Blue (25 page)

She walked out of the bathroom and sat down on the seat in front of her dressing table to put on some modest makeup. When she was satisfied with what she saw, she reached for a magazine on a bookshelf in the corner of her room, and started thumbing through the pages to pass the time until she needed to get dressed to go to the dinner party.

Shortly before seven o’clock, Alyssa showed up at Tabitha’s door, knocking right as Tabitha was zipping up the back of her dress.

“You ready?” Alyssa asked, pushing open the door of her bedroom.

“Yeah,” Tabitha said, pulling on her shoes.

The girls walked together to the main hall, and as they approached, they could hear music coming from inside. Tabitha noticed that outside the main hall were long black cars and a couple of limousines pulling into the circle drive in front of the marble steps. Out of each car stepped the driver, who would open the door to the back seat, and out would step one or two men dressed in fine suits, just like the one that Inali wore when he introduced himself to the girls earlier that day. The drivers closed the doors behind the men and returned to their post, driving their cars out of the circle drive and out the gate of the compound.

Tabitha and Alyssa approached the front door, followed closely behind by a few of the other girls their age. Tabitha couldn’t help but notice just how much older all of the girls looked, dressed up and with their hair dyed and elegant makeup on. Tabitha looked a little underdone for the occasion after looking at the effort everyone else had put into their façade, but somehow the thought comforted her. She didn’t want to look like someone else. She didn’t want to look ten years older than she actually was. She wanted to look like herself, and she had already allowed them to dye her hair and her eyebrows. She refused to let them take more of herself away. She regretted letting them touch that dye brush to her hair in the first place.

They walked up the front steps and through the open doors into the foyer of the hall, and from all around came the golden glow of the lights of the chandeliers. The room was warm, and the music was loud as they walked into the ballroom. Tabitha looked around the room, seeing small cliques of girls chatting together, and noticed a few men approaching them with drinks in their hands. Throughout the room scurried wait staff with silver trays full of bite-sized pieces of food, offering them to the cliques of guests, who would take a piece from the tray and daintily place them in their mouths. In the corner of the room was what looked to be a bar. A man in a white shirt and tie was standing behind it, pouring drinks from glass bottles and handing them to the men that approached.

“This is so fancy!” Alyssa whispered to Tabitha, who stared forward, taking in the scope of the room.

Tabitha decided that she would take up stock in a corner, sit on a bench, and attempt to avoid contact with anyone. She looked around the room for the safest place to linger and touched Alyssa’s arm.

“I’m just going to go sit over there. I’m still not feeling the greatest,” Tabitha said.

“Okay, well, I’m going to go and stand with some of the girls over there,” Alyssa said, walking over to a group of her friends and quickly joining their conversation.

Tabitha sat down in the corner and looked around the room for Marguerite, but she was nowhere to be found. Was she in the kitchen preparing the food? Was she not invited to this event? Tabitha longed to meet her gaze for her response to what was really going on at this “celebration,” but she was nowhere in the building.

Tabitha’s eyes locked in on Alyssa as she stood chatting with a group of girls. A young man with olive skin approached her with a bubbling flute in his hand and handed it to her. She blushed as she accepted the drink and took a sip, wincing a bit at the flavor, but attempting not to show him that she had obviously never tasted alcohol before. The man stood talking with her and sipped on a short glass of an amber liquid, seeming to make her laugh with every comment that he made.

Tabitha felt her stomach growl and secretly wished that one of the servers would make their way over to her bench. She refused to get up and mingle among the group, even if it meant that she wouldn’t have anything to eat tonight.

From the doors at the front of the building, she saw Commissioner Inali walk in as the small crowd of people in the foyer applauded his arrival. He nodded to them and bowed slightly, then stretched out his arms as if to tell everyone to enjoy the spoils of the party.

Tabitha watched Inali make his way through the small groups of people gathered all over the room, and saw him say hello, nod, and smile at every group, greeting some of the men with a firm handshake, and others with a hug. Tabitha couldn’t help but think that Inali had already made acquaintance with each of the men by the way he shook their hands and mouthed their names as he greeted them.

