The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

by John Joseph Adams

  Chidinma tried to distract her husband by asking about his day. Chance continued to stare at Ejem while he answered. Ejem wanted to move faster, to get out as quick as she could, but she was conscious of every sway of her breasts, every brush of her thighs as she hurried. Chance spoke to Ejem only as she was leaving, a goodbye she returned with a small curtsy. Chidinma walked her to the door.

  “Ejem, we should take a break from each other, I think,” she said with a pained air of finality, signaling that this break wasn’t likely to be a temporary one.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “You’re going to have to say it, Chidinma.”

  “Fine. This whole thing, this friendship, was fine when we were both uncovered girls doing whatever, but covered women can’t have uncovered friends. I thought it was nonsense at first, but it’s true. I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve been covered for thirteen years and this has never been a problem.”

  “And I thought by this time you’d be covered too. You came so close with that one fellow, but you’ve never really tried. It’s unseemly.”

  “He’s only seen me this once since you made it clear—”

  “Once was enough. Get covered. Get claimed. Take yourself off the market. Until then, I’m sorry, but no.”

  Chidinma went back inside the house before Ejem could respond. And what could she say anyway? I’m not sure I ever want to be claimed? Chidinma would think her mad.

  Ejem positioned her box to better cover her breasts and walked to the bus stop. Chidinma hadn’t offered her a ride home, even though she knew how much Ejem hated public transportation—the staring as she lay the absorbent little towel square on her seat, the paranoia of imagining every other second what to do if her menstrual cup leaked.

  At the stop, a group of young men waited. They stopped talking when they saw Ejem, then resumed, their conversation now centered on her.

  “How old you think she is?”

  “Dude, old.”

  “I don’t know, man. Let’s see her breasts. She should put that box down.”

  They waited and Ejem ignored them, keeping as much of herself as possible shielded with the box and the cosmetic company’s branded tote.

  “That’s why she’s unclaimed. Rudeness. Who’s gonna want to claim that?”

  They continued in that vein until the bus arrived. Even though the men were to board first, they motioned her ahead, a politeness that masked their desire for a better view. She scanned the passengers for other uncovered women—solidarity and all that—and was relieved to spot one. The relief quickly evaporated. The woman was beautiful, which would have stung on its own, but she was young too, smooth-skinned and firm. Ejem stopped existing for the group of young men. They swarmed the woman, commenting loudly on the indentation of her waist, the solid curve of her arm. The young woman took it all in stride, scrolling a finger down the pages of her book.

  Ejem felt at once grateful and slighted, remembering how it had been in her youth, before her waist had thickened and her ass drooped. She’d never been the sort to wear nakedness boldly, but she’d at least felt that she was pleasant to look at.

  The bus took on more passengers and was three-quarters full when an osu woman boarded. Ejem caught herself doing a double-take before averting her gaze. It wasn’t against the law; it just wasn’t done, since the osu had their own transport, and the other passengers looked away as well. Embarrassed. Annoyed. Even the bus driver kept his eyes forward as the woman counted out her fare. And when she finally appeared in the center aisle, no one made the polite shift all passengers on public transportation know, that nonverbal invitation to take a neighboring seat. So even though there were several spots available, the osu woman remained standing. Better that than climb her naked body over another to sit down. It was the type of subtle social correction, Ejem thought, that would cause a person to behave better in the future.

  But as the ride progressed, the osu woman squeezing to let by passengers who didn’t even acknowledge her, Ejem softened. She was so close to becoming an unseen woman herself, unanchored from the life and the people she knew, rendered invisible. It was only by the grace of birth that she wasn’t osu, her mother had said to her the very last time they spoke. “At least you have a choice, Ejem. So choose wisely.” She hadn’t, had walked away from a man and his proposal and the protection it offered. Her parents had cut her off then, furious and confounded that she’d bucked tradition. She couldn’t explain, not even to herself, why she’d looked at the cloth he proffered and seen a weight that would smother her.

  At her stop Ejem disembarked, box held to her chest. With the exception of a few cursory glances, no one paid attention to her. It was one of the reasons she liked the city, everybody’s inclination to mind their own business. She picked up the pace when she spotted the burgundy awning of her apartment building. In the elevator an older male tenant examined her out of the corner of his eye. Ejem backed up until he would have had to turn around to continue looking. One could never tell if a man was linked or not, and she hated being inspected by men who’d already claimed wives.

  In her apartment she took a long, deep breath, the type she didn’t dare take in public lest she draw unwanted attention. Only then did she allow herself to contemplate the loss of Chidinma’s friendship, and weep.

  When they were girls, still under their fathers’ covering, she and Chidinma had become fast friends. They were both new to their school and their covers were so similar in pattern they were almost interchangeable. Ejem remembered their girlhood fondly, the protection of their fathers’ cloth, the seemingly absolute security of it. She had cried when, at fifteen, her mother had come into her bedroom and, stroking her hair, told Ejem that it was time to remove her cloth. The only people who could get away with keeping their daughters covered for long were the wealthy, who often managed it until the girls could secure wife-cloth. But Ejem’s father had grown up a poor man in a village where girls were disrobed as early as possible, some even at age ten, and it was beyond time as far as he was concerned. He knew what happened to the families of girls who stayed covered beyond their station, with the exception of girls bearing such deformities that they were permitted “community cloth” made from donated scraps. But if a girl like Ejem continued to be clothed, the town council would levy a tax that would double again and again until her father could not pay it. Then his girl would be disrobed in public, and her family shamed. No, he couldn’t bear the humiliation. Things would happen on his terms.

