by Ruth White
Gramps and Mom begin to hum along with them, while David and I clap our hands in time. It’s not a fast, happy song, but it does have a steady beat. Of course, they’re amateurs, but I imagine that on our Earth this family could make a career with their music, maybe even become famous.
When the song ends, Mom, Gramps, David, and I applaud enthusiastically. The Gilmores are beaming with pride. The next thing I know we are talking and joking around like we’ve been friends for years. Although we’re in the dark, I can hear Colin’s laughter and imagine his face. Tonight he’s not thinking of war.
“Okay, Blues,” he says. “We want to learn new songs. What can you teach us?”
“ ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ ” I say. “It’s the best one.”
“Let’s hear it,” Gil says, and strums his guitar.
“That’s a hard one, Meggie,” Mom says. “Remember how many wacky sounds are mixed into it?”
“It’s okay,” Jennifer tells us. “Dad’s good. He can pick out the chords and play anything you can sing.”
So, between us, David and I are able to recall all the lyrics to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” but we find out that Mom is right. This is a hard one. Still, we try. We get Gramps to sing the lead while David and I do some of the background parts, and hand out others to Mom and the Gilmores. Pretty soon we are all laughing so hard, we can’t even hit the right notes, and Gil has to tell us to hold it down so the night watchman won’t order us to bed.
“They don’t ever say anything to us for being out here,” he explains, “but that doesn’t mean they won’t.”
“Okay,” Mom says in an exaggerated whisper. “Let’s do a nice, quiet one.”
“ ‘Bridge over Troubled Water,’ ” Gramps says. “It’s my favorite. I like to call it the secular Twenty-third Psalm.”
“What does that mean?” Gil asks.
But Gramps jumps right into the song so that he doesn’t have to answer Gil. Mom, David, and I help him with the words, but Gramps has a pretty strong voice, and manages to carry the melody, while Gil picks up the chords.
When the song is over, Gil says, “Those are the most moving lyrics I’ve ever heard.”
“Okay,” David says brightly, trying to raise the mood. “And now for something a little different. Help me, Meggie.”
He wants to do Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” So together we try to sing, but we have a hard time remembering all the words, and even the tune in some places. To make matters worse, David’s voice cracks twice and I can feel how mortified he is. Still, this seems to be the turning point for Jennifer and David. It’s obvious he has impressed her.
“That was sooo marvelous, Daavid.” She stretches his name out like it has three syllables, and her voice is very girly-girly. I imagine David’s heart is thundering like a timpani. “And you too, Meggie,” she goes on. “Please teach me that song.”
But Colin says nothing.
I’m guessing it must be midnight when we reluctantly part, and only then because Mom reminds us that she and Gramps have been called to report to work at eight tomorrow morning. Gil, of course, has to go to his job at the TV station as well. So the Gilmores dutifully climb up through their trapdoor, and we promise to meet again tomorrow evening to sing in the darkness.
“I guess they’re not robots after all,” Gramps says as we grope our way down the hallway to our bedrooms.
“Not tonight,” Mom agrees. “They were fun, and a breath of fresh air in this stuffy place.”
The next day, after my lessons are done, I take the Carriage computer out of the backpack in the closet, prop it up in the center of my bed, and do a search on Chroma. I find more than I can read at one sitting, so I begin with the Blue race. I have just settled in to read when I hear Colin and Jennifer in the living room. I put the computer away quickly and join them. A few days ago I was bored, with nothing to do, and now I wonder if there will be enough hours in the day.
Colin has brought the book he’s so proud of, stashed under his shirt. It is, as he said, about wolves and the Land of the Fathers before the age of industrialization. There are no specifics in it, no names of places or people that we can relate to, and when we check to see when or where it was published, we find there’s no information.
Mom and Gramps come home shortly after five o’clock. They say the work at the factory isn’t hard, but it’s repetitive and boring.