Tabitha reverted her attention again to Alyssa, who was seated on a leather couch next to the man who had brought her a drink. The two sat together, talking and laughing hysterically at each other, sipping on their drinks. Alyssa playfully touched his arm as she laughed and drank the last sip. The man took her glass and walked over to the bar, grabbing another flute of the bubbly drink. He handed it to Alyssa, taking a seat next to her again on the couch and setting his glass down on a small table in front of them.

“Can I offer you a drink?” came a voice from a few feet beside her, entering in through a door from the lobby. Tabitha looked up to see Commissioner Inali with a flute of the same liquid that Alyssa had been drinking in the hand that he extended to her.

“Thanks,” Tabitha said, taking the glass from him and setting it down in her lap. Inali looked at her, as if he expected her to take a sip, and she obliged. The foreign flavor flooded her mouth as she took in the tiny sip and attempted to hold back a cringe.

“You don’t look like you’re having very much fun here,” Inali said, sitting next to her on the bench. “Is there anything that I can do to change that? I hate to see one of my honored guests sulking in the corner.”

“The party is wonderful. I just haven’t been feeling well today,” Tabitha said, rolling the stem of her glass between two fingers. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to offend anyone.”

“Oh, no. No need to apologize. Are you hungry?” Inali asked.

“I could eat something, I think,” Tabitha said.

Inali snapped his fingers and motioned for one of the waiters to come over.

“Shrimp cocktail,” the waiter said, leaning down as Tabitha reached for one of the shrimp and dipped it in the red sauce in the middle of the tray.

Inali attempted to make small talk with Tabitha, and as the two sat together, a small crowd of people formed around them. A few of the girls attempted to start conversations with Inali, and touched his arms as they laughed at every comment that came out of his mouth. Tabitha just sat there motionless, pretending to take a sip of her drink every so often, and smiling every once in a while when Inali would turn his attention from the crowd back to her for a moment.

Inali spent the majority of the rest of the evening within a few feet of Tabitha’s bench. Throughout the night every waitperson had come by, and Tabitha had sampled a bit of everything in the room. As the night drew on, a few of the men began to walk out of the doors, and were getting into their cars outside. Slowly all the men began to say goodbye to the girls, kissing them politely on the hand as they turned to leave. When most of the men had left, Tabitha stood up to follow some of the girls out of the room.

“Leaving without even saying goodbye?” Inali asked, approaching Tabitha from across the room.

“I’m so sorry. Thank you for a lovely evening,” Tabitha said, not sure what to do with her hands.

“I wanted to give you something. I know that it may have been a little bit weird at this party tonight, but if anyone gives you any trouble or makes you feel uncomfortable around here, or if you see any of these wonderful girls being treated like anything less than princesses, I want you to call me directly. I just got one of the new cellular phones, so you can reach me any time, day or night,” Inali said, writing down a set of numbers onto a napkin and handing it to her.

“Okay. I will do that. But I don’t exactly have access to a phone,” Tabitha said.

“Oh, I thought they had hooked up the phones in your rooms last week. I’ll make sure that it gets done immediately,” Inali said.

Inali leaned in and grabbed her hand, planting a soft kiss on it. Tabitha felt nervous, and pulled her hand away a bit too soon and nodded to him.

“Goodnight, Tabitha. I hope I get to see you again soon,” Inali said, bowing to her and then walking out into the foyer.

C h a p t e r 
23

Anytha excused herself from the office and went out into the lobby of the building, holding back tears as she walked through the glass doors and toward the main gate of the compound. She stared at the guard at the gate until he opened it for her, and with every gate that she walked through, the tears became harder to hold back. Once she made it outside, she leaned up against the wall of the compound, and let the tears begin to escape and roll down her cheeks. She wiped them off of her face, trying to sort through all the thoughts racing through her mind, when out of the corner of her eye she saw the branches of a lone Jacaranda tree. It was beside the wall, where the fence that was to surround the construction zone for the new dormitory began. Anytha pressed off the wall, walked over to the tree, and dropped down to her knees in front of its trunk. She slid from her knees onto her hip and sat down on the ground, wiping the tears from her eyes and inspecting the bark of the tree with her fingertips. She let her hand fall back down to the ground and began to write with her finger, in the fresh soil near the edge of the tree, the letters of her sister’s name.

