We were told to find a hobby. There were a million choices and we tried them all: sports and crafts and art and music. There was so much to do. Every day there was some kind of program and then there were chores and then we had to study for class. No wonder we forgot stuff. We were told that forgetting was natural. Forgetting helped us survive, Jodi told us in Life Skills class, tears in her eyes. She cried as easily as Max. She was more like a kid sister than a counselor. Everybody wanted Jodi to be okay. “You’ll always be reminded,” she said in her hoarse, heroic voice. “You’ll always have your Parent Figures. It’s okay to be sad! But remember, you have each other now. It’s the most special bond in the world.”
Cee raised her hand: “What if we don’t want us?”
Cee raised her hand, but of course she raised her hand. She was Cee. She was Cee, she’d always been Cee, do you see what I mean? I mean she was like that right from the day we arrived; she was brash, messy Cee before the night in the bathroom, before she supposedly puked out her bug. I couldn’t see any difference. I could not see any difference. So of course I had second thoughts. I wished so bad I hadn’t flushed the toilet. What if there wasn’t anything in it? What if somebody’d dropped a piece of jewelry in there, some necklace or brooch and I thought it was a bug? That could have happened. Camp was so fun. Shaving my legs for the mixer. Wearing red shoes. We were all so lucky. Camp was the best thing ever. Every Child at Camp! That was the government slogan: ECAC. Cee used to make this gag face whenever she said it. ECAC. Ick. Sick.
• • •
She took me into the forest. It was a mixer. Everybody else was crowded around the picnic tables. The lake was flat and scummy and the sun was just going down, clouds of biting insects golden in the haze.
“Come on,” Cee said, “let’s get out of here.”
We walked over the sodden sand into the weeds. A couple of the counselors watched us go: I saw Hunky Duncan look at us with his binoculars, but because we were just two girls they didn’t care. It only mattered if you left the mixer with a boy. Then you had to stop at the Self-Care Stand for condoms and an injection, because becoming a parent is a serious decision! Duncan lowered his binoculars, and we stepped across the rocks and into the trees.
“This is cool!” Cee whispered.
I didn’t really think it was cool—it was weird and sticky in there, and sort of dark, and the weeds kept tickling my legs—but I went farther because of Cee. It’s hard to explain this thing she had: She was like an event just about to happen and you didn’t want to miss it. I didn’t want to, anyway. It was so dark we had to hold hands after a while. Cee walked in front of me, pushing branches out of the way, making loud crackling sounds, sometimes kicking to break through the bushes. Her laugh sounded close, like we were trapped in the basement at Lulu’s. That’s what it was like, like being trapped in this amazing place where everything was magically half-price. I was so excited and then horrified because suddenly I had to take a dump, there was no way I could hold it in.
“Wait a sec,” I told Cee, too embarrassed to even tell her to go away. I crouched down and went and wiped myself on the leaves, and I’m sure Cee knew what was up but she took my hand again right after I was done. She took my disgusting hand. I felt like I wanted to die, and at the same time, I was floating. We kept going until we stumbled into a clearing in the woods. Stars above us in a perfect circle.
“Woo-hooooo!” Cee hollered. “Fuck you, Neighbor!”
She gave the stars the finger. The silhouette of her hand stood out against the bright. I gave the stars the finger, too. I was this shitty, disgusting kid with a lamp and a plaque for parents but I was there with Cee and the time was exactly now. It was like there was a beautiful starry place we’d never get into— didn’t deserve to get into—but at the same time we were better than any brightness. Two sick girls underneath the stars.
Fuck you, Neighbor! It felt so great. If I could go anywhere I’d want to go there.
• • •
The counselors came for us after a while. A circle of them with big flashlights, talking in handsets. Jodi told us they’d been looking everywhere for us. “We were pretty worried about you girls!”
For the first time I didn’t feel sorry for her; I felt like I wanted to kick her in the shins. Shit, I forgot about that until right now. I forget so much. I’m like a sieve. Sometimes I tell Pete I think I’m going senile. Like premature senile dementia. Last month I suggested we go to Clearview for our next vacation and he said, “Tish, you hate Clearview, don’t you remember?”