“And you’re not allowed to call us there,” Mom says. “I’m sorry.” She closes her eyes briefly and bites her lip, then goes on, “So if you ever need help, you’ll have to call Tom. That’s part of his job.”
“When do you get a day off?” I ask.
They look at each other and say nothing.
“You have to work every single day?” David says. “How can they do that to you?”
“We’ll be allowed days off when it’s necessary to visit the health clinic, also to go to the park with you when it’s our turn,” Gramps says.
“And that’s all?” David sputters.
“As we told you,” Mom says, “the work’s not difficult.”
But she can’t disguise that gloomy look on her face. “We can stick with it for a little while,” Mom goes on, “until we figure out our next move.”
“Not to worry, Meggie B.,” Gramps tells me. “Let’s consider Fashion City like one of those rest areas where we used to stop on the interstate. We are resting before we get back into our vehicle and move on.”
“I think they are afraid we might wind up in a worse place than this,” David later confides to me. “They know only the basics of programming the Carriage navigator.”
“But Mom was a really smart professor!” I protest. “Wasn’t she trained to navigate the Carriage?”
“You probably don’t remember, since you were only three,” David says, “but it was Gramps who took the training before we left Chroma. Mom was spending all her time with Dad in his last days.”
That bit of information makes me nervous, because I know Mom is the technology geek in our family, while Gramps is the artiste.
The next day, I search the computer and find a tutorial for the Carriage. Could I? Of course I could. Why not? Yes! I’m going to learn all by myself to navigate this space thingy, and you know what? I can do it, because I understand the language.
• 19 •
David Speaks
Living in the Land of the Fathers, we settled into routine. We don’t feel the same bliss that Ulysses’s men felt in their lotus stupor, but we are temporarily reconciled to the idea of living in this mundane world.
Mom and Gramps go to work early each day, while Meggie and I take care of the apartment and do the food shopping. We’ve learned that in Fashion City boys and girls our age are expected to develop homemaking skills in preparation for having a family someday. In the afternoons we obediently do our monotonous schoolwork. For some reason Meggie’s class lasts longer than mine. Then we go for a walk with Colin and Jennifer, or if the weather is bad, we meet inside. Sometimes we go to their place, which is exactly like ours, but usually, just out of habit, we gather at our place.
Gil has decided that our night group will always meet on our balcony, because he says it’s inconsiderate to expect Mom and Gramps to climb up through the trapdoor. Sure, it’s nice of him, but if he’d ever seen Mom and Gramps doing chin-ups or playing sports with me and Meggie, he’d know Mom is no buttercup and Gramps isn’t feeble. Still, it’s okay with us, so we let Gil be the gentleman and have his way.
Jennifer is a shining star in this otherwise dreary world. In fact, I’m torn between wanting to be with her and wanting to leave this place forever. Which do I want more? I can’t say. I’ve been so wrapped up in her spell, it’s taken me a while to notice Meggie’s crush on Colin. As her big brother, I feel obligated to discourage her—for her own good, of course.
“You know, he’s not interested in a girl your age,” I tell her one day.
“I’m little, but I’m old,” she says to me.
“You know what I mean,” she says. “Our minds are equal.”
I have to laugh at that. “Why, you haven’t even achieved blue yet,” I remind her—once again.
“Blue means nothing to him,” she says. “Furthermore, you dork, it means nothing to me either. In this world, it’ll only get you in trouble.”
I chuckle because I know she doesn’t really feel that way. I’m not blind to her habit of checking the mirror two or three times a day. She’s dying to see blue.
But Meggie’s crush on Colin isn’t nearly as hysterical as Gil’s crush on Mom. He is sooo obvious, it’s embarrassing. He picks up small gifts for her—chocolates, flowers, a fruit basket. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. And both of them pushing forty.
Occasionally we come across Bonnie, the woman next door who is afflicted with gross vacillation, and we see Tom each evening at lockdown, or when he’s collecting schoolwork. Sometimes he brings our work back to us for corrections, but only when we’ve been careless. We’d have to be in a coma to have real problems with these classes.
