“But they don’t even try?” He was clearly impassioned about this. I guess I expected it, but it was hard to confront nonetheless.
“They can’t sugar pea.”
“Why?”
“Because then they couldn’t continue to do what they do.”
“So?”
“Now you be careful with that tone or you’re gonna miss suppa too.”
“But that’s not a reason. They should risk it.”
“You’re awful young to make such a decision. And they’ve been doing this an awful long time.”
“But why do they do what they do at all?”
I wanted to scold him but he was just usin' his ‘noggin. “Ezra, when people try to change things, they die, and that is the end of this discussion.”
“People die all the time anyways. They die in the gutter town. So why not try?”
“Don’t you holler at me,” I warned with pursed lips.
“I don’t believe any of this! I wish I had never come here!” And he started to run off. I felt Pumpkin begin to transform and give chase, but I held him back before he made the metamorphosis. Pumpkin wouldn’t ever hurt the child, but the last thing Ezra needed right now was to be chased down and pinned by a half-ton grizzly bear. Best to keep that little tidbit a secret for now.
I knew Ezra was mad, and though it hurt me, I let him run to the other end of the park, where, as I knew he would, he stopped and sank down, hugging his knees. He was not so very different from my other children. I strolled over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off, but in truth, wanted me to pursue him. When we run off, we want people to come looking. If I hadn’t, he would have been completely lost and alone in this world. And with no one to hold onto him, he might have just floated away into the sky. I felt so for him, but too much too quickly and he might run off for good. Not that he’d get far what with all my kids looking for him, but all the harder it would be to come back if it was against his will.
“Come on inside. I’ll make you some lunch.”
Ezra was very well behaved after that little outburst in the park. But he wasn’t any happier. It was the complacency of an indoor cat waiting for the right time to bolt through an unattended door. Not that the child had any hopes of “escaping.” Each day wasn’t one closer to the end but one surer to the beginning. When I showed him how to use the cataloguing system, one week later, it was already the point of no return.
“Now you see this here book?” I pulled one of the blank hard covers off the shelf, cradling its spine in my palm, and opened the title page. “A Raisin in the Sun.” I lowered the book so he could read it, then flipped to a random page to show him. I squeezed my fingers together and closed the book with a hollow thud, then put my palm on it like I was about give my oath in a court ‘o law and closed my eyes real tight. When I opened it to the title page again, it read, “Cost of Living by Tax Bracket in Southside.”
Disbelievingly Ezra flipped back to the same page number that I had shown him before, and found that it now contained a graph on rent as a percentage of income over a one-hundred year period in a particular Central Gothican neighborhood.
“Is that some kind of trick?”
I almost didn’t know how to answer that. “It’s something you and I can do and no one else.”
“You mean you couldn’t teach someone else?”
“No sirree.”
“Have you tried?”
I laughed. “Wouldn’t be a point.”
“So when did I get the power to do this?”
“Well you can’t just yet. I have to teach you.”
But he kept up with the questions. “So when did I become able to learn it?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know. When you were chosen I suppose. Maybe even before then.”
“So when the sentiner’s voted, I suddenly got powers?”
“Is it so hard to believe?”
You’d think a boy would be excited to learn this but not my Ezra.
“Look hun, if you don’t believe, you won’t be able to learn. Do you want to learn or not?”
“I’ll try...”
I started to pull another book off the shelf.
“No.” He said, determinedly, and gently took the one from my hand. He closed his eyes and put his hand over the cover. I was already preparing my reconciling smile when I felt a rush of kharma and the child did just what he was trying to. He quickly opened the book but found the title page empty. He was about to close it in frustration when I said, “Wait a second.” Without taking it from him, I grabbed the edge of some pages and started to flip through them. They were all blank, but suddenly a small section revealed print. Ezra looked eagerly at it. It was an excerpt from the Journals of the Anatheas’, a part on our motherly nature, essential for the job. He read it for a moment.
“Ezra, sweetie.” He closed the book and handed it back to me, but his little jowls were already frowning as he fought back tears. His lip quivered and his chest shuddered. “They said… I was a girl inside of a boy. But I’m not… I’m just me.”
I felt like I shouldn’t cry, but how could I stop myself? I felt that child’s pain. He was mine and so was his suffering. So I knelt down again and I held him as he wailed into my chest and I tried to keep my own tears from smearing my mascara.
“Sweetie, you listen to Miss Lori. You don’t have to worry one bit. I don’t give a damn what those nasty sentiners said. You are a wonderful person. And you just always be you, you hear? You always be you, ‘cause there’s no one else you should be.”
Now my job was a tedious one, make no mistake. For the wrong kind of person, three days would be a life sentence, let alone three-hundred years, but the time did pass for me. I never realized how fast though, until Ezra. I’ve read enough accounts of parents rearing children to know that the time flies by like an autumn breeze. But it couldn’t have prepared me. Ezra taught me that every day. You can read a lot about something and not know the first darn thing about it. If it didn’t make what I had spent most of my lifetime doing seem kind of wasteful. Pointless even. Least that’s how I felt some days.
