I Bring Sorrow_And Other Stories of Transgression

by Patricia Abbott

  “It’s a sickness,” Bill Harrison said, nodding his approval. “I think of it as girl trouble. We see it every day—women with too much time on their hands.”

  Looking at Eve’s abdomen for signs of nature’s remedy to this, he pumped himself up and waved his arm around, a representative of the great Wanamaker’s Department Store, and looking obliquely at Eve, shook his head. “Men, when they steal things, it’s tools or something they need or can sell. Girls, well, they take the pretty stuff, the trifles.” He looked at Eve. “Can’t help herself, you know, Hank. And she’ll keep doing it until she gets some counseling or goes to jail.”

  Eve held back the urge to slap him. She could imagine the satisfaction of feeling her hand on his heavily whiskered cheek. Did he think she was deaf or mentally deficient, speaking to Hank as if she wasn’t in the room? Probably some boys’ school behavior he’d learned at his costly Catholic high school, where girls like her were looked on as suitable for child-bearing, as dance partners, hostesses, but not much more. For that matter, why had no one spoken to her for the entire hour she’d sat in the dark office? Why must her husband be brought here to tend to it? Why must he speak for her, take care of her? Who was “we”?

  If it’d made sense when she was fifteen, it didn’t now. There was a woman in the Senate, for God’s sake. It was the 1960s. Her gynecologist was female.

  “Won’t do you any good to smack her around either,” Bill Harrison added suddenly, snapping her out of her stupor. “It’s a compulsion she’s got.” A bead of sweat suddenly mustached his lip. Hadn’t he said this only minutes before? “You’ll have to ask the men in white coats what to call it.”

  The heat in that office rose as he calculated his power over them. He must live for minutes like these.

  Hank must’ve seen the dangerous flash in her eyes then because he began edging her toward the door. “Well, thanks for giving us another chance. There won’t be another incident, I can assure you. She’ll stay away from Wanamaker’s in the future. Right, Eve?”

  Even now he didn’t look at her. No one was looking at her. She nodded anyway.

  “Forget about it,” the man said, finally released from the need to dominate the room. “I know you’ll take care of the little lady. Make sure she gets the kind of help she needs.” He looked at Eve directly for the first time. “Our upbringing, you know. The Church made us responsible men who take care of our women.”

  This responsible man with good upbringing and fine schools who now was a department store cop.

  “I’ve expunged the record, Hank. Never happened.”

  She still felt something bilious coming from Bill Harrison as he was about to release them—to send them off into the world chastened. If he hadn’t found out that Hank Moran was her husband—hadn’t recognized the name—would he have come alone to that dank office and done something to her?

  Like her father, ten years earlier, her husband never said a word on the ride home. It was a Buick LeSabre rather than a bus, but that was the only difference. The silence was the same: scorching and horrible. There were always grim-faced men in charge of her, she thought again. Men who guided her around by the elbow, steering her like an unwieldy ship into port. Men who were ashamed of what she’d done—at their association with her. She’d have to turn it around somehow. That’s what she thought as they began the drive home, to the house she’d filled with baubles and merchandise—some stolen, some charged to her husband’s accounts.

  “You didn’t mean what you said, did you? About an institution?” she asked him suddenly.

  “It’s more like a country club,” he said, reaching into the glove box and throwing her a pamphlet. “Dad played golf there in the forties, in fact.”

  Hot air funneled up her throat, forcing her mouth open. She looked at the slick colored pictures blindly. This was a real place, then—Hank hadn’t said it just to put the fellow off.

  “I’ll stop doing it. I’ll never…” What could she promise him? What words would derail this idea?

  He nodded. “That’s true—you won’t. After you get some help. Ninety-day observation period.” He poked a finger at an early paragraph on the brochure. “That’s the mandatory period.”

  “You are, you are…what do you call it? What you’re doing to me?”

