The nation’s women did their best to protect themselves. They made their husbands sleep in yards and outhouses and sheds. They researched herbs to promote impotence and snuck them into sandwiches. They developed headaches. Those who found themselves pregnant anyway drew runes on their doorways and draped white sashes over their bellies. They prayed and prayed for unmarked babies.
Not a magic child, they whispered. Please not a magic child.
Magic children were, after all, expensive children, the price of them measured in heartbreak and loss. They were taken, worked, and depleted, and then they died young. They were children who belonged not to their families, but to the government. And no one wanted to bear a government child.
The Sparrow was conceived under the spell of the Boro, of course. Two months before she was born, her mother had been rounded up with the other pregnant women and held in a high-security maternity ward, with nurses trained in martial arts and doctors who were excellent marksmen.
Even the orderlies had military training.
“No security measure is too great when it comes to protecting these precious mothers and their blessed progeny,” the Minister intoned on the Vox.
Staff stylists coiffed the hair of the expectant mothers, aestheticians de-clogged their pores, manicurists pampered to their quick-bitten nails. They were given the best food, the sweetest drinks, and the highest-quality drug cocktails to imbue them with a giddy sense of well-being. The mothers felt as though they were floating through clouds of feathers and bubbles. They forgot about their families, about their bellies, about everything. They were happier than they had ever been in their lives.
The Minister congratulated himself heartily.
“A regular humanitarian!” he said to no one in particular.
The Sparrow’s mother couldn’t get enough of it. She stole drug patches from the haunches of passed-out mothers in the recreation hall, or in the bathroom, or the morgue. She raided the trash cans, licked them clean.
The Sparrow, in her unborn, watery world, was as addled as her mother. She dreamed of a tower as high as the sky. She dreamed of a jewel hovering over the world, pulling energy toward itself like a magnet, or a black hole. She dreamed of a wave pulling out of the center of the world, of a man riding its crest, a look of ecstasy on his face. She dreamed of a wobbly tower and a wobbly cart and red flowers and yellow coins and of a girl disappearing into the sky.
She dreamed of her mother.
And then there was only darkness.
9. Now.
No one sees the junk man’s daughter. Not today. At least not so far.
She wears a dress that she made herself from cast-off bits of fabric and a man’s belt wound twice around her waist and a large, wool jacket that used to belong to the junk man, but now belongs to her. In theory. She has nothing on her tiny feet. Her soles are black and thick with road dust and farm dust and factory dust. They do her fine and take her where she wishes to go, which is all a body can ask of a pair of feet. And anyway, she hates shoes.
She sits in the back row of the church, listening to the pastor intoning on the virtues of Virtue, and of the beloved Minister—the Parent of Virtue—in his strange, dark tower in the center of the country. Everyone loves the Minister. It’s the law.
The entire town packs itself into the pews. Church services are required. Of course they are. How else would the population be reminded to pay homage to the Minister, if it weren’t for required services, or the daily adulations, or his face on the money, or his face everywhere else, or the National Radio Broadcasts—blasting into each home at four-hour intervals without invitation, hesitation, or volume control? What better way to be roused in the middle of the night, to have nightmares interrupted, than to be yanked into consciousness with the sweaty, panicked, screaming name of the Minister in the mouth?
The people of the town sit in the church, straight backed, shoulder to shoulder on a rough-hewn bench. To all appearances, they are attentive. It is a practiced attention. Pastor Jenkins clears his throat. His jowls are gray, his eyes hooded, and his hands shake. He hurts. He longs for a drink. This is obvious to everyone. The junk man’s daughter gazes at his face and feels her heart breaking with compassion. She feels his need as if it were her own, and experiences the deepness of the pastor’s ache in her bones. She traces his face with her eyes, studiously imagining a tumbler full of whiskey—all amber and gold—sliding down his throat, hot and cold all at once. She imagines the heaviness on his tongue. The squeeze of his throat as he swallows. She watches as his tongue darts across his lips. She watches as he swallows. To her satisfaction, she notes the creeping flush of his cheeks and the sudden steadying of his voice. The smell of whiskey wafts through the pews.
She smiles.
No one else notices.
The pastor continues with his sermon.
The junk man’s daughter has to pull her knees tight to her chest so that Mr. Brilange and his wife may pass by her in the pew, late as usual. She grabs her bare feet and makes herself as small as she can, in case she is bumped. The Brilanges don’t see her now, but they have before, a couple times, and they do not like her. Mr. Brilange called her a guttersnipe, and Mrs. Brilange called her a tramp. Doesn’t matter. The junk man’s daughter loves them. She loves everyone. She can’t help it.
According to the rules, the pastor is required to make note of the tardiness, though that particular statute, like many rules from the capital, has a tendency to be ignored. They are remote here. A backwater. Often forgotten. They do their best not to make waves. Especially recently.
Especially since the onset of the . . . well. No one knows what to call it. And certainly, no one mentions it. Little quirks started appearing around town, ten years earlier. The roof that doesn’t leak, despite the gaping holes. The jug that makes any water run clean. The old woman who can tell if someone’s lying just by touching their right earlobe. The little boy who can talk to horses and sheep and birds. Useful, that little skill.
