Two and Twenty Dark Tales

by Georgia McBride

  – Mother Goose

  SHE wasn’t always like this.

  Before the New Rule, when it was just Zeb and me, she’d take us outside and push us on the swings higher, higher! And we’d lean back so far my hair would breeze the sand and Zeb would jump off and we’d all laugh like pure happiness in the sun and the wind.

  But since the New Rule, since choice was a thing of the past, she’d had one baby after another after another, turning our two to four, our six to eight, until there were ten of us (and counting) living in one shoe-box apartment south of a town no one cared about.

  The twelve of us shared two bedrooms and one bathroom.

  She shared her room with the youngest of us: the baby and the toddlers, too young to sleep alone. The rest of us piled into the second room. Four boys sharing a double mattress on the floor—one Zeb found behind the dumpster, stained with urine and other stuff I tried not to think about. They slept Charlie Bucket style, while the girls—my two younger sisters and myself—shared one lone twin.

  When our father was on leave from the military he shared the room with her, and I took care of the babies in the living room, in front of the wall TV. It was constantly left on, blasting segments of news footage from the wars around the world: Iran and Israel the most recent and, apparently, the most popular of the five.

  Father’s visits were a mixed blessing.

  We liked his regulation pockets, lined with lint-covered candy. Oh, we’d line up like it was the best thing since sliced bread (which it was). He’d pat our heads and let the boys count his new scars, and then look over at mom and, in a voice not unlike the war reporters’, say, “Now it’s your turn for a treat, old lady.”

  The last time he came home, her dress was clean, clear from milk stains on the breast. Her dark hair was combed, her lips shining with gloss she must’ve stolen, because no way could we afford that. She’d smiled and let him drag her into the bedroom like he was the best thing since sliced bread (which was arguable) and I’d turned up the volume of the limbless soldiers and rotting crop news until Mom banged a warning on the wall.

  Why must the little ones be exposed to their noises? That was the real warning: a shrill sound, an alarm, a warning that in a few months, long after he’d gone, we’d see the result of his visit.

  The stomach swell of another mouth we couldn’t feed.

  After Dad left, her smile lasted only until the sickness began. Her groaning was replaced with hurls of vomit into the toilet, or sometimes the kitchen sink if she couldn’t make it in time.

  “You okay, Mom?” I asked. She slapped my hand off her shoulder with the growl of a rabid dog. My eyes stung more than my hand. But I was used to this. And as her stomach grew, so did her anger.

  “Warm up the broth!” she shouted on a day she was particularly agitated.

  “Don’t we have any bread? The cupboards are bare.”

  “Of course we have no bread. If we did, don’t you think I’d give it to you?”

  I wasn’t sure. Maybe she stuffed it under her mattress to eat after she whipped us into bed.

  Father wasn’t due back for another six months.

  They came home. Planted their seed. Flew away.

  “I’m so hungry, Mommy,” Frankie, one of the little ones, whined from the ground next to her. The evening was particularly hot; there was particularly bad news on the TV.

  “Shush, you,” Mother said, shooing him away.

  “Me too, Mommy,” Julip said.

  “Shh!” Mom snapped.

  That one got a slap.

  I scooped Julip up and soothed her tears and placed her in the middle of the double mattress. I gave her a ball of pink string to play with. The pink matched the harsh mark on her little cheek.

  “Mom.” I re-entered the room. “The little ones are hungry. They need to eat.”

  “We’re all hungry,” she said, her eyes glued to the screen.

  I stepped between the screen and her eyes.

  “You need to stop this.”

  “Stop what?”

  “These kids. You need to stop having them.”

  “Stop having them?” She looked at me like I was crazy.

  “Yes. We can’t afford them. They are starving.”

  “There’s nothing we can do to stop them from coming.”

  “You have to stop visiting Father. Letting him visit us.”

  “Have you gone mad? That would never be allowed.”

  “Then we need to figure out a way around it.”

