On Such a Full Sea (5 page)

•   •   •

FOR ALL OF US HERE,
it is difficult not to think often about that first night of Fan’s. Even now, after all that’s transpired, we still discuss how we might have fared in her place, being maybe seriously injured, stuck in a faraway counties house deep in the Smokes, and not knowing what would happen next. It’s an unnerving scenario. In fact, the circumstance is so far beyond what any of us could imagine that it seems like some evening-programs story line dreamed up with the help of one of those edgier young B-Mors you hear about these days, who, of course, still work in our facilities but “consult” for the Charter creators of such shows and sometimes even take a hand in writing them. Maybe Charter people don’t ultimately care about what happens outside their gates, but they’re certainly curious, and so you see more and more characters like us popping up in the shows, if not in starring roles. We’re mostly bystanders or else hardworking service people for Charter heroes and heroines, but sometimes more prominent foils, too, like a recent character in
St. Clair Beach
named Ji-lan, a beautiful woman from D-Troy, the big midwestern facility, who captures the heart of a married Charter executive and causes him much delicious and humiliating trouble. And though suffering plenty, he weathers his self-inflicted misfortune, and it’s no surprise that it’s Ji-lan who loses all in the end, everyone learning a harsh lesson in what can happen when you stray too far beyond your circle.

It’s funny, for although Ji-lan is nothing at all like Fan in either person or her situation (Ji-lan being a tall, statuesque femme fatale, mercurial and passionate, who would not hesitate to wreck the lives of others if it meant her gain), it’s almost impossible not to think of our petite, gentle Fan as the inspiration for her character. Perhaps it’s the actress’s Fan-like hairstyle that’s a cue for us, or the similar way she sometimes rides sidesaddle on her scooter (though in Ji-lan’s case it’s clearly due to the very short cut of her skirts), but whatever it is, the impression is unmistakable. Fan, of course, never knew of these developments in the show, if she ever watched the show at all. Being as modest as she was, she probably would have shaken her head at the notion of any perceived concordances, maybe even chuckled at the huge gap between the sinister sparkle of Ji-lan’s exploits and the dismal reality of her situation, what with her profound injury and the ragged conditions and being under the care of the ill-tempered Loreen and the mysterious and seemingly volatile Quig, whose standing in the Smokes, it would turn out, was much higher than he cared to let on.

When Fan awoke the next morning in the room of spare parts, she felt sick to her stomach and leaned over the side of the cot and gagged, though only a slick of spit fell from her mouth onto the dingy, scarred floorboards. It was nausea in the wake of the night’s painkillers, and probably some hunger, too, as she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous afternoon. Her leg was in the splint Quig had rigged, but she couldn’t quite bear to examine it yet and so didn’t remove the blanket. Instead she looked around the room. It had a salvaged clerestory pane installed near the top of the wall, which let in a good amount of the morning light; one could see the various plastic and metal and wire-sprouting parts set off by type with an unexpected neatness, stationed in rows rather than jammed in; in fact, the feel was somewhat similar to a parts room the maintenance workers have at the grow facility, though theirs is obviously much larger and cleaner and brighter, the atmosphere scrubbed of any foreign matter or organisms that could taint the planting beds or fish tanks. Here the air was closed off and smelled of dust and chain
oil and dry-rotted wood and was laced, as was everything, with a rank counties perfume, but it was the sensibility of order, if only an order masked by roughness and grime, that Fan latched on to and could quell the brunt of her fear with and so attempt to keep her mind composed and steady. For she had to believe what we all would have believed, given our schooling and our shows, which is that she would be used up in hard labor—if not much, much worse—and only after an interminable sentence of such use, disposed of. In fact, one of the sayings B-Mors will sometimes offer to someone on an errand or trip outside the gates is Don’t become
xiãng-cháng
!—Don’t become sausage!—a bit of black humor that comes from a famous episode of a now classic evening program in which a group of foolhardy B-Mor teenagers goes camping out in the counties before the commencement of their facilities careers and end up having their livers cut out and made into you know what.

That’s sensationalized, to be sure, and yet there are all sorts of rumors and anecdotes and semiofficial reports that over the decades have grown into a bank of lore about the counties that each of us adds to whenever we repeat that saying or others with which we admonish our naturally curious children. Thank goodness they are curious! It’s a sign of healthy minds. And while it may be obvious, it’s our responsibility to educate them to the idea that romancing the unknown is attended by myriad possibilities, too, shepherding them through those heady periods of urge and instinct when they think they can soar, and deliver them, we hope whole, to a place where perspective begins to reign, where they know that the groggy old bear at the zoo will instantly wake the moment you step inside the cage.

