by Ely, Jo;
Mother cupboards like, if they can, to die in the natural sunlight, the last lights of the old sun, when it’s time. She is just in time, night’s not fallen yet. Mamma Zeina just catches the moments after curfew, blink, and the general’s sun is switched off. Mamma Zeina will have less than two minutes of natural light, and she knows this too.
Last light, she thinks. Breathes out. She’d never even hoped as far as to end her days cast in natural sunlight, and yet … Here it is. The old sun. She remembers it from when she was a girl. Normally the punishment for being here, now, under the last rays of the old sun after curfew, Well. The punishment for this would be death. Mamma Zeina smiles wryly. And then a grimace of pain.
The sun dips and then glows behind the row of baobab trees on the long horizon, it’s like an invitation, she thinks. Gives her the strength to take more steps toward it, to get clean of the shadows by the general’s back door before she stumbles. Catches herself, only just, then holds there for a moment longer.
Two of the general’s worst killing organisms, the slug poison and a nipping sapling, are working their way through her one hundred year old system.
Mamma Zeina is still standing. At least for now.
And then turning slowly toward the baobab.
Sees the line of the trees.
She is considering the baobab.
These great trees with roots upturned and swelling, arms outstretched toward the sky, strange limbs making curving silhouettes against the last light. Splay-fingered branches, raised up. The baobab which cannot be stopped by the desert. The baobab endures. What better plant for the Sinta mother cupboards to hold on to. We were right to choose it for our sign in The Before, Mamma Zeina tells herself. We were right about some things. You can’t be sure of it all. Crosses herself, whispers ‘Downbutnotout.’
The mother cupboards have endured more than most, the last one hundred years.
‘Down but not out’ is The Last Prayer and also the first one of the mother cupboards.
Nobody can remember what it means now, if anything, but run the words together, add strange intonations, quirks, according to the aspect of your particular congregation or family, the way they turn toward the light when they pray to the baobab, to the left or the right. Forwards or back.
There is the down bet … Not owt
The downbutt … Net art, the
DownbutnotOw … Ttttttttt, sounded out at the end by a long stutter, emphasised by the swishing of birch leaves. It doesn’t matter, she thinks. It ain’t about how you say it, it only matters that you say it: We are down but not out.
But no matter what their creed or origin story, the mother cupboards in both tribes, the Sinta and the edge farmers, have the same singular aim of keeping the childur safe and fed through the crackdowns, the riots, the droughts, by way of a thousand ingenious small schemes. There ain’t nothin’ else to the mother cupboards’ religion, and nor should there be if you ask a true mother cupboard. That’s all, that’s it, that’s everything. The whole of Bavarnica ranged, it seems, against the edge farm childur. The sinta childur. And only the mother cupboards on both sides of the fence standing between the childur and long death. There’s nothing simpler or more complicated than a mother cupboard’s work.
Mamma Zeina looks down at her right hand. She pulls her glove off, with some difficulty. The skin of her hand is reptilian-looking. She’s been greened.
The goal of the general’s greening programme has been to make the Sinta mother cupboards and other rememberers seem inhuman. Dehumanising is usually stage one before a purge, a crackdown on the rememberers on the Sinta farms. The ones who aren’t taking their medicine. There aren’t too many folks in Bavarnica, the general has learned, who’ll risk much to defend the rights of a thing they believe isn’t ‘truly’ human. A witch.
The greening makes the rememberers look a little reptilian, strange. Not entirely inhuman, but ‘off’ just enough that they make a natural target in the country lanes, where they’re often stoned by a passing farmer, or on the streets of the capital city where, they say, the OneFolks might simply take a potshot at them from a high storey window. OneFolk children are told terrifying bedtime stories about witches, just to prepare their minds. They are taught to scream, ‘Witch!’ If they spot a little patch of green behind their nursemaid’s ear or on the family gardener’s thumb, a tendril of green hair twisting out from under their slave Sinta cook’s headwear. There have been even worse things. Unimaginable cruelties since the greening began.
