“Karma, I’m so sorry. I know he was your friend.”
As Andy’s form, still encased in the bulky suit that was supposed to protect him, stilled at last, I nearly crumpled to the floor myself. Only Rick’s arms kept me upright. It was safe to cry now, as so many others were, stunned and horrified to witness the dead man lying in full view of the giant wallscreen and all the observers.
Only I had the irrational urge to scream at my strangely unreactive husband, to pound on the doors to the outside begging to retrieve the remains of my friend, or do something, anything, to change the outcome of his tragic last walk.
10
I jump as Rick comes into the bedroom. I have to remind myself that my mind is still my own—no matter how much power the Silo has over our lives, we are still free in our thoughts.
He makes one of those husbandly sounds, kind of an “mmm” of appreciation as his eyes run over me. He comes up close and puts his arms around my waist. I can feel his heart beating as he presses his chest against mine. I catch a whiff of the pork that he must have eaten for dinner as he worked late on thirty-four, serving the servers, his babies. His masters.
He smiles at me.
“Sorry I’ve been working such long hours lately, Karma. It’s crazy down in IT right now.”
“That’s okay, honey. You know I don’t mind. I’m proud of your work.”
He seems to take this as encouragement. His lips come down on mine and they are demanding. I am thinking of how to play this.
I dance out of his embrace and give him a flirtatious look. “I’ll be right back. I need to brush my teeth.” Scooting out of our tiny bedroom while avoiding any further bodily contact, I go into the bathroom and lock the door.
Privacy. A rare and precious moment. Quickly I smear some of the Silo’s best mint-flavored goop on my teeth, so he’ll think I just brushed. Reaching into my small personal cubby, where I keep my stash of “feminine items” including what we use down here when we have our periods—only loosely related to the sophisticated tampons I used to have at my disposal—I pull out my most precious possession. It’s a crude excuse for an old-fashioned diaphragm, and while it is rumored to have a very poor success rate at curbing pregnancy, it has apparently done the trick for me recently.
For several years after giving birth to Athena, I hadn’t even known if I was capable of getting pregnant. Between my foggy confusion in the first months in the Silo and the drugged haze of the day she was born, I would never have known if some device had been inserted to keep me from conceiving, like the one they implanted in my tiny daughter’s hip.
Even not knowing for certain if I could get pregnant again, I kept Rick at arm’s length as much as possible. I wasn’t sure how I felt about bringing another child into the Silo, and so it seemed best to minimize the possibility.
But my situation was made obvious when I got pregnant a year ago. Recognizing the signs, and having no one to share it with, I was panicking. And then two months in, I suddenly saw my period again, and it seemed a second baby was not meant to be. At least not yet.
Before my Silo life, I had been a Christian, but even if that were permitted here, I no longer believed in a God that would allow his children to destroy the world and end up living in an eternal underground tomb.
I am determined at this point that no other child will spring forth from my loins. Thanks to the instructions of Grace, an older woman who lives on our level, I was able to fashion a rudimentary contraceptive device. I insert the faux diaphragm, and then run my fingers through my long hair to do what I can to untangle it. Even an Up Top apartment like ours is mirrorless, and I long ago gave up wondering how I looked. Or caring very much.
I emerge to find Rick in our narrow bed, a telltale rise under the sheets. He reaches out his arms and I slip in beside him.
As he caresses and then enters me I make encouraging noises and run my fingers down his back. After five years of no exercise other than climbing stairs, he is still a fit, lean man, and handsome. It is no chore to let him make love to me. But it is no passionate affair either.
His gasps turn to groans and my fingers slip over his skin as he gets hotter and sweat appears on his upper lip. Always careful to keep our noise down, because Athena is close by behind a flimsy wall, neither one of us can let go vocally.
Despite myself, I find my breath coming harder and my hips rising to meet my husband’s. He takes my hands in each of his and presses them tight against the shapeless mattress, locking them forcefully above my head. With a sudden shudder down the length of my body, I begin to respond to his rhythmic movements.
