So Long Been Dreaming

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Although children followed in the caste-careers of their mothers, Mist was untroubled by her daughter’s choice of her father’s caste. “You have the mind for it,” she said. “And you were not raised in a trading household, but in the house of a science-caste grandmother.” She smiled. “I’ll have to make you a green cap. Perhaps I’ll wear green too, to help you fit in.”

  Flowers-in-the-Sun smiled. “Thank you, Mother Mine.”

  “Will you study the scientific assessment of standards as your father does? Or will you choose another science?”

  Flowers-in-the-Sun nodded. “Father has a perfect inter-caste job. It’s the right job for me. I will show the Earth traders that we know how to measure the purity of foods, that we are more than receivers of their tainted money.”

  Mist stroked her daughter’s hair, her heart overflowing with pride at having such a wise daughter. And as Second Night rolled into First Morning, she found green fabric from which she made a cap for her beloved daughter and a new marriage scarf for herself.

  Her husband’s mother smiled approvingly when she saw Mist the next morning. “Will your trader friends accept a trader who wears green?” she asked.

  “Those who know me will,” Mist answered, smiling. “The ones who don’t know me will think I’m new to the trading game. It will be interesting to see how this ‘change’ affects a trader’s purse.”

  On the way to her shop, Mist saw the four off-worlders again. Again they had their instruments pointed at her beloved sky. As she studied them, she saw a light flashing from the corner of her eye. It came from Smoothed Stone’s fruit stand. He was signaling her.

  “Sister,” he said, when she arrived in front of his stand. “How goes your study of the Federation Lingua?”

  “Their English lingua has many words, brother,” she signed back, and wondered why he had called out to her. “But it isn’t particularly complex. Lip-reading, however, is hard. Not as hard to decipher as the guttural clucks of the Towans, for instance. But challenging nevertheless. Many unruly vowel sounds. Inconsistent.”

  “Very hard to lip-read,” the old man agreed, and yet even as he agreed with her, it seemed as if he had something more urgent to say. “The people of our world have always loved challenges,” he said at last.

  “True,” Mist answered. “Their ‘alphabet’ is something of a challenge.” And then as proof of her studies, she slowly finger-spelled in English, “Me not good Lingua talker yet. Go their English School maybe?”

  “We Aqueduct people are smart. Whoever heard of going to school to learn languages? Hey, you want them to cut your throat?”

  “Not me,” she said and added, “Many people are getting the implants. In many homes. All because the Earthers think it’s best to speak by mouth.”

  Smoothed Stone sighed. “Some of them tattoo the implants, embroider them with floral patterns, as if to cover their guilt. Worse, the more brazen among us leave the cut marks untattooed, uncovered, for all to see; braggarts, as if the cutting were an improvement to the Creator’s work. In our youth, if such a thing were told, who would believe it?”

  “Did not our Creator forbid flesh-cutting?” Mist signed rhetorically.

  “Those who get the implants grow richer and stranger,” the old man continued. “Sad it is, but true. I have seen it said that the Earthers are helping our economy with these implants.”

  Mist’s only answer was a facial gesture which meant, “I have so much to say, but not here.”

  He answered. “And I too. But whether from fear, fatigue, helplessness, or grief, one must be quiet.”

  Mist nodded. The flickering purple lights along the wallaou tree indicated that the News Carrier had arrived: six quick flashes and one long one. Just in time she looked up to see her brothers’ wives walking ahead of her.

  How richly dressed they were! How round and well-fed their bodies! Living in her husband’s family house, she rarely saw her mother’s family. But she had heard that her mother’s family, too, had chosen implantation and had prospered greatly in doing so. Mist studied her scrawny brown jewellry-less arms jutting out from under her full yellow sleeves. Her dress was made from Yona plant fiber, but her sisters-in-law wore Federation “silk” embroidered with Federation “gold.” Unsure if they had seen but purposely ignored her, she watched as they took seats near the podium. In the days before her marriage, she too would have sat in those places of honour. But now she hid in the back row among the women of the servant caste, dutifully dragging their mistress’ ling-carts from one vendor to another. She hoped no one from her mother’s house would see her.

