Wearing one of Nora's cute rompers, I sat in the passenger seat of her car. The city sped by as I stared out the window. Glass, brick, mortar. Storefronts, apartments, schools. I'd seen it all before, yet somehow it all seemed new as if I looked upon our city with fresh eyes. New but familiar.

As we crossed the bridge, heading out into the suburbs, Nora turned down the radio. I hadn't been listening anyway.

"Explain it to me again, Nikki."

"I woke up in a hospital, but it wasn't really a hospital at all." I didn't bother to look away from the passing landscape. I'd explained it twice already. "The place seemed like a private lab in an office building. And before you ask, I didn't get a look at the outside."

"Right, because you snuck into the basement and teleported."

"Don't say it like that." I felt crazy enough without her two cents.

"Are you serious? Listen to what you're saying: a doctor hopped up on steroids lifted up a car with one hand and you were so scared you teleported. Through. Time."

"I know how it sounds, but it's the truth. That's exactly what happened."

We stopped at a light and I turned to look at her. She'd put on a few pounds, her nose swelling with her baby bump. She wore her hair tied back into a puff. It felt like I hadn't seen her in a week. For her it had been five months. She met my eyes as if she felt my scrutiny.

"I want to believe you, Nikki, but it sounds like something out of those Octavia Butler books you used to love reading."

"Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction," I mumbled. "I know it all seems outlandish-"

"Seems!"

I chuckled at her incredulous tone.

"SEEMS outlandish, but how do you explain the scorch mark on the ceiling above your bed? How do you explain my five month absence? Shit, Nora. You had a funeral for me."

A tear spilled down her cheek as we turned and joined traffic merging onto the turnpike.

"You were dead," she whispered.

"Well I'm back now."

I balled my hands into fist. The feeling of my nails digging into my palms grounding me. Truth was, despite what I remembered, I wasn't sure what was real anymore.

"You finally got bored flying through time with your titties exposed."

"Nora!"

I nudged her gently. We both laughed, a much needed release of tension.

"Let's try to stay in the here and now until we know what's really going on. We've both done enough reports on the antebellum south to know you're non-domestic ass wouldn't survive one night as a slave."

"Like you would fair any better?"

"Never said that. I'd be on the road, looking for Harriet Tubman the moment the sun went down."

"You and that baby boy would have a hard march ahead."

Nora's face grew serious, the levity building within the car seeping away.

"Why do you keep saying that? I told you, I haven't found out the sex yet."

"I just have a feeling."

It was more than a feeling. I caught a glimpse of his future. The more I chalked it up to my imagination, the more I knew it to be true. But I couldn't tell her that. She already thought I was losing my mind.

"Well, stop with the feelings." Nora breathed a deep sigh. "Tell me more about this half-naked fantasy man who called you a goddess."

"Goddess of Time and Beauty."

"Better than being some bloated fertility goddess." She rubbed her baby bump.

I resisted the urge to comment about her tiny passenger.

Through the side view mirror, the city receded. Driving past truck stops and foul-smelling factories, we headed upstate. Faces in passing cars ignored us, lost in their own bubbles, living their own stories. I remembered my childhood, riding in the back of mom's car, heading to Nanna's. Back before smartphones and satellite radio. Back then people saw you, people smiled, back then we drove the road together.

Driving along the palisades we listened to the local radio. Trees and offramps, dotted with rest stops, passed on our right, the river on our left. Small boats meandered downstream far below. Popular music of no discernible genre played in sets of six before a commercial break and a minute of news. Twice they mentioned the accident and its toll on the environment. Twice Nora watched me from the corner of her eye. We exited the turnpike as the roadway veered away from the cliff's edge.

Grandpa and Nanna had lived in a very small township on the city fringes. The tree-heavy suburb one hour out of the city was a commuter's dream. A diverse community where one could quietly raise a family and comfortably access city jobs. In a time of redlining, Grandpa had a friend willing to handle the paperwork and sign for the loans. When the house was paid in full the friend had handed it all over. Back then, diversity was a dream in Dr. Martin Luther King's head.

