Graceful Burdens (Out of Line collection)

by Roxane Gay

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Roxane Gay

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  eISBN: 9781542020626

  Cover design by Zoe Norvell

  The librarians never asked why their patrons needed to check out a baby. It wasn’t their business so long as the baby was returned in good condition—unharmed, well fed, in good spirits. It was best to give patrons whatever space and private dignity they might need.

  On the first floor, near the circulation desk, there was a card catalog with information about each baby: their picture, below which there was more personal information—name, age, notes on general demeanor, likes, and dislikes. In very small print, there was circumspect information about each baby’s provenance and why they were in the library and where they would be sent when they reached the age of three—usually state orphanages but sometimes pharmaceutical companies or the CDC or the government for reasons no one liked to contemplate. These matters were determined by genetic profiles, and the librarians thought it deeply unfair, but there were so many deeply unfair things, and it did no good to dwell on the fate of borrowed babies when they had problems of their own.

  The babies of the Omaha Public Library were kept on the seventh floor of the main branch, each with their own crib, and next to each crib was a small play space and a rocking chair where patrons could hold a baby for a spell before deciding whether or not they wanted to check a given baby out. The walls were covered in bright, cheery wallpaper. There were floor-to-ceiling windows behind the cribs, letting in warm light during the day and the glow of the moon at night. During quieter times, the older babies would stand, holding the bars of their cribs, staring out into the world.

  When a woman came in but didn’t want to just say what she really wanted, the librarians knew. They watched as she hovered near the card catalog and began to browse the babies. They watched as she wandered into the stacks, pretending she cared about the books. They watched as she tried to wrap her mouth around the right words. They let her take the time she needed to avail herself of what she so very much needed.

  Sidra had been a caretaker as long as anyone could remember. She did not have a particular fondness for children. In fact, she said that very thing when the library administrator interviewed her for the position, and he leaned forward, clasping his meaty hands together. He smiled and said, “That’s exactly why you’re right for the job.” As it turned out, the library wasn’t interested in women who were fond of children—they made the library’s work too difficult, too messy. They wanted women who were largely indifferent to the charms of young children but still willing to treat them with tenderness and great care, the same way they tended to the books.

  She did not particularly have a fondness for children, but Sidra prided herself on doing her job well. She showed up to the library on time every morning, made sure the babies’ diapers were clean. She had her staff feed the babies—always there was feeding, every few hours, milk mostly, but also soft foods like mashed carrots or puréed apples, depending on a baby’s age. Once the morning feedings were done, the babies were bathed, their soft skin massaged with sweet-smelling lotion, what hair they had, if any, combed gently. They were dressed in simple but charming outfits. They had time on their stomachs. The babies were all generally pleasant. As she walked by their cribs, they smiled at her gummily and cooed and sometimes giggled. They rarely fussed, and Sidra knew that was a result of her meticulous caretaking.

  When it was time for a baby to be checked out, for anywhere from a day to two weeks, Sidra and her staff packed a small diaper bag for the baby and handed the woman, for only women were allowed to borrow from the baby library, a laminated instruction card detailing the particulars of the baby’s care and feeding. Though she would never admit it, Sidra always held her breath until a baby was returned to her care. Though she had no particular fondness for children, she had absolutely no tolerance for people who did not care well for them. The library patrons were known to be trustworthy, but still, Sidra worried. Desperate people did desperate things, and women who needed to borrow babies were, more often than not, desperate people.

  Upon turning sixteen, every woman was legally obligated to submit herself to genetic screening to determine her suitability for procreation. If she had the appropriate genetic markers, she could apply for a license when she wanted to bear a child, and then she could mate with a screened man whose genetic profile would complement hers, and together, they could spend their lives raising a genetically optimal child. The screening was a rigorous affair, one most young women dreaded because most anything could disqualify them—allergies, astigmatism, tendencies toward high cholesterol, susceptibilities for various ailments, physical and mental. And if they failed the screening, that was that. They would never receive a license. Genetic repair was an option for the very wealthy, and they availed themselves of the privilege regularly because centuries of inbreeding had rendered their genetic profiles largely useless. Some women welcomed the freedom of failure. They parachuted out of airplanes and worked dangerous jobs and fucked whomever they pleased and walked the streets alone after dark—everything licensed women couldn’t do.

  Other women appealed to the Council of Conception, and those appeals were always denied. They mourned the life they so very much wanted. They read well-worn books about a time when women were free to live full lives without council oversight. And when their yearning became unbearable, they went to the baby library and borrowed a child and doted on that child as long as their spirits would allow them to, which was rarely long at all. It was too much to hold a sweet-smelling baby and listen to her joyful noise and gasp with delight. It was too much to feel her tiny hand wrapped around a finger or hold a baby’s warm weight against their chest. They came to the library daring to hope that borrowing a baby would ease the ache of being unlicensed, and they left knowing there was no room for hope in this world.

