What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose)

by Beaumont, Delany

  “You’ll have to do better than that.” I turn around and a girl called Tetch is standing in the doorway.

  The door to the girls’ room has been pried from its hinges and removed. Maybe a moment of privacy in the restroom is a thing that has to be earned, a privilege only the most compliant children are worthy of. But it also serves a purpose, allowing enough cloudy daylight in from the windows across the hall to let me see what I’m doing.

  “Can I have, like, a moment?” I say. I watch her staring at me just beyond my left shoulder in the smudged surface of the mirror. I have to look away, unable to bear the contrast between my withered, pinched features and her healthy face with large brown eyes and long, dark hair tied neatly into a ponytail. She’s the first person I saw at the Orphanage, the one who brought me food when I was locked in the cellar.

  “You can have a moment if I want you to have a moment,” she says petulantly, like I have no right to talk back to her. Then her expression softens and she takes a few steps into the girls’ room. “You’d be pretty if you knew how to clean up.”

  “I’d do all right if I had what you use to clean up.”

  She laughs a little. I wonder if she’s trying to be friendly, opening up to me.

  Despite what William had said about them watching me—I imagined a whole group of older kids in control of this place—I see only two of them left in this old school. The others, including Jendra, have gone and William won’t say where.

  I first got a good look at Tetch last night. She said almost nothing to me, acted like I was hardly worth noticing. William told me her name. She’s not very tall, thick-bodied, a plain looking girl but in this place it’s not how attractive you are but how clean, how healthy you can look. On that scale, she’s totally my superior.

  “I can get you toothpaste. Shampoo,” she says.

  “Why are you being nice to me?”

  She shrugs. Her expression doesn’t change much. I get the feeling that everything happens on the surface with her, that she doesn’t experience many deep thoughts or emotions. She obviously spends a lot of time on her appearance, like Jendra does. She wears a succession of clean, soft, warm sweaters that I want to rip off her body and take for myself.

  “No reason,” she says. “Just bored, tired of the kids. Thought I’d take a walk around.” She looks at my figure appraisingly. “I could give you a few older things of mine but I don’t think they’d fit you. Maybe later we’ll try to dig something up.” She shrugs again as if it’s of no importance and disappears down the hall.

  Seven

  When I return to the dorm, down the hall from the girls’ room, I’m cleaner than I was but not by much. I’ve used up half the bar of soap, scrubbing and rinsing until only a thin residue of brown murk remained at the bottom of my once clean bowl of water.

  My hair is damp and tangled but less greasy, less clotted with dirt and debris like an unwrung mop. The skin on my face feels softer. When I touch my cheeks and forehead, my fingers no longer come away smudged with soot and oil.

  The dorm is what they call the enormous room CJ burst out of the day before, chasing after his ball. It was once an auditorium or a gym, a cavernous, rectangular space in the middle of the second floor of the school. Huge iron beams span the ceiling. A raised platform dominates the far end, once a stage for school plays and speakers at assemblies. Across the open floor are scattered dozens of narrow steel-framed cots like in an old-fashioned hospital ward. I imagine that when the plague was at its worst, the school was reconfigured into a temporary shelter for those too ill to flee the city.

  The dorm is now my home. The night before, William and Tetch told me to sleep here with the others so I nestled in with what remains of my small adopted family, a small island of familiarity among all these other children I’ve never seen before. CJ and Terry brought me a little food which I gobbled down and I fell asleep soon after, curling up with Stace in her bed, sleeping more soundly than I have since the night the Black Riders found us.

  My little family has pushed a group of cots together in a far corner of the room, well apart from the others. And this morning they helped me drag over another one and gather some spare bedding. Stace even made up my bed for me. Many of the cots are unused but look recently occupied. I’m almost positive that I can make out the imprints of children’s bodies still marking sheets and blankets tossed over thin, plastic-covered mattresses.

