by Paula Guran
Carriers—two others in the settlement, a few animals outside—recognize one another by the faint scent of what would on Earth be called orange blossoms, though it is unpleasant and fetid to the uninfected settlers, the doctor told her. He doesn’t use a mask anymore, but he breathes through his mouth when she visits. Even when she is out of quarantine, she avoids the canteens because faces change when she comes too close. She’s pretty sure some of them also think she should be executed. She is glad they are outnumbered, but she still stays away, in case of accidents. That is okay. The one night a few drunk kids from the village found her in her hut and called her out she hid in the closet until security cleared them away. She stayed there for a day and a night, her arms wrapped around her body, and the darkness lit by her own luminous excretions.
After that she stays away. She walks farther than any of the survey teams, farther than the scouts, or the trackers. She sleeps rough, alone, though never alone. Sometimes, together and without speaking—because to be a carrier is to be always in the wordless company of one’s beloved—she and the other two from the settlement climb mountains to the thin, high reaches of Shanti’s atmosphere, and bathe in a flood of cosmic radiation visible only to their naked, decaying eyes. Mai swims—the dormant creatures oxygenating her blood—an hour underwater. Her skin, once brown, now mottled a faint blue-green, pearlescent as it grows luminous in the blue glow of Shanti’s night sky. Everywhere she sees a new color adjacent to violet, something outside the human spectrum for which there is no name. She calls it Shanti.
She hears them teeming above her and underground, the littlest dear ones, the single-celled, the unattached, their bioluminous glow lighting the sky, and running through the water when, at night, she creeps from her hut and climbs the escarpment above the village, the last ridge before the ocean.
Even now Mai-who-is-no-longer-quite-Mai remembers to write letters to Mai’s mother, because to do so is kind. She does this monthly, and it is very difficult. She reads earlier letters in order to understand what letters to one’s mother are supposed to sound like. The problem is that, while she remembers, quite clearly, Mai’s life from before she became no-longer-Mai, she suspects she’s still missing something in the letters: some pain, some history that is no longer relevant or explicable in her new, composite existence.
She remembers a handful of lavender, which she held in her palm, and sniffed that first week on Shanti. The leaves were so old she wondered if the scent was a phantom of her desire to smell this last gift of her mother’s, which had traveled so far with her, and which had faded to grey-purple, the scent of something once green, of Earth. How she had kept it in the little pouch—the white one onto which her niece had embroidered three spears of lavender blossoms on their grey-green stems, her large, uneven stitches marked—so Mai’s sister had pointed out—with a drop of blood where the needle had dug deep by accident. Despite this mishap the girl had finished the little project, and Mai loved the stitches, down to the knots on the back, where her cotton had got tangled. The niece was in her twenties now. Out of school. Married. A mother. A religious zealot. An officer. A lesbian. A diplomat. A retail clerk. A slacker. An activist.
Mai-who-is-no-longer-exclusively-Mai feels the swelling along her spine, where in their dormant stage the creatures fixed themselves and now dream through the last sleep of their infancy. She thinks of all the shapes through which they traveled, of spore-consciousness and single-celled-consciousness, of jellyfish blooms, the lesions of recent years, and then quiescence, the latent promises of the pupal stage, which is also the nearly last stage of Mai.
She wishes she could smell it again. Lavender. They started a lavender hedge in one of the gardens, but the scent is different here, though equally beautiful. Or perhaps her memory is unreliable, and the thing she smells is lavender as it has always been.
She wishes the gardeners weren’t so uncomfortable around her. She could go visit the lavender more often then.
Mai-who-is-not-Mai knows these things, and knows that—somewhere inside, somewhere deep—there is a hurt, a structural break that will never come un-broken, even if she goes back home, even if they let her, even if she wanted to.
