Gravity Box and Other Spaces

by Mark Tiedemann

  That afternoon, Jen sat in a small office and tried to keep from looking at the blank walls. She could not rid herself of the suspicion that she was being monitored. She held the armrests of the swivel chair and hoped she did not look too nervous, too desperate. She tried to present a calm exterior, to show nothing that implied fear or instability.

  The door behind the desk at the front of the room opened and a woman stepped in. She was tall, dressed in a pale gray jumpsuit. Light brown hair fell to just below her sharp jaw line. She smiled and sat down.

  “Hello, Jennifer,” she said, her voice soothing. “I’m Ella Preston. I’ll be examining you for your application.” She briefly worked the keyboard to her right and scanned the screen on her desk. “You’re a bright student. How did the tests go? Do you feel you did all right?”

  “As well as I was able.”

  Ella looked back at the screen. “I see your specialty is mathematics and computer science. How exactly do you want to apply them?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What do you want to do with your fields? What area of math or computer science do you want to work in?”

  “I—” She paused, momentarily off-balance. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Math is—I don’t know. Don’t they need math and computer experts in the orbitals?”

  “Of course we do,” Ella laughed. “But what field? Astronomy, physics, engineering?”

  Jen closed her eyes for a moment. She wanted the questions to be over, the forms finalized, the decision made. She cleared her throat. “I’m most interested in astronomy, but I haven’t been limiting my studies to just that.”

  “You want to be a synthesist, then.” Ella nodded and typed something into the terminal. “There’s no reason to be nervous, Jennifer. Your academic record is excellent. There’s nothing I can see to deny your application. Not from our end, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?” Jen heard the tension in her voice.

  “How do your parents feel about this? After all, you would be emigrating. Quite a distance to be separated from your family.”

  “They’re fine about it. They’ve signed all the consent forms.”

  Ella pursed her lips. “But no one’s interviewed them.”

  Jen shrugged. “They’re busy people.”

  Ella studied her for a long time. Then she leaned forward, folding her hands on the desk. “Jennifer—”

  “Please call me Jen.”

  “All right. Jen. Let me explain a couple of things to you that you might not fully appreciate. These grants serve a number of purposes, some of them political. When the orbitals declared independence, a dozen treaties were signed and a hundred offices were created both up there and down here to handle relationships between Earth and space. These grants are one of those methods for keeping things cordial. We’re essentially another country. You’ll need a passport and visitor’s visa; you’ll need diplomatic status and approval from many sources. We can’t afford an incident involving fraud. We have to be careful with these. Do you understand?”

  “If Earth cut you off you’d survive, wouldn’t you?”

  Ella laughed lightly. “It would take a very serious problem for us to be cut off, but yes, we’d survive. Not easily. We’re barely self-sufficient. And we still need immigrants. There’s a lot we need from the surface. We can replace most of it eventually, but my point is we have limits and one of the limits we have is we can’t take just anyone up. The pipeline is controlled. We have to make sure no one will stir up trouble.”

  “All the appropriate forms are signed.”

  “We need to talk with your parents. Make sure they understand.”

  “Why? They signed the forms; they understand.”

  Ella frowned. Jen felt caught. She kept her face as blank as possible and hoped nothing told in her voice, but she knew it was over. She watched Ella study her and wondered how the refusal would be phrased.

  “What are you hiding?” Ella asked.

  The question surprised her. “Pardon?”

  “I’ve screened runaways before, Jen, but never one so bright. There’s no reason for you to do this covertly; you’re qualified. What are you hiding?”

  That was it. Jen had expected something more patronizing, more subtle, but this woman sounded as if she was really concerned for her well-being. Ella Preston was not playing by the rules Jen was used to; she was being direct, blunt, and very observant.

  Jen stood. “I have to go. I’m sorry to take up your time.”

  “Jen, wait—”

  “Thank you.” She hurried out of the small office. She kept control until she reached the hallway. Her eyes stung. All the money on the special classes, buying her way into the best courses, running her life like a spy, and five minutes of conversation saw it erased.