  Our cots are only inches apart. I can see that the three of them, CJ, Terry and Stace, haven’t made any attempt to blend in with the other children, to be accepted. They’ve built a fort out of their beds, a little haven of safety in this vast, chilly space. The unfamiliar children circle nearby, stop and stare but never approach or try to speak to us.

  Stace has come over to sit on the edge of my cot, watching me towel my hair dry, then try to drag a comb through it. “Has anybody been bothering you here?” I ask her, looking over to several kids playing with a set of plastic bricks.

  She shrugs. “They don’t talk to us. We don’t talk to them.”

  Then, without warning, she darts out a hand, latches onto the fingers of my left hand with a fierce grip. Her eyes are suddenly wide and her mouth open, her lower lip trembling. She reminds me of someone who’s been hanging by her fingertips from a ledge for hours and now finds an arm to grab onto, a person to help pull her to safety.

  “We didn’t know what to do and then they took Emily away,” she says, looking off across the dorm. It’s gloomy, almost as dark as the cellar, a thin fan of muddied daylight seeping across the floor from the open doorway.

  “Did they make her go somewhere?”

  “No,” Stace says, speaking faster, wanting to get the words out before she starts blubbering. “She wanted to go with them They’re the older ones. They told us to call them the Elders.”

  The Elders. It sounds so ridiculous I want to laugh.

  “It wasn’t like what they promised. What William and Jendra promised.” Her face is very pale, her red hair looking more intensely red then ever when compared to pasty skin now scrubbed nearly free of dirt and stippled with rust-colored freckles.

  Then her eyes narrow and she leans forward, searching into all corners of my face like she’s a doctor seeking signs of illness. I’ve been thinking that she looks sickly but she says, squeezing my hand again, “You don’t look too good. You’re not…” She lets her voice trail away.

  “No, it’s not that.” I know she’s worried about the disease she is certain lurks within me. That it might be about to burst to the surface of my skin with all the accompanying signs and symptoms. “But I’ve been cooped up below and they haven’t giving me much food. I got hurt, too.” I point to the purple knot on my forehead. “I’ll be okay in a day or two.”

  Stace lets my hand drop and stares at her feet, as if it’s her fault for what happened to me. She finally asks, in a small, ghost-soft voice, “Are these the ones you said were going to take care of us?” She nods toward the open doors of the dorm, to that place outside this room where the Elders are, wherever that might be. I’ve gone back to combing my hair before it’s completely dry, am in the middle of trying to drag the comb through a snag over my right ear so resistant to untangling I feel like I’m about to pull a clump of hair out by its roots.

  “No, these aren’t the ones. Not the only ones,” I tell her. I close my eyes as I say this, feeling only a little like I’m telling a lie. “There are others here, I know it. Not the Black Riders and not the Elders. There are some that can help us, take care of us.” I look around and lower my voice. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  And then, out of the blue, I feel like I’m going to pass out. I’m still so weak. We haven’t had anything to eat yet this morning. I scoot back onto my cot, telling Stace I’ll be all right in a moment. She looks worried, makes sure I’m comfortable, covers me with a scratchy wool blanket.

  Eight

  I drift in and out of sleep for a while, the sounds echoing around th
e dorm growing distant, indistinct.

  Only a few hours ago, I slept soundly, dreamlessly, completely. Now I find that it’s a struggle to shove aside nightmare visions of all the horrors I’ve seen since reaching the outer edge of Raintree. I try to wave away images of Moira and Needle and Gideon’s body, of the cage dangling above the river, of the ride in the van while lying prone at the feet of the Black Riders. Replace all of this with only what I’ve seen since my release from the cellar.

  The conditions at the Orphanage are awful. It’s beyond filthy—the children’s clothes are mud-stained and ragged, their bedding is torn and sour-smelling, the restrooms stink. If there was one thing I always imagined I’d find in downtown Raintree, it was a group of survivors who had figured out a way to keep clean.