  “Committing you? Yes. Mother and Dad and I talked it over….” Hank tipped his head to the side and frowned. “It’s not like your little stunt today was the first time, Eve. Or even the tenth. It’s not like our house isn’t filled with things you had to have, things you never bother to unwrap half the time.” He pounded the wheel. “Actually, Dad suggested sending you to Norristown State Hospital the last time this happened. Remember when you took that gold pen from the stationer’s?”

  Had she? Had she pinched a pen? She honestly didn’t remember it. “Norristown. That’s a snake pit. You wouldn’t send me there?”

  Stories about Norristown had been part of her childhood. Any kid who acted up was threatened with it. It was practically a chant to skip rope to on the sidewalk.

  Cinderella

  Dressed in brown

  Got carted off to Norristown

  How many shrinks

  Did it take? 1-2-3…

  “They’ll be waiting for you when we get home, Eve. I made the call before I left my office, although I’ve talked to them several times. Mother’s come over to pack an overnight bag. I can bring other things later. This is going to make things better. Give it a chance.”

  “Why can’t you take me there, then? Why these men?”

  He swallowed loud enough for her to hear it. “They have their own procedures, Eve. They were very clear about it on the phone.”

  They, they, they. They were in control. His voice was shaky for the first time. “Just go along with it. Give it a chance.” He kept saying that—like she had any choice.

  The two men were waiting in the driveway, looking eerily like the men at Wanamaker’s. Her mother-in-law stood at the door, suitcase in hand, trying to squelch the smile slithering up her face. Eve wondered if they’d chase her if she tried to run. There was nowhere to go though.

  She would’ve just had lunch downtown and come home if she knew what the day had in store for her. Been content with window-shopping. She straightened up in her seat and looked at the smiling men head-on.

  The Annas

  October 12, 2097

  My name is Anna, and I am one of fifty females duplicated in the months before the world went to shit. I’m speaking into a recording device, hoping for the possibility rather than the certainly that future humans are listening to me. The ones on Earth—save for we fifty—are gone. As the oxygen grew scarce, this experiment, modest though it is, was the best idea scientists came up with.

  Thinking back over the last decades, there were surprisingly few clever ideas. Years of denial that a problem existed wasted costly time. Futile attempts to launch select groups of humans into space literally went nowhere. It’s hard to determine the success of space missions when no communication from anyone has ever been received. Perhaps the mapped destinations were far beyond our reach in more ways than one.

  So at long last, fifty of us were duplicated, each one fifty times. The Annas I mentor have their own first names: Alicia Anna, Abigail Anna, Ashley Anna, and so on. It was thought important that the gynoids think of themselves as individuals—up to a point—so a distinct given name along with a shared surname seemed essential.

  Each “founding mother” keeps an audio notebook on a digital voice recorder, documenting events, observations, opinions. I am not a reflective person, but I see the usefulness in the task. A precise record of what transpired is necessary.

  Why no men? Superior genetic material has been saved, but a male presence, at least in the early days, was thought to be unnecessary, if not dangerous and distracting. Women are better at nurturing a
nd less likely to destroy each other. Or so we hope.

  October 14, 2097

  There is scant time to prepare the gynoids for their role in the new society. Annas are to be mediators. I was an attorney in my former life, handling negotiations between marital partners or business associates for only a few years before the idea of both marriage and business partnerships faded away. Until people began to die in frighteningly large numbers many years before the best predictions.

  Women who can settle small disputes and maintain order are useful. Not a day passed before I was called in to mediate a dispute over the inequity of pod locations. Rotating pod sites was quickly suggested—by me—and accepted. Its inconvenience seems a small price to pay for harmony. Although none of the Annas came up with this solution, they saw its even-handedness at once. They could formulate the pros and cons with admirable speed.

  I have approximately six to nine months to train my Annas before my supply of oxygen is gone. Each mother has roughly the same amount of time to train teachers, engineers, counselors, and so on. These were contested issues—what professions would be necessary in the new world, how many women should be duplicated, what occupations took longest to train. Dentists, for instance, were considered unessential since gynoids would never need them. A broken tooth could be repaired by an engineer or mechanic. And the expertise could be relearned if human life became supportable again.

