The New Girl (Downside)

by S. L. Grey

  ‘I work here,’ he says.

  His eyes skate over her face, her hair, down her body, linger, for some reason, on her sneakers. It’s a shameless, almost brazen, assessment, as if he doesn’t care if he’s making her uncomfortable.

  ‘You’re American,’ he says.

  ‘That obvious, huh?’ She crosses her arms over the slight bulge of her stomach. ‘Um... how long have you been working here?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just making conversation.’

  ‘Why? I don’t know you, you don’t know me.’

  What to say to that? Tara can’t tell if he’s being plain rude or trying to be witty. She’s saved from having to answer him as a door slams, followed by the scuffle of feet approaching down the corridor. The assembly must be over.

  He ducks his head, brushes past her. There’s plenty of room for him to pass, but she feels the bare skin of his arm sliding against hers.

  A mass of children streams towards her, en route to the classrooms on the first floor, and Tara’s struck again by how subdued they are; there’s barely a whisper or a giggle, just the shush-clump of their shoes as they shamble along. She presses herself against the wall to give them room.

  She feels a tug on her hand, sees the new girl staring up at her. She looks grubbier than she did yesterday, streaks of grease in her weird dyed hair, her makeshift uniform leaking threads. If she’s not an outreach kid, could she be a neglected child? In this sort of privileged school? Why not? After all, it happens everywhere, however prosperous the area. She should know.

  Tara smiles down at the girl. ‘Hello. I remember you from the library. What’s your name again?’

  ‘Jane, miss,’ the girl whispers.

  ‘Sorry?’ Tara’s sure she heard something else yesterday.

  ‘Jane. My name. It goes like this: Jay Ay En Ee.’

  ‘That’s a pretty name,’ Tara says, hoping she sounds convincing.

  The kids streaming past them don’t give the girl a second glance, although a couple of the reading-difficulties kids wave shyly at Tara.

  ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’

  The girl nods.

  ‘And... do you like the school?’

  Jane bares her teeth in that strange approximation of a smile Tara remembers from yesterday. One of the girl’s incisors looks like it might be rotten, the grey enamel pitted with white flecks, as if she’s tried to cover it with Tippex. Poor kid.

  She sees Martin shuffling past. He scowls at her, whispers something to the boy next to him – a kid Tara recognises as Jonah Hallock, another thug in the making – and smirks.

  ‘Freak,’ Jonah hisses as he passes the girl, slipping away before Tara can remonstrate with him.

  ‘Mrs Marais!’ she hears Clara calling over the heads of the kids. The girl skitters into the throng, her limp less pronounced than it was yesterday. The other children part to make room for her, as if they don’t want to brush up against her.

  Tara tries to smile as Clara approaches. It isn’t reciprocated. ‘That’s the child I was talking about yesterday,’ Tara says, gesturing at the girl’s back. ‘The one who came into the library.’

  ‘Oh yes. You mean the new intake.’

  ‘Is she...’ Tara searches for the right word, but in the fog caused by her increasingly throbbing headache all she can come up with is ‘normal’, which won’t go down well in this environment where students are ‘learners’ and remedial kids are ‘learning-challenged’. ‘Is she... okay?’ is what she finally settles on.

  ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t she be?’

  ‘She’s limping. And the other children don’t seem to—’

  ‘It can take a while for new learners to feel at home in Crossley College,’ Clara interrupts. ‘I’m sure the other children will make her belong soon enough.’ Strange choice of words, Tara thinks. ‘What are you doing here at this hour, Mrs Marais? You are far too early for library duty. Is everything in order?’

  Tara imagines spilling her guts to this woman. Oh, it’s nothing really, Clara. I hit the crap out of my stepson and a creepy stranger wants me to make them a replica of a possibly dead, but certainly mutilated, baby. Yeah, that would go down well. ‘Everything’s fine. I... um, thought I’d pop in early and help you with the new books.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Um... I caught a few seconds of the assembly. Is that normal? Asking kids to rat on each other?’

