The XY

by Virginia Bergin

  I feel as though my world has just tilted on its axis; if I got up and looked out of the window, I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw the stars of the southern hemisphere out there.

  “You are joking.”

  He does not respond.

  “People choose people to represent them. People choose people they trust to make decisions on their behalf. Decisions that will benefit everyone.” In my mind’s eye, I see our ha-ha-harvest field. “In the long term.”

  “This place is weird as hell,” he whispers to himself. “You’ve been duped, River. No one in this world thinks about anyone but themselves.”

  I can’t take any more. I feel as though I’m sinking where I sit—into a swamp of horribleness. I get up to leave.

  “See you later,” he murmurs.

  I can’t help myself. I want facts. “Why did you run away?”

  On the basis of the horrible, horrible insights I’m getting into his horrible, horrible world, I’m expecting a Kate answer. A DUH! of spectacular proportions, because who would not run from the world he is describing?

  “I don’t wanna say about that.” Then, “I thought I’d die,” he says, his voice dripping swamp misery.

  The swamp of horribleness, it’s soaking right up to my heart. I should have gone while I had the chance. I can’t move. I am trapped in it.

  “I wanted to die. I thought I would. I just kept running because I wanted to see the ocean. Do you know what that is? The ocean! Goddamn endless water! Sooner or later, that’s where we’ll all end up. Did you even know that, River? Did you even know every bit of land we walk on came from under the water and that it’s all going back to under the water? It’s all crumbling…right from under our feet.”

  “I’m not sure that’s quite right,” I say, and I sigh because, you know what? At this moment, it seems as right as anything else. “The Himalayas would take a very long time to crumble.”

  “Whatever,” he sighs back. “I’m tellin’ ya: it ain’t dust to dust. It’s water. That’s where we all came from, that’s where we’re all gonna go back to.”

  I draw a deep breath. It’s as though I somehow know how this will go. I am tired—so tired—but I cannot withhold knowledge.

  “Well, you made it,” I tell him. “The ocean is just over there.”

  “Just over where?”

  “You saw it, on the map. Not the ocean—the sea. Just over there.” I point at the bedroom wall.

  “How far?”

  “It takes about ten minutes to—”

  He’s pulling on his cloven hooves. He’s standing in front of me, in Kate’s big knickers, pulling on my satin bathrobe.

  “Show me,” he says.

  “I really don’t think—”

  “Show me or I’ll just go myself. The old one said I could. The unit mother didn’t say different. They said I could leave any time.”

  He takes hold of my arms and I feel a massive flinch of terror.

  “Never gonna hurt you. Code of Honor. Show me the freakin’ sea-ocean. River. Please.”

  I don’t move. I can’t move. In the moonlight, I watch a single tear roll from his zombie-ghost-boy eye. The possibility that he might be human blossoms weakly in my tired, tired mind.

  Very weakly.

  “No,” I tell him.

  Chapter 14

  A Chat

  Nudity.

  Over breakfast after not enough sleep, me and Mumma sit at the kitchen table, faces screwed up with the effort of trying to comprehend what it is that Kate is saying. The chat she wanted to have—postponed—is now happening, and it’s the weirdest chat we’ve ever had.

  Kate is saying that it is not okay to go around with no clothes on—not ever—if Mason is around. I do not understand this. Nor does Mumma.

  “But why exactly?” she asks, frowning deeply.

  Kate, who’s already beginning to get a little touchy about the chat, screws her face up too, thinking hard, me and Mumma waiting with bated breath. “It’s just how things were,” she says.

  “But…too bad, so sad, bye-bye?” I ask. I’m seriously NOT understanding; it doesn’t make any sense at all. And if it once did, it surely shouldn’t now, when nothing else that once-was is.

  “No!” Kate says. “Not in this case!” Ordinarily she’d have a go at me for speaking in uptalk at home, but it doesn’t even seem to have registered. “This has got to be a rule,” she says to Mumma.

