Escaping Exodus

by Nicky Drayden

  If I were anywhere near fit to be heir of our people, I would speak those words to her now, before it is too late, but me . . . the girl who should have never been born, I simply force a grin onto my face.

  “Hoist me high, Matris. High enough for all matrilines to see.”

  Adalla

  Of Slow Beats and Fast Women

  “There’s buildup in ventricle nine,” my ama shouts. “I need a pair of workers down there immediately.”

  I raise my hand, but she looks past me, calls on Jameenah and Uridan, who, yes, have got years more experience than I do, but Jameenah is too slow and Uridan is too cautious. Thank every heart-father of memory’s past that Ama’s and my shifts overlap only once every three days, or I’d have been driven out of my mind these past six weeks. I’ve proven myself again and again, and yet to Ama, I’m as green as swamp moss.

  Finally, her eyes meet mine. I stare until she looks away.

  “That should be my assignment,” I say to her once everyone is dismissed.

  “When’s the last time you’ve had a day off?” she asks me.

  “When’s the last time anyone’s had a day off?” I sass back at her. I can’t even remember the last time I hadn’t worked a double shift. There’re so many ways I can contribute, so many things I’m learning, but there’s an unspoken network as well. Stuff I’ve just had to pick up along the way because no one is willing to say out loud how bad this heart is straining. They act like it’s all normal, like this is the way it’s always been. Like the arrhythmia hasn’t cost the lives of a dozen women. Like any one of us could be next.

  We keep the beat. Most always, it’s on schedule. Sometimes, it’s a few seconds late. Once in a while, it’ll skip, and we’ll stand around for another three minutes forty-seven and a half seconds, doing nothing, wasting time, waiting for beastie’s beat to return. But every few days it’ll beat prematurely, catching everyone off guard, washing away anyone who isn’t lucky enough to secure themselves properly. This . . . we just have to put out of our minds, despite the numerous bodies we’ve dredged from receding pools of ichor.

  My ama sighs. “I know you could do it. Better than half the women here. Probably more than that, but, child, your head is swelling. And this heart is swelling. And I don’t have time to tend to both of you, you get me? Ventricle nine is easy compared to what’s coming down the line. Keep your focus. Work each job like the beast is depending on you. Because she is.”

  “She?” I ask, eyes wide. Never in all my dizzy dreams had I thought that our beast was something other than a thing, an animate object, a sustainer of life. The idea intrigues me. Scares me some, too.

  “It,” Ama corrects herself. “It’s our whole world, betcha girl. Your time will come soon enough.”

  I swallow my nerves, wondering how many other secrets she’s been hiding from me.

  And then she unsheathes her knife, and when the beat hits, she’s off, leaving me sulking. I look at my ventricle, the one I’ve been picking at this entire shift. The plaque buildup is massive, more than a day’s work, but it’s not critical. It’s right near the valve, just twenty steps in. I take my knife, pry at it. My bucket girl follows after me, a young thing, probably half my age, a pail hanging over each of her shoulders. She sets one down, waits for me to fill it, then goes to dump that one while I fill the other. She’s got good lungs, and she’s fast. Not many can keep up with my volume, but she can. I’ve asked her name, but none of ’em talk.

  But I can talk. “This is a bunch of third-ass shits, is what it is, betcha,” I tell her as I slice big chunks of calcified protrusions from the wall. “Third-ass shits! I should be in ventricle nine. Ama knows it too. If I’m to prepare for harder times, I need to be practicing, not playing it safe here.” The hunk comes free and I throw it into the nearly full bucket. Normally, my bucket waif would run off about now, but she moves with me, trusts me with her life. She sees my need right now goes beyond an emptied bucket. Need to empty my heart, too.

  “What are you going to do about it?” she says, not saying. Really, it’s just me imagining her words and giving her a voice an octave higher than I speak. Between beats, working in the heart is mostly uneventful, and having someone to talk to helps pass the time, even if the conversations are faked.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” I say. “I’m going to prove Ama has nothing to worry about. That I’m more capable than she even imagines me to be. I can’t learn anything down here, doing the job of a first season worker!”