“Mommy?”
Both of us stop mid-thrust and look toward the door of the bedroom, which is practically at our feet. Athena is standing there in her nightshirt with her yarn doll.
“Why are you fighting, Mommy?” Her eyes are wide but not afraid.
Rick scrambles off and out of me, making sure to keep the sheet over both of us. His eyes are stormy and every muscle in his body telegraphs frustration.
I pull my nightshift down and get out of the bed.
“Honey, we’re not fighting. Don’t worry. We were just… playing a Mommy and Daddy game.”
I take her by the hand and lead her back to bed.
Behind me, as I close the door, I hear Rick punch the wall and swear.
11
The first day of school for my baby! Athena is especially cute with the two pigtails I fashioned in her hair this morning. I can’t help smiling as she waves goodbye with the other children, pretending to leave my classroom at the end of the day, and then immediately popping back in, laughing. Her dark eyes and nearly black hair remind me of photos my mother had of me in elementary school.
Athena runs up and hugs me as I am putting some of the books away, wiping the stickiness of kids’ hands off the plastic.
“Bye, Mommy. I’ll see you.” She gives me a damp kiss on the cheek, and then dashes toward the door.
“So why did you pretend to leave, Athena? And then come right back in?”
“Because. I told you I didn’t want you to act like a mother. Just like a teacher, when I’m here. So the other kids don’t say I’m your pet.”
“Of course, sweetheart,” I say, nodding seriously at her logic. “So we won’t tell anyone.”
“Right.” She stands holding the doorknob for a minute. “But of course Jenna knows, because she lives right near us. And Dylan, ‘cause I told him.”
“Oh. Why did you tell him if you’re trying to keep it secret?”
She looks at me with wide eyes and five-year-old amazement. “He’s my best friend! I had to tell him. And I told Clara. But that’s all. Don’t tell anyone else.”
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t tell anyone else. Now you better get going before you miss Jenna and her Mom—they’re walking you back home.”
At that moment the door swings open and Athena almost loses her balance because she was leaning on the knob. It’s Jenna.
“Come on, Athena. We gotta go! You can talk to your mom later.”
My daughter disappears through the door, pulled by her curly-haired friend.
“That’s your mom?” I hear a voice say from outside in the hallway. “Hey you guys, the teacher is Athena’s mom!” Laughs and shouts echo from the walls as the small group of kids moves away with their parents.
It is bittersweet to watch my daughter grow and bloom in this place. She is the heart in the middle of my existence; she is everything I live for. I love to see how smart she is becoming and how she already has a sense of humor. But I ache for all the joys she can never know. Everything from seeing the house I grew up in and meeting her grandmother to playing in a field and riding a Ferris wheel. She will never bike and she will never swim in a lake and she will never see the Grand Canyon. She will also never meet her real father.
I push these thoughts away and get on with my preparations. I told Rick that I’m spending an hour organizing my classroom because the term has ju
st started—we call it that, even though school is year-round here—no agricultural seasons changing or summer vacation plans necessary. But in fact we just welcomed the new class of five-year-olds that Athena is a part of, so it is a beginning of sorts.
There is a quiet knock on the door and a slim young girl with olive skin comes in. I don’t know her.
“Can I help you?” I say, stacking wooden blocks into a small plastic bin.
She looks nervous, and her hands twist together in her lap as she stands in front of me, looking at her feet. “I… I don’t know. I hope so.”
I walk over to her, and sit down in one of the child-size chairs. “What is it, honey? Are you lost?” She’s not that young—probably about eleven years old—and certainly would be old enough to make her way from one level of the Silo to another. But perhaps she’s one of those children who is particularly susceptible to the drugs being delivered in the water. For that reason, I do my best to minimize Athena’s exposure to it. Some of them seem to be developing more slowly than they should be—and of course it’s impossible to know if it’s because of the happy juice or the constricted environment. “Do you want me to help you find your mother?”
