Psychopomp: A Novella (3 page)

All the long summer and well into the fall Anden and Harkin were gone. I continued to get drawn and didn’t see the ambassador again. Eventually I was able to sleep comfortably at night, even with the occasional hunger pang.

I’d been giving Blanca some of my rations as she grew large and round. Getting rid of a baby was expensive. She complained about the heat and stretch marks.

“How will I tell Harkin?” she fretted. “He’s going to think it’s not his!”

Pell stared coolly at her. She thought Blanca was useless.

The baby came early. Pell and I sat side-by-side in the blue-tinged lights of the clinic waiting room, reading torn magazines from years ago. Distant explosions sounded in the night. Another factory gone, a greenhouse shattered. We waited hours, flinching and anxious, until finally the red-faced little girl arrived. We all went home together before dawn, as Blanca couldn’t afford to stay.

In the following weeks, a strange sort of peace fell on the house. I drank cold powdered chocolate every morning while Blanca nursed the baby on the couch. Pell would often come over in the mornings after she finished working on the edge of Cizel, before she went to sell her jewelry.

Sometimes Blanca offered to let me hold the baby, but I didn’t like to. The little body felt so awkward and fragile in my unpracticed arms.

Mamá was sixteen when she had me, the same age as me now and just one year younger than Blanca. I didn’t know if I’d ever have kids, but it might have been nice, one day, to have someone to hold whenever I wanted. Maybe then it would feel natural. And maybe it would feel like love.

“He loves me,” Blanca reminded herself from time to time. She wished for Harkin’s return while dreading it at the same time.

Thinking of Anden’s return, I wrapped myself in mildewed blankets and stayed in bed for hours.

These were long and lazy days—tense days, because I knew they wouldn’t last.

Restless, I started going to the docks every day. In late fall, the breezes bit fiercely off the sea but did nothing to lessen the heat. I stared out at the dark water till my eyes ached, and one day my heart sank to see Anden’s boat appearing against the hazy sky.

I’d known he was coming soon. I shouldn’t have felt so disappointed.

“That your brother?”

Behind me, the blond man who’d talked to me before squinted off into the distance.

“The one on the left,” I said, watching Anden tie up the boat. “With dark hair.”

“Just like yours. But yours is nicer.” He turned to me and I saw the white lines around his eyes, etched into his tanned skin. “I’m a fisher, too. I don’t got a boat right now, but I been looking for work.”

He wanted me to put in a word to Anden. I knew he did. But I didn’t offer.

For a moment the squint softened as he looked at me, maybe waiting for me to say something. Pale sunlight gleamed in thick sections of his hair, its brightness emphasizing the weathered quality of his skin. He wasn’t tall, but his body was lean and wiry from dockwork. I felt my face start to flush.

His eyelids dipped knowingly. “See ya.” He jerked his chin at me in parting.

“Adiós,” I said softly as he blended into the crowd.

I ran home with my heart beating hard. I closed myself in my room, where I hugged my knees and waited.

Later that afternoon, Anden and Harkin bustled loudly into the house. I could feel the change in the air and see their red faces, smell their old fish smell. As I listened to them bang around downstairs, I began counting the days till they’d go again into the wild rising seas, seeking their fortunes and leaving me alone.

From below, my brother bellowed my name ominously.

He waited for me in the middle of the living room, a storm in his dark brown eyes. Harkin was washing his face in the kitchen sink. I kept an anxious eye on the amount of water he used.

“You know you’re s’posed to clean up while I’m gone,” Anden said, exhausted and irritable. He swept an arm along the table, upsetting a stack of the colorful flyers I’d collected from the streets. I watched them flutter to the matted carpet, my face blank.

“Lo siento,” I said.

Blanca had left a dirty glass by the couch. Anden picked it up and threw it against the living room wall, leaving behind a splotch of wetness. A shower of shards glistened on the carpet.

“Qué?” Anden turned on me in a rage. “You’re sorry you sit on your fat ass all day and do nothing, while I slave out there on the water just to bring a few credits to this house? Is that why you’re sorry? Do you know how depressing it is to come home from months on a filthy boat to a filthy house?”

“I cleaned the bathrooms yesterday.”

“Oh, gracias a dios, you cleaned the
bathrooms
.” He started to turn away but then he thought better of it. His arm swung around, his open palm connecting with my cheek.

I sank down to the floor as he stalked upstairs to clean the filth from beneath his fingernails. My eyes were dry, and not just because I refused to cry in front of Harkin. Anden had hit me many times before, so I was used to the quick, stinging pain and the bruises throbbing on my swollen face. He would apologize to me in a few days, like he always did.

And I would forgive him. Or at least that was what he’d believe.

