“The counselor warned me, specifically, that I shouldn’t let anyone find out I’m a lesbian,” Daisy said. “I’m not, but the way people like them think, if someone even kisses another girl she’s a lesbian, even if she spends more time in bed with men.”
Gail’s face flushed harder. She motioned for Daisy to continue.
“There’s been two beatings and one reported rape of lesbians on the Cal Tech campus in the past several years.” Daisy sighed. “So much for using the dyke excuse to keep the boys away. I also got warned about having multiple on-campus boyfriends. Apparently most of the Tech boys are so hard up for sex that if they learn about such things, they go all shark feeding frenzy on the woman, assuming anyone with more than one boyfriend will sleep with everybody. Rape bait, to quote the damned counselor.”
Well, Gail thought, that is why the word ‘slut’ was invented, wasn’t it? She didn’t say anything out loud, and chastised herself for her thoughts. From her own college experience, once a woman acquired the slut label, true or not, the group disapproval from the other women would be brutal. One of her casual acquaintances at U of M got caught in this trap, and committed suicide before the psych counselors could convince her and her parents the best solution would be to transfer to another university.
Oh.
“No problem,” Gail said. “Just don’t date any other students, ever. Go off campus for your boyfriends and girlfriends. Don’t let anyone on campus discover your bed habits.” As usual, figuring things out for other people was far easier than figuring things out for herself. This didn’t used to be the case. Before she was a Focus, other peoples’ problems always stumped her, and she had a much better handle on her own issues.
Daisy blinked and stubbed out her cigarette. “Damn,” she said. “Yah, that would work.” She slumped back to lean on the Lightning Oak, and studied the sky. “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but I’m sort of glad to be leaving. This place here is an ongoing disaster, and it’s not getting better.”
“Uh huh,” Gail said, her voice quiet.
“That boss man of yours, Bart, well, he looks ready to lock you in chains. The way he glares at you when your back is turned is not to be believed.”
“Tell me.” Gail suspected as much, but, truthfully, despite all the tricks her Focus transformation had given her, the one thing she couldn’t do was read a non-Transform when she wasn’t looking at him.
“It reminds me of the look John kept giving Sebby – biker friends of mine – before he blew his stack and knifed Sebby bad,” Daisy said. “John’s in the pen for a few years, and Sebby still hasn’t healed up to where he can ride again.” Motorcycles, presumably. “Fear and loathing are both bad shit. Fear that bad gets inside a person and doesn’t ever give up.”
“Do you have any suggestions about what I might do?” Gail said, earnest, not sarcastic. She was familiar with Bart’s fears, and she, too, feared Bart might break, take the final step, and enslave her.
“Sorry, I don’t have any good ideas,” Daisy said. “All I know is that you need to strike first, get him before he gets you, and whatever you do needs to be big.” Daisy paused, shook her head, and lit up another cigarette. “So, Gail,” Daisy said, her voice now turned ‘girl’. “What’s going on between you and Van, anyway?”
Gail’s face flushed again. She wanted to run, run and hide, do anything but talk about her and Van. How she kept thinking about how much simpler her life would be if she let herself continue slipping toward being distant, alone and unloved. She looked at Daisy, and if she ran, Daisy would chase her down.
Cornered, she leapt in, anyway. “Well, you see…”
Life sucked.
(21)
“Hi,” Gail said. She knelt down by Melanie, joining the Transform as she picked cucumbers in the hot late August sun. Melanie gave Gail a half-second glance, and went back to the cucumbers.
“Focus. What can I do for you?”
Well, how about not avoiding me, Gail didn’t say. She had left word she wanted to speak to Melanie three times. Nothing. Now, she had to force the issue. “I want to talk.”
Melanie picked three more cucumbers and didn’t answer.
This was bad. Back at the house, someone cranked up a radio playing ‘Born to be Wild’, quickly followed by several bellows of “turn that damned thing down!” Gail had to smile. Whatever anyone might say about her household, shy and polite wouldn’t be on the list.