But Fan, we have come to learn, was one of our number who was well aware of perils but pushed forward anyway, not rashly or arrogantly but with what might be thought of as a kind of inner faith. And as terrified as she might have been as she lay in that room, perhaps regretting herself to the core, she had already resolved not to show any fear, no matter what was in store for her. So when footfalls approached the other side of the door, Fan tried the best she could to sit up in the sagging cot, propping herself on an elbow and lifting her head so as not to look as feeble and vulnerable as she felt. A padlock was tugged at several times and the door opened and it was Loreen, holding a plastic mug with a spoon stuck in it, which she waved before Fan. Instant oatmeal.

You’re supposed to eat.

Fan nodded.

Well, you going to or not?

Fan leaned over and picked up the mug and slowly ate, twisting in the cot so she could take half spoons of the gruel. It was tepid and only partly reconstituted, certain flecks of oats hard-edged and dry, but it had a flavoring, if stale, of maple brown sugar, which made her mouth water and the swallowing easier. Loreen lit a hand-rolled cigarette and stood over Fan as she smoked, her arms crossed over her ample bosom. She wore loose blue jeans and a gray-colored sweatshirt that matched the long, untidy strands of her graying hair. She was heavier than she had appeared the night before, which was undoubtedly surprising to Fan, given the fact that all counties people were supposedly underfed, very thick about the hips and thighs, and with a fleshy face that made her look much younger than she was. Her eyes were a pretty marine blue and she might have been pretty generally but her nose was misshapen and pointed well off center and this lent her a skeptical aspect, as it appeared she was literally looking at you sideways. And then her harsh, threshing voice made her seem preternaturally irritated, angry.

I told him I wasn’t going to feed you. This isn’t some fancy facilities health clinic, you know. It’s not like everyone gets to stay here. I don’t know why he’s letting you.

Fan couldn’t understand what she was talking about but she kept eating anyway, glad now for the food. The nourishment stirred life in her veins and the more she ate the hungrier she got and she finished the oatmeal quickly, scraping out the last gluey streaks until Loreen took the mug from her and went to leave. Fan told her she needed to use the bathroom right away and Loreen said she’d find something Fan could use so she had better not soil the cot, unless she wanted a whipping. The door shut with a bang and was padlocked from the outside, and who could blame Fan for wanting to cry at that moment, being frightened of course by this gratuitous aggression (which is most uncommon in B-Mor) but also now longing for the comfort of her row house, where you were never alone for all the clan occupants.

For if she did not long
particularly
for her parents or siblings (or cousins or grandparents or aunts and uncles), she missed them in sum, for their constant and interchangeable array. They never much talked to one another at the table, or while watching their programs, or sitting in the yard on their free-days, but that didn’t matter now. Do not discount the psychic warmth of the hive. And Fan finally succumbed and cried, fiercely and silently, half ashamed at herself for doing so, half wanting to devolve into a mere cluster of cells, something simple enough that were she to disappear even she might not notice the moment of demise.

After a while, Fan realized Loreen was not returning anytime soon. She desperately had to pee and she scanned the room for any suitable container. On a shelf near the door were some partly used cans of paint and on top of these was a roller tray that she could probably reach, at least if she stood. Fan drew the blanket aside and examined her splinted leg, undoing the bandages within the structure as gingerly as she could, noting how he had wound them so she could redo them herself. Once exposed, her leg looked horrid with a multihued bruise of muddy purples and reds covering most of her left thigh, its shape very much like Australia as it curled about her limb. In school they had briefly studied the origins of the continents, and while Australia wasn’t one of them, the teacher had made a point of likening it to B-Mor, this substantial land that had detached from the rest and become a self-sustaining island, and here it was, tattooed on her leg, this sign of what might as well be a thousand miles away.