Blanca came downstairs with the baby as I pulled myself up off the floor. She faced the kitchen and waited for Harkin to notice her.

He shut off the faucet at last and turned, stopping short. “What’s that?”

She smiled and blinked her long lashes. “Tu hija.”

“What the hell?” He blinked in shock and confusion.

“You were gone, so I couldn’t tell you.” Her eyes began to fill. “Are you mad?”

“No—”

Anden shot back down the stairs. I tensed, worried for Blanca. She was too soft to bear my brother’s wrath.

Snarling, he jabbed a finger at her. “You got yourself knocked up and didn’t do a damn thing about it? Idiota. You think our resources aren’t strained enough? You’re feeding it from
your
rations. Don’t expect anyone else to help you!”

“Hey,” Harkin said sharply. “We won’t. Come on, B.”

They went upstairs together, Blanca sniffling. Ignoring me, Anden went out for liquor so he could celebrate having returned safely. He’d sold a catch, too, so poverty and starvation and death were thwarted once more.

That night, I sat on the roof, listening to the blare of the TV. Occasionally Anden would shout out at it. The sea was black, the lights of the harbor like gems washed atop the water. The indistinct shapes of moored boats bobbed softly, masts striking up at the sky. To the east were the desalination plants, low and lit in acid-green.

My chest filled with some emotion I couldn’t name. It was something I had felt many times in the past three years. For a moment, I had the feeling my life was going to change inexorably. I let out a long, soft sigh and bit my lip hard.

Shimmying over the edge of the roof, I lowered myself until my toes touched the windowsill. I reached down to grab the top of the frame and bent myself inside my room, knees first. The sheer green curtains fluttered around me.

Then I went to bed. Nothing ever changed.

The quiet morning belonged to me. I ate in front of the screen, which no one had turned off the night before. My eyes grew wide and hot as I watched the unimaginable horrors people endured and performed all over the world. Murders, abandonment, quests for eternal youth. The wars for rights to forests and newly-discovered aquifers overseas. Our tireless soldiers won battles effortlessly and without spilling a drop of their own blood.

Unable to stand it, I shut off the screen. Everything I saw on it made me miss Mamá with startling ferocity, especially on a lonely morning like this. And then I’d hate her for leaving me in Anden’s care, at the mercy of the world.

She was probably dead by now. I kept telling myself that.

“Get over it,” Anden had said once when I’d tried to talk to him about how I felt. “She’s gone. Papá’s gone. If I ever wanted them back, it’s only so I wouldn’t be stuck with
you
.”

“Thanks,” I’d muttered.

“You should thank me more often with all I do for you.”

Blanca said he was stressed and under pressure. That I should try not to be such a burden. But she didn’t understand how alone and unloved I felt.

Pell came by, as she always did when she’d spotted his boat. “How’d it go?” she asked.

“They had a nice catch,” I said. I left out the part where he’d hit me. The shiny bruise on my cheek spoke for itself.

“I had a good night last night. Fifty credits.”

I nodded. I might have gone with Pell, worked with her, but Anden had forbid me. I was too scared to disobey him even when he was gone. That was why I gave plasma instead. It was fear more than necessity that drove me in life.

For a couple hours, I helped her clean shells. She kept glancing up the stairs, hoping Anden would come down and say something nice to her. But he slept late and she had to leave. I could see disappointment in the set of her shoulders as she walked out the door.

~

Short of breath, I walked home from the center. I looked around every corner and made sure to avoid the entrances to alleys. There were lurking figures, as usual, but none came toward me. None had the yellowish eyes that haunted me.

I’d started dreaming again. Of tubes in my veins. Clear cylinders filling with plasma. Others lay in beds around me, eyes closed. It was like the center, only without the chatter of voices. Plasmapheresis machines beeped irregularly. It was dark, neon blue lights cutting through the gloom in which I awoke.

Those three days I’d lost…

I remembered ripping out the needle, tossing the tubes to the floor. Black blood trickled from the needle stick and down my forearm.

So, if this was a real memory and not just a dream, I’d escaped.

But from where or what I couldn’t say.

Laughter greeted me at home. I didn’t like it. When Anden laughed, he was at his most dangerous. I slipped inside and tried to pass through the living room without anyone noticing me. There were more people than I’d expected, and I didn’t look at any of them.

Anden grabbed my arm just as I put one foot on the stairs. “Marlo.”

“Sí?”

Someone yelled. Something thumped against the wall. Anden didn’t flinch, holding on to me. “You’re not gonna stay in your room all night. Get yourself cleaned up and come back down here.”

My stomach fluttered. “Why?”

