Filter House (12 page)

“So is that what’s going to happen?”

“Probably not. It would be cooler to move Quarters nearer to where the work is being done.” This sounded depressingly likely. It was, after all, their module, at their command. It would take a couple of Days to shift and re-anchor, but they’d still save time in the long run.

I sighed and let my chin sink down into one cupped hand.

“Kayley?” said Tata.

“What?” I didn’t bother to look up.

“Your sorrow equals?”

“You’ll be gone so much, traveling back and forth…”

“Kayley, must you always try to reach so far in front of your arms? These troubles are unborn. Each path has many branchings.” She came over to me and put her hands on my hunched-up shoulders.

“I’m here,” Tata continued. “I don’t have any work right now, and I’d really like to way with you. So ask your head to tell you what it’s best for us to do.”

My head was empty of suggestions. We wound up hacking my father’s book codes. Despite what she’d said, Tata was not wholly there, and it took longer than it should have. We succeeded about supper time, fed her skin, then hurried to join Penny and Dad in the kitchen.

I watched them all carefully. Penny and Dad were already at the counter, sawing away at grilled swordfish steaks. “Something’s wrong, Tata,” he joked as we entered. “You forgot to program me the sword I need to cut this thing.”

Penny winced. “Your wit, dear. Use your
wit.”

“I am. Maybe yours is a little sharper. Mind if I borrow it a moment?” He reached over and started rummaging through her wild curls. “Looks like what you’ve got here is mostly hair.”

All very jolly and fine, all throughout the meal. Except once I caught what Penny’s book would have called a long, burning look. Dad to Tata. Tata to Dad. Then both of them were studying their empty plates.

Afterwards, Penny asked Dad to come cad with her. I stayed behind, pretending to help Tata clean up, wondering whether or not I was jealous. At last I decided I just wanted to know what was going on.

“You love him, don’t you, Tata?”

Her hands stayed busily silent, smoothing creases from our crumpled paper napkins.

“Tata—”

“Yes. It hardly matters, but yes, I love your father very much.” She tossed the napkins into the paper cycler and turned away to face the sink.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “It doesn’t matter why?”

“Because.” For a moment I thought that was all she was going to say. Then the words came flooding out.

“Because it is unlikely that this love will advance either of us on our path of light and destiny. Because your father knows this as well as I do, though we both wish we didn’t. Because your father is strong for me, and I am weak for him. Because, because, because…” Tata stopped talking and turned on the water, flushing food scraps from the sink. “There are many, many reasons. Good ones.”

“All right,” I said. I kept quiet while she unloaded the washer and stacked our clean, dry plates in their hopper. When she was done, I followed her out into the corridor. “Do you still want to way with me?” I asked. “I could stay in your room tonight, if…if you’d like?”

She stood still, considering. “I might.”

Tata’s desk had such a tiny screen. “Or you could come spend the night with me.” That way we could read.

“Perhaps that would be most cool.” But when we came to her doorway, she stopped. “There are a few things it would be better for me to do tonight, before I leave for Quarters.” I could see she was still trying not to sign, though her soft, dark shoulders curved in some awkward emotion: shame, embarrassment? I didn’t know.

“Anything I can do, Tata?” I asked her.

“Wait. I’ll come when I’m through.” The glamp-light glimmered on her curtain’s fur as it closed behind her.

I went on to my room. Leaving the curtain open, I activated my desk and took a look at this afternoon’s discovery.

The book was called
Space-Apes in Eden: The Anti-Domestication of a New Racial Archetype.
It was a load of filth.

I was eleven Years old, up to my fortieth semester of school. I had heard of the antiquated notion that humanity is divided into races, special variations due to local inbreeding. But no one had ever discussed the inferences once commonly drawn based on this theory: that members of these racial subsets possessed differing abilities, qualitatively and quantitatively. That certain of these abilities made their possessors more fit to survive and reproduce than those possessed of other, and therefore inferior, abilities. That the inbreeding which had produced these races was a highly desirable occurrence, one to be cultivated and encouraged—“by any means consonant with the rapid colonization of space.”

I struggled to comprehend these repulsive assumptions as they were presented to me. The murky mysteries of the written word forced me to formulate this nastiness within my own mind. There were a few useful pieces of information; the origin of the word “maggies,” for instance. It had nothing to do with the works of Dylan, the Twentieth Century Welsh songwriter. “Maggie’s Farm” may have been an anthem of the rebellion, but the name came first. It derived from magnesium, the only element the rebels couldn’t mine or synthesize. With no access to planetary bases, it became their sole trade-link with Earth.

