“Apella told me,” she said nonchalantly.
“What else did she tell you? I asked.
“That I could trust you,” she smiled, “that we would be friends.” She patted her belly. The look on her face was so ridiculous, given our situation. She looked relaxed, like we’d just met at the grocery store. Not like a trapped, pregnant girl who had been drugged and god knows what else.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We can be friends.” Friends, a rather pointless thing to have in our current condition. Allies maybe. I wondered why Apella had spoken to her. Why she had pushed us together was also a mystery to me. So was Clara’s odd demeanor. Was she crazy?
“So you worked out the gas—how long did it take you?” she asked.
“It must be about three weeks ago.”
“Oh,” she said as she looked down at her belly again. “I have been awake for a lot longer than that, maybe about four months, though time is hard to measure here, isn’t it?” she said, giggling. I felt sorry for her. Perhaps she had been driven crazy from being down here so long, with no one to talk to. I wanted to reach over and pat her head.
I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice when I replied, “Yeah I guess. So how old are you, Clara?”
“Seventeen.”
I guess the surprise on my face was quite evident.
“Yeah, I get that a lot. I’m just petite. Well, that’s what my mother always used to say. I’m tiny but mighty!” She held her tiny, thin arms up as if showing off her muscles.
I laughed. She was as cute as a button. There was something about her that I couldn’t resist. She was unhateable. Likeable. Where I was suspicious and guarded, she was warm and honest. We talked for quite a while. I asked her loads of questions. She asked me some but eased off when she worked out she was only getting one-word answers. She seemed happy to share her past with me, and it was better than staring at the wall. She talked of her love for her family. About her deep respect and admiration for her hard-working father, who worked on a large farm fixing machinery and her devotion to her mother, who taught her how to make her dolls. She explained that her mother used to make toys for the Superiors’ children. When she asked about my family I kept it brief and, sensing my reluctance, she never pushed me.
Clara talked incessantly about her home. “Palma, Ring Five!” she exclaimed, holding her hand up in mock salute. She went on to describe her home, her tiny little head nodding up and down as if attached to a spring, as she spoke. Her full, dark lips talking so fast it was hard to keep up. Palma sounded identical in size and shape to Pau Brasil but the people were different. My town was consumed with fear, where everyone watched their every move and tried so hard not to draw any attention to themselves. Palma was ruled by their love for each other. They poured themselves into creative work. They had art and stories not written in the standard, supplied history books. They even had people that made and played instruments. I was shocked. I thought all the towns were the same. That we were all in the same immovable boat, entrenched in thick, binding mud we could never pull ourselves out of. These people sounded crazy or brave, I wasn’t sure. I was shocked and so very jealous. So very jealous, until I heard how the people of Palma suffered.
“How can you do things like that? I mean, how can you get away with it, without being punished?” I asked eagerly.
She scrunched up her thin, pointed nose, “Oh, we’ve been punished.” She shook her head, recalling. “Once I saw I woman beaten to death in the street for not surrendering a simple wood pipe.”
I looked at her, puzzled. “You mean, for smoking?”
She shook her head, smiling, “No, an instrument. You blow on it to make music.” She showed me the Y shape of it by drawing it in the air and then held the invisible pipe to her lips and blew. I nodded and pretended I knew what she was talking about. What was music? “This woman fought with a policeman. The pipe had been given to her by her son, who had just left for the Classes a month earlier. She knew she would never see him again and this was all she had to remind her of him. I remember her holding onto it so tightly as the policeman tried to twist it from her fingers. They kicked her and kicked her until there was nothing left, wrenching it from her dead hands and throwing it in the bin. Others tried to intervene and they were arrested. They just disappeared. We have lost hundreds of lives trying to protect what we love.”
I recalled the heartless couple, wincing as I remembered all that blood.
I felt relieved, as stupid as it sounds, that at least one thing remained the same. They still took the children to the Classes. This, we all had in common. Still, I was quite shaken by this revelation. The people of Pau Brasil had removed their feelings. Parents were merely caretakers. I mean, I understood the reasoning behind it. What was the point of loving someone so much for eighteen years who was going to be taken away from you? I loved my mother and she loved me, but it was understood that this was always going to be temporary. So we kept each other at a distance. She’d had to say goodbye to her parents all those years ago, when she went to the Classes, and we had known my time was coming. It was foolish to care that much—it served no purpose. The way Clara’s people functioned made no sense to me. The love that she felt for her parents, her friends, what she called her ‘community’ was self-destructive in my mind. I didn’t understand it. Nor did I understand her love for that thing inside her. I didn’t get it but my heart longed for it. I had lost so much because of caring about things. I touched my stomach very gently. I wasn’t sure my heart could ever love that way again.
A woman arrived with dinner and we returned to our drone-like state. Clara was a pro at looking dazed and dopey. But she was still so cheeky, taking risks I never would. When the woman’s back was turned, she poked out her tongue. We ate in silence, waiting until the woman returned to take our plates. She checked our milkshake cups to make sure they were empty and left.
Lights out.
“Do you know what’s in those milkshakes?” I whispered in the dark. But Clara was already asleep. I could hear her soft breathing and restless movements as I tried to sleep myself. That quiet sound of air escaping her lips was the best sound in the world to me. It felt good not to be alone anymore. I excitedly made a note of all the questions I needed to ask her in the morning, knowing I would probably forget most of them.
Clara was getting more sleepy and sluggish every day. She waddled around during our exercise as best she could, but she struggled to keep up. I had noticed that other women, who looked like Clara, were disappearing from the lines. One day they were there, straining under the weight of their giant, bulging stomachs. The next day they were gone. They didn’t return. There were always new girls to take their place, though. We all wound our way through the roped-off courses like a deformed caterpillar. The line of girls compressing and expanding when one bumped into another.
Despite her exhaustion, Clara continued to radiate that aura of faith. I don’t know what she was hoping for, what gave her any hope at all. I knew for certain, she wasn’t going to get it. She was too sweet and trusting. I didn’t want to break the bubble that she had surrounded herself with. The one that let her believe she had any claim on the child she was carrying. Well, that’s not exactly true, sometimes I did. Sometimes, I wanted to take a giant, gleaming pin and pierce it, watch it explode, covering her in the dripping truth. I wanted to make her see the world the way it really was, cruel, unfair, and devoid of hope. But, knowing her, it would only strengthen her resolve.