She probed the bruise with her fingers, pressing until it hurt, surprised to find that it was not as fragile or tender as she feared. When she twisted her leg, the pain was still searing but she could lift it several inches without too much discomfort. Slowly she swung her legs onto the floor and then bent her good leg and leaned forward and up and onto it, attempting to find her balance. She faltered and had to let herself down on the edge of the cot. She tried twice more before finally being able to stand on her good leg alone. When she tested the other, it was okay, until she tried a normal stance and then it hurt too much; she had to lean on one side of the splint to brace herself, hobbling across the room. She reached as high as she could on the shelf and barely grabbed the roller tray, but it hooked a can of paint, which came down with it as well, nearly landing on her foot. The top popped off and glaring yellow paint—the kind used for marking lines in roads—spewed onto the wood floor. Though it was pointless to be careful now, she crouched as much as she could with a splinted leg, holding the tray beneath her as she pulled her underwear to the side. And in a sweet whoosh she let it all go; it seemed she was relieving herself forever as she stared at the shimmering paint thrown out in the pattern of a seal’s flipper, fully extended, racing through the waters, and all at once she was crying again, in what seemed to her an equally ridiculous deluge. She couldn’t stop either flow, as hard as she tried she couldn’t, even when the padlock chocked and the door swung in to reveal Loreen holding an old green plastic beach pail, her fetching eyes shouting murder. Before Fan could take another breath, Loreen stepped forward and struck her across the cheek with the pail, sending her hard to the floor in a clatter, dismantling the splint and upending the tray and splaying Fan in her own warm, odorous water.

You little bitch! Look at what you’ve done! What a goddamned mess!

Fan, however, could not look, being momentarily blinded by the attack. And when her sight returned, all she could see were the woman’s pudgy, unpainted toes poking out from her rubber sandals, these mini-Loreens traveling pendulously to and fro before they struck, too, in the chest and shoulder and now on her arms, with which she was trying to shield her face. Fan had almost given up, not knowing anymore if she was asleep or awake or dead. But then the blows ceased, and Loreen was down on all fours beside her, and she saw Quig, looming high and wraithlike above them, a long white wand in his hand, its red tip two-pronged. He seemed to have stepped right out of a fantastical movie, like he was one of those warlocks but without a special hat.

I told you, he said softly. Be gentle.

Oh, screw you, Loreen rasped through her teeth. Screw you.

He extended the wand and touched her on the back of the neck. She bucked and stiffened, and then pitched forward, face-first, right in Fan’s puddle.

He said, with calm, Be gentle.

Those first few weeks Fan was gone were a quiet period in the neighborhoods of B-Mor. Naturally, as after Reg disappeared, there was the background noise of rumors and gossip, even some mad talk in certain quarters about a conspiracy to make it appear that Fan had willingly left but was actually sent away; of course, the posted video clips dispel that notion, though they say even those can be faked and made to look absolutely real. And we know why some wish to believe it was totally contrived; for it’s much easier to subscribe to various outlandish theories than confront the reality of her departure and what that might say about B-Mor and its ways.

But we will note once again: B-Mor is not perfect, nor was it ever meant to be. It was not a promise of anything to anyone. Yes, our women and children can walk about at night without any fear of assault; yes, there is always enough wholesome food to eat and clean water to drink, with our special celebrations, such as weddings and funerals, graced by lavish spreads; yes, we can count on steady employment if we are sound of mind and able-bodied, and expect a reasonable level of care if we are not; yes, we live in a kennel of our own blood, even if thoroughly mixed after numerous generations, which offers, during the fiercest storms, the most reliable shelter.

Yet there are some needling issues, even aside from the case of Fan, such as the fact that the less durable, discretionary-type goods in the shops have become stretches to the typical budget, and are often nearly unaffordable. Even our own products have become much costlier, the price of a single five-hundred-gram perch equal to what two cost just five years ago. Or that the maximum stay period in the health clinics is effectively one work cycle (six days), no matter the condition or needs of the patient, as the family is now responsible for the fees past that time, fees that are well beyond most any B-Mor clan’s capacity to pay.

An example of this would be the recent experience of the Rivera-Deng family, who occupy not one but two row houses down near the B-Mor waste treatment plant. They are not an especially large family, but because they run a popular aboveground trinkets and bubble tea shop (the subterranean-level shops are almost without exception owned, if never operated, by Charter investors), they could afford to purchase the leasehold on the adjacent house when it became available. They are considered rich by B-Mor standards, though what else this wealth truly buys them is not at all apparent. Harvey Rivera-Deng might show up at a wake in his flecked suit jacket with a contrasting pocket square but we aren’t inclined to offer any notice, much less compliments. He stands stout and flashy in his finery but clutches the same plastic buffet plate as everybody else, jostling to get to the snow-pea shoots before they’re all gone. And this is how it should be. But when his wife, a portly, ever-smiling, sweetly damp-necked woman named Ruby, took seriously ill recently, eventually passing, the feeling we had can only be one of steady, drenching sorrow.

