Hungry

by H. A. Swain

  “How far along are you?” I ask.

  “Thirty-two weeks,” she says. “And my back is killing me.”

  “Gaia says, ‘Being a vessel is a gift from Mother Nature,’” says Leeda, barely above a whisper.

  “Yeah, the gift that keeps on giving,” Bex jokes. “Giving me gas, giving me hemorrhoids, giving me a fat ass! Plus, now this baby is hanging out on my bladder like it’s his own personal water bed so I have to pee every fifteen minutes. If I run out of the door with my legs crossed, don’t be surprised.”

  “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I can cover for you if you need to go.”

  Leeda’s head snaps up. “Gaia says, ‘We must each earn our keep.’”

  I’ve had just about enough of her. “So I can’t offer to help someone?” I ask. “I thought this was supposed to be some kind of commune or something!”

  “It’s okay,” Bex says as she pours urine samples into a large red bucket. “Leeda’s right. I have to earn my keep like anyone else. ‘There’s no charity on the Farm.’ Besides, I’m fine. Just complaining to pass the time.”

  “What are we doing, anyway?” I study the chart I’ve been filling out. “Checking nutrient levels?”

  Bex just shrugs and continues dunking paper into pee. The crazy part is that dealing with the samples makes me miss my mom. I remember her saying the work you do when you start out as a scientist can be rote and boring—prepping experiments, reading results, entering data. But the excitement is in solving a problem in which each piece of data is part of the puzzle. Knowing that at the end you might be responsible for a major breakthrough makes it all worthwhile. Without knowing what I’m doing or why makes this work mindless, and I don’t care for that.

  When we’re done with the pee, Leeda hauls one bucket out the door while Bex removes a tray of syringes from a refrigerated drawer and spreads them across a long table.

  I pick one up but there’s no label. “What’s this for?”

  Again she shrugs, but this time she says, “Just what the dear doctor ordered, I guess!”

  “Who is this dear doctor I keep hearing about?”

  “You’ll meet him soon.” She hands me a packet of antiseptic wipes.

  “How soon?”

  “During the full moon,” she tells me, and I laugh, thinking she must be joking, but she looks at me quizzically and I realize that she’s serious.

  Before I can ask why he only comes out when the moon is full, Leeda sticks her head in the door from the hallway. “Ready?”

  “Send them in,” Bex says, then she turns to me. “You hand out the wipes and I’ll do the syringes.”

  The door opens again, and a long line of girls quietly enters the room. One by one, they recite their numbers to Leeda, who makes a mark on the charts we’ve been filling out. Then the girls step up to the table. I hand out swab after swab and watch as the girls systematically lift their dresses, rub a clean spot on their skin, take a syringe from Bex, and jab themselves in the belly. Nobody speaks. Nobody flinches. When they’re done, they drop their dresses, toss the used syringe in a blue bucket, and walk out of the room without a word.

  Fifty girls must come through, including Wren and Shiloh, who pass by silently like everyone else. The whole thing takes less than fifteen minutes. When the room is empty again, I look at Bex and say, “Wow, that was … interesting.”

  “See how interesting you think it is after you do this four times a day for seven days straight. Gets dead boring if you ask me.”

  The last thing Leeda, Bex, and I do is clean up the lab. Once we’ve disposed of all the used syringes and wiped down the tables with disinfectant, Bex goes to lift the last red bucket of urine and grimaces.

  “Hey,” I say, rushing to her side. “Let me do that. You should rest. Put your feet up. Take it easy for a while. Make your husband do something nice for you tonight.”

  She bursts out laughing and puts the bucket down. “My husband?”

  “Oh,” I say embarrassed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed, I mean, I thought … so you’re not married?”

  Bex continues to chuckle, but Leeda glowers at me. “Gaia says, ‘Marriage is an outdated institution.’”

  “But what about the baby’s dad? Do you get to live with him?”

  Bex swallows her laughter and shakes her head.

  “That’s so sad,” I say. “Don’t you miss him? Doesn’t he want to be a part of the baby’s life?”

  “No need,” says Bex. “The other mothers will help us when the time comes.” She rubs her belly affectionately.