No one calls these things magic.
How could they be magic?
Magic is against the law.
Martina Strange, two rows up, starts to cough. The cough tears through her chest and sends rhythmic waves coursing over her back. No one responds. She’s been coughing for years. And she is old. It’s only a matter of time.
The junk man’s daughter stands up. She snakes through the pews. No one notices. She lays her hands on the old woman’s back. The girl is standing so close to the man sitting behind Mrs. Strange, she is practically in his lap. He doesn’t notice. The junk man’s daughter feels a pleasant heat between the skin of her hands and the coat of the woman. She feels the coat thin and give way, and the flannel shirt, and the thermal underwear, and the thin jersey that probably belonged to the old woman’s husband years ago. She presses until she is skin to skin. There is, the girl notices, a cancer wedged in the lung—black and twisted and oozing. The heat on her hands is so hot, she can feel her fingertips start to blister. She closes her eyes and doesn’t move.
The woman shudders.
She lurches.
She gasps, clasps her hand to her mouth, and coughs so hard the sound might have come from the center of the earth. Once, twice, and at that third cough, out of her mouth flies a bird—black and twisted and angry. Oozing pustules for eyes. Talons gripping something bloody. The congregation gasps. The bird hovers in front of Mrs. Strange—all rage and malevolence—spirals four times inside the four walls of the church, and with a tremendous squawk, shatters the third window on the east side and flies out of sight.
Glass spangles the ground.
Bloody, black feathers fall to people’s laps. Every mouth hangs open.
The junk man’s daughter still doesn’t move. Her skin pricks and tingles. She bites her lips and presses her hands to her chest—all hope and anticipation. Still no one notices her. The entire congregation
holds its breath. They wait. A beat passes. And a beat. And a beat.
Oh for crying out loud, the girl wants to shout. Say something. Notice your life!
A beat. A beat.
A bird just flew out of a dying woman’s mouth! You have the proof on your damn laps. The world that you have inherited isn’t the world that you have to claim. There is so much, so much more. But she says nothing and they say nothing and eventually Pastor Jenkins resumes where he left off. The girl sighs and returns to her seat. What else can she do? Shake them?
Marla the egg woman arrives and sits next to the junk man’s daughter just as the service concludes. She is a wide, well-built woman—low to the ground and stable as a boulder. As reliable as earth. The pastor gives her a deferential nod and clears his throat. Drunk or not, there is no way he would report Marla. He wouldn’t dare.
Marla lays her basket on the ground and casts a sidelong glance at the barefoot girl with the cast-off clothes and the coat that should be burned, by the smell of it. She shakes her head. Reaching over, she lays her hand on the girl’s knee and gives it a squeeze. “Hello, my Sparrow,” she whispers. Marla can always see her. For as long as she can remember. The girl doesn’t know why this is, but she appreciates it all the same.
The junk man’s daughter lays her head on the egg woman’s shoulder. There is so much love coursing through her body that she can hardly bear it. She loves the town and each person in it, though few of them love her back. And her love rattles and heats inside her. It thrums against her skin and wrinkles her bones. It hurts, this love. And it exhausts her. She will need to take a break in a moment, find a dark corner filled with quiet and loneliness and thinking.
She has so much to think about.
“Where’s your papa?” Marla asks.
“Feeling poorly,” the girl says with a shrug.
Marla snorts. “You mean drunk,” she says. The junk man’s daughter doesn’t respond. She gazes at the backs of each head in the pew, lets her eyes graze along their straight spines, their aching shoulders, their swollen joints. She looks inside and sees empty bellies, worried minds, broken hearts. She wants to gather each one in her arms, love them to bits. She wants to help them, heal them, give them strong backs and clear eyes and loud voices. She wants their lives to overflow.
And she can do it too. She knows she can. She just has to figure out how.
The egg woman narrows her eyes.
“Just what are you up to, girl?” she says.
The junk man’s daughter closes her eyes. She takes a long, slow breath in through her nose and holds it for a moment. She turns to the egg woman, who instantly clutches her heart. She loves that girl so much it hurts. Her young face is flushed and shining.
“Something wonderful,” the girl whispers.
She kisses the egg woman on the cheek and slips out of the church. No one notices her go. No one speaks to Mrs. Strange, nor do they comment on the deepening flush of her cheeks, the growing glow of good health and vigor.
And no one mentions the bird.
10. Then.
There were only twenty magic children born that year. Nineteen, if you subtract the one that died.
The Constable made a show of holding the dead baby’s mother down as the Inquisitor weighed the tiny corpse, took photographs of the magic mark curling out of the navel, and filled out the forms in triplicate. But really, it was only a show. The woman in the birthing bed was drugged and exhausted. Her soul was worn thin. She gave no sign of resistance, no indication of struggle. Her shoulders were damp clay in his hands, and her eyes were flat, and dull as porridge.
