\nGrowing up, I didn\u2019t really get how my mother was different from the other moms. And I never questioned her love for me. She made picture-perfect pancakes with strawberries and whipped-cream in the morning, strolled with me through a park or a museum in the afternoon, read me fairy tales before bed, and told me she loved me before she planted a dry kiss on my cheek and cooed, \u201cGood night, honey-bunny\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\nI took her quirks for granted\u2014her phobia of water, the faint scent of rubbing alcohol on her skin, the way she lifted the fridge with ease when a pea rolled behind it, the quiet whirring when I put my head against her chest.\n<\/p>\n
\nMaybe I was slow for not putting two and two together. But I never gave any of it a second thought. It was just the way Mom was.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nSummer, I sat in the pool with my best friend, Betty. Shrill squeals of laughter erupted from mouths with missing milk teeth. The sun bounced off sunglasses and soda pop bottles. My mother lounged on a chair in capri pants and a white turtleneck, a lifestyle magazine flicked open to the same page for hours. Now I think back on it, I bet she was \u2018reading\u2019 hundreds of books at the same time, while keeping her eyes on me.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhy isn\u2019t your mommy wearing a swimsuit?\u201d Betty asked.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cShe can\u2019t swim.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIsn\u2019t she hot?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI shrugged. The temperature never seemed to affect my mom. When icicles hung from the eaves like teeth, and I pretended every breath out was a puff of cigar smoke, she\u2019d run to the store without a coat. She\u2019d be forgetful like that.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut she balked at going out into the rain. If we were in town, we\u2019d wait outside the bakery and listen to the pitter-patter on the striped awning. I craned my neck and stuck out my tongue to catch the rain drops that dribbled from the scalloped border. On our way home, I splashed into puddles, delighting in Mom\u2019s horror.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou have to wear a swimsuit to the pool, even if you don\u2019t swim,\u201d I whined. \u201cAll the other moms wear swimsuits.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nThe next time at the pool, my mom was in a brand-new bathing suit with daisies dotted on green. I traced the fine line that circled her wrist with my wet finger.\n<\/p>\n
\nShe recoiled. \u201cDon\u2019t drip on me, darling.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nMom hated water so much that when she bathed me, she wore a thick vinyl apron and long rubber gloves that came up to her shoulders.\n<\/p>\n
\nShe flinched at every splash, every cannonball.\n<\/p>\n
\nBetty\u2019s mom waded into the pool, calf-deep. I tugged on Mom\u2019s wrist.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, baby.\u201d She didn\u2019t budge. \u201cI see that you are sad and disappointed, but I can\u2019t go in the water. I\u2019ll get hurt.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou\u2019re no fun!\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen Betty\u2019s mom talked with my mom, her eyes fluttered and her hands fiddled with the bow on her bathing suit. Betty\u2019s mom would say perfectly normal things and blush. \u201cI\u2019m sweating something awful in this heat\u201d or, \u201cI need to use the restroom\u201d or, \u201cWho\u2019s up for ice cream?\u201d\u2014her red face clashing with her ginger hair.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe other moms huddled together on the other side of the pool.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t have the right to raise children. It\u2019s not natural.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHow can it love that little girl? That Anny has no feelings.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI bit a chunk out of my popsicle. The freeze stung my forehead, the pain louder than their voices.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nSometimes, a lady visited us at home. She clutched a clipboard with her long, red nails and asked for a glass of water she would stain with a lipstick crescent. She\u2019d take a seat at the kitchen table and place a clicking device with three dials in front of her. She asked Mom strange questions in a monotone voice.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhich animal\u2019s life has more value, a pig\u2019s or an ant\u2019s?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat is the difference between a friend and a refrigerator?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat is more beautiful, a red rose or a rocking chair?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nMom would sit very still as the needles danced to her answers.\n<\/p>\n
\nSometimes the lady turned to me. Had Mommy ever forgotten to cook for me? I told her how Mom sat with me at the table and watched me eat. I\u2019d offer a bite of my lasagna, and she\u2019d shake her head. \u201cDig in,\u201d she\u2019d say. \u201cIt\u2019s all for you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI told her too about the gloves when I had to take a bath. The woman nodded\u2014the sound of her nails tapping on the electronic clipboard like rain on a window pane.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen the lady came by, Mom wore an immobile smile that creeped me out.\n<\/p>\n
\nI would play the questions game by myself. I\u2019d prop up two dolls and sat them facing each other at the low table in my room. I had a broken clock with loose handles that wouldn\u2019t stay in place, which I placed in the middle of the table, next to a glass of water.\n<\/p>\n
\nI coloured the lips of the one doll with a red crayon. I jaggedly cut the other doll\u2019s long brown hair.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat do you like best, an egg or a book?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBook.\u201d I answered for the other doll.\n<\/p>\n
\nI shook the clock so the hands wiggled.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cOf course you don\u2019t like eggs,\u201d I said, moving the doll with the red-smeared lips. \u201cYou don\u2019t like any food.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI have in-die-jest-chin.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you have some water?\u201d I pressed the glass to the doll\u2019s hard mouth and the water trickled down the plastic chin and darkened the pink polyester dress.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nOne night that summer, I woke up itchy from mosquito bites and a bad dream. I barged into Mom\u2019s bedroom and froze. She lay propped up against the wooden headboard. A thick cord tethered her belly button to a bulky cylinder on the nightstand. Her face was expressionless, her eyes unblinking.\n<\/p>\n
