Blue (16 page)

She opened her front door and headed inside. The warmth of the kiss still lingered on her lips and fluttered through her stomach.

Anytha closed the door behind her and leaned her back against it, her cheeks stuck in their smile, and realized that she was alone in the house.

She walked into the kitchen and put a bag of popcorn into the microwave, poured herself a glass of water, and went into the living room. She turned on the television just as the local news was ending. The news anchor started a story as she curled up on the couch, munching on her snack.

“Our cameras were on the scene today to capture the mayor of the Gauteng province along with the most prominent donor to the project, cutting the ribbon to open the new addition to the largest humane harvest compound in the nation, Humanity—a beautiful new girls’ dormitory.”

Anytha stared at the screen, holding a piece of popcorn to her lips as she saw the mayor of the Gauteng province holding one handle of a pair of oversized scissors, Commissioner Inali’s hands clasping the other handle, as they sliced through the green ribbon together.

C h a p t e r 
12

Tabitha awoke before her alarm, but to say that she had really slept was an exaggeration. She had awakened every hour and checked the clock, eagerly anticipating meeting Marguerite before the sunrise.

She had so many questions to ask her this morning. So many things had happened this week, and the seven days that had passed since they last spoke the weekend before had felt like an eternity. Marguerite had said so much with her eyes this week, but Tabitha had nothing but her fears to interpret their language.

The blood harvest of the day before wasn’t nearly as bad as what she had thought up in her mind. Since she had never had her blood drawn before, she had no idea what it would require of her. She felt silly after letting her mind wander into ideas that involved scalpels and draining over a hole in the floor. It was really only the prick of a needle, and about five minutes of waiting as her heart did the work of pushing the blood into the bag. Betsy was kind and gentle as always, even with a needle. But in all honesty, the after effects of the razor were still much worse than the stick of a needle in her arm once a month. She was relieved that this was seemingly all the new harvest laws entailed. Harvesting a bag of blood seemed like nothing compared to what she had imagined when she repeated the words “blood harvest” over and over in her mind.

Tabitha got out of bed and threw on some clothes that would be comfortable for the hike to the dam. She pulled on her backpack, walked out the door, and skipped quietly through the courtyard. The sky was dark, and the compound was completely still. Only the orange lights along the middle of the metal awnings over the walkways were visible—shedding an eerie glow over everything at this time of morning.

Tabitha made her way into the kitchen, picked up the usual can of beans, and grabbed the key to the door. She looked around with her flashlight for the bag of trash that Marguerite always left for her beside the door, but couldn’t see one anywhere. It was unlike Marguerite to forget anything like that. Tabitha shrugged her shoulders, and decided that she would just be extra cautious as she walked out this morning.

She pushed open the door with all of her strength and peeked around both sides to check for the guard. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. She took quiet steps until she had made it into the trees, then she pulled out her flashlight and made her way to the overpass to wait for Marguerite.

Tabitha made it out to her special rock and sat down, noticing that she could no longer hang her feet in the water. The rain had slowed down drastically the last two days, but the sky looked like it was about to burst again at any moment. She waited there, throwing rocks into the water and shining her flashlight to reflect off the ripples they made as they dropped.

She waited for what seemed like half an hour, and Tabitha began to worry about whether or not Marguerite was planning to come at all this morning. Maybe she had forgotten. Tabitha decided to give her about five more minutes, then she would walk back to the compound.

Five minutes passed. Then another five. She got up from her rock and headed back to the compound, worried that Marguerite may have been caught on her way out.

The rain began to sprinkle as Tabitha neared the compound again. She turned off her flashlight as soon as she could see a couple of steps in front of her in the light from the new girls’ dorm. The building was beautiful, and it looked as if the rooms inside were much better than those in her old dorm. She stood in the shadow of a tree beside the fence surrounding the dorm, and could hear the buzz of the powerful electricity pulsing through its wires. She peered inside, hoping to catch a glimpse of what it might look like.

As she looked hard in the windows, she couldn’t help but think about how mortifying it was to be the oldest girl left in the “child” line the day before. She was now officially the oldest resident girl living inside the compound walls, and there was nothing that she could do about it except wait. She knew that she would probably regret it one day, but she didn’t care; she wished she could just start menstruating already. She just wanted to be with the rest of the girls—with Alyssa.

