Writing the Other

by Nisi Shawl

  We lie on the floor and scooch up to our shoulders beneath the bunk. The brain is open, and glowing with what the barge sees outside. I put my head in next to my mom’s. By tilting around I look under the water, on the right or left, or up at the morning sky. The barge sees stuff differently. Through things I think are solid, for instance. And farther away than I can. And if we were still on the main, big, part of the river, there’d be a line in yellow flowing down below my belly. Instead, it’s in Follow mode, with a yellow dot floating over the center of the raft Mom picked out for it to focus on. If that one stops too soon, I get to choose another.

  “Only a couple of other boats are left in front of us,” I say.

  “I thought the others would choose the first moorings they came to.” She sounds satisfied about that. A mooring is a place to put a boat when it is on the water but going nowhere. Because it brought you to where you have to be, Mom says.

  We sail past the Fair’s center, and soon there’s mostly just the ground again and the things that always grow there. The barge’s brain has an arrow pointing up for speed. As the arrow gets shorter I know we must be slowing down. Probably because that’s what the raft does, that Mom told the barge to follow. We are turning right, towards a sort of bridge of wood. It looks like a bridge ending out in the middle of the water. I see the raft pull up next to it and stop. The barge hangs around, confused what to do next.

  “Okay,” Mom says. “Now we’re using ‘Find.’” So I tell it colder, warmer, hotter, burning hot, on fire, until the barge is exactly where we want to be.

  I want to get out right away. My mom thinks we better wait. Why? The others that we moored up with are tying ropes and climbing up the bridge’s legs—actually, the pier’s. But it would be better if we didn’t have to talk to them. We don’t need to be noticed.

  So instead we clean up ourselves. I tell Mom about Baida’s invitation. She laughs. She says he is a Russian, and far away from where they usually live. “I wonder why he’s so sure of himself? Bravado, probably.” I learn that bravado is a way of pretending to be brave. It sounds like I could use it.

  “I told him we’d be there,” I say. My mom says nothing back. She braids my hair without talking.

  There’s still a bunch of cider left from the Nortons. My mom rolls two bottles inside her blanket, longways, and ties the ends of it into a circle to hang on one shoulder. She puts a circle of rope over her other one, and I copy that with the strap of my medicine box.

  It’s easy to jump down onto the pier from the railing of our barge. And we find a trail in the tall grass on the pier’s land side. The sun is high above, headed for noon.

  We go twisting around humpy little hills. No wars to worry about, thanks to the Nortons. Insects sing their high songs and hop away from our moving feet. Bushes of yellow flowers rustle softly from the breezes. I take one into my hands and kiss it.

  My mom is a ways ahead. I walk quickly to catch up, keeping in time to the beats of drums starting to be loud enough to hear.

  A man in a short white dress comes into our sight. He holds his arms out wide for a hug. Panther stops a few steps away from him. “Welcome home, sister,” he says. He stops, too, changes his arms to wave around, like it’s his whole Fair to show off to us. “Welcome home!”

  Mom nods. She just stands there, waiting for this man to move. He looks around her to see me. “Ahh, a little one! Welcome home, my child.” Mom reaches back her hand for me to hold. Everyone sure likes me. Nortons, Baida, this guy, too.

  I nod at the man, but I can’t think of anything to tell him. Thanks? He keeps staring and I sort of shrug my shoulders. Behind him the path splits in two parts. Some other people in white dresses start to come along them, walking our way. Four. More. I have to hug them all? Suddenly this doesn’t seem like such a great place.

  But my mom is already going around the man. She pulls me with her off the path, smiling. “Welcome to you, too,” she says. We pass him and she bends down and I hear her whisper “Run—like we’re playing a game.” So I shout “Tag! You’re it!” and I race by all the surprised people. My box bumps my butt, and my mom laughs and calls after me “Wait! Ida, you silly! Wait for me!” Of course I don’t.

  At the top of the next hill I turn around a second to see if everything’s okay. And to breathe better. The white people are standing where we left them. My mom’s coming pretty slow up the hill. I sit down till she comes.

  We head down the hill’s far side. I notice different plants here. They grow in groups, with bricks between them. It’s a garden. I decide and tell Mom. She smiles, but seems too tired to say anything.

  We keep walking along the path, much larger now. On our left-hand side are some very light marks, some trails in the grass. Looking along them I see cloths stretching out to make tents. Up to where we’re walking comes a boy, first kid I’ve seen since Roa. I stop and say hi. He smiles and looks at the ground. He walks with us not saying anything. His hair is smashed down flat everywhere but on top of his head. He has bare feet, and arms sticking out too long from his shirt.

