The Wall (The Woodlands)

by Taylor, Lauren Nicolle

  His mouth twisted and I could see his neck and shoulder muscles tightening. I knew it hurt him. I knew he found it hard to hear but all he said was, “Thank you for sharing that with me, Rosa. I appreciate it,” in an oddly formal tone.

  “S’ok,” I shrugged, a little confused.

  “Can you sleep?”

  “Probably not, but you should.” I could feel the dark, craggy fingers of sleep trying to wrestle me under but I was fighting it.

  “No, I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep. Close your eyes.” He lay facing me, propping his head up with his hand. His body caused the rollaway bed to sag in the middle, his big feet hanging off the edge.

  I lay on my side facing him and closed my eyes, opening them a couple of times to see if he was still awake. He was. He just watched me softly, his eyes muted in the safety lights, his warmth radiating through the glass and wrapping around me.

  Eventually, my eyes became heavy and I slept without a single nightmare. But I knew as long as I was in here it would only be a temporary reprieve.

  After my meltdown, Matthew came to visit. He casually walked up to the glass like this was a normal experience, knocking like it was my front door. And if it were, he would have got no answer. He explained that he and the others we were with had been quarantined too. But they were allowed out earlier because the doctors already had most of the data on them. I tried to avoid his eyes.

  “You lied to us,” I muttered sulkily.

  “No, I didn’t, Rosa. I said you had to go into quarantine,” he said unconvincingly.

  “Don’t pretend like you didn’t keep details from us so we would go more easily. Just don’t. I am so tired of being lied to or half-lied to or whatever.”

  He sighed, pulling his shoulders back proudly like he was shaking me off, moving on to the others who were happier to talk to him. I was disappointed and resigned. Maybe he was done with me. After a while, everyone was.

  “How much longer do we have to stay here?” Joseph asked.

  “One more week,” Matthew said.

  “She won’t make it,” I heard him whisper. “You have to understand—this is much harder for her than the rest of us. It brings back too many bad memories. I think she’s traumatized or something.” I stiffened at this. The number of times I’d heard someone say that about me was starting to add up.

  Matthew’s tone was terse when he replied, “Look, this is just the way it has to be. You have no choice.”

  No choice. Back to the Woodlands we go, I thought.

  Most of the time, Matthew seemed ever-patient and willing to help but sometimes something else slipped through—a shred of impatience, a tight knot of rope that constricted around his throat when he spoke, like the burden of being our caregiver was wearing thin.

  After that, Matthew stopped talking to me. He would wave, but took his steaming mug of coffee and pulled up a chair at one of the other pens. I didn’t acknowledge him. But a parade of guests started arriving. I don’t know whether he sent them or if they came of their own volition but they were all unwelcome.

  I was an animal on display. A static exhibition—an example of a Woodland citizen. See how she snarls at passersby. It’s because of the way they treat people over there. They have lost their humanity, the tour guide would say.

  First was Cal. I was so rude to him but he didn’t seem to get the hint. Pushing my headphones on my head, I turned my back and ignored him. But he just sat there, tapping along to imaginary music, and smiling gawkily at me.

  Joseph tapped on the glass and beckoned him over to the far corner of his room, as far away as he could get from me. I watched them curiously while trying to seem uninterested. He whispered something and then I saw Cal’s eyes widen as he nodded. He waved to me and left, walking jauntily off like he had just heard fantastic news.

  I walked over to the glass separating us and glared at Joseph, who had a ridiculous grin on his face, distracting me with his white teeth. I picked out my favorite one, the broken one, and focused on that instead of his eyes.

  “What did you say to him?” I was sure it was something unkind.

  “Nothing,” he said mischievously, his hands behind his back, looking up at the ceiling.

  “What?” I threatened. Most of the time, I wanted to break the glass so I could hold him. Right then, I wanted to get through so I could shove him over.

  He wouldn’t answer me but was obviously very amused with himself.