“No.” Her eyes are looking at mine now. “No. Please, not her.”
“Sit down.” I pat the chair beside me. “What’s your name?”
She sits. Every move seems to cause her anxiety. “Rose.”
“My name is Mrs. Brewer.” I give her my teacher name, the one the kids call me.
“I know,” she says.
“Do I know you?” I look closely at her face, but nothing resonates. She is a stranger to me.
She laughs nervously, and the hand twisting resumes. “You probably don’t remember.”
I’m beginning to wonder if she is mentally challenged. “Honey, why don’t you tell me what you need. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.”
Her hand goes up to her hair and twirls a strand around her finger. “I thought that….” She looks around at the crayoned pictures on the walls of the classroom. I can see her throat moving as she swallows. “Are you sure….”
“It’s okay, Rose. You’re safe here. You can say anything you want.” As I tell her this, I think about how carefully I’ve searched for possible recording devices in all the desks and shelves around the classroom. I hope I’m right. I can’t say how far the authorities would go—I imagine they would go as far as they needed to—but I don’t really know if they’re able to snoop out treacherous conversation. I don’t know what technology they have. Tiny listening devices? State-of-the-art hidden cameras? I have never seen such things around the Silo… but then, I wouldn’t see them, would I?
Rose clears her throat. “Okay. Well. I remember that we used to live in the outside.” She stops.
My hand goes to my throat and my eyes to the door. “Be careful, sweetheart.”
She stares at me with deep brown eyes. “Mrs. Brewer. I have been careful. I can’t… I don’t know what to do. I think I’m going crazy.”
Tears move slowly down her face, and she makes no effort to wipe them. “I saw you… I talked to you on the day of the… the day with the clouds and all the noise… I dropped my ice cream cone and was crying, and you got me a new one. It was my birthday. I was five.”
My mouth is open, and I look at this child, this ghost from out of the past… a past I strive to remember but can only partially break open. “Tell me.” I strain to imagine her face much younger. Nothing. No memories.
“My Dad had gotten me an ice cream cone, but I dropped it, and he was talking to a strange lady… she’s in here… she’s my stepmother now… only they pretend she’s my real mother….” Rose looks again toward the door.
Then with her eyes looking down at her lap, she whispers, “I want to kill myself.”
“Oh, honey.” I stand up and give her a hug, this vulnerable child, and wonder how awful it must be for her to be caught in this web of lies and obfuscation. So many questions. How does she remember me?
Why do I not remember her?
12
Athena is happily sitting at our table in her small chair, practicing her ABC’s. Some things are the same. She writes with chalk on a slate, but she still forms her letters slowly and carefully, like I did some thirty years ago.
Proudly she shapes the letters of her name, all upper-case, laboriously and with a downward droop.
“Look, Mom!” She holds the small slate up so I can see it.
“Beautiful, honey.” I stir the pea soup I am making, hoping that we’ll have a little bit of pig’s cream come up with Rick on his way home, and I can add it to the mix. “Pretty soon you’ll be writing whole sentences.”
“What’s senten says?”
I smile. “Sentences are what you say, and write. We’re speaking in sentences right now.”
“Oh.” She puts the end of the chalk in her mouth while she thinks.
“Take that out of your mouth, Athena, that’s not good for you. And we’re about to have supper. Pea soup tastes better than chalk, right?”
“I don’t know. I never ate chalk,” she says, grinning at me. After a moment, “So, sen-tences are like what you make up when you tell me stories.”
I find myself biting my lip, and stop, turning back to the soup. “I suppose. But you know, my stories are just for us.”
“Why, Mommy? I like your stories.”
The door swings open and I jump slightly, trying to place a smile on my face for Rick.
He walks in with his arms wide. “How are my girls?”
“Daddy!” Athena jumps up from the table as he crosses the room in two long steps. She reaches for a hug and he lifts her up in his arms.