It’s true, I hated Clearview: The beach was okay, but at night there was nothing to do but drink. So we’re going to go to the Palace Suites instead. At least you can gamble there.
Cee, I wonder about you still, so much—I wonder what happened to you and where you are. I wonder if you’ve ever tried to find me. It wouldn’t be hard. If you linked to the register you’d know our graduating class ended up in Food Services. I’m in charge of inventory for a chain of grocery stores, Pete drives delivery, Katie stocks the shelves. The year before us, the graduates of our camp went into the army; the year after us they also went into the army; the year after that they went into communications technologies; the year after that I stopped paying attention. I stopped wondering what life would have been like if I’d graduated in a different year. We’re okay. Me and Pete—we make it work, you know? He’s sad because I don’t want to have kids, but he hasn’t brought it up for a couple of years. We do the usual stuff, hobbies and vacations. Work. Pete’s into gardening. Once a week we have dinner with some of the gang. We keep our Parent Figures on the hall table, like everyone else. Sometimes I think about how if you’d graduated with us, you’d be doing some kind of job in Food Services too. That’s weird, right?
• • •
But you didn’t graduate with us. I guess you never graduated at all.
• • •
I’ve looked for you on the buses and in the streets. Wondering if I’d suddenly see you. God, I’d jump off the bus so quick, I wouldn’t even wait for it to stop moving. I wouldn’t care if I fell in the gutter. I remember your tense face, your nervous look, when you found out that we were going to have a check-up.
“I can’t have a check-up,” you said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because,” you said, “because they’ll see my bug is gone.”
And I just—I don’t know. I felt sort of embarrassed for you. I’d convinced myself the whole bug thing was a mistake, a hallucination. I looked down at my book, and when I looked up you were standing in the same place, with an alert look on your face, as if you were listening.
You looked at me and said: “I have to run.”
It was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. The whole camp was monitored practically up to the moon. There was no way to get outside.
But you tried. You left my room, and you went straight out your window and broke your ankle.
A week later, you were back. You were on crutches and you looked … wrecked. Destroyed. Somebody’d cut your hair, shaved it close to the scalp. Your eyes stood out, huge and shining.
“They put in a bug in me,” you whispered.
And I just knew. I knew what you were going to do.
• • •
Max came to see me a few days ago. I’ve felt sick ever since. Max is the same, hunched and timid; you’d know her if you saw her. She sat in my living room and I gave her coffee and lemon cookies and she took one bite of a cookie and started crying.
Cee, we miss you, we really do.
Max told me she’s pregnant. I said congratulations. I knew she and Evan have been wanting one for a while. She covered her eyes with her hands—she still bites her nails, one of them was bleeding—and she just cried.
“Hey, Max,” I said, “it’s okay.”
I figured she was extra-emotional from hormones or whatever, or maybe she was thinking what a short time she’d have with her kid, now that kids start camp at ei
ght years old.
“It’s okay,” I told her, even though I’d never have kids—I couldn’t stand it.
They say it’s easier on the kids, going to camp earlier. We—me and you and Max—we were the tail end of Generation Teen. Max’s kid will belong to Generation Eight. It’s supposed to be a happier generation, but I’m guessing it will be sort of like us. Like us, the kids of Generation Eight will be told they’re sad, that they need their parents and that’s why they have Parent Figures, so that they can always be reminded of what they’ve lost, so that they can remember they need what they have now.
I sat across the coffee table from Max, and she was crying and I wasn’t hugging her because I don’t really hug people anymore, not even Pete really, I’m sort of mean that way, it’s just how I turned out, and Max said “Do you remember that night in the bathroom with Cee?”
Do I remember?
Her eyes were all swollen. She hiccupped. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m scared.” She said she had to send a report to her doctor every day on her phone. How was she feeling, had she vomited? Her morning sickness wasn’t too bad, but she’d thrown up twice, and both times she had to go in for a check-up.
