HELPER12

by Jack Blaine

  “It’s a lot like a player—you just select the one you want to read and it opens.”

  I touch the title and it displays the first page. I already see some words I don’t know.

  “What if I need to look something up?”

  “You just open the dictionary, and then press the star, so you can go back and forth.” He shows me, and then lets me try it.

  “See?” He smiles. “Easy.”

  I nod. “It does seem like it will be. Thank you for loaning it to me.”

  “You can make notes, too, like this.” He shows me how to mark a place, and insert a note. I practice putting one in the first chapter of the book.

  “You’re a fast learner.”

  “I had to be. If you don’t stay on track in training, you could wash out.” I wonder if he knows what that means.

  “What does that mean?”

  I guess he doesn’t.

  “It means that you could be sent to labor camp. That’s if you’re lucky. At labor camps the life expectancy is less than a year.”

  He watches me. He says nothing. For too long.

  “What?” I finally have to speak.

  “Are you upset with me about something?”

  “No.” I answer too quickly.

  “I feel like you are.” He takes the reader from my hands and puts it on the bed. Then he takes my hands in his.

  “I know that we come from very different places. I know that you’ve had a very hard life.” He looks into my eyes, searching for something. “It’s still hard. And I’m a part of that—of making your life hard.” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to be a part of that.” For a moment he says nothing. Then he continues.

  “I want you to know that I do know some of what you’ve been through. I’ve been trying to find out, trying to see what it must be like for you. Because I do want us to be friends. I think we may be the only chance at sanity William has, being raised in this place. I need to do better, as a brother, and as a friend. I hope you’ll let me try to do that. I hope you’ll help me protect William from, well, from what this place can be like.”

  He looks at me with so much hope in his eyes, but I can’t help him. I pull my hands from his.

  “His name isn’t William,” I say.

  He looks puzzled. “Would you rather have him called Baby4?”

  I’m surprised he remembers Jobee’s Pre Ward name.

  “Of course not,” I say. “But that’s not his name either. His name is Jobee. It’s what I named him the day he arrived in my Ward, and it’s what he’ll always go by, even after he’s been tracked and trained in some stupid thing.” I’m crying, and I don’t know why.

  “Jobee.” Thomas says the name slowly. He reaches up to my cheek and smudges a tear away with his thumb. “That’s a fine name.”

  Suddenly I am full of fear. “Don’t call him that, not in front of your mother. Not your father either.”

  “I wouldn’t.” He looks at me. “It will be what we know about him, together.”

  I nod, and wipe my nose on my sleeve.

  Thomas laughs.

  “Are we okay, now?” He looks at me, and something about how he looks makes me feel naked. I nod.

  “Good.” Thomas gets up and walks to the door. “Keep that hidden,” he says, pointing to the reader. “I’ll see you at dinner?”

  I nod again.

  He starts to leave, but he turns back around.

  “What?”

  “What’s your name, Helper12? Will you tell me?”

  I am silent for a long time. Finally I just shake my head.

  He nods, as though he understands. “Maybe someday,” he says. And he leaves my room.

  Chapter Twenty

  The days fall into a sort of pattern. I rise each morning to Jobee’s chuckles, bathe him and feed him his breakfast. We spend some time outside in the courtyard where I show him everything I can—the sky, the trees, the plants, the fish in the fountain. I watch him touch things and the expressions on his face are like a second childhood to me, one where there is no testing or surgery or tattooing; one where there is what looks like happiness.

  After lunch, while Jobee naps, I get the reader from its hiding place under his changing table pad, and I study. I read all about what will come for Jobee this year, and I learn many new words. I fall in love with the dictionary. Sometimes, I look up words that aren’t in the baby books, just to learn new ones. I try to use them at dinner with Thomas, to see if I do it right.

  Thomas included an art book with the ones we got from the PIC. I found it the second day I was studying. I hadn’t bothered to read all the titles until then, and the last one listed was Line Drawings by the Masters. I gasped when I read the title, and selected it.