Tabitha. Anytha couldn’t help noticing the similarities in their names as she scratched it into the soil. She remembered her father mentioning that she had almost been Agatha, and as she scratched the last letter of Tabitha’s name into the dirt, she noticed the similarity between the three of them. She pulled her hand away, and stared at the name, forcing herself to feel the weight of her sister’s life. She mourned the loss of the sister that she had always wished she could have, and pressed back the feelings of rage that welled up inside of her at the thought of all the lies she had been told over the years. This moment was not a moment to be angry. Anytha wanted to remember this moment as one where she paid tribute to the little girl that she had never known; to pay respect to someone that probably never felt loved for her entire life inside the compound walls.

Anytha sat underneath the tree, staring at her sister’s name in the dirt, as she heard footsteps approaching her from behind. She looked up to see Ari. He took a seat next to her in the dirt. The two sat together in silence for what seemed like an hour, just staring together at the name that Anytha had scribbled into the earth.

“I just can’t believe that they never told me about her,” Anytha said, wiping the tears off of her cheeks. “All the times I asked for a sibling. I had one all along. I could have gone to visit her. I could have been her family. I could have been her friend.”

“How did you find her?” Ari asked, rubbing her back in gentle circles.

“She was the only white resident registered in the two years that she could have been registered before I would have remembered her being born,” Anytha said, looking up at Ari. “I mean, they didn’t even write her birthday. I guess she could have been born later, but this name was scratched in the top blank—Tabitha. That name. I just know she was my sister. I just know it.”

“How do you know your parents didn’t sell her to a different compound? Don’t lose hope yet. She might still be alive,” Ari said. “Don’t you think you should confront your parents about this and see what they have to say for themselves?”

“I don’t know what I want to do. I’m so angry with my parents, I don’t even know where to begin. I wouldn’t even know what to say. It just sounds like exactly something they would do. Sell their own child away for some quick money, even though they had all the means available to protect her. We were never starving growing up. We always made it. And they justified it because they thought they were protecting her. Protecting her from the terrible world that was out to get her. God, I just never thought they were capable of being that selfish,” Anytha said, pausing and looking up at Ari. “To think that I always dreamed of having a sibling. But, they never supported any of my dreams.”

“Well, maybe they’ve changed. I mean, they did buy you your car and pay for your tuition this semester,” Ari said.

“Yeah. And you know—that just seems so out of character for them. It doesn’t seem like something they would ever do without a motive. It’s almost like they wanted me to leave them alone,” Anytha said. “Don’t get me wrong, I was so thankful for those things, but they have never done anything JUST for me in my entire life. It still seems strange to me.”

“I don’t want to say that it is one hundred percent true, but, hypothetically, maybe your mom was feeling guilty about your sibling, especially if she thought that they may have been hurt or killed in the flood. Maybe she just didn’t want you around to see her mourning and struggling over it,” Ari said. “I mean, a decision that she made over fifteen years ago could have come back to haunt her, and she may have just needed some time to process it. Without you around. I mean, she still shouldn’t have lied to you. Please don’t think I’m justifying their actions at all, I’m just trying to hopefully help you figure this all out.”

Anytha stared down at the letters that she had scratched into the ground as she racked her brain for every memory from her last trip home, trying to piece together a puzzle that didn’t seem to have a solution with a happy ending. Her mother crying in front of the television when the news story came up about the flood. Their excitement over the Termination of Pregnancy Act. Her mom and dad being sick with food poisoning. Her dad going with her to buy the car. Her mom showing up at Humanity with Inali. A terrible feeling came over her as she realized that her mind had found the connections that tied all the links together, and she lifted her head to look Ari in the eye.

“Ari. What if she’s pregnant again?” Anytha asked, pushing off the ground to stand up as she felt the anger well up inside of her even more. “She’s feeling guilty. But not because she sold her child to the compound. She’s only feeling guilty about that because she died.”

“What are you trying to say?” Ari asked, following behind her as Anytha stormed over to the car.