  “You are a first season worker,” she says, not saying, her brow bent. “And I think your ama means for you to learn a little patience. She’s been doing this longer than you’ve been alive. Don’t you think she knows anything?”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” I say back to my bucket waif.

  “The beast’s side. The side of all the generations sitting upon the labor of those strong shoulders.” She smiles, looks at my arms. They have become quite muscular.

  “You say the nicest things.” I grin back at her. “I’m glad you’re here to keep me company.”

  The beat is building in my body. I toss the last chunk in the empty bucket and pick it up by its handle. The waif protests, sullying myself as I am, but I don’t care, so then she doesn’t care, and we make our way back out the exit. Usually, I’d take a breather and wait for her to come back with emptied buckets so we could start again, but this time, I accompany her to the dump spot to get my mind off things.

  She runs, and I run after her, catching stares. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but this forced separation between heartworkers and bucket waifs is just weird. Besides, the more I know about the process, the better worker I become. Maybe I can find ways for the other waifs I work with to shave a few seconds off their runs, so I’m not sitting around, waiting. Nothing to do with my own curiosity, sure is sure.

  Finally, we come to the dump, an enormous pile of scaly rock: yellows of marbled fat, greens of jagged undergrowth and infections, and deep purples of fissure pack rot. One end of the pile burns, ashes sifted and taken off in another set of buckets. Nothing goes to waste.

  I empty my bucket and turn, almost running right into a familiar face. My own, nearly. The waif girl averts her eyes, dumps her buckets. I’m staring. Staring so hard, I give her a moment, and she turns and runs back off, and before I know what my feet are doing, I’m following her.

  My little bucket waif is after me, pulling at my dress, trying to steer me back into the right direction, but I can’t. I take the artery that leads to ventricle nine. She must be working with Jameenah and Uridan on that big mass. My mass is nearly finished anyway. It can spare a beat or two.

  “Go wait for me by the entrance,” I tell my waif. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Just going to make sure everything up here is okay. No reason not to, right?”

  Her brow bends at me so hard, but nothing comes out of her mouth. She gestures at me, the silent language of her people. I’ve picked up a little the last few weeks. She’s warning me not to do it, not to go.

  “Please. If you have something to say, say it. If you think this is a bad idea, let me know.”

  She’s pissed off now, her gestures becoming hard and sharp, like a cuss.

  But the other waif, the one who could nearly be me, has almost disappeared down the corridor.

  “Ah, I’ll carry your bucket for a week if you don’t tell,” I beg. “I just need to know who she is.”

  Eyes squint, but her hands stay at her sides. I smile at her, and then I’m off, chasing after the soft padding of footsteps. I move through the entryway, check my gut for the time, then duck inside the valve. I’ve got just enough time to scope things out, to see just how deep this ventricle goes. I keep my eyes open for tethers, hook in my one hand, waiting for signs of an early beat. I walk, knife blade to my belly, in case I get swept away. I remember that first lesson they’d taught us, knife always at the ready.

  I’m so nervous, I forget to breathe. It’s like my ama ha
s given me a puzzle, expecting me to solve the thing even though she and everyone else are sitting on half the pieces. I need to know who this girl is who has so much of my father’s face. I’ve missed that face.

  Jameenah and Uridan are close, and oh, they’re swearing like a couple of boneworkers. They’re having a hard time of it for sure, because for someone to so brazenly curse the head-mothers, you’ve got to be at your wits’ end, sure is sure is sure. I slow down, crouch behind the trunk of a tendon, so they can’t see me. The both of them are fussing with a stubborn patch of crystallized fat. They’re hacking at it, right at what’s usually the weakest point of the structure, but they’ve missed how the fissures in this specimen are all lined up on the diagonal. If they struck at it six inches lower, the whole thing would shear off, no problems. But my thought is lost as I see the waif—my sister, I am sure—lay her bucket down at their side.

  She sways as Jameenah and Uridan chip, in a rhythm, focus intent. Fingers flex, just like mine. Does she also see how dizzy-headed they’re being? Of course, she would never correct their mistake. Couldn’t speak if she wanted to. She has a patience I will never know, because if I were her, I would have snatched those knives away from them and shown them what and all, betcha.

