The Other Side of the Island

by Allegra Goodman

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  Helix was shocked. Honor couldn’t help grinning at his startled face.

  “You have not,” he said. “You have not seen snow.”

  “I have,” she told him. “I saw it when I was little. We used to live in wild places.”

  “Was it as white as this?” Helix kicked the white scraps at his feet.

  Honor nodded. “Yes.”

  “Was it like feathers?”

  Honor tried to think.

  “Was it soft like feathers? Or hard like crystals?”

  Honor thought and thought, but she couldn’t remember. All she could picture was her father shoveling. The snow itself had no substance in her memory, just the color, pure white.

  “How come you never told me you saw snow?”

  “I’d forgotten. Anyway, it’s no longer Accurate,” Honor added hastily. “Now snow is eradicated in the Far North—”

  “What do you mean, eradicated?”

  “The Polar Seas are ceiled in the North and in the South,” said Honor. She was practically quoting from her climatology textbook. She’d copied the words so many times. “The North is Safe and Secure.”

  “No,” said Helix.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The North isn’t secure at all. Enclosure does not extend beyond the Polar Seas. Enclosure has just begun. They’ve barely started.”

  “How do you know?” Honor demanded.

  “My father told me. Didn’t your father tell you?”

  Then, deep inside of her, Honor remembered when her father had taken her down to the shore. Dimly she remembered what he had told her that night and how the water shone silver and the sand felt like warm honey on her hands. But she also remembered how dangerous his ideas were. Her father had thought she was afraid of the sea, but that was only part of it. She had been afraid because even as he spoke, she knew that she would lose him.

  She did not want to make her father’s mistake and lose her life. Stubbornly, she shook her head at Helix. “If Enclosure were barely started, then none of us would be safe.”

  “We aren’t safe,” said Helix. “We never were safe. And we aren’t going to be safe.”

  “Stop!” Honor cried out. Without even thinking, she lifted her hand and slapped Helix’s face.

  The two of them stood there stunned for a second. Helix’s cheek was red where Honor had struck him. He rubbed the place with his hand.

  “Look what you made me do,” Honor said.

  “What I made you do?” Helix asked.

  “You’re a liar,” she accused him. “You’re the one making up stories that aren’t true.”

  “How do you know?”

  She threw up her hands. “Because the Northern Islands are now Enclosed. They are almost ready. They are being numbered. Earth Mother is building cities for resettlement. It’s in all the books.”

  Helix was staring down at the drifts of paper on the floor. “Do you want to see something?” he said. “This paper we’re dumping—do you know where it’s from?”

  Honor shook her head.

  “It’s from books.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s from libraries. It’s from school libraries all over. These are the pages Miss Tuttle and the other librarians are cutting out.” He glanced toward the door. Then he took a fistful of scraps. “Look,” he said. He took a scrap and read, “‘When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin’ along, along . . .’ No, that’s a bad example.”

  He took another scrap, a sliver printed: “‘It was so easy to laugh in the springtime.’” Then another piece of paper, smashed so he had to unfold it: “‘. . . The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush / The descending blue . . .’ Look at these, they’re whole pages ripped from books. ‘Loveliest of trees, the cherry now . . .’” He rustled through the papers. “‘To Autumn,’” he read. “Look, this is from an old calendar.”

  “Oh, a calendar? Does it have all the old months? Does it have July?” Honor was curious in spite of herself.

  She puzzled over the words on the autumn page. “‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines . . .’ What does that mean?”

  Helix shrugged.

  “What’s thatch-eves?” Honor asked, staring at the page.

  “It’s Old Weather,” Helix said. “How should I know?”

  “But—”

  “Shh.”

  Mr. Sweeney’s footsteps grew louder in the hall and then died away again.

  “Don’t you see?” Helix whispered to Honor. “They rip out everything about winter and cold and storms and even summer ending. Then they rewrite all the books.”