  “Hush,” she said, pointing at the screen. “They’ll hear you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She sat quietly for a second, smoothing the faded fabric of her dress over the swell of her stomach. “You should care. This will be your life soon.”

  My stomach lurched. “What?”

  “On his last visit, Father told me you are being recruited as a wife, by someone in his unit. He will bring him the next time he comes.” She looked me over with a scrutinizing frown. “And he told him you were pretty, so we have some work to do.”

  “There is no way this is going to be my life.”

  For a second, she almost looked sad, human. But then her mouth froze into that same thin line. “You have no choice,” she said. “Move out of the way now. Shoo, shoo, little lamb.”

  ***

  She was sitting up sound asleep on the patchwork couch, like she was dead and didn’t even know it.

  As carefully as if I were holding the last spoonful of broth, I lifted her sleeping arm off the chest of the youngest baby, a chubby redhead I’d named Freedom (because she was done with naming babies). Freedom twitched and we froze.

  All ten of us.

  Two babies were on Zeb’s back, one on my hip, and now this one, which I gently swung over my shoulder. The others, wide-eyed and willow thin, were holding small hands like a line of ducks.

  I supposed I should cry, leaving her alone like this in her shoebox. But that was before I’d found the bread she’d hidden from her babies. The babies she hit because they were hungry. All we had were the clothes on our backs and the last three slices of bread I’d found under Mother’s mattress. It was enough.

  I didn’t hate her. I couldn’t.

  She didn’t know.

  She was too stupid to protest then, and too destroyed to care now.

  She was wrong about me, though. This wasn’t going to be my life, not without a fight. It wouldn’t be my brothers’ and sisters’, either. “You know why they do it,” Zeb whispered to me once. “We’re like crops to them, raised to fight in their never-ending wars.”

  “You’d think if they wanted decent crops, they’d figure out a way to feed us better,” I’d said wryly.

  Today I said something different as my eyes ran over my mother’s swollen belly for the last time. “Maybe if she just has the one baby, she’ll take care of her? Like she used to do us?”

  “If she doesn’t,” he said as we slipped out the front door, “we’ll come back for that one, too.”

  Over the border, swing sets still flew with laughing children, ripe strawberries grew on farms, and parents weren’t forced to have more children than they could afford.

  Some couples couldn’t even have children, we’d heard. And they weren’t even punished for it.

  I was hoping we could find some of them, loving and generous, who might help us. Maybe even take a few of us in.

  And if we couldn’t, well, then Zeb and me, we’d figure something else out.

  Anything was better than her life in this shoe.

  – The End –

  Interlude: Humpty Dumpty

  Georgia McBride

  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

  Humpty Dumpty knew he would fall.

  None of his counselors and none of the doctors could fix Humpty Dumpty after all.

  Humpty was lonely, and teased by the kids.

  He’d run away crying, and often he hid,

  From bullies and intolerant kids and adu
lts,

  They kicked him, and beat him to quite bloody pulps.

  One day poor Humpty had had quite enough,

  Of crying, and hiding, and daily rebuffs.

  “Stop it, you’ll be sorry,” were Humpty’s last words.

  Before climbing the tower in search of the bird,

  Who told him he’d be free, be able to fly,

  If only he’d listen, and jump from up high.

  So Humpty willed courage and strength from inside.

  He wrote one last letter, and posted online.

  I’m nothing, and no one, and now you will see,

  As I jump from this wall, totally free.

  I’m clear now, it’s fine here, I’m finally happy.

  You can’t touch me or tease me, or call me a fatty.

  Good night to you losers, still walking around.

  My name is Humpty, splat on the ground.

  Candlelight

  Suzanne Lazear

  How many miles to Babylon?

  Three score and ten.

  Can I get there by candlelight?

  Aye, and back again.

  If your feet are nimble and light,

  You’ll get there by candlelight.

  – Mother Goose

  “BUT I have to go. Everyone’s going,” Juliet huffed as she stood toe-to-toe with her mom in the hallway.

