Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

  “Your mother had to call Malcolm and lie to him about my heart before he would give us a telephone number for you. You see? I told them it was possible. But no one listened.”

  “Sure they did. And I’m here now. Freddie wants to say hello.”

  “Not now, Leni. After. Now you listen to me. You remember I told you about my friend Miriam,” she says. There’s the slightest of pauses before she says “friend”—almost imperceptible, but it’s there. Without waiting for me to reply, Oma continues. “I’ve been thinking. About my great-uncle.” Another pause. “And about what happened to Miriam’s sister.”

  I’m only half listening. The rest of me is trying to work some patience into Freddie and looking around Martha Underwood’s office, more brightly lit than the last time I was here. It’s because of the desk light, a Tiffany knockoff that shines a kaleidoscope of color onto the wall. “Look at that, Freddie,” I whisper. “Look at those colors, and you can talk to your Oma in a minute, okay?”

  Oma says something to my father in German, then comes back to me. “Miriam’s sister had the epilepsy. You know, those fits.”

  “I know what epilepsy is, Oma.”

  “Yes. Of course you do. A year after I joined the Girls’ League, Miriam came to my house. That was in September, I think. Maybe early October. Not too cold, and I think it was raining.”

  In the background, my father coughs. “Just tell her, Mutti. She doesn’t need the weather report.”

  “I still think it was raining,” Oma says. “Miriam and I weren’t talking then, but she came anyway, alone, and asked my father if she could see me. Yes, Gerhard, it was raining. I remember because Miriam had on her shiny coat and she didn’t come all the way into the house because her boots were muddy.”

  She’s rambling, and now I’m also staring at the colored lights, at the pieces of glass in the fake lamp, at its brass base and the polished wood underneath it. Martha Underwood’s desk is so neat, not a paper out of place. Pencils are lined up like little wooden soldiers, ruled notepads stacked in paper mesas, everything squared off. Which is why my eyes draw automatically to the envelope lying at a casual angle next to the phone. It’s that one thing that isn’t like the others.

  It’s the packet Underwood set down when she went to bring over an extra chair for Freddie.

  The envelope is closed with one of those metal butterfly clasps, the gum underneath the flap dry as a bone, forgotten in Alex’s haste. I know this because, while Oma talks about Miriam’s epileptic sister and how the cellar flooded because of the rain and how Oma herself had to clean up the muck in the foyer after Miriam left, I’ve reached over and picked it up, turned it over, hefted it. I’ve read the address twice, and the EYES ONLY stamp on the front and back.

  And, before I register what I’m doing, I’ve tucked the phone between my ear and my shoulder, pried the metal wings of the clasp open, and slid out the contents. Words fly at me from the first page:

  Petra,

  Per our discussion, here’s the plan. You’ll understand why I didn’t want to send an electronic copy. Too many eyes on us.

  Love,

  Alex

  Oma says something about a doctor and Miriam’s sister, and then something else about how the carrots and potatoes in the root cellar went rotten because of the damp. I don’t know. I’m on the second of several pages.

  GENERATION: zero (between thirteen and fifty-five years); female students and faculty at selected state schools

  TARGET POPULATION: substandard Q, ethnic groups (TBD), congenital or social anomalies, evidence-supported anomalous progeny

  METHOD: quinacrine? (see previous reports on hormone therapy complications)

  RISK TO SUBJECT: light to severe; potential for fatalities

  LIKELY OUTCOME: considered positive; untestable

  COST-BENEFIT RATIO: good to excellent

  “. . . and Miriam stood there, accusing me, as if I’d done it myself.” Another pause. “Did you hear me, Liebchen?”

  “Yes, Oma,” I say automatically. “I’m listening.” On to page three.

