Martha by Matt Leibel

"Martha had 128 children. They did not make a television show about her. After the first five, she stopped naming them. They all just got numbers."

Matt Leibel’s “Martha” might be the Short Story, Long story that most (and most successfully) captures “HAD energy” (the other journal I founded and edit). Focusing primarily on incredibly short pieces, and with a submission process built on spontaneous pop-up windows, HAD tends to favor a kind of oddness and chaos that can be incredibly difficult to pull off in longer pieces. Which is great. I often read different pieces wanting for different experiences.

In a short-short piece, it can often be easier to lean harder into language and let anything happen. It is all happening in a burst. It doesn’t have to sustain itself. But what if a piece did keep that going?

One of the things I so love about this story is it reminds me that anything can happen in fiction. And then it keeps doing that, over and over and over, paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. And all the while, it never falters. It’s a real treat. I hope you think so too.

—Aaron Burch

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Martha had 128 children. They did not make a television show about her. After the first five, she stopped naming them. They all just got numbers. The children had played games, seven-round single elimination tournaments like tennis majors; competition wasn’t always fair because the kids’ ages ranged from five months to 172 years. The 80-90 year olds usually won the historical knowledge games, while toddlers dominated the field in the crawling and teething events. Child 65, at the age of 106, improbably won the Decathlon. Martha was particularly proud of this feat, but she claimed to love all of her children equally. This was a lie many parents told to avoid the lasting damage of the ugly truth, but in Martha’s case it had a ring of authenticity to it; it was hard to draw clear distinctions over time when your progeny could populate a small village.

No one but Martha knew for sure who the fathers of her children were. Speculation abounded, but none of the men in the conversation ever stepped up to take responsibility. This was fine with Martha; single motherhood suited her well. Also, she was fairly set in her ways; she was very, very, very old. She was older than several countries that people refer to as “the old country.” She was older than many old-growth forests. She was old enough, certainly, to spend serious hours power-musing about death. But she’d also avoided the topic long enough now that she wondered whether she might be immortal. Immortality, Martha figured, would suit her fine. There were an infinite variety of needlepoint patterns she’d happily whittle away the days on, plus she had a hankering to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover, even the obsolete words so dustily discarded since medieval times. Especially those words. She figured she’d never read all the books she wanted to read even if she had a million billion years, but if she knew all the words, her brain could scramble them up in whatever order she needed them. Create any book she desired, plus hypothetical tomes that might even put the real writers’ efforts to shame. 

But she wouldn’t mind dying, either. She was exhausted, for all the obvious reasons (58’s hang gliding accident, 39’s recent incarceration, the endless interview requests due to 99’s annoying one-hit-wonder fame…) She’d had a life, and then some. The one thing she didn’t want now was any more children. She told this, in no uncertain terms, to all of her potential suitors (and there were no shortage of these, for she remained a handsome woman, extraordinarily well-preserved, with spritely blue eyes, and beyond all of that she was wealthy beyond reckoning, having invented in her younger days an unusually effective female contraceptive, which she nevertheless refused herself to use, obsessed as she was at the time with breaking the all-time record for natural-born children and continuing on to set the bar so high that no other sane woman would dare attempt to challenge her in this or any era) and the men understood. Most of them, conveniently enough, weren’t looking for anything super long-term.

Martha—in between breastfeeding, soccer practices, high school graduations, births of grandkids and great-grandkids, art openings, concerts, hiking tours, and dive bars—managed to set aside a snack break or two per day to take stock of her life. She was pleased with what she saw, but more concerned with the one-liner society might append to her pithy, posthumous bio, assuming she ever kicked the bucket. What she’d produced would ultimately be judged by society by whom she produced, and in what quantities. In such an aggressively misogynistic culture, she’d be seen more as an assembly line, a freak, a brood mare or factory chicken, albeit one with real knitting chops. Instead, she wished she could be judged for her business acumen, her sense of humor, her creativity, her lust for language. For the things that made her a whole person, and not just a goddamn incubator.