Mamma Zeina has a moss coloured tongue, which she dyes red using beetroot, whenever she can get some, and the white of her right iris, underneath her black eyepatch, is emerald coloured, crystallised and quite blind. And with the glove on her right hand, sewn so tight to prevent any slippage that she generally struggles to remove it at nightfall, it seems amazing even to her that she’s remained undiscovered so far. A Sinta rememberer, member of the mother cupboard cult here in the general’s own kitchen, and for all these years. It’s enough to give Gaddys the village shopkeeper a heart attack.
It has been Mamma Zeina’s greatest triumph, hiding her greening. But she understands that her corpse may be a problem for those left behind her. Once the Egg Men discover she’s greened, they’ll try to rout anyone who has helped her. They will look for her friends. The general’s paranoia has been deadly to his people many times over, and he has been obsessed with outing the mother cupboards ever since he took power.
A new pain enters her eardrum, right side. Mamma Zeina thinks about Zorry. She regrets what she’s done to Zorry. No mother Cupboard relishes reseeding herself. It cannot be helped.
Mamma Zeina breathes deep on the desert air. Lifts her head up, for the last time. Her past one hundred years seem to tumble inward, memories jostling up against each other. She remembers her children’s faces, every one of them, many of whom she didn’t happen to have borned. There will be no tears, at the end. She tells herself. Not one. She will not allow the general any manner of victory over her, not even in dying.
Mamma Zeina asks the baobab for one last thing. At least … she opens her mouth to speak and “Zz …” She says. “Zz …” Something seems to take her voice away.
She falls. Crashes heavily onto her knees, and then her chin hits the earth. She groans.
I have led with my chin all my long life. She tells herself. This thought lessens the pain that encases her skull from the impact. Her jaw is thrust forward and up. There’s a slash in her tongue where she bit, there are several cracked teeth, but Mamma Zeina’s borned twelve childur, including three sets of twins. Alone in a birthing hut, severed the cord with her teeth. Most of her childur were lost when the Sinta fled after the last revolution, caught hiding out in the forest or running toward the mountain. One lasted three days longer than the others, he was her youngest. Hid in the sewers and then dragged out by his heels, right in front of his mother. The others were gaoled or taken by the desert.
There has been nowhere to put the grief. The rage. Nowhere but the work.
At some point in the years after her losses, Mamma Zeina decided to go on living. To go on with her food experiments, to go on spending her nights scouring the killing forest, getting each night deeper and deeper into its dark mouth and spending her evenings with a mortar and pestle, testing pizens on herself, getting the roots and bulbs to Jengi of the plants she believes can be changed. He’ll promise to plant them out by the baobab for the edge farm mother cupboards to garden. Mamma Zeina decided that as long as her body held out then she would hold out too.
Inching forwards, relentless as the desert, slow and sure as it. The mother cupboard pushes it back, death, as it comes. Push for push, step for step. The vines are winding through her and she resists them, every one.
It was in these last few years of nights spent in the mouth of the killing forest that Mamma Zeina discovered something important.
She came to understand that whilst she feels pain, she no longer fears it.
I
t’s the single quality which has made Mamma Zeina the most dangerous mother cupboard Bavarnica has ever known. Dangerous to the general. Her light comes in at her wound.
Holding her eye toward the baobab now and the soft natural light glowing behind it, Mamma Ezray shimmies on her stomach, slow and sure toward that last light. When her legs give out then she uses her elbows. Her left elbow and right hand give up last and then she uses her chin for leverage, to get another few inches forward. These efforts get her just far enough away from the general’s house that she gets to die without the sound of Gaddys in her ears, her high pitched mindless chatter, the nervous laughter of the OneFolk guests and the general’s wife, who just broke out in over-pollinated great sobs and will not be consoled. The explosions of mirth and the tinkling of crystal glasses vanish.
And then Gaddys’ shrill voice washing in and out like a tuneless instrument. Fading.
The desert’s sound rises.
Sand dunes are moving. Spreading up and out beyond the killing forest. The desert’s silence seems to expand. Cicada, rustle of spider, slow slide of snake.
One thing left to do.
One thing.
Last thing.
Mamma Zeina strains her ears toward the sound of the great nothing before her. There is the slow creak of the baobab, in time with the wind. Small rushes of sand, like a chorus.