  Hadley tried to bear the burden of being unlicensed with grace. Or, at least, that is what she was supposed to do. She had been raised in a large family, Mormons, who by way of Utah’s closed borders had few problems passing genetic screenings. When she was disqualified, her parents took her to their ward’s temple, changed into their white garments, and prayed in the baptistry as if that might undo what had been done. Her parents told her she could commit her life to helping them raise her eleven siblings. They told her she could still be good and useful and that maybe she could become a third or fourth wife to a man willing to overlook her womanly failings. Hadley smiled and nodded, but she was not nearly as distraught as her parents, though she did a good job of making it seem as if she were. That night, while her family slept, she packed a small bag and went to the train station and bought a ticket to anywhere. She ended up in Omaha, where she took a job as a waitress. She did not date suitable men because there was no point. Unlicensed men were sterilized, and licensed men only consorted with unlicensed women in unspeakable ways. She rarely socialized because she knew few people in Omaha and was not interested in changi
ng that circumstance.

  The day after Hadley moved into her small efficiency, she sent her parents a postcard with her address and phone number in careful penmanship. She told them she loved them. She told them she missed them. She encouraged them to visit. Every day when she came home, she inhaled deeply, held her breath, and opened the mailbox, hoping her parents or one of her brothers or sisters had written. Instead, she found circulars for HyVee and glossy postcards advertising dentists and real estate agents and an Armenian newspaper because the previous tenant was, she assumed, Armenian. She found bills and bank statements. She found thick brochures for genetic repair clinics. She found everything but some sign that she mattered to the only family she had ever known.

  The disappointment was, Hadley often thought, more than she could take. It strangled the column of her throat until she nearly couldn’t breathe. After work, she always felt filmy—grease and sweat and the detritus of unfinished meals covering her uniform, her skin. She showered, punishing herself with scalding water, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, went for a punishing run, miles and miles at a time, then came home and took another punishing shower. Sleep was elusive. She stared out her window until it became too much to hold her head up, and then she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, her limbs long and loose. When the sun rose, she sighed, got up, dressed, went to work. She wasn’t friendly with any of her coworkers, but neither was she unfriendly. She was competent, and therefore she was appreciated. As one of the older children in her family, Hadley was no stranger to managing the needs of others. She understood what few others did. Her customers wanted food, that was obvious, but they always needed something more, and she had a knack for discerning what those needs were—a friendly ear, a warm smile, a small tenderness. Sometimes customers tried to reciprocate, tried to decipher her needs, but she refused their entreaties. She did not want their pity and she did not need their hollow kindness.

  It was not that Hadley thought having children, a husband, would suddenly give her life meaning. She was not one for such facile thinking. It was that everyone she loved and knew thought her life had no meaning without children, a husband. That betrayal strangled her almost as much as her disappointment did. She knew she could leave the North American Federated States and apply for genetic asylum in Iceland or Brazil or the West Indian Federated Islands, but the mere thought of it filled her with bitterness and disgust. It absolved the Federated States of their culpability in thinking they had any right to control who bore children and who did not. She was not in the business of absolution.

  When her loneliness became too much, Hadley went to a bar and drank until her face numbed. She danced to loud, throbbing music, throwing herself into the sweaty mass of bodies on the dance floor. On these nights, she left with a man, any man, with reasonably good looks. She lied about who she was and she was certain they lied about who they were and she did not care. Sometimes they took her to their homes, but she preferred dark alleys behind bars and the back seats of cars and diner bathrooms. She touched these men with abandon, allowing herself to be touched with abandon. She became another woman, an insatiable animal, and she hated how much she liked this animal version of herself.

  Seraphina hated her children. They were boring little creatures. She knew she was supposed to love them, but they always stared at her blankly when she tried to engage them in conversation. That was the exact phrase her therapist used when she complained about having no one to talk to during her large swaths of unstructured time with the children. They never understood her jokes. They reminded her too much of her husband, Paul, who was equally boring. She blamed him for the children. He had an excellent genetic profile and absolutely no personality. It was a disgrace. He tiptoed around her as if she would lose her temper at any moment, and his trepidation was something of a mystery to Seraphina because he was not interesting enough to inspire her anger. She was, largely, indifferent to her husband until she contemplated her children and then she was angry, but she kept that anger contained because there was nothing she could do about any of it.

  There was something wrong with her, she knew. When she became licensed, even then she was not filled with joy; she was filled with dread. After sharing the news with her family, they immediately began the work of finding her a suitable match, and she fantasized about being unlicensed and free. Only once did she suggest that she not marry and bear children, and her father slapped her three times and pointed a finger at her, his voice shaking. “Don’t ever speak such heresy again. You are lucky enough to have a pristine genetic profile. You have a duty, and you will fulfill it.” Seraphina held her warm cheek, the bones of her face throbbing. She locked eyes with her father; he looked away first. “That was for your own good,” he muttered, walking away from her.

