Juno of Taris (17 page)

T
he weekend passed. My parents were jumpy. The Saturday meeting’s entertainment was a documentary on wildlife in Africa – nice and safe, with animals killing each other and not a person in sight. The little kids sobbed when the lion killed the zebra foal.

Marba muttered, ‘A clever choice. A very clever choice.’

Yes. No humans, no hair and enough violence to upset the little kids. And some of the older ones too, I suspected, looking at Pel wiping her eyes.

Vima and I went to the bay both days. She was moody and withdrawn. I kept quiet, tried to send her love and courage but didn’t succeed.

Monday. Silvern waited for us again. Mother smiled at her. Saintly Silvern, I would be safe with her. Silvern smiled back and reached for Hera. ‘I’ll take her, Sheen. We quite regard her as one of us.’ She held Hera in front of her, face down and draped over her arms. ‘Don’t we, bubs?’

Hera gurgled.

Silvern and I laughed and sped off, leaving Mother to chat her way to school.

When it was safe, Silvern whispered, ‘Is Vima really going to do it?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. And I am too.’ There. I’d said it. Until that moment, it had only been a possibility, but now it was real. I would do it. I glanced at Silvern. She’d gone quiet. ‘You don’t have to walk with me. I’ll understand if you want to withdraw.’

She kept walking and didn’t reply.

Just as we entered the schoolyard, she said, ‘Me too.’

I stopped. I couldn’t have moved if there had been a rock tumbling straight for my head. ‘You too? You mean …’ I shook my head. This I could not believe.

She grinned at me and bounced Hera up and down. ‘Yep. My hair. I want it. I’m going to do it.’

I got back enough breath to laugh. ‘Silvern, I’ll be so glad of your company.’

‘You’re welcome. Let’s see if anyone else wants to join the party.’ She blew Hera’s hair, making it ruffle and float. Hera wasn’t pleased.

‘We’re not allowed to talk about hair.’ I stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a full head of the stuff.

She gave me a
grow up, can’t you?
kind of look. ‘We’ll do it at break.’

There was no more time to talk. Already, Justa was in the doorway, calling to us.

Silvern put Hera on the floor just inside the door. Then she put her toys in the middle of the floor. ‘Go get ’em, kid. You can do it!’

She managed to squirm and wriggle so that she was just about there by break time when Mother came in and picked her up. Hera yelled and we all laughed. ‘She’d just reached her toys,’ Marba explained, ‘and it had taken her all morning.’ He stroked Hera’s head. ‘You don’t want food, do you Hera? You want the prize.’

I caught the look Mother and Justa exchanged. It said: Hera is uniting them, giving them something else to think about. Thank goodness.

And so they happily let us go unsupervised down to the tamarind trees.

‘Are you sure?’ I muttered to Silvern as we walked.

‘Yeah. I’m sure. I’ve always wanted hair. Just didn’t have the guts to make a fuss like you did.’ She shrugged. ‘I got my kicks from feeling good and doing the right thing. I told myself it was a sacrifice and it made me feel noble. Then I’d go home and cry.’

I still found her hard to believe.

We reached the shade of the trees and sat down with the others.

Marba said, ‘Does anyone have a question?’

Silvern and I raised our hands. ‘We do.’ I gestured to Silvern. ‘You tell them.’ She could do it, she liked being the centre of attention.

She came right to the point. ‘Juno and I are going to grow our hair. Does anyone else want to join us?’

Paz said, ‘I will. I was going to anyway.’

Silvern grinned at him. I just stared, open-mouthed.

Fortun said, ‘Count me in.’

‘Me too,’ said Dreeda.

Then there was silence. Nobody turned away, nobody withdrew. They were thinking, and thinking hard.

Marba said, ‘It might help if we try and work out why there’s the no-hair rule in the first place.’

Paz lay on his back. ‘It’s got to be about control. That stuff about keeping us all the same is rubbish.’

‘Yes,’ Brex said. ‘I’ve thought that for a long time.’

I gaped at her. ‘It’s not rubbish. It can’t be. We
are
all the flaming same.’

She patted my shoulder. ‘Think about it, Juno. We’re not. For a start, the women wear their tunics differently from the way the men do. And why? To show they’re women, of course.’

