Valedictorian
N. K. Jemisin
THERE ARE THREE THINGS ZINHLE DECIDES, WHEN SHE IS OLD enough to understand. The first is that she will never, ever give less than her best to anything she tries to do. The second is that she will not live in fear. The third, which is perhaps meaningless, given the first two, and yet comes to define her existence most powerfully, is this: she will be herself. No matter what.
For however brief a time.
“Have you considered getting pregnant?” her mother blurts one morning, over breakfast.
Zinhle’s father drops his fork, but he recovers and picks it up again quickly. This is how Zinhle knows that what her mother has said is not a spontaneous burst of insanity. They have discussed the matter, her parents. They are in agreement. Her father was just caught off guard by the timing.
But Zinhle, too, has considered the matter in depth. Do they really think she wouldn’t have? “No,” she says.
Zinhle’s mother is stubborn. This is where Zinhle herself gets the trait. “The Sandersens’ boy—you used to play with him when you were little, remember?—he’s decent. Discreet. He got three girls pregnant last year, and doesn’t charge much. The babies aren’t bad-looking. And we’d help you with the raising, of course.” She hesitates, then adds, with obvious discomfort, “A friend of mine at work—Charlotte, you’ve met her—she says he’s, ah, he’s not rough or anything, doesn’t try to hurt girls—”
“No,” Zinhle says again, more firmly. She does not raise her voice. Her parents taught her to be respectful of her elders. She believes respect includes being very, very clear about some things.
Zinhle’s mother looks at her father, seeking an ally. Her father is a gentle, soft-spoken man in a family of strong-willed women. Stupid people think he is weak; he isn’t. He just knows when a battle isn’t worth fighting. So he looks at Zinhle now, and after a moment he shakes his head. “Let it go,” he says to her mother, and her mother subsides.
They resume breakfast in silence.
Zinhle earns top marks in all her classes. The teachers exclaim over this, her parents fawn, the school officials nod their heads sagely and try not to too-obviously bask in her reflected glory. There are articles about her in the papers and on Securenet. She wins awards.
She hates this. It’s easy to perform well; all she has to do is try. What she wants is to be the best, and this is difficult when she has no real competition. Beating the others doesn’t mean anything, because they’re not really trying. This leaves Zinhle with no choice but to compete against herself. Each paper she writes must be more brilliant than the last. She tries to finish every test faster than she did before. It isn’t the victory she craves, not exactly; the satisfaction she gains from success is minimal. Barely worth it. But it’s all she has.
The only times she ever gets in trouble are when she argues with her teachers, because they’re so often wrong. Infuriatingly, frustratingly wrong. In the smallest part of her heart, she concedes that there is a reason for this: a youth spent striving for mediocrity does not a brilliant adult make. Old habits are hard to break, old fears are hard to shed, all that. Still—arguing with them, looking up information and showing it to them to prove their wrongness, becomes her favorite pastime. She is polite, always, because they expect her to be uncivilized, and because they are also her elders. But it’s hard. They’re old enough that they don’t have to worry, damn it; why can’t they at least try to be worthy of her effort? She would kill for one good teacher. She is dying for one good teacher.
In the end, the power struggle, too, is barely worth it. But it is all she has.
“Why do you do it?” asks Mitra, the closest thing she has to a best friend.
Zinhle is sitting on a park bench as Mitra asks this. She is bleeding: a cut on her forehead, a scrape on one elbow, her lip where she split it on her own teeth. There is a bruise on her ribs shaped like a shoe print. Mitra dabs at the cut on her forehead with an antiseptic pad. Zinhle only allows this because she can’t see that one herself. If she misses any of the blood, and her parents see it, they’ll be upset. Hopefully the bruises won’t swell.
“I’m not doing anything,” she snaps in reply. “They did this, remember?” Samantha and the others, six of them. The last time, there were only three. She’d managed to fight back then, but not today.
Crazy ugly bitch, Zinhle remembers Sam ranting. She does not remember the words with complete clarity; her head had been ringing from a blow at the time. My dad says we should’ve shoved your family through the Wall with the rest of the cockroaches. I’m gonna laugh when they take you away.
Six is better than three, at least.
“They wouldn’t if you weren’t…” Mitra trails off, looking anxious. Zinhle has a reputation at school. Everyone thinks she’s angry all the time, whether she is or not (the fact that she often is, notwithstanding). Mitra knows better, or she should. They’ve known each other for years. But this is why Zinhle qualifies it whenever she explains their friendship to others. Mitra is like her best friend. A real best friend, she feels certain, would not fear her.
“What?” Zinhle asks. She’s not angry now either, partly because she has come to expect no better from Mitra, and partly because she hurts too much. “If I wasn’t what, Mit?”
Mitra lowers the pad and looks at her for a long, silent moment. “If you weren’t stupid as hell.” She seems to be growing angry herself. Zinhle cannot find the strength to appreciate the irony. “I know you don’t care whether you make valedictorian. But do you have to make the rest of us look so bad ?”
One of Zinhle’s teeth is loose. If she can resist the urge to tongue it, it will probably heal and not die in the socket. Probably. She challenges herself to keep the tooth without having to visit a dentist.
“Yeah,” she says wearily. “I guess I do.”
When Zinhle earns the highest possible score on the post-graduation placement exam, Ms. Threnody pulls her aside after class. Zinhle expects the usual praise. The teachers know their duty, even if they do a half-assed job of it. But Threnody pulls the shade on the door, and Zinhle realizes something else is in the offing.
“There’s a representative coming to school tomorrow,” Threnody says. “From beyond the Firewall. I thought you should know.”
For just a moment, Zinhle’s breath catches. Then she remembers Rule 2—she will not live in fear—and pushes this aside. “What does the representative want?” she asks, thinking she knows. There can be only one reason for this visit.
“You know what they want.” Threnody looks hard at her. “They say they just want to meet you.”
“How do they know about me?” Like most students, she has always assumed that those beyond the Firewall are notified about each new class only at the point of graduation. The valedictorian is named then, after all.
“They’ve had full access to the school’s networks since the war.” Threnody grimaces with a bitterness that Zinhle has never seen in a teacher’s face before. Teachers are always supposed to be positive about the war and its outcome. “Everyone brags about the treaty, the treaty. The treaty made sure we kept critical networks private, but gave up the noncritical ones. Like a bunch of computers would give a damn about our money or government memos! Shortsighted fucking bastards.”