Esther could make a joke however weak. Ruth took another deep breath. pushing back the irritation, her father and her ex-husband Jonathan had treated her that way, and she constantly fought their ghosts to avoid treating her daughter the same way. She felt sorry for Esther and her friends, it was bad enough that they had to finish their last two years of high school online, teleconferencing due to the pandemic. Now they were watching the country that they, Ruth, and generations of Americans had grown up in, change, and not for the better.
The nurse in Ruth surfaced again. A reasonable amount of fear and despair over things beyond Esther’s control, even if expressed in her typical overdramatic way, was better than the chemical imbalances Ruth had grown accustomed to seeing in patients daily at the hospital. “Okay, tell you what. I know what you need. “Esther’s eyelashes fluttered, but there was no other response. “A girl’s night out tomorrow I will give you a twenty you and Cleopatra can grab some pizza and a soda.”
“Can’t grab pizza with Cleo..” Esther said flatly.
Ruth looked her directly in the eyes her tone deadpan. “You don’t want pizza? Who are you And what have you done with my daughter?”
Esther propped her head up slightly. “Not that I didn’t eat today…Well nothing but ice cream food products… I swung by the refrigerator on one of my two-bathroom trips. We’re out of ice cream.” Ruth recalled that they had over two pints of Ben & Jerry’s morning, not that it mattered right now.
Cleopatra Parker had been Esther’s best friend since eighth grade; they were inseparable. Except for those one, two, or three days a month, every month since they were at each other’s throats until they made up. They were more like Ruth and her sister than any of her friends that she had grown up. “What caused it this time?” Ruth asked with more exasperation in her voice than she meant to reveal
Esther shrugged and pulled the blankie to her chin. “Don’t know, can’t remember, some stupid little thing. Someone said something to the other, not sure what. But I know I did not do it.” Ruth raised an eyebrow. “I would never do that.” By her mother’s reckoning, Esther started the fights a good eighty percent of the time.
Ruth bit her lower lip. She already hated what she was about to say but knew she had to say it “Have you thought of…maybe… talking with… Penny?’ Ruth had been fine with her daughter being bisexual ever since Esther had come publicly when she was sixteen. It wasn’t that she dated girls that bothered her; it was that she dated that girl. “You…know that I didn’t…” She struggled for the right words. “That I wasn’t particularly fond of her, but you were defiantly happier with her.”
“So, I didn’t tell you this,” Esther said pulling the blanket back up. Oh no., Ruth thought. Do I really want to hear this? Do I?
“Last month, we got back together…”
“Oh?’ Ruth said, shocked. It was a complete surprise.
Esther took a deep breath. “Yeah, it didn’t last… Took fifteen minutes for her to say something antisemitic… She didn’t know she’d said it or how bad it was…” Esther shook her head Ruth thought she could see tears glistening in her eyes. “She tried… God, she tried… just… It runs too deep in her…She just… I can’t be one of the ‘one of the good ones,’ to her… So she show off to her friends to show that she’s not really a Jew hater, ‘See I have a Jewish girlfriend.’ I couldn’t be that… Not the way she wanted.”
Ruth’s heart broke for her daughter. “Probably for the best” She whispered. Esther couldn’t speak she looked into her daughter’s eyes. “Oh… What about that guy you brought over last month. What was his name, what was it Pet…? Paul…? Yeah, Paul… I know you liked him. I saw how you looked at him, when he came to the house that time… And you went with him on that road trip.” She regretted saying that as soon as the words came out of her mouth. Ruth was furious when Esther had run off with a bunch of kids, and they were kids to Ruth, even if they were in college, to film ICE officers in LA. She pushed it down. That was then; this was now, and they were all safely back home.
“Yeah, another thing I didn’t tell you.” Ruth rubbed her temple; she wasn’t getting any sleep tonight, was she? “Well, I got drunk and made out with his girlfriend. Turns out she was using me to get even with him.”
Ruth blinked several times, trying to process what Esther had just said. “I know the Mother’s Manual Handbook, says I am supposed to say something.” She shook her head. “I’ve got nothing.”
“I’d be scared if you did.” Esther said flatly.
What.” what about that book you are working on? You were so excited about it?” Ruth said trying to change the subject.
Esther turned over, her face buried in the couch cushions. “I gave it up.”
“What? Why?” Ruth asked taken back by this. Her daughter loved to write, going on for hours about places and people she’d created in her head as if they were real places she’d visited and friends.
Esther mumbled into the cushion. “I suck… I can’t write… Everyone hates it… I suck…”
“What, Chickpea? No, don’t say that.”
“It’s true.” Her daughter mumbled.
Ruth stood up and headed towards her room. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Not planning to.” Esther sighed.
Nearly five minutes later Ruth returned. “Here, I saved this for you.”
“What?” Esther rolled over, seeing that her mom was holding an old, yellow, brittle piece of paper.
“Take it.” Her mother said handing it to her.
She took it, amazed it hadn’t crumbled in her hands. Half of the page featured a crudely drawn castle, with a stick figure above it, wearing a crown and wielding a sword, drawn in red crayon with yellow lines streaming from the blade.
Written below in a child’s block print handwriting…
“Queen Ruth is nice and pretty. She is the boss of the kingdom because King Jonathan went away because he did not want to be king anymore. She has a magic sword that lets her fly and shines light, that scares away the monsters. She keeps the kingdom and Princess Esther safe.”
Esther looked at it and shook her head. “I had to be what… eight when I wrote this. Why? Why did you keep it?”
Ruth’s eyes moistened “Because you wrote it for me when I was at my darkest point in my life. When I thought the whole world was against me. When I needed it most. That’s what you do when life gets crazy and everything feels out of your control, you create a world that you can control.”
“Wow,” Esther gasped, energy and youth returning to her face. “Wow I… I never knew.”
“I know it’s hard for you and your friends. There’s so much uncertainty and it’s getting worse. I see people struggling every day at the hospital. It’s so easy to feel like you want to give up.”
“It is so…” Esther said softly.
“I know it is,” her mother said reassuringly. “Listen, I love you, I really do. But I exhausted. I have to be on duty in the morning. If you haven’t patched things up with Cleopatra by the time I get home tomorrow, you and I can get that pizza, instead.”
“Thanks.” Esther whispered.
Her mom bent down and kissed her forehead. “I know it’s been a rough day. If you want to crash on the couch, just, turn off the TV before you go to sleep.” For the first time since Ruth had returned home, Esther the couch. “No. I’m okay I think take a shower, head to my room, and get some writing in before I crash.”
“Good idea” Ruth said. Esther started to hand her the fragile piece of old paper. “No, why don’t you keep it for a while.” Esther just nodded.
Wearing a fresh new Las Cuatro Chichas concert T-shirt, she toweled the last bit of water from her neck. She picked up the story she had written as a child, attached it to her magnet board, then sat in her chair, turned to her computer, and began to type.
Dystopian Days
By
Esther Goldbaum
Crystaline Eden cursed herself. She’d been foolish to rush into the abandoned subway tunnel without backup armed only with her trusty katana as a weapon Now six deadly Corp-Sec shock troopers were closing in. They all had state if the art assault rifles, and she’d made the classic tactical error of bringing a sword to an automatic weapons fight.
One –on –one, none of them would be a match for her. She’d hardly break a sweat against three. Half a dozen was a different story. As they stealthily moved in on her; she realized the danger she was in. She gripped her sword’s handle tighter. A sly smile curled on her lips. Crystalline was outnumbered, and the odds were against her. Just the way she liked it.
Esther’s Dystopian Days. 
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