by Elle Hill
RJ wheeled by, muttering something about canned fruits.
“Have you ever chopped onions, Blue?” Josh asked.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“You’re dicing, not chopping,” RJ said. “Or at least you should be.”
Josh assured her they were tiny pieces.
“How’d you learn to cook, RJ?” Josh asked after a moment. Anything to distract her from her stinging eyes. Only two more onions left.
“My mom taught me,” RJ said, and then grunted.
Oniony eyes streaming, Josh didn’t bother offering any help the older woman might need.
“Did she cook for a living?” Lynna asked.
“Huh-uh. She worked in the same factory I did till an accident took her. Too many blasted accidents in that place. Juss, would you hand me . . . Yeah, thanks. She used to cook, though. My dad cooked, but it was my mom’s escape. She hated working at the factory . . .”
Lynna made a sound of agreement.
“Yeah, me, too. And when she got home, my mom just disappeared—poof!—into the kitchen. She liked to have it all to herself. My dad and I would talk and play Squab till she told us dinner was ready. When I was like, oh, thirteen or so, she let me start helping. Only on Shabuah, though. She used to tell me it was to teach me to be grateful to Elovah, but I know it was because it was the only day she didn’t need to, you know, work off her hatred of work.” A smile lit her voice as well.
“My mother refused to let me cook,” Lynna said. “I think she worried I’d sneak bites and gain more weight.”
RJ snorted. “My dad weighs a good three-fifty, and he’s the healthiest and strongest guy I know. If your body is a small body, it’ll be small, and big bodies will be big. Your mother didn’t understand the difference between being big and being capable.”
Josh continued ch—uh, dicing onions, and her tears persisted in painting the world in fractals. Still, she could practically hear Lynna beaming.
“Well, huh,” Lynna said, tone oozing pleasure. “But,” she added, “my mother did it less because of doubting my capabilities and more because she worried they’d make me a Tithe.”
“What!” RJ cried, and dropped something that clattered on a countertop. “Your town considers big people incaps? Wait, is that why you’re here?”
No sound followed. Perhaps Lynna nodded.
“Ridiculous,” RJ huffed. “Stupid and ridiculous! Everybody knows big people are just big!”
Thank goodness someone else agreed with her.
“I guess I was born in the wrong town,” Lynna almost whispered.
Each retired into their own silence. Josh remembered Ima Christina, Ima Emm, Minnabi Keltyn, Eloine Crawsin d’Ijo. Even her own stomach wasn’t strictly flat. Had Lynna been born just a few miles to the north, she wouldn’t be here, waiting to die before reaching the quarter-century mark.
Maybe the town leaders were a little bit ridiculous, especially if not all of them could agree on what made an unworkable, an incap, or whatever each town called them. The Bitoran was silent on the subject of choosing the Tithes, although later synasch dictates interpreted passages about working to glorify Elovah as indicating people unable to work should serve the one purpose they could. Yet many of the Tithes Josh had met worked just fine: RJ as cook, Ryland as launderer, Marcus as leader, Lynna at whatever she wanted. Even she, wonky legs and all, had reorganized the library into a smoothly humming machine.
Josh wondered who might not have become a Tithe had they been born in a different town. The two twin brothers. Perhaps Avery. She’d met a number of people whose incapacities remained a mystery.
If nothing else, perhaps the leaders of each town should sit together and discuss making their criteria for judging incapacities a little more, well, uniform. Right now, its arbitrariness was . . . unsettling.
Josh finished dicing the last onion. “Thank heaven,” she breathed, and quickly stood to her feet. “What do you need me to do now?”
“Go wash your hands and then work with Blue in spooning some canned peaches onto the plates,” RJ said. “There’s a chair by Blue.”
A moment later, Josh dropped into the indicated chair. Blue put a hand on her shoulder, perhaps to help right her or perhaps not. It remained there for a moment. They worked together in silence, Josh spooning peaches onto a plate that Blue then placed in rows on the counter.
“So, how did you meet your wife?” Lynna asked.
Josh expected the heretofore-silent Juss to respond, but it was RJ who spoke. “At synasch, if you can believe it. I went with my dad to synasch twice a week like a good girl and to the rab’ri on Shabuah. One week, we came super late and couldn’t find a place to sit. We ended up sitting on the floor in the back, next to a girl and her parents. I caught the girl rolling her eyes a bit, and I thought maybe I’d found someone who might understand my feelings about—you know . . .” Josh glanced up and saw Lynna nodding her head conspiratorially. So Lynna had found someone who shared her religious skepticism. Good for her, she guessed.
“We talked after the service ended, and whew, did she knock me over with that big brain of hers. Next week, we sat together on purpose. After a few months, I asked her parents if I could start courting her. They liked me, and everybody likes my father, so they agreed. I asked her at synasch the next week.” RJ wheeled over to Juss and helped him with something.
