On Such a Full Sea (20 page)

But the truth of the dorms, as Tico would tell Fan after she first saw it, was that life happened behind the doors, the people rarely coming out and communing. Unlike us, they were from everywhere and were derived from all strains, universally diverse but perhaps too much so for their ideal collective good. And then there was the more significant matter of their work, as with Tico’s and his parents’ before him, which was mostly off- or long-shift service jobs, one-to-one or solo tasks such as home nursing or tutoring, waitressing or village security. Of course, the children got together in the neighborhood academies, but there were limited slots on the few sports teams and choral or theater troupes, and most had to go back to the towers right after the last bell anyway and look after their younger siblings, as every able-bodied parent was working to cover the ever-rising costs of rent, and food, and schooling. Though some moved up and out, most dormies were stuck, as Tico’s parents had been since they were young people, never quite making enough to make an entrepreneurial stab at opening a main-street business or to save for a down payment on a real Charter condo.

Miss Cathy had never actually driven into a service neighborhood—why would she?—and after a few moments parked in one of the lots beside a tower, she put the car into reverse to leave. But Fan spied an empty playground behind the building and asked if they could try the seesaw and swings. Miss Cathy looked repelled by the idea, but she agreed when she saw how much Fan wanted to, deciding the poor girl had probably never seen a playground before. So they rode the creaky seesaw, Miss Cathy having to sit toward the middle for balance, and then took turns on the swings, with Miss Cathy in fact going first, as Fan insisted on pushing her. Which she did, with all her strength, digging in and bursting forward like a sled driver while timing her push on the woman’s soft rump and ducking beneath her to send her soaring. Miss Cathy gave a whoop at the height, and when she began swinging her legs on her own, Fan quickly ran into the lobby of the building, from where she could see Miss Cathy happily propelling herself. She touched the screen and scrolled down the names to see if she could find any Bo and/or Liwei in the resident list. But there was nothing. A woman and her son came out of the elevator and Fan asked her if she could bring up a master listing of the residents of all the village’s towers. The woman asked why and Fan told her the reason and she said she wasn’t sure it was possible but would try, but then an urgent knocking on the glass window of the lobby stopped her. It was Miss Cathy. Her face had gone pale, her expression one of acute hurt and bafflement, her jaw now threaded through with cords of rage.

I didn’t know where you were! she shouted, making herself clearly heard through the glass. She entered the lobby and grabbed Fan’s hand from the screen and said, Don’t touch that, and dragged her to the car.

When they got home, they had to wash. They had done something like this before but now Miss Cathy knew exactly how she wanted it done, her brow tensing with expectation. Mala was ordered to get fresh towels and the bar of green laundry soap flecked with grit while Miss Cathy ran the water in the vegetable sink in the kitchen until it was hot. First she took Fan’s hands in hers and moistened all four of them in the water. She then used a tile scrubber to brush the skin of their palms and backs of the hands, spreading out their fingers to get in between. She used a different brush to clean under their fingernails, just as a surgeon might, working between the fingers and again on the palms and up the forearms, right to the elbows. And when the soap arrived, she rubbed the bar all over the prepped, reddened skin, softer now and pliant, which harshly stung, though not as much as when she redeployed the first brush, working the soap into a lather before spraying it off with the steaming water. Only then did she let Mala blot their hands and forearms with the towels, and after Mala took them away to be laundered, Fan thought she could catch mixed up with the pine oil and lye the babylike scent of raw new flesh.

After that, though they never went back to the towers, when they returned from their afternoons out, they went through this ritual. Miss Cathy never mentioned venturing into the service neighborhood, or the fact that anything was at all different, and that they had visited only her customary shops and lunch places was of no consequence; for once the shopping bags were set down, they had to roll up their sleeves and run the hot tap, Miss Cathy retrieving the brushes from under the sink while Mala fetched the soap and towels. It was as if after that brief moment in the lobby a dormant circuit had been restored, an accidental rewiring that changed nothing apparent in the woman’s revitalized mood or other routines but which set in motion this one, unerring operation. Fan complied without a word, scrubbing her skin as vigorously as Miss Cathy did her own, though the action seemed more to awaken the woman than punish her, her eyes never as lighted and alive. To Fan it was painful but the pain was made worse by the iron schedule of it, the thought of the hard scrape of the bristles to come, and once she set her mind to blocking the anticipation, the sensation itself could be endured. In fact, if she cast it right, she could believe that she was being honed instead of abraded, ever sharpened in her resolve to find Liwei, despite having no signs of him whatsoever and no other way to search for him. She was certain all she needed was time, and time—Mister Leo now comprehending this best—was plentiful in this house. Indeed, of the three of them, it was Mala who appeared to be most distressed, for she had to attend to their washing and simply stand by, wondering when Miss Cathy would reprise what she had done with every other girl before.

