Authors: Hillary Jordan
Simone made a couple of turns onto a tree-lined street, taking them past the imposing redbrick buildings of Mississippi University for Women. The campus was surrounded by lovely old houses with lush green lawns and large flower beds filled mostly with winter stubble, though there were some shrubs in bloom. Hannah was startled to see coiled garden hoses mounted on the side of several homes.
“Don’t they have rationing here?” she asked.
“No,” Kayla said. “Mississippi’s like Georgia, they get plenty of rain. In fact, they get so much they sell their excess to other states.”
“Imagine, having so much water you can use it on your
yard,"
Hannah said.
“Imagine, selling water to your own countrymen.” Simone’s tone was contemptuous. “How typically American.”
“I suppose you do it differently in Canada?”
“But of course. We are socialists. Even in Québec, where we have much rain, we ration to aid our sister provinces who have little.”
The absurdity of it all bubbled up inside of Hannah, erupting in a helpless snort of laughter. Here she was, being rescued by a socialist, feminist, lesbian, baby-killing, foreign terrorist. What would the ladies in the sewing circle say to that?
Simone was glowering at her in the rearview mirror. “You find something funny?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Put your hoods on.”
Hannah and Kayla obeyed. The van made half a dozen more turns and then stopped.
“Speaker on. Call Stanton,” Simone said.
A deep, rumbling voice answered on the third ring. “That you, sweet Seemoan?”
Hannah’s brows lifted.
Sweet
Simone?
“Yes. Are we green?”
“Green as a drunk on a roller coaster. What’s your ETA?” Stanton spoke in a drawl that sounded ever so slightly exaggerated, the vowels thick and round, like he’d just eaten a spoonful of pudding.
“We will arrive to you in five minutes.”
“Give me fifteen.” He hung up.
“You should leave now,” Simone said, and Hannah realized she was speaking to Paul. Kayla drew in a sharp breath, echoing Hannah’s own dismay.
“Yeah, I’d better.”
“Thank you, Paul. For everything,” Hannah said, extending her hand.
He took it and squeezed it hard. “Good luck. Take care of each other,” he said.
Take care of Kayla,
Hannah heard.
“We won’t forget what you’ve done for us,” Kayla said. Her voice was strained.
Hannah pictured their goodbye: Kayla’s red hand groping for Paul’s white one, their bodies fighting the leap of their hearts, trying, in the space of a few seconds, to communicate through their joined hands what they’d meant to each other, in case they never saw each other again. A cruel farewell, but better than what Hannah had had with Aidan, which was none at all.
“Godspeed,” Paul said.
The van door opened and closed, and presently Hannah heard another car start up and drive away.
Godspeed to you too, Vincent,
she thought. Trying, and failing, to imagine a God who would bless a mission such as theirs.
The three women waited in silence. It grew hot and close under the hood, and Hannah’s lungs ached for fresh air. How had she come to this point, this nadir so absolute that even air, that most basic of things, had become a luxury? Forget chocolate, silk, love—right now, she would have sold her soul for a single clean, unprocessed breath.
“Ben,
we go now to meet Stanton,” Simone announced finally. “He will take you on the next leg of your journey. You will do exactly as he tells you.” She started the van, but they didn’t move. “Listen to me. You think you have seen the worst from the world because you are Chromes. You think this has made you more tough, more sage. And maybe it has, a little. But you are still all two of you like infants. You give your trust too easily.” Her tone held none of its usual derision. What Hannah heard instead was something that sounded remarkably like empathy. “The road will become much more dangerous after you leave Stanton’s. You must trust no one but yourselves. No one.”
The van accelerated then. They drove a short distance, no more than a couple of miles, and stopped. “Wait here,” Simone said. She got out. Hannah heard another door open. She risked lifting her hood up and found Kayla already peering out the windshield. It was too dark to see much, but Hannah could make out Simone’s tall, thin form hugging—hugging!—a considerably shorter figure that must be Stanton. Behind them, she saw the faint silhouette of a high bridge and the glint of water below it.
“I recognize this place,” Kayla said. “We’re down by the river. What did you think of that little speech of Simone’s?”
“I think she’s been where we are, or someplace a whole lot like it.”
“What makes you say that?”