‘No …’ My voice died away as images paraded through my head. Justa had her beads. Creen belted her tunic tight so that her breasts were outlined – and her tunics were much lower at the neck than anyone else’s. My father wore his belt around his hips, so did my grandfathers, and well, every man I could think of. Some of them strapped a sheathed knife to their belts too. ‘Oh.’

They laughed at me, all thirteen of them, but it was kindly laughter.

‘So what’s the real reason?’ I asked. I thought of Vima searching for words like ‘power’ and ‘dictator’.

‘Control,’ Biddo said. ‘Gotta be.’

One by one, they nodded. Marba summed up. ‘So. We all agree. The no-hair rule isn’t about survival, it’s about control.’ He looked at me, his eyebrows raised. ‘Juno?’

I flapped a hand. ‘Oh yes. I agree. It’s just that – well, I thought it was just me thinking evil thoughts. I’m kind of winded.’

They laughed again, but then Silvern dragged us back to business. ‘Does anyone else want to rebel?’ She glanced around. ‘Brex?’

Brex hugged her arms around her body. ‘I want to. I do. But it’s hard.’

‘Not if we all do it,’ said Silvern.

‘It’ll still be hard at home.’

Several of us winced. She was right. Our parents would be distressed. All of them.

‘You know,’ Jidda said slowly. ‘It won’t be so bad if we all do it. They can comfort each other and they won’t feel like bad parents if it’s something we all do.’

Marba said, ‘Time to go. Think it over tonight, everyone. We’ll need decisions tomorrow.’

We stood up. ‘What about you, Marba?’ Wenda asked. ‘What are you going to do?’

A good question. We all wanted to know. He stretched his arms wide. ‘I’m going to do it. It’ll be most interesting to see how the GCs respond.’

We laughed and teased him as we ran back to our classroom. Justa and Mother smiled and glanced at each other, in that complicit, adult manner. Mother handed Hera to me, and we settled to our work.

I didn’t say anything to Vima during the recreation hour. There was no point in giving false hope if it all came to nothing.

At break the next day, Marba asked the question, ‘Who is going to grow their hair?’

And one by one we answered:

Juno: yes.

Silvern: yes.

Paz: yes.

Shallym: yes. (That made me gasp. She equalled Silvern – the old Silvern – in the goody-good stakes.)

Pel: yes. (Said in a whisper, but a determined whisper.)

Wenda: yes.

Brex: I’ll do it. I’m scared, but I’ll do it.

Dreeda: yes.

And the boys. Yes from Paz, Jidda, Fortun, Yin, Biddo, Rynd and Marba.

Then we were silent, as the enormity of what we proposed to do sank in.

Marba straightened his back. ‘Good.’ He grinned at us. ‘That’s excellent. We’ll need to do some planning. What we do on shaving day. What we say to our families. What we do when the GCs call the emergency meeting.’

He was so sure. It steadied us. Silvern organised what we’d do on shaving day. We practised the words until we knew them by heart. We walked back to class, with Marba’s instructions in our heads. Our task for tonight was to think about what to do and say at home.

My stomach hurt. I was nervous. And I was determined. Vima wouldn’t do this alone.

We went to the bay as usual. I felt the eyes of my parents on us as we ran. Tomorrow was Vima’s shaving day. Their worry reached out tentacles towards me.

Vima was tense and in a foul mood. Hera kept yelling, even when Vima took her into the water. I threw off my tunic and splashed towards them. I grabbed my sister. ‘She won’t stop yelling while you’re smouldering like a volcano. Go and swim it off.’

She snarled and powered off through the clear water. I held Hera tight and talked to her, all the time bobbing up and down in the water. I told her why Vima was upset. I told her how I, too, was going to grow my hair. I told her we loved her, and I tried to surround her with peace, love and serenity. By the time she stopped crying, Vima was a tiny splash out at the edge of the island.

She swam back more slowly. We watched her come closer. Hera shouted, laughed and banged her fists on the water.

‘You touched the wall,’ I said.

She flopped down on the sand and lay flat, exhausted. ‘Yeah.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Solid. Very, very solid.’

I let her rest and then I said, ‘You’ll have company on Friday. We’re all going to refuse to be shaved.’

