Rachel in Love

Rachel in Love

By Pat Murphy

The rain lets up. The clouds rise like fairly castles in the distance, and the rising sun tints them pink and gold and gives them faling red banners. Rachel remembers when she was younger and Aaron read her the story of Pinnochio, the little pupper who wanted to be a boy. At the end of his adventures, Pinnochio, who has been brave and kind, gets his wish. He becomes a real boy.

Rachel had cried at the end of the story and when Aaron asked why, she had rubbed her eyes on the backs of her hairy hands. – I want to be a real girl, she signed to him. – A real girl.

“You are a real girl,” Aaron had told her, but somehow she had never believed him.

The sun rises higher and illuminates the broken rock turrets of the desert. There is a magic in this barren land of unassuming grandeur. Some cultures send their young people to the desert to seek visions and guidance, searching for true thinking spawned by the opening of the place, the loneliness, the beauty of emptiness.

Rachel drowses in the warm sun and dreams a vision that has the clarity of truth. In the dream, her father comes to her. “Rachel,” he says to her, “it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you. You’re my daughter.”

A girl in love. Illustration by Elena

– I want to be a real girl, she signs.

“You are real”, her father says. “And you don’t need some two-bit drunken janitor to prove it to you.” She knows she is dreaming, but she also knows that her father speaks the truth. She is warm and happy, and she doesn’t need Jake at all. The sunlight warms her and a lizard watches her from a rock that lies on the floor of the cave. Idly, she scratches on the dark red sandstone wall of the cave. A lopsided heart shape. Within it, awkwardly printed: Rachel and Johnson, leaving scores of fine lines on the smooth rock surface. Then, late in the morning, soothed by the warmth of the day, she sleeps.

…

Shortly after dark, an elderly rancher in a pickup truck spots two apes in a remote corner of his ranch. They run away and lose him in the rocks, but not until he has a good look at them. He calls the police, the newspaper, and the Primate Center.

(The Year`s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martins`s Press, New York)