I also learned the names of the team that designed humanity’s first (and only?) self-replicating artificial mutation. It
was
a team, though Harding gets the credit, for the maggies, the curtains, and all the other spin-offs.

The rest—I couldn’t tell what was true, what contained a grain of truth, and what was pure, poisonous nonsense. The author implied, rather than stated, that maggies were animals, or anyway, less than human. Because they were made for us, to work for us. The more I read, the more I felt like I was agreeing with things I absolutely knew were wrong. At one point I stared so long at the screen, too stupefied to scroll any further, that my default clicked on. The swimming clocks showed two sharp. Late. My circadians would be way off.

Where was Tata? She’d have to help me deal with this. I didn’t care what she was doing. I needed her. I went down the tunnel to her room.

Her curtain was closed. I slapped it in frustration, and it opened slightly. Maybe it hadn’t been drawn completely shut. Or if she had sensitized it to my touch, she did so without telling me. I swear I didn’t know that it would open, that I would see them there like that.

Actually, I heard them first. A sound too soft to be a groan, followed by a low, desperate, sobbing. I was in the room, then, and I saw.

Tata lay on her bed, on her side, eyes closed. She was naked—no, without clothes, but not naked. Her long, beautiful breasts and her belly and thighs blazed black between the edges of her partially closed skin. With one gold-clad arm she lifted her leg, with the other she braced herself to thrust against him. Him. Dad.

Dad was behind her. I only saw his hairy knees, and his hands on her shoulders. But I recognized his voice.

“Tata, Tata, won’t forget me Tata, won’t forget who loves you, Tata—” Tension tore his words apart then, left ragged gasps fluttering in the air.

I should have gone away.

But I stayed.

It lasted a long while without changing, then slowed a little. Tata opened her eyes. I know she saw me.

It was my dad who spoke, though. “Sweet, sickin
God,
Tata, this will never be enough.” And quite deliberately his hands sought out the edges of her open skin, touching her there, underneath.

She screamed. It was nothing like Penny’s books. I wanted to die, I wanted to come, I wanted to run away and hide.

I was moving toward her, somehow, to help her. Spasming with pain, she signed me to stop.

My father’s hands continued their torture, brushing and plucking at the skin’s exposed funiculi. Tata’s scream had subsided to a hoarse grunting, nearly drowned out by my father’s moans. I hesitated, and she signed again: go. Her imbalance was extreme. I could not aid her. Go.

I went.

At the door I turned, still unsure. The hands went suddenly limp. Tata lay still beneath them. Then she showed me one more sign, simple, yet nuanced. Swimming through a virtual Nassea, she slipped into the contracting lock of Quarters, into the arms of healers, elders that would assist her in retrieving her coolness and alignment. She rested there, with them, depending on their love. And the memory of mine.

She was telling me goodbye.

I shut the curtain.

In the morning, Tata was gone, and next Day another maggie came to take her place. His name was Lebba. Dad didn’t care how often he left the station, and he never tried to stop me from going out with him, either. I thought sometimes I’d ask him to tell Tata I was well, I was fine, I was growing, developing quite normally. I thought I’d ask him to convey to her my wishes that she continue to receive the blessings of her highest heavenly head. But I haven’t done anything like that yet, and I still don’t know if I’m going to.

It’s been over six Years. With the last of the seeding done, my father has left New Bahama. I surprised him when I told him I wanted to stay here, with Penny, in what he called “this Surge-abandoned mud-hole.” But I’m eighteen now, no longer in need of a guardian.

I have settled down here, sinking into the darkness and silence of the Nassea. Penny provides me with an easy, unassuming companionship, and I help her with her work. Which is about to move into construction. For soon, according to our maps, the carefully nurtured coral will break the surface of the Nassea.

When that happens, the maggies will be moving on, to another waterworld, or something rare, a world of ice or dust. Tata, too.

Does she realize how much I miss her, how the loneliness is always there, still curdled up inside?

I think she does.

Momi Watu

I was just tired, that’s all. That gritty feeling in my eyes, as if the lids were encrusted with sand; it would pass. Blinking helped, though not much. Maybe a really
long
blink.… No. Only two more braids to go. Then the laundry to bag and unbag. Then a bath for both of us.
Then
I could sleep.