  There were pictures.

  There were line drawings of landscapes and city skylines, and animals. There were all sorts of different styles, done by many different Artists. When I got to the seventh Artist, there was a note that Thomas had added to the reader.

  This one made me think of your work.

  The sketches were of people; an old man on a train, a woman mixing something in a beaker. They were made with strong, spare lines, and they did look like my work.

  My work. Nobody ever called it that before. Of course, nobody knew about it until Thomas, but still. I look at the drawings every day, savoring them, trying to understand why the Artist used a certain line, why the shading is done a certain way for one area and another for the next.

  After nap Thomas usually comes to play with Jobee. He holds him and tickles him and shows him something new everyday. Yesterday it was a tomato. Today it was a wooden mallet. Jobee grabs every new thing and touches it, feeling all the different textures, smelling all the different smells. He is happy. He loves Thomas.

  I think Thomas loves him too.

  Some days Thomas leaves in the morning, and doesn’t come back until dinner. On those nights he is quiet. I think he’s been to see Greg. I don’t ask him, because I’m afraid I will be overstepping my bounds.

  Helper is scandalized by the time Thomas spends in my room. She grumbles to the Driver at breakfast and acts as though I can’t hear her. The Driver just shakes his head, and winks at me. I’m not too worried; we always have the door wide open, so that there can be no reason to suspect that something untoward is happening. Certainly she walks past the doorway carrying linens often enough, though there is no linen storage on the third floor, to know that nothing is happening between us. Thomas is there to see Jobee. Still, I wonder what Helper thinks I could do about it if the young man of the house wanted to rape me every day. Nothing—that’s what. She must know that, of course she does, yet she still carries on as though I could tell him to stop coming to my room.

  Tonight I choose a yellow sweater to wear to dinner. The color is one that Thomas mentioned once. That looks pretty against your skin, he said, about a shirt I had on one day. I went upstairs and held that shirt against all of the things hanging in the closet, and pulled all the ones that matched it out and hung them together. I choose something from that group of clothes every three days, and wear it to dinner. I pretend I don’t know I’m doing this.

  “Hello.” Thomas is waiting for us at the table. I smile and settle Jobee in his high chair. He reaches out for Thomas, grinning.

  “Hello, little man.” Thomas is careful not to use Jobee’s name when we are outside my room, but I notice he doesn’t use the name William, either.

  Helper brings out our dinner, huffing a bit beneath her breath.

  “Is everything all right, Helper?” Thomas is extremely polite.

  “Yes, sir.” She eyes him, and stops her huffing.

  “This looks absolutely delicious, Helper.”

  She preens a bit, always pleased to be praised.

  I can’t wait for her to leave. When she finally does, I sigh. Thomas laughs as he serves me my food.

  “Is she that bad?”

  “You know she hates me.”

  �
�Well, she probably wishes things were the way they used to be here. Greg could charm her in two seconds flat, and Mother and Father were happy.” His expression takes on the shadow that always darkens it when he thinks of Gregory.

  I’m silent. I don’t know how to explain it well, but when Thomas is upset like this, I feel upset too. It’s as though his hurt is my own. I have begun to wonder if I would bleed, should he be cut.

  I feel this same way about Jobee. It’s stronger in a way, than the way I feel with Thomas. Jobee can’t protect himself at all, and for him, all pain is still a surprise. When I have to take his boggle toy away to get him dressed, he looks so shocked and injured that I want to fight whatever made him feel that way, even though it was me. If he bumps his head, I feel it, and I’m not serene until he is soothed.

  It’s strange. We were taught in training how to care for our charges; what to look for that would indicate they are in pain, how to help them feel better, when to call the Doctor to the Ward to check on something that might be serious. But we were never taught to care about them. In fact, the opposite was instilled—I remember the Trainers saying that reserve was imperative, that we couldn’t do our best work if we were less than impartial.