“She must have been twitterpated,” Lynna said in a tone that had Josh lifting her head once again.
“She said no,” RJ said, grinning and wheeling back to the stove and the sultry smell of frying onions.
“What? Why?” Lynna actually sounded offended.
“She wanted to marry a boy and have babies. I said obies needed parents all the time.”
“Obies,” the nickname for “OBs,” or “overbred families,” had come to represent the children taken from families who had more than two offspring.
“She still said no. Fine, no problem, I said. I knew she’d end up with me. I was just—”
“What was her name?” Lynna asked.
“Kyr, with a Y. Still is her name. Some boy a few years younger began courting her. Her mom and dad liked me a lot better and didn’t make it easy for the boy.” RJ chuckled. “Not long after, she came to my house. Sex with boys was gross, she told me. Like I didn’t know.” RJ laughed.
Josh almost dropped her spoon. She knew, of course, that not everyone followed the rules about waiting till marriage, or at least engagement. Sure. Humans weren’t known for their boundless obedience. Still, to hear it said out loud . . .
RJ glanced at her. “We, uh, decided that night to start courting. Me and Kyr got engaged a few months later.”
“How old were you?” Lynna asked.
“About her age,” RJ replied, gesturing toward Josh. “Kyr was a few years older. Maybe your age.”
“So, uh.” Lynna cleared her throat. “What’s it like?” Her voice was almost a whisper.
“You have to apply with the town for an engagement and then wait six months before you can marry. It’s an annoying wait, but if you think you’re going to be together forever . . .” RJ shrugged.
“No, I mean . . .” Josh looked up. Lynna’s milk-pale face had acquired a light, rosy glow. Was it the heat in the kitchen, or was she blushing? “You know. Being. With a woman.”
“Ah.” RJ smiled.
Josh looked back at her remaining cans of peaches. Her heart tapped against her breastbone. Grow up, she told herself, but her heart continued pounding. In spite of what the imrabi say, people must have sex outside of engagement and marriage every day. “You ever been with a man?”
“Once,” Lynna said in a tone striving for RJ’s nonchalance. Even once could result in yearlong service to a rab’ri or synasch, at least in Barstow.
“It’s all sweaty and crowded and warm like that. But with a woman . . .” She paused. “With a woman, it’s more, you know, involved. There’s more to do and more to feel and you just
have to be more present.”
Lynna was silent. They all were.
“What about your daughter?” Josh asked after a while. Lynna turned to her, eyes widening and head shaking. Really? They could discuss sex before marriage but not offspring? Maybe she wasn’t the one to talk with Blue about social conventions.
“Kyr took her when she left,” RJ said shortly. “Looks like you and Blue are done. Go ahead and go sit down out there. We’re good in here.”
At noon, each town representative checked in. No one missing since last night. What would they do when one of the representatives went missing? Or Marcus?
No one mentioned Len, although Josh saw Parsey sitting cross-legged and staring blankly ahead for hours on end. Was she remembering the scene from last night, or was this her habit?
As the afternoon dragged by, more groups approached Josh about leading them in prayer. Despite her protests, they all insisted. Surely after all their years attending services, they all knew the words. “But you’re practically an imrabi,” a young man told her. She considered telling him and everyone else Marcus and Blue were also raised by the imrabi but decided she liked them too much.
And behind her, always diligent, always silent and patient, loomed Blue. People scrunched their eyes at him, but he either couldn’t sense their confusion and annoyance or didn’t care.
On her way back to her usual seat on the circular couch, Josh rounded on him. “I think I know why you follow me,” she announced.
Blue remained silent, but he stopped walking. Given his height, and had he been sighted, he would have stared rudely, loftily above her head. Josh still hadn’t grown used to conversing with someone who didn’t meet her eyes.
“You think I did you some favor the other night by pushing you out of the hallway. Now you feel responsible for me and want to keep me as safe as you can.” She put her hands on her hips, not indignantly but in order to maintain her balance.
“It’s a theory.”
She cocked her head. “Are you saying I’m wrong?”
“Mostly.”
After a lengthy silence, she demanded, “Well?”
“You’re tired. Let’s sit first.” Blue grabbed her elbow and led her to the couch. She wanted to snap at him for his presumptuousness, except he was entirely correct.
“I don’t owe you, Joshua,” Blue said. “You sacrificed yourself to save me. You did something no one else did. You’re better than everyone here, and I want to protect you. And know you.”
Josh drifted back against the cushions. “I’m not better than anyone,” she murmured while her mind whirled.
“You’re wrong,” Blue said simply. “I haven’t known many people in my life, but your compassion and selflessness are easily recognizable.”
She wriggled against the cushions. “Everyone has compassion and altruism,” she said.