  “No, you’re not going to that party; you’re too young.” Her mom’s voice ricocheted off the walls. “This conversation is over.” She marched toward the kitchen.

  “I hate you.” It tumbled out of Juliet’s mouth as she ran in the opposite direction. She slammed her bedroom door so hard that the corner of one of Melody’s sketches on the wall became untaped.

  Melody, lounging on her bed, looked up from her homework, short red hair hanging in her eyes in a curtain so thick that Juliet wasn’t sure how she could see the book at all.

  “That went well.” Melody blew the hair out of her face, revealing green eyes.

  “Shut up.” Juliet flopped onto her own bed and hugged her pillow to her chest. “She doesn’t get it. It’ll be social suicide not to go to the party.”

  “You could sneak out.” Melody glanced at her book, then wrote something down.

  “But that’s temporary—it’s always something. She pitched her voice to mimic her mother’s. “‘Juliet, your skirt is too short; you’re not going out with that much makeup on; no, you can’t stay out until midnight.’ It’s so unfair.”

  “Will you turn the TV on?” Melody made another mark on her paper.

  Juliet blinked. She was pouring out her heart, and Melody wanted to watch TV?

  “Turn it on yourself,” she huffed.

  “Can’t, remember?” Melody scrunched her freckled nose in distaste. “No TV, no computer, no cell phone for three months. But I can be in the same room when the TV’s on. And right now, my show’s on. Please?”

  Oh, yeah. Her younger sister wasn’t exempt from their mom’s wrath, either.

  “Sure.” Juliet grabbed the remote off the nightstand between their twin beds and pointed it at the TV. “Why won’t she let us do anything? No one else’s mom is like this. Ugh!”

  Melody nodded. “Seriously. Talk about social suicide—no phone for three months? I might as well die.”

  “And in the news, another heartbreaking teen suicide,” the TV reporter said.

  Click. Next channel.

  “Tune into tonight’s special: Runaways in America—a sudden problem, or is it just finally coming to light?” someone else said.

  Click. Next channel.

  “Is this the right channel?” Juliet asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Are your parents unfair?” A sympathetic female voice asked them on screen as a commercial played.

  The girls looked at each other and nodded.

  “Do they just not understand?”

  “Yep,” Juliet sighed. “Ugh, and Todd Wilkins was going to be there, too.”

  “He’s pretty cute,” Melody agreed.

  “Well,” the commercial continued, “come to Candlelight Center, where we understand. Where we can help.” An address flashed across the screen.

  Melody cocked her head. “Candlelight Center? I’ve never heard of it.”

  Juliet jumped off the bed; this was just what she needed. “We should go.” Excitement bubbled inside her. “Don’t you see? They can help us. Not only will I be able to go to the party, and you’ll get your phone and laptop back, but we’ll never have to go through this again.”

  She did a little dance as she ran a brush through her long, red hair.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Juliet pulled on her shoes, glaring at Melody, who’d yet to move, green eyes affixed to the TV.

  “After my show. Please?” Melody pleaded, still lounging on her bed. “I really want my phone back, but if I don’t watch this, I won’t be able to keep up at lunch tomorrow.”

  “Well…” Juliet twisted her body back and forth, as if that would help her decide. “I suppose it can wait half an hour.”

  ***

  “Oh, that’s so unfair,” clucked the blonde counselor, Pamela, as they sat across from her in a curtained cubicle in the bright and clean Candlelight Center.

  “Right?” Juliet replied. “Please, help us. I have to go to my party.”

  “And I want my phone back,” Melody added.

  “I’m sure you do.” Pamela looked to be around their age, but that was the whole thing about peer counselors, right?

  Juliet practically leapt out of the plastic chair in excitement. “So you can help us?”

  “There is a place…” Pamela opened a drawer.

  “A place?” Juliet’s heart fell. “Oh, I thought you could bring Mom here, and tell her how stupid she’s being.”

  Melody’s eyes lit up. “Wait—what place?”

