Silence and the Word

by MaryAnne Mohanraj

  “Sixth grade is harder, dad. I have a term paper due next Friday, and we’re doing worm dissections now in science.”

  “Dissections, huh?”

  He hesitated, and Manda tensed, knowing that he was going to try to talk to her. She hated these talks.

  “Honey, I know your mother leaving has been hard on you… .” He was having trouble talking; the words came out separately, almost like sobs. After a few breaths, he continued, “I keep hoping that she’ll come back to visit you like she said she would, but you know how it is. Interplanetary calls are awfully expensive…and I’m sure she’s really very busy with…well… .” He trailed off, then started again. “You haven’t brought any of your friends from school over in a while…that nice Janet, or Chantal… .”

  Manda was silent.

  Her father blinked red eyes. “Well, if you need any help, or just want to talk, you know you can ask me.” Her father blinked past her through his glasses.

  Manda held back a sigh. It was a little late to try to do the good dad thing. It had been too late since the day her mom left, the day her dad had stopped looking at Manda’s face. He had even stopped saying her name, maybe because it was the same name as her mother’s, Amanda. He called her sweetie, or kiddo, or honey—never Manda. But she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him she didn’t need his help anymore, now that she had Teddy.

  “Sure, dad.” She came around the table and patted his hand, once, and he smiled, still looking past her face. Then she took her dishes into the kitchen, stacked them in the cleaner, and went down the hall to Teddy.

  “Do you love me, Teddy?” she asked him that night. She had started taking him to bed with her, and he made a comforting lump beside her.

  “Of course, Amanda.”

  “Really love me?”

  “Yes, Amanda.”

  “And you’ll never leave me?”

  “No, Amanda.”

  “Good.”

  In science class, dissections gave way to studying rocks, and rocks gave way to electricity. In May, Manda’s class started studying robots. After three days of lectures, Manda came home furious. She slammed through the empty apartment until she was in her room, two inches away from the bear, glaring.

  “You don’t love me, do you, Teddy?”

  “I love you, Amanda.”

  “You don’t care about me at all.”

  “I care about you, Amanda.”

  “You don’t feel anything. You’re just a machine. You’re programmed to say that stuff. Who programmed you to say you loved me?” Manda’s voice had risen into a wail.

  “You did, Amanda.”

  Manda stared at the bear. It had no reason to lie—but she hadn’t programmed it.

  “Teddy,” she asked carefully, “when did I program you to say ‘I love you’?”

  “July 13th, 2018. Three years and seven months ago, Amanda.” Teddy’s voice was the same as ever, warm and fuzzy.

  Manda sat down hard on the edge of her bed, thinking. She hadn’t had the bear that long ago—but who knew how long it had been sitting in her mom’s closet? Manda had thought her mom had maybe bought it as a present for someone else, some grown-up—but her mom’s name was Amanda, just like hers—and the bear wasn’t really all that smart. When Manda first talked to it, the bear had said that she had changed, but Manda hadn’t really thought about it. If it had thought then that she was her mom…then this was her mom’s bear. And her mom had probably done all that sex stuff with it, and told it to say it loved her, instead of doing it with Manda’s dad like she was supposed to… . Manda’s stomach churned, and she wrapped her arms tight around it, trying not to throw up.

  “It’s your fault.” The bear stared blankly at her, not programmed to respond to that phrase. Manda screamed the next words. “It’s your fault they broke up! She probably loved you more than she did him. She loved a stupid teddy bear more than my dad…” Manda was crying now—huge, ugly sobs. Teddy moved to hold her, his fuzzy arms coming up, and Manda struck out wildly, hitting him. This didn’t slow Teddy, and he wrapped her in his arms, leaning to kiss her until she shouted, “Teddy, stop!” He stopped, freezing in place. “Get away from me, Teddy—back up!” The bear stood up and backed a few steps away, still looking straight at Manda with its slowly blinking eyes. Manda cried until her head ached and her nose was dripping. Finally, the tears slowed and stopped, and she looked back at the bear. It was standing perfectly still, the way it had been programmed. Programmed by her mom.

