Time Zero

by Carolyn Cohagan

  “I think you should leave,” he says, his soft voice only guaranteeing I feel worse.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Now,” he says, more softly still.

  Standing, I try to think of something to say. Our conversation can’t end this way. I feel desperate to fix it, to make him feel better. He thinks he wants to hear, “I love you, too,” but he doesn’t. It will only make him feel worse, unless it’s followed by “I’m coming with you,” which I can’t say. So neither of us speaks, and I walk out, letting the door lock behind me, leaving him a prisoner once again in a room so tiny he can’t even stand upright.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I WALK ALONG THE HALLWAY IN A DAZE, TRYING to figure out whether I’m more angry at Juda or at myself, but soon realize I’m most angry at Ayan and Nana for wanting Juda to leave.

  Nana said, “The boy seems important now, but I promise you he’s not.” How could she possibly know who on this earth is important? Did the Prophet seem important when She was first born? When She was a teenager?

  Nana declared that Juda was unimportant because he’s male. Is that not just as bad as deeming someone unworthy of an education just because she’s female?

  I look for Ayan, ready to plead my case. In the dining area I find Gray, who directs me to Ayan’s office down the hall. As I’m about to rap on the door, I hear voices coming from inside.

  Ayan sounds agitated. “This isn’t a joke, Rayna. If it happens again, I’ll ask you to leave.”

  I decide this isn’t a good time to knock but find I’m frozen in place.

  “Who else will do your recon missions?” Rayna says with confidence.

  “That’s my concern.”

  A snort. “It’s everyone’s concern. You’ll be a submarine with no periscope.”

  I knew Rayna was trouble. I wonder what she did.

  “I’m revoking your private sleeping quarters,” says Ayan. “You’ll go back to sleeping in the dorms, starting tonight.”

  There’s a loud thunk, as if maybe Rayna has kicked a trash can.

  Rayna says, “How can you just sit here month after month, doing nothing?’

  “You think saving lives is nothing?”

  “Do you know how many more lives we could save if we didn’t hole up here like cowards?”

  “Courage is about doing the moral thing, not giving in to anger.”

  “My anger is not immoral! How many more stonings will you let happen before you—”

  “Stop painting the leaves,” Ayan says. “Don’t make me say it again.”

  Rayna is the one who’s been painting leaves around the city?

  The door flies open. If Rayna notices me, she makes no sign. She marches off, down the hallway.

  Through the open door, I see Ayan sitting in a surprisingly spare room with a white desk and a clear plastic chair. She’s staring straight ahead, breathing deeply. She turns to look at me when I enter, and she doesn’t look pleased.

  “Hello,” I say, feeling awkward. When she doesn’t respond, I continue, “I’m sorry to be nosy,” I say. “I couldn’t help but overhear . . .”

  She raises an eyebrow, doubting me.

  “I thought you should know that . . . uh . . . the leaves that Rayna sprayed helped me find my way to you. I never would’ve figured out Nana’s clue without them.”

  She nods once. “We have a protocol. Leaves are to be painted in very specific areas where they won’t be noticed by authorities. We want women to see them, not Twitchers. Rayna is trying to stir things up. And that is not her place.”

  Oh.

  “Is that all?” she asks irritably.

  I’m guessing this is not a good time to talk to her about Juda. “Do you know where Nana is?” I ask.

  “Probably the library.”

  Seeing my confused face, she adds, “Turn right out this door, then walk to the end of the hall.”

  Leaving the office, I wonder what Ayan means by “specific areas” where women will see the leaves. Have I ever seen a leaf painted at a prayer center? I can’t remember.

  I reach the end of the hall and push through a swinging door, and for a moment all thoughts of leaves and Juda are swept away. The space is huge, bigger than the dining area. Low glass cases line the floor, like the ones the butcher uses to display his pig carcasses in the market. But these cases are not filled with meat. They’re filled with books. Thousands of books.