  Sometimes, when Paul eyed Seraphina warily, trying to gauge her mood, she snapped, “You’re being racist, assuming that I am angry,” and he reddened and looked away as if she had confirmed his worst fears about himself. Paul was, fortunately, handsome and wealthy. They should have never been paired, but the Mendel Council worked in mysterious ways. The two nannies—Gabriella and Chloe—did most of the heavy lifting with the children, getting them up and dressed in the mornings, shuttling them to school, picking them up, entertaining them, feeding them, and doing homework with them. The nannies seemed to love the work in a way Seraphina had never loved mothering. She envied them that. She also suspected they were lovers. She was an insomniac and spent her nights wandering through her cavernous home. When she passed by the staff quarters, she heard them whispering or giggling or moaning or breathing heavily. Seraphina had no problem with her nannies as lovers. Many unlicensed women took to other women because they had no need to put up with men. Seraphina envied them that, too. She did worry about what might happen should the nannies’ relationship sour, but, she supposed, she would deal with that crisis if and when it came to pass.

  “Mom,” she heard a high-pitched voice saying over and over, as if through repetition, her son, Geordie, might finally garner her affection. It was such a terrible word, “Mom.” She had a name, but few people seemed to remember it. She was “Mom” to her children, or worse, “Mommy.” Her friends—well, they weren’t her friends but they thought they were—often referred to themselves as mommies or mamas, unironically, as if motherhood was a vocation instead of a burden. “Mommy’s work is never done,” they liked to say, smiling widely as they wiped spit-up or fed a child crumbled graham crackers. Once Seraphina lost her temper and said, “That’s nonsense. Of course our work is done when it’s done, and if your work is never done, you’re doing it wrong.” There was a tense hush during which Seraphina realized she had said something wrong, had let her mask slip. She quickly rearranged her face, but she did not retract her words. She did not apologize. And suddenly, the women with whom she socialized knew something important about Seraphina even if they could not name that something, exactly.

  Geordie was still calling her name, and now he was joined by his sister, Eliza. Seraphina had not picked the children’s names. She had not cared enough to name them. She told Paul he could name the children because she had been blessed enough to carry them, and he smiled at her with such love, such gratitude, that she was overwhelmed by a wave of disgust that he misinterpreted as the reciprocation of his love. The children were still calling her not-name, and Seraphina knew she was going to have to acknowledge the children to get them to shut up. “Gabriella, Chloe,” Seraphina called out loudly, a frantic edge shaping her voice. The nannies did not answer, which was unexpected. Normally they responded immediately. Normally, in fact, they doted on the children such that the children had no need to call Seraphina’s name and Seraphina had no need to call the nannies’ names.

  Seraphina stood and cracked her neck and walked toward the feverish pitch of her children’s voices. She found them at the marble island in the kitchen, hunched over . . . homework, she assumed. “What is it?” Seraphina asked, her voice tight. “Gabriella and Chloe are gone,” Geo
rdie said plainly, his eyes rimmed red and watery. He was always reporting on this and that as if it were his responsibility to serve as the narrator of their family life.

  Seraphina crossed her arms over her chest and thought about the oxycodone pills she had tucked under her pillow; she liked throwback drugs. Once the children and Paul were asleep, she could take one and lose herself in the heaviness of her limbs as the narcotic took hold. For a few hours, she could disappear from her life. Seraphina felt a spark of excitement. It was getting dark out. She only had to keep the children alive for a few more hours and then she could have a few hours to herself. “Where are Gabriella and Chloe?” she asked.

  This time it was Eliza as Geordie suddenly bit his lower lip and looked down at his feet and went silent. “They said they were going away for five days. One two three four five,” Eliza said softly. Eliza had recently learned to count, only to ten, nothing at all impressive, Seraphina thought, but Eliza loved demonstrating this new ability whenever she could, even when counting made no sense. She wanted to ask Eliza why she was counting, but the disappearance of Gabriella and Chloe was the far more pressing concern.

  “Going away where?”

  Eliza and Geordie shrugged simultaneously, and Geordie said, “I’m hungry,” and Seraphina looked up at the ceiling, hoping the house would come crashing down on her head. It didn’t. Seraphina tried calling the nannies, but they weren’t answering their phones. Were they on some kind of romantic getaway? she wondered. She didn’t begrudge them a vacation. She wanted a vacation from her children every single day. But it was strange that they’d simply disappeared without letting her know or asking for permission or otherwise acknowledging that they were in her employ. Suddenly she remembered an email from a few weeks earlier, from Chloe, the more talkative of the nannies. As she threw a protein bar at Geordie, Seraphina opened her email on her phone and quickly scrolled to Chloe’s message, which clearly stated that she and Gabriella were taking five vacation days.