  Manda stood up shakily, staring at the bear. “It’s not really your fault, is it, Teddy? You didn’t get any say in it. She just told you what to do, and you did it. She didn’t love you. She just used you, and then she left.” Manda walked to the door. She paused in the doorway, and without turning, she said, “Go into the closet, Teddy. Stay there.” Then she closed the door behind her, and went down the hall.

  Manda’s dad seemed happy that she was playing more and studying less. When she handed him a report card with two C’s in June, he just shook his head, muttering, “Poor kid.” That summer, she stayed out all day, coming home for dinner and then going out again. Her skin got brown and her hair turned blonder, under the dome’s simulated Earth-type summer sunshine. Her growing breasts strained against the fabric of too-small tops and dresses, but her dad didn’t notice. He did notice when she started coming home after nine.

  “Kiddo, don’t you think you should be coming home earlier?”

  “You said to be home before they turned down the lights.”

  “I know, but 9:15, 9:30—that seems awfully late.”

  “It’s not dark yet at 9:30.”

  “That’s true, honey.” He hesitated before speaking again. “You’re just going over to the schoolyard to play with Janet and Chantal, right?”

  “Right, dad.”

  “I guess that’s okay.” He patted her on the head and went back to his desk, which had more bottles than books or papers on it these days.

  Manda had barely seen Janet and Chantal in the past months, and her supposed best friends had eventually stopped calling. Now she hung out with Mike and Jimmy, two of the freshman from the high school. They didn’t treat her like a little kid. They told her she was pretty. They flirted with her—and Manda flirted back. Things were okay.

  Once she had opened the closet and brought Teddy out.

  “Teddy, do you miss me?”

  “Yes, Amanda.”

  “Teddy, do you love me?”

  “Yes, Amanda.” The bear’s voice was absolutely steady, and his furry arms had extended towards her.

  Manda’s eyes were hard, and her fists clenched at her sides. “Go back into the closet, Teddy. Go to sleep.”

  June moved to July, and July into August. School started again, and Jimmy and Mike introduced her to some of their other friends. They were all sophomores, and Manda was a seventh-grader now. She didn’t wear a bra—her father hadn’t thought to get her one. The girls talked about her in the bathroom, but Manda didn’t care. She knew the boys liked her. She knew why the boys liked her.

  When Mike asked her to come to the high school Christmas dance, she said yes. Her dad smiled, and said it was nice to see her having fun. He instructed the car to take them to the dance and bring them home again at eleven. Mike had gotten a hacked program from Jimmy, though, and the car was soon completely under the teenager’s control. They skipped out on the dance after half an hour.

  In the backseat of her dad’s car, Mike did all the things to her that Teddy had done—though not as well. His skin was sweaty instead of furry, and his hands were clumsy. His body was even warmer than Teddy’s, and when he put his penis inside her, she could barely feel it, it was so small. But when he spurted, and said he loved her, Manda smiled. Even if he didn’t mean it, at least he hadn’t been programmed to say it.

  Mike told Jimmy, and Jimmy told some other guys. Soon there were lots of high school guys hanging around Manda. She enjoyed the attention, and if the guy
s said she was easy, at least they usually tried to be nice to her; they talked to her. Some of them were better at sex than Mike, though none were as good as Teddy. One or two sounded like they meant it when they said they loved her. Manda didn’t really care, but it was nice to hear.

  It was late April when Manda went to Teddy again. The rain poured down outside her window, and she walked into the closet and closed the door behind her. The dust on Teddy made her sneeze when she put her arms around him and buried her face in his fur.

  “Wake up, Teddy.”

  “Hello, Amanda.” The bear began to kiss her.

  “Stop, Teddy. No more sex stuff, Teddy.” Manda was crying now. “Teddy, I’m going to give you a command. No more kissing. No more kissing or telling me you love me.” The words were low and angry. “No more sex. This is a command for ever and ever. Just be a teddy bear. Just hug me.”

  “Sexual functions disconnected, Amanda.” Teddy’s arms wrapped around her, and Manda leaned against him.

