Mother's Milk

Get Born, Grow up and Move Away

(Part One.)

A silent scream, eyes closed, tears mixing with gray rain. There had been no closure to their ongoing conversation, no more steps to take, only room to collapse onto his headstone. She pulls fistfuls of wet grass into her hands, seeking him, throwing her consciousness into the dirt for a sign of warmth. There's no body buried beneath her knees, she searches, aches. An umbrella appears above her. Seventeen year-old Dick, already decades matured. He's scared in his too-big wool blazer and shiny oxfords. Miriam's chest heaves, tremoring from cold and from where Jason should have been. She'd been running. Over and over the moment plays, Bruce's soft voice telling her the news. Her knees sting and her mouth is filled with salt and molten iron and yearning. What of it now, the world has stopped and she'll be here, his eyes, the gap in his teeth, the bursts of red in his voice.

Blue. The ice of Dick's hand on her shoulder through her soaked dress. He's trying to be like Bruce but he can't do it and he knows.

-

She'd stopped trying to see since that day.

By nature of being Bruce's, she'd grit her teeth and been noble and numb, graduating high school and enrolling in university. Her abilities had become unbearable, flashing brighter than the sun, illuminating her skull and flaying tendons, invading the minds of those around her with crimson. Miriam hadn't put up a fight when Bruce proposed a solution. He couldn't bear it any more than she. The implant in her arm still stung, her head still throbbed, but the colors stopped, and as long as Bruce wasn't being reminded about his son; his child, nothing but empty flesh in his arms, the end of his little boy; he'd deemed the operation a success. Miriam still dreamed, mourned. She'd do it for the both of them. A final gift to her father.

As soon as she'd been able, Miriam left. Bruce said he didn't understand, but he did and she knew.

-

"Describe it to me."

She asked this of him sometimes. After the implant, not only had her ability to transmit colors–images, moods, entire inner worlds–to others stopped, but her own capacity to see. She didn't mind it most of the time. It was spring, and she could smell the cold fresh rain, like the day of Jason's funeral.

"The sun is coming through the trees. The wind is making the grass wave, and the sunlight is reflecting off. There's a bird on top of your mailbox...he's yellow and brown."

Miriam lets the memory of Dick's voice linger. It's a melody she knows well, one of the earliest songs she learned. Soft and sweet and low.

"How's university?" He always asks, the answer is always the same.

"It's fine." Bruce keeps wanting to get his hands in whatever she's trying to do, creating shortcuts she never asked for, giving her access to things she doesn't need, sending people to 'assist' that always manage to make things more tedious than they were before.

"How's work?"

Miriam deemed vigilante conversation off-limits, so there's not much else for Dick to ask about.

"Bruce found out I transferred and someone at my new place let it slip we're related. I can't take five steps without people asking if I need help wiping my ass."

She hears him smile. "Add it to the list. Are you going to switch departments?"

"If I have to do the paperwork again I'll lose my mind...I don't know. The trade-off stops being worth it at some point. I can still get done what I need to, even if I can't get a second to myself when I'm at the office." She feels the wood table beneath her hands, familiar dents and scratches passing by beneath her fingertips.