  The News Carrier who wore the wide tribal pants of the people of the land beyond the Two Hills took the high seat in the center square.

  “My mothers, my fathers, my sisters, my brothers, my daughters, my sons,” the woman began. Her gestures indicated a Two Hills accent. “Life has changed in our village since the Earthers came with their cutting. I have heard your elders are contemplating mandating this matter. Please warn them not to. Already I have seen” – and here the woman from beyond the Two Hills stared impolitely at Mist’s sisters-in-law – “that already some of your own people are cutting themselves and their children.”

  Mist watched to see what her brothers’ wives would do. She remembered well how they had mocked her when she chose to marry out of the trader clan. Their cruel hands had sawed at her like daggers. Her brothers’ wives were not the types to be challenged. But neither would they disagree with a stranger in the town centre where everyone could read their business.

  The News Carrier approached them and signed “Traitor!” in an angry sweeping gesture.

  In response, they stood up. They walked away from the crowd, their gold-threaded blue silk marriage scarves trailing behind them. Mist hid her face when they passed by, but she could easily imagine their faces, arrogant and expressionless as if the insult were nothing more than vapour in the air.

  The woman from beyond the Two Hills continued. “Already the children of our village no longer dance to the light at our festivals. They insist on ‘Sound-dances,’ preferring ‘music’ to light. They hide their natures, clans, and status. They do not wear their clan colours. Some of our marriageable young girls refuse to wear the courtship tassels. They refuse to give the world knowledge of themselves. It’s a perverse game they play. Yesterday, at the beginning of the Mother-Infant Festival, some children insisted on mouth-singing, even though their parents could not understand a word they said. And when they talk, they hide their conversations, imitating the mouth-speakers’ mouth-to-ears talk, what the Earthers call” – this she finger-spelled in English – “‘whispers.’”

  Mist thought of her nieces and nephews huddled together in their groups, doing mouth-to-ears and hiding their conversations. She remembered the family’s excuses: Children must explore and discover. They’re practicing using those implant things right. Children play endlessly with their toys until the novelty wears off. They then outgrow them. Mist had always thought her husband’s brothers’ wives were foolish women with no foresight. These latest events only proved their short-sightedness.

  “And many other new things have happened,” the News Carrier continued. “Now the young married youth move from the family house. They live by themselves. ‘Husband and wife family house,’ they call it. Who has seen such a thing? But worse things happen: They disappear and are not seen, then they suddenly re-appear for an afternoon. To ‘visit,’ they call it. They come when they want something. And many want to create speaking temples in order to worship the Creator. The world has crashed around us.” The News Carrier went on to list all the alarming troubles caused by cutting. She ended with the warning, “One law falls and all others fall with it.”

  Mist’s eyes met those of another woman in the crowd. They exchanged looks and then glanced backwards at the off-worlders in the distance with their strange metallic equipment. Mist and the woman shook their heads.

  “Surely the News Carrier is str
etching stories,” the woman signed. Mist hoped the woman was right. Surely, these were only tales.

  After the town meeting, she returned to her book shop. Many Earthers were coming in and out, marvelling at the “primitive” lifestyle of the “locals,” buying dictionaries and planetary histories. In the old days, she did not mind them. But now she grew impatient with them. They made her sad. Even stranger, they made her tired. The more Earthers she saw in the marketplace holding their ears like princes holding their noses, the more fatigued she felt. If the Earthers don’t like it here, she thought, why do they walk among us? Mist spent the rest of the day suspiciously reading their lips and feeling unusually tired, and later when she left her shop, she locked the door securely and carried the key home with her.

  Returning home, she saw more Earthers, two men and a woman, standing in the train station. She watched them for a while, standing there with those two ear-caps sticking out on the sides of their heads. She had thought them funny when she first saw them. But now she considered them offensive, small intrusive weapons against her culture.

