MELISSA TUCKMAN teaches at Rowan University. Her writing has appeared in Rust + Moth and Feed.
The oceans were a very pale shade of yellow, like antique paper. Across Eurasia stretched a giant scab, in a slightly darker shade of beige. It represented the largest country, with one of the longest names. Five words spanned from Kirov to Olekminska. The 70th meridian traversed the second "S:"
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
The name was so long that the line of letters appeared to turn upward at the corners, like WordArt, or a smile. But this was only an illusion, caused by the curvature of the model Earth.
The UNION was so enormous that you couldn't see the whole thing at once. You had to rotate the globe clockwise (in retrograde) if you wanted to inspect the eastern borders. Or counterclockwise (more naturalistically) to fly west, over Europe. There, the landscape was cluttered. Some names weren't spelled out in full:
GER.
F.R.
DEM. REP.
OF
GER.
Through these scattered abbreviations ran a wavy dotted line, as if the borders in that area of the world were more permeable. As if the constellated syllables wished to unite, in order to form a single word.
Opposite the scab, at about the same latitude, was North America, a vibrant patchwork. Only here - in the U.S. and Canada - was each state and province assigned its own color. Montana was sunset pink; Missouri, sky blue; New Mexico, green. Canada was sumptuous, with golden Nunavut flaming to the pole. The American states seemed to glimmer; each one had a star for its capital city. This was where our fortunate family lived, in the democratic jewel box.
I was born in 1986. By the time I could read, our Replogle was out of date. The UNION had been defeated; I was to call the beige area "Russia" instead. And it had shrunk; the edges had rainbowed and crumbled into independent nations. This was progress, we were told. Because there were only two options: the beige amoeba, or a quilt of many colors, solid boundaries. The cordilleras in raised relief were inalterable, as too were the coastlines.
