Psychopomp: A Novella Page 3

  “You know you’re s’posed to clean up while I’m gone,” Anden said, exhausted and irritable. He swept an arm along the table, upsetting a stack of the colorful flyers I’d collected from the streets. I watched them flutter to the matted carpet, my face blank.

  “Lo siento,” I said.

  Blanca had left a dirty glass by the couch. Anden picked it up and threw it against the living room wall, leaving behind a splotch of wetness. A shower of shards glistened on the carpet.

  “Qué?” Anden turned on me in a rage. “You’re sorry you sit on your fat ass all day and do nothing, while I slave out there on the water just to bring a few credits to this house? Is that why you’re sorry? Do you know how depressing it is to come home from months on a filthy boat to a filthy house?”

  “I cleaned the bathrooms yesterday.”

  “Oh, gracias a dios, you cleaned the bathrooms.” He started to turn away but then he thought better of it. His arm swung around, his open palm connecting with my cheek.

  I sank down to the floor as he stalked upstairs to clean the filth from beneath his fingernails. My eyes were dry, and not just because I refused to cry in front of Harkin. Anden had hit me many times before, so I was used to the quick, stinging pain and the bruises throbbing on my swollen face. He would apologize to me in a few days, like he always did.

  And I would forgive him. Or at least that was what he’d believe.

  Blanca came downstairs with the baby as I pulled myself up off the floor. She faced the kitchen and waited for Harkin to notice her.

  He shut off the faucet at last and turned, stopping short. “What’s that?”

  She smiled and blinked her long lashes. “Tu hija.”

  “What the hell?” He blinked in shock and confusion.

  “You were gone, so I couldn’t tell you.” Her eyes began to fill. “Are you mad?”

  “No—”

  Anden shot back down the stairs. I tensed, worried for Blanca. She was too soft to bear my brother’s wrath.

  Snarling, he jabbed a finger at her. “You got yourself knocked up and didn’t do a damn thing about it? Idiota. You think our resources aren’t strained enough? You’re feeding it from your rations. Don’t expect anyone else to help you!”

  “Hey,” Harkin said sharply. “We won’t. Come on, B.”

  They went upstairs together, Blanca sniffling. Ignoring me, Anden went out for liquor so he could celebrate having returned safely. He’d sold a catch, too, so poverty and starvation and death were thwarted once more.

  That night, I sat on the roof, listening to the blare of the TV. Occasionally Anden would shout out at it. The sea was black, the lights of the harbor like gems washed atop the water. The indistinct shapes of moored boats bobbed softly, masts striking up at the sky. To the east were the desalination plants, low and lit in acid-green.

  My chest filled with some emotion I couldn’t name. It was something I had felt many times in the past three years. For a moment, I had the feeling my life was going to change inexorably. I let out a long, soft sigh and bit my lip hard.

  Shimmying over the edge of the roof, I lowered myself until my toes touched the windowsill. I reached down to grab the top of the frame and bent myself inside my room, knees first. The sheer green curtains fluttered around me.

  Then I went to bed. Nothing ever changed.

  5. el vestido

  The quiet morning belonged to me. I ate in front of the screen, which no one had turned off the night before. My eyes grew wide and hot as I watched the unimaginable horrors people endured and performed all over the world. Murders, abandonment, quests for eternal youth. The wars for rights to forests and newly-discovered aquifers overseas. Our tireless soldiers won battles effortlessly and without spilling a drop of their own blood.

  Unable to stand it, I shut off the screen. Everything I saw on it made me miss Mamá with startling ferocity, especially on a lonely morning like this. And then I’d hate her for leaving me in Anden’s care, at the mercy of the world.

  She was probably dead by now. I kept telling myself that.

  “Get over it,” Anden had said once when I’d tried to talk to him about how I felt. “She’s gone. Papá’s gone. If I ever wanted them back, it’s only so I wouldn’t be stuck with you.”

  “Thanks,” I’d muttered.

  “You should thank me more often with all I do for you.”

