Birthmarked (4 page)

She nodded. “One was enough.”

Theo sat slowly, and she searched his face to see if he knew anything more. Theo and his wife Amy lived across the road, and like the other neighbors, they must have seen her parents being taken away.

“Tell me what you know,” she said. “Do you have any idea why my parents were arrested?”

“None. Total mystery,” he said. “You know, it just happens sometimes. The Enclave takes somebody in, asks a few questions, then lets them go none the wiser. Your parents might have been standing next to someone and might have seen some’ thing and now the Enclave wants a little information.”

“But if it’s that simple, why did they arrest them? Why didn’t they just ask the questions here? My parents would have cooperated.”

“Don’t know,” Theo said. “That’s their way.”

Gaia looked down at her hands and splayed her fingers in the light from the fire. She trusted Theo. She’d known him her whole life, and his daughter Emily was Gaia’s dearest friend.

“Do you know anything about my mother keeping a list of some sort?” she asked. “A calendar?” He pursed his lips together. “Your mother kept lots of lists. There’s nothing to that.”

“That’s what Sergeant Grey wanted to know.”

Theo crossed his arms over his chest, his expression pulled. “Well, for that, they could pretty much arrest every person in town.”

Gaia glanced behind him to her fathers sewing corner, with the boxes and baskets of material and needles and patterns. Her fathers yellow pincushion had rolled under one of the treads of the sewing machine.

“You don ‘t think I need to be worried?” she said, fetching the pincushion.

“I wouldn’t put it that way, darling. I’d say worrying won’t do you any good.”

Gaia glanced up to see him smiling at her, his eyes tender.

“Come over with me now,” he coaxed. “Amy will never let me hear the end of it if I leave you here, and Emily will about scratch my head off.”

She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I want to be here.”

“You’ll come to dinner, though, won’t you? Later tomorrow? We might hear something by then.”

Gaia rolled the pincushion slowly in her fingers, nodding. She was deeply weary now, and with his common sense to re assure her, she expected she would be able to sleep. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I feel much better now. It will work out all right, won’t it?”

Theo stood and gave her another pat on the arm. “They’ll be back before you know it,” he said. “Just get busy doing what you’d normally do. Keep feeding the chickens.”

She laughed. “I delivered my first baby tonight.”

“Did you! Well! That’s what we’ll celebrate when you come to dinner. Imagine our little Gaia a full-fledged midwife! Amy will be beside herself. I’ll go around and get Emily and Kyle to come, too.”

Gaia could see he was happy to have any excuse to get his family together. She smiled, holding the door for him. When he’d gone, she was finally able to slip into her parents
¹
bed, pull up the blankets, breathe in the scent of them, and sleep.

Under a bright noon sun, she carried the third May baby toward the gate of the Enclave, and this time Gaia felt no pride, no residual thrill from the birthing she had just

Mid-wived. She felt only exhaustion, and the perpetual dread that gnawed at the back of her mind. Her shoes scuffed over the dry brown dust of the road, each step taking her steadily upward toward the wall. She unrolled the long sleeves of her brown dress, grateful the light-weight material wasn’t too hot. She twitched her hat forward to keep the sun from her face and noticed that pinpricks of light fell through the weave of the brim onto the baby in her arms.

In the three weeks since her parents had been gone, Gaia had had no news about any of them-- Agnes, Old Meg, or her parents-- and she was beginning to fear she never would. Her initial terror had grown so enormous and her loneliness so acute that shed been afraid she would go mad with the simple, desperate need to have her parents back. She’d tried to remember what Theo Rupp continued to tell her, that everything would work out. Only her work had kept her going, and by day she’d learned to school her helpless panic into a needling, exhausting numbness. Her nights were riddled with nightmares.

In the quadrangle, before the Tvaltar, several families had set up market stalls, and the people of Wharfton were engaged in lively trade. A few desultory shoppers from the Enclave had wandered down to inspect the wares, and for them, Gaia knew, the prices would go up. Gaia waved to Amy Rupp, who had a blanket spread with bowls Gaia had watched her throw on her potters wheel earlier that month. Old man Perry sat under a makeshift umbrella of shade with a barrel of water on wheels and a string of cups. A whiff of the vinegar he used to rinse the cups between customers was enough to make her wish for a drink, but she had to keep moving. Another man sold woven mats and hats. Still others sold eggs, ground cinnamon, herbs, and loaves of flat, dark bread.

