The Age of the Child

by Kristen Tsetsi

  JE: You understand these were not my decisions and that I speak only for the company manufacturing the chips and carrying out the orders of the licensing bureau, yes? With that said, I can tell you that this is a very expensive undertaking being paid for entirely by the government—and so, by the people. This is why we have the rudimentary subdermal microchip versus a retinal implant. To further reduce costs, I can only assume it made sense to sterilize just one sex, and of course it had to be the woman. One man with a malfunctioning hormone could impregnate countless women in a single week, whereas one woman with a malfunctioning hormone…You see?

  DF: Can women expect the hormone to cause any physiological side effects?

  JE: That’s one extra question, but you may have it. To answer, yes, certainly. I expect many women will experience vaginal fulfillment. Oh, don’t look so frustrated, young lady. The hormone is completely safe, and side effects are both minimal and unlikely. I think we should look on the bright side, don’t you? Do you know half of the crimes in this country have been caused by sexual frustration? I believe it’s true. You wait. You’ll see.

  In addition to small and scattered protests decrying the injustice of being forcibly sterilized (“Technically it isn’t sterilization, and I wish people would stop using that irresponsible word,” Congressmember Abe Lakeland told the Daily Fact), the Main Street protest signs Millie drove past on the way to her new apartment reflected what she was seeing in the articles written by her new colleagues: no one knew exactly what they were protesting, beyond the broader idea of licensing. Some expressed a fear that they wouldn’t qualify (even those who didn’t want children at least wanted to qualify). Others, Millie’s mother among them, wondered why such a solution hadn’t been proposed a long time ago.

  Licensing measures moved forward in spite of minority opposition. The announcement that hormonal birth control had been activated came three weeks into Millie’s new job—and approximately three minutes before she invited Hugh on their first date. The same day, print newspapers and any online sources accepted as official media published an identical six-inch brief introducing a new system of corrections referred to only as “Exile.”

  STATE—The state in conjunction with support from anonymous donors completed construction Wednesday on property referred to only as “Exile.” Governor Harryette Michaels said the facility, built at an undisclosed location and described by Michaels as “the state’s best answer to an overcrowded prison system,” will differ from a traditional prison in minor ways whose details Michaels declined to outline.

  The governor said state officials initiated Exile facility planning three years ago and that it did not seem necessary at the time to inform or consult the public.

  “It’s just another prison, in essence. The end,” Michaels said.

  In anticipation of public concern and protest, Michaels stressed that exile as a method of corrections and the Exile facility itself are “perfectly legal and utterly necessary.”

  In an encrypted and anonymous email sent Tuesday to media outlets, an individual claiming to be the facility’s overseer characterized Exile’s system of punishment as “effective” and the overseer’s duties as “principled.”

  The facility is expected to house only those convicted of such child welfare felonies as kidnapping, abuse, neglect, and/or abandonment, Michaels said. Exile will receive its first inmates as early as Friday.

  Also published that day, in each publication’s version of a special section, was the complete list of provisional parent licensing guidelines:

  Guidelines per Executive Order 25538—Parent Licensing

  Licensing requirements apply to any citizen seeking to be a primary biological and/or adoptive parent.

  Primary Applicants may not be denied a license based on race, sex, gender, sexual preference, marital status, or political affiliation.

  Primary Applicants must be between the ages of eighteen (18) and thirty (30).

  Primary Applicants must have a verified Family Care Plan (FCP). A Family Care Plan is defined as one or more licensed individuals who will assume the guardianship of any Primary Applicant’s offspring in the event of the Primary Applicant’s absence due to death or other causes. FCPs may extend to family, friends, and all other parties invested in the welfare of the child.

  Applicants for secondary guardianship licenses under the FCP must be between the ages of eighteen (18) and sixty-five (65).

  FCP volunteers signing as physical guardians must be licensed as secondary guardians.