  “But why?” says Mumma, and I am thinking the same. I mean, it’s not like we all wander around naked all the time anyway, but if there’s swimming or we’re messing about trying old clothes on or we’re allowed a winter sauna, it’s not a big deal, is it, to be naked in front of people? I mean, even if you really, really, really liked someone, even if you were aching, absolutely aching, to be close to them you wouldn’t—

  “Is this to do with rape?” says Mumma, speaking the shocking thought that has presented itself in my mind too.

  I know what rape is. Some years ago, Astra, a mumma in a community just north of here, was raped. The report of the case was public, as all 150 Court cases are. There was shock and there was anger and there was huge sorrow. Gifts were sent to Astra from all over the region, and as part of the restoration she decided upon, as was her right, she will now advise and support in any similar cases. That’s how restoration works; the person and the community who suffered must decide how the perpetrator must address what they have done, but they will also decide what they need. Astra chose to advise and support on rape, of which there are so few cases—so few it had almost faded in my memory. Except we girls got a talking-to from the granmummas about “no means no,” which didn’t make a great deal of sense to us, because what else would “no” mean?

  “It’s just how things were!” Kate is saying.

  Rape. I feel such revulsion and such alarm.

  “I think we really do have to call H&R,” Mumma says.

  “No!” cries Kate. “You’re getting this all wrong!”

  “What right way is there to get this?” Mumma says. I’ve never heard her so…rattled. My calm Mumma is NOT calm.

  “Seriously, don’t even go there,” Kate tells Mumma. “It was another world, okay?” She wipes her sweating brow. It takes a lot for Kate to sweat these days; she says age has made her bones cold. Ready for the grave, she mutters darkly as, even in the heat of summer, she reaches for a sweater.

  Nothing makes sense and I can’t seem to find a thing in my head to help with making sense of it. Clothes—or towels—wouldn’t really stop anyone from doing something so incredibly dreadful, would they? They wouldn’t even slow anyone down for long, would they? And slowing down isn’t the same as stopping. How could anyone have so little self-control?! How could anyone… Why would anyone… WHY WOULD ANYONE, EVER, WANT TO DO THAT TO ANOTHER PERSON?

  “Did men have to never be naked too?” I ask. It is, I feel, the last intelligent, logical question I can pull out of my baffled, horrified brain before it explodes.

  “Yes!” shrieks Kate, like it’s obvious. “No nakedness, all right?”

  Mumma is slowly shaking her head, as confused as I am. “We don’t really understand,” she murmurs.

  “You don’t need to understand.” Kate sighs. “Look, I’m really sorry to have to be saying this. I do know how messed up it must sound to you…but there was a time when—argh! Things were so messed up that a woman could get blamed for what a man did. A woman could get blamed; they’d say she was too naked, too drunk, too whatever. You ask any of the old gals, and they’ll tell you the same! It wasn’t right. We all kind of knew it wasn’t right—”

  “Kind of?” says Mumma.

  “You had to be there,” says Kate coldly. “And you weren’t.”

  “No,” says Mumma. “But if you are saying that this XY is capable of rape, then we really do need to call
H&R. Now.”

  “I’m not saying that,” says Kate.

  “It sounds like it,” says Mumma.

  “I’m not. I’m just saying… God! It’s almost impossible to speak to you!”

  My mumma opens her arms, letting her palms rest on the table as if she is waiting to embrace whatever burden Kate has to pass on.

  Kate dabs her sweating brow firmly, as though pressing once-was thoughts back down into her mind.

  “Look, why don’t you try to think about it from Mason’s point of view?” she says.

  “Which is?” I ask. I truly cannot imagine his point of view.

  “He’s never even seen women and girls before—”

  “Yes, and we’ve never seen an XY,” says Mumma.

  “A boy,” says Kate. “He’s overwhelmed. He’s outnumbered.”

  “We’re being very kind.”

  I nod, vigorously, in agreement with Mumma. I am being especially kind, I think (e.g., my room).

