Holding Wonder

I hug this warmth to me, and savor the pleasure of hearing someone call, "Is she home yet?" and hear someone else say, "I don't know. I don't know where
she is." Most of the time I have to conform and go through all the motions the others do. And this is fun too, because no one knows I'm not really there. No one knows I have curled up behind my face and only watch and watch.
And listen. I love to listen-to be the sounding board for most anyone. Everyone needs a listener-everyone except me. If I listen long enough to enough people, I hear them say everything I need to say. And if all these things that need to be said can be said by others-there's no need of me!
From long practice I can become anyone. I can react with them, evaluate with them, and submerge myself in them, never having to Be at all. This ability to not Be has been my pride, my refuge, my attainment. But now I am betrayed by my own hand. Now I don't know who I am. Now I am lost.
Oh, I'd hate to be Allison. When we first arrived at Margin which is two intersecting gravel roads, a gash in the mountains, and a bright green dream of water and power, it was Allison who complained. She complains about the food-but she fattens on it and complains about that. She complains about the locale-though she had known how isolated it was. She complains about the heat and the dust and boredom and the Saturday night dances and the Dorm and the office and the bosses and the people she works with –I'd hate to be Allison. It takes so much energy to complain, and even negative complaints are so positive.
But I'd hate to be Kit. Kit was the first one in the Dorm to date anyone in Margin. She, started down as far as the busboy in the cafeteria but has methodically worked her way up as far as a GS 12. That means Government Service and we're just GS 5 and salaries and prestige rise in direct proportion to your GS rating-so she has achieved a GS 12 for a date. And she talks. Not in so many blank unmistakable words, but in hintings and half sentences and sly looks out of the corners of her hungry eyes. Her tongue is sharp and pointed, touching the corners of her mouth as she smiles a thin, hungry smile. Kit is starving to death-withering with famine. She feeds her hunger on dates and innuendoes and finds them husks, but something has convinced her that the only nourishment in her life is M-E-N and she tries to make up in quantity what she lacks in quality. I'd hate to be Kit. Sometimes her red fingernails cut half-moons in the base of her thumb because she's so hungry.
But then, I'd hate to be Greta. She's dying. She's been dying ever since she was born. She has a row of medicine bottles all along the bookshelf in her room, right in front of all her doctor books. She saves up her sick-leave carefully staving off death and destruction with vitamins and tranquilizers, capsules and fizzy powders until she has a little accumulated and her work well caught up, and then she collapses. And dies in semi-darkness with wet towels over her suffering eyes and the currently favorite bottles ranged neatly on the bedside table. Her trays come up regularly from the cafeteria-she has to keep up her strength. I'd hate to be Greta. By paying that much attention to herself she's making living-and dying-a positive thing-something of importance.
But who'd want to be Cleo? She's afraid. You name the fear-she has it. Only mostly she's afraid to show it for fear she might be laughed at. If there is a thunderstorm, cold little beads of sweat mark her forehead and upper lip. Her hands shake and so does her laugh when the thunder comes so close it blinks your eyes. She's afraid to stay out here on the job because life goes so fast and there's nothing here you could call real living, but she's afraid to leave here. Jobs don't grow on trees and you know how many frightening things can happen while you're learning a new job. And whatever fears are current, Cleo adopts them. She feared the A bomb and now the H bomb. She's afraid to breathe
deeply in a smoke-filled room-lung cancer. She's afraid to drive at night-twice as dangerous as daytime. If a tree dies, she fears drought. If there's rains, she fears floods. She's afraid of her boss and her fellow workers and of making mistakes and of getting fat or wasting away. Her crest should be two hands covering closed eyes and the motto J' ai peur. Who'd want to be Cleo?
But not Dorothea. Please not Dorothea. She's neat and precise. Her room is so dusted you can't even find a finger smudge on the top of the window casing. She goes at her cleaning as some people do weed pulling. You can't relax in a room where an incautious movement might displace a cushion. Her office desk is always so neat that the rest of them look like hurrahs nests. Personally you can hardly look at her for neatness. She's a precise band box-y person. So much so that she seems to be painted against her various backgrounds. Even her repose is neat. She never lounges or slumps or fidgets. She never slops around on Saturday mornings. She never appears anywhere-not even in the Dorm hall-in pin curls and bathrobe. She seems so serene and placid. And yet-and yet– She eats smally and neatly, but each forkful is pounced upon with delicate viciousness, each neat bite a snap of sharp teeth. Every controlled motion is a tiny act of violence. Even her voice, brisk and competent, is somehow just short of snapping and cursing. And her careful smile is just a wave-length short of a snarl.
So there they are, all working in the same office, all competent, well-adjusted, nice girls, who inhabit East Wing, second Floor, Dorm One. But none that I, knowing them from the inside out, would want to be. And one of them is me! I'm one of them! But which one? I'm afraid, afraid! Not only because I don't know who I am, but because one of them-one of them has murder in her mind-and on her lips-and is carrying murder in her hands.
It's almost dark now. I'll have to turn on the lights. Then I'll know which one I am. I think I'll know.
"I could kill him!" Kit's fingernails glinted redly as she flexed the long fingernail file she held in her hands.
"Oh, come now!" Dorothea smoothed her skirt with a soft controlled motion of her hands. "Not the GS-iest date you've had so far! You're getting up in the world! It's a far cry from a busboy to GS 12-"
"Busboy?" Kit's eyes flashed. "I've never dated a busboy!
"Why Kit!" Cleo's mouth sagged. "Jake was so a busboy and you-"
"Jake!" Kit twanged the nail file viciously. "I never dated him-"
"Why you did so," persisted Cleo. "It must have been a dozen times before you changed-"
"I did not!" Kit said flatly, the planes of her thin face sharpening.
"Save your breath, Cleo," smiled Dorothea. "She has a good forgettery."
"And you have a long nose for other people's business!" snapped Kit. "Keep it out of mine."
"Well, at least," said Allison, "don't kill him yet. He's GS-ier than Our Pharmacist. You dated him last month and don't deny him! I'd still like to pick your bones over that one!"
"Don't quarrel, girls, don't quarrel," begged Cleo. "It's nice to see you up again, Greta," she quavered in such a transparent attempt to change the subject that everyone laughed.
"Yes" said Allison. "Is your sick-leave exhausted already?"
"Yes," Greta's voice came faintly. "I don't know whether-"
"I should think you'd get tired of being sick," said Allison.
"After all," Greta's voice was very patient. "It isn't a question of being tired of having a frail constitution. One bears-"
"Just so much," said Allison, "just so much of that-"'
Not now! Not now! I can't lose myself now. Oh, Lord, am I already in my room? Or was I about to leave? We were about to break up. Should I get up and go, too? Who am I? Who am I? I don't dare look around.