Pure (36 page)

“You don’t know him,” Partridge says, but his voice is so soft that it has the tone of surrender.

Bradwell stares at the floor and shakes his head. “Look at what he’s done to us, Partridge. We’re the ones who can hate him in a way you can’t.”

Pressia looks at the doll-head fist, a reminder of a childhood she never really had. “What does this have to do with me?” She can’t think clearly. Her head pounds. She knows that her life is about to shift, but she doesn’t know how. She stares at the doll’s fringe of plastic lashes, the small hole in its lips. Her cheeks burn. Everyone around her knows something. They don’t want to say it. Doesn’t she already know it herself? It’s all there, in the bedtime story, but she can’t see it. “Why did the
OSR
and the Dome want me to find Partridge? How did they even know I exist?”

Partridge sticks his hands in his pockets and looks at the floor. Has he already put something together, too? Maybe he’s smarter than Bradwell’s given him credit for.

“You’re the little girl,” Bradwell says. “In the fairy tale. You’re the baby from the good king.”

Pressia looks at Partridge sharply.

“You and Partridge,” Bradwell whispers.

“You’re my half brother?” Pressia says. “My mother and your mother…”

“Are the same person,” Partridge says.

Pressia hears the sound of her own heart. That’s all.

Pressia’s mother is the swan wife. She may be alive.

PRESSIA
CAN
ONLY
THINK
OF
ALL
the things that may no longer be true—the entire childhood her grandfather invented. Is her grandfather even her grandfather? The giant mouse with white gloves at Disney World, the pony at her birthday party, ice cream cake, the teacup ride, the goldfish at the Italian festival, her parents’ church wedding, the reception under a white tent. Was any of it true?

But she remembers a fish. It isn’t the one from her grandfather’s stories pressed into her memory. Not the fish in the plastic bag won at the Italian festival. No. There was a fish tank and a pocketbook tassel, and a heating duct under a table that seemed to purr. She was wrapped in her father’s coat. She sat on his shoulders, dipping under flowering tree limbs. She knows it was her father. But the woman whose hair she brushed, who smelled sweet, was that her mother? Or was her mother the woman on the handheld recorder, the one singing about the girl on the porch and the boy who wants her to run off with him? Is that why it was a recording—because she couldn’t be there? Because she had to return to her real family, her legitimate sons? Someone played that song for her dutifully, even when Pressia had grown tired of it.
A barren woman
, that’s how Partridge put it in the story of the swan wife.

Those things were never a story. They’re real. The song is in her head—into the Promised Land and the talking guitar and how he’s going to spirit the girl away in his car.

The locks on the door unlatch from the outside, and the door swings open. It’s the woman with the broom-spear. She has alcohol in a large bottle and a stack of neatly folded rags, gauze, another leather band like the one used to stop the bleeding of Partridge’s amputated pinky, and something else—probably a knife—bundled in cloth. Bradwell takes them, and, without a word, the woman leaves, locking the door again with a series of clicks. Pressia closes her eyes for a moment, trying to steel herself.

“Are you going to be okay with this?” Bradwell asks Pressia.

“I wish someone else could do it. I don’t want any more favors from you.”

“Pressia,” Bradwell says, “your grandfather isn’t the reason I came looking for you. I just blurted that out. I don’t know why. But it’s not the whole story—”

She cuts him off. “Let’s get it over with.” She doesn’t want to hear any more stories right now, especially not any in which Bradwell tries to redeem himself.

She lies on the floor, on her stomach, tucking her
OSR
jacket under her head. The bell she’d taken from the barbershop is still in the jacket pocket, forming a hollow pocket of air. She’d forgotten about it and now she’s glad it’s here—a reminder of how far she’s come. She tucks the doll head under her chin. She closes her eyes, smells the floor—dirt, a smoky dust, faint traces of oil. Bradwell sweeps her hair to either side, exposing the back of her neck. His touch surprises her—it’s so light, it’s almost feathery.

Bradwell keeps saying, “It’s okay. I’ll be careful.”

“Stop talking,” she tells him. “Just do it.”