  “How do you know they rewrite them? How do you know these aren’t just old books they’re throwing away?”

  “I have proof,” Helix said. “But you have to swear you won’t tell.”

  Honor nodded.

  “Do you swear?”

  “I swear,” she said.

  Solemnly he took out some folded pages from his overall pockets. “I found these here.”

  “Oh,” Honor exclaimed as she looked at them.

  “You’ve read that book, I bet,” said Helix.

  “The Wizard of Oz.”

  “How does Dorothy get to Oz?”

  “She falls asleep and dreams she goes there,” said Honor.

  “Wrong!” said Helix. “Look at these pages they took out. There was a tornado and her house was swept away.”

  “No!” Honor grabbed the pages, devouring the words with her eyes. There it was in black and white. Dorothy’s house was swept away by a tornado. “I can’t believe it.”

  “See, they changed the book. They’ve changed all the books. They make the books up and they make the maps up too.”

  Honor didn’t know what to say.

  “Look where it says Dorothy’s name,” said Helix. “What’s her name in the school library book?”

  “Dorothy Dale,” said Honor.

  “But look what her name is here in the old version. Dorothy Gale.”

  “Why would they change her name?” Honor asked.

  “Because gale is a storm,” said Helix, and he pocketed the pages again.

  “Don’t take those,” said Honor, horrified. “You’ll get in trouble all over again. Do you want to come here every day of your life?”

  “But I like it here,” said Helix.

  “Are you crazy? How can you like it here?”

  “I like to read,” he said. “I like finding things.”

  Honor looked down at the floor. She remembered how she and Helix had played Archeology when they were ten. “What happened to your coin collection?”

  He shrugged. “It’s gone, with everything else in my house.”

  “I kept the quarter for a long time,” she told him.

  “Why?” he asked her.

  “I wanted to.”

  “Old coins aren’t good for anything,” said Helix. He kicked a pile of white pages at his feet. “These matter. Lies matter. Our parents—”

  “What did they do?” Honor interrupted. “Why were they stargazing?”

  “Shh. I hear him.”

  Mr. Sweeney opened the door to the paper room. “You’re a couple of lazy kids, I can see that,” he said. “I’m separating you. Heloise, take the shovel and finish loading in here. Helix, into the metal room with me.”

  All that day as she sat in class, Honor thought about what Helix had said. She sat at her desk and suddenly the world, which had been so well organized, seemed wild and uncertain. She had come to believe there was something the matter with her parents, but Helix thought the rest of the world was all wrong.

  How could Enclosure have barely begun? How could all the books and maps lie? She stared at a blue map of the world hanging on the classroom wall. There were the Seven Seas. Two Polar Seas, the Northern Sea, the Tr
anquil Sea, the Sea of Peace, the Sea of Light, the Sea of Reconciliation. There were the four hundred and one islands of the Colonies, each numbered carefully in black. And there were the numberless islands of the Northern Sea. On the map the Polar Seas were Secure, as were the numberless islands. Dotted lines showed where Enclosure was advancing next. The map was scientific. It even said Scientific Map Company on the bottom. What about the climatology textbook with its silky smooth paper and calm sentences? “The steady march of Enclosure marks the progress of mankind.” What did that mean?

  As soon as school was over, Honor hurried back to the Boarders’ Houses for chores. She needed to talk to Helix, but she had no time with him alone. She was assigned laundry while he worked in the gardens.

  Every day she tried to approach Helix, but it wasn’t easy. Even if he was in her chore group, there were others around. She knew better than to pass him a note asking him to meet her somewhere. Passing notes was Not Allowed, and if Mr. and Mrs. Edwards didn’t see, the other orphans would, and they would tease and laugh so much that the note was sure to reach some teacher in the end.

  She watched and waited for him, and sometimes when she saw him coming around the corner or even glimpsed him from a distance, she thought of running up to him, but she couldn’t. The others would see. She could not stop thinking about what he might know or might have figured out.

