Contaminated

by Em Garner

  We don’t really talk for the next few minutes, until it’s time to help her dry off and get dressed again. Both Opal and I are soaked, too, so it’s changes of clothes for us. I hang the wet things on the backs of chairs next to the radiators. In the past we’d have tossed everything we’re wearing into the laundry and not worried about it, but I want to get at least another day’s wear out of them.

  All of this has taken hours and hours of time. I’m glad I took the day off. I’d never have made it on time. I’m glad, too, I let Opal stay home from school. She’s been a big help.

  “I’m hungry,” she says. “Mama, are you hungry?”

  I don’t bother to point out that she’s not going to answer. I just go to the kitchen and open the fridge. It’s pretty bare.

  “Grilled cheese and tomato soup?” I say.

  Opal nods and leads Mom to the table to sit her down. “Mama likes that.”

  She does, I remember that. She used to make fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, with blue cheese or mozzarella and herbed garlic butter. We’ll have to make do with stale tortillas, since the bread’s all gone, and plain old American cheese. The tomato soup’s made with water, since we finished the milk, but we have some golden cheese crackers shaped like fish to put in it.

  It’s our first real meal together as a family in a long, long time. Opal sets the table with the plates. Only a couple of them match, and they’re the ones that were here when we moved in. The rest I picked up one or two at a time from the Jubilee shop. It’s the same with the silverware and glasses, too. We don’t have any napkins, so Opal folds a square of paper towel at each plate.

  “All right, everything’s ready—” I turn, a plate of grilled cheese in my hands, and stop short.

  My mom has a knife in her hand. She’s turning it from side to side, catching the light from the overhead fixture. It’s not a sharp knife, and she’s not holding it like she’s trying to cut anything. She’s looking.

  I think of the list of instructions in the packet they gave me. It specifically said to keep knives, scissors, all sharp things from the Contaminated. Even with the collars, they could be “incited to action.” My mom doesn’t look incited, just confused.

  “Here, Mom, let me have that.” I put down the plate of sandwiches and gently take the knife. I give her a spoon, instead. “Use this for your soup.”

  “Put an ice cube in it,” Opal says. “Mama always put ice cubes in the soup when it was too hot.”

  “Good idea.” I ladle soup—there’s exactly enough for three bowls, and I make sure to take a little less so they both have more. I add an ice cube or two to each bowl and break my mom’s sandwich in half before putting it on her plate.

  “Like this, Mama.” Opal snaps her fingers to get my mom’s attention, and surprisingly, Mom looks up. Opal pushes the spoon through her soup, away from herself, then purses her lips and sips daintily. “Like in Heidi, remember?”

  She demonstrates again, crooking her pinky finger. “Fancy. Remember, Mama?”

  Heidi was a movie about a little Swiss girl who’d been raised by her grandpa, then taken to live with rich people. She’d had to learn new manners. My mom has more than that to learn.

  “Away from yourself,” Opal says in a high, hoity-toity voice, and does it again. She sips her soup. “And no slurping!”

  “Like this?” I follow her lead, but make sure to slurp my soup extra loud, to tease her.

  Opal giggles, then forces her expression to be serious. “No slurping!”

  I try again, slurping louder, then talk with my mouth full of soup. “Like this?” Mom pushes her spoon through the soup and lifts it, spilling most of it, to her mouth.

  She slurps.

  So does Opal.

  So do I.

  I want to sing and dance—she’s feeding herself. She reacted again to us, something Jean and the instructional videos had warned would be unlikely to ever happen unless it was a negative reaction, like what had happened with Jerry. Yes, she’s sloppy and uncoordinated. Yes, she has a hard time with the sandwich until I break it into bite-sized pieces for her, but she feeds them to herself.

  “She likes it,” Opal says. “See, Velvet? I told you Mama liked grilled cheese and tomato soup!”

  After dinner, Mom watches TV while Opal and I do the dishes. We have a dishwasher, but it’s broken, and getting the landlord to fix anything around here is ridiculous. Besides, I don’t mind, really. We don’t have a lot of dishes, and we’ve sort of made a game out of it, me seeing if I can wash and rinse a dish before she’s dried and put away the last one. Opal doesn’t know it, but I go extra slow sometimes to make sure she doesn’t fall behind.

