The Bread We Eat in Dreams

by Catherynne M. Valente

  As little as possible should change.

  No matter how bad it got, McCarthy and his Brothers just couldn’t let a nice white girl (like Sylvie, like Sylvie, like the good floor-model part of Sylvie that fenced in the red, searing thing at the heart of her) get ruined that way. (If they knew, if they knew. Did the conservative-suit warm-glove Mrs. Drexler guess? Did it show in her dancing?) Draw the world the way you want it. Draw it and it will be.

  Sylvie tried to focus on the boy she was dancing with. She was supposed to be making a decision, settling, rooting herself forever into this room, the green curtains, the sugar cookies, the foxtrot.

  QUICK CUT to Mrs. Drexler. She spins around and claps her hands. She whaps her speculum on the floor three times and a thin kid with chocolate-colored hair and slate eyes sweeps aside his curtain. She crows: But wait, we haven’t opened Doooooor Number Three! Hello, Thomas Walker! Six foot even, Swiss/Polish—ooh, practically Russian! How exotic! I smell a match! Brown/gray, top marks across the board, average sperm count a spectacular 29 million per milliliter! You’re just showing off, young man! Allow me to shake your hand!

  Sylvie jittered back and forth as the filmstrip caught. The champagne settled her stomach. A little. Thomas spun her around shyly as the music flourished. He had a romantic look to him. Lovely chocolate brown hair. He was saying something about being interested in the animal repopulation projects going on in the Plains States. His voice was sweet and a little rough and fine, fine, this one is fine, it doesn’t matter, who cares, he’ll never sit in a garage with me and watch the bombs fall on the sheet with the hole in the corner. Close your eyes, spin around three times, point at one of them and get it over with.

  IRIS TRANSITION to Mrs. Drexler doing a backflip in her sequined dress. She lands in splits. Mr. and Mrs. Wells and Walker invite you to the occasion of their children’s wedding!

  Sylvie pulled the red, thornless rose and snowdrops from her hair and tied their ribbon around Thomas’s rod. She remembered to smile. Thomas himself kissed her, first on the forehead and then on the mouth. A lot of couples seemed to be kissing now. The music had stopped. It’s over, it’s over, Sylvie thought. Maybe I can still see Clark today. It takes time to plan a wedding.

  Voices buzzed and spiked behind her. Mrs. Drexler was hurrying over; her face was dark.

  ZOOM on Mrs. Drexler: Wait, sorry, wait! I’m sorry we seem to have hit a snag! It appears Thomas and Sylvie here are a little too close for comfort. They should never have been paired at the same Announcement. Our fault, entirely! Sylvie’s Father has been such a boon to the neighborhood! Doing his part! Unfortunately, the great nation of the United States does not condone incest, so you’ll have to trade Door Number Three for something a little more your speed. This sort of thing does happen! That’s why we keep such excellent records! CROSS-REFERENCING! Thank you! Mrs. Drexler bows. Roses land at her feet.

  Sylvie shut her eyes. The strip juddered; she was crying tracks through her Spotless Corp Pressed Powder and it was not a film, it was happening. Mrs. Drexler was wearing a conservative brown suit with a gold dove-shaped pin on the lapel and waving a long-stemmed peony for masculine bravery. Thomas was her brother, somehow, there had been a mix-up and he was her brother and other arrangements would have to be made. The boys and girls in the ballroom with her stared and pointed, paired off safely. Sylvie looked up at Thomas. He stared back, young and sad and confused. The snowdrops and roses had fallen off his rod onto the floor. Red on white. Bouffant was practically climbing over Douglas Owens 25 million per milliliter like a tree.

  In four years Sylvie will be Mrs. Charles Patterson 19 million per. It’s over and they began to dance. Charles was a swell dancer. He promised to be sweet to her when he got through with training and they were married. He promised to make everything as normal as possible. As little as possible should change. The quintet struck up Mendelssohn.

  Sylvie pulled her silence over her and it was good.

  Fade to white.

