by Ann Halam
I noticed they’d gone quiet. I looked around, and our teacher was standing there. He was looking at me, with a very shocked expression. I felt confused. What had I said? Had I been saying something rude, or cheeky?
“Hello, Mr. Pachenko,” said Rose, brightly. “Sloe was telling us about her mother, who taught her about the earth going round the sun, and—”
“Stop chattering and get on with your work,” snapped Mr. Pachenko.
He went away. I saw the flash of disappointment in Rose’s green eyes, and felt I’d scored a point. I would have bet she’d seen Mr. Pachenko coming over, and hadn’t warned me because she’d hoped I was going to get into trouble. Rose was like that: she had a mean streak a mile wide. But this time she’d failed.
A week later I was called out of class and taken to the principal’s office.
I was terrified. I couldn’t think what I had done, but I knew it made no difference. Once you were taken to the principal’s office you were going to get punished: and it would be something horrific. I was afraid I’d get the Box. Stronger children than me had been known to die, after they’d spent a day or a night in the Box. The warden walked ahead, her keys jangling. Behind me walked two guards with guns in the holsters at their waists: which was really, really scary. What could I possibly have done that was so bad, without knowing it? The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I imagined the men dragging me, kicking and screaming, to the coffin of cold darkness, and locking me in for hours, for a whole day. I was so afraid I thought of running: so they’d have to shoot me and get it over with.
The warden opened a door, took my arm, and pushed me forward.
There was a thick, patterned rug on the floor, that went all the way into the corners. The room was warm and there was a bright lamp, dispelling the gloom of a murky February afternoon. All I could see was the pattern on the rug. I couldn’t raise my eyes. The warden gave me another push, and I stumbled forward.
“So this is Sloe.”
“Look at Madam Principal,” said the warden sternly. “Stand up straight!”
I stood up straight. I saw a tall, slim woman in a tailored uniform. I had seen the principal only once before—a faraway figure, across a sea of heads in student caps, at the Winter Break General Assembly. I’d never expected to get any closer. Smiling, she came from behind her desk and led me by the hand to a stool in front of an easy chair near the stove. I wondered what on earth was going on. A warden, in a smarter white coat from the one who’d brought me, set a tray on a little table.
I could feel the armed guards, there behind me.
“Now, Sloe, don’t be afraid. You aren’t going to be punished, you haven’t done anything wrong. I’d like to talk to you about your mother.”
I nodded.
“Say ‘Yes, Madam Principal,’” snapped the warden who’d brought me.
“Yes, Madam Principal,” I whispered, reeling with shock and fear, trying not to let my voice shake, trying not to show any feelings. What had happened to my mama? The red light on the wall behind Madam Principal’s desk meant everything in here was being recorded. I stared at the tray, which held a glass of milk, a plate of yellow slices of cake, and a glass dish heaped with glistening purple jam. What were the treats for, if I was here to be given bad news? It made no sense.
“It’s been reported that you have confessed to your play-mates that your mother taught science, when you were living with her in the Settlements. Is that true, Sloe?”
Nothing had happened. Mama was safe. I almost fainted with relief.
“Do you like cake?” suggested the principal. “A little jam wouldn’t go amiss?”
The deal was clear. I must talk about Mama or I would get nothing. I had been hungry every day of my life, for as long as I could remember. I was hungry now. They could have stabbed me with red-hot pokers, and I would never, never have told anyone about the Lindquists, but I thought hard, and I could see no harm in what the principal was asking. Of course Mama had taught me. There was nothing wrong in that. She’d only taught me things everybody at New Dawn was learning.
“What kind of things did she teach?” coaxed the kindly voice.
My hand reached out. “Well, she didn’t teach anyone but me, but she told me oh, lots of things. About the planets, and the moon and tides, and how the winters got so cold, and how once there were dinosaurs.”
“Yes, yes,” said the principal, smiling sadly.