  “I’ve got something for you.” Thomas’s voice brings me back to the evening, the table, the dinner.

  “Is it the new boggle?” I’ve seen the ads for a red and green boggle that Jobee would love. Thomas often buys a new toy, and clears it with me to be sure it’s “proper” for Jobee’s current stage of development. It’s sort of a joke between us, now that I’m reading the books we got about childhood development.

  Thomas smiles, a slow, beautiful smile. I wonder if he knows how he’s begun to affect me. It’s different from the boys in the complex; they were just for scratching itches. Kris and I used to find a couple of likely boys to grab a touch with whenever we felt the desire, but I never looked at them and thought they were beautiful. I never followed the line of a boy’s brow with my eyes and wished I could trace it with my fingertips. Sometimes, when I’m watching Thomas play with Jobee, I want to touch him so much that I have to hold my hands tight behind my back, clenched into fists. It feels like they might float toward him all on their own if I don’t.

  “No. It’s not a new boggle. But I can pick one up for him tomorrow.”

  “What is it?”

  “Look under your seat.” Thomas grins.

  I do look, and there is a sack under my chair. Inside is a package. It’s wrapped up in fancy paper with what looks like a real silk ribbon. My eyes must get big, because Thomas is chuckling at me.

  “Put it back, silly. You’ll have to wait to open it until you’re back in your room.”

  I hide it back underneath my chair, and we eat dinner as though everything is normal.

  But everything is not normal. Thomas has given me a gift. A present, all for me, from him. It doesn’t even matter to me what it is; I’ve never been given a gift by anyone.

  Chapter Twenty One

  I put the sack under my pillow when I get back upstairs. I make myself wait until I’ve bathed Jobee and settled him in his crib for the night. When he is sleeping soundly, I sit on the bed and slide the sack out from underneath the pillow. I hold it for a minute, just like that, still hidden, before I take the present out of the sack. It feels thin and hard, and there’s one spot where it’s lumpy along the end. The paper is a luminescent gold color, and the ribbon is red.

  I slip the ribbon off. It’s so soft, and the depth of the color is wonderful. I put it next to me on the bed. Now the paper—I don’t want to tear it because it’s so beautiful. I slide my finger underneath it and tease it open, so that no harm is done to it.

  Beneath, there is a tablet of real drawing paper. The label says 250 sheets of fine cotton blend sketch paper. I lift the top cover and smooth my hand over the first sheet’s surface. It’s almost like the sheets on my bed; fine and soft, cool to the touch. I lift the tablet from the wrapping paper and something falls—a metal tin of some sort. I pick it up and turn it over so I can see the top. It’s sketching charcoal. I’ve heard of this but I’ve never seen any. I open the tin, and inside, nestled in translucent paper, there are five sticks of black, porous looking stuff. When I touch them, my fingertip comes away sooty.

  I’m stunned—literally. I sit on the bed holding my gifts, feeling completely zapped. Thomas has given me something that my heart has desired, but it’s also something that could land me in a labor camp. If I were caught with these materials . . . I don’t even want to think about it.

  It’s late. I’m tired and I need to go to sleep. I hide the tablet under the changing table pad, and the charcoals in one of my dresser drawers. I don’t know why I think that two places are safer than one, but I do.

  When I wake up, the sun is shining in the window. I run to the changing table and lift up the pad. The tablet is still there. I check my dresser drawer, and there is the charcoal tin.

  Jobee clucks from his crib. I pick him up and give him a hug, and turn around and around like he likes me to do. He laughs. Today we’ll spend a lot of time in the courtyard. Who knows how long the sun will last?

  After we’re both dressed, I’m just getting ready to go downstairs when I hear a knock at the door. It’s Thomas’s knock: three soft taps and one hard rap. I open it, and there he is, standing in the hall with a new baby bag.

  “He’s got a perfectly good bag for his things.” I laugh. Thomas wants Jobee to have everything.

