Siberia (3 page)

We made an agreement that if I was good at school and did not cheek Miss Malik, I would have Mama lessons more often, and if I was
very
good, we would grow the Lindquist kits again, as soon as it was my birthday at the end of winter. Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and she’d be gone from our bed, and I’d know she was doing magic. I didn’t get up and spy on her, but I’d watch and wonder, after these nights, and try to guess what she’d done, either for us, or for someone else. Maybe she’d caused a snowfall in midwinter, so the tracks were soft and pretty again, and Madame Imrat didn’t have to be so terrified of slipping and falling. Maybe she’d cast a spell to make the Settlements Commission send an unexpected shipment of jam.

I was very muddled. Mama knew it, because I’d ask her about the good deeds that she had ordered the Lindquists to perform. She didn’t correct me. The important thing, I realize now, was that I was practicing the skills I would need: practicing every step of the Lindquist process, with my hands and eyes and mind, over and over, until I couldn’t possibly forget.

After school, when she’d finished her quota for the day, and we’d eaten and done our housework, we’d have a magic lesson (not every night: Mama kept those lessons feeling special). Or she’d tell me about other exciting things. Then we’d go to bed, and she’d tell me stories about our great journey, north across the snowy wastes, through the forest, over the sea: taking our treasure to the beautiful city where the sun always shines. Not now, in a while, when I was grown . . . I would fall asleep to the murmur of her voice, and dream of Miss Malik, and fairy-tale animals; and the far adventure, on the other side of growing up.

Mama and I, alone and free in the wild, white emptiness.

The short summers and long winters passed. Supply trucks came across the hard-packed snow, with their guards (they never came in summer, because then the wilderness was a swamp and the roads were impassable for trucks). Sometimes the bandit families who ruled the wastelands ambushed our supplies, and we went hungry. It was impossible for us to grow enough to eat, in the poor soil of our little plots. Rumors of change reached us, terrible stories of thousands on thousands of “rebels” taken out of the cities; taken to the middle of nowhere and left to freeze in their indoor clothes. But where we lived, nothing changed.

When I was nine I moved up to the senior class. I was very proud, though it only meant moving from one end of the schoolroom hut to the other. I took my two mushy, rag-paper exercise books, my pencils, my old bread that I used for an eraser, and my precious sharpener (one of the few relics of my city toy box). I walked away from the juniors’ bench, overjoyed that I was leaving Miss Malik behind, and feeling the respectful gaze of the children. I walked past the narrow windows that would have inches-deep of ice on the inside in the winter, past the stove in the middle of the room, where the big teenagers spent the day in idleness, and up to the two rows of real desks of the senior class. The senior teacher’s name was Mr. Buryat: everyone called him Snory. He had a lung disease and couldn’t speak without making a snoring noise in his throat. He was kind. He was writing something on the battered blackboard, so I went to the senior bookshelf, which I had often longed to examine. There was a colored globe beside the raggedy textbooks, that had my passionate admiration. I switched it on, and beamed in delight as all the cities lit up like stars.

Then Snory noticed me, and sent me to sit by Rose, a very pretty girl with yellow wavy hair and green eyes, who had previously been the youngest senior. I put the better of my exercise books into the shelf under the desktop, with my extra pencil. Rose ignored me. She was cutting a new point to her pencil, with a blunt penknife. Shyly, I pushed my sharpener across the desk. Rose looked around, a gleam of malevolence in her green eyes. She smiled coldly and turned away, so she as near as possible had her back to me. But my pencil sharpener had disappeared. I never saw it again.

I liked the senior lessons. Mr. Buryat couldn’t breathe without snoring, and we laughed at him cruelly: but he was a good, patient teacher. My playtimes were lonely. The other senior girls followed Rose’s lead, although she was the youngest; and the boys followed the girls. They treated me with complete contempt. I was too proud to go crawling back to the juniors, so when I’d eaten my lunch I had nothing to do but walk around the muddy schoolyard with my arms folded, my nose in the air, and one wet foot where my boot had a big hole in it.

I hoped the ice was melting when Rose came up to me.

“What’s your name?”

“Rosita,” I said, shrugging, not to look too eager. “Same as it was yesterday.”