  “Well, at least you think yourself funny,” I snapped. I flopped down on the bed and put my finger to my mouth. I’d started biting my fingernails. Nervousness and fear had manifested itself and my nails were disappearing. I flashed back to when I had first seen Clara ahead of me in the line of dopey, pregnant girls. Her hands were raw and painful looking like someone had tried to strip the skin from her fingers with a vegetable peeler. Would she have been able to make this easier for me or would she have found it just as hard because she was also ‘traumatized’?

  Careen finally came to see us. I think they asked her to. She repeated some lines I was sure they’d fed her about how she’d been through it too. I knew it wasn’t her own words because she talked slowly for once, her mouth chewing over every word carefully before she spewed them out. She told us it really wasn’t so bad and once she was out, she was free to do whatever she wanted.

  “Which is what?” I asked.

  “Um. I’m in the hunting party,” she said, twisting uncomfortably under my gaze for a second and then jumping up and down like a toddler again, lifting her butt off the chair with her arms and legs swinging. “Yeah, I get to use all sorts of weapons. We hunt for food and share it with the rest of the people. It’s fun. When you’re out, I can show you how, if you like?” Her words mashed together.

  Take a breath, I thought. I wanted to pinch her lips together with my thumb and forefinger. I’m pretty sure that would be the only way to stop her from talking. But I was glad she had found something she enjoyed, even if it was slightly disturbing.

  “How fun for you,” I said sarcastically. I was being unkind, but I was jealous of her freedom, and jealous of her ability to assimilate into this new society so easily.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor and her face went smooth and serious. Her tied-back hair revealed a scar seamed across her left temple I hadn’t seen before. It was jagged, like the skin had been split apart or burst. “I never told you this before but my father was a butcher,” she said. “He taught me everything about the trade. I know it sounds terribly simple. I mean, to want to be a butcher, but I had a dream that I would set up my own shop once I left the Classes. But then I got pulled into Guardian training and that was the end of my dream.”

  This threw me. My assumptions about Careen flew off her body and landed in a pile at my feet. Another person I was wrong about. Her dream was not dissimilar to my own. There was a question I wanted to ask her, but it meant bringing up my own downfall at the Classes. I hadn’t told Joseph yet… I’m not sure I ever would.

  I said it anyway. “What did you do to end up underground, with me?”

  She shrugged and held her stomach, holding a baby long gone. “I said ‘no’.”

  Her eyes meandered around the room, avoiding mine, and I knew she wasn’t going to say anymore.

  I put my hand to the glass, remembering the hammer breaking my face, breaking my dream apart in an instant. “Me too.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then she shook her perfect hair free of the tie and started jabbering again. She talked about the surrounding woods, which were overflowing with life. There was good game in there. The words just made me ache and I started to feel like the walls were closing in on me, or that I was getting smaller. The glass cube would fold over on itself and I would disappear.

  Eventually, when I found a break in her prattling, I asked her to stop. She skipped off to say hello to the others and then left the area. One more week left of hell.

  The next morning, I awoke to gentle tapping on the
glass. I peeled one eye back and then the other, pulling myself slowly to sitting. What time was it? It felt like I’d barely closed my eyes and now someone was waking me up. I was about to snap at them when my blurry eyes focused and I was rendered speechless.

  Matthew stood behind a tiny woman, his hand affectionately on her shoulder. I dragged myself up and walked towards her timidly, fascinated.

  She cocked her head and smiled, missing teeth on the bottom row, her crinkly lips curling around her gums like they were searching for moisture. “So this is the one who’s giving you all the trouble?” she said, eyeing me carefully. Her voice sounded like gravel rattling in a paper bag. “She doesn’t look like much.” I would have been offended but she said it with a twinkle in her eye, like she was challenging me to prove her wrong. “You can stop staring, dear, and shut your mouth. You’re liable to catch flies.”

