Theory of Bastards

by Audrey Schulman

  Later in her life, Francine would learn to describe what she was feeling through comparing it to an event that resulted in a similar level of pain: a paper cut or fractured bone or amputation. She memorized the Stanford Pain Scale so she could select from its descriptors: occasionally absorbing, normal lifestyle curtailed, or temporary personality disorders.

  However with the nurse, she had not yet developed such techniques. Her sentences sounded like a child’s. She said, Sometimes my gut hurts, deep inside. Sometimes I vomit.

  Mrs. McGonickle leaned forward, her face concerned. This close, Francine could feel warmth radiating off her like from the side of a horse. She wanted to rest against the thick side of this woman, let go her worries.

  Aww Sugar, said Mrs. McGonickle, How often does this happen?

  Once a month, admitted Francine.

  The woman’s eyes refocused. She asked cautiously, From your period?

  Yes.

  And McGonickle sat back.

  Francine found herself leaning into the space the nurse had left.

  McGonickle sucked her teeth, focusing out the window. She asked, Do the women in your family make a big deal about their periods?

  Francine answered, I think my mom had a hard time with them.

  McGonickle said, Pain is something that can be suggested. You can make it bigger or smaller with your mind. Try to think about your period in a different way. Expect it won’t be so painful and you’ll find the pain will diminish.

  Her expression was kind, but her concern had left. She had the answer and was no longer worried.

  At her words, Francine closed her eyes. She managed to ask, Isn’t there something else I can do?

  If it really bothers you, said McGonickle, You could alternate ibuprofen and aspirin every two hours. But you don’t need that. It’s all just suggestion.

  The nurse added, Wait til you try giving birth. And she barked out a short laugh.

  From this point on, Frankie considered Caesarean section the only civilized answer to labor.

  However, thinking about the nurse’s words afterward, she realized she’d been offered a potential solution. She got several books on the power of suggestion and read them with her whole heart. Each night before sleep, she chanted to herself that she would feel less pain. She imagined herself in specific detailed scenes, the slight cramp her gut would feel, the sensation only in her lower pelvis. She fell asleep each night holding the details in her head. She had, it must be said, real hope.

  But right on schedule, her period arrived and she woke in mid stride halfway down the hall, running for the bathroom. The burning was back, filling most of her torso. On the toilet, she clenched her bladder and something inside disengaged, a frozen heat billowing outward.

  She learned always to carry ibuprofen and aspirin in her bag. During her periods, she drank as little liquid as possible so she wouldn’t have to pee. She reached for items with her left hand so she wouldn’t feel that strange tugging along the right side of her ribs.

  DAY 7

  Ten

  One of the Moments in the cube on Stotts’ desk was of his daughter being read a book—paper books mostly reserved these days for children before their first implant. Tess was about three years old, a stuffed animal over her shoulder, her eyes big and thinking. This was the kind of image Frankie forced herself to look at, examining the child, memorizing details, checking her own emotions.

  (People tended to assume that Frankie, a woman in her thirties, would yearn to hold any nearby baby. They’d plop their infants into her arms, saying, Isn’t he the cutest. Once, handed the baby while the mom ran to the bathroom, Frankie pinched the cheek hard. When the mom came back, Frankie handed the screaming baby back, holding her palms up as though confused.)

  In the photo of Tess, there was no sign of asthma except her mouth was open, the pacifier clamped between her teeth like a cigarette.

  The next Moment was a more recent one of Tess and her parents by a lake. Tess was standing while her parents crouched down on either side of her, posing. She was staring upward at something—a bird? A kite? Her mother looked at Tess, Stotts stared at his wife.

  Frankie heard someone in the hall and rolled over on the couch, turning away from the images.

  *

  Frankie continued to sit outside for much of each day in the tourist area, observing the bonobos through the plexiglass. Each time they were fed, she took notes on who mated with whom. Anytime more than one bonobo wandered behind the concrete hill out of sight, she used her Lenses to call up the video of the far side of the hill. She didn’t want to miss even one mating. Within a few weeks she’d be able to assess if the bonobos really were random in their mating choices.

  However, every once in awhile, the video from the far side of the hill went dark for a few seconds. She didn’t know if this was a difficulty with the cameras, the power or feed, but she sent a sharp note to Bellows to find and fix whatever was going wrong. This wasn’t the only problem at the Foundation. The longer she was here, the more she noticed the disrepair and outdated equipment—the flickering lights in the back hallways, the slow speed of data, the broken vehicles parked behind the building. Multiple coats of paint attempted to camouflage a clear lack of funding.

  Perhaps these problems were specific to the Foundation or maybe this was typical of the whole Midwest. The cars outdated, the people heavier. Used to Manhattan, she examined this foreign land.

  Meanwhile she did the best she could at her work, spending the whole day watching the bonobos, absorbing everything she could. By this point she’d learned their names as well as where each stood in the group hierarchy. The females ranged from Mama down to Houdina. Below the females came the juveniles and then the males. Houdina was the newest member of the group right now and was low enough in the strata that sometimes she appeared on par with the males.