  Blanca said he was stressed and under pressure. That I should try not to be such a burden. But she didn’t understand how alone and unloved I felt.

  Pell came by, as she always did when she’d spotted his boat. “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “They had a nice catch,” I said. I left out the part where he’d hit me. The shiny bruise on my cheek spoke for itself.

  “I had a good night last night. Fifty credits.”

  I nodded. I might have gone with Pell, worked with her, but Anden had forbid me. I was too scared to disobey him even when he was gone. That was why I gave plasma instead. It was fear more than necessity that drove me in life.

  For a couple hours, I helped her clean shells. She kept glancing up the stairs, hoping Anden would come down and say something nice to her. But he slept late and she had to leave. I could see disappointment in the set of her shoulders as she walked out the door.

  ~

  Short of breath, I walked home from the center. I looked around every corner and made sure to avoid the entrances to alleys. There were lurking figures, as usual, but none came toward me. None had the yellowish eyes that haunted me.

  I’d started dreaming again. Of tubes in my veins. Clear cylinders filling with plasma. Others lay in beds around me, eyes closed. It was like the center, only without the chatter of voices. Plasmapheresis machines beeped irregularly. It was dark, neon blue lights cutting through the gloom in which I awoke.

  Those three days I’d lost…

  I remembered ripping out the needle, tossing the tubes to the floor. Black blood trickled from the needle stick and down my forearm.

  So, if this was a real memory and not just a dream, I’d escaped.

  But from where or what I couldn’t say.

  Laughter greeted me at home. I didn’t like it. When Anden laughed, he was at his most dangerous. I slipped inside and tried to pass through the living room without anyone noticing me. There were more people than I’d expected, and I didn’t look at any of them.

  Anden grabbed my arm just as I put one foot on the stairs. “Marlo.”

  “Sí?”

  Someone yelled. Something thumped against the wall. Anden didn’t flinch, holding on to me. “You’re not gonna stay in your room all night. Get yourself cleaned up and come back down here.”

  My stomach fluttered. “Why?”

  His fingers tightened. “Because I said so. Look pretty. Wear something tight. And don’t ask no more questions. I have a lot riding on this. That’s all you need to know.”

  I nodded and didn’t try to pull from his grasp. It would only hurt more if I did.

  After staring hard at me for a moment longer, he finally let me go. Turning back to the living room, he shouted something and everyone cheered.

  My feet traced a well-worn path on the thin, shabby carpet of the stairs. I rubbed at the red marks on my arm, thinking over my brother’s words. I knew what he wanted. I’d have preferred he said it plainly, but it was no mystery what he expected. It hurt he’d even ask such a thing. It frightened me, too, but there was nothing to do except obey.

  Blanca followed me into my room. “I have something for you,” she said. “It doesn’t fit me anymore.”

  She handed me a short, tight red dress. “It’s sexy,” I said doubtfully.

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Uh… I guess.” I’d never had to be sexy for anyone.

  I put on the dress, but I didn’t have any makeup to complete the look. Before Pell had started working at the edge of Cizel, she would practice putting makeup on me and tell me how to do it myself. When I tried,
I could never achieve the same sleek effect that came to her so easily. My thin sable hair was too limp, my skin too pasty, my muddy green eyes not cunning enough. With her straight black hair and flawless skin, the effort Pell required was minimal.

  Anden would have to be satisfied with me as I was, dull-eyed and dry-skinned. Maybe he wouldn’t make a scene in front of his friends.

  Patting my shoulder absently, Blanca went to her room to check on the baby. Somehow I convinced my feet to take me out the door and down the stairs. My heart pounded against my ribs. I was scared. I was only sixteen. The trick was not to think about what would happen later, I decided. All I had to do was move.

  Anden glanced up as I entered the living room, his mouth tight. But he lowered his eyes and gave a faint nod of approval.