  We’re almost finished when the floor squeaks behind us. Opal and I both turn. The apartment’s not big, one big room, basically. Mom’s come around the back of the couch to stand at the line where the carpet of the living room area meets the vinyl flooring of the kitchen. She’s standing there, watching us, her head tilted the smallest bit.

  “Mom?” I say.

  She doesn’t answer. She just looks. I’m tempted to tell Opal to take her back to the TV, but I think about how she’s been behaving differently from what they told me to expect. If she doesn’t want to watch television, she shouldn’t have to.

  Opal and I finish the dishes a couple of minutes later. Mom’s still watching us. She hasn’t moved, except to bring her hands together in front of her. Her fingers link and unlink, twist and turn.

  “What’s she doing?” Opal says.

  “She’s wringing her hands.” I’ve never actually seen anyone do that, but it’s a good description.

  “Like… a bell?”

  “No. Not ringing like a bell.” I demonstrate, imitating the motion my mom’s making with my hands. “It’s like this. Like you’re worried about something.”

  Opal goes to her at once and puts her arms around her. “Are you worried about something, Mama?”

  It would be the perfect time for my mom to put her arms around Opal and hug her for real, but just like everything else, this isn’t a movie. My mom simply stands there until Opal steps back. Then she shuffles again toward the couch, where she sits and faces the television as though she really cares what’s on it.

  I think we’ve all had enough for one day, so though it’s not late, I tell Opal to make sure her homework’s finished and to go take a shower so she’ll be ready for school the next day. She makes a face, and I’m pretty sure she intends to fight me about going to school tomorrow, but there’s nothing she can do about it. I have to go to work. Mom will have to be alone. I’ll think about that tomorrow, too.

  TWELVE

  I’M EXPECTING ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT, but Mom seems to have adapted to her bed. Maybe it’s the restraints, which I apologized for before putting them on her, but she doesn’t make a noise all night long. What I’m not expecting is someone pounding on the door at 5 o’clock in the morning, an hour before I’m usually up.

  I’m dreaming about watching a marching band when the pounding starts, so I don’t get out of bed for at least a few minutes. By the time my brain figures out the noise isn’t the drums but a fist on my front door, I’m totally disoriented. I stumble out of bed and to the door, which I have to open without benefit of the chain lock, since Jerry broke it.

  “Oh,” I say when I see who’s on the other side of the door. “Are you here to fix the lock?”

  Mr. Garcia, the landlord, shakes his head. He’s dancing a little on the front mat, which, like a lot of the stuff here, came with the apartment. It used to say WELCOME. Now it just says WE ME.

  “No. No lock.” He peers over my shoulder and seems disappointed not to see anything.

  I look over my shoulder. Nothing. Opal can sleep through almost anything. “So… what do you want?”

  I have a long list of repairs that need to be done, but it occurs to me that Mr. Garcia’s not there for any of them. Why come now, and so early in the morning, when he’s been steadily ignoring us for the pa
st six months? There can be only one reason, but I’m not going to bring it up first.

  “I got a call from Jerry Wentling.”

  “Yeah? Did he tell you he broke my lock?” I pull the door open to show him the splintered wood, the dangling chain.

  Mr. Garcia looks at the lock, eyes narrowing. “No, no, he didn’t say nothing about the lock.”

  “How about the fact his mother’s dog barks all the time?”

  “No, no,” Mr. Garcia says. “Mrs. Wentling’s dog is fine.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you had to live next door to it,” I tell him. My bare feet are cold, but there’s no way I’m stepping aside to let him in. He’s the landlord, but I’m not sure he has the right to push his way past me. Then again, I’m not sure he doesn’t.

  “Jerry told me about… it.”

  For one split second I’m hoping he means the Connie in the laundry room. That Mr. Garcia’s come to tell me he’s added security, or even that he’s called the police. Suddenly I’d rather face the cops about a suspected murder than deal with what I guess Mr. Garcia’s about to say.