Hannah hesitated, feeling reluctant to divulge what she’d gleaned about Simone’s past. She pictured the guard’s face at the library, before and after she’d scanned Hannah’s NIC and known she’d had an abortion.
It’s personal.
Suddenly, the phrase took on a new meaning. Simone’s secrets hadn’t been freely given. Even knowing them was a trespass, but sharing them would be a violation.
“Just a feeling I have,” Hannah said. “Anyway, I think she’s right, we shouldn’t trust anyone. Including her.” Simone and Stanton were approaching the rear of the van. “Here they come.” The women hastily drew their hoods over their faces. The back doors were opened, letting in a waft of cool air.
“Come,” Simone said, grasping Hannah’s arm and helping her past the crates and out of the van. When she tried to stand, her legs buckled, cramped from all the hours of sitting.
“Whoa there,” said Stanton. A hand took hold of her other arm, supporting her. “I’ll take her from here, Seemoan. You get the other one.”
Simone let go, and Stanton led Hannah carefully forward. “Steady now, I’ve got you.” He stopped. “Open trunk,” he said, and Hannah heard it release. “I’m afraid that’s where you ladies will need to go, but it’ll only be for a short while, I promise.”
Hannah stiffened as he tried to ease her forward. She felt the hard bumper of a car butt up against the front of her thighs and jerked back from it. “I’m not getting in there,” she said, forcing the words out of her rapidly closing throat. This time, there would be no latch on the inside. She and Kayla would be trapped, helpless.
“You will, and you will do it now,” Simone said. Her voice was like a whip against bare flesh. Hannah shook her head violently and felt a wave of dizziness. She felt like there were fingers around her throat, choking her. Her hand flew up to rip the hood off, and another hand, gentle but implacable, took it and forced it back to her side.
“She’s hyperventilating,” Stanton said.
“Sacrament!
We do not have the time for this.” The hood was pushed up above Hannah’s nose, and she threw her head back, gulping in air.
“Hannah? Are you all right?” cried Kayla. Hannah heard her struggling to break free of Simone.
“Be still!” Simone hissed. “Each second we remain here puts us at a greater risk. You want the police to come?
Non?
Then you will shut your mouths and obey. I will not allow you to compromise this mission.”
The grim words broke through Hannah’s hysteria. She’d heard Simone say them before and knew the threat wasn’t idle.
“I’m fine, Kayla,” she said, but the quaver in her voice said otherwise. She swallowed, willed it steady. “Really, I’m okay now. We’d better do as they say.”
“Good girl,” said Stanton. He loosened his grip on her wrists, and she felt his hand in the small of her back, guiding her forward and helping her into the trunk. “It’s less than ten minutes to the house. I know you’re frightened, but just try to relax and think of something pleasant, and I’ll have you out of there before you know it.”
Hannah curled onto her side and felt Kayla crawl in next to her, wriggling in an effort to find a comfortable position in the confined space. “You can take your hoods off as soon as I’ve closed the trunk,” said Stanton. “That should help a little.”
“Goodbye,” Simone said. “Good luck to you.” She sounded as cold and remote as the stars. But then Hannah felt the soft touch of a hand on her leg.
“Courage”
Simone murmured.
The hand withdrew, and the trunk lid closed with a
whomph.
Hannah pulled her hood off at once. Her eyes met utter blackness. She heard Kayla removing her own hood and drawing in rasping lungfuls of air. The sound of her breathing calmed Hannah. She could imagine how easy it would be, without the anchor of Kayla’s presence beside her, to lose herself, to stop believing in her own existence.
As the car started to move, Kayla’s hand fumbled for hers and gripped it tightly. She was trembling, but Hannah actually felt her own fear receding. Her helplessness at this moment was so absolute as to be a kind of release. There was nothing she could do or say that would change what was about to happen to her. The lid would open in ten minutes or ten hours or never. She would find safety on the other side of it, or peril. She would live, or she would die.
She lay in the blackness, stroking her friend’s warm hand, waiting to be born.
A
SHORT ETERNITY LATER,
the trunk opened to reveal a round, white face beaming down at them. “Well, hello there. I’m Stanton. Welcome to Columbus.”
He was in his early forties, Hannah judged, but his smile was that of an eight-year-old boy who’d just found a puppy under the Christmas tree.