  Clara stiffens as if Tara has personally insulted her. ‘I’m sure you understand the need for strict discipline, Mrs Marais. Now that we are no longer able to use physical methods, Mr Duvenhage likes to emphasise teamwork and sharing and caring – collective responsibility, if you will. You are, after all, not from this country, are you? Some of our practices must seem strange to an outsider.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘But who knows, perhaps you won’t always be an outsider.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Clara leans in closer, as if she’s about to impart something confidential, and Tara’s hit with a whiff of her lavender scent. ‘You have a teaching degree, do you not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I believe you’re just waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn before you find yourself a position?’

  Now how in the hell does she know that? Tara wonders. She’s never discussed this with Clara before, and she’s only mentioned her past and her ongoing war with Home Affairs in the vaguest terms to the members of the Mother Tribe. ‘What are you getting at, Cl— Mrs van der Spuy?’

  ‘Just that if a vacancy comes up, perhaps you might consider being part of our family.’

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘Always, Mrs Marais. Now. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re looking peaky. Why don’t you go home, have a hot bath. We can do without you for one day.’

  Actually, Tara thinks, maybe that isn’t a bad idea. After all, she’s got a hell of a lot of issues to process, including Clara’s left-field offer. The school may have a strange method of naming and shaming, but so what? Most of the schools she’s taught at over the years have had some kind of hokey philosophy underpinning them. It’s the kids that matter, and surely they need someone like her – level-headed, concerned for their welfare – to balance out the other, more... disturbing elements? And if she went back to teaching she could make her Reborns on the side. Hell, maybe she wouldn’t have to sell them at all. If she gets her work permit and permanent residency, that is. Which isn’t entirely out of her grasp now, is it?

  She pulls out her phone, opens the drafts folder and flicks through to her unsent message.

  Before she loses her nerve she presses the send button.

  There’s a response almost immediately:

  It’s only when she’s climbing into her car that she realises her headache has gone.

  She dumps her bag on the kitchen counter, switches on the oven – she’ll need it at the right temperature to set the paint – then flies up the stairs.

  Giving Baby Paul’s drawer only a cursory glance, she clicks on the computer and prints out the photograph. Now that it’s in hard copy, it looks much clearer – she should have done this last night. She pins it above her work table, traces the lines of the baby’s lips and eyes with her finger. If it is photoshopped, it’s a brilliant job. Apart from the thread sealing its eyes and mouth, the baby’s features are regular and even, he or she looks perfect – almost alive. She’ll have to decide on a sex; she can’t tell from the pic if it’s male or female. It’s so generic, in fact, that Tara realises that she could, quite easily, get away with using the Baby Gabby head she’s currently working on, with only a few minor adjustments. Batiss’s baby’s skin is a delicate pinky-white, soft blue veins showing through the skin of the forehead, and she finds herself automatically working out which pigments she’ll need to mix to overlay that shade on Baby Gabby’s darker skin tone. Its skull is only slightly dusted with hair, so she won’t have to spend weeks rooting
its scalp, and she can use her new nasal drill to widen Baby Gabby’s nostrils to make them match Batiss’s baby. She tries not to think about how she’ll feel when it comes to adding those all-important finishing touches; for now she has enough to get on with.

  Her phone beeps again. She snatches it out of her bag. It isn’t Batiss this time, but Stephen. is all the message says.

  Yeah right, she thinks. Talk about what? Why he lets his son treat her like shit? Why he won’t even broach the subject of her getting pregnant again? Or perhaps why it is he no longer races home after work, but seems to slink in later and later each day? Then it hits her. Could Martin have told him about the slap? Is that what he wants to discuss? And if Martin’s told Stephen, isn’t it likely he would have also told Olivia?

  She deletes the message without replying, and feverishly unwraps her new batch of Genesis paints. She doesn’t want to think about Martin, about Stephen, about anything except the baby in front of her.