  GENERATION: one (under twelve years); mixed-gender students

  TARGET POPULATION: SEE ABOVE (with exception of progeny)

  METHOD: inheritable mutation via targeted gene drive; insertion method TBD

  RISK TO SUBJECT: negligible

  LIKELY OUTCOME: 80–90% in generation one with geometrical increase over subsequent generations

  COST-BENEFIT RATIO: dependent on insertion method; initial outlook positive

  The clock chimes its quarter-hour bells. Underwood pokes her head in. “Everything okay? Do you need more time?”

  “Just five minutes, please. It’s serious.” I hear myself saying the words.

  And then, Oma. In German. Screaming at me to listen. “I said they sterilized her, Leni. They took her away and they cut something out of her and then they brought her back. Do you hear me? They did all that to Miriam’s sister and then they brought her back!”

  She’s yelling at me in two languages, calling out numbers and years, talking about quotas and doctors competing with one another to meet them. The only numbers I remember are fifty thousand, and one.

  Fifty thousand operations in one short year.

  Somehow, and I don’t think I’ll ever know how, my hands work the papers back into the envelope. Then I drop it on the desk into the pool of colored light, as if holding on to the paper for even one second longer might burn me. I’m already burning with shame for doubting my own grandmother.

  “I hear you, Oma. I hear you.”

  “You need to come home, Liebchen. You and Freddie. You both need to come home before something terrible happens.”

  “Sure, Oma. I know.” I’ll just click my magic shoes, I think, feeling the room start to spin around me. I hand the phone over to Freddie. “Go on,” I say in a dry voice. “Say hello to your Oma.”

  While they talk, it’s all I can do to sit up straight in this chair inside this bright and formal office where a few sheets of paper wait to be mailed.

  My left hand reaches forward. I could take it, I think, this envelope with its evil, bloodcurdling message. I could hide it away and hope no one catches me, and then destroy the hateful thing. But another envelope would take its place, reach its destination, be opened by hands and read by eyes. I could take one page, though. One would be enough if I could deliver it to the right people.

  Freddie watches me open the envelope a second time and slide out the most damning page, folding it into thirds, and then into thirds again before tucking it up my sleeve. “Don’t say anything about this,” I whisper to her. “Not to anyone.”

  She nods.

  And the door creaks open.

  I’m going to be caught.

  Freddie starts crying, putting the waterworks into full gear. I can hear Oma through the phone, telling her everything’s going to be fine.

  “Sorry,” Underwood says and slips out again.

  She’s smart, my daughter.

  In the seconds before Martha Underwood comes back into her office for the final time, I lick the gummed strip on the envelope, press it shut, and arrange it cockeyed on the desk. Freddie tells her great-grandmother a tearful goodbye.

  “I’m sorry,” Underwood says, standing next to me. “It’s always hard to hear bad news.”

  Yes. It is.

  On the way back to my apartment, after hugging Freddie and feeding her another set of reassurances that I won’t be able to fulfill, I study the barred windows on the dormitory building. If what I’ve read is right, soon there won’t be a need for bars. Or state schools or yellow buses or Q scores. Within a few generations, everyone will be perfect.

  The unanswerable question I ask myself when I enter the faculty building is whether I would have believed Oma if I hadn’t seen the contents of th
at envelope.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Everything about the puzzle that’s been slowly piecing itself together is wrong: the shape of its parts, the ugly picture beginning to form, the sinister sounds of its individual words, the numbers of Q scores, test grades, colored armbands on children.

  The apartment is empty when I return. Only a note from Lissa and a heavy book with generic brown library binding are on the kitchen table. Read p. 460, the note says. Back soon.

  I open the book to the page Lissa marked and start to read. The section header is long and rambling, but its message is simple.

  Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeders’ Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population.

  There’s an audible gasp, and I realize the sound is coming from me. I reread the second part of the title: Cutting off the defective germ-plasm in the human population.

  Defective.

  Germ.

  Human.

  Cutting off.