  The books are stacked on top of each other horizontally, books in all different shapes and sizes, their spines pressing up against the glass—paperbacks and hardbacks. I had no idea this many books still existed in the world, let alone that women were keeping them! I want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  In the nearest case, I read the names on the spines: William Faulkner, Henry Fielding, Janice Fillmore, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Deborah Foiles, C. S. Forester—

  “Mina! Over here!”

  Following the sound of her voice, I find Nana sitting in a far corner.

  “I can’t believe it!” I say, giddy.

  “Welcome to the library.” Nana slumps in a frayed armchair, legs propped on a stool. As I readjust to seeing her so fragile, anger leaks out of me like I’m a draining bathtub. Next to her, on a plain chair, sits the tall, bushy-haired girl who danced last night. Between them, a blue-and-white tea set rests on a small table.

  “This is Grace,” Nana says. “She’s the librarian.”

  Grace seems very young to be in charge. I sit down in a chair opposite the two of them. “What a wonderful job.”

  “Yes,” Grace says, playing with a curl of hair as she looks at the floor. “I mean . . . uh . . . I’m not the librarian. We have . . . uh, several. Miriam is . . . in charge.”

  “Where did all these books come from?” I ask.

  “The Laurel Society helps women in need . . . but its, uh, secondary mission, uh, just as important, is to collect and protect the books of our city.” Grace doesn’t seem to have a lot of practice talking to people. “This collection is, uh, one hundred years old.”

  Dumbfounded, I ask, “The Laurel Society has been in Macy’s for a hundred years?”

  “No, Chickpea,” Nana says. “When the Prophet died and the Teachers outlawed reading for women, a woman named Maud Gayhill began to hide books in her attic.”

  “She was so brave,” Grace says, eyes wide behind her big glasses. “She did all of it—uh, hid books, sheltered women—all with her husband, uh, living in the same house.”

  “After word spread about Maud, books started arriving from all over the island,” Nana says. “Women carried them across town hidden in strollers or wrapped up like pork chops! And not just books—anything they could get their hands on, anything they thought might one day help their daughters get an education: newspapers, magazines, letters, even restaurant menus!”

  “It must have all been, uh, very exciting,” Grace says.

  Grace has not had run-ins with many Twitchers if she thinks crossing the island with a book is “exciting.”

  “Ms. Gayhill, uh, moved the collection when it got too big. It went several places, including, uh, Carnegie Hall, before it ended up here,” Grace says.

  Amazing. I wonder what else women were able to save. What else is buried around the city?

  “Would you like to see what Grace found for me this morning?”

  Nana holds up a magazine. I can’t believe it. It’s the Primer. But it’s like new.

  “Look at her face, Grace,” Nana says, handing it to me with care. “First time I ever saw her speechless in all my years!”

  I run my hands over the cover, which is fully intact. “Time Out,” I say, amazed. “We were both wrong.”

  “Yes, we were, Chickpea.”

  “We have many quality samples of, uh, that title, from the early twenty-first century. It was a popular guide to the city, published on a weekly basis, and many—”

  “Shhh, Grace,” Nana says. “Let her enjoy it.”
>
  “Oh,” says Grace, sitting back. “Sorry.”

  Gently, I flip through the pages I know so well.

  The best Jersey-style dogs.

  Spanish dance-rock stalwarts.

  Bioluminescent bay, full of plankton that sparkle a brilliant blue.

  But it’s the pictures that leave me wonderstruck. For years I’ve been forced to use my imagination to fill the blank squares, and here are the images, finally. Women dancing. Men singing. Men and women, together, drinking, eating food, or gathered in the parks. In the film section, people are doing all sorts of different things: arguing, kissing, running from an explosion. In the music section, they play instruments. A group of women stands holding guitars, wearing next to nothing, their faces smeared with color, their mouths painted to look like wet cherries. They wear high heels like Mrs. Asher’s, and they’re pushing out their breasts with pride. They aren’t wearing much more than that woman in her pink underwear in the Theater District. If I were wearing so little, I would be humiliated. The women in the picture are smiling and laughing.

  They don’t look humiliated. They look strong.

