Full and covered in red sauce, I sit
back. I am sweating from the amount I've eaten.
"Yeah you're gonna puke. I did the
same thing. It was cutlet night and I threw up everywhere."
Sarah shakes her head and lets the cart
lady wash her down. She looks less like an animal and more like a kid suddenly.
The lady hands me a warm white cloth. I
wash myself and sigh into it. I love this place. I will let them put as many
babies as they want in my belly. I will give them anything they want. I never
want to leave here.
She smiles a soft smile and notice for
the first time she is black. She is the first black person I've seen all day.
"I just need to put a needle in your
arm. Want to get comfortable for me?"
I lie back on the bed and cherish the
grossly full feeling in my belly.
"Do they keep the white people and
black people and Asian people and native people separate?"
She blushes, "Honey there aint no
black people in here except us nurses and cleaners."
I'm lost, "Is there another
center?"
Anna clears her throat, "They're
only breeding the whites around here."
I feel the disgust in my face and the
nurse laughs, "That was my thinking. Now this is going to pinch a tiny
bit."
She wipes my arm and swiftly she has a
needle hanging out of my arm. Sarah is beside my and curled up in my armpit.
She's hurting my side by laying on it because I'm so full.
The needle is suddenly pulled away and a
rubber hose is sticking out of my arm. She wraps it up with tape. She looks at
Sarah and raises an eyebrow, "Now if I leave you a bottle of water will
you drink it or do I have to give you a needle to?"
Sarah puts her hand out to the sweet
looking nurse. She puts the huge bottle of water in her hands and chuckles,
"Figured as much."
"I would have drank a bottle of
water." I say.
She shakes her head of curly hair that I
notice is shiny too, "Nope you gotta have that needle. They need you to
take meds and antibiotics."
She squeezes my hand, "I am so sorry
honey." Her eyes glass over for a second and I know I can trust her. She
lets go of me and hooks several plastic bags to the clear hoses running into my
arm. Water starts dripping into the hose and as it hits my needle mark my arm
gets cold there.
"How's that feel?"
"Cold."
She nods, "Okay I will check on you
in a bit. Try to rest."
She wheels the food cart out and pokes
her head back in and gives Sarah a stern look, "You drink that now you
hear?"
Sarah cracks open the plastic lid and
starts drinking. The nurse chuckles again.
Anna watches my arm. She looks distant.
"What's the deal with only white
women being bred?"
She shrugs, "Well you and I aren’t
women firstly. We're girls. Secondly I don’t know. Some of the others have said
they think it's like the Second World War where the racists wanted everyone
dead."
I sense him. It isn’t a feeling of his
body next to mine but his eyes watching me. I want to reach out and touch him.
I feel myself toss in the sheets and tangle myself up in Sarah and the
blankets. I open my eyes and climb off the bed. I rub my eyes and climb into
the other bed. The empty one that Anna sneaks into in the mornings. The sheets
are cold and crisp, compared to the sweaty bed that’s filled with a needy
eleven year old.
I stare at the glowing white ceiling and
feel a smile cross my lips. I knew it would be too bright to be dulled by the
black of the night.
I can see his wolf eyes if I close mine.
He is looking for me. I feel a tug at my heart.
He's never been away from me like this
before. I knew his staying with Meg was a bad idea. I can feel his hopeless
panic in my heart. My stomach makes a knot. The past two weeks have been
amazing. I can't even try to lie to myself. I've eaten meals I never imagined I
would, ever. I've had dessert every day. I can feel my body stretching and gaining
and trying to find room for the extra weight. Anna and Sarah are the same.
Sarah has started to get a little potbelly that Louise, our first nurse, has
started to make fun of.
Sarah eats
and rubs it. I've learned Sarah was sold to the military. Her mother got liquor
and smokes for her. She kissed her on the top of the head and told her not to
be a bother.
I have a small plan of hunting her down
when we escape.
I know Jake and Will have left us. I was
worried for a few days and even felt guilt for not even trying to get out, but
the food is to get better.
Anna says it's like the story of Hansel
and Gretel. The witch kept making better and better food but in the end she
intended to eat them.
Anna says we need to worry about anyone
who wants to give as much as the doctors and nurses do. Louise has grown oddly
quiet in the last couple days. She mutters to herself and gets emotional in our
room sometimes and then leaves quickly.
I try not to think about it all and let
my eyes close.
As my thoughts fade into simple things
that make me sleepy, I hear the knob on the door turn. I know it's Anna.
"You sleep with Sarah this
time." I mutter as she closes the door.
"Emma honey wake up now."
I shoot up to see Louise standing in
front of my door. Her clothes are dark, not the white coats and pale blue pants
and tops. I would know her voice anywhere.
"You girls gotta go tomorrow."
I frown and rub my eyes, did I fall back
to sleep?
"You gotta get out of here baby
girl. The doctors are going to take Anna in the morning for tests and then you
have got to go. Do you understand me?"
I nod, "Why?"
"This place isn’t what it
seems."
My mind starts functioning, "I
can't. I'm waiting for my dad's friend to come for me. He said he would send a
signal."
"I know Emma. Serge sent me.
Tomorrow there will be a huge garbage dump truck. You girls need to be in the
back of it."
My stomach knots tighter as my nerves
twist, "Okay. How do I get there?" I remember the garbage thingy
being in the middle. Will had been positive it would be there. I hadn’t been
prepared for everything to be stark white and look exactly the same.