  I’m expecting to see a list of names with “Grand Dragon” or “Imperial Goblin” next to them, those ridiculous ranks of America’s premier racist club, the Ku Klux Klan. That, maybe, I could swallow. It would taste like shit, but I could handle it. I’m not expecting three out of the five committee members of the American Breeders’ Association’s eugenic section to be medical doctors.

  “Jesus,” I say to the walls, and I let my eyes roam over the page, reading aloud. “Doctor. Professor. Judge. Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton. Columbia.” All men, of course, except for the single female listed next to Woman’s Viewpoint. She was Mrs. So-and-So from Hoboken.

  I turn to the front pages of the book. Lissa’s copy is old, yellowed with time, and frayed at the edges. The article on page 460 is relatively short, only one of thirty-some papers delivered at the First International Eugenics Congress held in the summer of 1912. Not in the backwoods of some underpopulated town in the middle of nowhere. In London. I scan the table of contents, my mouth dropping at every fresh theme: education before procreation, new social consciousness, healthy sane families, the influence of race on history. It reads like something from the Third Reich, but it isn’t. The authors are French, English, Italian, Belgian.

  Eight of them are American.

  My fingers fly through the brittle pages, hurrying back to the chapter where I began. There’s another list, ten lines of blurred, black ink headed by a single word:

  Remedies

  Number eight, unlucky and unhappy and foul-smelling number eight, stands out.

  I’m not a sociologist. I don’t know shit about economics or labor forces or how to manage population dynamics. I know, though, about animal shelters. Any mother with a pair of young girls dying for a puppy does.

  Euthanasia.

  Like an unwanted dog. I think I say it out loud—I don’t know.

  The world begins a slow spin, gaining momentum. It’s the feeling of being drunk and high and sick all at the same time. I fall back, but I don’t sink deeper into the chair. I go straight to the hard tile floor of the kitchen, breaking the fall with my head.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  THEN:

  Malcolm wouldn’t have any of it. Between the threat of fleas and the inconvenience of twice-daily walks, he had zero enthusiasm in us getting a dog. I took Anne and Freddie to the local SPCA anyway, behind their father’s back.

  This was a major life mistake.

  Inside the barn-sized building were rows and rows of kennels, each one the temporary—and, in some cases, extremely temporary—home of an animal no one wanted. While Anne and Freddie ran up and down the corridor in search of fluffy little beasts with big eyes and paws they hadn’t yet grown into, I counted the pit bulls, the thin hunting hounds that had been turned in (or—more often—discovered starving in the woods) when they lost their scent or their sight, the street dogs with ribs rippling underneath flesh. There were scabrous old Labs, once-handsome German shepherds with eyes that said, Don’t kick me. Please don’t kick me, when my shoes clicked on the concrete floor. There were barks and yelps and whines. One sign said Queenie. Twelve years. No further information available.

  Queenie. Someone had named this dog Queenie once.

  Queenie had been deposed.

  “There aren’t any puppies, Mom,” Anne said. “How come there aren’t any puppies?” She had gone from gung ho to bored in the space of a few minutes, finally stomping out to the entry room, where she sat with her arms crossed and a frown as long as a rainy Saturday afternoon plastered on her face. “Not one single good dog.”

  She was right. There weren’t any good dogs, not the kinds of dogs people wanted. I took Freddie’s hand and led her away from the world-weary—and, apparently, kick-weary—shepherd.

  I should have left sooner.

  A young woman came in through a door at the end of the corridor, a door marked Staff Only. She flipped the latch on Queenie’s kennel and clicked a lead onto the dog’s collar. “Ready for a walk, girl?”

  Queenie, despite her tired legs, looked ready. You could see it in her eyes.

  “Sometimes,” the woman said, “I hate my job.”

  So get another one, I thought. What I said was, “You don’t like dogs?”

  “You kidding? I love dogs. What I don’t like is that we just got ten more in this morning. Ain’t no room; ain’t no money. Ain’t never enough money. And Queenie’s been here the longest.”