  Nana breaks my reverie, saying, “I was as surprised as you. I thought Ayan had given me the only copy.”

  My head jerks up. “What do you mean? Your mother gave you the Primer. And her mother gave it to her.”

  “Not exactly,” Nana says, looking embarrassed. “I told you that because I had to make sure you would retrieve the Primer if something happened to me. I needed to make it valuable.”

  “So, it never belonged to your grandmother?” I say, confused.

  “No,” she says, with regret. “My grandmother learned to read when there were still a few secret schools for girls. She taught my mother using the Book when my father was at work, and my mother taught me the same way.” She waits for me to respond, and when I don’t, she adds, “Five years ago, I asked Ayan to bring me something that mentioned Macy’s, and she chose our Primer. You’d think she could’ve given me the copy without the torn cover!” She laughs.

  Grace raises a finger. “Actually, it makes perfect sense. Ayan would’ve wanted the more intact sample to stay in the permanent collection.”

  I’m unsettled by Nana’s confession, but it’s hard to say exactly why. “What about the pictures? If your grandmother didn’t cut them out, then who did?”

  “They didn’t seem appropriate for a ten-year-old,” Nana says, shrugging. “It seemed best to remove them.”

  “You damaged a piece from our library?” says Grace, shocked.

  I guess Nana hasn’t told her the fate of our Primer. I have no intention of confessing to Grace now.

  Unsubdued by Grace’s disapproval, Nana says, “Ayan made it clear that the Primer was a gift. It belonged to Mina.”

  I look at the Time Out in my hands, and I’m filled with sadness. “I would have gone to get it without the lie, Nana.”

  “I know that now. How could I have guessed when you were ten years old how you would feel?”

  I wipe my hand across my eyes, stifling a sob.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know the story meant so much to you.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “So what’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  She offers me a cup of tea. “That’s not possible.”

  Grace reaches her hand out for the Time Out, seeming nervous I’ll spill on it, so I hand it back to her. But I don’t feel like drinking tea. “Ayan is making Juda leave.”

  “I know you’ll miss him,” Nana says, “but over time, you’ll see that Ayan’s decision is for the best.” She sips her tea.

  Annoyed that she thinks all decisions have been made, I say, “Miss him? I might go with him.”

  She sits up, stung. “You can’t be serious. People don’t come and go here, Mina. You won’t be allowed to come back! I’ll never see you again!”

  “But why should I have to choose between you?”

  “This isn’t just about me. Look around!” she says, gesturing at the books. “Look at the education that’s waiting for you. You have so much more to learn. You can’t leave all this behind for a boy!”

  Nana looks to Grace, signaling for her to speak.

  Grace leans toward me, her too-big glasses sliding down her nose. “You’ll learn to really like it here. Sometimes it can be, uh, kind of suffocating, I suppose. But everyone is nice, and the books . . .” She looks around, a bee surrounded by a thousand flowers. “The books are just so wonderful, I can’t even tell you. There are so many I could give you to read . . . like the mythology collection that has the story of Daphne and Apollo! We also have oodles of newspapers and magazines and stacks of Time Out. And Miriam offers reading lessons on Wednesdays and Frid—”

  “I can’t wait for you to read your first novel!” Nana blurts.

  I look at the Time Out in Grace’s lap. Nana and I could sit here every day, reading to our hearts’ content, never worrying about being caught or about Father arriving to say “time to go home.”

  “A novel, Chickpea, well, it just opens up your mind in a way you can’t imagine. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never know otherwise.”

  Grace says, “You have a very hard choice. The boy you came with, uh, he seemed nice . . . and he’s, uh, very handsome.”

  Nana shoots her a look. “Thank you, Grace. Maybe you could get us some more tea?”

  Chastised, Grace excuses herself, taking the teapot.

  “Mina, I know you have feelings for the boy. But you’re young and you’re making a mistake that’s going to get you killed!”

  How does she know what will get me killed? She doesn’t realize what I’ve already survived. I’m sick of people underestimating me.