  My eyes skipped around the room. I didn’t recognize anyone and I was too uncomfortable to look at faces for long. I moved awkwardly toward the group, not knowing what to do next. Some of them laughed and I imagined they knew I was supposed to make a whore of myself that night.

  Then a guy broke away from the others, and a familiar face turned toward me with a charming smile. I recognized his crinkled dark eyes and weathered skin. All my worries vanished.

  “You must be Marlo,” the young blond man from the docks said. He held out his hand for mine. “I’m Verm.”

  The only men I’d ever known didn’t have much to recommend them. Anden was a bully, Harkin a pushover, and Papá had been too often absent for me to know him very well.

  But this… this wouldn’t be so bad. He was handsome. His smile was kind. Maybe he was lonely too.

  I smiled back and the rest of the night passed in a blur. Verm stuck by my side for hours. We sat close to each other on the couch and he let his hand drape casually over my thigh. I got so flushed I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. He laughed and drank with the others, but his touch was just for me.

  When the night wound down and Verm asked to see my room, I started feeling nervous again. He held my hand as we walked upstairs.

  I reached uncertainly for the light switch by the door. “Leave it off,” Verm said. He pulled his shirt over his head.

  “All right,” I said, so softly it was almost as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

  He came toward me, his compact, muscled body vaguely outlined in moonlight. His hands slid up my hips, rucking my dress up around my waist. With a hand on my chest he pushed me back on the bed, and I wondered if he could feel my heart ramming.

  I lay my head on the pillow. He tugged down my underwear and I slipped my ankles out. His face, mean in the dark, frightened me.

  “Verm,” I said. I put my palms gently on his cheeks.

  “Shut up.” He knocked my hands away.

  There wasn’t any part of me that didn’t feel hollow when he pushed himself inside. Pain speared up my middle but I bit my lip to keep from crying out. He grunted above me as he rocked back and forth, slow at first, then fast and faster. The bed creaked beneath us and my chest convulsed with suppressed sobs. A tear slid out of the corner of my eye.

  Finally, he made a deep noise of satisfaction and collapsed onto me, his breath hot and heavy on my neck. Then he rolled off and onto his back. His breathing slowed and soon he was sleeping deeply beside me.

  I turned away, unable to look at him. The blanket had slipped to the floor and I pulled it up over my naked lower half. My sobs were all gone, but the back of my throat burned.

  I wondered if it was always like that, so pitiless and cold. The thought of anyone making me do that ever again was almost too much to bear.

  ~

  By the time I woke up in the morning, Verm had already gone. I was glad not to see him. I lingered sadly in the warm bed, but I knew I had to go downstairs eventually.

  Anden was poring over his world map on the kitchen table. He’d weighted the corners down with broken bits of asphalt from outside. He circled the fishing spots he would travel to on his next trip.

  His eyes met mine briefly across the room. Maybe they softened a little, maybe they were a little ashamed. It was hard to say before he turned his attention back to the map. I waited until sunset. He never even thanked me for what I’d done.

  6. la partida

  They used to try to control the weather. They made it rain on failing crops and over lowering lakes anytime they wanted. During public outdoor events, they would use a machine to disperse the clouds so the sky would be a clean, bright blue, so there was no chance of rain.

  In school, I learned drought had nearly always been a problem. We, now, would welcome the clouds they’d once sent away. We’d welcome rain. We’d celebrate as it collected in our unused barrels.

  They never seeded clouds anymore. Decades ago, some group had decided it wasn’t wise to engineer the weather. Experimental methods of cloud seeding, along with excessive pollution, had caused extreme chemical damage to our soil. It was no longer safe or fertile. Environmental experts proposed the earth would eventually renew itself, if left alone. It had the inherent ability to heal anything we’d done to it.

  I wondered if that principle of renewal could be applied to a person. If you left a girl alone, she could learn to heal herself. She could consciously forget bad things, or at least learn to live with them.

  I’d thought Verm might forget about me after one night. But the next day I was in the kitchen when I heard the front door, permanently swollen from moisture and heat, pop open with a loud juddering sound. Expecting Anden, I didn’t turn around. The door slammed. A moment later, arms caught me around the middle, holding me tight so I couldn’t run.