She shared these concerns, in exhaustive detail, over appetizers with Larry. It was a litmus test, to see if Larry would be sympathetic to her broader outlook or if he was just in it for the tender lovin’. Larry, a medical devices salesman, was a paltry 36 years old. Unbeknownst to Martha, he’d already dated one of her children, Number 92, but had dumped her because she was too young for him (92 had been in her early 50s at the time). This could become awkward, Larry supposed, if he were ever invited over to the house for tea and a meet and greet. But for the moment, he and Martha were having a grand old time. He’d never been out with someone more than six times his age before. Martha seemed to keep up with the times, so they had many cultural references in common. And Larry considered himself (in a phrase that made Martha cringe) an “old soul.” Whenever she heard him say this, she imagined a rotting piece of Dover Sole left in the fridge too long; sometimes she’d lean over and sniff him to make sure he didn’t stink of cast-off fish. He didn’t; he usually reeked of Irish Spring. He was hoping, she supposed, that this was the magic scent that would coax diffident hospital administrators into forking out big bucks for those fancy ventilators and x-ray machines. 

The date went swimmingly, and the following Saturday, Martha agreed to go sailing with Larry on his brand new yacht. She asked 117 to babysit 124-128, offering to pay the teenager in Double Stuff Oreos and Motocross tickets, which, as usual, did the trick. On the open sea, with the wind at her back, Martha felt more alive than she had in years. “I know everything about this history with you and 92,” she told Larry, “and I don’t give a good goddamn.” This felt fun to say, though it made Larry squirm so stupidly he nearly tumbled off the edge of the bow. “You are a handsome woman, Martha,” said Larry, “I think I shall christen this vessel in your honor.” “That sounds like a fair gesture to make in exchange for my company,” Martha replied, and they made love right then and there beneath the mast. Guns ’N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” blared on the boat’s boombox all the while—the right mood, Martha thought, even if it was the wrong biome. Martha, thinking of the horror show that was 23.6% of her children, finally sampled her own, highly popular patent-pending birth control device. She made a mental note at one point to remember to check on the progress of that patent: the pending part had been taking forever.

There was sadness of a deep kind when she returned home after her afternoon with Larry. Child number 14 had died, at an age too old to contemplate, yet less old than Martha and a small but significant percentage of her household. 14 had been sick for years, with an unspecified ailment that many doctors, including 14s own doctor brother 33, had been stumped by. Before that, 14 had been a military engineer, working on weapons of war, and truthfully Martha hated anything to do with war, despite the fact that her offspring could, theoretically, form an entire battalion and play a key strategic role in some future conflict. Martha had argued with her daughter over her chosen profession, and the arguments had gotten ugly. Martha had come close to disowning 14, but didn’t have the heart. But she’d never let 14 (nor any of her children) keep guns in the house. So 14 had stored her significant personal stash off site, and now Martha was suspicious that 14’s death, despite, or perhaps because of, her illness, could have been self-inflicted.

Martha was a terrible consoler, so she didn’t try.  From her mouth, the words “there, there” sounded like a starving seabound explorer’s exclamation on his first delirious sighting of land in months, rather than the comforting pablum our Social Contract expects us to dish out to the aggrieved. So she outsourced the eulogizing to the siblings 14 was closest to, all of whom, perhaps appropriately given 14’s scientific bent, were prime numbers: 2 (Julie) , 5 (Craig), 13,  29, 53, 89, and 107. They each gave perfectly adequate bite-sized remembrances of their sister, almost too perfect, Martha thought. Martha believed that when you’re gone, you’re gone—and we’re better off getting on with it than wasting too much precious time prettifying lives that were mostly messy, ambiguous, and contentious. Martha herself certainly didn’t want to be eulogized the way she knew she would be. She could imagine it now, how at the service they’d play up her mothering skills and her freakishly resilient womb. 38, the preacher, would likely do the honors:

“Martha, our mother—The Mother—was a remarkable woman.” He’d say. “She was born an only child in a household entirely devoid of love.” (Note the latter part wasn’t true, it was something she told the brats when they  felt neglected, so they’d appreciate the attention they were getting.) “Mother gave and gave of herself, she gave her body to the great and Godly creative project of creating other bodies from her body.” (Jesus, she thought, this makes me sound like an office copier.) “There was truly no one like her. In spite of the fact that she was older than God when she passed, it still came as a great shock to us, primarily because we all had assumed she was immortal, as she always had that immortal glow.” (Really just high-end skin care products she ordered over the Internet.) “Mother made each of us believe that, truly, there were no limits in life, and that everything was possible.” (She did say this a lot, but mostly because it sounded badass, she has no idea if it was true.) “On behalf of Mother’s 127 living offspring, I will miss her with the power of 66 suns.” (The homonym may have been intentional, as she had exactly 66 sons, but it was debatable how much collective power they could generate.)

The death of 14 threw Martha for a loop in ways she didn’t completely understand. Which is to say, she gave Larry the cold shoulder, and Larry wasn’t the type to stick around when he wasn’t wanted. He was bummed there was no one older in the city for him to date, so he returned to seeking out more age-appropriate partners. Meanwhile, Martha took up with a painter closer to her own age named Jerry. Jerry was talented and wise and had, at least according to him, no natural-born children whatsoever. Which to Martha suggested, at this stage in his life, he must be shooting blanks, which naturally appealed to her family-planning instincts. Jerry told Martha that her eyes sparkled like emeralds, and then busted out an emerald the size of a fist, which she thought would make a comically deformed oversized engagement ring. One night, in his studio, he asked if he could paint her. Martha agreed, and even acquiesced to Jerry’s clothing choices for the session, which she found unnecessarily revealing and tacky. 

After a few brushstrokes, Jerry’s hands began quivering. He dropped the brush and keeled over—so Martha never got her finished portrait, which was a bummer. Also, she’d liked Jerry. He could have been The One, she thought. But people were dying on her left and right. Sure, she had the children to turn to, but they were her offspring, not so much her friends. The closest to a friend she had had been her first born Lleyton. But Lleyton had disappeared years ago, floating off in much-celebrated fashion when his hot-air balloon (in an elaborate corporate marketing stunt gone wrong) had disappeared in a fog, and had never been heard from again. Rumors about sightings of him in the farthest corners of the world abounded, but none of these had ever been confirmed.

Martha veered into Sadness, which was a terrible place in which to veer, one she wouldn’t recommend to anyone, and one which, if pressed, she’d rate 1 1/2 stars max. The kids tried to console her, to inveigle her into their games and tourneys. But she didn’t want to play; she was too old for that shit. What she wanted was something brand new, good-old honest-to-goodness novelty. Not like hand buzzers or fake nose-and-glasses kits or magic coin tricks, but more like the pretentious capital-N novelty which could cocktail-shake her out of her later-life malaise.

Then one day, as if the Universe were an active participant in brainstorming her personal narrative, help arrived, in the form of a letter of invitation from the Space Program. Hey Martha, the letter began, in wildly un-Space-Programmy diction, we would be beyond psyched if you would consider joining us on the adventure of a lifetime: in space. (She guessed before they mentioned it they meant “in space.”) It turns out the Program had a bunch of people (“pilgrims,” the letter called it) chilling out on this gazillion-dollar Space Station in the reaches of the galaxy, but the astronauts were all dudes, and the Space Program was interested in turning the Space Station into one of those self-sustaining interstellar colonies those old pulpy sci-fi paperbacks with bikini-clad green-skinned space-babes splayed out on the covers so loved to speculate about. The Program had a bevy of younger ladies lined up who seemed game, but they'd thought to include Martha because of her Guinness-worthy fertility.

Martha—despite being no longer interested in her fertility, and honestly despising that word—was still thrilled and stoked by the prospect of such a journey. Bitchen’! She said aloud to no one, though the word hadn’t been in common usage for many decades now, and had lost much of the surfer-dude froth of its former meaning. She didn’t want to have any more kids, but surely she could slip the patent-pending birth control device into her luggage so she could get freaky with any promising Space Station dudes relatively consequence-free in zero gravity. Hopefully they wouldn’t have, like, 24-hour-a-day surveillance cameras aimed on her up there. Unless they were planning to turn the Space Station into a reality show. Were they? Hell, probably. Anyway, she was exhausted by this planet and the endless demands of her endless brood, so she figured she’d chance it.