“You don’t like me, do you?” Gail said. Shy and polite, indeed. If you couldn’t force a confrontation when necessary, you should have stayed in the womb.
Melanie paused. “I’d rather not talk about this, Focus.”
This wasn’t going to work. All Gail got from Melanie was fear. “Time to take a break from the cukes,” Gail said, final and definite. “Come on and join me, under the Lightning Oak. I’ve got lemonade.” Melanie sighed, stood, and patted out the wrinkles in her pastel yellow frumpy dress. Gail led her away, to the Lightning Oak.
“So,” Gail said, fifteen minutes later, after having failed at over a half dozen conversational gambits. She swore the water froze out of the air after she politely asked Melanie where she had gotten her dress. “Go ahead. Give it to me. Whatever you want to say, say it.”
Melanie turned away. She wanted to leave. Run and hide. Leave the household altogether.
Impossible for a Transform, of course.
“I hate you,” Melanie said, her voice low and rough. “I hate you for transforming, and I hate you for making me a Transform. Everything I once knew is lost.”
Oh, shit. Gail wanted to respond, to protest, but she didn’t. The whole point of these conversations with her Focus attendants was to listen. However, she didn’t get any hate vibes from Melanie. Uncomfortable, yes, confused, yes, hating, no. She remembered her first household meeting, when Melanie had smiled and given Gail her seat. Those weren’t actions driven by hate.
“Ummm?” Gail said. Melanie didn’t even twitch. “I didn’t want to transform, either.”
Melanie picked up a twig and broke it, sharply, into small pieces. Each one she tossed away in anger. Gail waited, patient.
“I was raised strict,” Melanie said, five minutes later. Gail bit her tongue on the obvious ‘I would have never guessed’ rejoinder. “My people believed in heaven and hell, literal and inevitable, and in the rapture, the great tribulation and the second coming. My minister taught us to beware the Antichrist, and to await as the sign the building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem.”
Gail nodded. She knew the type. “No drinking, smoking, sex, dancing or card playing?” In Michigan, there were enough Christian Reformed around for the rest of the population to understand what they and their spiritual brethren were about.
Melanie nodded. “I was supposed to leave high school as soon as it was legal, to get married and fulfill my prophetic heritage, as a woman, to birth lots of babies. I decided I didn’t agree. I left home under threat of physical confinement, but I vowed to them, and to myself, to live a pure Christian life, just not theirs.”
Gail nodded, not quite sure what to make of Melanie’s comments. How medieval! She had talked to people from strict religious backgrounds before, but never anyone who had to run away from home to finish high school and avoid an arranged marriage. She made helpful happy prompting noises, though, and forced a sympathetic expression across her face.
“I found new people, kind, gentle and wise Christian people, in the Ann Arbor area. They supported me and kept me off the streets, thank the Lord. I got a job packing vegetables and got my GED. Later, I went to night school and got an Associate’s degree in business, which got me my U of M job. Until I transformed, I still went to night school. I wanted to teach High School. Experience for real what my overzealous parents forbade me.”
“Then I came along and ruined everything,” Gail said. The household had an epidemic of ‘I came along and ruined everything’; she couldn’t blame them, either. She thought the same way.
Gail poured Melanie another glass of lemonade. Melanie took the glass, and turned away.
“The thing is, I don’t want to hate you,” Melanie said. “I know, in my mind, that you didn’t ask for this, any more than I did. It’s, just…” She put her chin on her fist and fought tears. Sunlight peeked through the leaves of the Lightning Oak, glinting off Melanie’s blonde hair. “Unfair.” She repressed a sob. “The unfairness ruins everything.”
“Tell me,” Gail said. She didn’t understand Melanie. She really didn’t understand Van’s short grunts proclaiming Melanie one of his, that is, super-smart. She seemed to be a typical worship-the-Bible-as-a-heathen-idol fight’n fundy.
“Up until several weeks after I transformed, I believed Transforms were the willing servants of the Antichrist, the hidden mover behind all evil, the hand of Satan on Earth. All Transforms. Yet, here I was, a Transform.