Ezra was a natural at the catalogue. The books took to him like he was their author, even if he didn’t believe me when I told him that this knowledge couldn’t be shared, or else this place would become a target of the cycle. The more he read, the more he came to feel protective of every last page.
My children were still weary of him, but I knew time would heal that. He was too charming for them hold out much more than another few decades. All except Delano, however. But then again he had never been one of my children. He still insisted on coming to the back door, avoiding the boy completely.
“How are you?” I asked him as I sat on my bed.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. Cleaning up after this cult business has been… difficult.”
“It’s okay.”
“None of this is okay.” He took a seat at my dresser in front of the mirror and stared at one of my brushes. I stood and walked over to him. He was slumped over. Wounded. Weary. I put my hands on his shoulders and then down into his shirt which was already unbuttoned. I felt the scars on him even through his under shirt. He suddenly stood up to his full height, close to me, looking down into my eyes. My hands had become tangled in his shirt and had pulled it half off of him. As he kissed me, they ran up his sides and into his black hair.
Making love was our way of rebelling. It was a youthful expression of defiance. About loving when we were so forbidden. I let out a deep breath and suddenly hushed myself at the thought of Ezra hearing us. Delano continued to sway against me but he knew why I was suddenly distant. He began to push harder, looking intently down at me as I stared off to the side, refusing to meet his gaze. He moved faster and by trying to hold my breath I let out a moan. Then a groan. Then a whimper. I just wanted him to collapse down on top of me, to close the distance between us, and not to stare down from above.
When I looked up at him, no longer abl
e to take it, pain in my eyes, my affections torn, he stopped, but his gaze was just as intense. Angry, jealous, and hurt. He was looking at me like I had all but died already. We pulled apart. I stood and put on my nightgown in a hurry. He sat in the bed, naked as a ghost.
“I have to go check on him.” Of course I didn’t. We both knew that. I just had to be out of there and it was the only reason to give. He sighed as I left the room, closing the door quietly behind me. I went down the hall and looked up the stairs at Ezra’s door. Behind me, Delano exited the room and then he was gone into the night. He would think of the one before me. He would think of the loss and he would cry. But he would continue on. This wasn’t enough to break him. I wasn’t enough. In fact, I didn’t think he could be broken. There was nothing left to take from him that hadn’t already been ripped away. He was as constant as the world around him.
What could keep a person going like that, I would never know, but then again, my life was going to end. It was already coming to a close. He had no such hope. But what was I rambling about? Should have been the other way around, shouldn’t it? Heck, I didn’t know anymore. I thought then that I had better get some sleep. Ezra would be up bright and early and we had more things to go over.
“But Miss Lori?”
“Yes, child? What is it?” I knew my little breakfast lecture was about to tumble down a very deep rabbit hole as it often did when I tried to make anything even close to a simple assertion.
“What specifically happens to the people who go against cycle?”
“Well, many things. Sometimes a disease or a car accident, in a series of events so far removed from beginning to end, we can only trace a tiny portion of it. And sometimes, it seems, by all accounts, people just poof and vanish.”
Ezra took a big bite from his pancakes and chomped on them in thought. “Who gives it to them?”
“Gives what?”
“The disease.”
“Well, no one.”
I could tell Ezra was getting tired of being told about these inexplicable happenings. He wanted something substantial, something he could chomp on. “Then how come only the people who want to change things get diseases?”
“Other people get diseases too.”
“Has anyone ever seen a person disappear?”
“Ezra, there is only one sentiner for every three-hundred thousand souls in Gothica. It’s not realistic for them to record everything that happens every day in every life. And besides, the sentiners mostly agree that the strangest happenings in this city can only happen when you find yourself looking away from ‘em. In fact, there are probably aspects of reality that even we take for granted, ones that run in currents much deeper than the murky surface the sentiner’s see.”
“It just sounds too easy.”
“That sounds too easy! Explain this to me you little sesame seed, you.”
“It sounds too easy that you can’t change things. You’re not even supposed to think about it. If I was the king of Gothica, this is the story I would want everyone to believe.”
“Ezra, for four thousand years, the Sentiners tried to find the government doing something about dissidents. Cynthecorp never had to. They never even got the chance because the system of cycles they set up did it for them. You might do well to remain skeptical about some things, but this is just a fact.”
“They used to tell us errand boys stories about the flooded areas. They weren’t true… but the stories kept us from going there.”
Oh, sometimes that child made my blood boil. But I remained good. I said very calmly, “Maybe it’s time you started reading some sentiner files.”
“Miss Lori said I should talk to you about cycle,” I heard Ezra say to Miquel by virtue of my ear being pressed to the door.
“I assume you have questions then,” Miquel replied.
Silence. Maybe a nod or a frown like he did.
“What kinds, son?”
That word, son, sunk into me deep and I pulled back from the door. Was that fair? Was it ok for him to just bandy about a word so strong especially with the gender implication? Ezra must have had something to think about it. I pushed my ear back to the door again.