  The Annas must become self-sufficient—able to survive in this new world. They have been designed with the skill set they need to perform their tasks. It’s the inner self that needs development. This is my charge. I am driven by the need for their eventual success. Do the other mothers feel this responsibility? Surely we were selected for such traits.

  October 20, 2097

  I never had a child. That option was no longer available by the time I was of childbearing age. Even if I had wished to procreate, Peter, my husband, disappeared with most of the males. I was never sure what or who took him, but such occurrences were common, if not rampant, in the final days. Perhaps he rocketed his way to that distant star. I will never know.

  I love my Annas, and I think they can intuit the idea of love if not the actual feeling. Although androids cannot feel emotion in the same way humans do, they thrive, in their own way, from the expenditure of attention and care. When I recently chastised Allison for a lack of patience when settling a dispute between the street cleaners and the tram drivers, I detected a blush. Androidal research, a hot area in the final twenty years, allowed for some improvements in such areas. Can a future generation of gynoids mother humans without such ability? For as much as humans mentor the gynoids now, the hope is that gynoids will mentor humans at some future time.

  October 23, 2097

  When my Annas and I sit in a circle—as we do most days—my face reflects back at me like a hall of mirrors. I feel more nurtured and embraced than I ever did in my former life. And this comes after only a few weeks. Many of the other mothers bond only with each other, but I am more at home among my Annas. We are in synch, as they once said.

  “Don’t you want to come out with us?” Penelope asked me the other night.

  The Penelopes are cleaners and certainly not the sort of women I want to spend time with. “Ella and Madeleine are coming along,” she added, as if that was an inducement.

  I shook my head, citing an emergency to sort out. “Sorry. Maybe some other time.”

  She nodded. “But it makes it bearable, doesn’t it? The times we can let our hair down and put our feet up. Shrug off the pandering quality of companionship from the androids.”

  She turned away, her knap-sacked oxygen tank adhering to her back like a tortoise’s shell. Many of the mothers are unattractive. If I’d been in charge, good looks would have been a requirement. When the population is small, physically pleasing characteristics rise in importance. Why replicate unattractive women? One needs some beauty in a place as barren and featureless at this one.

  We were trained to treat each group equally, but I know I would never have interacted with a Penelope or an Ella in my former life. I can’t think of why they even thought to invite me. Did I seem lonely amongst my Annas, perhaps? Was there something they wanted from me?

  October 29, 2097

  I quickly began to detect subtle differences in temperament and skills among my Annas. Within a month, I could discern twelve superior Annas among the rest. Each time I pinned the correct name on an Anna, she was thrilled. This dozen showed leadership skills and became my head girls, as the British used to say.

  “None of the other mothers know their girls,” Adrienne told me. “They don’t even try to tell us apart.” She frowned. “We may not be human, but we are not without feelings.”

  November 1, 2097

  I insisted on rigid adherence to physical uniformity. Gynoids from other groups began to drift into a corporeal individuality I saw as dangerous. Some chopped their hair off; others inked tattoos on their arms. At a meeting of the mentors, I mentioned this.

  “I think it’s important to keep them functioning as distinct groups,” I said. “I saw a Heather gynoid the other day who could just as easily have been a Carrie. We don’t want them to blend into each other.”

  “Cousins,” Heather said. Carrie nodded. “We’re cousins.” I hadn’t noticed this before

  “There must be allegiance to one’s own group. The girls should not be encouraged to mingle until their group identity is fixed. Until they understand their place in our society.” My voice sounded shrill in the silence of the cavernous hall.

  “How can their identity not be fixed when they are identical?” Heather said after a moment. Heather looked to be a potential troublemaker in the months to come.