I bent back to my work. Individual strands of hair feathered beneath my comb, and I examined them all closely. Too bad she was so fair. Took after her Dad. Too bad I spoiled her so. It really should all come off. But even with school coming up next week, I just couldn’t. Every strand of heavy, golden brown was a link to Steve. Like dripping syrup, like the sweetness we had shared, making this child. Steve was gone, captured, disappeared. I just couldn’t stand the thought of cutting these ties between us. That’s probably why Lily threw a shit-fit every time I mentioned the idea.

Eleven p.m. and one braid left. Time for the news. I switched on the tv: just the picture, as accompaniment for the radio. That was where I got all my actual information. The pictures on the screen, when I glanced up at them, never exactly matched the stories I was listening to. But they acted as a sort of disjointed commentary, on the level of my lizard brain.

The Tigers were moving up into third place. They’d never make it past that, though, everybody knew. Not since they tore down the old stadium. The image of Tyree Guyton appeared on the tv as if in confirmation. He stood before one of his hoodoo houses, talking to an off-camera interviewer. Mannequin legs and bicycles sprouted from the veranda at his back. The spirit of Old Detroit lived.

Nina Totenberg did a thing on the “Cold Water Wars,” part of a series. They weren’t really wars, of course; no state had seceded from the union, no officials openly supported the “terrorist tactics” groups like Steve’s engaged in, though they were only trying to enforce the law. But insurance rates had risen, security on dams and pumping stations soared sky high, underwritten by our taxes.

The tv showed beer commercials, several minutes of tanned, beefy men pouring glowing golden liquids for one another. The condensation on their glasses looked real good.

Back to local and the weather. Clear and in the 90s; no surprises there. But what was this? Adrenaline kicked in as I isolated a strand of Lily’s hair. A small white fleck seemed to be attached to it, about an inch from the scalp.

With trembling hands I took up my scissors and severed the hair, carefully laying it on a scrap of black cloth. Dread burned like a fever, just below the surface of my skin. But when I rubbed the hair back and forth, the little speck of white detached itself from the strand. It lay there innocently, a mere flake of dandruff or dead scalp.

For a moment I let myself enjoy the cool ripples of relief spreading over me. It was always like this: the crisis, forcing me to focus all my senses on the narrow circle of immediate threat, then the resolution, and the corresponding sensation of floating, of release.

So far, anyway.

I finished the last braid without further incident, left Lily curled up on the floor and went to bring in the laundry.

Light from the kitchen window spilled yellow out into the yard and let me see enough to avoid the lopsided picnic table, the borrowed grill. The clothesline was a flapping shadow toward the back. I unpegged the clothes, mostly by feel. Into the wicker-creaking, plastic-rustling basket by layers: first underwear, then t-shirts, then socks, shorts, and scarves. The shaker pegs went into a separate bag. I carried the basket in, swung through the living room to check on Lily. Still sleeping. Her long braids swirled out in “esses” over the floorboards. Her lashes fluttered over her plump brown cheeks, then settled into stillness.

I hurried into the former study, sealed the laundry bag, and labeled it. Lifted it out of the basket, into the space awaiting it on my makeshift shelves. Pegs on top. I scanned the labels of the bags already in place. Some people say two weeks is long enough. They’ve studied the life cycle; they should know. I wait three, just to be sure. I found the bag labeled August 5, 2009, and carried it to our bedroom.

“Wake up, pumpkin, time to get ready for bed.” I had the herbs all set out on the mat: sage, rosemary, lavender, artemisia. Lily scowled as I scrubbed her with them. I was as gentle as I could be, turning her with one hand while the other rubbed her up and down with the scratchy leaves. Poor pumpkin. She used to love it back when she was a baby and we used water. Bath night was tough on her now, but I insisted. Better a tired and grumpy little girl than a sick or dying one. We usually slept in Sunday mornings, waking just in time for her favorite cartoons.

The bruised herbs released their piercing scents into the air. They left trails of green on Lily’s smooth, dry skin. I finished by massaging a little oil into her hair and brushing it through. “There. Now go dust yourself off and hop in bed.”

I stripped off my house dress and grabbed another bundle of herbs for myself. “Got your pajamas on, amazon?”

A giggle floated through the bedroom door. “Ye-es.” Good kid, I thought, beginning my rub-down. She’s definitely worth it. Definitely worth the work.

I had Saturday afternoons off so we could do laundry and go to the beach. A full day would have been more convenient, but that’s retail. The clothing and bed linens we used during the week went into the dirty laundry right away. I kept it well-sealed, in triple-thick plastic bags. As the days passed, the black bags swelled threateningly. I stared at them and imagined I could
hear
eggs hatching inside. It was always a relief when Saturday rolled around again.