I didn’t understand. Mama had always said she would explain things when I was older. She had never told me why we were in the Settlement. I didn’t know that what Dadda had done wrong had anything to do with science. I’d never thought about it, never put two and two together. . . . I was just a little girl, and I believed New Dawn was different, in spite of the guards and the wardens. I really believed I was being given a chance. Mama had taught me to respect teachers, even Miss Malik. I never suspected that a head teacher would get a little girl to betray her own mother.
I ate two pieces of cake, with a big spoonful of jam spread on each. I couldn’t believe how good it tasted. I drank my milk: and I answered the questions. Then I was escorted to my next class and sent to my desk. My friends and enemies stared as much as they dared, their brains frying with curiosity, amazed that I’d come back alive. Rose and Bird and Tottie jumped on me, the first moment they had a chance.
“What happened!” Rose gasped.
“We thought you were a goner. We thought we’d next see you on a plate.”
I shrugged. “Nothing much. We chatted. I think she used to know my mama.”
I didn’t understand.
News of my experience spread: I was famous. Some Bugs thought I would be taken to the city next, and have expensive treatment to fix my knee. Some were saying the principal wanted to adopt me. Suddenly I had a crowd of friends, wanting to get close to me, in the hope that my luck would rub off. Bird and Ifrahim and Tottie weren’t so sure. Nor was I. A visit to the principal’s office could not be good news.
But I seemed to have got away with it, whatever “it” was.
March began, and I had my eleventh birthday. I didn’t tell anyone; nobody celebrated birthdays. My trip to the principal’s office faded from my mind, except for a strange, nagging uneasiness. . . . Then there was a blizzard that went on for days. The running club was suspended. When we had to cross between the buildings we were lost in a world without outlines, where the air you breathed was made of snow. If there were buds on the branches of my tree, I would not have been able to see them. One evening in the blizzard we walked from the study hall to our dormitory, the night warden swinging her keys behind us. When we got into the room, I saw that my bed was stripped. My things had been turned out of my locker and put on the mattress. A strange warden, with different flashes on the collar of her white coat, was folding up a sheet. The other girls looked at each other, and went very quietly to their own beds.
I heard someone murmur, Is she really going to the city? Someone else muttered, Shhh!
The strange warden set down the folded sheet, stacked my things on it, and briskly tied the small bundle. She handed it to me.
“You take that with you to Permanent Boarders, Sloe.”
“Permanent Boarders? Wh-why do I have to go there?”
“Because you’re a Permanent Boarder.”
“But why am I suddenly a Permanent Boarder?” I quavered, tears beginning to start in my eyes. I had never cried at school, but I had such a sense of utter doom.
The warden’s mouth was a hard line. I could see she was one of the soft ones. Some of them were like that: they had to be on their guard, or they’d have been tempted to protest at the harsh way we were treated. Trouble rubs off, and you can’t be too careful. They were always the worst kind.
“It’s not my business, and it’s not yours, but I believe it’s something to do with your mother. She’s been practicing her profession, although she was disgraced: and that’s forbidden. She’s been taken away. There’s no home for you to
go to, and you’re a Permanent Boarder. Get a move on, I haven’t got all night.”
In a dead silence I limped out of the dormitory, clutching my bundle. My mama had been taken away, like my dadda. She was gone.
I suppose days went by, and nights passed. I suppose I went to lessons, sat in the canteen, finished my food. I know I was taken to the principal’s office a second time, and told officially that I was now a Permanent Boarder, because my mother had taught me science, and they had a recording of me saying so, so there was no way Mama could deny it. It was a grave crime, an act of criminal insanity, for someone sentenced to exile in the Settlements to teach science. What if she had taught dangerous rebels how to make a bomb? But it was all right, it was over now, and my mama was getting the appropriate treatment.