  Several Aqueduct families were to the left and right of her. From their shells and floral holiday dress, she knew they were awaiting the Festival train which would take them to Living-Water-White Light, the town where the largest Mother-Infant parade occurred.

  One young woman in the tribal cloak of the people of the Solitary Hills wore a baby carrier across her chest. The baby’s face was buried in its mother’s holiday cloak, a cloak trimmed and edged with “gold,” the signifier of a new mother.

  Her first time in the festival, Mist thought. I remember when I was newly-married, childless and young, and so wanting to join all the mothers in the parade. I waited so long. And then Flowers-in-the-Sun came. What a joy that was. To be a mother at last.

  The woman’s face was turned in the other direction and Mist could not gesture a greeting. The baby twisted and shook in its carrier, obviously uncomfortable and agitated. Mist watched the woman from Solitary Hills take the child from its little pouch in order to comfort it. As the woman lifted the baby, Mist saw the tell-tale patterned tattoos on the baby’s neck. No wonder she can wear “gold,” Mist thought. Her family is one of the mutilated. Then, startled, Mist realized that the people surrounding her all had the tattoos. Tears stung her eyes. She glanced at the Earthers speaking among themselves at the far end of the track.

  How smug they are! she thought. And she wanted to tell them so. What will I say to them? Will they even listen to me if I tell them they are destroying my culture?

  Mist had seen ideographs which told the stories and histories of the Earthers. A war-like lot, to be sure, bent on their own glory, “paying lip-service” – she loved that English phrase – to Cultural Respect, but not really caring about it. She walked towards the Earthers.

  “Coming to see our festival?” she signed when she reached the woman Earther.

  The woman Earther turned to look questioningly at a male Earther to her right.

  Very rude, Mist said to herself. Even if she doesn’t know our language, she should know that turning the face away is not done. That’s basic body language.

  The male Earther, who had black hair and dark brown skin like Mist’s people, reached into a sack and picked up a book of ideographs. He signed, “Do again. Sign again.”

  He had not preceded his conversation with the “Please” sign, which made his conversation seem abrupt and pushy. But Mist reminded herself that linguistic etiquette was complicated.

  “Watch me,” she signed. “Sign ‘Please.’ Or bow twice whenever you tell anyone to do something. So you don’t offend people.” She signed slowly, word by word, until he bowed twice and she knew he understood her.

  “What’s your name?” the dark-skinned Earther asked. “Mine is Ray.” He finger-spelled the English name, then signed “Sunlight Beam.”

  “Sunlight Beam?” Mist answered. “You must have been a blessing to your mother.”

  Ray grinned surreptitiously at the Earth woman, then bowed twice to Mist. “Tell me the question you asked our woman friend.”

  “I asked if she was going to our Mother-Infant festival,” Mist answered. “It happens every year at this time. It is our greatest festival and it lasts the whole month. If you go there, you will understand our culture and see our heart.”

  Sunlight Beam answered, “We don’t usually go into your towns unless we have to. Business or something. Your towns are very loud, you know. You don’t know it. But they are. Maybe that’s why you people ended up with atrophied eardrums and vocal cords. The air density causes any kind of sound to. . . .”

  How dare he judge my planet with those stupid hearing things of his! Mist thought and interrupted his analysis of her culture with a purposely impolite remark. “We have heard that your towns are very ugly, lacking colour.”

  Sunlight Beam made a gesture with his shoulder which Mist interpreted as “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” or “Your thoughts don’t matter.” “Towns are towns,” he signed.

  “Then what are you doing here?” Mist asked and bowed twice to indicate she was merely being curious, not intrusive or rude.

  “Waiting for the train to the coast,” Sunlight Beam answered. “We have a community there. And a school for bilingual education. You speak English?”

  “I heard about your school,” Mist finger-spelled in English. “Lingua Franca good. Cutting? Not good. Cut people there all-you? Implants put in?”