I feel her weight on my bed. She sits by
my feet, "I have something to tell you."
I feel twitchy.
"The garbage isn’t for regular
garbage. It's for the girls. You all will lay with the dead girls."
It doesn’t hit me in the way she's
expecting it to. I've lain with the dead before. I've covered myself in their
blood. Women used to die from childbirth even before. It doesn’t bother me.
"Okay."
"They take the babies three times
and then when the third one is born they get rid of the girls. They think we
don’t know but we do. They take their organs and put them to sleep like a
dog."
My stomach lands somewhere very low in my
abdomen, "What? What about the condos in the city? The healthy ones go
live in the city."
I can see her dark curls shaking against
the white wall behind her, "No baby. They don’t. That was a lie they made
up. They built the city on the children from those women but they never leave
here."
Tears have formed in my eyes,
"What?"
Her hands reaches for mine in the dark
and squeezes it, "That’s why you have to go. You have to get little Sarah
and Anna out of here. The scientists have done studies. A baby only needs its
mother for the first two years of its life. After that it can easily be raised
by anyone. It gets the milk and love from its mother for the first two years
and then it gets adopted out in the city. That nurse Gloria, she is waiting on
you to have a baby. She'll be old enough to raise your baby by the time the
first one is old enough to go."
My hands go to my stomach where my
unfertilized eggs sit. My fingers bite into my skin, mine. Those eggs, those
babies are mine. I would never let her take them. Not even from my cold dead
fingers.
I feel a cold sweat on my skin. I have
never given a single thought to having a baby. I can't imagine bringing
something into the world and making it learn to be what we are.
Louise stands up and grips my hand,
"You need this." She slips a piece of plastic in my hands and a small
folded piece of paper.
"Thank you." I say. I don’t
know what else to say.
"No. Do not thank me. Just get out.
Tell everyone what you've learned." She opens the door.
"Come with us."
She sighs, "I can't. You take my
love with you." She closes the door.
I lie back onto my bed and know I will
not sleep no matter what.
Images of women in body dumps, like the
ones in the borderlands I've seen, start to flash in my mind. If I close my
eyes they get brighter, more colorful. If I open my eyes I can see their faces
swirling in the bright white ceiling that never dims.
I hear their voices filling my head. My
eyes grow heavy against my will.
When I wake Sarah is sitting on my bed
eating an apple. It's bright and red and reminds me of Snow White. Her red ruby
lips and white skin is so shocking against the bright red peel. The sun is up.
Small round lights let in the sunlight instead of light bulbs. Like a skylight
my granny had but tiny and round.
Sarah looks pretty this morning. I see
such a difference in her. Her skin glows, her blonde hair is shiny and her blue
eyes sparkle with life and health. If I close my eyes I remember people looking
like that all the time, before.
"What's your mother like?" I
ask because of her white teeth. They're cared for. It's obvious.
She shrugs, "She's young. Like
thirty. She's kind of mean. She made me wash with really hot water every day
and brush three times a day and floss too. She would scrub my skin like I was a
potato."
I laugh. I wish I'd had a mother. Even if
she scrubbed my skin like I was a potato.
"What did she do before the
fall?"
"She was a secretary for a dental
firm. My dad was a dentist."
I take an apple from the plate she has
beside her of fruit and cheese, "Is your dad still there with her?"
She shakes her head and takes another big
bite. She chews for a second and then talks with her mouth full spitting tiny
apple bits, "He stayed with his family."
I take a small bite and leave it at that.
Anna walks in looking funny. Her eyes
seem dark, like the pupil has eaten up all the color.
"Hey."
"You okay?"
She shakes her head, "No. I feel
gross I went for testing and they put me to sleep. I threw up a minute ago.
It's like the room is spinning."
This changes things.
She sits on the bed and seems off. I can
see the sway in each of her movements.
She lays down and curls into a ball,
"I just need to sleep it off."
I touch her arm and squeeze, "We
have to leave now. You can't sleep."
She opens one eye "What?"
I nod and pull out the paper and white
plastic card, "Louise came to see me last night. We need to leave. Now. A
garbage truck is coming today. My dad's friend told Louise the garbage was
coming today."
She groans and nuzzles into the bed,
"Nooooo. Let's just stay for one more day."
I fidget with the plastic ID card,
"That’s not all Louise said."
Anna groans and rolls around, "Does
it matter? I don’t want to leave. Not yet."
Sarah frowns and tosses her apple into
the compost bin that gets emptied everyday. She gets down on her knees and
looks at Anna at eye level, "They're murdering the moms after they give
birth. They take your babies at two and then give them to women in the city.
After three babies they murder you. The condos are a lie. There is no life in
the city afterwards."
Anna licks her lips and tilts her head
back to look at me. I nod. I feel sick. I never knew Sarah was awake when
Louise was speaking. It sounds much worse coming from the lips of a child.
Anna pushes herself up, "Okay. Let's
do this." She drinks from the bottle of water next to her. "I'll be
okay. Just let me wake up."
I drink a huge drink too and pass it to
Sarah.
She looks at the apples and cheese on the
plate, "I'm going to miss this place."
We all laugh.
"Louise drew a map on this paper.
She said when you got back from the tests we should leave immediately and hide
in the garbage."
Anna nods and rubs her eyes,
"Okay."
I feel sick, "There is one last
thing."
She looks up at me. I can see her
fighting the grogginess.