  Primary Applicants and FCP secondary guardians must: pass a cognitive evaluation.

  pass a six-month in-home dog care evaluation.

  prove a sole or combined income matching or exceeding the minimum cost of raising a child as determined by each year’s calculated projections.

  FCP volunteers wishing to contribute solely by financial means (FCP(f)) need not be licensed, but finances must be verified.

  License is valid for the lifetime of the child(ren) born of a sanctioned pregnancy. Each additional pregnancy requires an additional license.

  Hormone regulation resumes upon the reported birth of the sanctioned child(ren).

  Any unlicensed individual or individuals convicted of willful chip manipulation or hacking, directly or indirectly, for the purposes of damaging the hormone component in order to bypass birth control and conceive a pregnancy will incur a $5,178 fine and lose licensing privileges in perpetuity. Should pregnancy occur as a result of willful chip manipulation or hacking, the individual or individuals responsible will be sentenced to an indefinite period in Exile.

  Unlicensed pregnancies conceived as a result of willful chip manipulation or hacking will be carried to term, at which time the child will become the ward of an adoptive family or, in lieu of an available family, the state.

  Licensed parents convicted of abuse, neglect, or abandonment of a sanctioned child will be exiled. The abused, neglected, or abandoned child will become the ward of a licensed adoptive family or, in lieu of an available family, the state.

  Licensed or unlicensed individuals convicted of willful termination of a pregnancy face lifetime imprisonment.

  Licensed or unlicensed individuals convicted of inadvertently terminating a pregnancy by means of negligence will face manslaughter charges and ten years confinement in a state prison.

  PART THREE

  TWENTY TWO

  Sheetrock and yellow paint covered the interior brick walls Lenny and Floyd had panted and sweated against twelve years before. It was a hot summer day during their senior year when Floyd had finally escaped his parents’ house and run home with Lenny. He’d had been so sure his dad would find him on the street that they’d climbed through one of the mill’s broken windows and hidden for two hours among gritty brick dust and spiderless webs. Half an hour in, Lenny and Floyd had kissed for the first time.

  She smiled at the memory and squeezed his spindly hand.

  The silk mill had been vacant for as long as Lenny could remember before it became one of eight hundred licensing evaluation centers across the country. (She knew there were eight hundred because Millie, while bugging Lenny to promise that she’d give her a referral, had told her there were eight hundred. “If this one refuses me, there are seven-hundred-ninety-nine more to choose from,” she’d said.)

  Decorating the sheetrock and yellow paint, a crowd of life-sized cutouts of happy children danced along the baseboards, balanced on the mounted coat hooks, and peeked over door frames. The rest of the wall space, minus the projection wall, displayed images of licensed carriers. Some were singles, and some were in pairs with one or both in the couple pregnant. All of the carriers had shining cheeks. Their hands held bulging bellies, and each posed in front of a nature scene—a wildflower meadow, a springtime forest, a rippled lake. There was also a hazy white light that glowed behind them, but it was so subtle Lenny didn’t notice it until looking away. She stared at it now, trying to see it straight on, but she was having a hard
time making it out.

  Floyd tapped the folder on her lap. “Why don’t we apply, too? For in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  He shrugged. He said almost under his breath, “Maybe the basement people are giving the wrong idea about things, or. It could be good. Never know.”

  Lenny searched the waiting room for the restroom sign. “Goofy-bear, we’re here for Millie, so don’t get all silly.” She whispered, “Please, please don’t talk about the basement in public.” She got up and asked Floyd to watch her folder.

  “You aren’t leaving, are you?” Millie jumped out of her seat on the other side of the waiting room and dropped her briefcase on Hugh’s lap. Hugh moved it to her empty chair.

  From inside her stall, Lenny heard Millie sighing and fiddling with things at the sinks. She flushed the toilet and opened the door.

  “If the general reference doesn’t work,” Millie said, “will you please reconsider applying?”