We’ve met only a few of the other tenants in our building. Colin and Jennifer told us there aren’t many young people living here, and no small children at all.
“As soon as a new baby is born, they move,” Jennifer explains. “Everybody but us seems to be moving up.”
Meggie doesn’t care much for food shopping, and I certainly don’t like dusting and vacuuming, so we trade off, and that’s how I wind up doing most of the grocery shopping by myself.
Often Tammy pushes a few of the blue boxes into my hands. “Take some of these today,” she says with a goofy Lotus smile. “One Lotus for a difference you’ll notice.”
I accept them because I feel like I can’t refuse. Mom tells me not to pick up the stuff on my own, but if it’s offered, I should accept. We’ve collected so many boxes, we have nowhere to store them, and when you open a kitchen cabinet, they come tumbling down on you.
One evening Meggie mentions that Gil eats Lotus like it’s candy.
“Maybe it’s because he’s in ‘luv,’ ” I say, and I’m surprised to see Mom blushing a little. “I’m amazed he hasn’t proposed to you yet,” I tease her. “You know the Fathers want everybody in pairs.”
“He’s very nice,” Mom says, “and he has a lovely singing voice. But I wouldn’t have a husband who allows himself to be manipulated with drugs and mind control.”
“He has no choice,” Gramps says. “He doesn’t have the option to leave, as we have.”
The next day Colin and Jennifer come in wearing shorts.
“Hey, Meggie B.,” Colin says with a smile, and I can see her eyes glaze over. He has used her pet name, and I know she must be daydreaming that he feels the same way she does, but I know he’s just being nice to a kid.
“It’s a hot day, David,” Jennifer interrupts my thoughts. “Are you going to be comfortable in jeans?”
“Yeah, it’s a real scorcher,” Colin agrees. “Better dress cool.”
“We didn’t see any shorts for sale at the mall,” I say.
“They were there,” Jennifer explains. “But maybe you missed them because they don’t have much of a selection.”
Duh! Like they have a good selection of anything. But I keep that thought to myself.
“I’ll ask Mom to buy some,” Meggie says, “but today, jeans it is.”
“Then why don’t we just stay indoors?” Colin suggests.
“I agree,” I say. “No point in being miserable.”
“Good idea,” says Jennifer. “Do you guys have a radio?”
We don’t, so Jennifer goes upstairs to bring theirs down, while the rest of us settle around the kitchen table.
“You should get a radio,” Colin tells us. “It pleases the Fathers.”
“What kind of programs do you listen to?” I ask.
“They play nothing but music all day long,” Colin says. “It’s nice.”
“Great!” I say, and I mean it, but my joy is short-lived. When Jennifer plugs in the radio, elevator music pours out of it. It’s worse than church music, but I suppose it’s better than no music at all—barely. With the music as a backdrop, we settle into a nice, normal conversation—uh, as normal as conversations go in Fashion City.
After a while Colin says, “Our dad is going to marry your mother. Of course, I’ll soon be gone to war, but the rest of you will get larger quarters, and it’ll be good for everybody.”
I’m surprised, and slightly ticked off to hear him say this. As far as I know, Gil hasn’t asked Mom, and Colin is surely taking a lot for granted.
“I don’t think Mom will ever marry again,” I tell him.
Jennifer is astonished. “Not marry? The Fathers won’t be pleased.”
“Right,” Colin agrees. “Your mom is young enough to have more kids.”
“I don’t think Mom wants more kids!” I say hotly. “The Fathers just want more workers and soldiers. And by the way, do the Fathers send their own children to war?”
“The children of the Fathers at war!” Jennifer exclaims, as if I’m being irrational. “They are much too valuable as our future leaders. Look at all the sacrifices the Fathers have made for us already.”