The principal said I mustn’t worry, I was not in trouble. New Dawn was proud to be teaching the daughter of such distinguished scientists, even though my mama and my dadda had fallen into wicked error. I could have a shining future, and make up for their unfortunate crimes. I could be Rehabilitated Settlement Child Number One. I suppose I said thank you. . . . You have to say thank you. It isn’t enough to nod and look at the floor. You can’t keep anything for yourself, not even your anger. They want it all. They want everything.
She didn’t tell me where my mother was. I didn’t ask.
She’s been taken away.
She’s been taken away.
Taken away like my dadda, and hung, or shot.
And I knew who was to blame. Not the police, or the Commission for Settlements, or Madam Principal: it was me. I was eleven years old, and I had killed my mother. She was dead for two pieces of cake, and a taste of fake berry jam.
At the end of March there was a day of blue skies. The town’s waste tips, which you could see through the mesh of the main gates, were smudged with brown where smoldering rubbish had melted through the snow. Scavenger gulls were on patrol, screaming to each other in a harsh, alien language. I huddled in the place where the running club stopped for a breather. My leg had stiffened badly since I’d given up running. Today the physiotherapy teacher had ordered me out with the others: but he hadn’t forced me to keep up. . . . I could see my tree, but I couldn’t make out if there were buds on its scrawny branches. I tucked my cold hands up into the sleeves of my uniform coat, and pressed my face against the icy mesh.
I wondered what I would have to do to get myself shot.
“Better off staying here,” said a gravelly deep voice, behind me.
It was one of the guards. They all looked the same in their gray uniforms: heads shaved to stubble, big shoulders, hard faces, but I thought I hadn’t seen this particular man around before. He was tall. A pair of deep lines pinched the flesh between his arched brows, his nose was long and straight. He looked quite old, for a guard. He had his rifle slung on his back, a gun in the holster at his waist, and a bottle tucked under his arm. His uniform tunic was open, as if he didn’t feel the cold. The shirt under it was very dingy.
“You’re called Sloe,” he said, with a grin. “From Wilderness Settlement 267, Third Brigade, East Sector?”
“What if I am?”
He slipped the bottle from under his arm, popped the cork out with his thumb, and took a big swallow. Then he handed it to me.
“Yagin’s the name. You look as if you’re planning a break-out, that’s all, and I’m saying you’d be better off staying here.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Oh, nothing. But think about it. Forget the lessons.
Think about three meals a day, a dormitory bed, vitamin pills. There’s the physio too. You know it’s done you a lot of good. My advice is, stay put until you’re grown. You won’t be ready for the trek before then, and where could you live better? Back in 267 you’d starve. You wouldn’t last a winter, without her to support you.”
I shrugged. I was too deadened to be surprised. The smell of liquor stung my nose: I wondered what I was supposed to do with the bottle.
“You don’t know if you can trust me,” said the strange guard. “I know. So let me put it this way. Spring’s a dangerous time for little animals. Worse than the winter, in many ways. The safe blanket of snow is melting away, and all your enemies are hungry. But things aren’t as bad as they seem. It’s not as bad as you think, little girl. You hang on, you’ll see. Hang on, and lie low.” He tapped me on the head with his hard fingertip (he wasn’t wearing gloves). “And I’ll be here. Look around, anytime, and I’ll be watching over you.”
I took a swig from the bottle, handed it back, and started to limp off toward the school buildings. I heard him laughing, deep and strong, behind me.
I didn’t know what to make of this strange meeting. But later, as the day went wearily by, I realized that somewhere inside me the flame of hope had started to glow.
* 4 *
After they took my mama away, I gave up the idea of getting an education and having a chance in life. I kept the hope that Yagin had given me, but I hid it deep in my heart, and tried never to think about it. One day I’d be old enough to leave this dump, and I would go and search for my mama. Meanwhile I was here for the three meals a day, the warm clothes, the vitamin pills, and whatever else was going.
