An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

  I’m not the maternal type. Lullabies bore me. The idea of a child hanging off my breast, using me for sustenance, makes me very angry for some reason. Probably because I am always angry about everything. I am like a gramophone and the volume’s too loud, and you can’t find the off button, and all you can do is cover your ears until the end of the record. My head is too filled with stories. Children think because I can spin a good tale that I can be gentle. I can’t be.

  I had a son once. They took him away. Sometimes I think I might have let him eat from my breast because he had that sort of handsome face most babies lack. One time, I pressed the bottom of his foot to my cheek, and would you believe it was so small that when the heel was at my chin, his big toe did not even reach up to my nose? I am glad most nights they robbed him from me, when they saw he was white as a lamb and could pass, because I would be a bad mother. I am not always so good with children.

  I had three little sisters and I disliked them all. Their diapers smelled and if ever I was babysitting, I would let them cry and get rash because I hated so much having to get close to their thingies to wipe them clean. I only wanted to clean myself. Get washed up, comb my hair into cute little pigtails, put on a nice dress, and then draw or paint or play dice with the older boys. I don’t like to take care of other people.

  My meema always asked, “Would you look after your sisters while I go see about a man who has pretty, wavy hair?”

  “No,” I would say. And my mother was so frail that when I protested like this she didn’t slap me like she should’ve. Didn’t try to get me in line. Instead she’d tell me how: okay, she’d work out other arrangements, and so my three little sisters would go to stay with this upperdeck woman who was a schoolteacher and had a mission to make all the little dark lowdeckers into readers. So they could read about the Heavens and the Promised Land and so they could memorize prayers. She’d tell my baby sisters that if they read and said their prayers and obeyed the Sovereignty, Matilda’s journey to the Heavens would be made sure. She taught this with such fervency that she must’ve actually believed it. What a sad thing. Nothing is more sad than a person who believes in something that’s so clearly not true.

  Now Abe say: “Momma. Momma. Momma,” peering up at me.

  I hear the hatch open, which means the white woman went to get the mistress, and she’s arrived.

  She slide off her jacket, hang it on a hook. Say her: “Melusine, what is it?”

  Say the white woman: “He got a fev—”

  “I was talking to Melusine. Lucy, get us some ice water.” Lucy. That’s the maid’s name.

  Say I: “Fever. These red rashes. Could be scabies, maybe. He real tired.”

  Hattie come and feel her son’s head, sit on the couch next to him, move him so his head is in her lap. Abe wedges his fat thumb between his lips and starts to suck. His black hair is up and away, pressed out where it should be pressed down.

  The white woman, Lucy, come back to the room with a cup of ice water and a rag. Mistress Hattie dip the cloth in to the water, then ring it out over Abe’s forehead.

  Say I: “Can I use your telegraph, missus?”

  Mistress nods and shows me to it. I type a message for Theo. Tell him to get my Aster. That boy is real sick. I know he’ll come to see after the child himself, but he’ll get Aster too. I like seeing her face, and I missed her this morning. She’s always off somewhere, and it’s nothing like she was when she was little, her little fist balled into my skirts always tryna stay close, hanging onto my every word like it was from a god.

  I’m not maternal but that doesn’t mean I don’t love. I love Aster. I love all the girls and women I look after. It is hard to be in somebody’s presence for so long and not develop something like love. I don’t have romantic feelings. I never fell in love with a person the way princesses falls in love with princes. I never wanted to be with nobody in bed. Aster, though, my love for her is—it’s malignant. And if I try to chop it off, all the bits of love will spread everywhere else and infect me worse.

  It’s a whole hour before Theo come. I love him also. He’s the son they took away from me. I can’t help but feel something strong for him.

  Say I: “I had Lucy strip the sheets.”

  Theo nod. “Please, Ms. Lucy, will you pull his clothing too? Clean and unclean. They’ll need to be sent to the wash.”