  “I know, but this one has some special qualities,” says Thomas.

  “Like?”

  He waits for me to indicate that he can come in, and then he sets the bag on the bed.

  “See?” He opens the main section of the bag, which is already filled with baby supplies and bottles. “Lots of room for all Jobee’s things.” Then he pulls open a side compartment and shows me how it’s reinforced. “And, nothing would get bent if it were carried in here. If you had, say, papers of some sort, that you wanted to keep nice, they would fit in here perfectly. And there’s a place for your charcoals.”

  “Shhh!” I put my finger to my lips and look past him at the door.

  “She’s downstairs. I’m having her fix a breakfast for us to take away. Because we’re going to spend the day in the country.”

  “The country?” I’ve heard about how the rich go for day-trips to the country. There are supposed to be lakes and trees and wild meadows. I’ve only ever seen those things in pictures.

  “Yes.” Thomas smiles at me. “Who knows how long the sun will last?”

  “I was just thinking that very same thing.” I smile back, and then I feel shy. “I want to thank you. For my presents.”

  “Do you like them?” He speaks softly, as though he is feeling shy, too.

  “I love them.” These words don’t convey how I feel. I can’t tell him in words how the idea that he would know to give me these tools—that he wouldn’t care that the world says I shouldn’t have them—makes me feel inside.

  “I thought we could bring them along,” he says. “In this.” He lifts the new baby bag. “That way maybe you could try them out, while we’re away.”

  “But we’ll be right out in the open, won’t we?” I imagine the country as being exclusively outdoors. “Out in a field, or something?”

  Thomas chuckles. “Yes, we will, but nobody there will know us.”

  “But I’m a Baby Helper. I’m not supposed to have any art materials.”

  Thomas looks at me, standing in front of him. He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me and Jobee around, to face the mirror in my room.

  “What do you see there?” He waits.

  I look in the mirror. Jobee does too, and he reaches out for our reflections, giggling.

  “I see a very silly boy,” I say.

  “And what else?”

  I look at my reflection. “I see me.”

  “Exactly,” says Thomas. “You. Not a Helper, not anything but a girl out f
or a day in the country.”

  I understand what he means, finally. I have no uniform. I’m wearing the clothes the Sloanes provided. My hair is still in a skinner cut, but it’s longer than regulation—I haven’t clippered it since I’ve been here. My designation tattoo is covered. There’s nothing to give me away as a Helper, nothing to indicate that I’m not just a Society girl, out for a day trip. Society girls can draw if they want; they can sing, and write and recite poetry if they want.

  “Meet me downstairs?” Thomas is grinning at the look of wonder that must be on my face.

  “Yes! I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  When he leaves I turn back to the mirror for a moment. I take in the image I see there, of a young woman. She looks like a young woman who could do anything really, anything she wanted to do. And for one day, I think, maybe, just maybe, she will.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  It takes us over an hour to get there. Jobee is an easy baby, and he’s happy as long as he has a boggle or a view out the window. Thomas is reading, the daily news or something, on his reader. I’m content to watch him do it, as long as he doesn’t know I’m watching. Whenever he looks up, I fuss with Jobee or look out the window. I don’t think he’s caught me.

  I admire his hair, which is worn in the Society style: long and straight and combed back away from the forehead. Thomas’s hair is dark and shiny, and so thick it looks like you could bury your hands in it. I’ve only touched it once, the night he came in drunk, and I wasn’t thinking of him in very kind terms then. I wish I could touch it now.

  He looks up, and I’m caught. He smiles at me slyly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you mean?” I hope I sound innocent.

  “It seemed as though you were staring at me.”

  “What?” I fumble with my sweater cuff. “Oh, I was just daydreaming. You know how you can just drift? And you’re not really aware of what you might be looking at . . .”

  “Ah.” He nods, very serious. “Yes.” He snaps his reader shut and looks out.

  “Almost there, Driver?”