Ruby was not the most healthful person in B-Mor, a longtime diabetic who liked her sweet cakes and scallion fritters a bit too well, washing everything down with creamy bubble fruit teas. One afternoon she collapsed in the back of the shop; one of her kidneys had failed, which apparently led to a stroke that paralyzed one side of her body. She was rushed to the clinic but then suffered another stroke before being stabilized, which left her unable to speak. Otherwise her mind was intact, and Harvey and the rest of the Rivera-Deng clan told her not to worry, that they would take care of her at home, but everyone could see that she would need a dialysis machine to bolster her remaining, chronically weakened kidney, a machine that a physician’s assistant told her (when she queried him via a weak left-handed scribble of “$$?”) would cost an astronomical sum to purchase or else lease for an indefinite period.

No doubt you can imagine what happened next. Harvey made the necessary arrangements to transport Ruby home, machine and all, despite the absurdity of the finances; it would be like some counties peddler buying a Charter condo with only her pedi-bike rickshaw and its junky contents as collateral. There is no leaping of worlds in this world. Except for the rare case, the distance is too great. But of course, Harvey was only thinking about how much he loved his wife. He was only thinking about the details of her care. He set up their tiny bedroom to be hers alone, even rewiring (he was a facilities electrician before retirement) the bedside outlet to be on a circuit that would instantly feed off a generator if the main power cycled down in the middle of the night, as it often does. He requested a change of his children’s work shifts at the grow facility and water plant, so that they would stagger instead of align. He was even putting up for sale his and Ruby’s fancier shoes and clothes on a B-Mor weblist, even if few of us could ever afford them, when he got word from the clinic that Ruby had died during the night of multiple major organ failure. He was going to bring her home that day and instead had to view her sheeted body already rolled out to the corridor, the tented, plumped mound truly the saddest sight of his life. What had happened? They figured out that she herself shut down the dialysis machine for most of each day’s session, only switching it back on just before the nurse returned, ensuring her own doom.

And while self-sacrifice is a hallmark of life here in B-Mor, one of our original and most cherished mores, is there anyone who does not flinch whenever he or she hears of yet another act such as Ruby’s, which seem to grow more numerous each quarter, each year? In the old days, with our first generations, people would relieve their households all the time, but those were mostly the very old, ultrastubborn, salty pioneers who were too proud to become any kind of burden, their gestures as much prods to the community as discharges of their respective families.

Yet one looks around, and not just at the more flagrant cases. Visits to the health clinics were once unlimited, a yearly exam for every citizen an option as well, and in this way Charter people had very little on us, save that most of them go to private offices and see the same physicians each time. Our clinics are staffed by Charter doctors (if the youngest ones, often fresh out of residency), who rotate through monthly, but the nurses and physician’s assistants are constant and are B-Mor residents, and it’s these people who tender the real care. You could stop in and get your thumb stitched up (a regular occurrence for our indomitable fish filleters); you could pick up a bottle of pills for impotence or anxiety; you could get a quick session of chiropractic or acupunctural therapy, and for the most part people availed themselves of these things without abusing the privilege. In fact, we often reminded ourselves of our fortunate circumstance with the saying “Save some noodles for tomorrow’s lunch.”

Now there are so many new rules that make it all very complicated. The doors are still open twenty-four/seven but for life-threatening emergencies only; the rest of us with broken fingers or kidney stones have to wait it out until the next morning, an emergency-care doctor making the final determination. And when you do check in at the clinic, everything that has happened to you and that you’ve ever been prescribed or treated with pops up on the screen like always, but now some lines flash when a certain frequency is exceeded, and if you want that particular prescription or treatment, you’ll have to pay a fee beyond the usual token fee to receive it, an additional cost that is sometimes not so small.

When did this change? you ask, though of course nobody at the desk knows. It did change, and now
is
, these “reforms” from this point forward in force, and the result is that you may forgo that diagnostic X-ray, you might take only every other blood pressure pill if that’s tolerable, you will decide to amble another season on that arthritic hip in the hopes that it will somehow, someday, kindly warm. Really, every person we know has had to make such compromises, most not leading to horrific consequences, but the truth is you can’t help but wonder where this will lead, what new reforms will be instituted next year, or in ten, and to what extent the quality of life in B-Mor might someday come to resemble the conditions outside.

