“Praise be to the Republic,” they said.
“Praise be to the Republic.”
“Good afternoon,” the first one said.
The other nodded.
I nodded back.
They walked past me into my Living Space. I followed.
We stood in the eating space, a triangle of three people, facing each other.
Oh, please, I hope you haven’t changed your mind. Please. Say something.
“The Children’s Village Supervisor reports that you did well during your interview.”
“Praise be to the Republic,” I murmured.
“Final arrangements are being made for your partnering ritual. Due to the extraordinary wisdom of the Central Authority, this will be a special ceremony.”
“Please, sir, I don’t know if I am worthy.”
“That aside, the Authority knows best in all things. Do you understand?”
I nodded and kept my eyes averted. The second man was restless and paced around, touched my energy board, went into my sleeping space. I watched from the corner of my eye, willing him away from my sleeping mat.
“Tomorrow evening at the Social Update Meeting, you and your partner will be introduced. You will be escorted to the stage. That’s where you will exchange your Partner Vows to the Republic.”
The pacing man came back to the eating space. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that we need to address the sleeping mat issue.”
Oh, no, no, no. I felt a rough spot on my fingernail and pulled on it. The end of my fingernail ripped off, close to my skin, and a little drop of blood appeared. I wanted to put my finger in my mouth but I didn’t.
“There is no sleeping mat issue,” said his partner. “He can bring his from the barracks.” He turned to me. “Would you like a new sleeping mat?” he asked me. His question surprised me because it sounded almost kind. I glanced up at him. His eyes were hard, turning me inside out, and he ran his tongue deliberately across his lower lip. His smile was wet and red.
“Oh, no, sir,” I said. “The Republic has gone to so much effort for me already. I don’t need a new mat.”
“Very well, then. Arrive early at the Social Update Meeting. Stand near the stage so the Enforcers can find you easily and escort you. Do you have any questions?”
“Yes, sir. When will I work my first night shift at the Village?”
“Not the night of the Social Update Meeting. That would be—” He paused, then said, “That would be unseemly.”
“And when will I get my Children’s Village uniform?”
“It will be delivered with your evening cube on the day you are scheduled to begin work.” He turned on his heel and started for the door.
“Please, sir, another question.”
“Of course.” He sounded like he was yawning.
“Should I walk my energy board on the day when I will be going to the Children’s Village at dusk?”
“It’s your duty to the Republic, isn’t it?”
Do you walk a board? I wanted to ask, with sarcasm equal to his. Do you ride an energy bicycle? Instead, I kept my voice even and asked, “Can you tell me, sir, who will be my partner?”
“It’s not relevant.” He stared at me, eyes narrowed. “You have so many questions. Almost as if you expect the Authority to answer to you.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Praise be to the Republic.”
“Praise be to the Republic,” he said, then slapped his glove against his hand while giving one long last glance at my sleeping mat. It was as though he was picturing me lying on it.
* * *
I didn’t want to get back on my board, not just yet. I went outside to look at my new energy bicycle. How hard would it be to ride? I’d seen others ride their bicycles; I knew I could figure it out. How long would it take me to get to the Village? I disconnected it from the download bar and shut off the valve. Then I got on it. The seat was narrow and hard. The handlebars were high; I had to reach up, stretching my arms out. It felt good, stretching out like that.
And then I pushed off with one foot, got both feet on the pedals, and started riding. At first it was wobbly and it tipped low to the left. I put my foot out onto the dirt to stop the fall. Try again. Try again. Finally I felt the rhythm, the balance. I was riding.
I rode in a circle past all of the Living Spaces in our Compound. Twelve Living Spaces here at Re-Cy. Other Compounds were larger or smaller depending on the number of workers needed in those workgroups. Our individual worlds were small and fenced, under the dark umbrella of the all-controlling Republic. When I got near the gate, the Gatekeeper stepped in front of me and I had to stop. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Just practicing.”
“Well, don’t think you can leave the Compound. You can’t, you know. Not unless you’re assigned to leave by the Authority.”
He remained standing in front of me, a barrier.
“I know the rules. I’m not leaving the Compound. I’m practicing.”
He stepped aside but said, “I’m still going to keep an eye on you.”
I made another circle around the Compound. The breeze shifted direction. I could smell the heavy rotten odor from the Re-Cy. It made me gag.
As I rode past Living Space 2, a woman with matted, tangled hair stood in her doorway, watching me. As I passed, she said: “I want to go home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Finally it was dusk. The sun drifted below the treetops and the common area was in shadow. Night owls began their haunting whoo-whoo-whoo. It was time for me to go to my sleeping mat. Citizens will sleep from dusk to dawn to preserve energy. The Earth is robbed when artificial lighting is used. It is written. But I couldn’t sleep. So much had happened in one day. So much that my chest felt heavy, tight, hot, and my breathing was a shallow, rapid effort. I should be happy. After all, I’d seen Elsa. But I hadn’t held her. Still, I should be happy. Joan had told me I’d be paired with David. But, then again, the Authority hadn’t told me. So there was no guarantee, no certainty. Certainty came only from the Central Authority, and even then, it was only as certain as they wished it to be.