  How can I get him to talk to me? Before I figure out an answer he turns right off of our way. He steps behind a short fence of sticks and sits down so I can’t see him anymore. A man stands up so I can. Then I hear the sound of water pouring, hitting mud.

  Is someone peeing? Without a bathroom or a head or even a bucket? I ask Mom is it all right to stop and find out. She shakes her head no. “If they wanted you to see what was going on over there, Ida, they wouldn’t have bothered to put up a fence.”

  The fence keeps getting bigger and keeps going along between us and the garden. Now we come to a really main path. So many people walking one way and the other. We’re behind the backs of a short man with a big tan hat and a pair of gloves he puts on.

  Towards us come more and more people. A wet, naked woman has her hair wrapped up in pink and piled on top of her head. A man in a mustache so long it’s hanging off his face hurries to catch up with her. By the time they pass us their arms are around the waists of each other. Coming next is a person I can’t decide whether to call him a boy or a man. Way bigger than I am, way smaller than my mom. His hair is tall, red curls mixed with brown. On his shoulders some yellow fuzzy thing stands balancing. A bird. It has a beak it opens and closes, letting out loud peeps. After this comes a girl on a horse! The horse, not even running, still goes by fast, jingling its bouncing bells. Spots of color on its sides streak along and are gone. The bells and the smell of it last longest. Like hot straw turning into bread.

  Up ahead of us the hat and glove man stops. He has come to a gate to the garden. Also a woman holding onto a wooden cart on three wheels is waiting there. She is turned sideways, blocking up our path. We wait for a moment while they get the gate open and go ­inside.

  The fence changes to bigger sticks placed further apart. I see right through them. This place is full of animals. Big brown shaggy things with huge heads. They ought to be able to make a bunch of noise. Only soft snorting comes from their black noses. They have little, dusty hooves, dark horns, skinny, swatting tails.

  In the distance I hear plenty of other animal sounds. We keep going, but they never get much nearer. Wild honking and disgusted sounding laughter, and a few other things mixed up so I have no idea what to call them. Next to the big quiet animals is an area of muttering chickens. Are they supposed to be this big, up to my waist? The bird on the boy’s shoulder was a baby one.

  And then there are more horses. Magnificent! I can tell they’re interested in me, the way they lay their heads along the fence. Their eyes ask me if I have a gift for them. I wish we could go back to the barge and get them something. Would they like chees? Bredstix? I turn around to ask if my mom knows.

  She’s ducking down beside me on the path with her head tucked in between her knees so she can’t see me. I tap my finger on her back and she pulls me down, too, without even looking up. “Shh!” she says.

  Are we in trouble? I don’t see
anything scary or wrong anywhere. My mom’s untying the blanket. Whispering. I lean close to hear her. “Limp and dry, limp and dry, withered, flapping, hairless dick of a— Here!” She hands me the bottles and makes her blanket be a big scarf over her head. Standing up by putting a hand on my shoulder, she keeps a little bit bent.

  “What’s—”

  “Tell you in a minute!” She shoves me away from the horses and across the path. I try not to bump into the many more people. They crowd around us till we stand in a line. By bending over, Mom makes a little tent of her light brown blanket. Inside, I see her worried face.

  “Ida, dear,” she says, “I’m sorry, I had to get us away from there.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “I saw someone I know, someone I wasn’t expecting to see here.” The line pushes us up. “He may have recognized me from another…pretend.”

  Again we move forward. In front of us somebody asks what is the show. “Riverdreams,” a woman says. “Family entertainment. Whatcha got?”

  A teachie here? I peek out of our tent. I see a few more people, and then the tall stump of a dead tree with a woman standing behind it. Behind her is a gate in a fence of more dead trees, locked together by their silver branches. “That’ll do ’er,” says the stump woman, and two of the people in front of us go through the gate. So the line pushes us up again.

  I duck back under the blanket. “What are we gonna do now?” I ask my mom.

  “Get inside the show. I’ll be able to tell if Rahvee follows us in, and if he does, they have to have another way out.”

  It comes our turn. The stump lady smiles like she likes me. She has fluffy grey hair and extra lines all over her face. She’s old! I give her one of our bottles. “Ain’t you a caution? Takin’ your ma to the show?” I nod yes. “What’s in the bottle, little one?”

  “Cider.”

  “Oooh! All righty, then.” She gives me back two flat open shells with wavy holes sliced in their centers. “What’s your name, little one?”

  “Ida,” I tell her.

  “Well, Ida, enjoy the show.” Everyone here is so nice!