  “But dads are so important,” I say, and wonder how my dad is—if he’s in trouble with Ahimsa for trying to help me, or if she’s turned him against me? But that would never happen. My dad will always have my back. “I wish I could talk to my father,” I say quietly.

  Bex frowns like she’s not sure what to make of me pining away for my dad. She nods to the bucket of pee. “You really going to take this out for me? I have to get to the kitchen soon.”

  “Of course I will,” I say.

  Bex directs me down the long corridor, past the dressing room, to the back door and tells me to dump the urine in the woods. When I go outside, it’s quiet and peaceful. The kudzu has been cut back about twenty feet from the steps, so I take my time, wandering around under the canopy of trees. From a distance I hear something clanging, like metal against metal, and I wonder if a new building is being constructed.

  When I come back inside, the hall is quiet and the lights inside the lab where we worked are out. I look inside the dressing room and see Bex and Leeda’s scrubs folded neatly on a bench. I change into my scratchy dress, but rather than leave as I’m supposed to, I decide to pull a Yaz to see what I can find behind closed doors. I’m hoping for something to wrap my ankle and, if I’m lucky, maybe a screen so I can send a message to my family.

  The first door I try opens easily, so I slip inside. The room is as stark and empty as the lab I’ve been working in all morning and the drawers only hold more plastic cups, syringes, and antiseptic wipes. I make my way down the hall, opening each door along the way, but every room is the same nondescript tile box, except for one where I can hear the hum of electrical equipment and see the faint glow of light emitted between the slats of blinds that cover the window. If there’s a screen here, surely that’s where it would be, but just my luck, the door is locked tight.

  * * *

  When I come outside, Shiloh waits for me in front of the hospital. “Come on,” she says. “We’re late.”

  “You go ahead,” I tell her. “There’s something else I need to do.” I turn toward Gaia’s house, determined to speak to my parents today.

  She grabs my wrist and yanks me along with her. “If we’re late, I’ll be in trouble.”

  She drags me back to Collection House No. 4 in the main clearing, where Wren and five other women are strapping large baskets to their backs. Shiloh hands me one, then we follow Reba, our squad leader, into the woods.

  “What are we doing? Where are we going?” I ask as I limp behind them.

  As usual, Shiloh frowns at me.

  “Can’t you ever just follow along?” Wren asks.

  “No,” I tell her honestly.

  She twists her face and looks away as if I’ve deeply offended her, but I don’t care. If more people asked questions around here, maybe nobody would have to pee in cups and jab themselves in the belly with mystery drugs or have two kids at fifteen. Once I find Basil and tell him everything I’ve seen today, surely he’ll concede there’s something strange about this place.

  Since no one will talk to me, I hang back marveling at the beauty around me. It’s so lush and green. The air is like nothing I’ve ever breathed before. It feels crisp and clean, moist and pure. I raise my face toward the sky, letting the sun warm my skin as the faint scent of sweetness tickles my nose. It’s like a place from my dreams, only it’s real. In that moment, part of me can understand why Basil is so smitten.

&nbs
p; Reba leads us off the main path to a smaller one, not cut, just trampled, and drops her basket. “This is our spot today,” she says, consulting a hand-drawn map. She only looks a few years older than I am. She’s tall with broad shoulders and fuzzy red hair that she pulls back into a messy knot, but she has a natural confidence that makes her easy to follow. The other girls in the group, Kiki, Jance, and Lu, look about the same age as Shiloh, Wren, and me. Only a woman named Enid appears older, with frown lines etched around her mouth and a few gray hairs spiraling from her scalp. When she takes the basket off her back, she stretches as if in pain.

  “Come,” says Shiloh. “We’ll show you what to do.”

  I follow her and Wren into a thicket of kudzu. They drop their baskets. I do the same.

  “There’s a knife inside,” Wren tells me. She’s smaller than I am. Short and compact, but she moves fast, every motion like a quick jab.

  I reach inside my basket and find the blade. I unsheathe it. “Good god.” Sun glints off the shining surface. “That looks sharp!”