  CLOSE-UP of a nice-looking Bobby, a real lantern-jaw, straight-dealing, chiseled type. [Note to Casting: maybe we should consider VP Kroc for this spot. Hair pomade knows no demographic. Those idiots at Brylcreem want to corner the Paternal market? Fine. Let them have their little slice of the pie. Be a nice bit of PR for the re-election campaign, too. Humanize the son of a bitch. Ray Kroc, All-American, Brother to the Common Man. Even he suffers symptomatic hair loss. Whatever—you get the idea. Talk to Copy.] Bobby’s getting dressed in the morning, towel around his healthy, muscular body. [Note to Casting: if we go with Kroc here we’ll have to find a body double.] Looks at himself in the mirror and strokes a 5-o’clock shadow.

  FEMALE VOICE OVER: Do you wake up in the morning to a sink full of disappointment?

  PAN DOWN to a clean white sink. Clumps of hair litter the porcelain. [Note to Art Dept: Come on, Stone, don’t go overboard. No more than twenty strands.] Bobby rubs the top of his head. His expression is crestfallen.

  VOICE OVER: Well, no more! Now with the radiation-blocking power of lead, All-New Formula Samson Brand Hair Pomade can make you an All-New Man.

  Bobby squirts a generous amount of Samson Brand from his tube and rubs it on his head. A blissful smile transforms his face.

  VOICE OVER: That feeling of euphoria and well-being lets you know it works! Samson Pomades and Creams have been infused with our patented mood-boosters, vitamins, and just a dash of caffeine to help you start your day out right!

  PAN DOWN to the sink. Bobby turns the faucet on; the clumps of hair wash away. When we pan back up, Bobby has a full head of glossy, thick, styled hair. [Note to Art Dept: Go whole hog. When the camera comes back put the VP in a full suit, with the perfect hair—a wig, obviously—and the Senate gavel in his hand. I like to see a little more imagination from you, Stone. Not a good quarter for you.]

  VOICE OVER: Like magic, Samson Brand Pomade gives you the confidence you need. [Note to Copy: not sure about ‘confidence’ here. What about ‘peace of mind’? We’re already getting shit from the FDA about dosing Brothers with caffeine and uppers. Probably don’t want to make it sound like the new formula undoes Arcadia.]

  He gives the camera a thumbs-up. [Note to Art Dept: Have him offer the camera a handshake. Like our boy Ray is offering America a square deal.]

  Bold helvetica across mid-screen:

  Samson Guards Your Strength.

  Fade to white.

  Ten Grays

  Martin watched his brother. The handsome Thomas. The promising Thomas. The fruitful and multiplying Thomas. 29 million per mil Thomas. Their father (24 million) didn’t even try to fight his joyful tears as he pinned the golden dove on his son’s chest. His good son. His true son. For Thomas the Office in the city. For Thomas the planning and pleasing and roasted chickens and martinis. For Thomas the children as easy as pencil drawings.

  For Martin Stone, 2 million per milliliter and most of those dead, a package. In a nice box, to be certain. Irradiated teak. It didn’t matter now anyway. Martin knew without looking what lay nestled in the box. A piece of paper and a bottle. The paper was an ordnance, unknown until he opened the box. It was a lottery. The only way to be fair. It was his ticket.

  It might request that he present himself at his local Induction Center at 0900 at the close of the school year. To be shipped out to the Front, which by then might be in Missouri for all anyone knew. He’d suit up and boot it across the twisted, bubbled moonscape of the Sea of Glass. An astronaut. Bouncing on the pulses from Los Alamos to the Pacific. He would never draw again. By Christmas, he wouldn’t have the fine motor skills.

  Or it would request just as politely that he arrange for travel to Washington for a battery of civic exams and placement in government service. Fertile men couldn’t think clearly, didn’t you know? All that sperm. Can’t be rational with all that business sloshing around in there. Husbands couldn’t run things. They were needed for more important work. The most important work. Only Brothers could really view things objecti
vely. Big picture men. And women, Sisters, those gorgeous black chip girls with 3-Alpha running cool and sweet in their veins. Martin would probably pull Department of Advertising and Information. Most people did. Other than Defense, it was the biggest sector going. The bottle would be Arcadia. For immediate dosage, and every day for the rest of his life. All sex shall be potentially reproductive. Every girl screwing a Brother is failing to screw a Husband and that just won’t do. They said it tasted like burnt batteries if you didn’t put it in something. The first bottle would be the pure stuff, though. Provided by Halcyon, Your Friend in the Drug Manufacturing Business. Martin would remember it, the copper sear on the roof of his mouth. After that, a whole aisle of choices. Choices, after all, make you who you are. Arcadia or Kool. Brylcreem or Samson.