\nI burst into hiccuppy tears.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to scare you, honey.\u201d Her face morphed into a smile and she patted the mattress. \u201cCome here, I want to tell you something.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nShe stroked my tangled curls and I shook with sobs as she explained how my birth parents had passed away when I was a baby, and how she wasn\u2019t like me, or Betty, or Betty\u2019s mom. She wasn\u2019t human. She was created by a company that produced social robots: companions for the elderly, nannies, teachers. My mom, Norma1, was programmed to be a parent, and had been one of the first models to take part in the android adoption government programme.\n<\/p>\n
\nShe told me there were other little girls and boys like me, all over the country, who had a mommy exactly like her.\n<\/p>\n
\nOne time, in a theme park, I had grabbed the hand of another Norma1. I was mortified, gaping back and forth at the two identically tall figures with the same short, brown bob, the same smooth, symmetrical features. My mother and the other android nodded in acknowledgment.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThat must have been a bit frightening, huh?\u201d Mom said.\n<\/p>\n
\nShe would do that a lot, identify my feelings. To confirm that she had rightly interpreted them? To validate me?\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhy does she look like you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cShe\u2019s one of my sisters.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI never knew I had an aunt. \u201cHow many sisters do you have?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cOh\u2026three hundred seventy-five,\u201d she said, and tickled me.\n<\/p>\n
\nI tittered. I thought she was joking.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nBy the end of summer, Betty could go in the deep end. She\u2019d gone on holiday, stayed in a cabin by a lake, and found an owl pellet under a pine tree, and roasted marshmallows above a campfire, and her dad had taught her how to swim!\n<\/p>\n
\nI sat on the porch and sucked on a slice of watermelon, the juice creeping down my arms. Fat flies buzzed. Mom peeled potatoes without lifting the knife, cutting long spiral ribbons of potato skin.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI need swimming lessons.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat you need is a napkin,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
\nI pulled on the hem of her dress and wailed. Betty knew how to swim. I wanted to learn too. It wasn\u2019t fair that she didn\u2019t want me to swim because she wasn\u2019t human and hated water. People needed to learn how to swim.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAlright,\u201d Mom said, unsmiling.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nEvery Saturday morning, my mom accompanied me to the swimming pool. On the bus, people stared at her. I would stick out my tongue when people muttered \u2018Anny\u2019. The way they said it, I knew it was a bad word.\n<\/p>\n
\nOther times, men would approach Mom, the way Hazel\u2019s dad had done on the playground. He had coughed and asked Mom out to dinner, ignoring me as I yanked her rigid hand. She\u2019d smiled and thanked him kindly and said no, she wasn\u2019t made for that. After that, he stopped greeting my mom or smiling at her. And when it was Hazel\u2019s birthday, I wasn\u2019t invited to her party.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s not so easy to clock an android these days, but the skin, even with the designed imperfections, looked too even and stiff back then. The flatness of her eyes also was a tell, so Mom often wore big movie-star sunglasses.\n<\/p>\n
\nSince she\u2019d told me she wasn\u2019t my real mother, wasn\u2019t real in any sense, I sat a few seats away from her on the bus. When we reached our stop, I slapped her hand away when she tried to help me descend the steep step.\n<\/p>\n
\nI strode ahead of her, pretended not to hear her when she called my name.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nThe indoor swimming pool had a caf\u00e9 on the third story. Parents would sit up there, drink coffee, and overlook their kids practising their breaststrokes. I could make out the shadowy shape of my mom behind the wall of glass. She sat very straight. Her shiny blouse-buttons caught the light at times, guiding me like a beacon.\n<\/p>\n
\nMy swimming teacher was bald and brawny, and always barked at me to \u201cKick! Kick!\u201d. His back was turned to me, and he was talking to a woman in an orange swimsuit, who kept smiling and nodding at him, her blonde ponytail flailing.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt was my first time in the big pool and I was kicking my way towards the deeper blue. As soon as I had started my lessons, I learned that I hated swimming. I struggled to keep my head above water, to move my lead frog legs in time. Afterwards, I would be so tired that I\u2019d fall asleep on the bus and Mom had to carry me home. I\u2019d wake up groggy and grumpy on the couch hours later, too stubborn to admit I regretted begging for swimming lessons.\n<\/p>\n
\nI thought of Betty, laughing, weightless, carried by the water and her father\u2019s arms and I\u2019d get so mad. Why couldn\u2019t I have a normal mother? Or a father. I dipped, and discovered I could no longer reach the bottom standing on my tippy-toes. I gulped chlorine-water. A wild terror washed over me and I went under again. The echoing splashes and voices drowned out my gurgly screams, my thrashing. The water wrapped around my head and my chest, tightening its grip on me with every gasp\u2014like a corn snake crushing a mouse. I was seeing prickly stars.\n<\/p>\n
\nStrong hands hooked under my arms and lifted me up to the light. I spluttered and coughed. My swimming teacher shouted something at me I couldn\u2019t hear as he dragged me out of the water. My mom stood next to the pool. Tiny shards of glass glittered in her hair and blue wires spilled out of the crack in her right leg. I looked over her shoulder, at the window she had jumped through to tell my teacher her daughter was drowning, to yell at him to save me.\n<\/p>\n
\nI pressed my wet face against her hard chest, choking on salt and bleach, soaking her shirt. For once, she didn\u2019t wince.\n<\/p>\n
Sciascia DeKay is a Dutch speculative fiction writer living in Belgium. Her work has previously appeared in Martian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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