Blue (2 page)

“Let’s just forget everything I said this morning about the university and try to have fun today. Sweetie, if you are meant to go to school there, then it will happen. You have a way of getting what you want, you know,” Delah said with a half-smile.

Anytha caught her mother’s gaze and gave her a reassuring grin. Anytha knew that her mother had been looking forward to shopping for their activation dresses for months. There was no reason to give her any idea of her negative opinion of this particular shopping trip.

Anytha’s mother was beautiful. Just like Anytha’s, Delah’s long, brown, curly hair fell in perfect bounces around her waist. Her skin was smooth and pale by nature, unlike Anytha’s more olive complexion that she inherited from her father. Anytha couldn’t remember a time that she and her mother were in public together and didn’t capture the attention of everyone in the room. Men always took notice of Delah, and no one could blame them. She was striking in every way.

Anyone that was unfamiliar with their family would undoubtedly find it hard to believe that Delah was Anytha’s mother, though their resemblance was unbelievable. Delah found out that she was pregnant with Anytha two weeks before her sixteenth birthday. Anytha’s father, Chester, was nineteen. Delah, head over heels in love, persuaded her parents not to press charges against Chester for statutory rape as long as he promised not to leave her. Chester, who was madly in love with her as well, promised without hesitation. Shortly after Anytha’s birth, Chester asked for Delah’s hand in marriage, and she graciously accepted. They were married in a small ceremony a couple of months later.

“Oh, look. Ten percent off activation dresses with proof of birthday,” Delah said, smiling and pointing to a sign beside the door as she reached for the handle and pulled it open.

A bell chimed as they entered the store and immediately Delah began thumbing through the racks. She wouldn’t admit it, but today’s shopping trip was just as much about finding herself a dress as it was about finding one for Anytha. They browsed the racks together; the clinking of the metal hangers rang through the shop as the storeowner went to start a fitting room for the two of them. Anytha picked out a couple of dresses and handed them to the clerk who brought them to her fitting room. Delah stacked her choices high on a couch, and went back to look for more. Eventually, they both made their way to the fitting room to try on what seemed like a mountain of tiny dresses.

There was nothing in writing that said a woman’s activation dress needed to be overly sexy or immodest, but over the years it had come to be known that there was no limit to the amount of skin that could be exposed by a female activee. Hems were known to be shortened, panels were known to dip low in the back, and necklines were known to plunge. Anytha knew that it would take some convincing for her mother to allow her to buy something that didn’t incorporate all three of those revealing elements. Delah was very proud of her body, and Anytha secretly hoped that her mother wouldn’t assume that Anytha was as willing to flaunt it as she was.

Anytha thumbed through the rack of dresses in the fitting room. The white shutter doors were closed behind her and a large three-angle mirror stood in the corner of the small dressing room. She picked out the most modest of all of her choices, a little black dress with an interesting neckline. Maybe uniqueness could make-up for lewdness in her mother’s eyes.

Anytha unzipped the clear bag and pulled out the dress, rubbing the corner of the velvet hem with her thumb and forefinger. She looked at herself briefly in the mirror, and undressed. Slipping on the dress, she reached around the back to zip it up as far as she could. She relaxed her arms to take a look; the dress fit like a glove. She wouldn’t mind this dress; it wasn’t nearly as revealing as many of her other choices. Realizing that she couldn’t finish the zipper on her own, she stepped out of the dressing room to get some assistance.

Delah was already standing on a platform in front of an elaborate, full-length vintage mirror displayed in the corner of the store. Ooh’s and aah’s emanated from the staff as they gazed upon Delah, dressed in a bright blue satin frock that highlighted everything beautiful about her body. Delah turned around to see Anytha, let out a small squeal, and motioned for her to come over to the mirror. Delah grabbed her by her bare shoulders with a huge smile on her face, practically picking Anytha up and placing her on the platform herself.

“Anytha, it’s gorgeous!” Delah squealed. “It looks like it was made for you!”

Delah reached for the zipper, snugly zipped it all the way up the back of Anytha’s neck, and buttoned the snaps at her hairline. The clerk brought over a strappy pair of black stilettos and handed them to Anytha. Anytha put them on as gracefully as possible, and stood up to inspect herself.