  She screams through the school gates, tyres squealing. She’s been so lost in her work that the afternoon slid away from her – she’s over twenty minutes late to pick Martin up from his Encounters group.

  She races into the parking area, sees him waiting alone in the gloom next to the ‘Differently Abled’ sign, steels herself for the usual barrage of snide comments and a marathon sulk session.

  She pulls up next to him, winds down her window. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  Martin shrugs.

  That’s odd. It’s not like him to pass up an opportunity to give her a hard time. ‘You okay, Martin? How was your meeting?’

  Martin mumbles something under his breath that could be anything from ‘go fuck yourself’ to ‘great, thanks for asking’.

  ‘Listen, Martin,’ Tara says, before he climbs into the back seat. ‘About what happened this morning. I just want you to know, it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have raised a hand to you.’

  She’s expecting him to say, ‘No you shouldn’t, you stupid bitch,’ or words to that effect, but he just shrugs again.

  ‘We’ll talk about it when your father gets home this evening. We’ll sort it out.’

  ‘I don’t need to talk about it,’ Martin says.

  ‘Your father should know what happened, Martin. Unless... unless you’ve already told him. Have you?’

  He yawns. ‘No. Why would I?’

  Tara experiences a twinge of guilt at the relief she feels. Is it possible that this could be buried? It’s not as if she’s been abusing the kid, is it? It was just a moment of madness. Could’ve happened to anyone. And no one could say she wasn’t provoked.

  He straps himself in without having to be asked, yawns again and starts humming something under his breath (Tara hopes it isn’t ‘I Just Wanna be a Sheep’). She’s so used to seeing him continually fiddling with his iPhone that it’s disconcerting to see him without it. And does he look paler than usual? He rests his head against the window, a faraway look in his eyes.

  ‘Martin?’ she asks, twisting round in her seat. ‘Are you feeling okay?’

  He stops humming, looks straight into her eyes and says, ‘Yes, thank you, Tara. I’m just primo.’

  Chapter 6

  PENTER

  Penter pokes her head around the gate and looks at the road outside the precinct. There’s a constant stream of the machines going by and from the documents she’s seen, there are even more on other roads. She’s amazed that the browns don’t all just smash into each other and terminate themselves. Despite herself, she feels another prickle of admiration for their organisational skills. To live at such speed and not cannon into one another is a feat in itself.

  She shuts the gate and retreats into the quiet precinct. If she were here longer, or if her role were different, she’d need to venture out, but as it is, she has work to do in the precinct and there’s no reason to brave the rushing machines.

  On her way back to the house, she looks up into the bewildering sky and stops to feel the sun’s warmth. It’s like when she was a halfpint and would move too close to the heat vents. She knew it was hazardous, was parching her skin, but at the same time the warmth in her muscles and bones was irresistible. She’d heard about the sky and the sun, of course – everyone has; everyone dreams of them secretly when they’re due for a renewal, she’s sure – and the Ministry warned her just how uncanny they were, but nothing could have prepared her. The thin air out here makes her feel like she’s floating and about to evaporate away. The sun is like a prophetic floodlight, like all the faulty wiring in the world coiled into a single, massive point of danger. The sky is like all the garment dye ever produced and she doesn’t know how it could have been manufactured, how they could have made it so big, how they could have used so much material, and how it still stays floating above them.

  She detours through the garden and marvels at the opulence of green, the acrid breath of the trees’ leaves. She plucks a sappy leaf off a berry tree, consciously suppressing her guilt at the desecration. Up here, there’s an abundance of plant life, leaves are left to coat the ground and rot into the soil. Fruit is left to fall and is given over to the insects and the birds – those creatures that swirl in the ether like solid breath. She looks at the living green tissue in her hand and a drop of white sap leaks out of the end of the stem and spills onto her palm.