  “What?” I can play really dumb when I have to. It’s particularly useful when dealing with adults or people in government agencies about things like trying to cash the same assistance check twice. Yeah, I knew it was the same check, but “oops, I’m sorry” and an innocent look got me out of that one.

  “It,” Mr. Garcia says again with a swift look over my shoulder. “He says you have one of them in there.”

  I make a show of looking over my shoulder. “A… kitchen table? A couch? They came with the apartment. I don’t really like them, though, so if you want to take them—”

  “No!” Mr. Garcia turns an angry gaze to me. “You know what I’m talking about. One of them. Those Connies! You have one in there!”

  “My mother’s come home,” I tell him as calmly as I can, even though I can feel the fury starting to build. It’s paired with familiar sickness rolling in my gut. Two sensations I hate but can’t seem to get away from anymore for longer than a few hours. I think I used to not feel so angry all the time, but honestly, I’m having a hard time remembering it.

  “She can’t stay here! The lease is for you two only. No others allowed.” Mr. Garcia points a stubby finger at me.

  I don’t flinch. “You take assistance tenants, right? You have a government contract? That’s why we got placed here. The government pays you money so you can house kids like me and my sister, right?”

  “Yes.” He eyes me warily, like I’m trying to trick him. This annoys me, because I’ve never done anything to Mr. Garcia but complain about the stuff that needs to be fixed. I’ve never even been late with the rent. Yeah, we get a portion of it from assistance, but the rest of it comes out of my paycheck. I’ve always made sure he has it on time, which is more than what the Wentlings do. I know that for a fact.

  “Well, I have paperwork releasing my mom into my custody under that new law—”

  “Law? What law? You talking about that stuff on the news?” He grimaces and waves a hand, and, yeah, I know the news is mostly a bunch of crap, but that doesn’t make this any less real.

  “Yeah. You heard about it.”

  A lot of new laws have been passed. The one lowering the age of adulthood from eighteen to seventeen, for example, that let me take guardianship of Opal and declare myself emancipated. The ones that deal with all the money tied up in the accounts of the Contaminated, where it goes, how it’s distributed, what happens to it if the accounts have nobody to claim them. And of course, the one about taking them home.

  “I haven’t heard nothing.” Mr. Garcia crosses his arms and glares at me. “The lease is for two people. Not three. And people! Not… them!”

  “I have paperwork,” I tell him again. I feel like a CD skipping, the same lyrics blurting out over and over. “She’s entitled to residence in the same place as I am. I’m her guardian. Legally. I can show you the papers.”

  “No, no! I don’t wanna see no papers! I got nothing to see! This is still my place!” Mr. Garcia’s voice rises, high like a little girl’s, as his face gets red. “They say I got to take your money and charge what they say, they don’t say nothing about me having to let you stay here!”

  My stomach’s sinking, twisting into a knot at the same time. “But I have paperwork. I have…”

  “I don’t care.” He points his finger at me again. “You and your sister can stay here. It can’t. I can’t have something like that in here! People are scared about that sort of thing! It’s not right!”

  “Well, it’s not right that you don’t lock up your laundry room, either!” I shout.

  He steps back at my sudden forcefulness. I follow him out onto the landing. The WE ME mat’s squishy and cold under my toes.

  “I got attacked in there! Yeah, Jerry didn’t tell you that, did he? That an unneutralized Connie attacked me in there! Could’ve killed me! What do you think I should do about that, huh? Maybe I should sue you!”

  Mr. Garcia’s threatened only for a second. “You see? Dangerous! Too dangerous! No, no, it has to go!”

  Stupidly, I gave him too much ammunition. “She’s my mother, not an it. She’s got the collar—”

  I can see curtains twitching in the Wentlings’ apartment across the landing, and in the apartment next door to me. The one next to the Wentlings’ has been empty for the past few months, but if it had occupants, I’m sure they’d be peeking out, too. Mr. Garcia doesn’t care if he’s making too much noise for this early in the morning, and I’m sure the neighbors appreciate the show even if it woke them.

