She likes him. My daughter. And he is attractive, I can see that. Even though he is thin, even though he has not had enough to eat. And he’s not sick. But he has no family to surround him. To surround her. He isn’t sick, but the rest of us are. Our tribe is dying. We are dying. They cannot be a couple.
And he is nice. He doesn’t rage. He doesn’t kill for fun. Like my oldest did. How can he protect her? How can he protect anyone? If only I have time. If only I can keep them apart long enough.
The ground of the forest is thick here. We stop often. Stoop and feel around for moving things. To eat. I remember our caves. We were safe there. Why did we leave? I don’t remember. Perhaps I’ve never known why we left.
Sometimes I sniff others in the wind. Very faintly. And then the breeze changes, and it’s gone. Their smell. Smell tells me where to go. I listen. Sound tells me where to go. The father blithers. This way, I say. The father blithers. That way, I say.
They don’t know that I can hardly see. That the father is saying nothing.
If only we could keep our memories in something other than the words we say to each other. This is what I think. Often. What we say changes what we know. Each time we talk. I have seen it so many times, and for so long.
I am far too old to be alive. But there is no one to replace me.
Perhaps this is what it is to be old. To see how they repeat everything wrong. To see how it all changes. If only we could make memories into pictures. And keep them in caves. The way we once did. Pictures we kept. That didn’t change.
We move slowly out of forest and into plains. Before we step out of the forest’s shadow, everyone turns to me. Should we go this way? This is what they are asking me with their sad faces. The father blithers. I sniff, and very faintly I smell others. That is the way to go. The father blithers again. Then I nod, as if he makes sense, as if he has informed me of something, and I point. And we go on. Some of us stagger. Some of us trudge. Ulcers on our legs and feet. That don’t heal. That never heal. We move slowly because each one of us stops. Frequently. Each one of us picks up insects. We pop them into our mouths like berries. We move slowly because it hurts most of us to move at all.
Insects.
I close my wrinkled eyes, my old dying eyes, and sob inside where no one can see. This is eldering, I tell myself. My interior landscape is always wet. It is always raining. There is no sunlight in my mind. Where I live.
Each evening I feel my daughter’s teeth, reach into her mouth while she protests, pushes back at me angrily. I nudge each tooth with a finger to see if it’s starting to move. She hates this, she resists me, she punches at me with her small delicate hands. I like that. She is stronger than she looks. And her teeth. They are still strong too, they are still firm, they refuse to yield to my fingers. And they’re straight. Almost completely. It’s a miracle of beauty. Her teeth. I can’t believe my luck. I can’t believe her luck.
I don’t have much time, this is what I think. We don’t keep our teeth for very long.
She’s not sick. I rub fresh mud over her body, let it dry on her skin. I don’t talk to our ancestors anymore. I don’t brag to them about how beautiful she is. I don’t try to make our ancestors proud of her body. This is what we used to do. Before our ancestors evaporated. Before they deserted us the way water does.