  She did not cry. She retrieved her backpack, reached the doors, and left the school. It was too early to go home; she had half an hour yet before classes were finished, but she knew she could not stay. She needed to get away even if she had nowhere to go. It did not matter, she decided. She was going nowhere in any case.

  Jen stopped by the bankcomp she used on the way home. She slid her false ID into the scanner and waited. The machine welcomed her and offered a menu. Jen requested a readout of her account. She had just over seven hundred dollars. She cancelled further transactions and retrieved her card. Seven hundred dollars was hardly enough to disappear on, even with the additional two hundred in her pack. She had worked through a runaway scenario many times in her head, and it never came out to her advantage.

  She walked farther down the street to a point where she could see the perimeter towers of the port. Her neighborhood abutted the high-security fencing like refuse. Once all these buildings had housed the workers who had built the port and serviced it, but ever since the orbitals had declared their independence, border regulations had eliminated most of the jobs Earthbound citizens could take. With independence, the economics changed, resulting in a brief but devastating depression that had left all these people, formerly hard-working and involved, with little to do. Jen knew the economy was recovering now, things were supposedly getting better, but from where she stood nothing had improved.

  Her father had been a delivery driver, handling combustibles. His job ended almost immediately. Jen’s mother had worked in a data resource center. Her job had lasted a while longer, but eventually it ended too. Her father had been too proud or too obstinate to relocate or look for new work. It became a weight around the family, holding them back. Their situation had degraded as had the world around them. It seemed pathological now. Neither of her parents seemed capable of moving on in any constructive direction.

  As she neared her apartment building she looked over the neighborhood. The sandwich shop was full of unemployed service workers squeezed in between a couple of blue-collar types who worked for one of the few ground-bound companies lucky enough to get and keep maintenance contracts with the port. She glimpsed watery shapes of people in windows of the block-long tenement across the street from her own smaller building. A few cars drifted by, older models that were beginning to acquire the organic rot appearance of aluminum and plastic humus. Glumly, she entered her building.

  It was difficult for her to move through its dark hallways and smell its musty damp air. She couldn’t remember a time when it had been anything more than a tenement. Now it was just harder to bear. At her apartment door, she carefully opened the small tube attached to her keychain and dipped the door key into the dark gray powder. She tapped it on the edge of the tube then slid the graphite-laden key into the lock. It turned without a sound. Jen recapped the tube of graphite and slid the keys into her backpack. She entered the apartment.

  A hallway led from the front door all the way to the kitchen at the rear. Doors let off into a living room, a small dining room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The hardwood floor shone dully from hundreds of waxings; Jen sometimes felt that she had put down every coat and was personally res
ponsible for the polish on the floors.

  Jen stood still for a while, listening. For a few moments she thought she was alone in the apartment, but then she heard a delicate sound, a page turning, coming from the kitchen. This had to be her mother because her father never made soft sounds. He always stomped, shoved, or bullied.

  She went to the kitchen and stopped short in the doorway. She blinked, confused. Her father was sitting at the kitchen table, a notebook open before him. Warren wore a gray shirt and black tie. His usually unkempt hair was slicked back neatly, although he had still not shaved. Shock kept Jen from retreating back the way she had come. He looked up.

  “Jenny,” he said. “Good. Your mother’s out shopping, I think. I’m hungry.” He looked at her expectantly.

  “I just got home from school,” Jen stammered.

  He nodded, still watching her.

  “Did you get a job, Daddy?” she asked.

  He raised his eyebrows, leaned back in the chair, and drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. Jen did not know what to do. She was baffled. She fished for something else to say. Behind her the apartment door opened.

  “Jennifer, hi,” her mother called. She turned and saw her mother coming up the hallway with a plastic shopping bag in one hand, her small purse and keys in the other.

  “Melissa,” Warren called, “I’m hungry.”