  “Relax,” Verm said soothingly. “It’s only me.”

  It was hard to relax, though. He’d tucked his chin in the crook of my neck and pressed his hands flat on my stomach. His hips pressed hard against my bottom.

  “Verm, I—”

  His arms tightened suddenly. “You trying to get rid of me? You want me, don’tcha, Marlo?”

  “I…”

  The front door jarred open again. I thought Verm might let go but he held on, asserting his possession of me. Anden came in, eyes sliding over us dispassionately. I begged silently for his help.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Verm.

  “Come on. Let’s talk.”

  My brother made me stay in the room while they discussed fishing techniques. I kept as far as I could from Verm, but I felt the way he watched me.

  They talked about blast fishing, which fishers sometimes used illegally to gather large amounts of fish at once. Anden didn’t like it, because the explosion often harmed the underwater habitat, making it harder to collect more fish later on. And you had to be careful not to get caught by the environmental police.

  Neither of them cared for cyanide fishing, mainly because rich people looking to populate their aquariums favored the technique. These people would pick a spot in the ocean and pay fishers to pour a cyanide mixture into the water. The cyanide would stun the fish but not kill them, making collection simple.

  I’d never thought I would sympathize with creatures that could barely think for themselves.

  “You can come with us if you’re ready to leave tomorrow,” Anden said.

  Verm nodded. “I’ll be there.” He caught me just as he was leaving. “You can’t avoid me forever.”

  I locked the door behind him. When I turned, Anden had fixed me with a burning glare.

  “He still likes you?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused. “Why is this so important to you?”

  Anden hesitated. “I think he’s a good fisher and could help with the catch. But I need someone who’ll work for fewer credits and not ask questions. That’s where you come in.”

  I shook my head. This was a new low even for him. “I ain’t no whore.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Clean up your room. Verm said it’s a pigsty. And try not to look like such a slob all the time.”

  I slept restlessly that n
ight, always half in a dream. One of the bony cats slunk through my open window and curled itself into the crook of my body. And something else was in bed with me, something moving sinuously against my back, around my head. There was makeup smeared red and black all over my sheets.

  When I woke, my pillow was wet from tears. But I was glad, because today was the day Anden meant to leave again. This time he was taking Verm with him.

  Pell and I went to the docks to watch them go, even though I didn’t want to. The hot air was heavy with the trashy smell of things brought up from underwater. Hands were stained with the blood of ocean life. Feet walked on boards layered with years of fishy grime. This was the place I’d been born to.

  I stood in the shade of bait shop awnings and hoped Verm wouldn’t notice me. From a distance, he and Anden both looked strong and hearty, incapable of cruelty. I knew, suddenly, eyes could lie. And however pretty the lie, I knew I didn’t want to live in it. The truth may have been horrid, but lies were cruel.

  “He didn’t have to go again so soon,” Pell said. “Why didn’t he stay longer?”

  “Food. We need credits.”

  She was stubborn. “He could have stayed a little while.”

  “Pell,” I said, “why do you like my brother?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It seems like he’d take care of me. Then I wouldn’t have to go to Cizel anymore.”

  “I want to love someone who sees me. He won’t stop loving me no matter what I look like or what I do. And he’ll be kind. He’ll never hit me or make me do things I don’t want.”

  “Good luck finding a guy like that.”

  The guys set out, their boat drifting from the harbor, and the weight of their presence fell from my shoulders.

  interim: una ala

  For a place located in the heart of a city, the institute was strangely isolated. Claire could feel the isolation all the way down to her bones. She’d always lived at the institute, so she’d always felt that way. A high wall topped with spiky iron bars separated the grounds from Cizel, preventing her from seeing anything but the tallest of the gleaming glass buildings. But she could always hear the whoosh of the rail, the laughter of people passing by, and sometimes screaming when the bombs fell.