The day before she reported for her training, she called a House Meeting. Everyone skittered over to the Auditorium over in Bungalow D. There were kids, grandkids, spouses, and handfuls of unaffiliated temporary significant others whose names Martha never bothered to learn, and who weren’t on the birthday and holiday invite lists, which itself made her kids resent her more bitterly than she would ever know or care to know. Those guilt-gilded days are gone now! Martha thought cheerfully. To be truthful, she’d never felt all that guilty about it, though she did feel a kind of residual guilt about her original lack of guilt. Anyway, she’d prepared a few remarks to explain her choice to her kids, who almost without exception thought she was wackadoo:

Greetings my esteemed offspring and associates! she began. I have brought many of you into this world, and for decades, and in some cases, centuries, I have nurtured you, guided you, scolded you, indulged you, wiped your bottoms, and sometimes let you down, probably more often than I’ve allowed myself to admit. I’ve also told each of you at least once that I love you. If you don’t believe me, check out this spreadsheet: (with 89’s help, she projected a Powerpoint on the big screen). I have been there for you to help you spread your wings—and congrats on your pilot’s license by the way, 33!—and now, my darlings, it is time for me to spread mine: in space. (She figured they probably knew she meant “in space” but said it anyway.) I will miss you all, some more than others, though the order in which I will miss you will remain highly Classified. (Seriously: she filed this info under seal with the Space Program.) Take care of yourself, and, as necessary, of each other. I trust you absolutely, and even if I didn’t, I’m dead set on doing this anyway, because it’s my life. (Cue the Bon Jovi tune of the same name.) I hope that someday, perhaps, you will join me in my journey. But not too soon: getting a break from the lot of you is part of the idea here. (She didn’t specifically mention the potential space nookie.)  So: Ciao, my babes…and godspeed.

And with that, she was on her way. The wilds of space beckoned. She’d aced the training, been told that she had the constitution of a woman 100 years her junior. When she replied that even so, her constitution was still ancient, older than the Constitution of a majority of actual nations, the Mission Commander replied: well, I’d rather follow your constitution than theirs. She could sense that the Commander was carrying a space-torch for her. It wasn’t going to happen, since she was saving herself for the Station, but still, she wouldn’t have minded going for a spin with him in the simulator, had it not been strictly forbidden in her contract.

A million miles above the Earth. The damned thing looked like a blue kickball, she thought. She remembered kickball games with the brood in her relative youth, and how she could once power-boot like a fucking champ. There had been good times over the years. But those days were done. Martha stuck her foot against the window of the capsule and pretended to kick the now-distant planet over a hypothetical shortstop’s head. The other astronauts aboard treated her like their spirit elder; it was excruciating. Are we there yet, Martha? Are we there yet? they’d ask her, playing at kids in the back of Mom’s minivan.

One of the women, Juliana, had befriended Martha during their training. When the Commander would scream at them like military recruits, Howitzer-like spit blasts cannoning from his mouth, Juliana would do this conspiratorial eye-roll thing that made Martha crack up under her suit. Juliana reminded Martha of her own daughter 91, and the goofball faces she used to make when she was young. Juliana must have been in her early forties. She had no children. Martha couldn’t countenance such a state. She asked Juliana why she’d decided to join the mission. I was bored with everywhere else, she’d told her. I’ve been all over. All seven continents. I’ve had every job from hairdresser to radio announcer to travel writer to chef. I don’t particularly want to populate the Universe, but at this point I’m not averse to it, either. When Juliana suggested that they be partners in crime on this trip, Martha was down for it, though she wasn’t sure exactly what that could possibly entail: there was nothing to steal out here, anyway.

Eventually, they got there. There was nowhere, because there wasn’t a planet, or even a crappy asteroid. There were a bunch of floating panels and metal tubes, a docked shuttle, a handful of silver-suited humans. Hallelujah, she heard Juliana say, eyeing a potential hunk in a spacesuit with Cyrillic lettering. How can you even tell if he’s hot? Martha asked. I just can, Juliana said, awkwardly if unabashedly floating over in the astronaut’s direction.