One evening after dinner, when Fan was sitting with Mala and Tico having a snack and tea, Miss Cathy appeared in the kitchen. She had appeared so before at night, always viewing her programs in the office. She was holding a remote, and when Mala saw this, she immediately apologized for removing the recharging deck from the office, as it was not working anymore. She said a new one would be delivered in the morning, but if Miss Cathy wanted, she could call and perhaps have it delivered tonight, but now Miss Cathy was completely unconcerned with this fact. Instead she was glaring at Fan sitting before the plate of
mochi
at the kitchen table as though she had committed a terrible crime.

Have you been here since we ate dinner?

Yes, Fan said. I often help clean up.

I thought you went to your room to study or watch. That’s always where I find you.

Fan told her she did, usually right around now. At this point Tico excused himself to give Mister Leo his bath.

I thought you were in your room, Miss Cathy said, with a sharpness that officially ended the conversation. She dropped the remote on the island and left.

When Fan went up to her bedroom, Miss Cathy was already there, waiting for her. Usually Miss Cathy came in and sat down on the bed, and they briefly talked about what Fan was doing, either in her studies or the program she was watching, though never for very long. She was not terribly interested in the details Fan offered, as Mala always was; it was simply about their convening before each retired for the night, checking in, as a mother would, to make sure her child was comfortable and happy and ready for sleep. But of course, Miss Cathy would take the many extra steps of inspecting Fan’s hands and nails and teeth and hair, the soles of her feet and toes, to make sure she was as clean as could be, though still rarely touching her. In fact, she almost never did, except for that first time they did their scrubbing, nor did she ever caress or embrace her.

But that night she did, gesturing Fan forward and hugging her; she even kissed Fan on the forehead, her lips dry and cool. She pressed Fan to her chest for what seemed a very long time. And then the woman took a step back and beheld her, with what to Fan could only be described as a great welling of satisfaction and pride.

We’re finally getting to know each other, aren’t we? Miss Cathy said.

Yes, answered Fan.

We want to be happy, don’t we?

Fan nodded.

As happy as we can be?

Again she nodded.

And do you know, Fan, how we can make that happen?

No, Fan said, taking a step back now, from the wildness in the woman’s eyes.

It’s how it always happens. You’re young, but I think you know. It’s this way: We make our special place. Our very own little spot. Our little world. Where we’ll live with one mind and heart. Do you understand me?

Fan said she did, though this time just with her eyes.

Oh, Fan, you’ve done so well here!

Miss Cathy leaped forward and embraced her tightly enough that Fan nearly became faint, her face jammed between the woman’s plush breasts, which smelled of nervous dampness, a fast souring.

I’m so proud of you. Everything’s changed since you’ve come!

Fan figured she was referring to Mister Leo, and that she had somehow spurred Miss Cathy to do something finally, though seeing the woman’s heightened, almost disordered, expression, it wasn’t clear this was what she meant at all.

Miss Cathy asked her if she wanted to take one of her “friends” with her, namely one of the many dolls and stuffed animals she bought for Fan on their sprees.

Where are we going? Fan asked.

To my place, Miss Cathy said. You’ve not been there yet but I know you’ll like it. We have a special spot for you.

Fan shook her head but Miss Cathy did not notice, or did not want to, and simply cupped Fan’s shoulder and walked her down the length of the house, to the far end, where she and Mister Leo had had their separate suites. There were double doors to each, and when Miss Cathy touched the knob, there was a click and they entered through the doors on the right, which automatically locked behind them. The suite was an immense multichambered room, the first part of which was furnished with a loveseat and armchairs and coffee table. Next was the bedroom, where Miss Cathy’s king-sized bed was made up with fancy linens and abundant throws and shams. Beyond the bed was another entire section of the suite behind curtained glass French doors, which Fan assumed was where the dressing room and bathroom were. Miss Cathy led her around the bed. On the far side was a young child’s mattress on a low steel platform, short enough in length that Fan’s own feet might hang over its edge. It was made up very plainly, with just a white sheet and a thin gray-brown flannel blanket, which made it seem almost penal, particularly in contrast to the opulence and great size of the bed beside it.