Blue smiled at her. His teeth gleamed against his swarthy complexion. “Some, yes, but not like you.”
He wasn’t a handsome man by town standards. He was too tall, his eyes too light, his nose too sharp, his frame not stocky enough. Still, she saw a good face, an earnest and truthful one. One that could become beloved with time.
Time. Ha!
“Blue Lenwood, are you trying to court me?” she asked him, squinting her eyes at him, much as the others had earlier.
“You keep accusing me,” he replied, his face turned away from hers.
“You keep denying it and then saying sweet things,” she countered.
“I think you want to court me,” he said.
Josh sat back, mouth agape. “That . . . That! I cannot believe you!” she gasped. “That is so . . . arrogant.”
She waited for a shrug, a head nod, something. His face remained blank except for the remainder of his earlier smile.
“The others in here think of me as your pet,” he said finally. “A dangerous one, but a pet nonetheless.”
Josh wasn’t sure she was ready to give up her self-righteous anger. She waited a moment, sighed, and then asked, “What makes you think that?”
“It’s easy to hear in their voices.” Blue paused. “Maybe I am your pet. Your guard dog.”
Josh had never seen a dog, although she’d read a lot about them. Loving, loyal, and silent in their adoration but with a memory of the wild in their genes: They sounded scary and wonderful all at once.
“I think,” she said slowly, “I’d rather have you as my friend than my guard dog.”
Blue’s lips still stretched over his teeth. “I’ve never had a friend.”
Josh hesitated for a moment. “Me neither,” she admitted. Not a real one, anyway. Something brushed against the back of her breastbone. She thought it might be wonder. And probably grief.
A short time later, she scuffled her way to Avery, who sat talking with two of the children. One of them was Izel, the girl from Barstow.
“It’s like drawing,” Avery was saying gently. “You’re drawing words, using pictures that are supposed to stand for sounds.”
“Like the circle with a tail,” one of the children offered.
“Yep. That’s A. It sounds like this: aaaaaaa.” Avery waved his hands like a singer on a stage.
Both kids giggled at his silliness.
“Want some help?” Josh asked.
Izel waved at her with her forefinger.
Josh waved back.
“No, but thank you,” Avery said. “We’re just reminding ourselves about letters and sounds.”
Josh shifted her weight. She liked kids just fine, but she had no idea how to talk to them. Heaven, she barely knew how to talk to adults, and they at least pretended to follow all the social rules.
“Okay. Well, then.” She turned, found herself staring at Blue’s chest, and took a step around him.
“Are you blind?” Izel asked Blue.
Josh stopped walking.
“Yes,” he said.
“Blind means you can’t see.”
“Yes.”
“What’s it like to not see?”
And this was why children scared her. What would she do if one of them asked her about her legs or even wanted to see her feet? Josh shuddered.
“I don’t know,” Blue said. “What’s it like not to smell the color purple?”
A confused silence followed. “Colors don’t smell,” the other girl finally pointed out.
“Maybe they do and you don’t know,” Blue said. “You don’t miss it because you don’t know what it’s like. My blindness is the same way. I was born not knowing what it means to see, but I don’t miss it.”
They returned to their seats in silence. Josh liked that about him. He wasn’t one to stuff words into conversational gaps. It was soothing, like being alone without the loneliness.
After a time, Josh spoke with unusual softness. “I remember what it’s like to run and skip or even just walk and not worry about falling.”
“How old were you when that changed?” Blue asked in his quiet, inflectionless voice.
She shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see it. “Thirteen.”
He said no more. Neither did she.
As the afternoon ticked by, illuminated by nothing more than various fluorescent lights, Blue retreated to the laundry room. Since the attacks seemed to happen only during the evening, he must assume she was safe for a couple of hours without him.
Joshua Barstow, so famous she needed a bodyguard. She shook her head.
Shortly after Blue left, Hollyn, she of the peanut butter crackers, waved one of her crutches in the air and shouted, “Nobody’s saying it, so I figure it’s up to me.”
Conversation ceased.
“It’s coming back tonight,” she pointed out. Various heads nodded. Some pointed downward. “So what’re we going to do about it?”
“What do you think we can do?” Marcus, seated next to an older woman with a vacant look in her eyes, asked.
Holly lowered the crutch. “Godfire if I know,” she snapped. “But I figured
we should talk about it. Better than doing nothing and waiting till we get picked off, one by one.”
“That’s blasphemy,” a woman’s voice called.
“Hey, you want to sit there and wait for the angel to drag you away, be my guest,” Hollyn called back. “I’d like to think Elovah gave us free will for a reason, and it’s not to burrow into the sand like a gopher and molder till the angel comes.” Kind of a mixed metaphor, Josh thought. She wondered if Avery was offended. “If we have the strength to fight for our lives, I say we do it.”