His fingers tightened. “Because I said so. Look pretty. Wear something tight. And don’t ask no more questions. I have a lot riding on this. That’s all you need to know.”

I nodded and didn’t try to pull from his grasp. It would only hurt more if I did.

After staring hard at me for a moment longer, he finally let me go. Turning back to the living room, he shouted something and everyone cheered.

My feet traced a well-worn path on the thin, shabby carpet of the stairs. I rubbed at the red marks on my arm, thinking over my brother’s words. I knew what he wanted. I’d have preferred he said it plainly, but it was no mystery what he expected. It hurt he’d even ask such a thing. It frightened me, too, but there was nothing to do except obey.

Blanca followed me into my room. “I have something for you,” she said. “It doesn’t fit me anymore.”

She handed me a short, tight red dress. “It’s sexy,” I said doubtfully.

“Isn’t that what you want?”

“Uh… I guess.” I’d never had to be sexy for anyone.

I put on the dress, but I didn’t have any makeup to complete the look. Before Pell had started working at the edge of Cizel, she would practice putting makeup on me and tell me how to do it myself. When I tried, I could never achieve the same sleek effect that came to her so easily. My thin sable hair was too limp, my skin too pasty, my muddy green eyes not cunning enough. With her straight black hair and flawless skin, the effort Pell required was minimal.

Anden would have to be satisfied with me as I was, dull-eyed and dry-skinned. Maybe he wouldn’t make a scene in front of his friends.

Patting my shoulder absently, Blanca went to her room to check on the baby. Somehow I convinced my feet to take me out the door and down the stairs. My heart pounded against my ribs. I was scared. I was only sixteen. The trick was not to think about what would happen later, I decided. All I had to do was move.

Anden glanced up as I entered the living room, his mouth tight. But he lowered his eyes and gave a faint nod of approval.

My eyes skipped around the room. I didn’t recognize anyone and I was too uncomfortable to look at faces for long. I moved awkwardly toward the group, not knowing what to do next. Some of them laughed and I imagined they knew I was supposed to make a whore of myself that night.

Then a guy broke away from the others, and a familiar face turned toward me with a charming smile. I recognized his crinkled dark eyes and weathered skin. All my worries vanished.

“You must be Marlo,” the young blond man from the docks said. He held out his hand for mine. “I’m Verm.”

The only men I’d ever known didn’t have much to recommend them. Anden was a bully, Harkin a pushover, and Papá had been too often absent for me to know him very well.

But this… this wouldn’t be so bad. He was handsome. His smile was kind. Maybe he was lonely too.

I smiled back and the rest of the night passed in a blur. Verm stuck by my side for hours. We sat close to each other on the couch and he let his hand drape casually over my thigh. I got so flushed I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. He laughed and drank with the others, but his touch was just for me.

When the night wound down and Verm asked to see my room, I started feeling nervous again. He held my hand as we walked upstairs.

I reached uncertainly for the light switch by the door. “Leave it off,” Verm said. He pulled his shirt over his head.

“All right,” I said, so softly it was almost as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

He came toward me, his compact, muscled body vaguely outlined in moonlight. His hands slid up my hips, rucking my dress up around my waist. With a hand on my chest he pushed me back on the bed, and I wondered if he could feel my heart ramming.

I lay my head on the pillow. He tugged down my underwear and I slipped my ankles out. His face, mean in the dark, frightened me.

“Verm,” I said. I put my palms gently on his cheeks.

“Shut up.” He knocked my hands away.

There wasn’t any part of me that didn’t feel hollow when he pushed himself inside. Pain speared up my middle but I bit my lip to keep from crying out. He grunted above me as he rocked back and forth, slow at first, then fast and faster. The bed creaked beneath us and my chest convulsed with suppressed sobs. A tear slid out of the corner of my eye.

Finally, he made a deep noise of satisfaction and collapsed onto me, his breath hot and heavy on my neck. Then he rolled off and onto his back. His breathing slowed and soon he was sleeping deeply beside me.

I turned away, unable to look at him. The blanket had slipped to the floor and I pulled it up over my naked lower half. My sobs were all gone, but the back of my throat burned.

I wondered if it was always like that, so pitiless and cold. The thought of anyone making me do that ever again was almost too much to bear.

~

By the time I woke up in the morning, Verm had already gone. I was glad not to see him. I lingered sadly in the warm bed, but I knew I had to go downstairs eventually.

Anden was poring over his world map on the kitchen table. He’d weighted the corners down with broken bits of asphalt from outside. He circled the fishing spots he would travel to on his next trip.

His eyes met mine briefly across the room. Maybe they softened a little, maybe they were a little ashamed. It was hard to say before he turned his attention back to the map. I waited until sunset. He never even thanked me for what I’d done.