Gaia heard the chink of coins and saw the smithy exchange a bright blade for several Tvaltar passes. Above, a brace of pigeons flew by on their heavy, loud wings and vanished in a messy nest at the apex of the Tvaltar roof Several dirty, bare-foot children ran through the quadrangle, laughing as they kicked a soccer ball. One ancient mesquite tree cast a pool of shade where several old people had gathered to rest on the rickety stools that always waited there.

“Coming to the Tvaltar later, Gaia?” Perry called, waving himself with a paddle fan.

“Not tonight.”

“Suit yourself, then.”

Gaia glanced back at the facade of the Tvaltar, and the doors that were closed to keep the interior cool. In the weeks since her parents had been arrested, Gaia had avoided the Tvaltar and its palliative escapism, but now as she saw a pair of young girls head inside, she remembered how the Tvaltar had been a magical place to her when she was little.

Until recently, she’d liked the colorful costumes, the music, and the dancing that splashed across the gigantic screen. She’d liked the short specials about life inside the Enclave, with its fashion and parties and glamour. There were specials about the Protectorate family, with his advanced son and his own son and his two twin daughters, just a little younger than she. She’d enjoyed the archive reels from the cool age, with all its strange technology, and the nature ones about horses and elephants and other extinct species.

But most of all, when she was very young, shed loved the fairytale stories that took her into a different life. These would stay with her for weeks afterward. She had only to close her eyes on her own back porch, and she would be carried away again to a world under the sea where mermaids sang, or to a land where dwarves lived in a wooded glade, or to a castle tower where a princess under a magic spell slept for years while the dust gathered around her and generations beyond the enchanted forest grew up and had children of their own.

She remembered in particular how on the night of her friend Emily Rupp’s fifth birthday, Emily s parents promised to take Emily, Gaia, and their friend Sasha to the Tvaltar to see
Rapunzel.
To add to the excitement, Sasha had never been to the Tvaltar before because her family couldn’t afford passes, so Gaia and Emily had the pleasure of anticipating their friend’s delight.

“It’s huge,” Emily explained. “As tall as the Enclave wall, with moving pictures.”

They were holding hands, with Emily in the middle, skip’ ping ahead of Emilys parents toward the quadrangle.

“It gets dark before the show,” Gaia said. “There are twinkling lights in the ceiling like stars, and on the side walls, other lights go down on a horizon, like sunset. That’s how you know it’s about to start.”

“And people go every night?” Sasha asked.

“No. Well, maybe some grown-ups do. But only if they have Tvaltar passes,” Emily said. When Emily leaned close to them, Gaia could smell the cake still on her breath. “My mom got them special. For my birthday.”

Gaia just hoped
Rapunzel
was as good as the other shows she’d seen. Her mother had told her that the story had a tower in it, like the tower of the Bastion, and a princess with a very long braid. She, Emily, and Sasha had braided their hair on purpose for the show, and Gaia’s brown braids were the longest. Sasha’s blond braids were the shortest. Emilys red hair was so thin, they put it into one braid.

Soon they passed through the tall doors. Gaia looked back at Sasha, who was gazing up at the stars in the ceiling with suitable awe.

“What did we tell you!” Gaia said.

Sasha simply closed her lips, speechless.

Emily poked her. “I knew you’d like it. The show hasn’t even started yet.”

“Come on,” Gaia said, pulling at Emily again, trying to lead her down the long aisle that sloped toward the huge screen. People were filling up the benches all around them, talking and laughing in merry voices. Many of the women waved paddle fans idly before their faces, and some of the younger men who’d let their arms become uncovered while working in the fields had bright red burns.

Gaia glanced back for Emilys parents, wishing they would hurry, and then, to her amazement, she saw them start to turn into a row of benches only halfway toward the front.

“Girls!” Emilys mother called.

Emily and Sasha turned obediently, but Gaia tugged at Emily’s hand.