  I watched them leave, and I saw Queenie’s whole life in a flash. She was a newly whelped pup, suckling at her mother’s teat, nestled together with brothers and sisters. She was rolling in grass as high as her little legs, warming herself in the sun. She was playing with a ball, with a squeak toy, with one of those hard rubber things you stick peanut butter in. Her head out the car window, she was tasting air as it whistled by. She was curled in a corner, head down, knowing she shouldn’t have peed on her master’s rug, knowing she couldn’t help it. She was being walked into the sterile, bleach-scented SPCA, sitting obediently while forms were filled out, signed. She was watching out the window as the young man who once named her Queenie drove away.

  I couldn’t cry on the drive home. And I was harsh with Anne, telling her to shut up after she’d complained about all the sucky dogs I took her to see. Roads and trees blurred together as I steered through late-afternoon traffic. All I really wanted to do was howl and scream at the humans around me. But I didn’t do that, not with the girls in the backseat. I waited until we pulled into our driveway, and I made some excuse before running to my bathroom, turning the tap on full, and bawling until I didn’t have any tears left.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  “Slight concussion, but I think you’ll be all right,” a voice says. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, only that it’s soft, and that it rounds off the edges of the pain on the left side of my head. For an amount of time I can’t measure, all I know is the voice.

  New sensations come in, slowly, one following the other. Something like ice close to my temple. The pressure of fingers opening my eye wide. Another eye, only an inch from mine. Girlish sounds, thick with the strains of Appalachian English, worrying, ordering me to lie still and hush.

  Concussion or not, I need to move, and I need to speak. Ruby Jo’s right hand disagrees, keeping me down on the sofa while Lissa talks, telling me what she believes. “Yeah, we’ve been tracking the Fitter Family assholes for a while now. Trying to find out where the money comes from, who they’re backing for seats in the legislature, what their plans are. Bonita Hamilton’s been on them like flies on shit, and all we come up with is a fistful of nothing. But she’s got a theory.”

  “Eugenics,” I say.

  “Bingo.”

  “Most people don’t know about it,” Lissa says. “I taught history for almost thirty years and
never saw a textbook mentioning the Human Betterment Foundation or the Eugenics Research Association. Not a single one. Like it’s our dirty little secret, an embarrassment we think we can get away with not talking about by sweeping it all under a rug.”

  She boils water on the small stove and pours a double dose of coffee grounds into the filter-lined funnel, while I listen to facts, numbers, the movement of oodles of money from Progressives like Rockefeller and Carnegie and Harriman, the Ivy League scientists who mangled data.

  “It was huge,” Lissa says. “And really got rolling in 1912 with that paper.” She nods toward the kitchen table.

  “It says—” I begin, my voice shaking. “It says euthanasia.”

  “We don’t think the FF will go as far as a lethal solution,” Lissa says. “They didn’t try it a century ago. Not here, anyway.”

  “That’s reassuring,” I say.

  Ruby Jo frowns. “They did so. My granny said they did all kinds of things. Most of it was passive. You know, not feeding a baby, accidentally forgetting some old man’s antibiotics if he came down with an infection. She had a million stories from working in the town hospital. But, yeah, Lissa’s right. They had other ways. I think if the institution my granny was in hadn’t closed down, I probably wouldn’t be here.”

  We all look at her. Even me, although it hurts to move my head.

  “What?” I say.

  Ruby Jo puts on a sour face. “Don’t you get it? I just said I almost wasn’t. Like, at all.”

  I do get it, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to get it in the same way I don’t want to get leprosy or syphilis or cancer.

  Ruby Jo looks us over and shakes her mop of red hair. “Remember how I told you about Oliver Wendell Holmes? There’s something else he said. He said that if we had laws to cover mandatory vaccinations, we could have laws to tie up your Fallopian tubes. And that’s what they near about did to my granny back in 1957. Someone figured out they didn’t need to kill anyone. They just needed to stop them from breeding.”