  Now’s the time to say what I came to say. “You just hate all men. Like Rayna. You hate all of them because your husband turned you in for reading. He betrayed you. And now you want me to hate men too. Why can’t you—”

  “He didn’t turn me in!” she says, angered and surprised at my words.

  “What?” I say, confused. “Then who did?”

  A pain crosses her face that I’ve never seen before, a sharp and heavy heartbreak.

  “Mother,” I say, knowing the truth the moment I say it.

  Torment is all over Nana’s face.

  “How old was she?”

  After a while, she says, “Eight.”

  I’m dumbstruck.

  At eight, I was still playing hide-and-go-seek with Sekena. My mother had what I always longed for, a childhood in Nana’s house, and she threw it away—decimated it. Nana wants me not to judge people, to stop and consider the lives they’ve had, what shaped them. But in my mother’s case, I believe she was born cruel.

  “You must hate her,” I say.

  “I love her,” Nana says. “Always.” As her eyes water, I realize I’ve never seen Nana cry. “She was a child. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

  The woman who set me on fire? I imagine she knew exactly what she was doing, even at eight. “Who did she tell? One of her friends?”

  “Oh, no. On the way to the market, she stopped a Teacher in the street, and before I knew what was happening, she’d told him everything. He had me arrested on the spot. My Marga was always smart, resourceful like that.”

  I say nothing. Mother ruined her life. If Nana doesn’t want to hate her, I’ll do it for her.

  Nana sighs. “You are my great love, Mina. You are everything Marga should have been. She was a coward. She loved to read more than you and me combined. Our lessons were her favorite part of the day. But her father would come home, treat her like a princess, talk about the men she could marry, and tell her how important it was that she be docile and pious. She started to fear that no man would want her if she were educated.”

  “At age eight?”

  “Your grandfather convinced her that she would be worthless unless a man wanted her, and that using her brain was a sin.”

&nb
sp; “Grandpa Silna is a pig.”

  “In the beginning, I loved him very much. Just as you love Juda. I was in the Tunnel less than six months before he remarried.”

  I go to her, kneel, and wrap myself around her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t repeat my mistakes.”

  “Refill?” Grace is back, steaming teapot in hand, eager eyes darting back and forth between Nana and me as she tries to ascertain whether she should rejoin us.

  “Thank you, dear,” Nana says, giving her a warm smile.

  Grace fills Nana’s cup. The smell of chamomile fills the air.

  “I was thinking, uh, about what you should read first,” Grace says, her face vibrant. “If you’ll come with me . . . I’d like to make a suggestion.”

  I look to Nana, not feeling that our conversation is over.

  She says, “Go ahead,” seeming tired. I’m not used to this new Nana who gets exhausted so easily.

  When I kiss her on the cheek, she says, “Promise me you won’t leave without saying goodbye.”

  “I would never,” I say, knowing now that I won’t be able to leave her at all.

  “THE BOOK IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES, SO IT’S actually in my room.”

  Grace practically skips down the hallway. I can’t match her enthusiasm; my head is so filled with confusing thoughts.

  We enter what must be Grace’s bedroom, but it looks more like a crazy market stall. A bed in the corner overflows with dolls and fluffy animals, stacks of books and magazines cover every inch of the floor, and what appear to be shower curtains line the walls. One has a big map on it, another has a cherry blossom tree, a third has cotton clouds against an indigo sky, and the fourth has an old Manhattan skyline. Most strangely, in the corner, two mannequins, a young boy and girl, stand dressed in formal wear. He’s in a gray suit with a navy tie, while she wears a frilly lemon dress trimmed with lace.

  Wading into the chaos, Grace grabs a few books and sits on top of the stuffed animals on the bed. With a beaming smile, she says, “Join!” She throws a few dolls off the bed, creating a small patch of free bedspread.

  Once I’m seated, she hands me a book. “This is my favorite, The Secret of the Old Clock.” She hands me a second one. “But this one might be my favorite, too, called The Invisible Intruder. You’ll have to let me know which you think is better.”