These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

After this has sunk in a moment, Zan turns his attention from the television. “What?”

“You shouldn’t have called her Sheba. It sounds like a B-movie,” she protests. “Queen of the Jungle.”

Zan says, “That’s Sheena.” Coming almost two years after the fact, this is an unforeseen point of contention. “What should we call her?”

“Not so loud.” Viv glances the girl’s way. “Her real name, maybe?”

“Do we know that ‘Zema’ is her real name?”

“Well, we know it’s no less real than Sheba,” says Viv.

“We have no idea what it means. ‘Zema.’ It sounds like a power drink.”

“It means ‘hymn’.”

“That’s kind of what it means.”

“It’s close enough.”

“People have been as vague about her name as they have about everything else,” including, he wants to point out but doesn’t, her mother. “It means different things depending on how the stars are aligned that day, or the given meteorology. A fog happens to roll in, and for all we know suddenly it means ‘Death to the Great Satan’ or something.”

“Sheba sounds silly.”

“Won’t it seriously mess with her sense of self if now we go back to calling her something else?”

“Her sense of self is going to be O.K.,” Viv answers firmly.

“Yeah, if we don’t start calling her Death to the Great Satan.”