  Then suddenly she’s up, charging toward them, and I’m thinking, Yes! Yes! She’s grown tired of this sad display, and she’s going to chop that entire swath of crystal off in one hit, and then I’ll know she’s mine for sure. But that’s not what happens. Not at all. She’s grabbing their clothing, pulling them away. And then I feel it too, a premature rise in tension of the heart muscle beneath my feet. Like it’s about to—

  Beat.

  I scream out, but ichor fills my mouth, fills my lungs. I brace myself against the deluge, but it slips under me, unseating me from my perch, pulling me away. I swing my tether, hoping for it to find a grip. It digs into the flesh above, but the anchor hasn’t gone deep enough, not with this turbulence. I press my blade to my stomach. Soon as that anchor gives way, I have to do what’s best for all. I’ll plunge it hard and deep, so deep my amas will have no sorrow, only pride for how I’d given myself for the sake of the ship, and for the knife that has been passed down for generations.

  Oh blessed mothers, my anchor is slipping. I close my eyes. Feel the poke at my skin. The tear of flesh. And then a hand is around my wrist, pulling and twisting and wrapping me up, tossing me like a babe in my father’s arms. Those familiar arms.

  As the ichor starts to recede, as the ichor drips from my bleary eyes, I see the waif who may be my sister has anchored in on her own, muscled arms clamped all around my body. She releases as the pools lap to our ankles. Unclips. Smiles at me.

  “I just saved your life. You owe me one,” she says, not saying, in a voice that I imagine to be raspy and low, but for the first time, I wish bucket waifs really did talk. She seems like she has so much to say.

  “Indeed,” I say. “Thanks.”

  She looks back at Jameenah and Uridan . . . Jameenah screaming like Ol’ Baxi Batzi’s got ahold of her and Uridan still trying to catch her breath. Their anchors held, but the women got all tangled up in the beat and are now just a collection of limbs splayed all over the place. My waif sister raises a brow.

  “I’d better attend to these two, and you’d better get out of here before you get in any more trouble,” she says, not saying. The deepness of her voice scratches at my throat, but I’ve already committed her to this persona . . . the fearless waif who’s as much of a badass at play as she is at work. “Meet me at the doldrums? After shift? You can buy me a lungful.”

  Her brows go high with that one, like she’s amused by my suggestion. Have I pushed this putting-words-in-her-mouth thing a little too far? Maybe. Probably. But nearly drowning and nearly dying has put me in a ripe mood, betcha, and I accept her offer as if she’d actually given it.

  “I’ll buy you two,” I say, then scurry out of there, fast as I can, hoping to get back to safety before anyone misses me.

  Confession: I’ve never been to the doldrums before. They’re huge, cavernous, stretching a mile up, probably. Strips of spongy gray materials strung from bottom to top. If you squint, you can just make out the acrobatic workers, way up high near the gills, collecting the mad vapors for our consumption.

  A lot of my coworkers come here after shift, but no one’s ever invited me. I try to fit in, laugh at their jokes, but those rumors about Seske proposing to me have lingered like a mysterious stench, and maybe they’re afraid of some of that embarrassment rubbing off on them. Or maybe they’re all jealous of my talent. Or they think I don’t deserve to be here. Or maybe they just don’t want to waste their time getting to know me because they think I’ll wash out of the heart sooner than later . . . either literally or figuratively.

  That’s not to say I haven’t had mad vapors before. Sonovan pretends not to notice that I sip some from the envelopes he leaves lying around. Usually only a swallow here and there, enough to make my arm hairs prickle, enough to relax my brain and give pretty purple ripples to objects moving too quickly in front of me.

  There aren’t many waifs here, now. Three in all, and they’re all servers, delivering hoses and overfilled bladders to customers, running this way and that. Suddenly I feel awkward for making my waif sister fake-invite me here. Will she feel comfortable? Will she even show?

  Her hand is on my wrist again. I spin around, see her. Smile.