  “Has to be,” says Shiloh, who is as willowy as the vines and has eyes as green as the kudzu leaves. “Got to hack through this stuff. But be careful, it’ll slice right through you, too.”

  They show me the best way to cut the vines then wrap them into coils and shove them in my basket. Although the work is tiring, I don’t mind. For days, my brain has felt like one big jumble. I can’t quite remember the order of events or how long I’ve been gone from home. But, the solitude of repetitive motion helps me unravel that knot. As I cut the vine, coil the vine, and stack the vine, I slowly go over everything that’s happened to me in the past few days, trying to make sense of it all, and I wonder what the others have gone through to get here.

  “So, Shiloh,” I say, moving my basket closer to where she and Wren are working and chatting. “Where are you from?”

  She scowls. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, where did you live before you came to the Farm? Are you from the Inner Loop or Outer Loop?”

  She focuses on stuffing more vines into her basket. “Gaia says, ‘Leave the past in the past.’”

  “We can’t totally leave our past behind, though,” I say for arguments sake. “We’re the sum of our experiences, don’t you think? Like my Grandma Apple, she was a farmer so…”

  “Brining up the past creates a false hierarchy,” Wren huffs at me. “Privies and workers. Firstborns and seconds. And it’s obvious what you were.” She frowns at me. “We left those divisions behind when we came here.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” I tell them apologetically. “I was just curious.…”

  “Well, there are better things to talk about,” Shiloh snaps.

  “Sorry,” I mutter. They both pick up their baskets and move away, leaving me to work alone.

  * * *

  When Reba shouts that it’s break time, I leave my basket and follow the others to a small clearing with a hand pump. As we’re taking turns getting drinks, we hear a man yell, “Hey ho, the vessels beat us here!”

  A group of guys crash through the kudzu on the opposite side of the clearing. Most of them are bare-chested, their shirts tossed over their shoulders or wrapped around their waists. Their skin glistens with sweat.

  “Shut up, Carrick,” Reba tells the tallest boy who swaggers toward the pump. He is lean and muscular and walks with an athlete’s loose-limbed stroll.

  “You got a gift for me, Miss Reba?” he teases.

  “You wish,” she says, eyes narrow, but she doesn’t really look mad. Shiloh stands beside her laughing.

  “Who’s this?” Carrick asks, looking me up and down.

  “I’m Thalia.”

  “Fresh eggs!” he announces, which makes the other guys laugh.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

  Carrick leans in close and takes a hold of the pump handle. His eyes are dark and I can smell the musk of sweat coming off him. “You hatching, girl?”

  I step away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Leave her alone.” Reba grabs me by the elbow and pulls me to her side. “She just got here, for god’s sake.”

  “Oh, you’re the one.” Carrick glances over his shoulder. “Came with that boy? So your eggs are taken.”

  I ignore the last remark and ask, “Are you talking about Basil? Do you know where I can find him?”

  “They put him in the machine shop,” Carrick says. “He didn’t even have to start in the fields. He some kind of mechanical genius or something?”

  “Yes, he is,” I say, proud of Basil, but wondering why I’m in the fields and not doing a more specialized job. “But I don’t remember seeing a machine shop. Where is it?” I ask, but no one answers me.

  Carrick pumps murky brown water over his head. When he comes up, he flings droplets all over everybody.

  “Farm boys,” Wren snorts to Shiloh.

  “They’re all idiots,” Reba says, rolling her eyes to the sky, but I see a faint smile cross her lips, so I’m not sure she means it.

  I follow the others into the shade. No sooner than we have sat down, Carrick plops beside Reba. He leans back on his elbows. “Why don’t you come in the weeds with me, huh?”

  Reba hugs her knees and pretends to ignore him.

  He plucks a leaf from a vine and trails it gently from her ear to her chin. She swats at him but laughs. “We can plant some seeds,” he tells her.

  “Shut up.” She bumps him with her shoulder.

  “Ain’t nobody plows a garden like Carrick,” he coos.

  Reba looks straight at him. “You’re full of it.”