  Sunlight Beam made the same shoulder gesture again. “I just teach you people our ways,” he signed. “Funny, but you people are the only humanoids we’ve met in all the galaxy who don’t really use their ears.”

  Mist could not quite figure out if he meant to praise their uniqueness or if he thought they were freaks. Either way, she found the Earther rude. Turning, she walked away without giving him the customary goodbye gesture. What would such a gesture mean to rude Earthers anyway? Had he really said that he was teaching her people his ways?

  She walked back to where she had been previously standing and studied the “implanted baby” who was holding its small hands in a clenched fist. Tears streamed down its little brown cheeks. Its tiny feet kicked at the air. Mist wondered if an infection had set in. She almost hoped it had. Perhaps if there were rampant infection, the women of the council would stop the procedure for medical reasons. Not that she wanted the baby to suffer, but one or two deaths here and there might not be such a bad thing after all.

  The green lights flashed, indicating that the train was on its way. Beside them, Mist noticed, were “speakers” attached to the eaves of the train station. The Earthers had touted bi-lingualism and had convinced many elders of many towns to create some kind of communication system that ears could respond to. But lately, Mist told herself, the “speakers” were proliferating to a dangerous degree. She thought of the long tube and of the off-worlders “fixing the air.” If the dense air makes things loud, aren’t there technical problems with having speakers and other sound-based technologies? she asked herself. She grew nervous. What are they going to do with our atmosphere?

  Mist pondered again the Earther’s words. Teach our thousand-year-old culture? She thought. Those Earthers think highly of themselves, don’t they? Our families have roamed the starry seas for centuries. Others accepted us; they saw our gifts, not our lack. But these Federation Earthers are used to seeing things their way, so they change everyone else’s way of seeing.

  Her downcast eyes saw four flowers blooming in a small shaded corner near the tracks. She thought of Flowers-in-the-Sun.

  My child, my life, she thought. You are living in a time when another planet’s sun overshadows yours. I hope you will change your mind about the cutting.

  She reminded herself that she and Flowers-in-the-Sun would both be revitalized by their visit to the Mother-Infant festival later in the week.

  Arriving home, she found Flowers-in-the-Sun in the family gathering room surrounded by her aunts. Flowers-in-th
e-Sun had been implanted. When Mist entered her apartment, the aunts and cousins rose almost as one and formed a barrier between her and her daughter. The Earth doctor and a woman of the medical caste stood beside the sedated patient. Their lips were moving and they were giving Ion a small bottle of tiny balls with writing on it.

  Shadow-of-Light-Turning looked immensely pleased. “Can’t you see?” her mother-in-law signed. “Your daughter is no longer being isolated by her cousins.”

  Ion’s face was turned toward the ground and not once did he lift his eyes to look at her. Not even as she sank into a chair near the door, too shocked and amazed at the conspiracy and betrayal to speak.

  Her old self might have spoken. She had been a warrior woman once. The chief of barterers, the villages had nicknamed her. Now, she could hardly lift her hand to argue. Her emotional and physical strength failed her. She looked up at Ion and thought, what use is fighting if my family, my husband, and my village won’t fight for me? What was the use of fighting what could not be undone? She felt old, like a living ghost.

  A day or two later, after she had taken enough of the little white pills, Flowers-in-the-Sun began to smile in that sweet way she always had. Seemingly gone was the sadness that had accompanied her when the cousins ignored her. Seeing her daughter’s happiness, Mist’s anger melted into resignation and grief and lost its edge. And yet she felt old. But she was not truly old, not yet.

  That happened at the end of the month, when Flowers-in-the-Sun was fully healed and Mist took her and a niece to the Mother-Infant festival.

  Mist was one who always tried to mind her own business and so she did not ask her niece why her mother had not accompanied her to the festival. Besides, few of Mist’s sisters-in-laws had attended the festival this year. No doubt the lack of interest in celebrating children was because of the increasing tension caused by children ignoring their elders. Mist wished her mother-in-law would call a family meeting about it. As it was now, a brooding “silence” hovered in the house.