Grandma Pearl had a baby.
Nobody could figure it out.
Everyone knew that she had herself a beau, Dennis Earl, who used to come around to sit with her on the back porch, but he said it wasn't none of his.
Swore up and down that all they ever did was sit and look out across the Bottoms, where the trees still grew thick.
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Nanette tumbles down into a strange, disorienting dream, losing herself amid a swirl of blue sky that gives way to the deep blue black of space. The stars streak by in galaxy-long smears of light. She floats, her consciousness carried along in an unfurling vision that plunges her down through the atmosphere of a strange, alien world and carries her along the unraveling thread of its history, the ebb and flow of a distant, ancient civilization. Nanette bears witness as their struggle culminates in an ascension to the stars. In a journey to Earth.She watches President and Mrs. Obama greeting the exotically garbed, dark-skinned visitors who step out from the simple spacecraft onto the White House lawn. Her perception shifts, drifts through languid moments of passion. The President is smitten by the lovely, gray-eyed beauty of the female ambassador; his duties, his position forgotten in the throes of love. A time lost, a love lost, as the alien diplomats must soon enough return to their home world. But, as the strange visitors prepare to re-board their vessel, with the same lack of fanfare which had greeted them, the male ambassador is disquieted, and casts hurtful glances towards his companion, his eyes sliding down and away. She, in turn, her pregnancy quite apparent, looks back regretfully and breaks free. Stepping towards the First Lady, she pulls her close and whispers into her ear, “I’m so sorry.” And, with tears in her eyes, she turns to leave.
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