Rose went on being friends with me, when I was a Permanent Boarder, and I went on being friends with her. There wasn’t a school rule keeping Permanents and Termers apart, it was something the students had decided themselves: but my self-appointed guardian didn’t like it. Once he found me sharing a weed (that’s a prison cigarette) with Rose, behind the kitchen rubbish bins. He took great pains to catch me alone after that, and told me Rose was bad company, and she would do me harm.
I knew Rose wasn’t to be trusted. It was the spice of danger that made her interesting. “I’m bad company myself,” I said. “Warn Rose.”
Yagin watched me, as he’d promised. He had an annoying way of looking—as if he knew every naughty thing I’d ever done, but he would always forgive me. It gave me the creeps. But there wasn’t much he could do about my being friends with Rose. He couldn’t hang around near the students without getting into serious trouble. I often avoided seeing him for weeks at a time.
My tree down the road put out its leaves. It was never much of a green cloud, but made the best show it could manage. I went to the gates to look at it sometimes: until the summer faded. New girls moved into the dormitories. After they’d been issued their uniforms, we old Bugs took anything worth having, substituting our own worn-out stuff. We threw shoes at them when they cried at night, and warned them they would be killed if they complained. . . . Deep inside, where my hope was buried, maybe the person I used to be survived. But I had betrayed my mother, and the only way I could live with that was to become hard and hateful; so I just let it happen. At least, as the winter went on, the crying stopped. It was a relief not to have to be cruel anymore. On very cold nights I wrapped my stolen extra blankets tightly around me, hid my head under the pillow, and dreamed I was in the snowy forest. Mama, I whispered in my heart. I’ll come and find you.
I knew she was probably dead; but you have to believe in something.
I knew I wasn’t the little girl she had loved anymore, but I couldn’t help that.
The winter passed. By March my tree emerged from the blizzards, looking more sickly than ever, but at least it was alive. So now I was twelve.
It was during my second year that we started the real stealing. I don’t know what Yagin would have done if he’d found out: but he didn’t. Maybe he was fooled by the way I still worked at my lessons and got high marks (which I did because it was easy and it was good cover). Or maybe it was because it happened very gradually.
First we were taking things from the new Bugs, same as the year before: a nasty game, but it kept us warm and fed. Then Rose talked to one of the townspeople, one of those bad lots who hung around the New Dawn College gates in the hopes of some kind of pickings, and set up a regular trade. That’s what she told us, anyway. Ma
ybe it was really something to do with that friend of her mother’s: I never knew. I left that side of it to Rose.
My job was to organize the stealing. We Permanents had chores, around the kitchen and the housekeeping stores, and we weren’t too well supervised. I recruited Rain, and a couple of other Permanents. Later there were more people involved: Bird and Lavrenty, Tottie and Ifrahim. We’d recruit anyone useful. It grew to be an empire. On my thirteenth birthday I didn’t go to look at my tree: I’d forgotten all about it. We’d just traded a stack of blankets and a box of canned food over the fence: I sneaked out of the dormitory (we had a lockpick in our gang by then) after lights-out, and celebrated with my thieving friends, on vodka and plenty of greasy chocolate.
The third summer break was endless. We got short rations when the Termers had gone home, on the grounds that we weren’t doing brain work. But the Cats liked us to be exhausted, because it made us easy to handle, so they didn’t cut our chores. Hours of scrubbing floors that didn’t need scrubbing, and not even a full stomach to look forward to. It was awful. And we didn’t steal during the “holidays,” not even food for ourselves. It wasn’t safe. There were only a few students, which meant the Cats could watch you every minute. . . . Also Rain was ill, and they took him to the school clinic. I tried not to think about it, but I missed him, and I worried about him.
It was a big relief when the Termers came back, and Rain was let out of the clinic. I was tempted to concentrate on my schoolwork for a while just to relax. I was getting bored with being a criminal. But this was the fat time of year, with a new crop of Bugs to be fleeced, and kitchen opportunities it would have been a shame to miss. I told myself I would quit once the harvest was over.