“So?” I said.
“So—they always put you to sleep, you know …”
“Yeah.”
I just said “Yeah.” Just sat there in front of her and said “Yeah.” Like I was a rock. After a while I could tell she was feeling uncertain, and then she felt stupid. She picked up her stuff and blew her nose and went home. She left the tissues on the table, one of them spotted with blood from her bitten nail. I haven’t really been sleeping since she left. I mean, I’ve always had trouble sleeping, but now it’s a lot worse, especially since I started writing in your book. I just feel sick, Cee, I feel really sick. All those check-ups, so regular, everyone gets them, but you’re definitely supposed to go in if you’re feeling nauseous, if you’ve vomited, it might be a superflu! The world is full of viruses, good health is everybody’s business! And yeah, they put you to sleep every time. Yeah. “They put a bug in me,” you said. Camp was so fun. Jodi came to us, wringing her hands. “Cee has been having some problems, and it’s up to all of us to look after her, girls! Campers stick together!” But we didn’t stick together, did we? I woke up and you were shouting in the hall, and I ran out there and you were hopping on your good foot, your toothbrush in one hand, your Mother Figure notebook in the other, and I knew exactly what they’d caught you doing. How did they catch you? Were there really cameras in the bathroom? Jodi’d called Duncan, and that was how I knew how bad it was: Hunky Duncan in the girls’ hallway, just outside the bathroom, wearing white shorts and a seriously pissed-off expression. He and Jodi were grabbing you and you were fighting them off. “Tisha,” called Jodi, “it’s okay, Cee’s just sick, she’s going to the hospital.” You threw the notebook. “Take it!” you snarled. Those were your last words. Your last words to me. I never saw you again except in dreams. Yeah, I see you in dreams. I see you in your white lacy nightgown. Cee, I feel sick. At night I feel so sick, I walk around in circles. There’s waves of sickness and waves of something else, something that calms me, something that’s trying to make the sickness go away. Up and down it goes, and I’m just in it, just trying to stand it, and then I sleep again, and I dream you’re beside me, we’re leaning over the toilet, and down at the very bottom there’s something like a clump of trees and two tiny girls are standing there giving us the finger. It’s not where I came from, but it’s where I started. I think of how bright it was in the bathroom that night, how some kind of loss swept through all of us, electric, and you’d started it, you’d started it by yourself, and we were with you in that hilarious and total rage of loss. Let’s lose it. Let’s lose everything. Camp wasn’t fun. Camp was a fucking factory. I go out to the factory on Fridays to check my lists over coffee with Elle. The bus passes shattered buildings, stick people rooting around in the garbage. Three out of five graduating classes join the army. Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change! How did I even get here? I’d ask my mom if she wasn’t a fucking lamp. Cee, I feel sick. I should just grab my keys, get some money, and run to Max’s house, we should both be sick, everybody should lose it together. I shouldn’t have told you not to tell the others. We all should have gone together. My fault. I dream I find you and Puss in a bathroom in the train station. There’s blood everywhere, and you laugh and tell me it’s hair dye. Cee, it’s so bright it makes me sick. I have to go now. It’s got to come out.
© 2014 by Sofia Samatar.
Sofia Samatar is the author of the novel A Stranger in Olondria. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, and Stone Telling, among others. She is and Poetry Editor for Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts, and has just moved to southern California to teach literature and Arabic at California State University, Channel Islands. Find her at sofiasamatar.com.
The Mao Ghost
Chen Qiufan
Translated by Ken Liu
I still remember that evening: In the heavy air, the plastic dragonflies hovered just below the eaves like miniature helicopters, drifting about slightly even though there was no wind.
I came home, and Dad was already in the house but kept the lights off. The setting sun came in through cracks in the window, and his face seemed indescribably thin in the dim, yellow light, like a stranger’s. He extended an arm toward me and the sleeve hung loose as though it contained only bones and no muscle. Without even realizing I was doing so, I tried to hang back, staying away from him.
