Hungry

by H. A. Swain

  Gaia settles on the windowsill. The sun streaming through the panes of glass highlights the long graying curls around her face. “Nowhere else in the world would this be possible,” she tells us. “If you were to go back, they would surely separate you. Pump you full of mood stabilizers and antipsychotics and appetite suppressants to deaden your feelings. Tell you that your desires are illegal, immoral, detrimental to the whole of society. You would be demonized. Locked up. Forgotten. It’s truly a miracle that I found you. And for that we should thank Mother Nature.” She closes her eyes and lifts her chin as she turns to bask in the sun filtering through the window.

  For a moment, I am completely enthralled by her story. She’s right. Or at least partly. I might not feel lucky given all that’s happened to us over the past few days, and I’m not sure what Mother Nature has to do with it, but I am relieved to be with Basil again and not on the run. It’s true that I’d much rather be here than trapped like fugitives or sent back to rehab or worse, prison, but some of what she’s saying doesn’t sit well with me. I look at Basil. He’s got his eyes closed like Gaia, as if he’s communing with Mother Nature, too. She seems to think we’ll be staying here for a long time, but I want her to understand that this is only temporary. “Gaia,” I say, “you know…”

  Her eyes pop open and she asks, “Delilah, dear, when was your last menses?”

  “Excuse me?” I choke on my words and wonder who Delilah is.

  “Your menses. Your period. The monthly curse, which is actually a blessing,” she says with a laugh.

  My cheeks burn bright. “I’m only seventeen. I haven’t entered the Procreation Pool yet so my hormones haven’t been adjusted for that,” I mumble, embarrassed to be talking about such things in front of Basil. “And my name—”

  “Ah, I see,” she says, cutting me off. “When was your last inoculation?”

  “About three months ago. Why?” I ask, wondering what business it is of hers.

  “Mm-hm.” She nods. “So in about three more months the hormone suppressants will be out of your system, and you’ll begin menarche.”

  I squirm, hating this conversation. Having a stranger talk about my period in front of Basil is worse than having my mother talk about my genetic flaw to Dr. Demeter. I’m so self-conscious that I can’t find the words to tell her that I won’t be here in three months.

  “Oh, don’t be embarrassed!” Gaia exclaims and rushes to my side. She leans down and hugs me around the shoulder. I sit stiffly in her arms, wishing she would stop. “It’s such a beautiful thing. We’ll have a special festival to mark the occasion. Everyone will celebrate you! You will be on a pedestal with ribbons in your hair.”

  I can literally think of nothing worse. Prison, maybe?

  “And then.” Gaia slings one leg over the bench so she’s facing me. She gathers my hands in hers. “You will bestow the most amazing gifts.”

  I stare at her, completely confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She reaches out and lays her hand on my belly. “Your monthly contribution,” she says with glistening eyes.

  I flinch and pull away from her touch.

  She rises and walks to Basil’s side. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, my beautiful boy.” She reaches out to stroke his cheek. “You have much to give, too.”

  He peers up at her with adoration. Similar to the way I saw him look at Ana but even more enthralled, which worries me. Especially because something in Gaia’s demeanor—the way her fingers linger around his jawbone as she looks him up and down hungrily—makes my skin crawl.

  “I’d really like to contact my family,” I say quickly. “They should know that I’m okay and…”

  Gaia slowly turns. She stands over me and shakes her head. “We’re your family now, dear.”

  I feel the blood drain from my face and I get woozy.

  “Now then,” she says, heading toward the double doors. “I’m going to leave you two lovebirds alone. Finish your soup. Ella will bring you some lovely tea. So good for the tummy. Then we’ll find a job for each of you, because everyone must earn his or her keep. Remember, there’s no charity at the Farm.”

  * * *

  When Gaia is gone I whip around and latch onto Basil’s arm. “Did you hear that?”

  “She’s completely amazing, isn’t she?” he says, barely looking up from his soup, which he’s plunged back into.

  “No! I mean, she’s certainly interesting. But some of that was weird, don’t you think?”

  “She can see into our hearts,” he says as if it’s a fact.

  “No she can’t.”

  “How else would she have known your parents were trying to keep us apart?”

  “She didn’t know that,” I point out. “She made a general guess about why we ran away, which is probably pretty obvious when you think about it. A guy and a girl showing up together.…”

  Basil shakes his head.

  “And what the heck is my monthly contribution?” I can’t even say it without blushing. “Or saying we’re going to start a family! Or calling me Dehlia and Delilah? Does she even know who I am?”

  “Just because everybody from the Inner Loop knows your family…”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I snap, but my face grows warm because he’s sort of right.

  “Look,” he says more gently. “There are probably two hundred people who live here, and she’s not good with names. Big deal.” He looks at my half-empty bowl. “Are you going to eat that?”

  “No, I’m not hungry anymore.” I push it away. “Was she part of the Analogs? Had you heard of her before?”

  “No. It’s crazy, isn’t it? She’s been here the whole time and we had no idea. If I had known about this place earlier.…” He eyes my bowl.

  I push my broth toward him and he digs in. “But doesn’t any of what she said freak you out? Just a little? She thinks we’re going to be here long enough to have a kid together!”