“Come now,” the Constable said. “That’s enough,” as though just by playacting with the mother he could spark a little life in her. If she fought him, he reasoned, maybe she would heal.
“I have authorization from the Minister,” the Inquisitor said, “to gift to your family the full amount, even though his Excellency will be deprived the assistance of this once-blessed child.” He adjusted his glasses on his nose. “It is most generous.”
“Most,” whispered the woman in the birthing bed, “generous.” Even her voice was a cold, dead thing. “Can I have my baby back now?”
The Inquisitor squinched his face as though smelling something foul. “Of course not!” he said. “You have been paid. The procedures are done. The child is marked, therefore the child belongs to the Minister.”
“But—” the woman on the bed began. The Inquisitor interrupted her.
“Young lady, it doesn’t matter whether or not she is alive. Death, in the case of magic children, is irrelevant. A magic child is a government child. And your government thanks you. It says so on this form.”
The woman’s dead eyes burned to life and her ashen cheeks flushed. It was so sudden, so abrupt, that it seemed to the Constable nothing short of a miracle. She is alive! He nearly sobbed in relief. He was new to the job, and he could tell already there was a reason why no one else wanted it. Still, better that he do it than some Minister’s stooge from the capital. This was his town, after all.
The woman twisted this way and that. Her feet were still in their straps, and she would not be able to undo them without a nurse. “Take these off!” she shouted.
“As a spokesperson for our precious Minister and his government—”
She spat. “To hell with the government!” She punched the Constable in the eye. “To hell with the goddamned Minister. Give me my dead baby, damnit.”
The Inquisitor gaped in horror. “Language, lady!” he sputtered. “This is a hospital! Keep your heresy to yourself.”
She thrashed and bit. The Constable got a fingernail in the eye, teeth marks on his bicep, a knee in his groin. He groaned.
“Constable,” the Inquisitor said, “please use the cuffs for the wrists of the heretic traitor, and deal with her at a later time. I expect you know what to do with this kind of law-breaking.”
The Constable, did, of course, though he suspected that what he had in mind was different from what the Inquisitor meant. They had their own ways of dealing with things, out here in the hinterlands. It was better to keep that information as quiet as possible.
Much later, in the Constable’s office, the box containing the dead baby sat on the desk. It had sat there for hours. The Constable opened the lid, and closed it again, wrinkling his eyebrows.
The baby was still dead. That was certain.
The Inquisitor stood next to the wall, a telephone perched between his ear and his shoulder. For some reason, his communicator had ceased functioning normally, and he was forced to humble himself with the substandard technologies of this outlying town. As if his job wasn’t hard enough.
The Constable opened the lid of the box again. Grunted. Closed it.
“Yes,” the Inquisitor said. “Yes, yes, yes.” A pause. “Of course I’ll hold.”
The Constable nearly jumped out of his skin. He opened the box. Closed it with a smack. Shook his head.
“Yes,” the Inquisitor said, “I understand the Minister is very upset. And for good reason. Imagine that woman! Giving birth to a dead baby. And a magic baby, of all things. It is an insult that cannot be borne. But there is still a question of the corpse itself.” Pause. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
The Constable leaped from his chair and started pacing the room. He shot a glance at the box on the desk. Gave a sidelong glance at the Inquisitor on the phone. Slid his eyes back to the box.
“Is there a problem?” the Inquisitor said.
The Constable shook his head. “Nope,” he said. A grimace. “No, I don’t believe so.”
It took three days for the Inquisitor to get an answer. Three days, the dead baby lay in that box. The Constable didn’t sleep a wink. He normally slept on a cot in the back corner of his office. But instead of sleeping, he spent the last three days sitting straight up, his back against the wall,
his knees bent under his chin. Staring.
And he heard it.
And he heard it again.
He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his mouth, shook his head. “Stop being an idiot,” he told himself. Still, he did not sleep. Still, he kept watch.
Finally, the Inquisitor received an answer. Not a particularly good answer, but an answer all the same.
“Come now,” the Inquisitor said. “You will accompany me so you may co-sign the form.”
The two men, along with the phalanx of soldiers, walked to the rubbish heap.
There it is again!
Don’t they hear it?
When they reached the entrance to the heap at the edge of town, the Inquisitor gave the Constable a hard look. “Well,” he said, “go on.”
“Go on what?” the Constable said.
There! Why doesn’t anyone notice?
“Throw the trash on the heap.”
“What?” the Constable sputtered. He clutched the box to his chest. “That’s a horrible thing.”
“No,” the Inquisitor said. “That is our order. There were nineteen magic children born. They have no names. They do not exist. They live only for the Minister. This one—the twentieth—is a dud. So. The trash heap, then.” The Inquisitor was a short man, but he drew himself up, attempted an imperious expression. He pointed to the heap with one, long finger. “Honestly, where do you think the rest of them end up? It’s not like there’s a graveyard for magic children. It would rile people up. Think it through, man.”
The Constable thought he might be sick.
“But,” the Inquistor added, “not the box. Cardboard is expensive.”
Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories Page 15