“Is that what you’re going to use? Jesus,” Partridge says. She pictures all of Bradwell’s butchery knives. “Did you put the alcohol on yet?” Partridge sighs. “You’ve got to keep it clean!” Is this what an older brother is like? Pressia wonders. Hovering around? Overprotective?

“Out of my light,” Bradwell says.

“I don’t want to watch,” Partridge says. “Trust me.”

She hears Partridge walk to the edge of the cramped room. He’s shuffling nearby. He’s processing all of this too, she figures. It changes who his mother is, doesn’t it? Does a saint have an affair and a child by another man? She wonders how he’s doing with this new version of his mother. It’s easier to think of him than herself right now, but those thoughts barrel at her too. Why didn’t her grandfather tell her the truth? Why did he lie to her all these years? But at the same time, she knows the answer. He probably found this little girl, and he took her in.

If she and Partridge have the same mother, and Partridge is white, then her mother has to be white—her mother, who went to Japan, who became a traitor, a spy? Her mother is the woman in the photograph on the beach and the same woman on the handheld computer screen, singing her a lullaby. Did she record it because she knew she was leaving her daughter? The photograph—her mother’s hair kicked around by the wind, sunburned cheeks, a smile that seemed as happy as it did sad. Who then is the mother she’s always imagined—the young and beautiful Japanese woman who died in the airport?

Her father has to be Japanese—the good king in the fairy tale—and so who is the young man that she’s imagined as her father—the guy with the light hair whose feet pointed inward but played football on the lined fields in high school? Was it someone her grandfather loved? His own lost son?

All of this, she thinks to herself, is what she must tell her mother if she ever sees her, if she’s truly alive—her life up to the moment she sees her again. That desire hasn’t changed, only now she has hope—real hope—that she might actually meet her mother one day.

But can she really have faith that her mother might be alive? Her grandfather is the only one she’s ever truly trusted in the world, and yet he’s lied to her all these years. If she can’t trust him, who can she trust?

Bradwell swabs her neck with alcohol. Rubbing alcohol or liquor? It’s cold and gives her gooseflesh.

“The chips were a bad idea,” Bradwell says. “My parents had enough conspiracy theories to know that they never wanted to have me chipped. They didn’t want a megapower to know where everyone was at all times. Too much power. This chip makes you a target.”

“Wait,” she whispers. She’s not ready yet.

Bradwell sits back.

She gets on her knees.

“What is it?” Bradwell says.

“Partridge,” she says, quietly.

“Yes?”

She isn’t sure what she wants to ask. Her mind is full of questions.

“What is it?” he says. “I’ll answer any question you have. Anything.”

His voice seems disembodied, as if he’s only a dream, not real at all, as if he’s a memory. Partridge has memories of his mother. Was she too young to hold the memories?
Memories are like water
, she remembers her grandfather saying. It’s truer now than ever. Or does she not remember because her mother wasn’t in her life very much? Was her mother the swan wife who gave her away to the woman who couldn’t have children? “Do you remember me? As kids, did we ever meet?”

Partridge doesn’t say anything at first. Maybe he’s flooded with memories, too, or he’s wondering if he should invent some story for her, the way her grandfather did. Doesn’t he want to be able to fill in her lost childhood, like a real brother could? She would want to do this for him. Finally he says, “No. I don’t remember you.” But then he’s quick to add, “That doesn’t mean much, though. We were young.”

“Do you remember your mother pregnant?”

He shakes his head and runs a hand over his hair. “I don’t remember.”

Her mind is flooded with questions. What did my mother smell like? What did her voice sound like? Am I like her? Am I different? Would she love me? Did she ever love me? Did she just let me go? “What’s my name?” she whispers. “It’s not Pressia. I was orphaned. My grandfather probably didn’t even know me. His last name is Belze. It isn’t mine. And it wouldn’t be Willux.”

“I don’t know your name,” Partridge confesses.

“I don’t have a name.”

Bradwell says, “You were given a name. Someone knows it. We’ll find it.”

“Sedge,” Partridge says, and his eyes fill with tears. “I wish you could have met him. He’d have liked you.”

Sedge is his dead brother. Her dead half brother. The world is frenzied—giving and taking. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Partridge says.

Pressia can’t possibly miss Sedge, and yet she does. She had another brother. She had another connection in the world. And it’s gone.