  “Look, no one walked around naked,” Kate mumbles. I see her thinking, hard. “It was…courtesy,” she says, beaming as she hits upon the word. Beaming because she knows that me and Mumma, that’s a thing we understand. That’s a thing everyone understands. How you’re supposed to treat people: respectfully and kindly, even when you wish they hadn’t come over/weren’t saying what they’re saying/want to scream at them. And strangers and newcomers? Utmost courtesy.

  “But—” I get out, which is the cue for Kate to lose it completely:

  “COURTESY!” she shrieks. “THE SAME AS GODDAMN PLEASE AND THANK YOU! CLOTHES ARE COURTESY! YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW! THIS IS NOW A RULE IN THIS HOUSE! NO MORE WANDERING AROUND STARK NAKED, OKAY?!”

  I have many thoughts all at once:

  1. Kate, as she has just demonstrated, has no time for courtesy. Rare—the occasion on which she shows it.

  2. I don’t get how never being naked could have been courtesy.

  3. I was brought up to think when we can’t decide what to do, we have to think firstly about the environment (so one towel, not two) and secondly about the survival of people. I don’t understand where this naked thing fits into that or any Agreement—international, national, or local—that I know of.

  4. I’ve seen the old magazines Kate and the rest of the granmummas have. Women wore all kinds of crazy, funny things (some even see-through!). The men in those magazines? Mainly they wore suits, and generally they wore a lot more clothes, unless everyone was on the beach, in which case the breast-less men wore shorts and the women covered their breasts. Breasts are…breasts. They’re normal. They’re… Why would you cover them but leave an absence of them uncovered?

  C-O-N-F-U-S-I-N-G or what?

  Mumma and I stare at Kate.

  “Look, what I mean is that I’m fairly sure Mason might find naked women a bit of a shock,” she says quietly.

  This is, it seems to me, a reasonable statement. “I was quite shocked,” I tell them, “when I saw him naked.”

  Mumma shrugs. “People are often shocked by what is new to them,” she says. “And then…they move on. They have to move on,” she says to Kate.

  It’s such an important comment—one that we all understand. After the sickness, the whole world had to move on, didn’t it?

  “I can’t,” Kate says. “Not on this issue. So it’s me. This is about me. Forget about Mason. Who knows what he thinks, and now is not the time to go asking him. This is about what I can and cannot deal with. I can see that it’s incomprehensible to you, and that makes me feel…very old. I was brought up in a different time. There’s hardly a day goes by when I don’t see that, when I don’t see how…the things I thought were normal, they were just how things were. And then everything changed. But I still feel how I feel. It’s how I was brought up. It’s hard to undo that. It’s in my head; it shouldn’t be, I’m sure, and you wouldn’t understand anyway. I don’t expect you to get a word of this. What would you know? But I’m telling you…you can’t go around naked for a while, okay? You can’t because I can’t handle it.”

  I’ve never heard Kate speak like this. The granmummas and their views are always treated with respect—if not for their wisdom, of which they often have plenty, then for their having survived a time so terrible none of us can quite imagine how they did it. But what Kate is saying now seems not to come from the granmumma spirit that is so respected. It seems to come instead from a place of quiet personal confusion and distress.

  “You’d prefer us not to be naked when Mason is around?” says Mumma gently, in uptalk.

  Kate has run out of puff and patience. She just nods very hard at us, eyes wild.

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” says Mumma. “Subject to review.”

  Kate, her quiet self immediately shoved aside, rolls her eyes at “subject to review,” which is fantastically cheeky of her considering she just got her own way without proper discussion and while demonstrating blatant disrespect for at least two Global Agreements. That’s so Granmumma of her.

  “River…you need to ask him if there is anything he’d like,” she instructs, pulling herself together.

  “Why me?”

  “Because he trusts you.”

  “He does not!”

  “Okay, so trust might not exactly be the right word, but there’s a bond there.”