I put on my sleeping robe and took off my awful black-and-white headscarf and rolled it into a ball—a tight, angry little ball—and threw it onto the floor. Then I started pacing around and around my cement box. I wished I could remember more about the farmhouse in Kansas with the big windows and green grass. I wished I could remember the “good days” Mother used to tell me about. The vegetable soup and the cats in the barn—the “mousers,” she called them. And the one house cat, a calico, she said, that always slept in the living room on the bay windowsill in the sunshine. I wished I could remember a living room. What must a Living Space be like if it has a room called a living room? A living room sounded like a peaceful place, somewhere your whole life could settle around you. I wished I could help the tangled-haired lady in Living Space 2 find her home, her living room, but that was beyond my power.
The only thing in my power was to do whatever could be monitored and care for Elsa while I was on duty at the Children’s Village.
And to love David.
It was dark enough now for the Gatekeepers’ change of shift. David should be coming on duty. I peered out through my partially opened door. I saw the two Gatekeepers, the day shift reporting off to David on the night shift. I saw my energy bicycle beside my door. The Gatekeepers’ backs were toward me. I saw the day shift hand the clipboard to David. I saw the circle signs. I saw the day-shift Gatekeeper leave. I saw David turn toward the Living Spaces to begin rounds.
Except, it wasn’t David. It was a tall, stoop-shouldered man, thin like a chicken bone standing on end. He began walking his rounds. He had a limp, a painful lurching gait as though one leg was shorter than the other. He went past Living Space 1 and stopped at 2. I heard him, faintly but clearly: “Get back into your space, you hag.” David was a respecter of sadness. This Gatekeeper made a mockery of it. Is this the way others had seen
Mother? As a hag? Mother, who had raised and protected me? I closed my door quickly.
I wondered where David was. I felt fear, like watching myself trip in slow motion over a rock and falling headfirst onto another rock, with no ability to stop. Knowing, knowing there would soon be pain. Or worse, having someone you love being taken away with ropes on their wrists. Or feeling the roughness of ropes on your own wrists. And not knowing what would happen next.
I stood, pressed up against the wall, the cement blocks cold against my back. The new Gatekeeper stopped outside my door. I stood as still as I could, frozen in place. Even though my door was closed, I could hear his breath wheezing in and out. He had no reason to be standing there. He stood outside my door for a long minute, then said, “I wonder where David is. Yes, indeed, I wonder where David is.” Then, he moved on.
I shivered and slid down to the floor, feeling the rough wall on my back, the frigid floor through my clothes. I don’t know how long I sat there, worrying about David.
Finally, too weak to stand, I crawled to Mother’s mat. Her smell had completely faded, leaving only the dank odor of the room. The Little Prince dug into my cheek. Something was terribly wrong. I was so close, so close to holding my daughter, but I hadn’t. I was so close, so close to telling David we might be paired. But I hadn’t.
I turned over on the mat and the covers twisted around my legs, trapping me.
I had failed myself, failed those I loved. Why didn’t I object when they took Mother? Why hadn’t I blocked the doorway, daring them to push me aside? Instead I just stood by, childlike. And why hadn’t I opened my door tonight and demanded that the sickly, harmless Gatekeeper tell me where David was?
I was no longer a child. But I still felt powerless. I still did what was expected of me, whatever could be monitored. But I didn’t do what was important to me. I let the Authority have power over me. Power they didn’t deserve.
Finally I began to drift off to sleep, the covers twisted around my legs and the gold thing clenched in my hand, and I wondered when exactly I had exchanged my conscience for fearful obedience.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I slept well past dawn and woke with a dull, throbbing headache. I rubbed my forehead, trying to think. I wanted to find John and ask him where David was. I reached deep into Mother’s sleeping mat, wanting to touch the things she had touched. I needed to feel something that wasn’t being controlled by the Republic. I reached past the pictures, past the recipes, past The Little Prince, and felt something else. Something small, smooth, cold, round. I pulled it out slowly. A golden color. An image of an Indian on one side. I slipped it back inside the mat.
I didn’t bother to get my nourishment cube from the box, though it was required. Citizens are required to eat their nourishment cubes upon awakening, before beginning their assigned duties, to maintain productivity. Forget the rule, I thought. For once, forget the rule. Thanks to the headache, my stomach felt queasy. Reluctantly, I put on my Re-Cy Compound uniform and started walking my board. Walk. Walk. Walk. Tonight was the Social Update Meeting. Tonight I would be paired. And tomorrow night I would work at the Children’s Village.
I walked until noon, facing the bare cement walls, keeping a steady pace, making the board move beneath my feet. Birds called in the trees on the other side of the fence, and when the cool autumn breeze shifted, I smelled the putrid Re-Cy odor. Luckily, the breeze from the Re-Cy plant was infrequent and brief. Eventually my headache faded, and I felt hungry. I regretted the recklessness of not following the rule.
I went outside to my storage box, but it was empty. There was no cube. The Gatekeeper sat in his booth with his back to me, oblivious. Just yesterday I promised myself to do everything I could to protect my family. Do everything that could be monitored. And now, this—something that I could easily be reported for.