  Jen’s mother squeezed by her into the kitchen. “I had to go to the store, get a few things.” She set the bag on the table. She shrugged out of her thin cloth jacket and looked at the notebook open before him.

  “What’re you readin’, hon?”

  Warren stared at his wife. Jen, relieved at the distraction, turned and retreated to her room. She dropped her backpack beside her bed, sat down on the edge of the bed, and fell back, stretching across its length.

  Nothing felt the same. The day, she decided, was a complete bust. She had accomplished nothing. She wanted to forget it. She wanted sleep.

  Her door banged open. Jen snapped to her feet, heart thundering. Warren looked down at her, eyes wide and irrational.

  “Come into the kitchen,” he said, his tone familiar and dangerous.

  Jen hesitated until he moved aside. He stood so that she had to go through her door sideways. Jen did not run. She congratulated herself on that feat of control. In the kitchen her mother was unpacking the groceries. A carton of milk, a few cans of tuna, a loaf of bread, and a box of rice. Melissa did not look at her daughter.

  Jen crossed the length of the kitchen to sit on the window ledge. She could sense Warren looming in the doorway behind her.

  “Some rules’re gonna be started,” he said. “Things’ve changed. From now on—”

  The doorbell rang. Warren scowled and stormed down the hallway.

  Jen stared at her mother. She seemed smaller, more faded. There were more gray hairs sprinkled through her light brown hair. Everything about her looked tired. Jen wondered why she hadn’t noticed before. Then she felt her chest tighten with a longing she did not understand, a need she could not articulate. Instead of trying, she went over to the notebook still open on the table.

  “‘The Order of Natural Ascension for the Supremacy of Males,’” she read. Jen stared at her mother. The woman caught her daughter’s look and chewed her lower lip, apologetic and helpless. Jen rolled her eyes and sighed. Another of Warren’s “interests.” She wondered how long this one would last. He had gone through these every few months, deciding that it was his job to set things right by starting with his own family. If, the argument ran, he could make clean his own house, everything else would fall into place.

  The door slammed. Jen went back to her perch by the window. Her father returned and glared at her briefly before turning his gaze on her mother.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. He sat down before his notebook. He frowned at it for a moment, then closed it.

  “I can make us some Spanish rice,” Melissa said. She pulled a large saucepan from the cabinets above the stove.

  “I want my dinner ready every day at five,” he said. He folded his hands on the notebook and gazed thoughtfully at the sink against the far wall. “Not five after, not three after, not five till. Five.”

  Melissa drew a cup of water. The pipes gurgled. She returned to the stove and poured the water into the saucepan. The fire would not light; she tried another burner. Finally she had to light it with a match. The smell of unburned gas tinged the air. Melissa filled a coffee cup from the new box of rice.

  “I don’t care who makes it,” Warren said. “One of you. Just make sure. Dinner at five.”

  “I’ll try, hon,” Melissa said, stirring the rice into the water. “But sometimes the bus doesn’t run soon enough, I don’t get home till almost quarter to. Hard to put somethin’ together in fifteen minutes.”

  “Then Jenny can do it. She’s big enough; she’s female.”

  Jen wanted to leave, but she felt frozen in place.

  “Hon, sometimes school doesn’t let her out till—”

  “Then she can quit school.”

  Jen panicked. Warren smiled at her.

  Melissa turned from the stove. “What did you say?”

  “You didn’t hear the first time?”

  “Yes, I heard you.” Melissa frowned, turning her back to him.

  “Pay attention. Problem in this family is no one pays attention. Listen, god damn it, when I say something. Now, what did I say? Just repeat it back.”

  “You said Jennifer could quit school,” Melissa repeated.

  “Now why’d you ask me to repeat it? You heard it.”

  “I asked ’cause I couldn’t believe it.”

  Warren cocked his head to one side. “Oh? You think I’m kidding maybe?”

  “I think you’re upset and it has nothin’ to do with Jen.”

  “Or maybe you think I’m bein’ cruel. Lord knows you’ve accused me of that before.”