  This gets his attention. “She just means if we want to. Eventually.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I say, thinking about all the girls my age walking through the clearing. At least a quarter of them looked pregnant. “There are a lot of little kids running around this place.”

  He grins, a bit embarrassed. “I think that’s what happens, Apple, when people don’t have inocs and Synthamil.”

  “Obviously, I know that, but I don’t want it to happen to us. At least not yet.”

  “I don’t even want kids,” he says as he scrapes up the last bit of liquid from my bowl.

  This surprises me almost as much as Gaia saying that we should start a family. “Really? Never?”

  “And end up like my parents?”

  “Not all parents are that bad,” I tell him. “Look at my family.…”

  “Yeah, look at yours,” Basil says with a snort. “They stuck you in rehab then put a price on my head.”

  “Yeah, but…” I try to protest.

  “How’s that any different than what my mom did?”

  “Because my parents thought they were doing the best thing for me.”

  “Are you joking? You were the first one to admit they were covering their own asses so One World wouldn’t look bad.”

  “But—”

  “These people saved us,” he says, angrily. “We could have wandered around for days or weeks or months. Or we could be in prison by now because of your family. We should be grateful that Gaia welcomed us with open arms.”

  “Open arms? They hauled you out of the woods like you were a criminal. I saw the whole thing.”

  “They have to be careful. People come out here and steal the kudzu.”

  “Like there’s not enough!” I say.

  “What if I’d been a One World agent?”

  “But you don’t have the whole picture. Things have changed in the Loops and some of what’s going on here is strange.”

  “Look, Apple.” He turns to face me. “You’ve only been running for
days. But it’s been my whole life.” Color rises to his cheeks and his eyes burn bright. “Most people here are seconds, just like me. We’ve lived in fear. Hiding from security. Never knowing where our next Synthamil would come from.”

  “I know,” I tell him. “That’s why we should go back and fight to change that system because there are other seconds like you and people who are hungry like me. Like us.”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve spent my life fighting a system that killed my brother and doesn’t care whether I live or die, but you didn’t. Now finally my life can be easy.”

  I look down, ashamed.

  “I know this is a big change for you.” He reaches for my hand. “But for the first time in my life, I don’t have to worry or constantly check my back anymore. I’m sure if you give it a chance, you’ll see how wonderful it is. Gaia loves us. All of us.”

  I shake my head.

  “She sent a search party for you after they found me. They could have left you out there, but they didn’t.”

  “I know,” I mumble.

  “And I was so relieved when they brought you in.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me close. “I couldn’t imagine being here without you.” When he bends down and kisses my forehead, I almost feel the dopamine squirting into my brain, melting away all the reasons I want to leave. “Please give this place a chance,” he asks. “For me.”

  I snake my arms around his waist and drink in his scent. For those few seconds, part of me thinks he could be right. Then the girl called Ella pushes through the doors with another tray. When she sees us embracing, she stumbles, rattling the cups, and slopping hot liquid onto her fingers. She yelps and drops the tray, splattering its contents across the floor.

  “Are you okay?” I grab a rag from the table and kneel down to sop up the tea.

  “I’m fine,” she says as she gathers broken cup shards.

  “Let me see your hands.” I reach for her to make sure she’s not burned or cut.

  As I hold her hands in mine, I don’t look for marks on her skin. Instead, I stare into her innocent brown eyes and at her round cheeks and realize that she’s very young. “How old are you?” I whisper.

  She pulls away, sitting back on her heels. “Fifteen.”

  I suck in air and point at her belly, which extends over her thighs. “But … but … but…”

  She lifts her chin in defiance. “But what?”

  “Are you…? Is that…?”

  She cradles her belly in her hands. “I hope this one’s a girl,” she says shyly. “I’ve already given a little boy.”

  “Given?” I’m flabbergasted and before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “Why?”

  “Because.” Ella places the broken cups on the tray. “Gaia says, ‘Mother Nature wanted it to be so.’” She heaves herself up to stand. “I’ll make more tea.”

  When she’s gone through the double doors, I get off the floor and look at Basil. “Now you can’t tell me this place is normal,” I say in a hushed shout. “That girl is fifteen and going on her second baby.”

  “Maybe that’s what she wants,” Basil says with an unconcerned shrug.

  “No,” I say. “Nobody would want that if they had a choice.”

  He grabs my hand. “Apple,” he says. “You’re not even trying.”

  I drop down to the bench with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Don’t say that,” he begs.

  “Look Basil, at the very least, I have to let my parents know where I am.”

  He shakes his head with disgust.

  I stare down at my hands, trying to find a way to explain, but then Ella comes back with more tea. She sets the tray on the table.

  “Gaia says to drink this. Then I’ll show you to your work squads.”

  “Work squads?” I ask. “But you don’t even know what we can do.”

  “Gaia knows,” Ella says, busily exchanging the soup bowls for the teacups.

  “How?” I ask. Ella doesn’t answer. I try to catch Basil’s eye, but he’ll no longer look at me.

