Turnabout

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  The frown eased, and a smile dawned, lighting her face and giving her a kind of glow. “I like you, too. A lot.” She stroked my face again, and this time it sent shivers of anticipation up my spine. “I never met anyone like you before in my life.” She glanced around the room. “Is the door locked?”

  I nodded. Suddenly my heart was pounding in my chest.

  She took a step closer. Her hair smelled like flowers. “No one can ever know,” she whispered.

  “Know what?”

  She started unbuttoning her shirt—slowly, not like she was in a hurry. “I wish I was stronger,” she said, “but I’m not. It’s not fair that I see you every day, but I can’t really touch you.”

  I stared at the strip of flesh that showed as she opened her blouse wider and wider. Wild thoughts flew through my head. Did I really want to do this? Would I get into trouble?

  I stared as Teleza undid button after button, and I swallowed hard when she got to the last one. Ever so slowly she let the shirt slip from her shoulders. She didn’t have anything on under it.

  I didn’t give a damn if I got into trouble. At least for once it would be worth it.

  TELEZA had all her clothes back on before I did. “That was nice,” she said.

  I hoped it was. It had been great for me, but I wasn’t entirely sure I’d done everything right as far as she was concerned. “It was wonderful.”

  She smiled and slid across the bed toward me, waiting until I had slipped on my shoes before she kissed me lightly. “I had better go now.” She touched my lips with one fingertip. “Remember! Not a word to anyone.”

  I had a flash of memory—hiding in Becca’s closet while her father rattled the doors. Maybe I could set something up where Hobart got mad enough to scare me into Turning?

  “You won’t tell, will you?” Teleza sounded as scared as I had been in Becca’s closet.

  “I won’t tell.” I felt like a douchebag for giving her a promise, knowing I’d break it if doing so would help me get home. I stood up and pulled my shirt on over my head, partly so Teleza wouldn’t see my expression.

  When I could see again, she had started for the bedroom door. She unlocked it and started for the corridor.

  It occurred to me that if I watched her, I could learn the code that opened the outside door without setting off the alarm.

  “Wait!” I said, rushing toward her.

  She stopped right by the door, one hand on the latch and a pleased smile on her face.

  I looked from her hand to the keypad she was ignoring. The outside door had a five-key cipher lock like a secure facility would have had in the real world. “What are you doing? Don’t you know the code to open the door?”

  Her smile fled as she stared up at me, her eyes widening. “I know it’s locked, but you can open it from this side. You must be able to open it, in case there’s a fire!”

  “Sure, I can open it, but it’ll set off an alarm. Hobart told me that the first day.”

  Her eyes widened with fear. “What?”

  “You can’t open the door when it’s locked or it sets off the alarm.”

  She put one hand over her mouth. “Oh, no!” She glanced around wildly. “I have to get out! Mother will notice if I don’t get my chores done.”

  I wasn’t sure what would happen if someone found out what we’d been up to, but she was so terrified I didn’t have the heart to ask her. “Get ready to run.”

  She looked blank.

  “I’ll push the door open,” I said. “You run like hell for the nearest doorway and disappear as fast as you can. When your mother and your sisters show up, I’ll say I was feeling cooped up and needed some air.”

  A smile of pure relief broke across her face. She reached up to pull my face down and gave me a swift kiss. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” I put both hands on the latch. “Ready?”

  When she nodded, I pushed hard.

  The door flew open, letting in the late afternoon sunshine and a warm breeze. An ear-splitting racket rent the air, and all the birds in the courtyard shot upward, flapping their wings like the devil was after them.

  Teleza ran, her long hair flying out behind her, and her arms and legs pumping like the same devil was after her. She had barely ducked into the laundry room when her mother raced into the courtyard from the kitchen. A moment later Panya and Ulu rushed out of the sitting room door and almost collided with Teleza’s mother.

  “What’s wrong?” the three of them all said at once.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I felt sick. I needed some air.”