“Think of it this way,” Miquel said. “When you get sick with a cold, it is because a virus has gotten into your body. It’s so miniscule compared to you that you can’t see it. But your body still knows it’s there. Other tiny parts of your body recognize the threat and fight back against it. Your nose gets runny and your throat tickles, but that’s not something either your nose or your throat decided to do. It’s all part of a big system – an immune system. That is cyclic backlash. It is the body of Gothica made up of all these tiny parts which, for the sake of the city, fight any perceived threats.”
Ezra mumbled something I couldn’t make out, something about the evil of cycle. Child, I wanted to interrupt, it isn’t evil. It’s just the way of the world. The only evil is in what we do.
“Well some viruses and diseases trick your body. Different types of cancer for instance, or AIDS. AIDS actually turns your immune system against you, till you essentially kill yourself from the inside.”
Miquel! He’s a baby! He doesn’t need to know about that! Least of all in those words! Now he’s gonna wanna get into the evil of suffering. Oh hush Lori! Wait, what did he say?
“That is a big question, son.”
That word again. This time I keep my ear pressed, staring at the edge of the door frame before me.
“But it does seem to be the implication,” Miquel said to something I missed.
Then something about Ezra asking if evil creates more evil.
Miquel shifted in his chair. He was biggun and tough on old furniture. “It does pretty much rules out the possibility of a benevolent god.”
And then… Don’t mumble, child. How am I supposed to hear what you’re saying?
“Well that’s only if inaction is as culpable as action,” Miquel replied.
I’ll be damned if the little muffin wasn’t quoting me. There’s only evil in what we do, I think I heard him say.
“That may be. Perhaps you could talk to Miss Lori about that, she’s fond of saying the opposite as I’m sure you know.”
The opposite?
“Maybe she’d get us some tea, even.”
I looked to the side table next to the door at the tray of tea and croissants. The melted butter had congealed in the ramekin.
I knocked on the door, opened it an inch and picked up the tray with a jingle of porcelain. I entered tush first and then set the tray down on the table between them.
“What are you to on about then?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Ezra quickly but softly.
“Oh, come now, you can tell Mama Lori,” I said with a smile. “Imparting some wisdom on this Young Turk, are we?” I said to Ezra, nodding towards Miquel.
But Ezra shook his head, no.
“Well that’s fine, keep your secrets–”
“Evil is in what we don’t do.”
My belly quivered and I felt a burp surface. I took a deep breath through a tight chest and nodded trying to seem unaffected. “Well, carry on.” I stepped out and stood with my back to the door. I didn’t need to cry; just to compose myself. What was I so upset about? I was would need a little more starch in my breeches if I was going to raise this defiant little one. Why did his words affect me so? I put my hand to my mouth and smelled the tea on my fingers and immediately after, wondered if that smell would become forever tainted with the feeling of disappointing my child.
“Miss Lori?”
“Yes child?”
“Miquel sounds like he’s read one of the books you said no one but us has.”
“Oh? Which one is that?”
“The one by Marx.”
“Oh child, careful saying those names out loud. I told you those were books that came to us from long before the Anatheas’, or the Sentiners, or Gothica itself. Those are very delicate things I let you read. No one else can kn
ow about them, you hear?”
“So then why do some of Miquel’s reports have things from… that book?”
“Well child, when you start to counsel the sentiners, you get to know them very well, to hear about the things they leave out of their reports. And so you sometimes steer them in certain directions, help them come to conclusions that they should rightly have come to on their own, if it weren’t for the crazy world we live in.
“Of course some of that stuff, about half of… that book is rubbish and so you leave those parts out. But some parts are thoughts so profound you can’t keep them to yourself.”
“But how is that different from sharing our knowledge with anyone?”
“Heavens; if you don’t ask the best head scratchers. Let me see, now. Well for starters, all the information in all these books? It isn’t really in them at all. It’s actually up there in the collective consciousness. That’s how the catalogue system works. We’re asking the consciousness a question, and it gives us an answer, usually something we already know but need to be reminded of. And sometimes we find things we didn’t already know. Forgotten things. What we do when we share it with the sentiners is plant a seed in their noggins, and then they ask the consciousness themselves in their own way, usually not nearly as efficient as our bookstore mind you, but over time they get their answer.
“The point is, it’s they that pluck the idea out of the sky. We just have to make sure only ever to steer sentiners towards things they can handle. Do you understand? Miquel would never act on the revolutionary ideas, but it helps him to formulate ideas about the fetishization of commodities and the commodification of capital.”
“How will I know what to steer them towards?”
“Oh that just comes with time and experience. Never you mind it now.”
Time passed quickly and it seemed, at the time, that I was finally starting to get through to Ezra. I knew in my heart that he hadn’t come to accept certain things I told him, but he had stopped questioning them. No denying it, we lived in a bubble. So there was nowhere else for him to turn for truth. It was the only way he would come to accept things, and I did my darndest to present a strong case.
Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) Page 14