  “It’s called Babylon.” Her voice hushed. “Imagine a place with no parents, where you can do anything you want, whenever you want.”

  Juliet twisted in her chair, suddenly unsure. “I don’t know if I want to leave, I just want to go to the party.”

  “She’ll never understand,” Pamela warned. “No, if you’re to have the freedom you want, then you need to get out before she totally ruins your life. Just think of all the friends you’ll make, all the parties you’ll go to—and no one will tell you what to wear or when to come home.” Her eyes danced as if she was imagining being there too.

  Melody slapped her hand on the desk. “I’m in.”

  “Wait—you are?” Juliet’s heart skipped a beat.

  “She’s already making my life miserable. Imagine when I’m your age.” Melody shuddered. “Do you know what it’s like to have no phone? To not even be able to use the computer for schoolwork?”

  For a moment, Juliet just sat there, thinking. “Where is this place? Is it like foster care?”

  “Not at all. You’ll be independent, yet taken care of—and most importantly, no one will boss you around.” Pamela smiled knowingly.

  It didn’t actually sound bad. But…

  “We should go,” Melody hissed. “Show Mom we’re in control. We can always go for a little while, and then come back.” She looked at the counselor. “We can come back, right?”

  “Of course.” She waved it off with her hand. “But you probably won’t want to.”

  “Well…” Juliet considered this. If they disappeared and then returned, Mom would be so grateful that she’d never punish them again—and if she did, they’d just leave. She looked at Melody, who flashed her puppy eyes. “I’m in—but just for a little bit. How do we get there?”

  The counselor set a little bundle on the desk. “The only way to get to Babylon is by candlelight.”

  “Candlelight? Is that a train?” Juliet stared at the lump of fabric.

  The counselor leaned in, voice daring. “You do believe in magic, don’t you?”

  “Magic?” Okay, this was getting weird.

  Melody snatched
the bundle and shoved it into the pocket of her hoodie. “I do.” She bounced in her seat. “Wait, I know this poem. Babylon is real?”

  “Very. It’s been a refuge to misunderstood children for thousands of years, and you can’t expect a place like that to be here, right?” Pamela’s look made Juliet feel stupid for even considering disbelieving in magic.

  “Right…” An unsure feeling spread through Juliet. “But I just want to go to my party.”

  “In Babylon, you can go to parties every night—or even in the day,” the counselor added. “You don’t even have to go to school.”

  Melody stood. “We’re so in. So what do we do?”

  “Just follow the instructions. Believe me, it’ll be so much better for you.”

  Would it? Juliet stood. “Thank you.”

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  Melody dragged her home.

  When they got there, their mother met them at the door, hands on her hips.

  “Where have you two been?” she demanded. “You’re not supposed to leave without telling me.”

  The early uneasiness Juliet felt at the idea of leaving their mom melted away. “We’re not babies. It’s not even dark,” she snapped.

  Her mother’s mouth formed a hard line. “Juliet, you’re grounded. Melody, you’re grounded even more.”

  “What?” Melody shrieked. “We just went for a walk!”

  “Girls.” Their mom’s hands pressed against her temples. “I’m not trying to ruin your lives. There’s some bad stuff going on out there and I’m just—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Juliet retorted, tired of being bossed around. “I hate you.”

  Grabbing Melody’s arm, she ran toward their room, not stopping when their mom yelled that rudeness was unacceptable and to go to their room.

  Like they’d go anywhere else.

  Juliet locked the door. Anger whirred inside her. “Unbelievable.”

  Melody stood there, frozen. “She took the TV.”

  “What?” Juliet looked—the TV shelf sat empty.

  “I can’t believe she took it,” Melody wailed, flopping onto her bed. “Wait…” She pulled the bundle from her hoodie pocket. “Tonight after she goes to bed?”

  For a long moment, Juliet gazed at the bundle. Then she looked at the empty shelf, and thought of all the things she’d missed because of their mom.