  Teleza’s mother frowned at me, but she pulled her PDA out of her pocket and did something that silenced the screech of the alarm.

  “What’s wrong?” Teleza burst out of the kitchen, sounding genuinely breathless, like she’d been running hard.

  “Nothing,” her mother said. She slipped one hand onto my forehead in a maternal gesture. “You don’t have a fever, Jayzoon.”

  “I feel better already,” I said. “Maybe it was something I ate?”

  “Next time, open a window,” Teleza’s mother said, a frown hovering over her face.

  “I’m sorry I disturbed everyone,” I said. “I didn’t know the noise would be that bad.”

  “Maybe you should lie down,” Panya said. “You do look flushed.”

  I wouldn’t let myself meet Teleza’s eyes. “I think you’re right, Panya.”

  “Go back inside then,” Teleza’s mother said. “And I’ll reset the lock.”

  I apologized again, and ducked back inside, leaving the four of them standing in the courtyard. A second later I heard the lock thunk behind me.

  Once I was back in my room, I ate my sandwich, and then I leaned back on my pillow and stared at the calendar on the wall where I had marked off every day since I got to Makoro. Fifty-seven days since I had Turned. Here in Egume, where there were thirteen lunar months, it was the middle of Okello. In Maryland it would be the last week in November. At Clara Barton High School, homecoming was over. Probably we’d lost the game—our football team sucked—and most likely Monica had found someone to take advantage of a free limo ride and gotten a date.

  But had Ryan and Allie done it that night? Was I first to get laid or was he? Even though I might never see Ryan again, it bothered me not to know.

  Teleza’s mother came and got me at dinner time, and the five of us ate at the kitchen table. I tried not to stare at Teleza, but it was hard not to, now that I knew what she looked like naked.

  Teleza’s mother locked me up again after dinner, but I didn’t mind so much this time. I lay on my bed and thought about how great the day had been. After a little while I tried to sleep, but then I heard the gates clang. When I opened my eyes the lights of three hovercars swept across my wall. Adeola and the others were back from the Assembly. I smiled to myself and reached over to the bedside table where I’d left the torn foil wrapper from my one and only condom. I couldn’t bring myself to throw away anything from home—well, not something so inoffensive. I had buried the used condom in the trash can to be sure no one ever saw it. But the scrap of foil had been with me for months and I hated to part with it, even if it was useless and would get me into trouble if someone found it.

  Or would it? Teleza had never heard of condoms. She hadn’t even thought about birth control until I mentioned it. And as terrified as she was that someone might find out about us, she hadn’t given a thought to the risk of getting pregnant.

  I slid the remains of the foil wrapper under the mattress. I could hear Gyasi and Kafele chattering away outside my window. It sounded like they’d had a great time at the Assembly.

  I’d had a pretty good time staying home. Sex was a lot more fun with a girl in the room.

  THE effects of getting laid lasted three days. After the third day, I went back to lifting weights to make myself less restless. It made me good and tired, but I was still on edge.

  That night at dinner, I noticed that Hobart kept watching me.
Whenever I turned my head, I’d catch him staring, and then he’d look away.

  After the girls had cleared the table, we all sat and drank cups of hot herbal tea. It was Teleza’s turn to help with the dishes, so I watched her heft trays and wipe down the tables. Once she dropped a fork and bent down to pick it up, giving me a great view of her ass when she did it.

  As soon as Hobart got up to leave, everyone else stood up. Before I could go two steps Hobart caught up with me and put his right arm around my shoulder.

  “Did you enjoy dinner?” he said, steering me toward the door to the corridor.

  “Sure,” I said as we stepped into the hallway. It was raining so no one used the courtyard shortcut. Kafele and Gyasi ran ahead of us; Gyasi was pretending he was a hovercar, and Kafele was pretending he was too old for that kind of game.

  “So, Jason,” Hobart said, and it occurred to me he was speaking to me in English for the first time in days, “care to tell me what else—or rather who else—you’ve been enjoying?”

