The Other Side of the Island (19 page)
Read The Other Side of the Island Online
Authors: Allegra Goodman
Tags: #Nature & the Natural World, #Social Issues, #Families, #Family, #Juvenile Fiction, #Individuality, #Fantasy & Magic, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Family Life, #Weather, #Peer Pressure, #Islands, #General, #Domestic fiction
All that day as she sat in class, Honor thought about what Helix had said. She sat at her desk and suddenly the world, which had been so well organized, seemed wild and uncertain. She had come to believe there was something the matter with her parents, but Helix thought the rest of the world was all wrong.
How could Enclosure have barely begun? How could all the books and maps lie? She stared at a blue map of the world hanging on the classroom wall. There were the Seven Seas. Two Polar Seas, the Northern Sea, the Tranquil Sea, the Sea of Peace, the Sea of Light, the Sea of Reconciliation. There were the four hundred and one islands of the Colonies, each numbered carefully in black. And there were the numberless islands of the Northern Sea. On the map the Polar Seas were Secure, as were the numberless islands. Dotted lines showed where Enclosure was advancing next. The map was scientific. It even said Scientific Map Company on the bottom. What about the climatology textbook with its silky smooth paper and calm sentences? “The steady march of Enclosure marks the progress of mankind.” What did that mean?
As soon as school was over, Honor hurried back to the Boarders’ Houses for chores. She needed to talk to Helix, but she had no time with him alone. She was assigned laundry while he worked in the gardens.
Every day she tried to approach Helix, but it wasn’t easy. Even if he was in her chore group, there were others around. She knew better than to pass him a note asking him to meet her somewhere. Passing notes was Not Allowed, and if Mr. and Mrs. Edwards didn’t see, the other orphans would, and they would tease and laugh so much that the note was sure to reach some teacher in the end.
She watched and waited for him, and sometimes when she saw him coming around the corner or even glimpsed him from a distance, she thought of running up to him, but she couldn’t. The others would see. She could not stop thinking about what he might know or might have figured out.
On day nine, she finally got her chance to work with him. Honor and Helix were assigned gardening, and as the weeding group was so big, the two of them were sent to the hot and humid greenhouses to pick tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants. No one wanted to work there, but when Helix headed over to the greenhouses, Honor put on thick gloves and followed eagerly.
The greenhouses were long and connected to each other, and they were planted so thickly that it was hard to make your way through them. Leaves pressed against the glass walls and even the sloping roofs of the greenhouses. The plants looked desperate, as if they were dying to escape.
Rapidly, Honor and Helix worked their way down the rows of tomatoes. Picking was easy. There was no need to bend over, because the plants were trained as vines along the greenhouse walls. The tricky part was picking enough before the misters went off. Misters sprayed the plants every hour with water and special Planet Safe fertilizer. Staying in a greenhouse during misting was dangerous. Even orderlies got sick. Once Fanny had seen an orderly malfunction in a greenhouse. She’d seen it through the glass. For some reason the orderly got jammed in a corner, and when the misters came on, he got sprayed. Mrs. Edwards called for help, but by the time a pair of orderlies dragged the jammed one out, he was completely disoriented, spinning like a top, and so memory-sick he had to be taken away for retraining.
Honor and Helix kept their eye on the greenhouse timer as they worked. Sweat trickled down their faces as they hurried to the next greenhouse, where they would gather eggplants.
“What did our parents do?” Honor asked. “Did your father tell you?”
“Just a little,” Helix said.
“Well, what?” she demanded. “I have to know. No one’s told me. My parents were taken before I had a chance to find out. They never warned me.”
“How could they have warned you?” Helix asked. “If parents knew when it was going to happen, they’d never disappear.”
“Yes, but I think mine always knew,” said Honor. “Mine always knew they were in danger. I always knew it would happen to them.”
Helix bent his head under hanging racks of eggplants. He seemed to be examining all the different kinds: the rich purple eggplants, the long skinny ones, the little white dwarf varieties.
“Of course they always knew. So did mine,” said Helix. “But they never knew the day; they never knew the exact minute. No one does.”
“What were they working on?” asked Honor. “Were they really bad?”
“No, they’re heroes,” said Helix. “They are Objectors.”