  But the older ones have. The Elders. The ones my age that I’ve seen are all like Tetch, clean and comfortable, well-fed and satisfied. But they aren’t doing a good job taking care of the younger ones. Maybe they can’t be bothered.

  Besides William, Tetch and me, I’ve counted twenty-two young children gathered here, including CJ, Terry and Stace. I keep wondering, are these all that are left?

  All the children who have survived the long, slow trek to Raintree?

  Or who were left behind in Raintree in the first place?

  My guess is that they range in age from around eight or nine to thirteen or fourteen, but it’s hard to tell. Most are scrawny, malnourished, underdeveloped even with the two meals a day at this place. To be an Elder must mean you get more to eat.

  Then I have a thought that strikes me with the force of a revelation. I can’t believe that it’s never occurred to me before. Maybe it never has because Larkin was around before and I always imagined the two of us growing old together, somehow escaping what was happening to everybody else.

  Thinking about all of the small, bony bodies of these children milling around me, listening to their cries, the thwack of balls, the stomping of feet, noticing how quickly they wear themselves out, how they stick close to the cot they’ve claimed as their own like it’s a tiny lifeboat on a turbulent sea, I realize that there are no children any younger than the youngest of these.

  No babies are being born. No toddlers, no runny-faced little tykes to repopulate the world. This is it. When the youngest of these get older, when they fall ill, there will be no more to take their place.

  The world is emptying out fast. Soon it will belong to Moira and the other Black Riders. Soon it will contain nothing recognizably human at all.

  Nine

  When I open my eyes again, it seems like only moments have passed since my talk with Stace—but there’s William, kicking at the edge of my cot, trying to shake me awake.

  “It’s time to get breakfast going,” he says. “You want to eat, don’t you?”

  I swing my legs off the end of the cot, sit up and pull on my boots. When I get to my feet I’m a little wobbly but I say nothing and follow him out of the dorm.

  He takes me down to the main floor of the old school building, through a door next to the cafeteria and back into the kitchen. It’s as filthy as every other place I’ve seen. The counters are smeared with the crusted remains of meals. There are plates and bowls and platters waiting to be scraped clean piled in the sinks.

  I look out through the large space opening into the cafeteria, above a long counter where students once stood in line to have hot food dished onto their trays. I see that the cafeteria tables are in the same state, caked and littered with scraps. There are unlined garbage pails, clouds of gnats buzzing above them, waiting to be hauled outside somewhere and dumped. There’s the sharp cidery smell of boxes of apples in a corner. Most look smushed and water-damaged, many rotting.

  William says nothing, watches me inspect the kitchen. It’s as if he’s already withdrawing from whatever he used to do here, handing it over to me. Even though there’s no electricity, someone has stashed loaves of misshapen bread in the refrigerator. Jumbo-sized cans of beans and chili and vegetables and hotdogs, boxes of macaroni and cheese and rice clutter the counters.

  “We’ve got this set up,” William finally says, proudly. “See.” He points to a couple of camp stoves, small, smoke-smudged things with a pile of propane canisters stacked nearby. “You can heat some stuff up but don’t use too much fuel. We’re starting to run out.”

  “Where does the bread come from?” I ask him.

  “We have some generators working. And there’s a bakery nearby with a bunch of flour and shortening and stuff that’s still good. We can make simple things.”

  We, I think. The Elders.

  “What happens when you run out of that stuff, though? All of this?” I point to the cans and boxes and rotting apples in the kitchen. “When you run out of fuel?”

  He shrugs. “Nobody’s going to be around when that happens. Nobody like us. Like we are now.”

  “What do they eat?” I ask abruptly, my voice dropping to a whisper without my intending it to. “The…others?”

  He shakes his head and turns away from me. Then he picks up a can of corn, a giant can of creamed corn and holds it out to me like it’s the most important thing I will ever need to know about. “Look, I brought you down here because we want you to start feeding the kids. You only need to know what you need to know to do that—nothing else. Don’t be a pain in the ass and we’ll get along.”

  Feed the kids.