  On day nine, she finally got her chance to work with him. Honor and Helix were assigned gardening, and as the weeding group was so big, the two of them were sent to the hot and humid greenhouses to pick tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants. No one wanted to work there, but when Helix headed over to the greenhouses, Honor put on thick gloves and followed eagerly.

  The greenhouses were long and connected to each other, and they were planted so thickly that it was hard to make your way through them. Leaves pressed against the glass walls and even the sloping roofs of the greenhouses. The plants looked desperate, as if they were dying to escape.

  Rapidly, Honor and Helix worked their way down the rows of tomatoes. Picking was easy. There was no need to bend over, because the plants were trained as vines along the greenhouse walls. The tricky part was picking enough before the misters went off. Misters sprayed the plants every hour with water and special Planet Safe fertilizer. Staying in a greenhouse during misting was dangerous. Even orderlies got sick. Once Fanny had seen an orderly malfunction in a greenhouse. She’d seen it through the glass. For some reason the orderly got jammed in a corner, and when the misters came on, he got sprayed. Mrs. Edwards called for help, but by the time a pair of orderlies dragged the jammed one out, he was completely disoriented, spinning like a top, and so memory-sick he had to be taken away for retraining.

  Honor and Helix kept their eye on the greenhouse timer as they worked. Sweat trickled down their faces as they hurried to the next greenhouse, where they would gather eggplants.

  “What did our parents do?” Honor asked. “Did your father tell you?”

  “Just a little,” Helix said.

  “Well, what?” she demanded. “I have to know. No one’s told me. My parents were taken before I had a chance to find out. They never warned me.”

  “How could they have warned you?” Helix asked. “If parents knew when it was going to happen, they’d never disappear.”

  “Yes, but I think mine always knew,” said Honor. “Mine always knew they were in danger. I always knew it would happen to them.”

  Helix bent his head under hanging racks of eggplants. He seemed to be examining all the different kinds: the rich purple eggplants, the long skinny ones, the little white dwarf varieties.

  “Of course they always knew. So did mine,” said Helix. “But they never knew the day; they never knew the exact minute. No one does.”

  “What were they working on?” asked Honor. “Were they really bad?”

  “No, they’re heroes,” said Helix. “They are Objectors.”

  Even in the sticky greenhouse, Honor began to shiver. “Are you sure? Are you . . . What do you mean they are Objectors? Don’t you know they’re dead?”

  “Who said they’re dead?”

  “Fanny,” Honor told him. “Everyone.”

  “No,” said Helix. “Our parents aren’t dead. Haven’t you figured that out yet? It’s like the book they give the little kids: Disappeared Means No One Here. Not dead.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Reduce, recycle, and reuse,” said Helix.

  “How can you reuse people?”

  The timer was ticking above their heads. The yellow warning light began to flash, but Helix bent down for just a moment and whispered, “Look at the orderlies. Where do you think they come from?”

  FIVE

  NO ONE EVER LOOKED AT ORDERLIES. HONOR HADN’T looked at an orderly since that day on the playground when Mrs. Whyte pulled her away. No one looked at them or spoke to them except their managers, and those people had special training. An orderly in the room was like furniture that moved. An orderly glided silently along, vacuuming or scrubbing floors or stocking shelves in the Central Store. Even if orderlies were called for security, they ran silently in pairs and picked up offenders gently. Orderlies did one job at a time. They jammed when someone or something blocked them. Even little children knew they must not block their way.

  Honor had forgotten about orderlies. Everybody did. They were everywhere, but they were silent. They all looked alike with their bald heads and their smooth faces. Their eyes were open and glassy bright. They stared straight ahead. Could orderlies see like ordinary people? Could they hear? Could they remember anything? All children wondered when they were young, but over time they grew out of these childish questions. Orderlies became part of the background, the clutter of daily life.