  One of the best ways to see the hierarchy was to observe who got groomed. Mama was groomed so often that Frankie began to suspect this was at least partly the reason for her baldness, others constantly tugging on what little hair remained. Houdina, on the other hand, was furry and even though she spent considerable time grooming others, she didn’t get groomed often in return.

  The hierarchy was demonstrated also in how treats were passed around. The biggest treat was the book of honey, hidden somewhere in the enclosure each morning, a few of its pages painted with honey. (The Foundation had received a truckload of books from the local library when it closed.) The daily book kept them busy and alleviated boredom. No matter which bonobo found it, under the attentive gaze of the Terrible Two, that bonobo would soon offer the book to Mama. The others would sit nearby waiting while Mama peeled apart the sticky pages, then ran the back of her knuckle across the honey and sucked on her finger. If Mama at any point felt the interest of another bonobo—especially one of the males—was too high, she would rest her eyes on the offender and Marge and Adele would turn to look. The offender would freeze, a nervous grin on his face, until Mama and the Terrible Two looked away and then he’d creep backward.

  Frankie had begun to think of bonobo society like a group of high-school cheerleaders and bashful wallflowers locked together in a room for years. Yes, physical violence was unlikely and everyone had good manners, but status was still wielded like a stick.

  After Mama had finished with the book and walked off, Marge and Adele took their turns scraping off honey, followed by the other females, then the juveniles. The males were left with the tattered remains.

  Today Frankie noticed Mama taking an especially long time with the book, which was bigger than the books they normally got. Even after Mama had consumed as much honey as she wanted, she continued wiping off the pages, then scrubbing her knuckle clean on the ground. Once she had a page clean, she swiveled the book around to study the page one way and then another. From where Frankie sat, she could see there were photos on
the pages, but not what the photos showed.

  When Mama finished examining a page, she’d peel open the next one and scrub its honey off on the ground. The other bonobos watched, not making a sound.

  At one point, as Mama angled the book, Frankie saw the title along the spine: Hairstyles of the Last Century. She watched Mama consider the photo, her eyes narrowed.

  Then someone flicked the back of Frankie’s head. She turned to look at the teenager next to her—so absorbed in whatever was displayed on his Lenses, he didn’t realize he’d hit her. He had his hand up where his Bindi could see it and was flicking his index finger repeatedly to the right, paging through different files or sites. Frankie could only assume he’d Quarked the word bonobo. His finger froze as he found something interesting. His eyes focused up and to the right as he breathed through his mouth. He didn’t glance at the species in front of him.

  Of course with people constantly gesturing and talking this way, from a distance it could be hard to discern who was on a business call and who was delusional. This was partly why Bindis had been invented (the other reason was of course to allow corporate logos to be displayed even as technology disappeared into the body). Now, late at night, if a strange man was walking toward Frankie on the street talking to himself and gesturing, she could look for a blinking Bindi or a speck of light in the upper right corner of his eyes to know whether or not she should cross to the other side of the street.

  From a few feet away, especially in the dark, the tiny screen on the Lenses made a person’s eyes appear to have a strange luster. Bright-eyed used to mean a person was interested in the world. Now it was slang to mean the person was texting.

  Behind the teenager were a lot of younger children slapping buttons on the sign-language kiosk.

  From repeated use, some of the kiosk buttons didn’t work anymore. This—along with the fact that most of the children could only reach the first two rows—meant the bonobo avatar said the same words over and over. Stick. Human. Banana. Perhaps the verbs were higher up.

  The bonobos kept their eyes away, ignoring the avatar’s apparent Tourette’s.

  There were kiosks scattered around the Foundation. Some were sign-language translators for the chimps, gorillas and orangutans. Other played short educational videos narrated by thoughtful voices. None of these videos, however, were allowed to play more than a second or two before a passing child would slap a different button, starting a new video. The children weren’t interested in the education, only in control of the device. One of the kiosks near the Snack Shack had been broken by repetitive use. Every time Frankie walked by, even late at night when the Foundation was closed, it was lecturing the park bench in front of it about the geographic range that orangutans used to have when they lived in the wild.

  Mostly only young children played with the kiosks since those over eight tended to have implants. These older children stood apart instead, their Bindis blinking as they gestured, playing an invisible guitar or gunning down unseen terrorists.

  *

  During the bonobos’ pre-lunch orgy, while the tourists fled, Frankie moved back and forth in front of the glass, getting up on her tiptoes or lowering herself down to the ground, doing her best to see what all the genitals were doing. She kept a breathless running commentary for her Bindi to note down. However there were so many different acts, all occurring so quickly and in such a variety of positions, it was difficult to be certain which bonobo was connected with which set of genitals, much less if the interaction was traditional enough to potentially result in pregnancy.

  Afterward she stood there just as breathless as they were, except while they were satiated, she was irritated. It was likely she’d missed important information.

  She cocked her head, looking them over. She was wasting time and hated that feeling.