The old lady from Living Space 2 stood outside her door, looking in my direction. She was saying something I couldn’t hear. The Gatekeeper was still watching the birds beyond the fence, so I walked over to her.
She grinned at me, showing several gaps in her teeth. Then she held up a nourishment cube.
“I took it,” she said. “I took your cube.”
“Why?”
“I need it.”
“Why?”
“I’m saving it. For my children. For when they take me home.”
I didn’t know what to say. Obviously, no children lived in her space, nor had any lived there recently. She looked a little younger than Mother, but she was so unkempt, so untidy, that her sadness seemed to have aged her by the decade.
“Who is going to take you home?” I asked her.
“My children. Elizabeth and Andy, of course. They’re coming for me. I hear their voices. Listen. You’ll hear them, too.” She cocked her head to one side and closed her eyes. Her eyelids were crusted with dry skin and the corners of her mouth were red and cracked. “Do you hear them?”
I didn’t answer. She didn’t notice.
She reminded me of someone from long ago, from a different Compound, when I was still too young to walk a real energy board. A lady who used to stand in our doorway and wave to me.
“Go away,” Mother would tell her, waving her hands toward the woman. “Stop staring at us.” And then Mother would complain to Father about her. “Something about that lady isn’t quite right. Not since they took her children away.”
“Now, Elsa, what harm is there in letting her visit our Emmie?”
But Mother was adamant. “Remember the illnesses?” she asked Father. “Remember that? Remember when the Authorities ran out of routine vaccinations? Oh, the perfect, perfect Authorities who regulate medications but can’t provide enough of them! Shortages of this and shortages of that and children got whooping cough and polio and measles and who knows what else. Emmie didn’t. I kept her safe, away from everyone.”
The discussion stopped at that fact, always. And after a while, the lady stopped coming to our door to wave at me.
This woman with the toothless mouth might have been the same woman.
The Gatekeeper stood up and began walking toward us.
“Please give me my cube,” I said to her quietly. “I won’t tell.” It is forbidden for one Citizen to take from another. Everyone is given equal amounts. No one can have more than anyone else. Only the Authority can give, and only the Authority can take away.
“Is there a problem here?” he asked, first of me and then of her.
I shook my head no and turned to leave. But the old lady shook my cube in his face and said, “This is mine, and she can’t have it.”
He frowned and opened her storage box. Inside was a single cube. “Then whose is this one? And why is it still in the storage box?”
“My husband,” she said. “He didn’t eat his. That one is his—this one is mine.” She put both hands on the cube and clutched it to her chest so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“I saw your husband leave for Re-Cy this morning. He was eating his cube. The one in your box is yours. Give the one you’re holding back to her.” He motioned to me.
She shook her head no; her hair fell across her face.
“Citizen! Now!” He was visibly angry.
Reluctantly, she held the cube out to me.
“Have you walked your board today?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she closed her eyes and cocked her head to the side as though she was listening to something.
“I’ll file a report on this event,” he said to me. I breathed a small sigh of relief. Obviously, he didn’t realize I hadn’t checked my box first thing in the morning. I was safe. But she was not. What kind of a person had I become, glad that an old woman would be reported instead of me?
I went back to my space and he went back to his post. As far as I know, the old lady remained standing there with her eyes closed, listening. I couldn’t eat the cube. It felt dirty. And I wasn’t hungry anymore.
* * *
La
ter that afternoon, I heard the bus-box at the gate and watched as the Enforcers took the old lady away. She was smiling as they walked her to the bus-box, wrists tied together with dirty ropes. She said to one of them, “You must be Andy. My, how tall you’ve grown.”
I couldn’t hear his answer but I saw him shake his head no.
“You look like my Andy.”
He shook his head again. The Enforcers, one on each side, held her by the elbows, practically lifting her feet off the ground.
She turned to the other one. “Are you taking me to my Elizabeth, my little Lizzie?” She sounded so hopeful.
A few minutes later, a metal screeching sound drew me back to the door; the Gatekeeper was raising the flag at the gate, the signal that a Social Update Meeting would be held this evening. Then a dark thought, a dreadful thought, came to me: What if they decided to pair me with that old lady’s partner? Was he still able to reproduce? Oh, what a terrible thought. What a terrible, awful thought.
I picked up my headscarf and went to the washing-up area. It was time to get ready. The special Pairing Ceremony would make this one of the strangest Social Update Meetings ever. The meetings were always about the total community—how much the farm co-ops produced. How many healthy births there were. Updates on the size of our army and speculation about the size of the armies of other republics. Rumors of war. Citizens were not recognized as individuals there. Ever. Unless, of course, they had broken some law, violated some pledge. Those individuals were publicly pointed out, humiliated. Some were never seen again. But that, we were told, was for the good of the community.
But what happened to the ones who were never seen again? Who decided their punishment? Citizens who didn’t do what was required, didn’t produce enough energy, were they treated the same as, say, someone who hurt an animal or picked a flower? I finished my washing up and tucked my hair into my headscarf, resolving to find answers any way I could.