  Some of the trees are higher than the central victual court at the Mall, higher than the prefab palms in the piazza at the Apartments. And all around her, the birds are singing songs that make her chest ache. Animals that fly! With their colours, they swoop in the open air and they soar off into the nothingness above. Everything lives exposed out here, stretching and growing and moving and moulting.

  The tame brown has been tending a patch where vegetables grow on living wood. Even the soil, something she knows well, smells different here. No matter how well they prepared her, it’s overwhelming.

  She walks upstairs to the television room, finds Father on the couch, scanning through a sheaf of mimeographs from the evening session. She watches him for a moment without him noticing. She’d never met him before she was assigned, doesn’t even know his real name, just as he is unaware of hers – up here, he is simply Father, and she is simply Mother. He finally looks up, nods distractedly at her.

  ‘Was it a good session?’ she asks from the doorway.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Plenty of viable. The Ministry’s prognosis was sound.’

  Realising that he is busy, Penter turns to leave.

  ‘Mother?’ he says.

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘The meal you prepared. “Breakfast”. It was... interesting. In the sense of unpleasant. I think you could make some more effort to prepare a meal that allows the family to remember the comforts of home.’

  The bubble of good feeling she was nurturing is rudely burst and she’s stung. ‘May I remind you that I am a Deputy Node Liaison for the Ministry of Upside Relations, and not a victual servant?’ A terrified thrill runs through her. Her disregard is a direct result of the thought-seep. Despite her status, Father is the team leader on this project and she knows she would never address a team leader in these terms back home.

  ‘May I remind you,’ Father says, still smiling coolly from the couch, ‘that here you are Mother?’

  Penter walks further into the room. ‘My name is Penter Ulliel,’ she enunciates. When she embarked on her path, she was assigned the name by the senior Node Ministry Commissioner himself. He told her that she was named after an auto-loading haematology analysis device which he had admired on a visit to the Wards, but after he was depreciated, she realised that he had mispronounced the word, so now she has a unique name. Despite its idiosyncrasy – or perhaps even because of it – she’s proud of her name.

  But, she realises, this is another extraneous conceit that won’t worry her when the assignment is finished and she goes back home and has her penetration renewed. She won’t be arguing with her superiors either. By the look on Father�
��s face, he’s enjoying the unusual exchange as much as she is.

  ‘That notwithstanding, Mother,’ he says, ‘your organisational role in this project team is to behave as the female head of an upside nucleated family does, which the research has clearly shown’ – he indicates the television set in the corner – ‘definitively includes victual preparation. Nourishing, comforting victual preparation.’

  She shakes her head but she knows he’s right. Still tingling with the thrill of disregard, she goes downstairs to find the tame brown and send him out for some proper ingredients.

  Chapter 7

  RYAN

  ‘You wanted to see me, Mr Duvenhage?’ Ryan says. As expected, he managed to sneak in while everyone was religiously at assembly and drop Duvenhage’s flash drive on the floor under the desk, as if he’d just mislaid it himself. He looks forward to seeing the man backtrack. ‘My landlady said you came to visit last night, but I was out. She said you didn’t leave your name but described you, and, well... you’re the only person I know who—’

  ‘Yes, yes, okay, Mr Devlin.’ Duvenhage’s standing in the doorway, clutching the doorknob. His skin is as pallid as ever, but even more sweaty. ‘I, uh, I have a meeting.’

  ‘I just wanted to check, sir. Was it you? How can I help, sir?’

  ‘Uh, yes, it was...’ Duvenhage straightens, draws the door shut behind him and steps towards Ryan in the corridor. ‘Yes, Mr Devlin, it was me. I thought I had lost something and I wanted to ask you about it. It was something very important.’

  ‘What was it? I can tell you if I’ve seen it. It must have been very important if you—’

  ‘Thing is, I found it. So there’s no problem. But frankly, yes, I suspected you. Locking my office door like you did yesterday. Really, that’s suspicious behaviour. An important part of being seen as honest is behaving, at every moment, in an honest fashion.’

  ‘I’m not sure what—’