  * * *

  Despite being separated from Basil and stuck in a strange sparse cabin with eight girls I’ve never met, I sleep well that night. I’m so exhausted I would probably sleep fine on a rock. Since I have an actual bed, I wake up more refreshed than I’ve felt in days, and I can’t wait to find Basil. But Shiloh and Wren, the girls who share the three-level bunk bed with me, have a different plan. They drag me off for the morning routine as soon as they open their eyes.

  In the latrine, I notice a stack of small plastic cups with screw-top lids beside the circular hole cut in a wooden bench where we take turns relieving ourselves. When I’m washing up at a communal sink, one girl after another carries out a cup of her own urine. They take turns writing a long number on the sides of the cups with a pencil, then they place the cups on a tray sitting by the door.

  When Shiloh comes out of the stall carrying hers, I say, “Was I supposed to pee in a cup?” fearing that urine shouldn’t go down the hole.

  “Did Gaia tell you to provide a sample?” she asks.

  “Well, no.”

  “Then there’s your answer.”

  “But why do you pee in the cup?” I ask.

  Shiloh blinks at me as if she doesn’t understand my question, then she says, “Because Gaia told me to.”

  I almost laugh thinking about how my grandmother used to say, If Yaz told you to jump off a bridge, would you? Clearly, here the answer is Yes. If Gaia tells you to pee in a cup, you pee in a cup.

  As we leave the latrine and head toward the dining hall, a woman walks out of the pump house. A little breeze catches the door and holds it open for a few seconds so that I get a glimpse inside. What I see startles me and I quickly look away embarrassed. By the time I look back, someone has slammed the door, and I wonder if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

  “Were all the women in there half naked?” I ask Shiloh and Wren. They answer me with frowns. “Because it looked like they weren’t wearing tops. Not even bras!” This makes me giggle. “What exactly are they doing in there?”

  “How would we know?” Shiloh asks.

  “Only mothers work in there,” Wren adds. “And we aren’t mothers yet.”

  “Gaia says, There’s a reason for everything, but not every reason is for us to know,” Shiloh adds.

  Right, I think. If Gaia tells you to go in the pump house and take off your shirt, you go in the pump house and take off your shirt. This place is getting stranger by the minute.

  * * *

  In the dining hall, while we have our morning ration of kudzu soup and a strangely sweet, cloudy tea, I look everywhere for Basil, but I can’t find him. When I ask, Wren tells me he probably ate during an earlier shift since the dining hall can’t hold everyone at once. I realize then that I have no idea where he sleeps or what job he does, so I can’t go in search of him after the morning meal. Instead, I follow my bunk mates from the dining hall. I’ll have to ask around for him later.

  We take the right-hand path out of the main clearing and stop in front of a building that’s modern and sleek, made of metal and glass. No kudzu here. “Is this the hospital or the harvest house?” I ask.

  “Both,” says Wren.

  “Do you think I could get a brace or a steroid injection for my ankle?” I ask as we enter through the front door.

  Wren looks at me bewildered.

  “I sprained it,” I tell her.

  She looks away as if none of this computes.

  “Can you at least tell me where the doctor is?” I ask.

  “He won’t be here until the harvest,” Shiloh tells me. Then she introduces me to a freckled worker named Bex who looks like her belly is about to pop and a quiet girl named Leeda whose bump is barely showing beneath her dress. “You’ve been assigned to help them,” Shiloh says and leaves.

  “Are you nurses?” I ask the girls.

  Bex bursts out laughing. “Hardly!” she says. “Come on. We’ve go
t a lot to do.”

  We change into freshly washed blue hospital scrubs in a small dressing room near the back of the building. I never thought I would be in heaven wearing Cottonyle, but the fabric feels luxurious against my skin after the scratchy kudzu of my dress. Bex also gives me a little blue cap and tells me to tuck my hair up inside. I follow them to a clean, quiet lab with white tiled floors and walls and stainless steel surfaces, where they set to work processing pee samples that someone brought over from the latrine.

  I like Bex immediately and am glad to have the company of someone chattier than Shiloh and Wren, who seem shocked every time I ask a question or make a comment. “Do you know how I would find someone here?” I ask Bex while we write down the number from each cup on a chart, dunk a strip of paper into the urine, then note the color that appears.

  “Depends on who you’re looking for,” she says.

  “The person I came with.”

  “That guy Basil?” She grins big. “You two ran away from the Loops together, didn’t you?”

  “News travels fast,” I say, slightly embarrassed by what she already knows.

  Bex pulls a strip from a cup. “Yeah, well, nothing much happens around here so when someone new shows up, it’s kind of a big deal.”

  “How long have you been here?” I ask.

  Bex puffs out her cheeks. “A while,” is all she says.

  “And did you come with someone?”

  “There was a group of us.…”

  “This is not appropriate conversation,” Leeda snaps.

  “Sorry,” I say, stung by her disapproval. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just want to find Basil—that’s all.”

  Bex looks at me with sympathy. “You’ll see him soon,” she says and hands me a new tray of urine samples.

  We work silently hunched over the pee cups for another ten minutes, then Bex stands up straight to stretch. “Ugh,” she says holding her lower back.