  Lenny ran water over her hands. “Aren’t there seven-hundred-ninety-nine mo—”

  “Obviously they all share the same information in a central database. Not everything I say actually means something.—Lenny,” she said and moved between Lenny and the exit, “one licensed reference can nullify as many as two failed sections, depending on what they are. If I fail to provide appropriate answers on the emotional evaluation, for example.” Millie tilted her head, reminding Lenny of the way she used to be in school. “Doesn’t Floyd want one?”

  “He does,” Lenny said.

  “Then you could also be a carrier.”

  “He wants to adopt.”

  “Adopt.” Millie’s chin tucked into her neck and her mouth turned down. “Is he incapable?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The truth was, Lenny didn’t know. She hadn’t come up with a painless way to ask him to find out. Any talk about children gave him hope that she’d changed her mind, but she was so sure of what she didn’t want that she called the toll-free Microchip Monitoring Center on a weekly basis to confirm her hormone was active. She knew too well that chips failed, some-times. Her shelter had taken in more than a few unregistered, un-chipped infants, most with apology notes stuffed in a pocket or a sock. (Her shelter had then brought them in for chipping, as the law required, and then trans-ferred them to a new shelter with neonatal professionals on the volunteer staff, all of it funded for the most part by a small portion of Lenny’s inheritance.)

  Millie said, “So what if he wants to adopt? You could still impregnate.”

  “Impregnate!” Lenny laughed. “Why?”

  “Because. It isn’t enough to be licensed, what do you th—What do you…do you suppose would happen? Every applicant seeking a reference would persuade every person they know to apply, and that would over-whelm the system. Carrier references are the only references of true value to the board.”

  “You said licensed.”

  “Correct. Licensed. I naturally assumed ‘and carrying’ was understood.”

  “But I don’t want to be a carrier.”

  “Yes, Lenny, you’ve said that, but couldn’t you do it for me? What about the benefits?”

  Do It for Your Country’s Continued Positive Growth, urged the pamphlets Lenny threw away at least once a week. The carrier on the cover was a silhouette wearing a sun halo. Inside, a bulleted list praised the integrity and patriotism of licensed parents.

  A licensed parent is a proven paragon of moral superiority.

  Empathy, gentleness, patience, and kindness are the hallmarks of any licensed parent.

  The license to parent is a high honor reserved for the country’s select few who exhibit excellence of character.

  In a world of uncertainty, a licensed parent’s contribution is a certain step toward global harmony...

  Lenny had somehow been added to the Parent Licensing Bureau’s mailing list, a recruitment effort everyone knew was narrowly targeted. Some of the shelter staff Lenny worked with had been getting them, too, and a few had been convinced to go through the evaluation process. Lenny stuffed all the pamphlets she found tucked in her door to the bottom of the trash can where Floyd would never see them. (She’d never told Millie about them, either, because she knew the bureau hadn’t sent Millie any pamphlets. Millie would have told her if they had.)

  Millie went on: “You do know that you wouldn’t have to carry beyond the referral process. I’ve made contacts through interviews, if short-term pregnancy is your preference. The board’s only requirement is a positive pregnancy test. However,” she said quietly, “you should know they urine test all references in-house. No faking.”

  Before Lenny could respond, Millie sidled close enough to whisper in her ear. Lenny instinctively pulled back, expecting nicotine breath, but Millie must have held off that morning for the interview. She smelled like mint.

  Millie murmured against her ear, “If you’re opposed to early eviction and elect to carry to term, we both know you of all people can make a successful drop.”

  Because Lenny refused to impregnate, she didn’t see the point in telling Millie a drop could only be a guaranteed success if the government didn’t know about the pregnancy. They didn’t surveil families, but they did have records of positive pregnancy tests and live births.

  Millie pushed on: Not only would Lenny not be caught and therefore not exiled, but Exile couldn’t possibly be as terrible as everyone believed it was. That it was worse than prison was an unsubstantiated rumor, Millie said. Its true conditions were known only to Exile workers and residents.