  The day Ejem was disrobed was also the day her father stopped interacting with her, avoiding the impropriety of a grown man talking to a naked girl. Ejem hadn’t wanted to go to school or market or anywhere out of the house where people could see her. Chidinma, still under her father-cloth, told her (horrified, well-off) parents that she too felt ready to disrobe, so that she and Ejem could face the world together, two naked foundlings.

  Chidinma’s parents had tried to spin it as piousness, a daughter disrobed earlier than she had to be because she was so dedicated to tradition. But it’d had the stink of fanaticism and they’d lost many friends, something for which, Chidinma confided, her parents had never forgiven her.

  A part of Ejem had always believed they’d be claimed at the same time, but then Chidinma had secured a wife-cloth at twenty, with Ejem as her chief maid. And then Chidinma gave birth to a boy, then two girls, who would remain covered their entire lives if Chidinma had anything to say about it. And through it all, Ejem remained uncovered, unclaimed, drifting until the likelihood passed her by.

  She downed a mug of wine in one huge gulp, then another, before sifting through yesterday’s mail. She opened the envelope she’d been avoiding: the notice of her upcoming lease renewal, complete with a bump in monthly rent. With the money she’d earned today, she had enough to cover the next two months. But the raised rent put everything in jeopardy, and Chidinma’s abandonment meant Ejem could no longer sell to her wealthy set. If she co
uldn’t secure income some other way, a move to a smaller town would soon be a necessity.

  When she’d first leased the apartment, Ejem had been working at the corporate headquarters of an architecture firm. Though her nakedness drew some attention, there were other unclaimed women, and Ejem, being very good at what she did, advanced. Just shy of a decade later, she was over thirty, the only woman in upper management, and still uncovered.

  Three months ago Ejem was delivering a presentation to a prospective client. As usual, she was the only woman in the room. The client paid no attention to her PowerPoint, focusing instead on what he considered to be the impropriety of an unclaimed woman distracting from business matters. Ejem was used to this and tried to steer the conversation back to the budget. When the man ignored her, none of her coworkers bothered to censure him, choosing instead to snicker into their paperwork. She walked out of the room.

  Ejem had never gone to Human Resources before; she’d always sucked it up. The HR manager, a covered woman who was well into her fifties, listened to her with a bored expression, then, with a pointed look at Ejem’s exposed breasts, said, “You can’t seriously expect a group of men to pay attention to pie charts or whatever when there is an available woman in the room. Maybe if you were covered this wouldn’t happen. Until you are, we can no longer put you in front of clients.”

  Ejem walked out of the building and never returned. She locked herself away at home until Chidinma came knocking with a bottle of vodka, her youngest girl on her hip, and a flyer for home-based work selling makeup.

  Now that lifeline was gone, and it would be only a matter of time until Ejem exhausted her savings. She switched on the TV and flipped channels until she reached an uncovered young woman relating the news. The woman reported on a building fire in Onitsha and Ejem prepared dinner with the broadcast playing in the background, chopping vegetables for stir-fry until she registered the phrase unclaimed women repeated several times. She turned up the volume.

  The newscaster had been joined by an older man with a paternal air, who gave more details.

  “The building was rumored to be a haven of sorts for unclaimed women, who lived there, evading their responsibilities as cloth makers. Authorities halted firefighters from putting out the blaze, hoping to encourage these lost women to return to proper life. At least three bodies were discovered in the ashes. Their identities have yet to be confirmed.”

  That was the other reason Ejem wanted to remain in the metro area. Small towns were less tolerant of unclaimed women, some going so far as to outlaw their presence unless they were menials of the osu caste. They had a certain freedom, Ejem thought—these osu women who performed domestic tasks, the osu men who labored in the mines or constructed the buildings she’d once designed—though her envy was checked by the knowledge that it was a freedom born of irrelevance. The only place for unclaimed women, however, as far as most were concerned, was the giant factories, where they would weave cloth for women more fortunate than they.

  The town’s mayor appeared at a press conference.

  “This is a decent town with decent people. If folks want to walk around uncovered and unclaimed, they need to go somewhere else. I’m sorry about the property loss and the folks who couldn’t get out, but this is a family town. We have one of the world’s finest factories bordering us. They could have gone there.” The screen flipped back to the newsman, who nodded sagely, his expression somehow affirming the enforcement of moral values even as it deplored the loss of life.

  Ejem battled a bubble of panic. How long before her finances forced her out into the hinterlands, where she would have to join the cloth makers? She needed a job and she needed it fast.