Mom hated the whole thing, hated the house and the township. There were stories of hurt and persecution she refused to share. When our grandparents died, she wanted to sell the place and wash her hands if it, but dad and I convinced her to sign the house over to me and Nora. Nora was a city girl at heart and only stayed long enough to secure a career in photography before leaving me all alone.

Aside from Nora's old room, the place looked exactly the way Nanna had left it.

"Oh, great. I wonder who she'll fight with first," Nora grumbled as we turned into the driveway.

An unfamiliar zipcar rental sat in the driveway. I turned to Nora, eyebrow raised.

"Mom's here."

Shit.

I took a few deep steadying breaths before getting out of the car. Mom and I rarely agreed on anything.

Nora used her keys and we went in. It dawned on me I didn't have my keys or my wallet. My minivan was back in the lab parking lot or it had been the morning of the accident. I felt naked despite wearing Nora's clothes.

Plastic covered my living room furniture and moving boxes were stacked in the middle of the room where my coffee table should have been. Mom had been busy. I heard movement and slow jazz playing in the kitchen and steeled myself for a cold welcome. I passed my hallway mirror and paused.

My reflection was off. I can't think of any other way to say it. My skin was darker, smoothed of all spots and blemishes. The minor acne I'd always dealt with had gone away and I was luminous. Literally glowing. Rays of light beamed from my outline as if I stood in front of an intense light source. A solar eclipse. My eyes sparkled and the pupils were deep dark and roiling.

"Do you see that?" I whispered, too shocked to catch my voice.

"See what, Nikki?"

I looked at Nora through the mirror. At first she was her normal, vibrant, beautiful self. Then a beam of light touched her and I could see through her. I could see her fear, her worry, her joy, and her confusion. I could see little Nathan nestled within her uterus. I saw her love for him and her love for me as a bright light at her core.

"What?" she asked, her voice grown small with concern. "Is it more of that space goddess stuff."

Squeezing my eyes tight, I chased it all away. When I looked again, only our normal reflections remained. Space goddess.

"Nothing. It's nothing."

"Nora, is that you?" Mom called from the kitchen.

"Yeah." Nora rolled her eyes. Both of them knew how to hold a grudge.

I followed her down the hall and into the kitchen. Mom sat at Nanna's old wooden table wrapping my glasses in newspaper. She looked older than I remembered, more than half of her hair turned to grayish-blue, heavy bags hanging beneath her sharp eyes which seemed to catch everything. It looked like she'd been crying.

Our eyes met as I walked in behind Nora. The wine glass in her hand slipped and shattered against the tiled floor. Tiny shards sang as they skipped across the linoleum. Mouth agape, the woman who had never lost a debate against anyone but my father, was struck speechless.

"Mom!" Nora cried.

She rushed to the cabinet where I kept the broom and dustpan. Carefully Nora swept up the shards, working around our mother who sat stock still like a stone statue.

"Nykia?" she finally whispered, a single tear trailing down her cheek. Emotion made her voice husky.

"Mom..."

Staring into her unblinking eyes, I felt my consciousness sink into hers. I saw beyond her hard facade, through her emotional barriers grown from years of pain. I saw her childhood as the only black girl in a white school district which would make a wildly progressive swing, but only after years of quietly making her life hell. I saw the resentment she held towards Nanna and Grandpa, and the hate she held for the home we stood in. I saw how the emotional wounds would make it difficult for her to bond with her teenage daughters. It was there I saw her regrets. Henrieta Baccus loved her children very much, though she'd never told them so.

Peering into her soul, I didn't know what to say.

Crossing the room, I took her hands in mine and kissed them. I felt those hands trembling as she looked down at me and all the animosity I'd held towards her for so long faded away, gone into the wide universe. It was a moment of catharsis, a freeing of bonds. Release from an unseen prison.

She jumped to her feet and threw her arms around me. Across the room, Nora watched on with a look of utter surprise. Our mother had never been an affectionate woman, even towards our father who was the most openly loving man I'd ever known. I'm so confused, Nora mouthed to me.

I tried to laugh, but my throat was choked with an unreleased sob. All I could do was hold onto my mother and take it all in. Leaning into her, I sniffed her hair.

There came a loud knock from the front door. We hadn't closed it.

Nora left the kitchen, broom still gripped in her hand.