We waited for the bus for what seemed like an hour. Probably twenty minutes objective time; must have been several weeks for Lily. She squiggled around on the easement, scuffing her new green sandals in the gravel. People waiting with us mostly smiled, though a few of the careful ones looked a little bothered by the braids sticking out from under Lily’s scarf. I’d have to get her a larger one; maybe one of mine would do. I didn’t really need a scarf, short as I kept my hair.

Lily balanced on the curb now and swung her white patent leather purse in big arcs, seeing how far she could go before she pissed someone off.

“Ow!” Not very far.

“Lily, come here.” She obeyed reluctantly, dragging out each step into a long, stone-slithering slide. “Do you still have the tokens? Check and see.” She dug into her purse, her expression cute and serious. The tokens were still there (I had back-ups, of course). So was a Garuda Guy finger-puppet, which she put on her thumb and waggled back and forth. Within seconds they were deep into a private conversation.

The man she’d whacked came up to complain. I pulled her closer and ignored him. He looked HIV to me. Suspicious spots sprinkled his neck and forehead.

“Did you know,” I announced to the air, “that the common louse is capable of leaps up to 15 feet in length?” That shut him up for a moment. Long enough for the bus to round the corner. The HIVer got in first. I let him. I considered waiting for a later bus, but decided against it. I told myself that a few red spots do not an infestation make. Even if they did, who knew what’d be waiting for us on the next one that stopped? I spread white towels for Lily and me, and we sat in our seats.

Benton Harbor used to be practically a ghost town. It started turning around about the middle of the decade, with Mayor Todd’s administration. Gil made a big dent in the drug gangs and muggers, the petty crime. Then he tackled the economy. He had a little help from the Feds there, no question. Three divisions of the National Guard stationed nearby perked things up a bit for most businesses. Homeland Security’s response to the “Wars” reduced our back-and-forth with Chicago to almost nothing, further cutting back on crime. Smugglers switched to Muskegon and Grand Rapids, routes where things were under a little less scrupulous observation.

But Gil’s dream of bringing back the big tourist trade that flourished here forty, fifty years ago? That was still a dream, and nothing more. True, the Lakes’ shores lacked the sand fleas that infested ocean beaches and scared off those who couldn’t tell them apart from lice. And water pirates sound romantic—but getting personally killed by one does not appeal to most. Rich resort-heads stuck to Traverse and the Upper Peninsula. Rents stayed low in Benton Harbor, and Lily and I stayed as close to the Lake as we liked. We got off after twelve roundabout blocks.

Silver Beach.

A giant rusting iron wheel, half-buried in pale sand. The time-eaten girders of the old roller-coaster. Further down, the Guard’s gun emplacements, never used. The shell of Cook Nuclear facility in the distance, a dead-white mosque. No chance of contaminating leaks there; it was one of the first to be shut down.

Steve must be somewhere beyond that. He had to be. He had to be alive.

On clear days you could see the glittering towers of the greedy city that had swallowed him. Today there was a haze, melting at the horizon into the enormously blue water. “Momi Watu,” he used to call the Lake, after some African goddess he studied in college. “Precious mother of us all; I would defend you with my life.” That’s what he said. So of course, that’s what he did.

There was a sign warning us off at the place where the crumbling asphalt ended. They could not be responsible for our safety from this point on. If there’d been any real chance of trouble today, the Guard would have been there to turn us away. The sign was a notice to liability lawyers and insurance companies. We ignored it and spilled along the beach.

“Race you!” I cried. I gave Lily a head start, then pretended to struggle to catch up. The soft sand sank beneath my feet, and I staggered playfully. She turned her head and whipped off her scarf, laughed gleefully at my clowning. “Wait! Wait!” She shook her head, being naughty. Her scarf and purse fell to the sand and she was off again, running harder, braids flying straight out over her back.

I dropped the beach bag next to her things, then really ran. I timed it so we hit the water together.
Smack! Splash! Slosh, slosh, slosh.
We kept trying to run, but a big wave knocked Lily on her bottom, and my wet skirts dragged me down next to her.

Lily stood up, defying the waves. I leaned back on my hands while she poured water on my hair, tiny little cupped palmfuls trickling down over my scalp.

Lovely, lovely, cool, cool water. We may not be able to pump much more of it into our homes than they do in Arizona. That’s the law. But that’s all right. It’s better than an actual, true-to-life, all-out war. The water stays in the Lakes, where it belongs. And we stay near the Lakes, where we belong. A place for everything, and everything in its place, I’ve always liked to say.