The hem of the dress hit Anytha mid-thigh, and highlighted her long, muscular legs beautifully. The heels made her calves form chiseled, but feminine, round lines. The dress hugged around her torso, and the velvet bodice ended like a strapless dress, with a sweetheart shape on her chest. Snugly around her neck was a strip of velvet in the shape of a short turtleneck, about two inches wide. Connecting the bodice to the collar was see-through black mesh, forming a triangular shape from the neck to the bodice. The mesh formed the same triangular shape in the back from the neck to the top of the bodice. The dress did, in fact, look as if it was made for her. She felt covered enough.

Anytha smiled at her reflection. She decided that the dress was adequate enough and told the clerk that she could wrap it up. The clerk unzipped the top of the dress for her, and Anytha headed back to the dressing room to get changed.

“I’m pretty jealous that you picked the first one you even tried on! Why is it never so simple for me?” Delah asked as she passed Anytha, this time wearing a stiff red taffeta dress.

As Anytha pulled on her skirt, she realized that she hadn’t even looked at the price tag on the dress. For some reason she knew that her mother wouldn’t care how much it cost if she approved of it. She hung the dress on the hook, and flipped the tag around. It was 3,100 rands, much more than she thought that the dress was worth, but she knew it was around the price her parents were expecting to pay. She flicked the tag, slipped on her t-shirt, and walked back into the store.

Anytha sat and watched her mother try on dresses for another forty-five minutes, and with each one, the compliments flowed from the staff. Delah finally decided on an off-the-shoulder blue taffeta dress with one strap, which hugged her tummy and hips in all the right places. She decided to put it back on one more time before she bought it, with a pair of silver heels. She tousled her hair, pinched her cheeks and pouted her lips in front of the mirrors, finally giving the saleswoman a reassuring nod and a wink. This was the one for her.

They walked up to the counter together and laid their bags and boxes down.

“Your total comes to 7857.57 rands,” the cashier said, unswayed.

Delah swiped her credit card with confidence, and looked over at Anytha, who rose up onto her toes, half-smiled, and raised her eyebrows.

A few more months and the day would come and go. A few more months and it would all be over.

C h a p t e r 
2

Tabitha could tell that the sunrise was going to be breathtaking this morning. The gray sky was fluffed with clouds overhead, and she knew that they would be stunning drenched in the morning light. She couldn’t wait to make it out to their spot this morning, and take a moment to sip the sky—to drink in the few minutes of the week where she felt free from the concrete walls of the compound.

She had left her room a half-hour earlier than normal, not really knowing why she had awoken so early, but excited to take the hike out to the rock where she and Marguerite could talk without worry of anyone listening. It had been their custom for two years to sneak out to the dam long before the other residents were awake and sit among the boulders under the overpass, skipping rocks on the Vaal, and observing the water levels as the seasons changed.

Her sandaled feet clung to the rocks along the pathway that she had beaten through the small patch of trees just beyond the concrete wall, as her flashlight lit the way down to the river. Tabitha reached their meeting place an hour before sunrise, and knew that Marguerite wouldn’t be arriving for half an hour.

Marguerite was intelligent and fascinating, and Tabitha loved her as if she was her own sister. Tabitha didn’t mind waking up hours before sunrise just to have a few minutes alone with Marguerite, to hear what she might have overheard from the rest of the compound staff the previous week. Marguerite gave Tabitha an education that she could never receive within the walls of the compound; the few minutes of talking on Sunday morning were more precious to her than the thirty hours a week she spent in school.

Marguerite was one of the few residents of the compound that wasn’t afflicted with albinism; her main affliction was a skin disorder that she called her “spots.” Tabitha had done some research on the subject, and found that the medical term for her condition was called Vitiligo. After seeing other people that had the condition, she had come to the conclusion that Marguerite must have a minor case of it. Marguerite’s face only had one white spot in the middle of her right cheek that stood out from the rest of her dark brown skin, but her arms and legs were covered with stark contrasting spots. Marguerite had full lips and beautiful black eyes, and though she was over the age of eighteen and had the choice to avoid harvest and just pay for her stay in the compound out of her salary, she chose to allow them to harvest her hair anyway. Her monthly harvest paid almost as much as her salary.