  “I do know it can’t be any worse than what Chester Walton’s mother would have done to us had she caught us,” Millie said.

  Lenny couldn’t remember Millie having brought up that day once in the twelve years since it had happened, and she hated the sudden, sickening suspicion that she might have been holding onto it, waiting for a moment like this.

  She remembered, then, that that was the same day she’d promised Millie she would owe her for censoring her Chester Walton story.

  “Is this about the Chester article?” she said. “Because I never said it explicitly, but I thought I paid you back for that with the house Floyd and I—”

  “No! No, no.”

  “Is it—Is it about Chester’s mom? Do I owe you for that?”

  “Oh, Lenny! Do you think you owe me for that?”

  Lenny assumed the best and hugged her, and Millie stiffened the way she always did. Lenny let her go, smiled, and said, “Good luck today.”

  When they returned to the waiting room, Lenny took her seat next to Floyd, who looked past her at Millie. Millie smiled at him as she tucked her-self into her chair.

  Lenny said to Floyd, “Are you two colluding?”

  “What? No, we’re not canoodling. What do you think?”

  She bumped his shoulder with hers. “I said ‘colluding.’”

  “Anyone’d be a fool to collude with her.” He kissed her cheek. “Here.”

  Lenny took the zippered folder of tax documents (her mother’s in-cluded, in case the board needed them) and laid it on her lap.

  “The combination is your dad’s birthday,” her mother had said over shrimp cocktail in the dining room the night before she’d killed herself. She’d bought the neatly packaged shrimp precooked, pre-peeled, and deveined. (Lenny’s dad would have demanded fresh shrimp, had he been there, but he’d been gone five years, and her mom had always liked the circle of pink shrimp from the grocery store cooler.) The Isley Brothers played around them.

  “Tell me what you’re going to do,” her mom said.

  Lenny pushed a shrimp through the cocktail sauce. “Take the winter painting—the one with the white house, not the one with the horse—off the wall and open the safe.”

  “Tell me what you’re going to do tomorrow.”

  Lenny took a bite and wiped the cloth napkin against her lips. “Leave at the same time I do every day, come home at the same time I always do, and don’t look for you.”<
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  “And.”

  “And make sure the basement room gets finished.”

  “Promise me all of it.”

  Lenny’s parents had taught her to take promises seriously, so she never promised anything unless she meant it. She thought back to the day her mom had told her she was ready to die—“I’ve decided it’s my turn, sweet daughter”—and truly believed she hadn’t imagined her mom’s genuine happiness when she’d told her she was not, and had never been, depressed, but was simply ready. Lenny also remembered that when her aunt Kat was dying, her mom had said it was beautiful that people could decide how or when they would leave.

  “Your aunt Kat has known for years what smoking is doing to her,” she said. “Every filter she bites down on with those bloody teeth is a tiny step toward saying goodbye.” The only tragic deaths, her mom had said, were the ones the living fought against. “Like those poor, belittled girls you knew in high school. I don’t care what the legal word for it is. They were murdered by judgment every bit as much as your dad was murdered by a gun.” She’d sighed. “My poor Ernie-bear. Those last moments must have been so devastating.”

  “He didn’t go in a boring way, at least, right?” Lenny said.

  Her mom had laughed. “Right. But he’d never want to leave without saying goodbye, you know that.”

  Her mom was still waiting, taking tiny bites of shrimp and bopping her head to the music. Lenny wanted to run to the basement and hide forever in the construction dust, never promise a word, but that would only delay things. “It’s a simple matter of time,” her mom had said after Murphy died. “The greatest mystery—to me, anyway—is who goes first? Will it be your dad? Will it be me? Will it be you?” She’d lunged at Lenny to tickle her, and they’d all laughed over the fresh pile of Murphy dirt.

  Lenny wiped her eyes with her sleeve and promised everything she was supposed to promise. “I’ll miss you.”