  What sorts of jobs could one do naked? Ejem was too old for anything entry-level, where she’d be surrounded day after day by twentysomethings who would be claimed quickly. Instead she looked for jobs where her nudity would be less of an issue. She lasted at a nursing home for five weeks, until a visiting relative objected to her presence. At the coffee shop she made it two and a half hours until she had to hide in the back to avoid a former coworker. She quit the next day. Everywhere she went heightened how sheltered she’d been at her corporate job. The farther from the center of town she searched, the more people stared at her openly, asking outright why she wasn’t covered when they saw that she didn’t bear the mark of an osu woman. Every once in a while Ejem encountered osu women forced outside by errands, branded by shaved heads with scarification scored above one ear. Other pedestrians avoided them as though they were poles or mailboxes or other such sidewalk paraphernalia. But Ejem saw them.

  As her search became more desperate, every slight took a knife’s edge, so that Ejem found herself bothered even by the young girls still covered in their father-cloth who snickered at her, unaware or not caring that they too would soon be stripped of protection. The worst were the pitying Oh, honey looks, the whispered assurances from older covered women that someone would eventually claim her.

  After a while she found work giving massages at a spa. She enjoyed being where everyone was disrobed; the artificial equality was a balm. Her second week on the job, a woman walked in covered with one of the finest wife-cloths Ejem had ever seen. She ordered the deluxe package, consisting of every single service the spa offered.

  “And may I have your husband’s account number?”

  “My account number,” the woman emphasized, sliding her card across the counter.

  The desk girl glared at the card, glared at the woman, then left to get the manager. Everyone in the waiting room stared.

  The manager, a woman close to Ejem’s age, sailed in, her haughty manner turning deferential and apologetic as soon as she caught sight of the client. “I’m so sorry. The girl is new, still in father-cloth. Please excuse her.” The finely clothed one remained silent. “We will of course offer you a significant discount on your services today. Maria is ready to start on your massage right away.”

  “No,” the woman said firmly. “I want her to do it.” Ejem, who’d been pretending to straighten products on the shelves, turned to see the woman pointing at her.

  Soon she was in one of the treatment rooms, helping the woman to disrobe, feeling the texture of the cloth, wanting to rub it against her cheek. She left to hang it and encountered the manager, who dragged her down the hall and spoke in a harsh whisper.

  “Do you know who that is? That is Odinaka, the Odinaka. If she leaves here less than pleased, you will be fired. I hope I’m clear.”

  Ejem nodded, returning to the massage room in a nervous daze. Odinaka was one of a handful of independently wealthy women who flouted convention without consequences. She was unclaimed but covered herself anyway, and not in modest cloth either, but in fine, bold fabric that invited attention and scrutiny. She owned almost half the cloth factories across the globe. This unthinkable rebellion drew criticism, but her wealth ensured that it remained just that: words but no action.

  Odinaka sat on the massage table, swinging her legs. At Ejem’s direction she lay on her stomach while Ejem warmed oil between her hands. She coated Odinaka’s ankles before sliding up to her calves, warming the tissue with her palms. She asked a few casual questions, trying to gauge whether she was a talker or preferred her massages silent. She needn’t have worried. Not only did Odinaka give verbose replies, she had questions for Ejem herself. Before long she had pried from Ejem the story of how she’d come to be here, easing muscle tensions instead of pursuing a promising career as an architect.

  “It doesn’t seem fair, does it, that you have to remain uncovered?”

  Ejem continued with the massage, unsure how to reply to such seditious sentiments.

  “You know, you and I are very similar,” Odinaka continued.

  Ejem studied the woman’s firm body, toned and slim from years of exercise. She considered the other ways in which they were different, not least that Odinaka had never had to worry about a bill in her life. She laughed.

  “You are very kin
d, but we’re nothing alike, though we may be of the same age,” she responded, as lightly as she could, tilting the ending into a question. Odinaka ignored it, turning over to face her.

  “I mean it; we are both ambitious women trying to make our way unclaimed in male-dominated fields.”

  Except, Ejem didn’t say, you are completely free in a way I am not, as covered as you wish to be.

  “Covering myself would be illegal—” she started.

  “Illegal-smeagle. When you have as much money as I do, you exist above every law. Now, wouldn’t you like to be covered too?”

  Odinaka was her savior. She whisked Ejem away from her old apartment, helping her pay the fee to break her lease, and moved her into a building she owned in one of the city’s nicest neighborhoods.

  Ejem’s quarters, a two-bedroom apartment complete with a generously sized kitchen, had the freshness of a deep clean, like it had been long vacant or had gone through a recent purge, stripped of the scent and personality of its previous occupant. The unit had a direct intercom to the osu women who took care of the place. Ejem was to make cleaning requests as needed, or requests for groceries that later appeared in her fridge. When Ejem mentioned the distance from the apartment to her job, Odinaka revealed that she didn’t have to work if she didn’t want to, and it was an easy choice not to return to the spa. The free time enabled her to better get to know the other women in the building.

  There was Delilah, who seemed like a miniature Odinaka in dress and mannerisms but in possession of only half as much confidence. Doreen, a woman close to forty, became Ejem’s favorite. She owned a bookstore—one that did well as far as bookstores went—and she had the air of someone who knew exactly who she was and liked it. She eschewed the option to self-clothe.