Mai is sorry, she writes on behalf of her addressee’s daughter, for that Christmas you climbed Mount Tolmie together. She remembers that after the mountain you both walked all the way to the gelato place that’s practically on the beach, and she told you that she’d been accepted in the third wave of settlers. You began to cry. It was chilly, but she bought a raspberry sugar cone, and you kept sniffling, and she could only think about how awful your sniffles sounded, and how she wished you’d brought a hanky, which you hadn’t, so in this imperious way she handed you a handful of napkins, and you sniffled into them, but you wouldn’t talk because your voice tore, so it was better to be quiet. Mai remembers looking across the water toward the Olympic peninsula, and the day was flat and she thought about how worn-out the world was, how crowded, how grotty, how back-of-beyond, how provincial. And how, winking invisibly at you, though you were both blinded by daylight, lay Shanti. And that was the future, not the tired old world where mothers could sniffle their tears into napkins from a gelato stand. Mai crunched through her sugar cone, and asked—angrily, and without compassion—why the most important decision of her life was more about her mother than it was about her. Mai is sorry for this. Mai would like you to know that she understands now why you were crying. I write on Mai’s behalf, but I am not, exactly, Mai. I am aware that this statement will hurt you further, but I think you would also prefer to hear this than to hear untruth, or nothing.
I wish I could tell you that Mai is doing well, that she’s not in pain, that she loves Shanti and is happy here, but I am not sure what these words mean, exactly. I wish I could give her the fingers with which to type this letter, but that is no longer possible. I know she wants me to say goodbye, though.
More than that, she wants to say she’s sorry.
She is relieved to wake up one day and know—without knowing how she knows—that it is the last day. The knowledge is not painful, because it comes with the love that always floods what’s left of her body. She knows what the other ones—the humans—expect her to do with this knowledge, which is to quarantine herself and alert the hospital, so they can destroy the creatures before they flower. They’ve talked about how they’ll handle it, which comes down to a fatal dose of morphine derivatives, and then something she does not wish to know regarding the destruction of her body.
She is no longer human enough to feel that silly sort of loyalty to the settlement. In the manner of hosts before her—none of them settlers, because she is the first one to bring the dear ones to term—she limps up the escarpment above the village before the sun rises. The instinct is as inexorable as the spawning runs of Pacific salmon, so she walks listening to the impulse, driving her upward. She hears their teeth, and—the part of her mind that was still Mai—imagines that somewhere, she is in pain. They are kind, though, they do not wish her to hurt, only want her to hear the grinding of tooth on bone, and the softer sound of something wearing away at the cartilage of her ribcage. When she holds one hand to her throat she feels through her fingertips a new vibration.
Her spine snaps as she reaches the top of the escarpment and she topples, her head turned enough so that one cheek presses into Shanti’s light soil, and one eye—the eye uppermost that survives the fall—staring now into the darkness that is no longer darkness to her, that glows with the faint phosphorescence of all the winged ones, all the dear creatures of the air, the glad host of Shanti’s heaven. Not long now, the first breaches her skin in a rush of blood, and then another, the once-limitless universe of her body too small to contain them all.
Her skull cracks, and she still loves them. Her brain, sentient a moment longer, hung about with the tiny creatures—their carapaces pale brown like her skin, and possessing her dark eyes—wriggling out into the sunrise, their long bodies, their damp limbs already knitting
spider-web wings to catch the breeze. They flicker through her peripheral vision, gleaming in the ultraviolet spectrum. She thinks, How lovely, how lovely, as they leave afterimages and light trails in her eye.
Out in the sky, above the settlement, among the glad hosts of the infected. Go on. She expects no response, but she hopes they sense her as she senses them, and thinks, Go on go on go on.
Rebecca Campbell is a Canadian writer and academic. She attended Clarion West in 2015 and her work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interfictions Online, and Interzone. NeWest Press published her first novel, The Paradise Engine, in 2013. You can find her online at whereishere.ca.
I imagine her cocooned in a soft grey gel that presses on the skin of anyone approaching her—cold, firm, resistant. No such gel is visible in real life.
THE ABSENCE OF WORDS
Swapna Kishore
Music blasts my ears when Mom opens the door. A glance to check that Mom’s okay—no bandages anywhere, nothing wrong with her walk, face not particularly tenser than normal—then I put down my overnight bag, kick off my high heels, and stride across to switch off the over-energetic, ear-splitting disco music. Things must be worse with Gran if Mom needs such cacophony.