  I swallowed but didn’t say anything. How had he found out?

  Hobart tightened his grip on my shoulder and then held out his left hand. When he opened his fist, there was the crumpled foil wrapper I had hidden under the mattress.

  “In Egume,” Hobart said, “people think it’s good to turn the mattress every week or so—makes it last longer.”

  Whoever did that chore—it would never be Hobart—had found the wrapper and given it to him—or to Adeola and she’d given it to him.

  “They don’t have condoms here,” Hobart said. “Not much need, really. Married women use birth control when they need it, but not condoms.”

  He looked a little worried, maybe even annoyed, but in spite of his grip on my shoulder, he was far from angry—nothing like Becca’s father rattling the doors of her closet. So much for using Hobart to scare me into Turning.

  “To repeat myself,” Hobart went on when I didn’t speak, “which of my daughters got lucky?”

  My head reeled at having this discussion. “Does it matter?”

  He sighed and let go of me. “Of course it matters. If nothing else, I need to know who I should chew out.”

  The world was spinning. I’d gotten laid, and it was the girl who was getting blamed for it.

  “I suppose I could lecture them all,” Hobart said. “But then they’d all know what happened.”

  “Teleza,” I blurted out. “But it wasn’t her idea, it was mine.”

  He nodded. “I suspected it was her after I watched her drop that fork tonight.”

  It took me a second to figure out he meant Teleza had dropped the fork on purpose. The idea made me feel pretty smug.

  Hobart frowned. “I was hoping it was Zuwina. That would have been one less problem, anyway.”

  I guessed he meant that Teleza was too young to fool around. I certainly had never paid much attention to Zuwina, even when she was home, which wasn’t often. Adeola spent a lot of time giving her lessons on household management or something.

  “In less than a year you’ll be old enough to get married,” Hobart said. “The Council has confirmed my daughters as a household, and they have first dibs on you, but you have to keep it in your pants until then.”

  My heart caught in my throat. They planned to marry me off to Teleza and her sisters and no one was asking me what I wanted.

  “Don’t look so scared,” Hobart said. “None of my girls would ever hurt you. You like them, don’t you?”

  “How—how many?” I croaked. Hobart had twelve daughters. The youngest was six and the oldest was twenty-three. All of the three oldest girls worked, Zuwina full time, and Bolade and Jumoke in internships after college classes, so none of them were around as much as the younger ones. “How many of your daughters do you mean?”

  He flinched a little at my tone. “Just the six oldest ones.” He turned his head away like he didn’t want to look at me. “That way we’d have room to add an unrelated woman or two to the household if we needed to.”

  I didn’t even ask why they might want or need to do that. I could barely breathe.

  “Are you okay?” Hobart asked.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t though. I had six intended brides. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have them each come in turn to my room every night. My head reeled at the thought. Teleza was totally hot, Panya and Ulu were cute, and none of the others was exactly ugly, even if Zuwina seemed on the severe side sometimes.

  Maybe Hobart was right and I was lucky to have Turned here?

  It could have been a lot worse.

  IT was only two nights after Hobart found me out that I was interrupted as I got ready for bed. I had just pulled off my shirt and tossed it on a chair when a knock sounded on my door.

  The men’s wing was already in lockdown so I figured it had to be one or both of the boys. Hobart would doubtless have company by now.

  I started to yell for them to come in, then realized the automatic lock on my door would have clicked only a few minutes before, so I went to open it.

  Zuwina stood there in a long gray bathrobe. Her black hair, which she usually wore pinned up, was down around her shoulders and her feet were bare.

  I felt my jaw drop. “What are you doing here?”

  She pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped past me into the room. “I’m restoring haru.”

  I had no clue what she meant. I also felt a little awkward with no shirt on, but I didn’t want to look shy by putting it back on. “What?”