“Leaving home was my only possible grievous sin. Don and I were engaged, but we hadn’t had carnal relations. In the dark days in the Clinic, I decided if God damned me for exercising my free will, then all humanity was similarly damned, and my parents and their pastor’s dispensationalist theology was full of beans. Free will as evil? Every man with power I ever knew, back home, utilized his free will to the utmost, often with sinful impunity. Why weren’t they transformed?”
Did Melanie just say what I thought she just said? Gail asked herself. Surely not. That sort of thing didn’t happen in this day and age. The last place she would ever look for child rape cases would be among the holy and devout. “Impunity is one of the darker aspects of evil,” Gail said, avoiding her suppositions. “Anyone who believes ‘I can do this, regardless of all other considerations, just because I can get away with it’ has fallen into evil. Uh, into sin. Mortal sin?” Gail realized she would need to get slicker with her commiserations and her presentations, if she was going to be her Transforms’ den mother.
Melanie’s eye flicker told the tale: Gail didn’t understand Melanie’s real point. Melanie turned away in disgust. Gail winced and beat her hand on her knee, pissed off at the opportunity she just lost to connect with Melanie.
“I must be just about on the Antichrist level to you, myself, then,” Gail said, quiet. “Woman, in college, almost with a journalism degree, living with a man, going to parties…” Gail paused, and continued, unable to stifle herself this time “…even dancing and playing cards.” She had so wanted to like Melanie, but how could she like someone so screwed up in the head? She wasn’t sure she would ever forgive Van for his comment saying she and her attendants were, at their cores, all the same. “You must think I practically demanded Transform Sickness to strike me from above.” And take her with me. Ick.
“I did, until I realized how full of beans my beliefs were,” Melanie said. “What I hate you for is for destroying my beliefs. For making me realize I’m just another person.” Pause, beat. “That there are no Elect.” Gail suspected Melanie wasn’t ready to talk to her about her moral struggles, and how she came to decide her beliefs were full of shit. Melanie couldn’t look at Gail. Gail decided she would ask Rev. Narbanor to make a special effort to talk to Melanie. Oh, and have him help her decipher Melanie’s theology and emotional struggle. Gail didn’t understand what Melanie even meant by ‘the Elect’. “I’ve come to know you better, though, and despite the magnitude of your worldly sins, in your heart, and in your knowing actions, I’ve realized you’re a goodie-two-shoes. I swear you decide what to wear in the morning based on whether you’ll do good better in one pair of torn jeans than the other.”
Gail snickered, which didn’t win her points from Melanie. “I’ll admit to being a walking contradiction.” She had heard this particular complaint before. “Here I am, a moral crusader against corruption and hypocrisy, and for basic human rights for all, and I don’t particularly like a great many people.” She paused. “I’m not sure where to go, anymore, though, as a Focus. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
Melanie stopped her hunched-back glare at the Ebener’s farmhouse, stood up straight, and glanced over at Gail, a freshening gust of wind lightly tousling her hair. “To me? Why? We’ve never talked.” Mostly because you didn’t want to, Gail didn’t say.
“I trust my friends and confidants,” Gail said. Who all said Melanie was wise beyond her years. Which Gail still didn’t see. “By the way, what did you want to teach in High School?”
Melanie blushed. “Mathematics. Being good in math was, well, the first wedge that life drove between my parents and me. I think too many girls who are good in math are being subtly told to study something else. I want to help them.”
Bingo, with a big gold star! If only she could learn to speak in something besides passive voice, she might even go far. Well, not counting the being-a-Transform problem. Gail smiled.
