MARTians (2 page)

“Yokum?” says Ms. Brody, without looking up from her touch screen.

“No, Zindleman,” I say. I think Yokum has been gone — six months? Maybe a year? I don’t know exactly how long. I didn’t pay that much attention to him when he was here. Why bother with boys? Aside from how they come and go, socializing makes it harder to be sexually responsible. That’s what my AnnaMom says, and she knows. I don’t remember Yokum’s face, but I do remember there used to be a Yokum because the name Yokum comes before Zindleman, or used to, when there was a Yokum.

Ms. Brody taps her screen and then looks up at me while she says, “Zoë, Zoë Zindleman.” She scrubs tissue over her eyes, across her cheeks, and under her nose. “Did you know, Zoë, that you are my best student?”

I didn’t. I mean, I suspected it. I’ve seen the result charts for the entire test population and know how my own scores fit into that picture, but no, I never knew for certain that I was the best.

“There was a time, Zoë, when a student like you would be going to university — a real university — after graduation. You could have been an economist or an engineer or an education technician, like me.” Ms. Brody’s head droops forward, and she covers her face with her hands. “I’m so sorry, Zoë,” she says, the words a little muffled by her palms, then she straightens, wipes her face, and continues. “But this is not that time. Zoë, you have been invited to apply for an entry-level position at both AllMART and Q-MART. Please check your phone to make certain that your e-tificate of graduation and your invitations to apply are transmitted.”

I do that. They are. I open to confirm receipt. I cloud-archive backups. These are important messages.

Ms. Brody’s voice changes again; it’s softer, more personal. “Good luck, Zoë. And please accept this gift from me — and your school.” She hands me a jumbo-size bag with the AllMART logo on it. Yay! But when I look inside, there is nothing but one old book. They don’t sell used books at AllMART. Far as I can see, it is a very weird gift. Maybe Ms. Brody confused it with the trash? It’s been a confusing day for all of us.

“Thank you, Ms. Brody. Good-bye,” I say.

Ms. Brody tries to smile, but it melts into tears and sweat. She wipes them away and then drops the soggy tissue into the trash bucket.

The school halls are almost empty. There are a few end-of-the-alphabet stragglers like me. There is also a long, snaking line of students wearing plastic riot shackles and zipcuffs. A bus will come soon to take them to the penitentiary. Everyone needs an entry-level position. Everyone needs to start somewhere, get that practical experience, and develop natural skills. Even if, like Abernathy’s, the natural skill waiting to be developed is cruelty.

I leave my school and step out into the world. It is strange knowing that whatever tomorrow holds, it is not 2-B.

Our house is on the market.

That’s why I always come in through the front door. I want to see my home as others see it. I know little stuff can make a big difference to a prospective buyer. I focus on the details. I pinch off a dead daylily. I make certain that the welcome mat is perfectly square with the front door.

Every house on the cul-de-sac — in the whole neighborhood, really — is for sale. But none of those houses are as nice as ours. The landscaping is dead, and the backyard pools are slimy with algae and mosquito larvae. Those people don’t even bother to close their doors to keep the raccoons out.

Our lilies are still alive.

It’s a little thing, but it matters.

I set the plastic bag with the book in it on the mat and then key the combination into the lock. The slippery bag topples over and the book slides out, pages spread open and ruffled by the hot wind. It looks like a dead butterfly, or it would, if butterflies were more rectangular and had hundreds of papery wings. Sometimes butterflies visit the daylilies by the porch. I have watched them unspool their long sipping-straw tongues and slide them like hollow needles into the secret of the flowers. Then they fly away, or the wind blows them away — it is hard to tell because butterflies seem to have so little control over where they are going. The daylilies are left behind, knocked around by the same wind but rooted in that place. The next day the yellow flower is over, crumpled and damp as a wad of tissue, and the butterfly is gone.

I gather up the book and see the words
“The flowers stirred, opening their hungry yellow mouths.”
I look once more at the daylilies shaking in the wind.

They do not look like hungry little mouths to me.

I step into the foyer, where everything is clean and serene.

It took a lot of work and a hired home stager named Jyll to get it to look so inviting. Keeping it that way is not difficult. We just don’t let a crumb fall or a drop of water bead on a faucet handle. We live by the eight-hour rule: If something comes in, it must be out within eight hours. This applies to everything from food to the junk mail gleaned from the mailbox. There is an exception for durable goods, like clothes and appliances, although we can’t afford those right now. The eight-hour rule prevents clutter. It helps us live as gently as ghosts or mannequins in our own home.