  On the other side of the dead trees is a slanting down field full of curving steps. Some people are sitting in rows, close to the bottom. And at the very bottom I see this giant drum, big as a room. Back and over it curves an enormous shell, like the ones I hold in my hand.

  My mom has been staying in one place with me to look, too, but now she starts down the field, holding onto my hand. She walks real slowly, and winds up with us sitting several rows above everyone else. She snuggles me closer and says “Keep an eye on the entry for me, Ida. He’s not here yet, but he might be further back in line.”

  I turn around on our log sitting place and lean up against my mom’s side again. No one has been coming in behind us, so it’s okay so far. Then these three people show up in the gateway. I can tell only one of them’s a woman. What’s Rahvee look like, anyway?

  Mom answers my question right as I open my mouth to ask it. “Watch for a short, thin man with hardly any hair on his head and a bright yellow skirt. And a big dot on his forehead.”

  Not these guys. They have lots of hair and wear shirts and pants. A big smell of smoke comes off of them as they walk by. I hear them talking and sitting down lower in the field.

  More people come in after that. None of them are Rahvee. They’re all different from what my mom has said. I see so many faces, but I check to be sure each one isn’t Rahvee.

  A bell rings, loud and sweet, and it clears everyone’s words out of the air. After a quiet moment, more words come from all around us, all saying the same thing in different ways:

  Sometimes, I dreams I’m crossing the river, again.

  Sometimes I dreams…dreams I’m crossing the river, again.

  Sometimes…I dreams I’m crossing the river, again.

  Whisperings and shouts and wonderings out loud, and then a strong voice starts singing:

  Wade in the water!

  Wade in the water, children!

  This song is coming up from someone’s toes and knees and belly. And two high voices join together with it, just as good, and all these others under that, singing so powerfully to me:

  See those soldiers dressed in white?

  Soldiers? What kind of war is this music for? I really, really, really want to turn around and see. Is this the show? No one else ought to be coming in by now.

  I twist over my shoulder. Down on the drum a small group of people singing stands. And over the field others are walking toward them. And singing, too. And they are really there, this is not a teachie. It’s a great big pretend! I have to see this. I turn all the way from the gate and sit facing them.

  Gai gonna trouble the water!

  On the drum they have a stone and a blue bench and a wagon with big wooden wheels; a bag, a tall counter, and a long shimmery blue piece of cloth that lies in a circle around their feet and flutters in the wind. They sing some more:

  See those soldiers dressed in blue?

  Gai gonna trouble the water!

  Must be the little ones will see us through;

  Gai gonna trouble the water!

  Music rolling over the air rushes right into me. I stand up. I can do this too. I’m singing:

  Wade in the water!

  They’re really there, they see me, they are, and I know they do. I dance and clap my hands in time and follow them down to the drum.

  Wade in the water, children!

  Wade in the water!”

  I don’t even know what it means, but I am one of its parts. As grand and mysterious as trees, and the deep parts of this music are the dark roots, and the high parts are the lacing of branches arching over us to the sky—

  —and I remember last time I felt like this, running away into the woods. Being bad. Spoiled. I drop my hands from clapping. I look behind me. This time, my mom’s still there.

  She reaches out from under her blanket. Moving also in the music, she wraps me up with her and keeps us walking, over to the side from the center of the drum. Other singers slow down the song, dragging it deeper, lower, quieter now. Somehow I know we’re going to stop this soon.

  Gai gonna trouble the wa-a-a-ter!

  And then the song is over. Only humming keeps the tune. The show is on. And we are in it.

  Biographies

  Nisi Shawl’s short stories have been published widely, including in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; Strange Horizons; Mojo: Conjure Stories; and the Dark Matter anthologies of science fiction by Afro-diasporic writers. Her fiction collection Filter House, from Aqueduct, was a Co-winner of the 2008 James Tiptree Jr. Award. Her reviews and essays have appeared regularly in the Seattle Times since the turn of the millennium, and she is a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Themes in Science Fiction and Fantasy and to The Internet Review of Science Fiction. A board member for the Clarion West Writers Workshop, she likes to relax by pretending she lives in other people’s houses. She was a Guest of Honor at WisCon 2010.

  Cynthia Ward was born in Oklahoma and lived in Maine, Spain, Germany, and the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Seattle. She has published stories in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Bending the Landscape: Horror, and other anthologies and magazines, and has written articles and reviews for Locus Online, SF Weekly, and other magazines and webzines. Her market-news columns appear in Speculations (http://www.speculations.com) and The SFWA Bulletin (http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/). Cynthia is completing her first novel, tentatively titled The Killing Moon. Her website is at http://www.cynthiaward.com.

 

 

 
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