  “You made it!” I say. “I hope I wasn’t too forward.”

  “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” she says, not saying. She looks around too, notices what I’ve noticed.

  “We can go somewhere else, if you like,” I say, but she’s already heading for a table, claiming the space like she belongs here. I like her already.

  We take seats across from each other. Our server comes by, drops a vapor palette in front of me, stalls a moment as she takes my waif sister in. She looks back at me, mouth gaping wide enough for a murmur to fly straight in.

  “Um, she’s a grisette,” she mumbles. “We don’t serve them here.”

  “She’s not a grisette,” I say. “She’s a person. A person with a name . . .” I blink a few times, realizing I haven’t even bothered to ask her what I should call her. But I have to save face in front of the server. I have to be convincing. “Parton. Parton Kendi,” I say, proud and erect, giving her the demasculinized version of my father’s name. Our father’s name.

  The server’s eyes widen like I’ve smacked her across the face.

  “We’ll be having that other palette now,” I say, sliding my knife onto the table in a completely nonthreatening way. Completely, betcha.

  Her trembling hand puts a palette down in front of Parton, then she’s off, probably to tattle to her boss. Who knows how long we have left to enjoy ourselves, but I smile at my sister anyway. If this is all the time we’ve got to connect, we’ll make it work.

  “So I guess you’ve noticed we look a bit alike,” she says, not saying. But her brows don’t pitch, so I’m fairly certain we’re both on the same wave here.

  “Yeah, I noticed,” I say in my own voice. “But I get the distinct feeling that I’m not supposed to have noticed.”

  I take the length of bone pipe and pierce the lightest-colored membrane on the palette, sucking up the entire vapor sample, trying so hard to look like I know what I’m doing. I let the gas twirl in my mouth, cheeks puffed like I’ve seen Sonovan do a million times, then I blow out a pathetic wheeze, pale vapors immediately dissipating into the air. The flavor is sharp, cloying, so much fresher than the stuff I’ve scavenged. I resist the urge to scrape the residue off my tongue. I blink a few times, and my muscles start to relax. My eyes trace over every single one of her facial features, then I say to her, “It’s so odd, looking at you. Sorry.” I giggle into my fist. “I didn’t mean for my words to come out like that. I wish you could tell me more about you.”

  I’m a lightweight, already halfway to gaffed on a single vapor sample. St
ill, I poke my bone pipe at the next one, a deeper-colored gas, swirling and shimmering beneath the confines of its clear membrane. I take a hard suck. This one’s spicier. Waaay more potent. From my fading periphery, I see Parton’s hands moving. I lean back. Watch. Try to put together her language of gestures. Purple ripples follow her hand movements. Mesmerizing. I don’t know what she’s saying, but I never want her to stop talking.

  “Here’s the thing,” I say, leaning toward her, nearly falling off my seat. “I could really use a friend right now.” I say friend, but sister is the word that wants so badly to tumble out of my mouth, but I’m nowhere near gaffed enough to say it in public. I’ve been pulling double shifts in an effort to work Seske out of my mind. Focusing on the heart that really matters. But as much as I try, I just can’t put her behind me. “I’ve got no one else to talk to. And oh, I feel like I’ve got to talk, before my feelings eat me up alive. Get me?”

  She nods, and the purple ripples now have some shimmering silver friends.

  “Parton, is it okay if I call you Parton?” I look over and see the manager coming, our timid server trailing several steps behind. This will not end well. I take the bone pipe, pierce the darkest sample, a deep aqua blue closer to the pitch of ichor. My lungs burn so badly. My head is so spinny. Last thing I need is to stab someone, accident or not, so I stand up and holster my knife. “We don’t want any problems here,” I say to the manager. “We’re leaving.”

  Parton is up and at my side, which is good, because the ground starts shifting beneath me. I think maybe I swallowed that last sample instead of blowing it out. I think that was a very, very bad idea. My gut twists and roils.

  I walk as straight as I can, propped up on Parton’s shoulder. We get twelve steps past the door when I spew all my dinner and most of my lunch up against a wall. Parton sits with me, her hand on my back, rubbing till I’m emptied.