Pressia clears her throat. She doesn’t want to start crying. She has to be tough now. “Why aren’t you chipped, Partridge?” she asks. “Don’t they have tabs on you?”

“Bradwell’s right about the target. My father said that any son of his could become a target at any time.”

“They put a simple tracking device in the birthday card; maybe there were others,” Bradwell says. “We burned his things.”

“But you put the tracking device on one of the rat beasts,” Pressia says.

“How did you know that?”

“Figured it out.” Pressia wants to get this over with now. No use putting it off. She lies down again on her stomach. “I’m ready.”

Bradwell leans all the way to the floor—to whisper something to her? Pressia turns and rests her cheek on her hand. But he doesn’t say a word. He simply tucks her hair behind her ear. It’s a small gesture—so delicate, like the feathery touch she didn’t think his large hands were capable of. He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid who’s raised himself. He’s tough and strong and angry—but tender, too. And nervous, she can tell by the rustling of wings on his back.

“I don’t want to do this, Pressia. I wish I didn’t have to.”

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “Take it out.” A tear slips over the bridge of her nose. “Take it.”

Bradwell swabs her neck again, and then she feels his fingers on her skin. His hands are shaking. He must be bracing himself, because he takes hold of her neck and pauses. He says, “Partridge, I’m going to need you.”

Partridge walks over.

“Hold on tight,” Bradwell says. “Here.”

There’s a moment’s hesitation. And then she feels Partridge’s hand holding her head.

“Harder,” Bradwell says. “Keep it steady.”

Partridge’s hands tighten like a vise.

Pressia feels Bradwell press his knee into her back. And then she feels Bradwell’s hand again; he pushes his thumb and fingers into her neck, firmly this time, and then, in the space between, he digs in with a knife as sharp as a scalpel.

She lets out a shriek, a voice she didn’t know she had. The pain feels like its own animal inside of her. The scalpel burrows deeper. She can’t scream again, because her breath is gone. She tries to buck Bradwell from her back involuntarily. And even though she feels like the animal-of-pain has taken her over and she’s become an animal, she knows not to move her head now.

“Stop,” Partridge says.

But Pressia isn’t sure if he’s talking to her or to Bradwell. Has something gone wrong? He could paralyze her. They all know this. She feels the tickle of blood running down both sides of her neck. She’s panting now. Her own blood is dotting the floor. She can see it start to pool, dark red. She is bracing herself for more pain. Her body takes on a deep core heat. She remembers the heat of the Detonations, waves of heat that kept coming. She remembers what it was like to be untethered for a moment, a child alone in the world. Does she really remember this? Or does she remember trying to remember? She can see the Japanese woman—young and beautiful—her mother who died, and she is now dying again because that woman isn’t her mother. She’s a stranger to her, a face singed to nothingness. Her skin melts away. She lies among bodies and luggage and overturned metal carts on wheels. The air is filled with dust, and the wave of heat comes again. And then there is a hand wrapped around her hand, her ears flooded with heartbeat. She closes her eyes and opens them and closes them. She once had a toy that was a set of binoculars with a button you could push that would make new scenes appear. She opens her eyes and closes them, then opens them, hoping for a new picture.

But it’s still the dirty floor, the pain, the dirty floor.

She says, “Partridge, did our mother sing lullabies?”

“Yes,” he says. “She did.”

And that’s something. It’s a place to begin.

THE
BACK
OF PRESSIA’S
NECK
IS padded with a gauzy cloth, moist with blood, and kept tight by a leather band tied around her neck like a choker to keep the padding in place. She applies extra pressure to the aching wound by sitting low on one of the mattresses on the floor and pressing her neck against one of the walls.

The chip, wiped clean of blood, is white. It sits on the floor like a lost tooth—something that was once deeply rooted inside of her now gone. And for some reason, it doesn’t feel like she’s free of it, but that she’s lost another tether to someone in the world—someone who was watching over her—and this feels like something she should mourn even though she knows that the watching-over wasn’t some kind of parental love at all.

Bradwell is all furious motion around her. The birds’ wings on his back are pulsating. He pulls out a lawn mower then shoves it back into place. He picks up a hand trowel then stares at the ground.