  She turned and pushed the door shut, keeping her hand on it until the lock clicked. “I’m here to restore haru.” When I didn’t say anything she made an impatient tisking noise with her tongue. “First Mother told me what happened between you and Teleza.”

  I gritted my teeth at the idea that Adeola and the rest of the household were talking about me and Teleza. “It was none of her business.”

  Zuwina’s eyes opened wide. “How can you say that?” She crossed her arms over her chest, which made her bathrobe gape a little, and I saw that she had a lacy black nightgown on underneath it. “First Mother is within her rights to insist that haru be restored. I will be senior in our household, and Teleza should never have tried to deprive me of my place.”

  I knit my brows, trying to figure it out. “So you’re mad at me because I had sex with Teleza?”

  She snorted. “I’m angry at Teleza for not honoring her obligations. She should have been fifth for you, and not first.”

  It occurred to me that they were assuming I had arrived in their house as a virgin. They were right, of course, but it still annoyed me. “And that’s it? There’s no problem because of my age?”

  Zuwina waved one hand. “That’s a consideration, of course. First Mother has already appealed to the Ocan Garun to declare you legally of age. Once that happens, we can hold a proper wedding.”

  “How—how long will that take?”

  She seemed unconcerned. “A few months, perhaps.”

  “A few months?” Somehow it sounded awfully soon. They might actually hit my real seventeenth birthday in March.

  She nodded. “In the meantime, we must work on restoring haru.”

  I cleared my throat, which seemed suddenly dry. “And how do we do that.”

  She pulled off her robe. Static electricity made the nightgown cling in nice ways, hugging the curve of her hips, and the round, perfect mounds of her breasts. “By having sex.” She looked me up and down. “Take off your pants.”

  I didn’t like her tone, but the sight of her body under her gown made it difficult for me to care. I had started to undo my pants buttons when I remembered I had used my only condom. “Oh!”

  Zuwina was watching me. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t—” I started to say. “I mean, should we use some, um, protection?” I wasn’t sure they called it that. AIDS and other STDs didn’t seem to be a problem here. And Hobart had said there were no condoms.

  One corner of Zuwina’s mouth
pulled up in a near sneer. “You don’t need to worry. I’ve taken care of that.”

  My only qualm evaporated. Zuwina stepped closer. Her hands reached out to stroke my sides.

  “I thought I would have to wait almost a year for this,” she said. “In a way, I’m glad Teleza was so weak.”

  I wanted to say that Teleza hadn’t been weak, she just liked me a lot, but I couldn’t make myself string the words into a sentence.

  And then Zuwina moved one hand down to my waist and undid the last button on my pants. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close against me, feeling the smooth sleekness of her nightgown against my skin.

  Makoro wasn’t such a bad place.

  WHEN I woke up the next morning, Zuwina was gone. I sat down to breakfast in a thoughtful frame of mind. Would everyone know what had happened? If Adeola had given permission for Zuwina to visit me the night before, then she must know, but who else had she told? I glanced around the dining room. Adeola was deep in conversation with two of Hobart’s other wives. Panya and Ulu were busy clearing empty plates and platters from the tables. No one was paying me any attention.

  No, wait! Bolade, the second oldest daughter, was smiling at me in an inviting way from her place beside her next younger sister Jumoke. Had Zuwina told Bolade we had slept together?

  I finished my food, and waited for some sign that she knew. Sure enough, Bolade made a point to brush against the back of my chair on her way out the door. She didn’t say anything to me when I looked up. She just lifted her brows and gave me an even warmer smile, then left the dining room without a word.

  I had lessons with Hobart that morning—the history of Egume. It wasn’t too bad since it started with the Great Folly.

  “So no one bothers to learn what happened before the plague hit?” I asked Hobart.

  He looked up from his book. “Most of the records from before then were lost in the Rage.”

  I cleared my throat. “Speaking of rage, why is Zuwina so mad at Teleza?”

  Hobart froze for a second, and then he shut his book. “It’s because of haru.”