She curled her lip. “That’s not a name,” she said, loudly. “That’s not a
name
.”

This must have been a signal, because the seniors gathered. All six of them got in a circle round me, and I was scared. The big teenagers (who were generally kind) weren’t out in the yard. Snory never came outdoors, and I knew Miss Malik wouldn’t protect me. The two top boys, Storm and Soldier, were twelve and thirteen, and looked enormous to me. Rope, who was older, was small, and slow in the head: but he could be violent. The two girls besides Rose were Aspen and Snow. They were both about twelve, tough and vicious in a ruck. Here we go, I thought, and braced myself. Maybe Snory would see through the windows and come out and break it up, if they all set on me at once.

“You can’t keep your city name anymore,” said Aspen. “We won’t let you, it’s wrong.” She was a very thin girl (we were all horribly thin, except Rose), with a long, pale, yellowish face, and an irritable temper. I kept an eye on her hands, which were twisting and tugging one of her pale braids.

“You have to have a plain name. You can’t have a
dressed-up
name,” said Snow, who was shorter, and had thick dark hair. Snow was very shortsighted. She peered at me from under her fringe, scowling.

“Rosita is a
false
name,” said Rose, smugly.

“Who says I’m not allowed? Rosita’s only the same as ‘Rose.’ . . . It’s not as pretty as Rose,” I added, in a hurry. “It’s less fancy, it’s
junior
to Rose.”

The boys murmured, as if they were half ready to let this thing go. But the girls glared at them, so they stayed in the circle. Storm said, quite kindly, “You can’t be Rose.
She’s
called Rose. Pick another name. How about Sugar?”

This was meant for a compliment, and I should have seen that he was trying to help me. But I didn’t have any sense.

“I don’t want to change. It’s the name my mama and dadda gave me, and I’ll never see my dadda again. Make me do something else. What else can I do? I’ll give you my lunch, every other day.”

They looked at each other. “Her mama,” muttered Rose, rolling her eyes. “Mrs. Bighead the
peepee
. Her dadda, not too good to be hung.”

“They act like they’re better than us,” said Snow. “When they came they were rich. They could have given us things, but they sold their fancy stuff to the bandits.”

Mama had given my toys and books to the school, but they had disappeared,
like my pencil sharpener.
If they’d ended up with the bandits, that wasn’t our fault.

I didn’t say anything. I set my teeth and waited for the thumps.

“Think it over,” said Soldier, and they drifted away.

I asked Mama what it all meant. She said the children of the Settlements knew this was their world, the only world they were going to get, and they wanted to make rules for belonging, the way any tribe or nation will. That’s where the craze for “plain names” came from. She said people who’d been sent here when they were grown up, whether they were ordinary criminals or exiles, didn’t feel the same way.

“They’ve told me I have to have a name like theirs.”

“That’s
good,
” said Mama. “They’re inviting you to belong. What are you going to choose?”

“I don’t want a new name. They’re not inviting me, they’re picking on me because Rose makes them. She took my sharpener. She scribbles on my book, and pretends it was me. She’s jealous, because I was moved up and I’m younger and I get higher marks than she does.”

“Why don’t you let Rose get the high marks?” said Mama, frowning. “If that would make her happy. What does it matter?”

“It matters to
me.
”

Mama was frowning because Rose’s mother was one of the people who told tales. She and her daughter lived in a hut like the rest of us, and didn’t wear a uniform, but they had nicer clothes: and better food that somebody important sent to them, maybe a Settlements Commission official, maybe a bandit. Even Nicolai was polite to Rose’s mother, and tried not to offend her. But I knew I was in the right.

“I could still call you Rosita at home.”

“I won’t do it. I don’t see why I should. It’s not a school rule. Mama, what does
peepee
actually mean? It doesn’t really mean wetting yourself, does it?”

“It means political prisoner.”

I knew that was bad, worse than being an armed robber. It didn’t worry me. I’d learned that in the Settlements there was no point in being ashamed. “That’s what they call you. Are we
political prisoners,
you and me?”