“So, what happened?” I say.
Mom had summoned me by using the “emergency” word and then emailed the Delhi-Bangalore-Delhi e-ticket. Three days, Nisha, that’s all I need, she had said over the phone. It’s a three-day weekend, no, Good Friday morning through to Sunday night? I’ll tell you when you come. Please?
Our project didn’t “do weekends” as my boss put it—we worked all seven days and late hours at that—but I had been sufficiently alarmed by Mom’s desperate-sounding parental pleading. And here I am, tired because I woke up at 2:00 a.m. to catch the flight. I’m still clueless about the problem.
Mom waves me to the sofa.
“I’ve bagged a two-year assignment in New York,” she says. “Researching and writing on a series of health topics. Prestigious stuff.”
“Congrats,” I say tentatively. My gaze snaps to Gran’s bedroom door.
Mom sighs and plunks on a chair opposite me. There are traces of white at the roots of her hair. Her housecoat is crumpled, smudged with turmeric splotches, and her slipper strap is frayed. She used to be so particular about remaining meticulously groomed even at home. Things change over the years, I guess.
“You’ve accepted?” I say. I already suspect the summons is related to Gran. Gran’s eighty years old, frail but with no known problems other than the one we never talk about. Still I can’t imagine Gran living alone, doing stuff like buying groceries, getting gadgets repaired, ordering gas, taking auto-rickshaws to the nearest ATM, and I guess Mom can’t imagine it, either.
“I shortlisted some old age homes where I can pull strings and get bumped up the queue,” Mom says. “I contacted a couple.” She pushes her bifocals up her nose and tucks back a wayward strand. “One said they don’t accept elective mutes. The other wanted a medical certificate and full psychiatrist evaluation.”
Fifteen years ago, I’d been away at boarding school when Mom called to inform me of the diagnosis. That someone would choose not to speak creeped me out; for a while I blamed myself for my spat with Gran, even wrote a bunch of letters promising to be a good girl if she started speaking, but Gran never replied. Then I came home and saw the rest of the problem. It still creeps me out, Gran’s muteness and the weird stuff around it.
“You could refer them to the psychiatrist you used earlier,” I suggest. I can’t imagine what any doctor would say now about Gran. How would they even ask her any questions?
“Actually, Nisha,” Mom smoothens her gown over her knee, “I didn’t take her to any doctor at that time.”
I gape at her. “But you had told me . . . ” So she had lied fifteen years ago. I feel rage rise in me, sizzling, in my core, branching through me, dividing, narrowing, till I am a network of fire. I force my anger to invert into ice. It turns shard-sharp under my skin, solid as icicles. But my incomplete sentence lies heavy between us.
Red splotches stain her cheek.
“Amma and I had argued,” she says. “I’m not sure you remember what had happened the night before you left for school that year. You’d returned late because of some silly friend’s party and I’d scolded you.”
Of course I remember. “Scolded” was a mild word for the fury Mom had unleashed on me for a minor teenage mistake, but I’d managed to stay absolutely quiet by freezing in my rage. That time, after Mom stormed out, was probably the only time Gran scolded me. I hadn’t known that Gran argued with Mom afterwards.
Mom continues, “So later that night Amma barged into my bedroom all preachy and saintly. Apparently my—” she annotates the air with curly quotation marks “—legacy of anger would spoil your life.” Her chest heaves, her voice is ragged. “I just lost it. I told Amma she had screamed often enough herself. At least I hadn’t abandoned my daughter.”
“Abandoned?” I repeat.
“I—” Mom’s mobile rings. She blinks at the display, clears her throat, and begins speaking in a smooth voice with a cultured BBC accent. Her shoulders straighten, completing her morphing into her competent journalist persona. I wonder whether to head for Gran’s door and finish off the obligatory visit, but Mom’s call is over and she’s glaring at me.
“About Gran’s silence,” I prompt. “If you think she’s not speaking because she’s angry with you, have you tried apologizing to her?”
Mom’s glare could frizzle anyone normal, but me, I have my ways to meet her crest of rage with my troughs.