“No,” Gaia said. “Let’s go down to the front. That’s where the good benches are. Look! There’s plenty.”

Emily shook her head. A couple of adults budged past them, jostling them.

“We can’t go down there,” Emily said.

“Why not?”

“That’s where the freaks sit,” Emily said.

Gaia didn’t understand. She didn’t know what a freak was.

She and her parents always sat at the front of the Tvaltar. That’s where their friends were. That’s where it was easy to see. She slipped her hand out of Emily’s and turned to take a few more steps down the sloping aisle, toward the front.

“Gaia!” Emily’s father called firmly.

But Gaia kept going, like she couldn’t help it, like the slope was pulling her down. There were the benches where she and her family had sat the other times that they’d come. There was the boy with the cleft lip, and the boy with crutches. Their parents were mixed among them, still standing, talking to each other. She could see the quiet, moody boy who lived with the artist, and a very small girl whose arm didn’t grow right. The girl lifted her hand and waved to Gaia.

Freaks,
Gaia thought. They
let
the
freak families sit in
the
front.

“Gaia!” Emily’s father said.

She jumped as his hand came to rest on her shoulder. “We’re sitting back here today,” he said gently.

An usher came toward them. “Hey, Theo. She can sit up here,” the man said casually. “She can bring her friends, too, if you want.”

Emily’s father took her hand. “Thanks. That’s all right.”

Mutely, she felt him tug her gently. “Come on, Gaia,” he said softly. “The show’s starting soon.”

She realized suddenly that most of the people had sat down now and the chatter was dying down. Turning, she saw the rows of faces and watched as one by one, as if on cue, they all began to turn toward her and Emily’s father. Gaia was wearing a new dress, a pretty brown one her father had made for her just the week before, with a soft, curved collar and a bow in the back. Matching ribbons were carefully tied at the ends of her braids. But she knew the people were not noticing her clothes. They were staring at her scar. And as she and Emily’s father walked back up the aisle, to the place where Emily and Sasha were already sitting with Emily’s mother, Gaia heard whispers. Muttering. She didn’t have to hear individual words to know it was pity. The only thing that stung worse was the deeper message: freak.

Not even
Rapunzel,
the most amazing Tvaltar show she’d ever seen, could make Gaia forget what she really was. Just before the end, she begged Emily’s mother to let her leave early, before the lights came up, to avoid the staring crowd. To clinch any last doubt Gaia might have had, Emily’s merciful mother agreed with her, and took the freak out.

Chapter 4

The Folded Triangle

GAIA BLINKED AND THE MEMORY VANISHED, leaving only a trace of the old shame. Even the worst feeling, with time and familiarity, became tolerable. A pigeon was audibly pecking at the dirt before her feet. Perry had turned back to his friends, and the baby made a small shifting motion in her arms. As Gaia left the quadrangle and continued upward toward the gate, she passed a couple of Enclave men dressed in white and evaded their gazes with the brim of her hat.

Gaia’s job was to advance a baby, and that’s what she would focus on. Today’s mother, Sonya, had not objected or complained. She had known when Gaia arrived that this was a third child of the month, and Sonya had accepted that the infant would be advanced. This, and knowing Sonya had two kept children already, should have made advancing the baby easier for Gaia, but she found the woman’s passivity disturbing. She kept expecting someone to react like Agnes had, with tormented, heart-wrenching cries. But no one did, and Agnes had vanished along with the agony of that night. Gaia didn’t know whether she’d been arrested or fled, like Old Meg, to the wasteland.

Gaia glanced down at the sleeping child and wearily touched his little ruddy cheek. “You 11 have a good life,” she whispered.

Uneasy, she wiped a strand of her dark hair back over her right ear and glanced up at the banging, sloshy noise of a filthy boy who was washing dust from a rain-collecting panel.

“Are you wasting water?” called a voice from the doorway behind him.

“No, Ma,” he said, his sponge dripping over the bucket.

“If you take your hat off, so help me, I’ll knock your head off, too. I don’t want you burning.”

“I got it on.”

He nudged his hat back to grin up at Gaia, his teeth white and his feet wet in a dark track of mud. From above, an unseen man laughed pleasantly, and Gaia heard the clink of dishes.