  I clamped my lips together with some effort. I’d never seen anyone like her before. I stumbled over my words, selecting probably the most offensive ones my brain could come up with. “I’m sorry. It’s just, you’re so old.”

  Joseph chuckled in the corner. He had seen older people before. I’d never seen anyone past the age of sixty. The Superiors’ attitude was everyone had to get around on their own steam, so if you were too old to walk that far, you never made it to the center circle.

  She patted down her clothes like she was looking for something and then replied, “Am I? I’m only twenty. This is what living on the outside does to you.”

  My eyes were bulged out of my head in disbelief. Matthew covered his mouth with his hand and laughed. The woman turned to him, cupping her hand over his ear, and whispered dramatically, “I thought you said she was clever?”

  At this point, Joseph fell backwards on his mattress and started laughing uncontrollably. I walked to the glass and glared at him.

  “Ooh, ouch,” he said. “If looks could kill.”

  “If only!” I said.

  Matthew tapping on the glass brought me back. “This is my grandmother, Adleta.”

  Grandmother? I know I looked confused. My face scrunched up like if I refocused my eyes, she would look young again and things would make more sense. Suspecting my confusion, Matthew explained, “She is my father’s mother.”

  “But how is she still alive? How did you find her?” I said, feeling more stupid every time I spoke. But this crumpled-up bag of skin didn’t look like a person to me. Her words sounded real enough, she seemed to have a lot of life in her, but I couldn’t quite grasp the idea of this being allowed, or even possible.

  I nodded slowly, taking her whole form in. “Adleta,” I repeated. She was tiny, shorter than me. She looked like it was just her clothing holding her together. Her skin was sagging over her eyebrows, her cheeks slipping off her face like melting wax, but she wasn’t frightening. Just foreign. I could see Matthew in her bright eyes. That kindness and kinship was there.

  “Call me Addy, please. I’m alive because I want to be. And he didn’t find me; I’ve always been here. I’m like the furniture, dear, old but sturdy,” she said, smiling crookedly; it looked like an effort to move her cheeks that far up her face.

  Orry cried. He let out one long, howling note and then took several sharp intakes of breath like he was panicking. It was a noise that pierced right through me. He missed me. I knew it. I could feel it.

  “May I?” she asked me.

  “I guess,” I said shyly.

  She approached the door without putting on the gloves and mask.

  “I thought you were all worried we would make you sick or something,” I challenged.

  “Like you said—I’m so old. I shouldn’t even be alive. I’m not scared of your Woodland germs,” she said dismissively, waving a wrinkled, bark-like hand at me.

  Matthew stopped her. “Addy, you need to put on the suit. Otherwise, we will have to quarantine you as well.”

  The old woman made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Very well, doctor man. You’re the boss.” She held her hand to her head in mock salute. He smiled back at her with such affection I felt embarrassed to be party to it.

  Matthew helped her into the big, plastic coveralls, booties, and facemask while I watched her old limbs struggling to lift and maneuver their way into pant legs and armholes. She made an inordinate amount of noise for someone so small. Each movement of her bony body crackled and sighed like she was made of brittle sticks. It was almost too painful to watch.

  Finally, she bustled through Orry’s door, large bag in hand, her oversized, plastic suit swishing with static. Placing the bag on the floor, she pulled out a knitted rabbit and placed it at the end of the cot. Matthew sighed and rolled his eyes. “You’ll have to leave that bag there now,” he said, trying to sound aggravated but coming off more amused. She rolled her eyes back and made a ‘pfft’ noise.

  She scooped Orry up, who screamed at first, wriggling and fighting. Just like his mother, I thought. But she wrapped him up tightly and rocked him back and forth. She was strong. When she picked up Orry, I imagined she would crumple like a paper figure but she had him. He stopped crying. He felt secure.

  She started singing.

  “Are you trying to torture my child?” I asked.

  Why would you sing about a baby falling out of a tree? It would give them nightmares. She paused, smiled, and changed the song.