“Let’s get you out of there.” With the courtly manner of a footman helping ladies from a carriage, he assisted them out of the trunk. “I assure you, the accommodations in the house are much more commodious,” he said, tilting his head back to look at them. He was quite short, no more than five foot two. His deep voice sounded incongruous issuing from such a diminutive frame. “Hannah and Kayla, am I right, or do I have it backwards?”
Hannah wasn’t fooled; the mind behind those shrewd eyes knew exactly who was who, and probably every other detail there was to know about them too. But she played along, saying, “Good guess. Pleased to meet you.”
Stanton gave her a decorous nod of his head. He was small and round, with a small, round head, a neat mustache perched above a small, round, rosy mouth and a bird’s small, round eyes covered by small, round, rose-tinted wire spectacles. He was elegantly dressed in black wool slacks and a black cashmere sweater, neither of which could disguise his small, round, protuberant belly. And yet, Hannah mused, watching him greet Kayla, he wasn’t unattractive. He had a gracious, dapper air—the word “dapper” might have been invented to describe this man—that was very beguiling.
She pulled her gaze away from him and took in her surroundings. They were in an old, slightly dilapidated wooden garage, but with none of the homey clutter of Susan and Anthony’s. It was bare of everything except two cars: the nondescript sedan they’d ridden in and a vintage dark-green convertible shaped like a bullet. The sinuous beauty of its lines made her fingers itch to touch it.
“It’s a ‘75 Jaguar XK-E,” Stanton said. Languidly, as if he could scent her desire, he trailed a small, neatly manicured hand across the hood. “Still runs on gasoline. It costs the earth to drive it anywhere, but I couldn’t bear to have it converted.” He looked back at the two women, his black eyes shiny as beads. “I bet y’all are ready for a hot meal and a shower. Get your things and come with me.” He gestured at the ground behind them, and Hannah saw the backpacks Anthony had given them that morning leaning against the rear wheel of the sedan. She slipped hers on, comforted by the feel of its weight against her back. Though there was nothing in it of any personal significance, the pack contained the few possessions that she could call hers. Such a small vessel, she reflected, to hold her entire life.
Stanton led them behind the Jaguar to an open trapdoor in the floor. A metal ladder led downward. “Ladies first,” he said, waving them ahead. Kayla shot Hannah a
what-the-hell
look and climbed down into the hole. Hannah followed, and then Stanton. The trapdoor closed behind them with a heavy clank. For a moment, the sound filled her with the reflexive panic of a trapped creature, but it also reminded her of something, and finally, she identified what: the sound of the gate closing behind her the day she’d been released from the Chrome ward. She made herself remember that this too was a gateway, to freedom from the red prison that was her body.
They ended up in a narrow, well-lit tunnel lined with some sort of hard gray material. It gave off a dull sheen and was warm to the touch. Stanton jumped the last few feet, landing nimbly beside them. “Kinda makes you feel like you’re in a James Bond vid, doesn’t it?” He hummed a few bars of the theme song, and Hannah couldn’t help but smile at the thought of this natty little bespectacled man as 007.
He led them down the tunnel for perhaps fifty feet and stopped at what appeared to be a dead end. “By valor and arms,” he said, and a hidden door slid open. “That’s the Mississippi motto.” He waved the women through, adding, “This door only responds to my voice, just in case you were wondering.”
They entered a windowless bedroom in what had to be the basement. “Voilà, the guest suite,” Stanton said, with a sweep of his arm. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here.”
Hannah looked around and felt some of the tension go out of her. Though the room and what she could see of the adjoining bath were sparsely and simply furnished, it was a refined simplicity. The walls were painted a soft yellow that helped compensate for the absence of natural light. The matching twin beds were wrought-iron, their down comforters drawn back to reveal crisp white sheets. A large orchid arched over the nightstand between the two beds. The white blooms with their throbbing fuchsia centers were so perfectly formed they looked fake, but Hannah knew that if she touched them, they’d feel like skin beneath her fingers, soft and vibrant. The orchid reminded her of the one Aidan had given her, but that wasn’t the only reason for the sudden stinging in her eyes, or even the main one; it was the simple fact of the flower’s existence, here, in this room that this man had decorated with such care, believing them worthy of this grace, the perfection of this beautiful, living thing.