Me and My Baby View the Eclipse by Lee Smith Page A

particular—hot-air balloons, World War I, you name it. Wilbur and Orville Wright’s plane, the first one, hangs right up at the front where you go in, and it is so tiny you can’t imagine how it ever got off of the ground. It’s the littlest thing in the whole museum. But anyway this museum is like the biggest room you ever saw, full of color and noise and flight. It made Richie and Tommy crazy like they wanted to fly themselves, they wouldn’t stay with us or watch any of those programs all the way through. “Let them go,” Lucie said, which I did because there wasn’t anything else to do, no point to try to keep them if they wouldn’t stay.
    Now this museum had another effect on Darnell, more like it had on me. It made her hunch her shoulders and press real hard against my side. And me? It made me want to shrink too, pull in my feet and arms for fear they would touch something foreign and cold and made of some material you never would find on this earth, something slimy you didn’t know what it was. At the same time it made my head sort of float up off of my body—the way I get in malls ever since Lonnie left me—like I was talking and hearing myself talk at the same time, or walking and watching myself walk, or taking the Space Quiz with Lucie and watching myself do it while I did.
    First thing we did was press the button that said MINIMUM DIFFICULTY.
    The square green letters came out on the screen like on a computer.
    WHAT PLA NET, they read, MOST CLOSELY RE SEMBLES THE EARTH?
    â€œVenus,” Lucie said right away.
    C ORRECT, the machine spelled out. NUMBER TWO. W HAT PLANET IS FARTHE ST FROM THE SUN?
    â€œMama, I have to go to the bathroom.” Darnell pulled at my hand.
    â€œMercury,” I said, but we missed whether that was right or not because Richie and Tommy came up right then with their faces looking like Christmas, to tell us that the Lunar Module was at the other end of the building, the real thing, they said, and we had to come right away.
    â€œI have to go to the bathroom,” Darnell said again, but Richie punched her.
    â€œListen,” he said. “The astronauts peed in their suits.”
    â€œYou quit that,” I told Richie from my mouth which floated away up high in my face above us all. I could look down and see us and see all the tourists from foreign lands.
    WHA T PLANET IS CHARACTE RIZED BY RINGS? the machine spelled out, and Richie and Tommy together hollered out, “Saturn!”
    Darnell was crying.
    â€œCome on, then,” Lucie said.
    She moved off easily through the saris, the backpacks and blue jeans and car coats, looking like a foreigner herself with her jeans and those running shoes. I think you should dress for a trip myself, but I have to say that by then my feet were hurting from my heels.
    After the bathroom, where we had to stand in line with French people and I had to put toilet paper all around the seat for Darnell, you can’t be too careful, we finally made it to the other end of the museum, where Lucie stood reading the sign by the Lunar Module and Richie and Tommy jumped all around.
    Lucie turned her face to me then, that same dark quick fairy-tale face she had as a little child, and took my hand.
    â€œOh, June,” she said. “Oh, June, don’t you remember? Oh, June, aren’t you glad you came?”
    *   *   *
    W ell, I was. I still am. But it was a bigger trip than you can imagine by a long shot.
    When Lonnie left me, all I did for two weeks was throw up and cry. Oh, I was plenty mad too. Everything that happened made me sick or mad or sometimes all of it, like when I went down to the mall to get some panty hose at Belk’s and when they were out of my size I had to get a paper bag from the salesgirl and breathe in it right there in the middle of the hosiery department to keep from passing out. Then I went into the ladies’ and threw up. Another time I was