Miss Cathy was almost teary-eyed, she was so pleased with the sight.

This is where you’ll stay, she beamed. Right next to me. No one else but you for the next three days. It’ll be so nice.

I prefer to stay in my own room, Fan told her. Or else downstairs with Mala.

That’s no longer possible, Miss Cathy said. This is your place now. We’d like to keep you.

You and Mala?

Mala? Miss Cathy said, her voice gone totally cold. Mala has nothing to do with anything.

That’s when a giggling could be heard coming from behind the curtained French doors. There was a tiny knock. Miss Cathy said, Yes, dear, and the door opened. It was one of the girls from Mala’s viewer, though a few years aged. She wore a simple white cotton nightshirt with an embroidered collar, rustic and old-fashioned. A second girl came out, wearing the same, though she was much taller and older. And then another followed, and another, until it was all seven of the girls Fan had seen in the album. Some were grown women, twice as broad as the youngest. But something was different about all of them, and not just that they had grown older. All of their eyes were huge and shaped in the same way, half-moons set on the straight side, like band shells but darkened, their pupils being brown. They were all giggling now, shoulders scrunched, their high pitch cutesy and saccharine. They crowded about Fan, bright of teeth. They smelled laundered and dryer-fresh. And now one of them was gently touching her face, others her hair, the rest clasping her arms, her hands, already vining themselves through her, snatching Fan up.

Whenever we tell the story of Fan, details are apt to change. You don’t mean to alter anything; in fact, your intention is the very opposite, you want nothing more than to be an echo of the previous speaker, who, you decide, did a perfectly super job. And try as you might to match the very tone of the telling, the bellow of certain episodes and the half-breathed whisper of others, isn’t it the truth that, despite your fealty to the story, a moment will arise that compels a freelancing, perhaps even rebellious, urge?

Of course, those moments will vary depending on who you are. Like everyone else, we have a sensitivity to particular incidents, which can strike a nerve. For example, when we hear about Miss Cathy’s girls surrounding Fan, we’re as startled as anyone else, the same hard knot instantly twisting in our chests as in yours; and yet we can’t help but add a little of our own special imprint, a tiny re-marking here, a slight miscoloration there, and sometimes even more than that if the feeling is intense enough.

For what comes to us when we picture Fan’s last circumstance is not solely worry or fright or repulsion but also a fascination with this unlikely gathering, which, we are quite sure now, did not alarm Fan as much as one might assume. And why not? The Girls were only nice to her. She was certainly in shock when they appeared and quickly conveyed her back into their room behind the curtain, helping her change out of her regular clothing into a nightshirt exactly matching theirs, even squeezing toothpaste onto a new toothbrush and placing it in her hand. They brushed her hair and washed her feet and lightly misted her with a fruity, candy-sweet perfume. She would sleep in the bed next to Miss Cathy’s bed for several nights before moving in with them, after which they would resume their nightly schedule of taking a turn to sleep in the bed outside.

Apparently Miss Cathy could not sleep if sleeping alone in her room, and when she didn’t rest well enough, the following day was often very difficult because of the pall of her mood, which perhaps prompted the Girls to bring Fan right back out to Miss Cathy, who was already in her own bed, eyeshade on. Fan realized how chilly it was in the room—the AC constantly pushed icy air down from the vents—and she turned off the lamp and slipped beneath the tightly tucked sheet and blanket of the tiny bed. She found she had to lie on her side and bring up her knees a little to keep her feet from overhanging the edge, which she would have done anyway to keep from shivering, as the cotton nightshirt was thin and the sheeting was starchy and cold. Miss Cathy had a fluffy duvet covering her and Fan wondered if she was supposed to freeze and thus be compelled to climb up into the big bed. In fact, for nearly all of the night the woman did not stir, which Fan knew because she could not fall asleep herself, given the frigid temperature and the high beam of her own vigilance. What perverse episode lay ahead for her now? How might she have to defend herself? And how would she ever manage to escape, which she needed to do soon? She was at last thinking about Mala as she finally did relent and lose consciousness, wondering if the woman had been wholly false in her kindness and feeling, acting out yet another round of temporary friendship that would reside as a set of glimmers in her bedside viewer, to be accessed when it appealed.