“That’s absurd!” I say. “Why don’t we ever see these Fathers? Where do they live? Certainly not in the sectors. No, they are out of sight so that we can’t see their elaborate lifestyle. And it’s for sure that, wherever they are, their rivers are not polluted with factory waste, and the air they breathe is not thick enough to stick to the lungs.”
Jennifer is so distraught at my words, she takes a Lotus pill from her shorts pocket, unwraps it with unsteady fingers, and chews it.
“The Fathers take care of the people,” she says. “Praise the Fathers.”
I’ve upset her, and now I feel like a jerk. So I try to backtrack. “Just sayin’ … but look, I didn’t mean anything.”
Colin stands up, unplugs the radio, and tucks it under one arm. “Jennifer, we should go.”
Jennifer nods and stands up as well.
At the door, Colin turns and says to me in a low, controlled voice, “Your newness in our city is wearing off, and you must learn quickly that you can’t say things like that. It’s not tolerated.”
“You can be sent away for disloyal statements,” Jennifer adds.
“Sent away where?”
“To wherever they sent Mom,” Jennifer answers as tears well up in her eyes.
• 20 •
Back to Meggie
I dig further into the Carriage tutorial and learn that the navigation is done by figuring a set of coordinates. It’s a string of numbers that’s like a code that you punch into the control panel. The first number is for the place you’re located, and the numbers after that are for something else, followed by a number for the planet of your destination, then the latitude and longitude numbers for the location on that planet, then a more specific number, then something … something that I haven’t quite figured out yet.
If you have no specific destination, and you want the computer to find a place for you, you enter your preferences. That’s what Gramps did when he brought us here, and obviously it’s not the best method. I imagine that’s why Mom and Gramps are now nervous about moving forward. They want to find just the right place next time, and considering all the possible worlds out there, it’s not easy.
David knocks on my door. “Jennifer and Colin are here.”
As I store the computer, I realize I didn’t finish my schoolwork. Well, so what? I haven’t messed up since I’ve been here. I place the half-finished work in the door pocket for Tom.
Both Colin and Jennifer are in a good mood as we set off toward the city. Maybe they each had a Lotus for a difference we’d notice. They seem not to remember David’s dissing of the Fathers yesterday. Pretending all�
�s well is a habit of most people here.
Today there’s a mild breeze, like rain may be in the air, and we agree to a shorter walk than usual. We’re on our way back home when the thunder starts.
Colin points in the direction of some apartment buildings we haven’t seen before. “Let’s take a shortcut through these parking lots over here!” he suggests.
“The dark people live here,” Jennifer explains.
“So the African … I mean, the black people live apart from whites?” I ask.
“Yes, of course,” Colin says. “The Fathers don’t allow the races to mix.”
I know America didn’t integrate overnight. It was tough, and there were “years and years of fears and tears,” as my African American teacher used to say, but they made a lot of progress. It seems the people in this place haven’t even started to work on the race problem. Could it be because they have no leadership since Lincoln and King left to go to the Western Province?
As rain begins to hit the pavement in large crystal drops, several young black girls hurry around a corner and head into one of the buildings. That’s when I see her.
“Kitty!” The words burst out of me, and I run to her. “Kitty! It is you!”
I become aware of two things at once—David clutching my arm and pulling me away, and Kitty looking at me with puzzled brown eyes. “Who are you?”
“Sorry,” David mumbles to her. “My sister mistook you for somebody else.”
“But my name is Kitty!” she calls after us. “How did you know?”
David holds my arm tightly and leads me to where Colin and Jennifer are waiting.
“Well, anyhow,” Kitty calls again. “I like your shoes!”
My shoes? I realize then for the first time since coming to this planet that my sneakers are different from everybody else’s, and nobody but Kitty has noticed. Of course the shoes are white—now a dirty white—like almost all the others, but they have purple laces with a gold star dangling from each lace. On our Earth, Kitty picked them out for me one day when we were in town together.