  There’s definitely a pecking order among the Elders, among the survivors my age. And I know I’m at the very bottom. Subterranean level. Bowels of the earth.

  But William and Tetch can’t be too highly placed in this society either. And somehow Emily has insinuated herself among those Elders lucky enough not to be stuck in this place. Or maybe they want to keep us apart so I don’t corrupt her, try to turn her against them.

  In the daylight, William looks puny. He’s not very tall, standing only a few inches above Tetch. I start to think of both of them as the runts of the litter. The weaklings. The scar above his right eye makes me feel a little pity for him every time I see him, for how he must have suffered at some point in the past. But he’s such a jerk that the feeling doesn’t last long.

  I keep thinking, When I’ve regained my strength, these two will be easy to control, to manipulate…

  There are knives on the counters, heavy, thick-handled meat-cutting knives with broad blades. William catches me staring at them and his expression changes from one of superiority to a look of unease. “Can you cook anything?” he says, dropping the creamed corn on the counter with a clang to distract me.

  “I can open a can,” I say.

  “Well, it’s time to make breakfast then,” he says. “Or brunch or whatever you want to call it.” He rustles through a couple of large utensil drawers until he finds a big can opener which he slides over to me. “Here’s your equipment. Get to it.”

  “I guess that means you’re not going to help.”

  “Listen,” he says, laughing at how dense I am. “You’re going to have to earn your way out of the mess you’re in. Honestly, I don’t know how you’re going to do it.”

  And so I make breakfast—cold slices of what I start to think of as Raintree bread, lumpy and often burnt but far better than no bread. There’s the creamed corn served cold and applesauce. I start to make oatmeal but William tells me to save the propane for dinner. Orphanage rules—only one hot meal a day. Oatmeal is a dinner thing.

  “There’s a lot of dirty plates to clean, too,” William says. “You can get some of the kids to help you. We’ve been using paper plates for a while. That’s why there’s so much garbage.” He goes to a box stashed under one of the overhanging counters and grabs a stack of paper plates, peels two off and hands one to me. “Let’s eat first though.”

  I’ve gotten good at staving off hunger, at making a little food last a long time and it’s not until he says this, until he gives me permission to feed my face, that I feel a jolt of hunger. It’s like an electric shock, buzzing down
through my esophagus to the bottom of my belly.

  “You’re going to eat this, too?”

  He looks annoyed. “Well, I’m stuck here, aren’t I? What else am I supposed to eat?”

  “I thought you and Tetch would have a special gourmet stash hidden somewhere.”

  He flips me off and roots around in some of the drawers until he finds a couple of serving spoons. He rubs them clean on his shirt-tails. He waves one at me. “I want to see this kitchen in better shape by dinner time. There’s some dish soap and you can get some water outside, from the rain barrel.” But then he surprises me by dishing me up a plate of food and handing it to me.

  I eat with my hands and the food tastes wonderful. I remember the fantasies I had about the food waiting for us in the city. About cheese. About bacon and eggs. Sausages and French toast. Hot, solid food that I might never see. But there’s enough in this room to give me hope that somewhere there is more.

  I let the applesauce slide down my throat, soothing it, working its way into my impoverished stomach.

  With my mouth full of bread, I ask him, “Why is Tetch called Tetch?”

  He gives me a puzzled look, as if he has no clue what I’m talking about. “That’s her name.”

  “The name her parents gave her?”

  “Oh, I see. It’s the name of a friend of hers who’s no longer around, that person’s last name. She decided she wanted it for her own. It means something to her. We all try to reinvent ourselves. They certainly do.”

  “They?”

  “I’m not going to talk about…the others.” He’s been sitting on a stool, eating without any great interest in his food. He gets up now and tosses the remains of his breakfast onto a pile of rotten scraps that overflow a stinky green plastic pail. I watch applesauce slide over the lip of the pail to pool in a small, peach-colored puddle on the floor. He makes no move to wipe up the mess.