Even in the sticky greenhouse, Honor began to shiver. “Are you sure? Are you . . . What do you mean they are Objectors? Don’t you know they’re dead?”
“Who said they’re dead?”
“Fanny,” Honor told him. “Everyone.”
“No,” said Helix. “Our parents aren’t dead. Haven’t you figured that out yet? It’s like the book they give the little kids: Disappeared Means No One Here. Not dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Reduce, recycle, and reuse,” said Helix.
“How can you reuse people?”
The timer was ticking above their heads. The yellow warning light began to flash, but Helix bent down for just a moment and whispered, “Look at the orderlies. Where do you think they come from?”
FIVE
NO ONE EVER LOOKED AT ORDERLIES. HONOR HADN’T
looked at an orderly since that day on the playground when Mrs. Whyte pulled her away. No one looked at them or spoke to them except their managers, and those people had special training. An orderly in the room was like furniture that moved. An orderly glided silently along, vacuuming or scrubbing floors or stocking shelves in the Central Store. Even if orderlies were called for security, they ran silently in pairs and picked up offenders gently. Orderlies did one job at a time. They jammed when someone or something blocked them. Even little children knew they must not block their way.
looked at an orderly since that day on the playground when Mrs. Whyte pulled her away. No one looked at them or spoke to them except their managers, and those people had special training. An orderly in the room was like furniture that moved. An orderly glided silently along, vacuuming or scrubbing floors or stocking shelves in the Central Store. Even if orderlies were called for security, they ran silently in pairs and picked up offenders gently. Orderlies did one job at a time. They jammed when someone or something blocked them. Even little children knew they must not block their way.
Honor had forgotten about orderlies. Everybody did. They were everywhere, but they were silent. They all looked alike with their bald heads and their smooth faces. Their eyes were open and glassy bright. They stared straight ahead. Could orderlies see like ordinary people? Could they hear? Could they remember anything? All children wondered when they were young, but over time they grew out of these childish questions. Orderlies became part of the background, the clutter of daily life.
Now Honor thought about orderlies constantly. She tried not to stare, but she was watching them. She watched them wheeling recycling bins or hauling manure in the gardens. She watched the circular motion of the orderlies’ arms as they washed the blackboards with wet rags. She watched the way they mowed and vacuumed one strip at a time, in straight and careful lines. When she could, she tried to look into the orderlies’ wide-open eyes.
When Honor saw two orderlies together rolling trash barrels, she glanced quickly from one to the other to try to see if they were different, but the orderlies were so close in size, their faces so bland, and their movements so similar that it was hard to see them separately. If orderlies were all the same, then how would Honor recognize her parents among them? Standing on the boardwalk with the orderlies approaching two abreast, Honor could see no difference between them. She saw nothing distinctive, no matter how long she looked. A pair of orderlies in white uniforms looked like a matched pair of socks sorted and clean straight from the wash. The trash barrels rattled as the orderlies rolled them over the boardwalk. Honor stood still and waited. She should have moved aside to let the orderlies do their jobs, but she didn’t move. She waited and waited. The pair of orderlies was almost on top of her. They were bearing down on her quickly and seemed to have no idea she was standing in their way.
Honor’s heart beat fast. She was doing something dangerous. The trash barrels were huge and they could hit her, but she stood in the path of the orderlies like a girl on the tracks of an oncoming train. They were close. She should jump off the boardwalk and run away. She screamed instead. She shrieked and ran right between the trash barrels and stopped the orderlies with a hand on each of their arms.
She was shaking. Her fear of the orderlies was even stronger than her fear that someone had heard her cry out. She had never touched an orderly on purpose, and now she’d grabbed hold of two at once. She couldn’t tell if they were men or women or if the pair was one of each, but they were alive; their arms felt strong and springy through the thin cloth of their jumpsuits. She held them for a moment, fiercely. They did not look at her, but she looked at them; she peered into their faces, first one, and then the other. Who are you? Where did you come from? she thought. Were you somebody’s parents once? She’d stopped them, but neither orderly blinked. Glassy eyed, they remained fixed on the task in front of them. They were not exactly the same, and yet she couldn’t figure out the difference between them. They were pushing against her with equal force. They were alike, except—she realized all in a rush—they were not alike at all up close. Their features were completely different once you stopped them to look. She hadn’t realized. She had only known orderlies from a distance and in motion. Up close, they were different as two leaves or two potatoes. One had thick lips and the other thin; one had a long narrow face and the other a fat pink face; one had dark eyes and the other blue. She let them go.