Meanwhile, Martha wasn’t in such a hurry to pair up. She wanted to scope out the scene first. Take time to bask in the wonder of space: the quiet, the lack of constant cacophony. For millions of miles, there were absolutely no children. No one begging her to take them to the mall. No one needing a diaper change. No dysfunctional adult sons looking for approval of their dubious life choices (that means you, 68, and your professional gambling “career”). Space was as pristine, Martha thought, for what it wasn’t as for what is was. When she crawled into bed on her first night, she went to sleep alone. It was as alone as she’d been in centuries, but it wasn’t lonely: it was liberating.

On the second day, Martha started feeling queasy. She could feel herself losing fluid in her legs. She could feel her face begin puffing up like a piece of dough. Along with it, she noticed her wrinkles vanishing, as if she’d finally doled out the cash to a plastic surgeon like she’d been threatening to do for decades. She hadn’t counted on space making her ageless, but she didn’t mind the transformation, either.

But by the fifth day, she had already grown weary. Working on soil experiments she couldn’t give a damn about. She had started, as many astronauts do, to lose her sense of smell and taste. She’d always enjoyed food, but now it all basically tasted like mush. This is bullshit, Martha muttered, louder than she’d intended; sound seriously carries in space, she thought.

Her complaint drifted like a tiny word-asteroid down the metallic tube of the station toward the ears of a young astronaut named Ron. What’s bullshit? He pressed her, and she thought, this is a bullshit way to begin a conversation. Still, she liked Ron; his voice had this mischievous lilt to it, like all talk was play. He told her that he was here because his mom had passed away recently and everything on Earth was reminding him of her in ways that were making it impossible for him to function. Martha, thinking of 14, told him she was here because of a death as well. She wasn’t sure if this was true, or if she were escaping the other 127 still alive, but she wanted to bond with this guy; she had a good feeling. And it worked; she still had mad game, even in zero-G.

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A year zoomed by. Juliana was expecting, and was pretty amped about it. Two other women had already given birth, and three more were due soon. Ron and Martha had been using the patent-pending device, and praying that the Commander didn’t notice, or he might have them shot off into an asteroid belt. Their relationship had thrived on this secret—the thrill of getting away with what for some was murder, the elimination of the possibility of future-humans—but it had also become awkward. For Martha, the line between lover and mother had blurred. Perhaps it was inevitable with the age difference, but Martha found herself consoling Ron when he cried—which was basically every time they had sex.

It turned out that Ron had promised his mother before she died that he would carry on the family name. Apparently this had been important to her, though Martha was at a loss as to why: their family name was Glamp. Ron Glamp. Did the world need more tiny Glamps running around, or orbiting around, or whatever? Ron was convinced it did, and he was tired of pretending. He said this to Martha: I’m tired of pretending. Which Martha rolled her eyes at, because in her mind, the pretending was the BEST PART. Foolin’ the system was where it was at. And deliberately procreative lovemaking was something that was…pretty much old hat to her. Still, she was as tired of his crying as he was of their pretending. Okay, pal, she said to him, tossing the patent pending device out into the black. Space babies it is.

Five years drifted by. What did time even mean here? Like, what time zone were we even in, Martha wondered. She and Ron had two little ones, with a third on the way. 129 Glamp, 130 Glamp, and TBD (to be delivered), 131 Glamp. Martha said she was too old to start up with the names again, though when Ron said he had names in his head for each of them, Martha said, fine, whatever. She had to admit: she’d missed it. There’d been limited contact with any of the offspring back on Earth, and much of that news had been bad: kids getting divorced, entering rehab, losing big in Vegas (dammit, 68!).