  “But you like it.” He grins and wiggles his eyebrows. “Come on now. Help a farm boy out.” Reba shakes her head laughing, but she relents and allows him to pull her to stand. He leads her out of the clearing and into the kudzu.

  I turn to Wren, but she’s deep in a conversation with a shirtless guy named Billet, who must be ten years older than she is. Within a few minutes both she and Shiloh have left the clearing with farm boys, too. I look around and realize that the only people still here are a scrawny guy named Noam, who’s busy whittling a piece of wood with his kudzu knife, and Enid, who’s snoring in the sun.

  “Hey,” I call to Noam. “Where did everybody go?”

  Instead of answering me, he says, “You from the Inner Loop, too?”

  I nod, surprised that he’s willing to mention a place of origin. “How long have you been here?”

  “About three years,” he tells me.

  “Really?” I ask. “Do you like it?”

  He considers this for a moment. “I didn’t at first, even though it was better than the alternatives facing me back at home.”

  “Rehab?”

  He nods. “And probably jail the way things were going.” He looks down at the stick in his hands, which has the vague shape of an airplane. “But, I’m pretty happy now.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  He cocks his head to the side and smiles. “Family.”

  Ugh, I can barely control my distaste. How can all these people think of one another as brothers and sisters and Gaia as their mother? “So it gets better?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he says, then goes back to working on his stick as if he doesn’t care to discuss it any further.

  * * *

  For two days, I haven’t had a chance to speak with Gaia about calling home. The only time I see her is when she’s on the dais in the dining hall, giving her daily address. And I’ve only caught sight of Basil twice, when his work squad was on their way out of the dining hall door and mine was going in on the opposite side. Both times, I caught his eye and started a crazy pantomime about us finding each other later so we could talk. He smiled and shook his head in confusion then mouthed words to me that I couldn’t understand. I don’t even know where his bunkhouse is, and I haven’t had time to look for the machine shop. We’re kept busy from morning to night, and by the time we’re done wi
th chores, I barely have enough energy to crawl into my bed, where I immediately pass out.

  On the third day, I can’t wait any longer. I must contact my parents and track down Basil. After I finish my morning shift with Bex and Leeda at the lab, I ditch Shiloh by going out the back door of the hospital and cutting through the kudzu toward Gaia’s house.

  My heart races as I climb onto the porch and knock. I hear quick footsteps inside, then the door swings open and Ella stares at me. “What are you doing?” she hisses.

  “I’d like to see Gaia,” I say. Ella blinks and blinks but doesn’t say anything. “Is she here?”

  “Ella?” Gaia calls from inside. “What’s going on down there?”

  “Hello, Gaia,” I call, my voice shaky. “Do you have a moment? I’d like to speak to you.”

  Gaia hurries downstairs from the second floor, fastening a green belt around her white jumpsuit. “Who’s in my house?” She stops in the middle of the staircase and squints at me as if she can’t believe some person in a dirty brown dress has barged into her lovely living room. “Well?” she demands. “What is it?”

  Something in the way she stares at me makes me shrink. Suddenly I don’t feel like that girl who stood up on a Dumpster and admonished a mob to loot a Synthamil distribution center. Instead I’ve become a nervous, sweating ninny who feels out of place among the woven rugs, light fixtures, and upholstered furniture, too afraid to speak her mind. I gather my courage, take a breath, and say, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I really need to contact my parents. I mentioned this to you when I arrived, and now I feel it’s imperative. I need to let them know that I’m okay and…” I stop because Gaia crosses her arms and stares down at me indifferently.

  Then she snorts as if she cannot believe what I’m requesting. “Clearly there’s something you don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wish I could shrink behind the plush red couch. “I know you’d like me to think of this as my new family, and it’s so kind of you to take me in, but…”

  “But what?” she demands. “You’d be happy to jeopardize everyone’s safety just to have a word with Mommy and Daddy back in the Loops? Did you ever stop to wonder why we have no screens here? No network connection? No phone line straight to One World Headquarters? Why don’t we just paint a big red X across the farm and wait for One World to send in the spies or start dropping bombs?” She pauses while I shift from foot to foot, trying to find a way to defend myself.