That made her sit up. ‘What? All fourteen of you? Silvern too?’

‘Yep. Especially Silvern.’ I told her the whole story.

She said nothing for ages, then she jumped up, grabbed Hera, tossed her in the air, and said, ‘You’re going to keep your hair, bubs! What do you think of that?’

Hera chortled and dribbled on her.

We walked home. Vima held her head high.

Wednesday came and with it, the day Vima normally had her head shaved.

I sent her an early morning text.
good luck. we all
love you. u wont be alone after friday.

But she was very alone that day. The news zapped around the island:

Hilto came stomping in to our classroom before break to tell us of Vima’s rebellion. He lectured us. He handed out the same old reasons for being compliant, for accepting the old rules. We listened. We were silent.

‘Well?’ he barked when he at last ran out of words.

Marba stood and spoke for us all. ‘You may have confidence in us all, Hilto. We will never act in any way that will bring harm to Taris.’

I doubted that Hilto could say the same.

He swept us with a final, force-10 glare. ‘The subject will not be discussed. Is that understood?’

Again we nodded. ‘Yes, Hilto. We understand.’

He left and Justa allowed us to go to break five minutes early.

We ran to the tamarind trees, trying to put Hilto and his orders behind us.

‘Does anybody want to go back on their word?’ Silvern demanded, not even waiting for us all to sit down.

Paz said, ‘Bring on Friday, I say. It can’t come fast enough.’

And that was what we all thought, every single one of us. It made us laugh and the poison that Hilto had left behind dissolved.

‘Give Vima our love,’ Brex said to me. ‘It must be hard for her.’

‘Yeah,’ Biddo said. ‘She’s one brave Tarian, that one.’

‘I mightn’t be allowed to go with her,’ I warned them.

But when recreation hour came, my parents withdrew from Vima but they didn’t forbid me from going with her. Maybe it was because my grandparents had told them to trust me, or maybe they believed that if you did what was right, then others would follow.

I got a taste of what Vima had suffered as we walked to the bay. We met Jerrin. He withdrew so far from us that he walked off the path.

Hera sobbed at full volume.

A minute later, Roop saw us coming and stepped into Ingold’s garden rather than come face-to-face with Vima. She shaded Merith’s face to protect her from Vima’s glance.

‘You shouldn’t have come with me,’ Vima said, her face tight and closed.

I didn’t answer that. ‘Let’s run. It might shut Hera up.’

We reached the bay and settled Hera under a bush.

‘What happened?’

‘What do you think happened? You’ve probably heard everything now anyway.’ She was distant, prickly and spoiling for a fight.

‘Vima, are you sorry? It must have been awful.’

She grabbed handfuls of grass, tugging it out by the roots. ‘No, I’m not bloody sorry. But it was ghastly. I didn’t know how horrible it would be. Everybody withdrawing.’ Her hands stilled and she stared into the distance. ‘Hilto was furious. Majool looked like he’d stab me with his stick.’

I whispered, ‘What did they say?’

She wriggled her shoulders. ‘Nothing different. It was just the rage. I’ve never experienced such fury before. I felt sick.’ I kept quiet, deathly afraid for her. ‘And then I had to go to the Techno Centre to get some gear.’

Jov worked in the Techno Centre. ‘Did he withdraw too?’ I whispered the words.

She shot a searing glance at me. ‘Of course he withdrew. What did you expect? Something romantic, like kissing me?’

‘Don’t be angry,’ I begged. ‘I’m so sorry. And he couldn’t do anything else. I know that. Dumb question.’ I touched her hand.

She hunched into herself. ‘He did what you did.’

‘Huh?’

She gave me a half smile. ‘He touched my hand.’ She looked away, out across the sea and her face grew dreamy. ‘In this day of withdrawing, of everybody giving me the evils, he touched my hand.’

My heart squeezed. So dangerous. So romantic. So utterly futile. ‘How did he …’ My voice trailed away.

‘He had one of the bio-sphere monitors gutted and lying on the bench. He moved his hand to brush mine as I walked away.’ She sniffed. ‘It damn near undid me.’

I gave her a quick hug. ‘You’ll have company on Friday.’