  “You’ve had a hard day,” Melissa said, sighing.

  “Or maybe I’m just in the habit of makin’ shit up to hear myself sound important.”

  Jen swallowed. The more he cursed the angrier he became. She had seen this all her life and had never grown used to it.

  Melissa looked at Warren and folded her arms. “Jennifer can’t quit school. Will not.”

  “Oh? I said she could. You know, you got a habit of trying to run everybody’s life but your own. You try to tell me what to do; you order Jenny around—”

  “I do not—”

  “What’s that? You sayin’ now I’m a liar?”

  “No, but you need to listen, Warren.”

  “Then what did you say?” Warren got up and leaned on the edge of the table. “You come in and walk around here like a mousy little nothin’ and don’t say shit until somebody around here tries to order things contrary to what you got them. I say I want my dinner at five and you give me all kinds of reasons why you can’t do it. I say it don’t matter, Jenny can do it, she ain’t got nothin’ better to do all damn day, and you stick your mouth out and bite off some accusations. Who the hell do you think you are? If Jenny wants to quit school, then she can! If I want my goddamn dinner at a certain time, then I can too!”

  “Then maybe you ought to make it yourself.”

  “Now you’ve told me time and again to leave your kitchen alone. You say I mess everything up. Fine. You can’t have it both ways. You got a right, the kitchen is yours. This is your domain, your responsibility. I don’t mind givin’ you your own head in here, suits me fine. How things oughta be. Now it’s inconvenient for you to do your job, so you change the rules again. Make up your mind, will you?”

  Melissa wiped the tears off her face. “Jennifer can’t quit school.”

  “I say she can.”

  “I don’t want to,” Jen said.

  “She can’t. She’s only fifteen. Law says she has to go.”

  “Fuck the law! This is a free country! Least, it used to be! If she don’t want to go to school she don’t
have to!”

  “I want to go to school,” Jen said.

  “That wouldn’t be right, hon,” Melissa said.

  “What wouldn’t?”

  “Takin’ her outta school just wouldn’t be right.”

  “I don’t see why not. She can’t handle it anyway. Chores are never finished. Things ain’t done right. She’s always nervous as a monkey and tired all the time. I never did think it was good for her.”

  “Now that’s not her fault.”

  “I’m a liar again? Look at her! She looks about ready to cry! Tell me school ain’t done this to her!”

  “I—like—school—Daddy!”

  Warren jabbed a finger at her. “You’re talkin’ outta turn, young lady. You know how I feel about that.”

  “She wants to go to school, Warren.”

  “She don’t know what she wants! She’s a child! Children don’t know shit! That’s why they’re children!”

  Jen headed for the doorway.

  “Where the hell you think you’re going?”

  “Out.”

  Warren grabbed her arm and spun around, hurling her against the refrigerator.

  “No!” Melissa screamed. She pushed between Warren and Jen. Jen looked past her mother. Warren’s face was twisted and stretched, eyes bulging, focused with fanatic intensity upon her.

  Warren grabbed Melissa’s shoulders and turned her, wrenching her off her feet.

  Jen broke for the doorway.

  “God damn it!”

  Jen reached the end of the hallway and looked back. She saw her father straining through the doorway, arms outstretched. Melissa was holding Warren’s leg with one arm, her free hand pulling at his pants.

  Jen opened the door and fell through. She pulled the door shut and ran. She hit the sidewalk and kept going, momentum carrying her down the street even though night was coming on. She thought she heard someone calling her name. She ignored it and kept going.

  The street was empty. Fortunately, most of the lights worked, throwing an orange wash over the cracked concrete, making black shadows in the doorways of the buildings. Jen sat in the shadowed arch doorway entrance of her old school which was now boarded up and long empty of students. She remembered attending classes here briefly when she was very young. The place had possessed an inviting odor of books and linoleum. In second grade it had been closed down, and everyone was transferred to the giant polyversity that smelled of ozone, plastic, and antiseptic cleanser.