Miss Cathy did, however, wake Fan up in the night. A light tug on her shoulder roused her and she instinctively curled up at the sight of the woman above; the bedroom was faintly lit by moonlight and the expression on Miss Cathy’s face was of a ghoul, lifeless but hungering, her eyes half lidded, her mouth slackly ajar. But all the woman did was nudge Fan off, and the moment she cleared the bed and stood up, Miss Cathy took her place. The woman even expropriated Fan’s meager blanket and wrapped herself in it as she curled into a tight ball, which was the only way she could fit, this sonorous mound of a whorl. Fan did not quite know what to do. After a while, she climbed up into the huge, high bed and got under the heavy duvet, which was still warm and dampish from Miss Cathy, the downy pillow laced with the powdery, floral scent of her facial cream; and she must have fallen asleep within a minute, for the next time she stirred it was morning and Miss Cathy was gone from the little bed and the Girls were enveloping her with their excited warbles and trills and their many pe
tting hands, conveying her straight back into their lair.

They sat with her on a circular sofa in the middle of the very large, airy room and introduced themselves by number, One through Seven. Fan could keep them straight for it was the order of both their coming to the house and their ages, One being the eldest and so on down the line, although their identically altered eyes made it harder at first. Fan had heard of girls and boys doing this long, long ago to make themselves look like their favorite anime characters but had never seen it done. Apparently early on One and Two had asked Miss Cathy if they could have their eyes done and then each successive girl wanted it as well soon after her arrival. Their bizarrely large eyes made them look deeply attentive, like some puppy or doe who craves only your company and succor. But there was also a welling of wistfulness in those big brown discs, as if they were all quietly longing for someone or something, that they would always be searching.

As for their names, they’d had their original ones before, but once there were three of them, it seemed best to shrug off the markers of the near and distant past, and start anew, this world of a room peopled only by themselves and, of course, anchored by Miss Cathy, who rarely came inside but always received one of them nightly. And what happened with Fan, said Five, was exactly how it went each night, Miss Cathy arising at some point to switch places, something about the temperature and smell of a girl’s just-vacated bed helping Miss Cathy to go back to sleep after she awoke from her nightly bad dream.

The Girls didn’t seem to know what had happened to Mister Leo, and Fan did not say anything, perhaps concerned that such news would be too disruptive, or simply because of her characteristic reticence. What is clear is that she joined their grouping without resistance, the only worry being that they would assume she’d want to have her own eyes done, too. But none mentioned it. They seemed simply pleased to have a new addition, a brand-new sister, and Fan let herself be appended on their line when they asked if she would be their most propitious number Eight.

Of course, there was an eighth bed already made up for her, the last along the wall. All the beds were made up exactly like the one next to Miss Cathy’s, with a white sheet and thin flannel blanket, and they were the same shrunken size. At the foot of each was a small white plastic set of drawers on black plastic wheels, just enough storage for perhaps underclothes and socks, some toiletries, maybe a few pieces of jewelry, and an extra nightshirt. It could have been like a barracks but the huge square room was bright and fresh smelling, despite having no windows or even a skylight. This now explained the massing above the garages, which was covered in ivy and looked like the broad tower of a granary and which Fan had assumed housed a personal gymnasium or some such thing. The space was well lighted by numerous can fixtures set in the double-height vaulted ceiling, as well as by the lamps on the night tables beside each bed. The carpeting was wall-to-wall and white, though more like the white of an animal, vaguely richer in tone, and in fact, Fan would learn that it was made of many sheep hides all stitched together, practically a small herd. She’d never seen a live sheep, so she didn’t know that they could look like this. The carpet was wonderfully plush on the feet, which was good, as they only went barefoot. The four expansive walls were white, too, except that approximately one and a half of the panels had been painted from ceiling to floor.

It was this Fan kept glancing at, for there was something strange about it, and the Girls tittered with glee as they vied to show it to her. It was their work, Three said—she was broad shouldered and had sparkling teeth and was obviously the most strident of them—and this was how they spent most of their waking hours. From the center of the room you couldn’t make out any particular images or shapes; in fact, the walls appeared to Fan as a murk of brown-blue, with random crosshatchings and blotches of brighter tones, which seemed the oddest and slowest way to paint a wall, if it truly took up most of their day. There were several stepladders at the edge of the painted section and Fan drifted toward those, but Three insisted that she should start at the “beginning,” at one of the corners near the curtained French doors.