She suddenly heard a voice coming from the back of the dormitory and heard a door open. She looked around in panic, wondering if she might be visible where she was standing, and tucked herself further behind the trunk of the tree, hidden in its shadow.

“Okay, now, one at a time. Just follow me,” said Marguerite’s voice from behind the dormitory, accompanied by what sounded like the tinkling of a wind chime.

Tabitha’s jaw dropped. Marguerite must have been moved into the new dorm. Why hadn’t she left her a note to let her know that she wouldn’t be able to make it out today? Or did she leave her a note and Tabitha just hadn’t seen it? Tabitha knew that it was unlike Marguerite to just not show up; she knew she must have been held up somehow. Her curiosity got the best of her, and she decided that she had to find out what Marguerite was doing.

Tabitha looked around her and saw a tree closer to the back of the dormitory with branches low to the ground about eighty yards away, and she wondered if she could make it over there without being seen. She decided that she had no other choice and sprinted to the tree, pulling herself up into the branches. She climbed high into the tree until there was a break in the leaves and peered out over the back of the dormitory.

Tabitha could see a small concrete patio behind the back door of the dorm. On the patio were about ten girls. From the patio there was a concrete walkway that led to a cinderblock building with a metal roof. Tabitha suspected it to be a building for the community bathrooms and showers for the girls in the dormitory. The girls on the patio stood motionless with their hands behind their backs, just as the residents did on harvest day. Tabitha looked all around the grounds to see Marguerite, but couldn’t seem to find her among the girls.

Suddenly, the metal door to the small concrete building opened slowly and light poured out as a girl walked out of the building, her head hung low. Marguerite stepped out behind her, placing her hand at the small of her back.

“Thanks, sweetie,” Marguerite said to her as she walked back into the dormitory. “Who’s next?”

Marguerite waved her hand to gesture to one of the girls, asking her to come with her into the bathroom. The girl walked slowly over to her, and Marguerite closed the door behind them. One by one, Tabitha watched all of the girls follow Marguerite into the bathroom, come out, and go back into the dormitory, until they had all gone in with her. As the last girl came out of the bathroom, Tabitha heard the tinkling sound again, like glass bottles hitting together on a bumpy ride in a vehicle. Out of the bathroom, Marguerite came pushing a shelved cart packed with small glass jars in rows. The glass clinked together at every bump along the trip from the bathroom into the back door of the dormitory. Marguerite opened the door and pushed the cart inside.

As the door slammed behind her, Tabitha jumped, causing some of the leaves to shake around her. The sky was just beginning to show signs that the sunrise would be coming soon. She had to get back to the compound soon, but somehow what she had just seen seemed to paralyze her there in the tree. After a few minutes of gripping the branches with white knuckles, Tabitha swallowed hard and forced her legs off of the branch that they were standing on. She climbed down the tree and sprinted to the patch of trees behind the kitchen.

There she stopped and hid behind another tree to check for guards. The guard had just rounded the corner of the compound wall, so she ran to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. She picked up the can of beans and replaced the key, then tiptoed through the back of the kitchen. She saw that the door to the pantry was slightly cracked, and she could see the edge of Marguerite’s shirt inside. She must have come straight to the kitchen. Tabitha stormed over to the door and pushed it open.

“Where were you this morning?” Tabitha whispered angrily. “Or I shouldn’t even ask that, because I saw where you were.”

As she was still speaking, Tabitha looked down to see that Marguerite had a bag of sugar and three little blue capsules on the table in front of her.

“What are you doing?” Tabitha asked, doing a double take at Marguerite’s hands. “Are those for me? Have you been emptying out my capsules?”

“Beetha, I just did it to protect you,” Marguerite said, stuttering a bit as she fumbled with the capsule in her hand.

“Marguerite! How could you do this?” Tabitha whispered loudly.

“I—I just saw what the pills were doing to the girls. They were maturing so quickly, and I just didn’t want to see you go through that,” Marguerite said, shaking her head. “It was just so unnatural—I couldn’t let you keep taking them.”

“You couldn’t have done it for Alyssa too? Or anyone else for that matter? Did you know that I’m now the oldest girl in the entire compound that doesn’t get to move into the new dorm? I’ve been separated from my only friend. It’s not like I’m not going to ‘mature’ eventually anyway. You have to stop doing this,” Tabitha said with tears in her eyes. “If the rest of the girls have to go through it, then I want to have to go through it too.”