There’s a small light. At first like it’s tangled in the briar, but then rising in slow uncertain movements up one branch of the lowest baobab.
At first it drifts gently up and down, the light, and then seems to pull free, the small beacon dancing down one branch, bounces to another branch below it and then drops softly. Fizzles out on the earth beneath the tree. Her mind is washing in and out of sense.
She feels the tightening spread to her throat. Soon now. She thinks.
“Did it take long to find me?” She asks the nothing.
And then rising as much as she can rise now.
Her right elbow goes from under her, cheek against the soil now. Hard soil.
Green jewel coloured beetle runs across her splayed left hand and scurries onwards, and now her left eye swivelling upward, following its line of flight. She loses sight of it quickly. And then the small light again, just at the periphery of her vision. Gently up and down. A little above the lowest branch of the smallest baobab. A new small light dances. Smoke.
I said, “Did it take long to find me?”
Now the pain gets worse.
Something comes up from Mamma Zeina’s stomach, her spine ripples and arches, gargling in the back of her throat…..” Zz …” She says … And then, “Listen.”
The last word comes out like a sigh, like a song.
Eyelashes clutch, unclutch the last light.
She closes her eyes.
She seems to give a shudder and then she relaxes.
The small light in the baobab blinks out. There’s the sound of tinny buzzing, distant, and then someone scrabbling down the side of the baobab tree, leaping from the lowest branch, hits the earth and then takes off, running, in the direction of the village shop.
“Damn it, Jengi.” Mamma Zeina’s last words.
A small green leaf is growing out of Mamma Zeina’s mouth now.
The leaf seems to twitch then look up toward the sound of Zorry stumbling and hitting her shin in the shadow by the window. Nearly catching herself on the upturned row of nails along the wooden frame. She climbs down from the window ledge with skill. Narrowly avoids the edge of the moat and slips across the drawbridge quickly, into the garden. Veers right.
Zorry doesn’t see the slump of Mamma Zeina’s body in the shadow. She leaves her behind.
Now there’s only the sound of Zorry’s feet, scramble of small stones. Rhythmic beat of her running. Getting fainter. The vine twists slowly around the slumped shape of Mamma Zeina on the ground.
–––––
SMOKE
ZORRY IS MAKING HER way toward Jengi, now before the feast is over. She figures it’s safer to give the plant to Jengi whilst Gaddys is safely ensconced at the feast table. Zorry reckons she may have a chance to be minutes ahead of the village shopkeeper. It’s a bold plan, perhaps motivated in large part by Zorry’s instinct not to take such a revolutionary plant home to the house she shares with her Mamma Ezray and infant sister Zettie. Doesn’t want to take that kind of trouble to her own front door. Aims to get rid of the water plant as quickly as she can.
When Zorry reaches the village shop, Jengi is waiting in the alleyway beside it, as if expectantly. He’s panting slightly, as though he’d just been running, she thinks. And then dismissing the thought. He is pretending to inhale on his government smoker. Jengi has clearly been waiting for someone.
Jengi’s regulation smoker is a useful alibi as he’s found on more than one occasion when caught out after curfew by the Egg Men. He never inhales but can do a good enough impression of passing out with the effects of the fumes. He has carefully cultivated his reputation as an addict, all the better to be sure he’s underestimated, passed over. Zorry notes that he holds it well away from his face now. Drops it and wipes his right hand on the side of his trousers, crushes it under his foot. It goes on giving off a small light. Jengi lights another. Holds it away from him.
Zorry makes her way towards him by its small light, which lights up one side of his face. His right hand.
Jengi leans against the shop wall at an angle. Cap pulled low.
“Where is Mamma Zeina?”
Jengi has a way of asking you a question as though to test what you know. Zorry finds that sly. She sighs. She has no time for Jengi’s games.
“Do you want this or not? She holds out the cup with the plant root in it.
Jengi doesn’t move to touch it. “I see.” He says.
“Do you, Jengi? What do you see?” And then, “Look … I don’t know why she trusts you but …” Zorry thrusts out her hand. “Look, just take this cup from me, would you Jengi?”
Jengi conceals a small smile. Takes the cup. Touches her hand for a fleeting moment, runs his index finger down her palm.