  November 4, 2097

  The other mothers made numerous mistakes and I came to understand why. Because a woman has talent as a mathematician or a teacher, there is no reason to assume she’ll be able to function as a leader. Why didn’t the architects of this society see that? Marian might have been an effective social worker in her former life, but now she spent increasing amounts of time having sex with Bonnie and allowing her Marians to drift. Another example. No alcohol had been allocated for our use, but Hannah, a chemist, was able to formulate a facsimile. At least five mothers spent most nights imbibing at her bar. Their duplicates misbehaved similarly, thinking such after-hours behavior was permissible. Environment still counts for something, and ours was faltering.

  “We are still in mourning,” Edith, a psychologist, had the nerve to tell me when I approached her about the matter. “Grieving the loss of home, family, friends. We are not perfect, Anna. It will take some time.”

  “Mourning is a luxury,” I said. There was no time for frivolous behavior in our experiment. Our months of mentorship, of mothering, were running out. Six of my canisters of oxygen were already on the recycling heap. I looked with apprehension at the remaining ones.

  November 7, 2097

  My girls are perfect. Perfect. The head girls inspire the rest. They encourage trust, devotion, and fidelity. They will have to depend on each other so I feel no jealousy in my emerging secondary role.

  We have meetings most afternoons and evenings now to discuss our strategy as facilitators. Sometimes I lead the discussion and sometimes one of the gynoids takes charge. I stay behind to allow them the autonomy they need. Arlene is especially skilled and, of all the Annas, most like me. Every parent likes to imagine her children surpassing her, and I’m no exception.

  If I were a lesser mother, I would eavesdrop on these private sessions, but I have complete confidence in my Annas. They are made in my image, aren’t they? No other group rivals us in discipline, loyalty, adherence to our mission. I—they— might have been military leaders in another life. None of we Annas can bear to watch the anarchy the other groups take part in. Orgies every night, for instance. Did someone belie
ve a single-sex society insured lust would diminish? The behavior we believed to be male-coded occurs in females if given a chance to take root. Did they ever watch the death dance of bumblebees in the autumn? Is this sexual experimentation a similar phenomenon? Annas are ashamed to be associated with it. I long to root it out.

  November 11, 2097

  I have been thinking I am one of the few mothers fit to govern. And the allotted six to nine months for mothering was an error in judgment. It will take years for the non-Anna gynoids to be ready to run this society. If there were only one mother, she’d have enough oxygen for two dozen years or more. Almost half a life. So many of them deserve a quick death.

  November 15, 2097

  We talk about the mistakes the creators of this society made, agreeing it’s within our means to correct them. It is not me who comes up with the solution to the mayhem around us. It is Arlene, of course. The Annas will stage a raid and seize the stockpile of oxygen tanks, bringing them back to our pod. In this way, I can lead all of the gynoids for the foreseeable future. My Annas love me—it’s as if they are handing me a crown when they tell me their idea.

  Do I feel any misgivings about sentencing the other mothers to death? I only have to look around me—to see the moping, wailing, screwing, drinking, and lack of discipline the others suffer from. If our task was to give birth to a new society, only I have what it takes to do this.

  November 22, 2097

  Ironically, today is my birthday, and thus all of the Annas’ birthdays. The plan is to wait until midnight to attack the other pods. For once, the excessive drinking my peers engage in heartens us. It should make our plan of attack easier. I must confess, I tipped a glass or two in nervousness at how it all will transpire. We are not warriors, after all. No soldiers were included in the group of women duplicated.

  I wait and wait, pacing my pod. Arlene suggested I remain here so as not to arouse suspicion. I fancy I can hear the feet of my Annas marching down the hall, entering the rooms of sleeping mentors, taking the oxygen away in the carts used for trash removal. It’s not necessary to lay a hand on anyone. The oxygen in the sleeping tank each mentor uses will run out by morning. I have seen this happen enough times to know how it works. It won’t be a violent death—for most of them. Their lungs are no longer well-functioning organs. They will sleep more and more deeply until they expire.