Marguerite wore a scarf around her head all the time, like most of the girls did to hide their bald heads, but Tabitha knew that baldness was not the only reason Marguerite was never seen without her headscarf. She hadn’t been as lucky as Tabitha to avoid the black market harvesters before she had come to the compound. She wore the scarf tied farther on one side than the other to cover the hole in the side of her head where her left ear used to be—the main ingredient to the antidote that the healers used to heal the deaf.

Marguerite had finished her schooling at the compound a couple of years ago, and still fearing life outside of the compound walls, had taken on full-time employment in the kitchen. Over the last two years, she had been promoted twice and was now the head chef at the compound, a trusted member of the staff. She also happened to be in charge of tossing out all of the trash from the kitchen every night, which made her one of the few in the compound with a working key to the outside. Every Saturday night she would leave her extra key under the second row of canned beans on the top shelf of the pantry in the kitchen; Tabitha would retrieve it on Sunday morning, slip it in the keyhole in the heavy door, type Marguerite’s code into the keypad, pull open the door with all of her strength and slip out behind the walk-in freezer into the sparse patch of trees just outside the compound walls.

The compound never had guards stirring at this time of the morning. If there were guards out at this time, they were probably new to the job. Obviously, if they were given such a terrible time of day to be on guard, they must be rookies. Tabitha had only been caught once in the two years of their weekly outings, and the bag of trash she carried with her had duped the guard. Marguerite said that it may have been less about the bag of trash and more about Tabitha’s “cute, little, innocent face” that convinced the guard. But Tabitha liked to believe it was because of the trash combined with her keen ability to talk her way out of the situation.

Tabitha sat down on her favorite rock, let her arms rest down at her sides as she placed her weight on her hands, leaned forward, and tilted her head up, breathing the biggest breath she had ever breathed. The water had been steadily rising each week; the rainy season was only beginning and already the water was higher than she had ever remembered. Tabitha shone her flashlight down to the river, and pointed her toe toward where the light touched the water. Only a few more feet and her small subconscious dream of soaking her feet from this pit in the rocks would come true. She lay back on the boulder, placed her backpack under her head, and tried not to drift off to sleep.

“Couldn’t stay awake this time, Beetha?” Marguerite asked as she lay her backpack down on the rock.

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was just daydreaming,” Tabitha replied with a sleepy grin.

“It’s not daydreaming if the sun hasn’t even risen yet,” Marguerite snarked with a sarcastic smile.

As the sun seeped over the water, the conversation illuminated between the two of them. The grayness around them faded, and with the morning light, Tabitha’s beauty lit up like a bulb. Today she wore a colorful new scarf around her mostly bald head, which she had been lucky enough to snag from the donation bin before anyone else had claimed it. There were many perks to being friends with Marguerite, and getting the first pick of the donations was definitely one of them.

“Hey, did you happen to catch a peek at the new girl’s dorm on your way out this morning?” Marguerite asked. “I heard that they should be finishing it up in the next couple of weeks.”

“No, it was too dark when I passed,” Tabitha replied. “They didn’t have the lights on.”

“They gave the staff a tour last week. It’s really nice on the inside. And it’s nice to see a building around here that isn’t made of solid concrete for a change. I mean, even if it is still surrounded by a huge electric fence. It will be sad when they actually build the wall around it. It’s too pretty to hide,” Marguerite said. “I hope that they’ll let me move in there with you girls when it opens.”

“Well, good.” Tabitha said, shrugging her shoulders and looking down at the ground. “Anything has got to be better than what we have now. I just feel bad for the rest of the kids that aren’t going to be able to move in there.”

“I know. And not to make you worry, but in our staff meeting the other day, they talked about how the government is working on a new bill that is going to allow them to make more money off of us. And with that money they’re going to start doing more renovations on the compounds,” Marguerite said. “So, I mean, maybe it is a good thing. Maybe they will actually start making some improvements.”

“Great,” Tabitha sighed, with a coughing laugh. “So, they’re going to take more from us so that we can have more comfortable housing. That sounds fair.”

“Well, it’s better than them taking more from us and using it elsewhere where the residents don’t benefit at all,” Marguerite said. “They said at the staff meeting that they’re in the middle of voting for more liberal harvest laws. That they could go into effect sometime even in the next few weeks. It’s inevitable that they’re going to find a way to take more from us, eventually. I’m just glad that they are at least talking about using that money to help us directly.”