  “My name is Manda, Teddy. Call me Manda. I’m not my mother, and I’m only twelve and a half, and I think I might be pregnant.” She was shaking and crying so hard by then that she would have fallen if Teddy hadn’t held her up.

  “This unit is not designed for consumers under eighteen,” he said softly. But his arms remained tightly around her as Manda stood in the dark closet and cried.

  Poem for a University

  Chicago is not in Chicago.

  Chicago lies south, a little drive

  down the lakeshore. South on

  Lake Shore Drive, the water

  shines so blue-gold to your left,

  the tenements grey to your right.

  The Museum rises, lost white relic

  of fair days long gone, when

  strippers danced the Midway,

  those strips of grass just south

  of Chicago. These buildings are

  grey gothic. Gargoyles crouch

  everywhere, disappearing into

  the stone. It will take you four

  years, at least, before you know them.

  The heart lies in the quadrangle,

  quartered lawns where in the

  best of springs, mathematicians

  juggle, balls and clubs in sharp

  geometries. It is rarely warm enough

  for that, but when the temperature

  climbs above forty, we sit on the grass,

  we spread out our books and

  exclaim—how beautiful it is!

  And when the brief spring

  gives way to killing heat,

  when the old ladies are suffocating

  in the old grey tenement buildings,

  the students scatter. Lawns

  are almost deserted, and

  those who stay live a lifetime

  in three short months.

  Love blooms and dies,

  so gorgeously, in August.

  We explain to the new

  children that there is a law

  of conservation at work here—

  misery levels must be

  maintained. Fewer inhabitants

  means greater misery for those

  who remain. In October,

  they return—bright swarms

  of eager minds. Enthusiasm

  will not last long—winter’s

  coming, and abstracted old

  professors struggle to catch

  us before we begin to forget

  to remember. At Christmas,

  it empties again. Briefly. My

  first Christmas at Chicago,

  I made love for the first time,

  in the quiet dormitory

  by the lake. He studied physics

  then, and I knew little more

  than poetry. He never

  graduated—one of Chicago’s

  many casualties—but

  before he left, he showed me

  how to climb across the grey

  gothic roofs, how to shout

  love words into the lake air

  past midnight, how to talk

  about Nietzsche, and the Bible,

  and Wittgenstein, and Chaucer

  till dawn rose above us, nakedly.

  How It Started

  When a hot new dyke moves to Berkeley, you’ve only got a tiny window of time in which to make your move. If you don’t move quick, she’ll be snapped up by someone else, and you’ll be left alone in your bed—wet fingers for company, waxing the saddle and wishing for love.

  It was late at the Calyx, past midnight, and the floor was packed with couples, hip to hip, breast to breast. But she was dancing alone, shimmying to the beat with a circle of space around her, head thrown back and sweat dripping off her body. She was so fine—skin like toasted coconut, lips dark and lush. A tight white tank over huge breasts; god, each one looked bigger than my head. Curving belly. Hips that moved in deep, wide circles, like she was fucking the air. No one I’d seen before. I didn’t know why no one was making a move on her, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out.

  I let my body move to the music, let it carry me over to her. We were dancing alone, a foot or so apart, and then a little closer, a little closer still. That’s when her eyes opened—dark green. Yum—I’ve got a thing for green eyes. She smiled at me, slow and lazy, and I slid closer, just an inch or two away from those glorious breasts. Dancing hard, sweat flicking off me as I shook my ass, arms up in the air, arching my back and hoping my breasts looked bigger than they were. Our sweat mingling in the air, falling to the floor, the whole place hot and damp with horny cunts writhing to the music. She opened her mouth a little then, and I almost just went for it, almost dove in for the kind of hot wet kiss that could convince a girl that she wanted to go home with me tonight, that I could show her the best time she’d ever seen. And that’s when she said it.

  “I have a girlfriend. She just doesn’t dance. Sorry.”

  Fuck. I kept dancing; there wasn’t much else to do.

  “I’m Janna,” she said.