My mama was tired after rolling and heading nails all day: too tired to be bothered with me, I thought. She pulled off her torn work gloves, and rubbed her worn and dirty fingers. “I’ve never been involved in politics,” she said. “Your dadda did something that the government didn’t like, but he didn’t know it was wrong, he thought it was his duty. Rosita, pick yourself a new name. You can’t win this one. Don’t insist on learning everything the hard way.”

Storm secretly passed me a note saying CH+NG YR NAME ITS F+R YR OW+N GD. I mean secretly as in trying not to let Rose see. No one had to keep secrets from Snory. He was too harmless. I didn’t answer it. I went on spending my playtimes walking around alone. I knew the thing about the plain name wasn’t over, but the others didn’t come near me, so I didn’t know what to do. It was the worst season of our year. The whole Settlement, except for those who were too ill, had spent the brief summer weeks frantically tending and harvesting our potato patches (we grew anything that would grow, but mostly potatoes). Now the warm days had gone, the excitement was over and the tasty food was stored away. But we were still living in an unfrozen bog, and the insects were still biting. Everyone was longing for the frost to set in, and every day we hoped for the first snow.

About a week after they’d told me to change my name, we seniors were sent out into a sleety, freezing drizzle to eat our lunch. The juniors were allowed to stay indoors, with the big teenagers and the teachers. I walked up and down eating my meal: a piece of rye bread with a chewy dried tomato. The bread was rations from the stores, and nasty, but the tomato had been grown and dried by my mama and me, and it was very nice. Then I went to get myself a drink of water. I was standing by the pump, sipping from the tin cup, that was attached to the pump handle by a chain, when I felt a creeping in my shoulder blades.

I looked around, and there they were.

They made a circle round me.

The pump was near the schoolyard wall. I looked up at the crumbling bricks, and a reckless plan leapt into my mind. The schoolyard gates were kept locked, and the walls were high. But if I managed to escape and run home, what would happen? I had never heard of anyone doing that, so I didn’t know. I could get expelled. Then I’d have to stay at home and help Mama. . . . That didn’t sound too bad.

“We’ve decided,” said Snow, glowering from under her fringe. People said her father and her oldest brothers had been executed for several gruesome murders. That was why the mother and younger children had been sent here. It was the law: if someone in your family was guilty, you were guilty too. “You have defied us and must be punished, but we are merciful. Give us your lunch every day for three weeks, and give Storm a kiss right now, and we’ll let you be called Sugar. Is that a deal?”

“I don’t want to kiss anyone,” I said. “And I can’t give you my lunch every day, I’ll get sick. I’m only
nine
.”

“You’re in the senior class,” explained Rose. (I was sure this was all her idea.) “That makes you a teenager. You have to be tough, when you’re one of us.”

I knew they would do it. They’d steal my food. I wasn’t sure about the kiss, but I couldn’t look at Storm, and I had started shaking.

“I’ll t-tell Snory, what you just said.
You’ll
be in trouble, not me.”

They laughed. “Oooh, she’ll tell Snory!”

Rose bent down, and scooped up a handful of mud. She never got herself dirty, so that caught me off guard and the first gob hit me in the chest. I ducked the next one. I dodged another gob, and they let me run. I ran around the yard, getting mud flung at me, and horrible names, and stones too. I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream for help. I galloped around, ducking and diving, sleet stinging my face: it was almost fun. I could take it. Maybe if I showed them
I could take it,
they’d decide they liked me. . . . But I had my plan in mind. When I saw my chance, I made a break. I leapt at the wall, in the corner of the yard, and scrambled up, bracing myself between the two sides. Then I was on the top, standing on the slippery coping stones, waving my arms to keep my balance. It was a longer drop on the other side. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure this was a good idea. I knew Mama would hate it if I was expelled.

Miss Malik’s tall, thin form appeared at the door of the school hut. She came marching over, through the sleet, in her indoor shoes, without her hat or coat.

“
Rosita!
Get down! You’re going to get a whipping for this!”

“They were throwing mud at me.” I was going to get whipped whatever I said. I was just putting it off. “They said horrible things.”

“Get down!”

Her mouth, red as blood, seemed to gape at me, her hands were like claws. I was so scared I lost my balance and fell, my right leg doubled under me.

“Get up! Right now! Back into the classroom, this minute, all of you!”