Still holding Athena, Rick leans over and gives me a kiss on the cheek. He’s in good spirits. I smell a night of passion coming on, and I do a quick mental check of where I am in my cycle. Not a good time to be coupling. And I can’t say no… I did that the last time he asked. Too many refusals will lead to suspicion.
“Hi sweetheart,” I say, going automatically into fuzzy mode. Back in the time before, we used to say something about wives being “Stepford.” But I can’t remember why.
At least he’s being kind toward Athena. Sometimes he gets angry at her, and I worry that he knows.
13
I waited for a day when I was sure I would be alone. Athena was only four days old at that point. Bella, the nurse who had been coming to make sure I knew how to feed and bathe my infant safely, had left me on my own for a few hours. Clearly, babies were a rare and precious commodity in the Silo, because Dr. Whittaker and Bella acted as though they hardly trusted me with Athena.
It had crossed my mind that if I didn’t seem to be a good candidate as a mother to one of the only infants down here, they would be quite happy to find her a better one. Another reason why what I was about to do would have to be done carefully and in private. And while she was as young as possible, to minimize the likelihood of her being discovered.
Rick was down in IT doing whatever it was he did there all day, and no one would interrupt me. I took the supplies I had snuck out of the birthing room in my satchel… string, bandages, the closest thing to a scalpel I could find. Some concoction that they put on me when they wanted to give me an injection… so it must contain some properties of sterilization. I had nothing else, so it would have to do.
I unwrapped Athena then, pink and smelling of the sweetness of babyhood. She had already plumped up a bit from my generous breast milk. For a moment I was overcome at what I was about to do to this child. But I had to. To protect her.
I laid her down on the bed with the only rag I could spare under her wriggling foot. Though she had been sound asleep, she was now starting to fuss. Kneeling beside her, I got the supplies ready, setting them out on the floor on my right. I took a deep breath and let it out.
I knew I could do this. I knew I must do this.
Tying the string as tightly as I could around her miniscule extra
toe, which was barely visible, tucked as it was between the normal third toe and the pinky, I gritted my teeth and poured a bit of the unknown liquid onto the site. The sharp smell hit my nose.
I was about to cut my baby. I could feel my heart in my chest and hear my pulse.
Fingers, stop trembling. This is for Athena. This is to protect her.
Tears escaped my eyes as I imagined her pain, this precious infant who had been a part of my body only four days before. It was like taking a knife to myself. Worse.
I fisted the scalpel, held her tiny toes apart, and sliced quickly, gasping as I did so. The volume of blood was stunning, exceeded only by the volume of her screaming. She was crying for her life, her face turning red and her eyes squeezed shut. Her arms and legs flailed.
I poured some of the liquid onto where the toe used to be, which made her squeals louder, if that was possible. Every inch of her body was racked with protest and fear. I was fairly sure I was making it hurt even more, but that didn’t concern me as much as keeping that extra toe a secret.
I stuffed a bandage—praying that it was as sterile as anything gets down here—between the existing toes, and wrapped her entire foot up in a clean rag. In an instant I had the rest of her body comfortably covered and I brought her to my breast, the both of us weeping. She latched on and suckled, snuffling and hiccupping in her distress before settling down to a rhythm, tiny bubbles coming from her nostrils as the crying was overtaken by the nurturing of Mommy.
As she nursed, I carefully took a match to the bloody rag and watched it burn. Then I used the blade to make a tiny slice in my own wrist, to explain the red stains on our bed cover.
I lay down beside my precious daughter and rocked her while she drank.
“Mommy is sorry, sweetie. Mommy is so, so, sorry.”
14
The fire was intense, the flames leaping upward while sparks rose and danced in the dark when new driftwood was added. My front was warm and my back was chilly. I looked around for the friend who had invited me, who at some point must have drifted off to a sand dune with that guy she had been eyeing earlier.
Karma of the Silo: The Collection Page 5