  “Code of Honor,” I rasp, doing a fairly brilliant, if somewhat cruel, impersonation of the creature boy.

  Kate ignores me: “Exactly.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “Listen, sweetie pop,” coos Kate, “I know you’re freaked out, but this is important.”

  When Kate calls me sweetie pop, I love it. I melt.

  So I ask. On my own. Kate whispers she and Mumma will wait outside.

  I whisper, “NO WAY.”

  Kate ignores me and knocks at my bedroom door. There is no response. Mumma looks at Kate in alarm.

  “I don’t think he understands about knocking,” Kate whispers. “Ask him if it’s okay for you to come in.”

  “Is it okay to come in?” I shout.

  Silence.

  “Say his name,” instructs Kate.

  “May-son.” I say it very theatrically. I know I shouldn’t even before Kate bats the back of her hand at me.

  “Whatever,” it croaks from behind the door.

  Kate turns the handle and shoves me into my room, where the creature boy lies in my bed, looking sick and sorry for himself and generally stinking. I leave the door wide open behind me. I might have to run.

  “We were wondering if there is anything you’d like. Or anything you need.”

  I don’t say it in a way that you’d describe as being nice. A part of me… So maybe I don’t feel okay about being so rude, and Kate and Mumma are sure to tell me off about it, but I somehow cannot find it in myself to be more polite or sincere to this thing boy.

  “Like what?” it croaks.

  How would I know? I’m thinking, in a panic, truth be told. I just thought I’d ask the question, get the answer, and get out. I conduct a speed rummage in my brain for the things I like when I’m sick.

  “Well, you know…maybe some books?”

  OH NO. WHY DID I SAY THAT? I AM NOT LENDING IT MY BOOKS.

  “Picture books?” he asks…with the tiniest twinkle of curiosity.

  “No, books with words.”

  “Can’t read good.”

  Oh how I envy Mumma and Kate, who, out of sight, will be free to faint from shock. I compose myself.

  “Or…some flowers?”

  He looks at me as though I am weird and crazy and even more strange than he is.

  “Soup?”

  I have the eeriest feeling it doesn’t know what soup is.

  “Or…a bath?”

  At my final of
fering, a flicker of what could be interest crosses his hairy face.

  He clears his throat. “Imma think about that,” he says.

  “Well…great!” I say, Kate-and-Mumma-listen-how-nice-I’m-being loudly. I make a last attempt to sound sympathetic. “So, you think, and just let us know if there’s anything else you want.”

  Outside, one of the cows starts up bellowing—probably Dandelion, she’s always got something to say—and the boy grips hold of the bedsheets, legs twitching to go.

  “It’s just a cow,” I tell him.

  He looks at me and—oh!—what I see on its face is littler-one fright.

  “You know, moo.”

  “I been hearing a whole lot of things,” he says, eyeing me.

  “Like what?” I don’t even mean to ask that, not really. It’s just, who doesn’t know how a cow sounds?

  “Things.”

  I have to think really hard. If he doesn’t know what a cow sounds like, it wouldn’t know…

  “So you probably heard the rooster.”

  He just looks at me. Does that word mean anything to him?

  “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” I do my best littler-one-style rooster impersonation. “Or the sheep. You know, baaa! Or the pigs—hrr, hrr, hrr—weeeeee.”

  It’s grinning at me—full-on grinning.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Nope…well, you know, some.”

  “I think the only thing that’s funny is someone not knowing what a cow sounds like.”

  “That ain’t my fault, is it? Where I come from we ain’t got no cows.”

  “Everyone has cows.”

  “A unit don’t. A unit’s got no animals ’cept the ones running it.”

  “What?” There’s the tiniest creak from outside the room, and I remember Mumma and Kate are outside. “Look, just let us know, okay? There must be something you’d like. Something that would make you feel better.”

  I’ve done my job. I’ve asked the question. Unable to bear the confused frown on its face, I turn to leave.

  “River, wait!” it croaks.

  “Yup?”

  “I never saw no gym room here.”