They say that with the economy stuck so long in the doldrums, even the Charter villages have had to institute certain cost-cutting measures, like no more free full-body scans each quarter for everyone over age thirty, though some of our more cynical citizens contend this is simply what the directorate and the Charters want us to believe. Even if this is true, what of it? How can it matter what goes on inside those gates? You might as well worry about the life cycle of the nearest star. A twinkling in the heavens, rightful but brief. We must remind ourselves of what the reality is within those lovely confines, that along with the neatly paved streets and the spotless schools and the fancy shops offering uncontaminated goods from all over the globe comes the fact that very little is guaranteed for a Charter person, if anything at all, and that one must continually work and invest and have enough money to sustain a Charter lifestyle or else leave.

This is, in fact, what had befallen certain open counties people. For it is known that a surprising number of them are former Charters. One might ask, Hey, why don’t they just come to the gates of a place like B-Mor? But it’s not as simple as that, and in practical terms, impossible. They can’t quite enter a B-Mor–like settlement because those are oversubscribed already, the row houses or residence halls occupied right up to the rooftops, our children assigned two to a desk at school. Plus, what could any newcomer among us possibly do to make a living? The jobs in the grow facilities and water and power plants are always filled and backed by apprentice attendants, who have been training since youth to step into the positions the moment they come open. The smattering of privately run businesses, like the one the Rivera-Dengs own, have been under family control for generations, and their leaseholds are rarely relinquished.

It’s ironic that ex-Charters should have to fall so far so quickly, that there’s no middle realm for them and their kin, pushed out as they are into the counties with little practical know-how or clue as to how to get by. It’s the reason why so few do get by, at least for very long, in particular those with solely Charter-specific skills, such as real estate speculators, or brokers of insurance or stocks, or the writer/creators of evening programs, one of whom was a compulsive gambler who squandered his considerable fortune. Needless to say, he did not last.

So when our dear Fan came to after the assault by Loreen, lying again in the cot with the splint redone, she couldn’t help but wonder about Quig. Like any of us, she knew the possibilities. Could he in fact be a former Charter nurse, or maybe even a doctor? Though as they say in the Charter villages, that would be quite an “outcome.” Doctors are among the most important and prestigious people around, especially for Charters, and thus often quite wealthy, too.

The messes were gone, her arms and legs and torso sponged mostly clean, the floor cleared except for a faint scrim of yellow paint. Loreen was of course gone, too, and though a panic that the mad woman might soon return sparked through Fan, she had a naturally reciprocal welling of what must be gratitude for Quig’s having halted the beating. She was surely wary of him, but the fact remained that he had already rescued her twice.

For the rest of the day Fan kept as still as she could. She tried to quell her hunger and thirst the same way she’d pushed back the need to breathe when she was underwater in the tanks, with the force of pure will, but applying it now like a balm to the jabs in her belly, the dry spots in her throat. She wanted not to need anything, at least as long as she could bear it. She couldn’t stand up, so she could not look out the little window set high in the wall, but she listened to numerous vehicles and people who came and went through the compound all day. One of the voices was Loreen’s, bossy and annoyed, rudely ordering people about; yet no one seemed to contest her. There were other voices and she listened for Quig’s; but none were his.

It was toward the end of the afternoon that someone approached the door, which immediately made Fan brace and sit up. When it opened, it was neither Loreen nor Quig but rather a pale, curly-haired boy of about thirteen or so, wearing a soiled T-shirt and dungarees and decrepit sneakers, and sipping from a drink box of strawberry-flavored soy milk. He had another drink box in his free hand and he offered it to Fan. She poked the straw through the foil hole and they drank without speaking. Fan surely couldn’t help but recall the breaks at the grow facility when she and Reg would buy a cup of tamarind juice from the refreshments cart and maybe slip away for a quick hug or even a peck or two before getting back to work. She drank the soy milk slowly in a long, steady draw. It was brackish and artificially flavored but still tasted as good as anything she could imagine. All the while the boy stared at her without a hint of self-consciousness. His sleepy, slightly up-angled eyes, like a goat’s, were the color of seawater beneath an overcast sky, and just as blank and murky.