“Qianer, come here. Let Daddy get a look at you.”
I struggled to understand the meaning behind his words. He tried to look at me every day, regardless of my wishes. It seemed that other than looking at me, he had nothing else to say or do. He was always getting my age wrong. Sometimes he would ask me if I was getting along with the other children, and I felt that he was only making conversation because whenever I brought up Xiao Qing or Nana, he always put on an expression that said I’m-interested-but-who-is-that? even though I’d already repeated those names for him at least eight million times.
“Qianer,” he said, and seemed unsure if he should go on. “I want to tell you something.”
“Are you about to go on another business trip?” I asked dutifully.
“No, it’s not that. I’m never going on a trip again.”
“Then you won’t be able to buy me the newest Little Pixies?”
Little Pixies were colorful plastic dolls with fluorescent wings. Dad thought every girl in the world liked them, and so every time he went on a business trip he’d bring back the season’s models from the big cities. They formed a cheerleading squad at the foot of my bed.
“Little Pixies? Oh, we can buy them through the mail, as long as you like them.” He seemed to think of something, and his eyes brightened. “Qianer, I want to tell you that I’ve been Chosen as a host.”
I looked at him blankly, letting him know that I didn’t understand the term.
“It means that the spirit of an animal has chosen to live in my body and make use of my strength until it can become a real animal.”
“Wow, that sounds cool!” I had never heard of such a thing, and asked suspiciously, “But what kind of animal?”
“Oh … A snake? A parrot? Definitely not a rhinoceros. To be honest, I don’t know. Before its form is fixed, a spirit can become any animal, and it’s up to me. What animal would you like?”
“A mao,” I said. “A Bosi mao.” I’d always wanted a white-haired, blue-eyed Persian cat, but Mom had always mercilessly refused. It’s hard enough raising you, she always said.
“Then it will be a mao spirit, the spirit of a cat. You have to work together with me, all right?” The light in his eyes dimmed.
“Okay,” I said. But I didn’t really believe him.
• • •
Dad wasn’t always like that.
Back when I was still i
n kindergarten, I remember him riding his bicycle to the school every afternoon to wait for me. When little me got to sit on the child’s seat on the rear carrier of the 28” bike, I was as excited as if I got to ride a dinosaur. I most looked forward to rainy days so that Dad would cover me with the wide, spacious tent of his rubbery-smelling raincoat. All I could see then were the tire spinning under me and the rapidly receding ground, and I had to guess where we were.
- Are we at Zhongshan Road yet?
- Not yet.
- Are we at Red Pavilion yet?
- We already passed it.
- Are we home yet?
- Guess.
A crisp and joyful braking sound.
Dad stayed home every evening. He would watch TV and then fall asleep on the couch. He was fat then, and again and again his belly would swell like an angry puffer fish and then deflate, jittering, accompanied by his snores. I liked to press my ear against it and listen to the thunderous rumbling from within, which had a hypnotic magic.
Back then Mom and Dad often argued, as if playing some secret game. Whenever I caught them, they pretended that nothing was wrong and changed the topic to me. Of course I knew that most of the arguments were because of money.
Each time, after they fought, Dad would be silent for a few days, like a TV set that was put on mute.
Later, he spent less and less time at home. He went on many business trips and brought back lots of presents for Mom and me. They didn’t fight as much, but it wasn’t clear if that was due to the presents or because it was hard for them to even spend much time together. His potbelly disappeared, and when he put on his uniform, he looked as handsome as a movie star. The way Mom looked at him changed as well, as if she had turned from a tiger to a rabbit.
For me, Dad became a Santa Claus that showed up too often, bringing me new toys that no one at school had seen. The other kids liked to mill about me, asking about this and that, and I was always glad to share with them and lend them my toys. Compared to those lifeless objects, I preferred small animals, the sort that were lively and active. I read all the animal encyclopedias that could be found in the library. My interest wasn’t in the background explanatory text, but the pictures, so that I could imagine what they were like before they went extinct.
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