But these new kids: there was a purity to them, she thought. They were uncorrupted by Earthly folly. They would not hanker for a trip to McDonald’s. They would have a chance to start fresh, build a new civilization from the ground up, even without the ground. Her kids and Juliana’s played games together; there was a dodgy space-dodgeball game that no one ever won or lost. Martha was starting to miss gravity. She thought of it in multiple senses; she missed the gravity, the weight, the stakes of terrestrial life. She thought in terms of the grave, and realized hers, if it ever came, would be out here, far from home. She tried not to think such things too much though, because she believed the littlest Glamp inside her had bionic fetus-ears and could hear her thoughts. She distracted herself by crocheting him a sweater that said “131”. She’d finally mastered zero-G sewing, and could now die happy.

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Fifty years later. The station was sprawling. Ron had passed on a decade before. Martha found other partners. Her space babies' babies were having babies. The station received news that the Earth had been destroyed, along with presumably all of her original kids. The nations of the world couldn’t hash it out; this didn’t surprise her in the least, seeing as how tricky it had been to keep the peace in her own small-town-sized family.

When she heard, she started to cry. Juliana (with whom Martha become occasional lovers) tried to comfort her. But this was a gush of sadness that had been building in her for centuries. She could have cried an ocean, or at least enough tears to fill a crater on the Moon. She didn’t believe that she could have saved everyone had she stayed home—but part of her did believe she had that power. Regrets weren’t Martha’s bag, and anyway it was far too late for them to matter. But it felt good to unleash the sadness that had been dammed up for too long. It felt so, so good.

500 years passed in a blink. This was an estimate; there were no more calendars. There was barely even a station anymore, just a single pod she used to sleep and eat and excrete. She still seemed, remarkably enough, to be doing all the things a person needs to do to be alive. At this point, she’d outlived them all. She was the ultimate, singular yield of this colonizing experiment.

She’d kept some sticks and hooks and yarn. She was crocheting hats with the names of all of her children. Because—haha, plot twist—they did have names all along!  She hadn’t bothered to tell them, because she actually thought the numbers gave them more of an identity, a sense of where they lived in the pecking order. But really, they’d all been Annas and Santiagos and Porters and Clytemnestras and Sallys and Woodys and Didos and Launcelots. She’d given them all names, and had been fooling everyone, including herself, that she didn’t give a shit about them. She had plans and materials for over a hundred and fifty sad little sweaters, and she hoped this could keep her going—for how long, she had no idea.

One day she saw an object, a UFO—any object she saw now was a UFO. When it came closer, she was like, What the actual fuck? and it turned out this was a hot-air balloon. A tattered and dirty dirigible, with a corporate logo on the fabric that had long since become blurred and unreadable, from time, attrition, and at lower altitudes, bird shit.

As the balloon drifted closer, she was able to make out a man in the basket. He was impossibly young—maybe in his mid-fifties. Ll-Lleyton? Martha asked, and it was weird, at this point, to use her mouth to form words. Hi Mom, Lleyton said.

This is impossible, Martha said. Is it? Lleyton asked, reaching out his hand to grab hers, which was shaking. It washed over Martha, the moment. Does this mean I’m—

Dead? Lleyton prompted.

I was going to say stoned, Martha answered.

Lleyton smiled. Get in the basket, Mom.

She floated over and climbed in. The balloon felt real, but the bags of ballast—and everything else—felt light as helium birthday party balloons. She put her arm straight though Lleyton’s body, like yarn through a needle, to confirm her suspicions. Also, it was just plain fun.

She tossed the ballast over the side as if gravity were still a thing here, and the balloon took the cue and ascended, like some cosmic kickball, into an infinity of unpopulated darkness.

STORY:
Matt Leibel lives in San Francisco. His stories have appeared in Post Road, Electric Literature, Portland Review, The Normal School, Quarterly West, Socrates on the Beach, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and Best Small Fictions. Find him on twitter/X at @matt_leibel. 

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ART:
John Elizabeth Stintzi (they/she) is an award winning novelist, poet, editor, and cartoonist. JES is the author of the novels My Volcano and Vanishing Monuments, the poetry collection Junebat, and the illustrated short story collection Bad Houses. JES is also at work illustrating their first graphic novel: Automaton Deactivation Bureau.  

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Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Matt about this story!

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