Zorry pulls back.
Now Jengi examines Zorry by the thin light, seems to see her for the first time. Blink. “Oh! You’re a bit young for a mother cupboard.” Jengi looks disappointed.
“Guess I just happened to be in the wrong place when she was reseeding.”
“No.” Jengi gazes at Zorry, the look is more brotherly now. “Mamma Zeina must’ve chosen you for a reason.” He looks up and seems to glance something behind her. “Now, get out of here. Scramble!” He says.
They both hear Gaddys’ car pull up at the front of the shop. Jengi thumbs toward the fence at the back of the shop, hisses, “That way!” But then catches her upper arm as she leaves. “Zorry.” He says. They are eye to eye for a moment. “She’s never been wrong Zorry. You are a mother cupboard now. Welcome to the resistance.”
Zorry examines his face. She is thinking. It’s a long, strangely unnerving moment for Jengi, the girl seems shrewd beyond her years. He blinks and she moves, sliding into the shadow beside the shop.
“Wait.” He says. “Don’t move yet.”
Now Jengi moves toward the front of the shop, greets Gaddys with a deep bow. Takes her jewelled hand in his own as she steps from the car and doffing his hat at the same time, one sinuous motion with more than a hint of swagger to it.
“What were you doing back there?”
“Smoking, Madam. My apologies.”
Gaddys smirks. Jengi kisses the shopkeeper’s thick, ringed fingers.
Zorry slips noiselessly toward the fence which blocks the other end of the alleyway. She is distracted by Jengi’s strange performance with Gaddys, catches her hand on the top of the fence by mistake. Curses in silence.
Zorry considers that Jengi might have mentioned the broken glass at the top of the fence.
She leaves her blood at the scene.
THE LIGHTNING BOX
ZETTIE QUIETLY SL
IPPED OUT of the yard and meandered toward the schoolhouse, the way she does whenever Mamma Ezray’s too exhausted from her night work, collecting plants in the killing forest, to notice that the small child playing out in the yard is too quiet, that Zettie’s singing has stopped, and Ezray allows herself to drift asleep a little, head face down on the hard kitchen table. She tries to hold her eyes open for as long as she can, but then there is only the soft clucking sound of the chickens, shuffling of the wind in the pear tree in the yard, morning light filtering in through the blinds, and the half open back door, and all of it no reason at all for alarm.
Mamma Ezray’s last waking thought is to tell herself that she’ll only sleep for a moment. Just for a moment, before her work rota starts. And then her eyes closing softly against the smooth circles and knots in the sanded down wood. Blink, blink, and the vegetable scraps, chopping-knife scars in the wood and the hinges and joints of the table vanish. Eyelashes clutch the light, flutter and close. Her breaths get deeper and less hurried. Eyeballs twitch and move underneath her eyelids.
Zettie had, like always, climbed on to the rain barrel outside the kitchen window, to check Mamma Ezray was fully asleep before she started out on her daily expedition. If Zettie had a plan at all, then it was to be home just before Mamma wakes.
There is an transparent cage around the OneFolks’ schoolhouse now, a faraday box made of thin but strong mesh, to protect the children from lightning strike. The OneFolk childur inside the protective box call it Furdy. They have been banned from going outside the Furdy during school hours and especially when it’s storming outside. But Zettie is a Sinta. A slave girl. She is not allowed in. Not inside the Furdy, not inside the schoolhouse. Girl. Slave. They are the most important words in Zettie’s life, coming only after the word ‘Mamma’, in order of importance to the child.
Zettie is only small but she knows what ‘Girl’ means, more or less, but not yet what a ‘Slave’ is. The word seems to her to carry a great physical weight. It has the power to darken the kitchen, she thinks, to press down on her parents’ shoulders, eyebrows and the corners of their mouths. Even the back of her mother’s neck, so that Mamma Ezray’s head sinks a little, under its weight. Some days the word seems to have more power over Mamma Ezray than other days, so Zettie knows that it can rise or sink and bide its time. It is a word which cannot be said at home, not once the evening fire’s lit. A taboo. As if the home fire protects them all from the word, for a while.