  “Yes sir, of course.” She never seen the Surgeon before, clear by the way she become nervous and flighty all the sudden, her voice getting more fancy. Even Mistress Hattie is suddenly shy.

  Theo begin his examination of Abe, listen to his heart, look at his red rashes, swab inside his nose. He smear the cotton onto a little glass slide.

  “Melusine?”

  It hurt when he call me that instead of Ainy, even though I know he don’t mean a thing by it. Theo never been the type to use sweet names. When he was little he called his father by his rank and surname. He is as handsome now as he was when he was a little one. I think it’s the dark in him. He’d make any mother proud.

  I used to think he was like me. Urgeless. I don’t have desires for coupling like others do. It made sense that he could’ve inherited that from me. But I get now it’s all about his religion. What he thinks he should and shouldn’t do. I don’t know where he got it from, his devotion. Not from me. Not from his father. I think it’s true what they say, though, that he is touched by the Heavens. When he was three he could read books grown men couldn’t understand. Not a late bloomer like my Aster.

  His father beat him, and when I tried to stop it, he beat me too. He called Theo sissy because Theo was small and only liked to read and listen to stories. He called him worthless and a word I don’t like to say that starts with a f and rhymes with the word for fly larva. The same kind of names folks would later come to call my Aster, though not exact.

  Say Theo: “Melusine?”

  Say I: “What?”

  “Would you please send a message to the I deck nursery letting them know I wish to see their roster for the last week?”

  Abe’s mother pats his head, says: “I’d never send him there. Weekday mornings he’s with Melusine. Afternoons he’s with his nanny. Evenings starting at three he’s with me.” Abe sucks away at his thumb. His eyes are closed now and he snores.

  “Are there any other public places he’s been?” asks Theo.

  Say I: “Yesterday I took him to the Field Decks. When he get low, I take him there so he can get some sunshine. Picks him right up.”

  Say Hattie: “Melusine, you should’ve taken him to the promenade. I would’ve allowed it.” The part she leave out is that she think the Field Decks are filled with my filthy kind, and that’s where he caught whatever sickness he got.

  “I’m not welcome on the promenade,” say I.

  The mistress give me a look, like she sorry, then go back to patting Abe’s head. “Please, tell me, what’s wrong with him, Surgeon?”

  Say Theo: “I’ll investigate the sample I took, but I can say with much certainty that it’s a staph infection.” He push a thermometer into Abe’s ear, press a button so the reading stay recorded into the machine. “I assure you, Miss Hattie, he will be fine, but I would like to start him on medication as soon as I’ve identified the strain of the bacteria.”

  Say I to Hattie: “Sorry, miss. I understand if you want to let me go.” I hope she do.

  Say Theo: “It is unlikely that he caught the infection during his time with you in the Field Decks. I only asked where he spent time out of the cabin to ascertain whether he might have given the infection to others.”

  He already done with the examination, and Aster isn’t here. As he’s putting away his things, and the mistress is carrying Abe back to the crib, Theo start talking to me. “I told her I’d write her a pass to join me,” he say, like he know what I’m thinking before I say it.

  “And?”

  “She said she’s trying to keep her nose to the ground, though not in so many words.”

  Say I:
“It’s not like her to avoid trouble.”

  Theo nod. “I think Lieutenant’s ascension has a lot of us very frightened.”

  Say I: “No. It’s something more specific than that that got her all worried. She been asking me all kind of questions.”

  I look at him so we eye to eye. So maybe he can know that he is my son, that I was more than just his nanny. For the better part of a harvest year I swathed him in my skin and muscle. He look just like me except for his pallor. I wish I could say I was the one who taught him his fine manners, but that’s all him. He was born the most loving, kindest soul, and stayed that way, the very opposite of me.

  Say Theo: “I’m sure Aster will inform us the full breadth of what’s on her mind when she’s ready to.”