“Fine,” she says. “Fine. One more time won’t hurt.” She snaps her fingers, like she’s saying, Nisha, heel. I keep myself cool, distant, visualize my return ticket right down to its Times New Roman font and the airline’s logo, and tell myself it is just a few days.
Mom strides towards Gran’s room, her housecoat swishing at her ankles. I follow her. An abrupt halt at the door, with me just a step behind. I am aware of the thud in my chest, the clamminess of anticipation on my skin.
Gran’s room is still like a world in a time warp. Dust motes thicken the slants of light. Gran is sitting near the window, her wrinkled skin translucent in the morning sun. There are no other sounds, of course, none of the tiny sounds that define us: a throat being cleared, dry hair crackling, the gentle swoosh of breath, the rustle of Gran’s starched cotton sari.
Gran looks up at us, sensing us in spite of the absent footsteps.
“I said something fifteen years ago,” Mom shouts from the door. “I’m sorry, okay? How many times must I say that! You can start talking again, can’t you?”
Horns on Mom’s head would have matched that tone.
“Your voice doesn’t reach her,” I remind Mom.
Mom frowns and steps into the room, her footfalls cushioned into nothingness. Whenever I dream of Gran, I imagine her cocooned in a soft grey gel that presses on the skin of anyone approaching her—cold, firm, resistant. No such gel is visible in real life, but even so, Mom takes tiny steps, as if she, too, is forcing her way past some invisible gel.
When Mom is a couple of feet from Gran, she opens her mouth. Her face twists like she is screaming, her mouth keeps opening wide, closing, opening, closing. I hear nothing. I know Mom can’t hear herself, either. How the hell does Mom tell Gran anything? Food’s ready. Geyser water is hot enough for a bath. Do you want this sari starched? Stuff needed to coordinate the minutiae of life.
Mom’s expression stiffens. She presses her lips together as if to catch words before they are swallowed. She grabs a notepad, probably kept handy for this purpose. She scribbles something and holds it in front of Gran, who glances at me, then adjusts her spectacles and squints at the pad. No nod, no shaking her head, no twitch of her face. Her hands remain folded restfully on her lap. I retreat to the living room.
Mom follows me a few moments later, crumpling the note. “Breakfast?”
Spoo
ns clang against plates, cupboards and drawers are opened and closed with violent bangs. But apparently the noise is an inadequate antidote for Mom, because her eyes are over-bright—this, the woman who has never cried in my presence.
I wish I was far away, safe from whatever is about to tumble out. It is as if we are both standing at the edge of something dark and viscous that we have been avoiding all these years. I wonder if we will finally admit that “elective mute” cannot explain that gobble-all-sound sphere that’s been growing around Gran all these years.
Mom gulps hard. She cracks an egg with unnecessary force. Whisk, whisk. Chops onions. Whisk, splatter, mop, curse. A pat of butter sizzles in the pan. In goes the omelet mixture, and then Mom finally looks at me. “She walked out on me again that time.”
The toaster belches out toast charred at the edges. I place it on a plate. I absorb the words. Walked out. Again.
“After I dropped you off at the railway station the next morning, Amma wasn’t there and her clothes were missing. She had left a two-line note saying I shouldn’t worry. I didn’t tell you because you’d get tense. You were so fond of her.” Jealousy tinges Mom’s voice in spite of the stretch of years.
I run my finger across the rough, burned edge of the toast, stare at the charcoal on my fingers. “Then?”
“I called up friends and relatives acting casual and probed them without explaining why. No one mentioned Amma. I wondered whether to report her as missing, but she’d said, Don’t worry. A week later, she rang the doorbell and marched to her room with her bags. That’s when it started, her refusal to talk and the . . . rest of it.”
I wonder how it must have been, that week of uncertainty, then Gran returning, and Mom not getting any explanation or even the satisfaction of a good slinging match. I wonder how it must have been, sensing that zone of silence and fearing showing it to a doctor. That summer, when I’d come home for vacations and noticed how sound got deadened when I approached Gran, I’d felt so frightened I’d pretended there was no problem. Back then the sound-soaking shroud extended a foot around her; now it fills her room.