“Where did you get the idea that they used to be real people?” Honor asked Helix in the kitchen.
“When I had chores in the garden, I stuck one with a pin,” said Helix. Heads down at the sinks, the two of them spoke so softly no one else could hear. “I stuck him right in the arm and made him bleed.”
“That’s nasty,” said Honor.
“I wanted to see if he was alive,” said Helix.
“What happened?”
“He yelled.”
“He made a noise?”
“He said, ‘OW!’ Then he was quiet again.”
“I didn’t know they could make sounds,” said Honor.
“Not just sounds. Ow is a word,” said Helix. “It’s a human word.”
“I keep looking at them,” Honor confessed as orderlies wheeled in racks of dirty dishes. She scraped and Helix rinsed. The orphans had to wash down the stainless steel counters and even the floors with spray hoses. There were drains in the polished cement floor for the dirty water. The work was hard and messy. No one liked to touch the filthy plates covered with smashed potatoes and peas, partly chewed chicken hanging off the bone, bread squeezed back into dough.
Mrs. Tannenbaum, the head cook, was strict. “Do it right,” she told Gretel and Hector, who were washing the floors, “or do it again.”
As soon as Mrs. Tannenbaum was out of earshot, Honor asked Helix, “How did you find out where orderlies come from? Have you told anyone else? Does anyone else know?”
“Everyone who knows anything knows,” said Helix. “They just don’t say.”
“Did your parents tell you?”
“Of course.”
“My parents didn’t.”
“Did you ever ask?”
“No,” Honor admitted.
“You were too busy changing your name,” said Helix.
Honor reached over and snatched Helix’s spray hose from him. She shot a stream of water at him. He tried to duck aside, but she soaked his sleeve. “Take it back!”
“No!” Helix snatched the hose and shot water straight into Honor’s face. Helix was laughing at Honor. She dove for the hose again and soaked Helix at close range. Suddenly they were both laughing. Water streamed from their eyes and ears and noses.
“Stop! Danger!” Mrs. Tannenbaum screamed. She came running toward them, scurrying on little feet. She was extremely fast, even though she was so fat her white cook’s jacket strained at the buttons. “Roughhousing in the kitchen is Not Allowed.”
Honor dropped the hose. She and Helix stood dripping before the cook.
“What happened here?” Mrs. Tannenbaum demanded.
Honor looked down at her wet sandals.
“You, Heloise. Tell me what happened here.”
“I don’t know,” whispered Honor.
“Is that or is that not a lie?” asked Mrs. Tannenbaum.
“It is . . . not,” Honor said.
“You, Helix. Wipe that smile off your face,” said Mrs. Tannenbaum.
Helix wiped his hand across his mouth. When he dropped his hand again, he looked so deadly serious that now Honor couldn’t help smiling. It was as if his smile had migrated to her.
Gretel and Hector stifled laughter. Mrs. Tannenbaum whipped around to look at them and the two began mopping again.
“You’ll stay late,” Mrs. Tannenbaum told Honor and Helix. “You’ll clean the stoves. Get back to work.”
The kitchens were dark now. The other orphans went to dinner and Mrs. Tannenbaum went home. Honor turned on the lights over the stove so that she and Helix could see. They scrubbed and scrubbed with steel wool and soapy water, but the stoves seemed as dirty as ever, black with charred food.
Honor rolled up her wet sleeves, and now her forearms were wet all over again, gray and slimy with soap and grease. “This is a job for orderlies,” she said.
“That’s why it’s our punishment,” said Helix.
“How do they turn people into orderlies?” Honor asked him.
“Why did you change your name?” Helix asked her almost at the same moment.
“I wanted to fit,” said Honor. Then she felt ashamed. “My parents weren’t like yours,” she said. “They didn’t explain; they just did everything wrong. They tried to stick out. They even gave me the wrong name. How would you like it if you had a silent H?”
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