  “I don’t care about your collar or your papers! I don’t care about nothing! You get out of here by the end of the day! That’s it!” Mr. Garcia crosses his arms.

  He’s about half an inch shorter than I am and not at all intimidating, but there’s no question he means what he says. I soften my tone, try a different way. “Please, Mr. Garcia. We don’t have anyplace to go.”

  I might be imagining him bending a little. “Not my problem.”

  I try a bit harder. “Please? I have to take care of my baby sister, and my mother isn’t a problem, really. I promise.”

  “Jerry Wentling says she attacked him!”

  “Jerry Wentling broke in my door and busted my lock!” I cry. “She was scared! Besides, did he also tell you the collar did what it was meant to, and totally knocked her down? She couldn’t have attacked him even if she tried.”

  Something flickers in his gaze. “I don’t trust those collars. No. You go. Get out.”

  I remember something in time to try again. Mr. Garcia’s daughter, Josie, went to my school. “What if I were your daughter, Mr. Garcia? Trying my best to just keep my family together—”

  I know I’ve said the wrong thing the instant I say daughter. Mr. Garcia’s mouth slams shut, his eyes burn bright with anger. He shakes his head, then his fist right in my face. I step back.

  “My daughter died,” he spits through clenched jaws. “She was a little chubby her whole life. I said, ‘Don’t you worry about it, Josita,’ but she did. And she died! So, no, you can’t have none of those things in there, I don’t care who it was! Now it’s an it, and you get it out of my apartment by the end of the day!”

  I know when to stop. There’s nothing to say to him after this. I nod and step through my doorway. He’s still shaking.

  “She died!” He shouts and raises both fists. “Right there in the street! Right in front of me!”

  Any hope of gaining his sympathy is gone. Instead, I feel sympathetic for him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Your sorry don’t mean nothing,” he says, more quietly, in a voice raw with pain. “They should all be put down. They’re not who they were anymore. I would rather she be dead than what she had become.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, then add, “but I’m glad I found my mom. I don’t want her to be dead.”

  He only looks at me with blank eyes worse than any Connie’s. �
��By tonight. Or else I get the police to throw you out.”

  I’m not sure he can do that, but I don’t want to find out. And this place, it’s a dump, anyway. I hate living here. I don’t like anything about it, so this is a chance to move on to something better, right? Except I have no idea of where I’m going to go or what we’re going to do. As Mr. Garcia stomps away down the stairs, the Wentlings’ curtain twitches again. I see Jerry looking out. He’s smirking.

  I flip him a rude gesture. He makes an exaggerated frowny face, then puts both his fists to his cheeks and twists them like he’s wiping tears. Jerk. I can’t forgive him for this, even if he did save my life.

  I close the door behind me and turn, jumping when I see Opal standing there. “You scared me!”

  “What’s wrong with Mr. Garcia? Why was he shouting?”

  Cotton candy–colored explanations want to come out of my mouth, but once again I figure it’s best to be honest. “He wants us to move out.”

  “Oh.” She ponders this. “Because of Mama?”

  “Yeah.” I sigh, scrubbing at my sleepy-eyed face. “Yeah, because of Mama.”

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “Yeah, but unfortunately, because he owns this building, we have to do what he says.” Suddenly, I have to sit at the table. My legs won’t hold me. My sore butt thuds hard in the chair, which creaks. I almost hope it breaks, since it’s not ours and we can leave behind a broken chair.

  “What… where are we going to go? Hey, does this mean I don’t have to go to school today?” Opal rustles in the fridge for something, pulling out a carton of orange juice she drinks from without a glass. “Gross! Use a cup!”

  She shrugs and tosses the empty into the garbage. “There wasn’t enough left, anyway. So, school?”

  “You have to go to school.” Before she can protest, I hold up my hand. “I need to figure all this stuff out, Opal. Where we’re going to go. All of that.”

  “But I can help you—”

  “Not this time. And if you miss another day in school, you could get into trouble. Or worse, I could. You remember what I told you back when we were first moving here, right?”