But today I am bringing things into the house. I have the bag and the book that Ms. Brody gave me. I’m not sure how the eight-hour rule will apply to them. Even though the gift is more than a little disappointing, I’m glad I have it to hold on to. It seems momentous, graduation I mean, and the e-tificate is not . . . monumental. The bag makes it more real. So I carry it with me into the family-great-room and put it down on the polished acrylic table in front of the couch. That table looks like air, only a bit shinier, and the AllMART bag sits there, hovering in space. It becomes the focal point for the whole room, although the wall of dramatic frosted windows framing the purely theoretical fireplace is supposed to have that role. Jyll, the home-staging consultant who whipped us into shape last winter, would not be pleased.

I sit on the uncomfortable couch and fish the remote from where it hides in the cushions. I press the program buttons for my homework channel. I don’t think about it. I don’t have to. My fingers know what it means when I sit on the couch with the clicker in my hands. But when the screen wakes, it is frozen on a written message:

I do not press Info. We discontinued all paid television service as part of the new austerity budget. If it isn’t free, we don’t watch it. Until today that meant I could choose between homework and local round-the-clock news. Now I have one choice:

Yes, wow! I think.

That’s the source of Sallie Lee’s moment of wow. Mine is different. At first my wow! is happy surprise. So
that’s
why I graduated today! It was for the greater good. I’m a tiny piece, but what happens to me matters! Then my wow! is sad. I feel for the Governor: how painful it must be for her to reject government. It is like rejecting herself. Public service requires heroic sacrifice like that.

I click the remote and turn away from the blank screen.

I’ve already had so much time to think today, and the stuff I have to think about is so . . . shapeless, sleep is most attractive. I stretch out flat on the tile floor of the kitchen. It’s the coolest place in the house. So that’s where my AnnaMom finds me, asleep on the kitchen floor, when she comes home hours and hours later.

AnnaMom is holding a big bag with the Yummy Bunny logo on it, and good smells of ginger and garlic are escaping, even though I know the lids on the food are sealed tight.

Yummy Bunny is my favorite. It is also more expensive, so we only get takeaway in the big bag with the red-checkered bunny on it on very special occasions.

“Thanks, AnnaMom! When did they tell you?”

AnnaMom pauses and looks at me. “Tell me? Tell me what?”

“That I’m graduated. Graduated! Really! I’ve got my e-tificate of graduation and my first job referral. Surprise!” I don’t have to tell her to be surprised. I can see that she really, really is. She isn’t pretending for the sake of celebration. She would never have dropped the bag full of dinner on the floor unless she was genuinely shocked.

“Zoë, baby, what?” says AnnaMom, and she holds her arms open. We lock each other into a hug that neither of us wants to break, but I notice that there is a trickle of soup leaking out of the bag, which is wasteful — and messy — so I give the little extra squeeze that signals hug:over and then gather the food up onto the counter while AnnaMom blots the wetness from the floor.

She looks up from the tiles, which are shining and so clean a person could eat right off them, if they wanted to, which would be a weird thing to want. “Really, Zoë,” says AnnaMom. “Did I hear you right? Did you say you are graduated? With a job referral?”

“That’s exactly what I said. Two invitations to apply, actually.”

“Wow! Fantastic! This is huge.”

I open the lids on the containers and snap the disposable chopsticks apart so we can use them. There is so much food: rice balls and soup and noodles and two boxes of tempura . . . and sticky pickled plums and tiny pink sweets to enjoy with cups of green tea. It’s a crazy feast. A big family celebration. And it’s also confusing, because my AnnaMom didn’t know that I graduated today, so we must also be celebrating something else. The house! The house! We must have sold the house. I wait for my AnnaMom to say it so we can hug again, and probably hop around while we are hugging because Wow! We sold the house.

But that isn’t what she says.

“I’m moving,” says AnnaMom.

“We’re moving?”

“Tomorrow,” she says. “I’m moving. I was worried, you know, about how it would be for you here, alone, trying to finish school, but . . .”

“. . . now we can go together?”

“. . . now it’s going to be so much less complicated. For you. Here. I’m not worried.”

Me. Here.

“Eat some tempura before it gets soggy,” says AnnaMom.

So I do. I pick up a big piece of tempura between the tips of my chopsticks and transport it to my mouth. I’m chewing, but I can’t taste anything. I could be eating a wad of toilet paper deep-fried in a lovely light batter.