This Thing Called the Future by J.L. Powers

it’s Mama, I swallow my fear. We stand together, watching as lightning strikes the ground like the tongue of an angry woman.
    â€œEven though it’s dangerous, there’s something beautiful about it,” I say. Even the fact that a witch can control lightning, using it to kill somebody, doesn’t change how beautiful it is, the way it lights up the whole world in a sea of black and white light.
    â€œIt’s like the ocean,” Mama agrees. “Powerful.”
    I shiver. Mama puts her arm around my shoulder.
    Auntie’s voice echoes from the back bedroom, where she’s busy chiding the little girls. “How can you be frightened by such a little thing as this? A lightning storm? And Mama, you should be ashamed, encouraging it!”
    â€œShe sounds just like you, Mama,” I say.
    â€œNeither one of us wants our daughters to be crippled by superstition.”
    â€œDo you really think Gogo is so superstitious?” I ask, knowing what her answer will be, wondering what she would think if she knew that, every night, I leave food and drink out for the ancestors.
    This is what I think: Both Gogo and Mama are right, and they’re also both wrong. Science is important. So are the old ways. We can explain some things through science but not everything . But because Gogo and Mama are so stubborn, it makes it really difficult to navigate a path between them, to be my own person, to assert myself. I don’t want to offend either one of them. No, I want them both to be pleased with the person I become. That’s the difficulty of my life.

    But Mama surprises me. “Sometimes, even I believe things that aren’t true.” She laughs a little. “So perhaps I shouldn’t judge your grandmother so harshly. Everybody has their own little superstition, heh, Khosi?”
    It’s not exactly a concession, but it’s more than she’s ever offered before.
    We turn back to the open door, watching the play of light and dark dancing along the horizon.
    It’s so rare that we can be together like this, Mama and me. I stand there as long as she does, watching the sky light up with blue and white streaks of light before we close the door, then turn back to Beauty, who’s waiting to finish plaiting my hair.
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    In my dreams that night, a bolt of lightning creeps into the house, sneaking in through the crack in the door. It knows my name, spoken by the witch. It skulks down the hallway, feeling from side to side, searching… searching…searching for me.
    I wake up, bathed in sweat and unable to fall back to sleep. So I get up early to fix Mama a good breakfast before she leaves for Greytown.
    While Mama bathes, I cook eggs and toast bread, placing them under a plate to keep warm. I even fry a small piece of fish I saved just for her sending-away breakfast.
    But when I open the back door to empty the rubbish bin, there’s a sudden fluttering of black wings, gigantic wings, wings as tall as I am. A man-sized bird. The wings flutter and flash, silver like lightning, quickly disappearing around the corner.
    I run around the house, flinging rubbish to the side in my haste, but the bird is long gone, leaving only a streak of something like smoke lingering in the air.
    It’s nothing. That’s what I tell myself as I pick up rubbish and place it back in the bin. It’s nothing. At least, that’s what Mama would say. She would laugh. “Sho, it is just a bird, Khosi. You’re scared of a little thing like that? A bird?”
    And I would have to admit, “It wasn’t just any old bird. It was the impundulu .” I’d feel stupid telling Mama that. She’d insist it couldn’t be true.
I can hear her already, in my head. “Khosi, really! There’s no such thing as a lightning bird. It’s just something old people talk about. A folk tale, nothing more.”
    And what would she say if I persisted and said, “But what