  Don’t worry, Martin. It’s a relief, really. Now you can really get to work. Accomplish something. Carve out your place. Sell the world to the world. You could work your way into the Art Department. Keep drawing babies in carriages. Someone else’s perfect quads, their four faces laughing at you forever from glossy pages.

  Suddenly Martin found himself clasped tight in his Father’s arms. Pulling the box out of his boy’s hands, reading the news for him, putting it aside. His voice came as rough as warm gin and Martin could hardly breathe for the strength of his Father’s embrace.

  Thomas Walker squeezed his Brother’s hand. Martin did not squeeze back.

  Velocity Multiplied by Duration

  Sylvie’s Father was with them that week. He was proud. They bought a chicken from Mrs. Stone and killed it together, as a family. The head popped off like a cork. Sylvie stole glances at him at the table. She could see it now. The chocolate hair. The tallness. Hannah framed her Presentation Scroll and hung it over the fireplace.

  Sylvie flushed her Spotless trousseaux down the toilet.

  She wasn’t angry. You can’t get angry just because the world’s so much bigger than you and you’re stuck in it. That’s just the face of it, cookie. A poisoned earth, a sequined dress, a speculum you can play like the spoons. Sylvie wasn’t angry. She was silent. Her life was Mrs. Patterson’s life. People lived in all kinds of messes. She could make rum balls. And treat soil samples and graft cherry varieties and teach some future son or daughter Japanese three weeks a month where no one else could hear. She could look up Bouffant’s friend and buy her a stiff drink. She could enjoy the brief world of solitude and science and birth like red skies dawning. Maybe. She had time.

  It was all shit, like that Polish kid who used to hang around the soda fountain kept saying. It was definitely all shit.

  On Sunday she went out to the garage again. Vita-Pops and shadows. Clark slipped in like light through a crack. He had a canister of old war footage under his arm. Stalingrad, Berlin, Ottawa. Yellow shirt with green stripes. Nagasaki and Tokyo, vaporizing like hearts in a vast, wet chest. The first retaliation. Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Clark reached out and held her hand. She didn’t squeeze back. The silent detonations on the white sheet like sudden balloons, filling up and up and up. It looked like the inside of Sylvie.

  “This is my last visit,” Clark said. “School year’s over.” His voice sounded far away, muffled, like he didn’t even know he was talking. “Car’s coming in the morning. Me and Grud are sharing a ride to Induction. I think we get a free lunch.”

  Sylvie wanted to scream at him. She sucked down her pop, drowned the scream in bubbles.

  “I love you,” whispered Clark Baker.

  On the sheet, the Golden Gate Bridge vanished.

  Sylvie rolled the reel back. They watched it over and over. A fleck of nothing dropping out of the sky and then, then the flash, a devouring, brain-boiling, half-sublime sheet of white that blossomed like a flower out of a dead rod, an infinite white everything that obliterated the screen.

  Fade to black.

  And over the black, a cheerful fat man giving the thumbs up to Sylvie, grinning:

  Buy Freedom Brand Film! It’s A-OK!

  Aeromaus

  A Series of Informal Notes Compiled on Behalf of Visiting Foreigners by Córdoba Jandza, Yellow District, 4th Level, Freely, with Delight in Service, and Under No Duress in the Year 19—

  First: Aerograd has always been occupied. In the grottoes, near the propellers rusted over with moss like verdigris, you might hear someone say otherwise. Crowded around an old gasoline barrel boiling up grey shrimp in oil-slicked water. You might hear someone say anything. Any sophisticated soul can sieve out such obvious lies. The shrimp bob up iridescent, green, purple, blue. I would recommend against eating them. They taste sweet, they taste like life and salt, but your system is not prepared for Aerograd yet. Should you have an allergic reaction to that aspic of petroleum and moss spores, your esophagus will very likely perforate and before your bowels have a chance to put an end to you. We would not like to lose you so soon and by accident.

