CHAPTER FIVE
As soon as I walked into her
room, Kathy yelped, “Sophie! I was worried about you! You simply vanished. I
thought something dreadful could have happened to you.”
That made me smile. “What could
have happened to me?”
“Oh, you hear things about
carers going missing all the time, but never mind. I’m so happy to see you. The
muffins were delicious. Thank you.”
I wanted to tell Kathy about
the home-baked ginger biscuits and how magical they had tasted, but then I
would have had to mention the Golds and their shop, so I thought the better of
it.
“Sophie, could you indulge me and
tell me more about Allen. Did you and he have a forbidden love affair?”
For the second time in under
two minutes, I smiled. “ I wouldn’t exactly call it a love affair, but I was in
love with him and I probably still am. He treated me like a real human being.”
“Some of them do you know,”
Kathy said softly,” think of us as real human beings. My doctor does, and a few
of the nurses do and a couple of the orderlies as well. That makes my situation
bearable. And you too, Sophie. Knowing that I’ll be seeing you pretty much
every day until I complete gives me comfort. I worry about you, though. I worry
about who will comfort you when you need it.”
I dragged the room’s only chair
to the side of Kathy’s bed and sat down. Under the fluorescent light she looked
so frail. There were bruised smudges
under her eyes and her lips were grey.
“Mr. Steeple made it possible
for Allen and I to spend time together. Mr. Steeple was a friend. He told Allen
that our bus would be parked at the shopping centre on the second Tuesday of
every month from two-thirty to four pm. And sure enough, Allen showed up the
following month, and the month after that and the month after that. He showed
up for fifteen months, and then he stopped.”
“Why did he stop?”
“I don’t know. There are so
many possible explanations. Mr. Steeple told me that Allen was formulating a
kind of rescue plan for me but that it failed. After that, he became
discouraged and decided it was best to end it.”
“But then why didn’t he tell
you so himself or at least pass along a letter for you through Mr. Steeple?”
“I don’t know, Kath. I’ll never
know unless I track him down. I’ve thought of doing that, but where would I
start? At any rate, Allen would park as close to the bus as possible, and Mr.
Steeple let me get inside Allen’s car. Allen always brought me a sandwich or a
piece of quiche or a pastry and a drink: cocoa or café au lait in the winter
and lemonade or juice when the weather was warm. We would talk and kiss and he
would stroke my hair and touch my breasts through my coat or tunic. We’d listen
to music. And the news! That was astounding, to get real news, fresh news,
uncensored breaking news. I loved the smell of him: like apples, he smelled,
and the touch oh him, and the way he looked. One of his top front teeth was
just a little chopped, and that made him look, oh, I don’t know. I thought it
made him look so sexy. Even his suede jacket, which he wore even on very warm
or very cold days. It was so soft and beaten up, so beautiful. Maybe it’s
because all of our clothes were synthetic, no cotton or silk for the likes of
us. But suede and leather! Taboo for boarders.”
“Yes, I’ll never forget those
horrible vinyl shoes and boots we had to wear. They were the worst part of the
uniform. The blisters they left gave me permanent scars. Have you ever asked
yourself why leather was off-limits?”
“Yes, Kath. I have. And as
crazy as this might sound, I think it had something to do with our future. In
the same way we weren’t allowed to eat meat. In the human scheme of things,
clones and animals aren’t very different. We’re meant to be used. Consumed.
Processed. But don’t get me wrong. I’ve never heard or read an official
explanation. Sometimes that bothers me more than anything, knowing that I’ll
never know the answer to so many questions. It’s different for them.”
“How is it different for them?”
“They’ll never know only the
things which are beyond their understanding or the unanswerable questions.
Stuff like is there a God of creation and why every living organism must die
and what is the purpose of being. For us, it’s different. We know what our
purpose is and we know that for us, there is no God, but all these rules that
govern our lives, we’ll never know why they have to be that way. Why can’t they
be bent or broken?”
“Maybe there is,” Kathy said
vaguely.
“Maybe there is what?” I asked.
“Maybe there is a God, even for
us, but they’re keeping it a secret. The biggest secret of all. But getting
back to Allen. Don’t you find the whole thing rather odd? What did Steeple say
about it?”
“Not much, that lads will be
lads and that he probably found a more suitable girl to fancy. You know,
someone he could go places with, be seen with and take home to mother.”
Kathy sat up ramrod straight
and whispered fiercely, “I’ve heard things, Sophie. Things about them being
anxious about us, what we might do, what we might know. So they randomly assign
checkers. People to get close to us, gain our trust and discover what makes us
tick, our attitudes and the like.”
I was gobsmacked. I’d never
heard anything of the sort. But when I started thinking about it, it made no
sense, at least in the case of Allen. “But Kath, I was only fourteen years old;
I had no information whatsoever. All I knew was what I’d been told, and I’d
been told very little.”
Both of us were silent for a
good long while. I began to wonder. Could Mr. Steeple have been an informant?
But why me? Because I didn’t want to waste my time and money in that depressing
dollar store? Or maybe it had something to do with Miss Veronique and her
unorthodoxy. I recalled that Allen had asked me a lot of questions about Miss
Veronique over the course of our trysts. At the time I thought it was because I
had told him how beautiful she was, and how kind.
Miss Veronique paid special
attention to Sylvia, Carla and me. Her cinema class was the last one of the
day. I loved her classroom. It smelled of cherries and almonds. The walls were
decorated with Alphonse Mucha posters and maps of the world’s continents. Miss
Veronique regularly invited Sylvia, Carla and I to stay after class top discuss
films with her. She’d bring out dried fruits and nuts from a bulging plastic
bag that she kept in one of her desk drawers. I remember one after school
conversation in particular.
It was a cold afternoon in late
November. Sylvia, Carla and I would have been eleven years old at the time. We
donors didn’t have birthdates. We didn’t even know in which months we were
begun, but we did know the year. Our year was 1964. Miss Veronique told us that
was the year of the dragon, and that she was also a dragon, twelve years our
senior. The classroom was unusually warm and I found the heat of the room and
the violet-rose sunset outside of the window very pleasant.
“I wish you girls could taste
roasted chestnuts. They’re perfect at this time of year. The thing about food
is that you can’t properly describe it to someone who hasn’t tasted it. The
vocabulary for food is wretchedly inadequate.”
Miss Veronique began to pace.
Her normally lovely features looked contorted. “The truth is—” We waited.
Sylvia was munching happily on raisins and pumpkin seeds. Carla, who was
looking out the window, said, “The sun is going to set very soon. Doesn’t the
sky look bruised? Miss Veronique, sometimes I get so scared. I don’t know what
to think.”
Miss Veronique moaned. She bit
her lower lip and in a clenched voice said, “Girls, these are dark times. You
must stay hopeful and strong. God willing, you will find friends. I know that
no one has told you about God, but trust me, trust me; you must believe in
Him.”
Sylvia began to cry. She
shielded her face with her hands, her elbows propped upon a desktop and the
sounds coming from her throat were deep and dark and feral.
Carla burst into staccato
laughter. She rose to her feet, such a compact girl she was and she challenged,
“Why, Miss Veronique, why?”
“I don’t know, Carla. I used to
think I could make a difference, but I see now that this order of things is
far, far larger than me. If I could take you girls home, hide you, protect you,
believe me, I would. In a heartbeat. But that heroic gesture would be doomed to
failure.”
It was strange, so strange
because I had the distinct impression that Sylvia and Carla knew exactly what
Miss Veronique was talking about, whereas I listened in absolute darkness.
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