  I sit. I can’t stand for more than a few minutes these days. Say I: “Does she tell you things? Like how a lover would? Maybe she tell you more than me.” I am fishing like a nosey old woman. They spend all their time together, and I do be wondering. I’m a old gossip. I got to get my stories from somewhere.

  Theo fluster the slightest bit, then say: “We have developed a good working rapport.”

  When he leave, I go to check on Abe. He asleep. Hattie is humming him a song, leaned over his cradle. Say I: “If you need me, I’ll be washing up his sheets and all that.”

  “Oh, Melusine, you don’t need to do that. Come here. You can stay.”

  I don’t want to stay. I’d rather scald my hands scrubbing Abe’s dirty bedding, even if it make my knuckles swell as big as the wild strawberries that grow in the Field Decks.

  Say I: “How about I go to the Archives, miss? I could pick up Abe some new picture books. I’m allowed as long as you write me up a pass.”

  Hattie smile. “Oh, that’s a splendid idea.

  Once there, I show my pass to the man working the front desk, and he nod perfunctory-like. He used to seeing me here for years, since when I used to get books for Aster when she was nothing but a little thing. He put up a fuss my first few visits back then, accusing her of smudging the books with dirt and ripping pages out. My boy Theo had to shut his protests down. At ten years old, he took me by his hand and pulled me into the stacks. He told that librarian man that he was to give me no more trouble.

  “Sign in,” he say now, not glancing up. I reckon I can’t be gone long before Hattie put up a fuss. It’s not enough time for a full search, but enough to find the books I’m looking for and stash them in my bag. I scrawl my name onto the sheet of cream paper and mark 2-N.55, the physics branch.

  Well, it ain’t picture books for Abe. I’m a good liar.

  Aster been asking all sorts of questions. Her mind elsewhere. I know she and Giselle up to something. I only want to help. I need only show her that I can.

  The science stacks ain’t as nice as all that, more akin to the lowdecks than anything. Long, narrow aisles, barely the width of a person.

  Poor, poor books. Lonely pages bound in lonely leather, their only company the occasional louse. They exist only to be read, and yet with no one there to read them, they might as well not have been bornt at all. I run my fingers along the spines of the books I can reach. I do it to affirm them. To let them know I’m a lover of stories, even stories about alchematics or biology and other true things.

  The catalog say the Archives contain three books on distortion balloons and one where it was the main topic. None of them are here, all four checked out. A small gap in the shelves where they ought to be.

  I make do and gather up some of the more general books. My eyes ain’t used to reading in this dark light, the typeface small. Flipping through the index, I find distortion balloon referred to on pages 8, 323, and 411-5 in a textbook on advanced topics in astromatics. When I flip through to the right sections, there’s only the rough edges marking where someone’s done torn out the pages.

  I go right up to that front desk man and say, “Excuse me, sir. Sir?”

  Say him: “What?” Dried spit is all caked into the corner of his lips, white, flakey. He got the look of a man who died, come back to life, and is bitter about being among the living again. His gray beard isn’t trimmed a lick. Messy as all hell.

  Say I: “You got some records of who checks out which books?”

  “Name?”

  Say I: “Huh?”

  “Of the book you are looking for.”

  “Theoretical Models of Distortion Systems for Light-Speed Travel,” say I, just picking one out of a hat.

  He—somewhat begrudgingly, I can’t help but note—stand from his chair and go to the shelf behind his desk. He pick up the fifth volume from the left, a thick blue tome. He let the book thud loudly on his desk and say, “It is all in alphabetical order, assuming you know what that means.”

  I find a little nook to work in. I’m not alone in the Archives, but the stacks is big enough that when I find the right corner to tuck myself away in, I can make myself all cozy.

  I scan the catalog looking for the title and find it about halfway through the book. Unless there a error in recordkeeping, the book is currently in the possession of a man named Seamus Ludnecki—or it had been twenty-five damn years ago.