  ////⁄: This is a cypher. I do not hold with simple word substitution. I have embedded information also in accent marks, punctuation, the angle of my penmanship on letters e, a, æ, o, h, n, l, and s. Whether or not I use the Oxford comma in a given phrase. Whether or not comma splices occur, prepositions positioned at the end of certain sentences. Under my paragraphs other paragraphs lie, levels up and down, like Aerograd itself. This is a cypher, but everything is a cypher. Everything can be substituted for something else. I believe that.

  The truth is, it does not matter if Aerograd existed before the occupation. If we were ever other than we are we have forgotten it. Forgetting has been attached inside us like a second spleen. Memory is dispensed through official channels. Go to the market; stand in line; receive your ration of the history of the city. I do not speak in metaphor. Our dialect no longer allows such dissembling. You cannot say a thing is another thing. It is like another thing, perhaps, though even that smacks of a certain effete enervation of thought. But it cannot be another thing. That is an unworthy lie.

  This is not a lie: Memory has the taste and texture of cooked meat. Eat it and live. Remember, but only what it is licit to remember.

  In Aerograd, the words for meat and memory are the same.

  Second: Aerograd was originally designed as an Academy Town, an experiment in isolation. Hundreds of pure, precise minds brought together and removed from the nation as a whole. From distraction, if not from oversight. We descend from the best and brightest of the Old World. On Phalarica Hill, rising greenly through the constant clouds, you will find the University, a wonder of revival design. Each year the University graduates clear-eyed, clear-minded students of the highest caliber. In the mist of Blue District, the Capital reflects the University in both architecture and intent: to govern with clear eyes and clear intellect.

  This is the Ossuary. It is where they turn laws into bones.

  The mist in the Capital is uniform, curling like fleece. It is opaque, pearlescent, unchanging. It does not part, not at morning nor at night. Even inside the gilded buildings it is so thick and silver and soft you could not see an elephant if she sat down beside you. Water drips from the carved metal columns. This is how virtuous government is performed—good ideas are accepted with joy, without personal prejudice, no matter who’s mouth they emerge from, for it could be anyone’s mouth. Your mouth, mine. Even Our Lady’s.

  ////⁄: I remember the first time I saw Our Lady. I am allowed to remember that, why not? She processed through Yellow District, walking as I have been told she always does, to show that she is like us, she is one of us, no better or worse. Her tigers went before her, long and bright in the unceasing cloudfog. Where they breathed and snapped their garnet-colored jaws, pools of clear air appeared. They ate the clouds, so that we could see her. I was afraid. My mother pushed me forward, in case Our Lady should glimpse me and bestow some minor favor. So I watched without obstruction. She processed, very tall, very straight, bald, dew pearling on her cheeks. In her silver government dress, with the blue sash indicating her endless duty to Aerograd. Her skin was a
fiery opal violence, terrible glittering colors, hard and slick with vapor condensing and rolling down the gem of her skull. Our Lady appeared as though she was crying. I tried not to look at her hands. I knew what they would look like. My primer had an algebraic game based on them. I could not be prepared. At the sopping ends of her buttered lace sleeves, fifty graceful, strong, ringless hands hung like garlands of awful flowers. The hundred hands of Our Lady. Hands in every part of the city, able to seize anything and anyone, hands around every heart, not squeezing yet, but soon. It seemed an unbearable weight for her to carry with those thin arms. When she clasped her fingers together, they became a huge single fist. Our Lady wore no shoes. Her feet clacked hard on the wet pavement, stone striking stone. Behind her black giraffes followed, dancing, winding and unwinding their necks.

  No one else in the city looks like her. I have seen old pictures of tigers and none are that color. She is a dream we all have at the same time. I do not think any meat tells where she came from. She has always been here, like the occupation. But she cannot have been, for nothing in Aerograd is built for fifty hands. She is the occupation. But that is not true. We are all the occupation. We occupy each other and save work for the tigers. We are afraid of her and her animals. We do not even know her real name. We speak of her and God using the same words.

  Our Lady did see me. She turned the glitter-black and hot ochre cups of her empty eyes toward me. I felt nothing. On the inside I too was a cloud. Our Lady looked up at my mother and said something. Her voice sounded like a propeller winding up.