  “Susan. You been in town long?” I knew the answer to that one, but I had to try, had to keep the conversation going. I was still hoping it wasn’t serious, that I had a chance. Not that I was the sort of girl who tried to break up relationships…but if a couple was already on the rocks and you just came along at the right time, that wasn’t really your fault. You might even be doing them a favor.

  “Just moved out. I’m teaching at the U.” She paused there; I hoped that she was going to say something about having just met her girlfriend, or say it wasn’t working out, or that the woman was mean or just plain nuts. Instead, she said, “Carla came with me. We’ve been together eight years.”

  God damn it. That was it, then.

  She disappeared into the crowd after the song ended; I figured she was out of my life. But in the next few weeks, I kept running into her. At the co-op, buying groceries, we’d be picking out cucumbers and carrots side by side. At the bookstore—not one of the regular bookstores, but the sf one, we reached for the same copy of Delany’s latest. Across the counter at Sushi-A-Float, I watched her slide sea urchin into her mouth, watched it move down her throat. By the third encounter, I was dying of unsatisfied lust. The worst time was Saturday night at the hot tubs; she left just as I was walking in—we stopped and exchanged a few words. And even though I was with a cute redhead, a girl with sweet thick nipples and a fat ass just right for grabbing, I fantasized about Janna the whole time I was fucking the girl in the tub. I had three fingers in the redhead’s pussy and my mouth on her nipple; I was dizzy with the heat and every curl of steam rising from the water reminded me of the black curls of Janna’s hair, made me wonder if it was just as curly down below.

  I got the redhead off, but only just, and she never spoke to me again. Guess she could tell my mind wasn’t really on her. That was when I lost it. I’d never tried to break a couple up before, and I wasn’t going to try now, not really. I didn’t need to date Janna—I
just had to have her, had to fuck her. Just once.

  I signed up for one of her classes at the U. She was teaching some feminist theory crap; I had never went for that stuff, but I read up on it, just in case she called on me. Not that I talked much in class. It was summer term, as hot as Berkeley ever got—70s or 80s most days; cool crisp mornings followed by brief heat. I wore the skimpiest clothes I had, and when I ran out of those, I raided the used clothing stores, looking for more. Pale mesh tops with dark push-up bras; short tight skirts and tall black boots; thin white t-shirts with no bra at all; cut-offs and ankle bracelets and bare feet with the toenails done in red…every sexy look I could think of. I sat in the front of the class for weeks and alternated crossing and uncrossing and recrossing my legs. No panties, red silk bikinis, black lace thongs, damp white cotton. I leaned forward in my chair, rested my elbows and breasts on the table. I didn’t try to catch her eye; that would have made it just that little bit too obvious. She would have had to confront the fact that I was deliberately fucking with the teacher, and that the teacher was enjoying it. Janna was enjoying it. I could tell. I watched out of the corner of my eye, in quick glances. Her face got flushed when I uncrossed my legs; she called on the others, but she kept looking at me.

  The day it climbed up to 90, I had a coke with ice in front of me. I kept fishing ice cubes out of the cup, sucking them slowly until they were half gone, then chewing the rest. I wondered if she had heard what I had heard—that girls who chewed ice were sexually frustrated. God knew it was true. Janna was wearing a thin white dress that day—opaque, but thin enough that it clung to her curving body, moving as she moved, damp with her sweat. Little trickles of sweat slid from behind her ears, down her neck and collarbone, into the V of her dress, disappearing between those breasts. I was so thirsty, and hot enough that I couldn’t think straight. So I pushed it further than I ever had before—I fished out another ice cube and used it to trace the same path on my own body, right there in class. Anyone could have seen me. Started behind an ear, down my neck, across the collarbone, shivering with pleasure. I was carefully looking at the chalkboard, but I could feel her eyes on me—and then I dropped the ice down the front of my shirt. It slid down between my breasts, coming to rest for a moment in my belly button. It was fucking cold—too cold to leave it there. So I shimmied a little and it slid down further, coming to rest where my thighs met, melting against my clit, creating a little wet puddle on the wooden seat underneath me. Janna watched everything.