  It don’t escape my notice that the day it was checked out is during the year my Aster was born. I fount something I can give her. Something to make her grateful and look at me how she did when she was my sweet little one.

  xviii

  Aster received the summons to appear in Sovereign Lieutenant’s office as she was readying herself for sleep, not long after she’d been introduced to her newfound obsession, Seamus Ludnecki. Ainy had given her the name and told her about the curiously missing books she’d found in the Archives.

  The notice arrived by way of a guard seconds before Aster was to take a long lie-in. It was Sunday, her one day off from shift. ASTER TO REPORT TO O-0211 IMMEDIATELY UPON RISK OF LOSING PRIVILEGES, the notice read.

  She rushed her way up the main stairs to O, didn’t bother to avoid contact with the guards. As soon as they saw the summons signed Lieutenant, they pushed her along her way, told her to hurry up.

  “Sovereign?” she said when she reached his hatch, pressing the button to activate the comm speaker. No one lived in Osage Wing, all of it offices, storage, break cabins for guards who worked the lowdecks. There was a buzz, then the hatch opened.

  “Enter,” said Lieutenant.

  It was odd to think she was in the presence of the head of Matilda. This man believed himself second to God, but he occupied such a modest office. She stepped inside, forcing her gaze to his, refusing to bow down her head despite wanting to. Aster barely recalled him. It had been a couple of years since she’d last seen his face.

  His light-brown eyes, brunet hair, and straight nose did nothing to ring the bell. He had blotched and purple skin, suggesting the passing of time—because that was something she would have noticed then, and remembered. Age discolored things. Left them too pale or alternatively too saturated. Eyes fading to washed-out nothingness, while the skin beneath was the brightest shade of purple.

  “May I sit?” she asked, eyeing the chair across from him at the desk.

  “I’ve just had that cleaned, actually, and would prefer you not,” he said. “You understand.”

  She answered immediately, without a moment’s hesitation so he wouldn’t know his comments stung: “That is very well. I prefer to stand anyway.”

  His smile had a tiredness to it, but was genuine, Aster thought. He had no reason to fake it. He’d gotten everything he ever wanted. “You’ve grown since last I saw you.” Lieutenant tilted his head as he examined her with a casual but unblinking gaze. “You are not as unpretty as one might’ve expected you’d turn out, little pigeon.”

  “I am surprised you remember with such specificity the details of my person, given our meetings have been so brief and quite some time ago.”

  “I do not forget sins committed against the Heavens, Aster,” he said. “You are still at it, it seems.”

  “I have
been called an aberration before.”

  “Aberration. Yes. I like that word. Your High accent is flawless, by the way. You speak it as well as my wife, and she is of the finest upperdeck stock. A true lady.”

  “My time under the Surgeon’s employ has refined my tongue,” she said, though she’d always spoken High, for as long as she could remember. Long before she could speak, she listened, absorbed the sounds people made, mimicked them as best she could.

  “Indeed.” Lieutenant stood, grabbed a flask from the shelf, and unscrewed the cap. The scent of bitter coffee wafted toward her as he filled a mug with the black liquid. “The Surgeon is a very good man, Aster. One of the best. Chosen by the Heavens to be their hands in this plane of existence. But he has a certain soft spot, shall we call it, when it comes to you. Which is no matter. No man is perfect, and he’s not the first to seek relations with a lowdeck woman. I suppose there’s something about your lot that heats his blood. Your animalian nature, I presume.”

  Aster clasped her hands behind her back, so tight that it hurt and with such force that if she held on any tighter, she’d break her own fingers. “Theo and I are not—”

  “And yet you are on a first-name basis. Don’t deny it. It’s pointless, and your lies only widen the great gulf. I find it strange that the Surgeon fixated on you above all others, but then all men have their proclivities, and who am I to judge? My problem is your obvious exploitation of his weakness to have your way aboard this ship. That will not do at all.”

  Aster reached for her goggles, wanted to slide them from her forehead over her eyes. She didn’t have them, forgetting them in the rush to meet Lieutenant.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” He leaned his elbows on his desk, chin rested on his fist.