  With so much action happening at the same time, she needed to focus her attention. In terms of what she cared about, the only copulations that mattered were those that could result in pregnancy.

  A male and a female.

  Actually, she could get more specific than that. She needed some way to figure out which females were ovulating.

  Lucy knuckled by her, her sexual swelling wobbling behind her. This pink flesh advertised to the males that she could be ovulating, however the swelling was inflated for a majority of each month—like any good advertising, not entirely false, just exaggerating the truth. Frankie needed to figure out how to pinpoint the actual ovulation, then she could narrow in on which females to pay attention to each day.

  For the rest of that afternoon, she found herself staring at the females’ swellings. When the females sat down, the swollen balloon of skin would puff out like a pillow beneath them. She regarded this tight cushion, wondering how to see past it.

  *

  A little after lunch, the tourist area mostly deserted, a six-year-old sat on the ground near Frankie, his forehead against the glass, plumes of his breath appearing on the surface. He sat there quietly, staring into the enclosure, one hand on the glass, his mother on the bench behind him, talking on a business call, flipping through information on her Lenses.

  In the enclosure, the one-year-old Id began to ease her way toward the child.

  Although the boy and Id were only a few feet from Frankie, they ignored her. She tended to sit still enough that sometimes people tried to step in front of her as though she were just a concrete stanchion.

  The bonobos seemed to treat her a bit like a stanchion too. If they knuckled up anywhere close to the glass, it was likely to be in front of her. Probably since she moved so little and had been here for days, she didn’t make them as nervous as the other humans who called and rapped on the glass, trying to attract attention. Or maybe it was because, instead of staring mostly at her Lenses, she actually watched them.

  Occasionally she caught one bonobo or another studying her. They felt no compulsion to turn away, looking as long as they wanted, their dark eyes concentrated.

  Id edged closer to the boy, Houdina whining nervously in the background. The boy stayed seated, his hand on the glass. Id knuckled closer and then closer until she rose to her feet in front of him, peering into his face. Both the child and Id barely breathing.

  Id examined the tourist area for danger, then extended one hand up to flatten it against the boy’s, a single pane of plexi between their fingers.

  There was a pause for sheer pleasure on both sides of the glass.

  After a moment, the boy moved his other hand onto the plexi.

  Id considered this, then flattened her hand against his.

  A slow second passed with the two staring into each other’s eyes.

  The boy removed his hands. Id copied him.

  Gravely they began the game of patty-cake.

  Meanwhile the boy’s mother flicked through the documents on her Lenses, discussing the pricing of different fonts.

  DAY 8

  Eleven

  At 5 A.M., Frankie sat at the table in the apartment and opened a box of saltines by the flickering light of the muted broadcast. For over a decade, she hadn’t been allowed food with gluten or salt. The operation she’d had removed all symptoms permanently, an average of 85 times out of 100. Before this, statistics had been against her, the doctors stating the probabilities in a serious voice, as though she gave a damn about those 99 other patients.

  Placing a cracker in her mouth, she closed her eyes, inhaling through her nose. Her joy crisp and salty on her tongue. Behind her, the avatar on the wall mouthed her silent words.

  Reaching for another cracker, she fumbled the box slightly and it fell to the ground. She eased herself off the chair to retrieve it. While she was on her knees, the avatar’s wall suddenly went bright. She glanced up, assuming a malfunction.

  It took her a moment to realize she was looking at a field. The field had furrows, in the background a wire fence, a sing
le tricycle on its side and a sun-beaten house. The confusing detail was the color of the soil, close to the light beige she associated with hotel hallways.

  Gattonville read the title.

  Gattonville could be in so many different states. A lot of the south, as well as California, had declared federal emergencies because of the drought. Any broadcast in a restaurant or bar (the audience too large to conform to everyone’s preferences) had to revert to actual news and within a few minutes would play some story about the drought. These stories so pervasive, she’d wondered at times if they might be subsidized by agribusiness in hopes of justifying the constantly rising price of food.

  She had a basic dislike of E-musement broadcasts since with her work she spent so many hours staring at a digital display of some kind or another. Other people seemed different. Even while they were working on their Lenses, muttering and gesturing, they directed their eyes toward the broadcast on the wall, seeking out as much digital information as possible, as though it fed them in some way.

  She picked up the box of crackers. On the wall, the scene had shifted to what looked like a New England forest, a man in a lab coat scooping up some soil and then holding it out for a close-up, the earth a rich brown color. His hand squeezed the soil into a moist clump, then rolled it between his fingers, letting chunks fall. A lab report showing the percent of moisture in the soil and the Latin names of unicellular life scrolled across the screen too fast to read.

  She threw her arm over the seat of a chair and levered herself up. So many different muscles were needed to get to her feet. Even with minimally invasive surgery, so much inside had been what the doctors called insulted. Breathing hard, she found her eyes on the broadcast.

  A hand was now scooping up some of the beige-colored dirt. The fingers squeezed, then let go. The dirt did not clump. The analysis began to scroll across the screen, the moisture content at zero and the Latin names crossed out.