  Her voice was soft and dusty at first, but once she brushed it off, it was beautiful. The words were lilting and comforting. Rhythmic. And Orry responded to it immediately. The rise and fall of the melody brought tears to my eyes. How I ever lived in a world without music, I’ll never know. She sang about trying to get home. Once there was a way to get back home. The words flew over me and transcribed our experiences perfectly. Sleep, pretty darling, don’t you cry. I thought she was finished but then the last part gave me goose bumps all over my skin. How did she know?

  Golden slumbers fill your eyes.

  Smiles await you when you rise.

  Sleep, pretty darling

  Do not cry.

  And I will sing a lullaby.

  Orry calmed down and the old woman placed him gently in his cot. She stretched her back after he was down and planted herself in a chair in front of my cage.

  “What was that?” I said, desperation pitching my voice higher. I was clinging to it.

  She clucked her tongue. “You’ve never heard The Beatles before?” She shook her head like she was so very sorry for me.

  “Can you teach me?”

  She nodded. “Sure, but first you have to do something for me.”

  “Ok,” I said, suspiciously. Matthew had walked away, talking to one of the other doctors.

  “It’s give and take here,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “What can you do, apart from be a smart mouth?”

  I paused. It had been so long since I’d done anything useful. I noticed the chair she was sitting on was wobbling, creaking every time she shifted her weight.

  “If you bring me some tools, I can fix that,” I said, pointing to the chair.

  “Deal. As long as it doesn’t end up a pile of splinters or slammed against the wall,” she said sternly but with a hint of humor to her voice.

  So my education with Addy began.

  Every day she brought me things to fix and in return, she helped me with Orry. She taught me songs, gave him toys, and answered my questions.

  When I asked her about the Survivors, she tried her best to answer everything in detail. I wore her out, though. Quite often, she would fall asleep in the chair mid-conversation and I would have to wait until she had rested before continuing. Her age, and the way she behaved because of it, was intriguing to me. She was smart and aware like an adult, but she needed as much sleep as a baby.

  I managed to find out the Survivors had been nomadic for the most part, moving from town to town until they settled here about twenty years ago. It seemed close to the Woodlands but it was far enough away that the helicopters, which were battery powe
red, always ran out of juice and had to return to the solar-charging stations before they could reach the settlement. The people were mostly of Russian, Mongolian, and Chinese descent. There were only a few Chinese—the Superiors hadn’t lied about that—as they were almost completely wiped out. Clothes were scavenged from abandoned factories, as were canned and processed foods, like the fizzy drink. They liked to grow their own when they could.

  Beyond the city was nothing, a vast blackness of dust and destruction. People who had dragged themselves from those ruins were diseased, or almost dead. Hardly anyone survived the first few years.

  The population was small—maybe three thousand.

  She had the same small charm around her neck, which she played with while she talked. It hung between her collarbones, her wrinkly skin and neck trying to envelope it with their sagginess. “What is it?” I asked.

  She removed it and looked both ways before passing it through the door. She dropped it and it landed on the ground with a metallic chink. Examining it closely, it was just a simple circle of metal with a square hole in it.

  “During a routine scavenge, we found a big metal box, as big as a house, standing out against all the rubble. Inside, we found millions of these, as well as stacks upon stacks of small slips of paper. We took some and thought it would be a useful way of identifying members of the community. Everyone has one. You’ll get one too.”

  I tried to imagine a young Addy, agilely climbing over rubble and searching out treasures in abandoned buildings. I couldn’t quite do it. In my mind, she looked the same but bounded across the rocks like she had springs in her shoes.

  “What if I don’t want one?” I said.

  “You will.”

  I smirked. “You’re a bit of a know-it-all, old lady.”

  She crimped her lips together in a fake frown. Then she grinned, showing all her teeth and several holes where teeth used to be.

  “Get back to work!” she said, flapping her hands at me.

  Joseph watched our interactions quietly. He peered over his book every now and then, the pages shaking like rustling leaves when he laughed to himself.