“Over in the Ebener’s are eleven Transforms,” Gail said. “I’m a Focus, and I can see them as they work, and rest, and care for the kids.” She picked up a fallen twig, and tossed it away. “They – you – are always in my mind. It’s not ‘picture seeing’, though. To my metasense, they’re more like glowing stick figures. If I close my eyes I can, well, focus on them and enlarge them in my metasense. This isn’t like a telephoto lens on a camera, though. Instead, they just become bigger glowing stick figures. To see more details in their glows, I have to get closer. The details click in at around forty feet. Only, the detail range is growing over time; when I left the Detroit Clinic, I couldn’t pick up any details unless I was within five feet. None of this is in any of the standard literature they give Focuses, or in any of the articles I had all of you hunting down. I’ve found quite a few strange things of this nature. It’s because of this that I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with Transforms, and why you were corralled into digging through all that information at U of M.”
“Van explained this already,” Melanie said. She sighed, straightened her dress, and sat back down.
Gail nodded. “It relates. I’m stuck on a problem I need to solve,” Gail said. “You see, well, I can’t seem to talk Bart out of, well, keeping me here as a virtual prisoner except on absolutely necessary Focus business.”
“Well, if you do die in an accident or something, Focus, we’ll all die as well,” Melanie said. She winced. “Uh, sorry. I don’t support Bart’s decisions on many things.”
“Well, it isn’t as if I want to go out partying,” Gail said. “I just feel that by keeping me from going out and doing things, such as what I mentioned before, researching Transforms at the U of M library, or even something as mundane as getting a job at the nearest A&W, I’m not able to keep up with my end of the bargain, to be a better Focus.” Worse, Gail had this tiny voice inside saying to her that by doing so, Bart kept her looking weak and helpless, and therefor unworthy of holding any household power. She would have never noticed such a thing before she became a Focus. Was becoming a conniving bitch part of the Focus transformation? She wasn’t sure she had enough nerve to mention her wild supposition to anyone. “The one obvious weapon available to me, the juice weapon, is, well, morally wrong to use as leverage. In addition, it’s addictive when used badly, perhaps even in all cases. I want to use the juice, and the juice wants me to use it, if you don’t mind me wrongly anthropomorphizing a hormone reaction.” Even though she had used the juice weapon on Sylvie only as a test, ever since she had done so, the juice weapon had called to her, stronger, for more use. “I’m afraid that once I start using the juice weapon, I’ll keep using it and using it, until all of you are enslaved.”
Melanie shrugged. “You may be looking at things the wrong way. You already have all of us enslaved. Why shouldn’t we enslave you as well?”
Gail tensed. Melanie groaned. Gail gave Melanie back her juice. “Sorry.” She took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself. “Yes, we both need each other to survive what the juice is doing to us. I’m not forcing people to stay cooped up in their tents, though, or forcing them to wait on me hand and fo
ot.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Melanie said. Implying she would rather be anywhere else.
“Point made,” Gail said, tasting failure again. Every attempt to tackle the issue edged her closer to enslaving her household. Even thinking about the problem, alone in the dead of night, edged her closer. She kept fantasizing about taking over, how she might go about taking over, and what she might make the people in her household do, if she took over. “I’m running out of patience, though. I’d rather be a good King David than a Nazi about things, but I’m not going to sit back forever and allow myself to be confined indefinitely.”
“Just go.” Melanie’s time-tested solution – run away. Running away had worked for her, from the time she left her parents until the day she transformed. Running away no longer worked for Melanie, though, or for anyone who had transformed. Running away had worked for Virgil Conte, though. Therein lay the difference.
“I can’t just run,” Gail said. She paused and watched the clouds move for a few moments, trying to think of what to say. “Ever since I tried to borrow a car to go to U of M for the afternoon, Bart has people watching me, and the cars.” Gail sighed. “That’s not the message I want to send, either. To you, to Bart, to any of the people in the household.” Especially not to Van. Van grew up around chaos, but a chaos often caused by people being too polite. ‘Anarchy’ was practically a four-letter-word, for him. “Bart and his crew will just find a better way of confining me, if I try and solve my problem by ignoring his orders.”
“Well, if you can’t use the juice weapon because it’s Satan’s lure, then, instead, do something with your Focus tricks you don’t like to do,” Melanie said. “Can I go, now?”
Something she didn’t like to do? Gail smiled. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? It was perfect. “Thanks.”
“Thanks?”
No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) Page 17