  Now Honor thought about orderlies constantly. She tried not to stare, but she was watching them. She watched them wheeling recycling bins or hauling manure in the gardens. She watched the circular motion of the orderlies’ arms as they washed the blackboards with wet rags. She watched the way they mowed and vacuumed one strip at a time, in straight and careful lines. When she could, she tried to look into the orderlies’ wide-open eyes.

  When Honor saw two orderlies together rolling trash barrels, she glanced quickly from one to the other to try to see if they were different, but the orderlies were so close in size, their faces so bland, and their movements so similar that it was hard to see them separately. If orderlies were all the same, then how would Honor recognize her parents among them? Standing on the boardwalk with the orderlies approaching two abreast, Honor could see no difference between them. She saw nothing distinctive, no matter how long she looked. A pair of orderlies in white uniforms looked like a matched pair of socks sorted and clean straight from the wash. The trash barrels rattled as the orderlies rolled them over the boardwalk. Honor stood still and waited. She should have moved aside to let the orderlies do their jobs, but she didn’t move. She waited and waited. The pair of orderlies was almost on top of her. They were bearing down on her quickly and seemed to have no idea she was standing in their way.

  Honor’s heart beat fast. She was doing something dangerous. The trash barrels were huge and they could hit her, but she stood in the path of the orderlies like a girl on the tracks of an oncoming train. They were close. She should jump off the boardwalk and run away. She screamed instead. She shrieked and ran right between the trash barrels and stopped the orderlies with a hand on each of their arms.

  She was shaking. Her fear of the orderlies was even stronger than her fear that someone had heard her cry out. She had never touched an orderly on purpose, and now she’d grabbed hold of two at once. She couldn’t tell if they were men or women or if the pair was one of each, but they were alive; their arms felt strong and springy through the thin cloth of their jumpsuits. She held them for a moment, fiercely. They did not look at her, but she looked at them; she peered into their faces, first one, and then the other. Who are you? Where did you come from? she thought
. Were you somebody’s parents once? She’d stopped them, but neither orderly blinked. Glassy eyed, they remained fixed on the task in front of them. They were not exactly the same, and yet she couldn’t figure out the difference between them. They were pushing against her with equal force. They were alike, except—she realized all in a rush—they were not alike at all up close. Their features were completely different once you stopped them to look. She hadn’t realized. She had only known orderlies from a distance and in motion. Up close, they were different as two leaves or two potatoes. One had thick lips and the other thin; one had a long narrow face and the other a fat pink face; one had dark eyes and the other blue. She let them go.

  “Where did you get the idea that they used to be real people?” Honor asked Helix in the kitchen.

  “When I had chores in the garden, I stuck one with a pin,” said Helix. Heads down at the sinks, the two of them spoke so softly no one else could hear. “I stuck him right in the arm and made him bleed.”

  “That’s nasty,” said Honor.

  “I wanted to see if he was alive,” said Helix.

  “What happened?”

  “He yelled.”

  “He made a noise?”

  “He said, ‘OW!’ Then he was quiet again.”

  “I didn’t know they could make sounds,” said Honor.

  “Not just sounds. Ow is a word,” said Helix. “It’s a human word.”

  “I keep looking at them,” Honor confessed as orderlies wheeled in racks of dirty dishes. She scraped and Helix rinsed. The orphans had to wash down the stainless steel counters and even the floors with spray hoses. There were drains in the polished cement floor for the dirty water. The work was hard and messy. No one liked to touch the filthy plates covered with smashed potatoes and peas, partly chewed chicken hanging off the bone, bread squeezed back into dough.

  Mrs. Tannenbaum, the head cook, was strict. “Do it right,” she told Gretel and Hector, who were washing the floors, “or do it again.”

  As soon as Mrs. Tannenbaum was out of earshot, Honor asked Helix, “How did you find out where orderlies come from? Have you told anyone else? Does anyone else know?”