“I couldn’t do it for everyone! Believe me, I wish I could have done it for everyone, but if they weren’t having any effect, then the doctors would have become suspicious and I would have been caught for sure. I just wanted to make sure you were safe. I didn’t want them to change you,” Marguerite said, pleading with Tabitha.

“Well, I don’t want you to do it anymore. I want to be treated just like all the other girls. I saw you. This morning in the bathroom with all those girls. I don’t even know what you were doing, but all I know is that if they have to go through it, then I want to go through it too,” Tabitha said, standing up straight and looking Marguerite straight in the eye.

“Believe me, Beetha, it’s not something that you want to rush into. Stay the way you are for as long as you can. I know you may be lonely, and it might even feel embarrassing now to be the oldest girl in the compound, but I promise you, you will not miss being there. There is nothing more embarrassing than having to endure what those girls had to endure this morning,” Marguerite replied.

“How exactly can it be more embarrassing than having a nurse shave every inch of your body once a month? Having someone get excited because your underarm and pubic hair is finally coming in thicker? I find it hard to believe that anything could be more demeaning than that,” Tabitha replied. “Just tell me so I can be ready. I needed to talk to you this morning, and you didn’t show. Tell me. What were you doing with those girls?”

“Beetha, there are things that are much more embarrassing than being shaved. I’m sorry that I missed our time this morning, but I volunteered to take over a job that I didn’t trust anyone else to do. To oversee the blood harvest of over fifty young girls. I didn’t trust anyone to treat them with the dignity and respect that I could. I couldn’t let the other girls suffer because of our little meetings,” Marguerite replied. “I’m sorry I didn’t leave you a note. The harvest started earlier than I was expecting this morning, and I didn’t have a chance.”

“I just miss you, that’s all,” Tabitha said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I miss the comfort of discussing all of this with you—in private. This is all so scary—so unknown. I’ve been thinking it over in my head, and none of my ideas make sense. Just tell me. What were you doing with those girls this morning? Please. Just tell me.”

Marguerite set her hands down on the table in front of her and sighed.

“Please,” Tabitha said, as a tear ran down her face.

“The pills don’t just make the girls start bleeding prematurely. They are also making all of their cycles line up together, so that a monthly ‘blood harvest’ can take place all at the same time. Eventually everyone will even out, but for now I am in charge of collecting it three times a day from all the girls that are currently bleeding,” Marguerite said.

“That’s disgusting,” Tabitha said, feeling her throat tighten. “I don’t understand, though. How?”

“Every girl has a—well—silicone cup thing. You use it like a tampon. I have to watch them—three times a day,” Marguerite said with a catch in her throat. “I told you, Beetha, there are things that are much more embarrassing and awful than being shaved.”

“That’s just disgusting! And the government allows this to happen? This is part of the harvest law?” Tabitha asked angrily.

“They assure me that it is all legal. The jars don’t have the same government labels on them that the blood bags do, though. I overheard Dr. Hance saying to one of the other nurses that the jars are worth five times the amount of a bag in the bush— this kind of blood is supposed to help with fertility, I guess,” Marguerite said, hearing someone coming into the kitchen. “Someone’s coming. Here, carry this tray out to the breakfast bar.”

Tabitha grabbed the tray full of danishes and walked them out to the breakfast bar as one of the other cooks walked into the kitchen.

Tabitha’s thoughts were racing. She felt torn. She didn’t know if she should be angry with Marguerite for tampering with her vitamins, or if she should be thanking her for saving her from the terrible humiliation that the other girls were having to endure. She knew that Marguerite was only trying to look out for her, so she couldn’t remain angry with her either way. Tabitha left the cafeteria and headed out to see if Alyssa would show up to their bench before the breakfast bell rang.

Tabitha sat down on the bench, pulled her knees up to her chest, and buried her face between them. She felt her eyes fill with tears, and a lump form in her throat. How could the citizens of her country allow for them to be treated this way? Exploited simply for being women.

“Sorry, I would have been here sooner, but all the girls in the other dormitory have to walk through the gated pathway back to the compound together at the same time every morning and evening. So, I guess I won’t be able to make it to our early morning talks anymore,” Alyssa said in a disappointed tone, sitting down beside her.