Ofelia sat where she was and closed her eyes. She felt divided inside. One little voice kept saying I’m not going, I’m not going. But the voice she was used to hearing continued to talk about the problem of the fabric boxes. She knew how to plan work with others; she knew how to listen to the voice that spoke for her when she did. That other voice felt strange.
Ariane came back, with Dorotea. “We’ll round the corners, add the cord—anything else?”
“No . . . I was just thinking.” Ofelia went back to work, stitching around the curves, her fingers automatically shifting the material through the machine. She had the box almost complete when she realized how hard it was going to be to sew stickystrips on the rim now that it had been sewn to the sides.
“We’ll tell the others to sew the stickystrips on first,” Ariane said. “You should rest now—it’s past lunchtime.”
She had not noticed. She had always enjoyed figuring out ways to do things, though usually someone just gave her directions. She had followed the directions; now she followed Ariane, slowly, aware of the kink in her shoulders from hunching over the machine.
“Will you eat with us?” Ariane asked. Ofelia shook her head.
“I should go home; Barto will want me. But I’ll come back later.” Ariane gave her a little hug; for the first time Ofelia could feel the bones through Ariane’s flesh. She looked at her daughter’s friend. Ariane was aging; she had hardly noticed before, but there were gray streaks in Ariane’s hair. In Ofelia’s mind, she had stayed the same age as Adelia—who had never aged past twenty, when she died.
At home, Barto and Rosara were out somewhere; the house felt peaceful and cool without them. Ofelia laid the stack of completed mending on their bed, and went into her own room. Someone had dumped all her clothes onto her bed, pushing them into messy piles. Underwear, shirts, skirts, the one dress. She hated seeing her clothes like that. Underwear always looked vaguely indecent, even if it was plain and old, like hers. Limp unattractive shapes of beige and white, designed only to cover twice what her baggy clothes would have covered anyway.
She was not going. She would not have to wear underwear once there was no one to be scandalized because she did not. She felt her heart pounding, and a delicious sense of wickedness rose from between her toes to the top of her scalp, bathing her in heat. She went back to the living room and looked down the lane. Nothing. They would be eating in the center, more than likely.
Ofelia went back to her room and shut the door. She had no window in her room. Stealthily, she took off her clothes. In broad daylight, her public voice scolded. For no reason. Her new voice, the one that said she wasn’t going, said nothing. For an instant, breathing hard, she stood naked in her room, and then she slipped her outer clothes back on, leaving a pile of underclothes on the floor. Indecent! shrieked her public voice. Shameless! Disgusting!
She could feel the skin on her belly, on her hips, on her thighs, touching the cloth of her skirt. She took a tentative step, then another. A little draft between her legs, coolness where she was used to heat.
No! her public voice told her. You can’t do that.
The private new voice said nothing. It didn’t have to say anything. She could not do it now, not while other people were there to condemn. But later . . . later she would wear only what felt good on her body. Whatever that was.
Quickly, without paying attention to herself or her feelings of distaste, she undressed and dressed again, properly. The underclothes, all of them. The outer clothes, all of them. For now. For twenty-nine more days.
She had just dressed, and refolded her clothes into neater stacks, when Barto and Rosara came back. They had a new grievance.
“They say you are too old,” Barto said, glowering at her as if she had chosen that age on that day.
“Retired,” Rosara said. “Too old to work.”
Ridiculous. She had always worked; she would work until she died; that’s what people did. “Seventy,” Barto said. “You’re no longer on contract, and they say it will cost them to send you somewhere else, and you won’t be of use to the colony anyway.”
It did not surprise her, but it angered her. Useless? Did they think she was of no use now, because she had no formal job, and only kept the garden and the house, and did most of the cooking?
“They are going to charge our account,” Rosara said. “We will have to pay back the cost of shipping you.”
“There was a retirement guarantee in the contract,” Barto said, “but when you didn’t remarry, didn’t have more children, you lost a portion of it.”
They had not told her that. They had said she would lose her productivity bonus, even though she kept working full time. They had said nothing about retirement. But of course, they made the rules. And with this rule, perhaps they had made it easy for her to stay behind.
“I could just stay here,” Ofelia said. “Then they wouldn’t charge you—”
“Of course you can’t stay here!” Barto slammed his fist on the table, and the dishes rattled. “An old woman, alone—you would die.”
“I will die anyway,” Ofelia said. “That’s what they mean. And if I stayed, it wouldn’t cost you anything.”
“But, Mama! You can’t think I’d leave you here to die alone. You know I love you.” Barto looked as if he might cry, his great red face crumpling with the effort to project filial devotion.
“I might die alone anyway, in the cryo. Isn’t it supposed to be more dangerous for old people?” She could see by the look on his face that he knew that already, had probably just been told that.
“That would be better than dying here, the only person on the whole planet,” Barto said.
“I would be with your father,” Ofelia said. It was an argument that might work with Barto, who remembered his father as a godlike person who could do no wrong. But she hated herself for the lie, even as she said it.
“Mama, don’t be sentimental! Papa’s dead. He’s been dead for—” Barto had to stop and work it out; Ofelia knew. Thirty-six years.
“I don’t want to leave his grave,” Ofelia said. Having begun, she could not stop. “And the others—” The other two boys, the girl who had died in infancy, Adelia. Over those graves she had cried real tears, and she could cry over them now.
“Mama!” Barto stepped toward her, but Rosara came between them.
“Barto. Let her alone. Of course it matters to her, her own children, your father—” At least Rosara had it in the right order. “And besides—” But trust Rosara to ruin the effect; she was going to explain that it would, after all, be a solution, even though they could not allow it. “If she did stay,” Rosara said, fulfilling Ofelia’s expectation, “then we would not have to pay—”
“No!” Barto slapped Rosara; Ofelia had prudently backed away, and Rosara’s backward stagger didn’t hurt her. “She is my mother; I’m not leaving her here.”
Ofelia said, “I’m going to the center to sew the fabric boxes.” Barto would not follow her into the open; he never did. He might think her remark was capitulation, too.
That evening, neither Barto nor Rosara mentioned the incident. Ofelia said she had completed a fabric box, and would do more tomorrow. “If the machines produce enough fabric, we can make a box for each person in the colony. It will be difficult, in the short time, but—”
“Rosara will help tomorrow,” Barto said.
Rosara sewed slowly and clumsily. “The machines are all busy,” Ofelia said. “I can make the other boxes for our family.”
“And I am supposed to report for vocational testing tomorrow,” Rosara said.
“It is ridiculous to test you before me,” Barto said. That began a tirade against the Company. Ofelia didn’t listen. After eating, she scraped the dishes and carried out the scraps to the garden. She had not been in the garden since dawn; she drew a deep breath of the evening scents. There was just enough light to see the slidebug’s web between the rows, and avoid it. When she came back to the kitchen door, she peeked. Empty. The door to Rosara and Barto’s room was shut. That suited her. She cleaned the dishes and set them to dry.