The nature of their work became apparent as Fan drew closer. It was miraculous, in a way. We have mentioned the “guerrilla” images of Fan and Reg that have popped up on the walls of B-Mor in the last couple of months, billboard-sized portraits of the pair that are mostly simple and crudely executed, and then another kind you see more and more of late, abstracted or surreal images of such things as a pair of weeping lovers’ hands, or the widened maw of a pond carp, or a floral burst that in a certain light looks like an immense suppurating sore, all of which, we have begun to feel, are now an expected feature of a B-Mor stroll. They are eventually whitewashed or papered over, and if the individual expressions won’t permanently linger in our minds, the ready regeneration of them does, this irrepressible urge.

But an urge was trebled in the handiwork of the Girls. The work covered every square centimeter of the nearly four-meter-high wall. It was not paint that they used but colored magic markers, of which Miss Cathy had provided thousands, in every possible hue and a half-dozen widths, and that filled three rolling towers organized by gradations in the spectrum. Fan had to get up fairly close to make out what was depicted, which was basically the story of their lives, separately and together. The mural was begun when there were two of them, and so naturally the initial images, drawn in the style of anime, showed One and Two in their much younger days, the very first scene being a pair of nightshirted girls crouched down in the corner of a room with markers in hand, dabbing at the wall, the skin of the bottoms of their feet crinkled as they knelt, the picture they were working on being the very picture of their kneeling selves but in the appropriate minuscule dimension. The size of this and the rest of the scenes was small, no wider than the span between a young girl’s shoulders, and half as high, though in comparison with the great panels of wall, it was tiny, a mere footprint in a field, as if they understood before they started that this would be their enduring task.

How they did it was this: One and Two (and now Six as well) would sketch out in faint pencil specific moments from their lives, for example, how they were separated from or lost their original families, how they came to Seneca to work in this house, how with each new arrival, the girl who worked with Mala was then sent up to Miss Cathy’s suite to live with the rest, the scenes rendered from bottom to top in a narrow column and then shifting to run down before they went up again and so on. The scenes were not separated by borders or other framing but rather magically melded into one another, via all sides, a detail of background or figuration of one threading into the fabric of the next so that the whole appeared to be roiling in a continuous, visceral flow.

The quality of rendering was impressive, as polished as in any of the anime movies regularly playing in the B-Mor mall, the figures and objects and backgrounds not simply in the right proportion and perspective but rich of presence and sentiment. The scenes with Mister Leo were moodier, of course, but no less finely executed. The noteworthy detail about his panels was that he never appeared whole but rather as an insinuation or part; in one scene, for example, of one of the girls ironing napkins in the kitchen, a line of wine goblets on the shelf behind her kept watch, their bellies twinkling with his eyes. Or another, showing Three vacuuming the seat of a stuffed chair whose arms looked just like his, right down to the stout pink fingers. Or just Mister Leo’s mouth, five-o’clock-shadowed, saying HERE through his heavy, almost womanly lips. And the few that showed his face were in the motif of a group portrait, their number growing with each arrival, nightshirted and barefoot and so skillfully captured you could distinguish them from one another simply by their posture, except that each girl possessed not her own face but Mister Leo’s impassive, once handsome visage, now repeated in a line.

They had her pose for the newest version. The latest columns were still marked out in pencil, and while the others, laddered high and low, colored in the scenes behind her, Six sketched Fan into their group. The girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, wore thick spectacles and had a faint shading of dark hair on her upper lip, but there was no concealing how pretty she was, her especially dark, glistening eyes and high, sharp cheeks, and how talented she was, her hand moving over the blank white space with speed and assurance, like a tiny champion skater, the other girls almost instantly appearing in their present sizes and shapes. Fan, after being appraised by a brief but locked-in glance, swiftly came into being with the exact splayed angle of her feet and her petite hands and the curt bob of her hair. For the moment Six left their faces blank, working instead on the background, the detail as ornate and filigreed as the sheeting of the Girls’ nightshirts was plain, and as it came to life, Fan could see that it was an underwater garden, wildly overgrown, of entwined sea plants and fabulous creatures such as tusked fish and many-headed eels and fat man-o’-wars whose insides contained miniature worlds of the same, though the sheer density of the images made the scene appear more like a design than a place.