The Only Ones (35 page)

By the time we finally got to Queens, I was so worried I can’t stop blabbing. What does she want for dinner? If the power works, what TV does she want to watch? She doesn’t say anything. By now we’re almost at Courtyard 2, and I’m like, please, let her say something, I will never leave her side again. I won’t do IVF with Rauden’s product. I won’t do SCNT. I will even give up my cleaning jobs. Well I will tell you this. When she did say something I almost changed my mind. She said, “You’re not my mother.”

Whoa.

“You’re my sister.”

So what is this?

“The ID filter said you’re my sister. The first Supervisor said so.”

“Ani, you know I am your mother. I brought you up.”

“Did I ask you to?”

We just have to get through the Courtyard 2 entrance and cross the courtyard in the dark and we will be home. There is still some wind and ash. “Ani. It is about the ID filter. It’s not about us.”

“My mother would not let them lock me up.”

We just have a little more ways to go. “Ani, they never even reached me all day. They never let me through when I was even there because the code Reader would not let me through.”

“My mother would not send me to this school to start.”

“I will find you a better school. Country Day is not going to work—well, you don’t know about that, but I will find you something else.”

“Did I ask you to?” So we are in the middle of our courtyard, and it is dark and cold with some ash still falling. “You don’t even know what is a good school. You don’t even know the driver hurt me.”

So this is news to me. “When?”

“He grabbed me really hard!” And she shows the bruise on her wrist, which I can’t see in the dark.

At least she is talking at all. “When?”

“When I am trying to jump off the bridge.”

So I am like Rauden was when I tried to explain the Country Day thing, I’m just trying to follow this. “I think he saved your life.”

“DID I ASK HIM TO?” We’re almost at our door, but she is stopping where she is. “I hate my life! I HATE MY LIFE!” Then she goes, “I hate you.”

I just sat down on the steps in the dark. I didn’t know what else to do, I’m just so tired and she is just going, “I hate you! I hate you! You send me to schools where no one will sit with me. I’m glad it isn’t going to work with stupid Country Day!”

So it is just as well I didn’t do the Change.

“I’m glad I am expelled from Armory stupid Prep! Why do you even find these stupid schools for me?”

I am so tired. “I just want you to have a better life.”

“You don’t know anything about my life.”

“Ani, let us go inside.”

She just keeps going on. “Whatever school you put me in, no one will sit with me. No one will sit with me anywhere. You don’t know anything about anything! You don’t even know who is my Dad!”

I really want to get inside. But she keeps standing in the courtyard in the dark, going on.

“No wonder I can’t do anything! I got it from you! You can’t do anything! You can’t even pick me up on time! So don’t tell me what to do. You don’t know what to do, yourself. You don’t know anything!”

I was just so tired.

“Anything!”

So tired. I been running for days. To the hospital, the Nassau County job, the Yonkers Board, the Farm. I been running for years. To the Transport Stops, all the trips to all the goddamn islands where you get the goddamn Passes, the MagLevs, the cuchis, the hybros, the goddamn Lifeboat. And these last four days? Let alone this one day, the hospital, the Country Day stuff, the Change stuff. Maybe that wasn’t even why I said what I said now. Maybe it was all the things Rauden said, and the whole airborne thing, the hum, I don’t know. I just know I told Ani, “You do not have a Dad.”

Then she got really quiet.

“And I know why.”

I don’t know if I thought it was good for her or I was mad at her because she thinks I don’t know anything. I don’t know who I thought it was good for. I don’t know if it is just, you know, from all the things that Rauden said, I finally got some self-esteem and do not want to lose it. I just know that I told her.

I don’t even know why I told her. Maybe I was just too tired to make things up any more.

It is dark in the yard. It’s getting darker. The ash had stopped. But we just stay there, on the steps, in the courtyard where she spent so much of her life. Now look. She hates that life. It’s not so dark I can’t see how her face looks. I wish it was that dark. I wish I didn’t see it. I wish I didn’t see how her face looks when she said, “So I
am
a clone.”

“There’s a lot of things you can call it,” I told her. “You can call it what you want. I prefer human being.”

iii

Now maybe you think this night here, and the next day that follows now, it is the worst time of my life. Well, I will tell you this. I wish it was.

She pretty much cried the rest of the night. She is shut up in her room.

I don’t know if she even slept. At least we are home.

I just stayed in the living room the whole time, on the plaid sofa she bit, so long ago. I’m not going to go to any of my jobs. I’m afraid what she will do if she’s alone.

She cried so long I go to her door and call her name. “Ani?”

She just cries.

I come back in a while, and try again.

She will not say anything. She just cries.

“Ani,” I tell her. “When all is said and done, it’s just another way to be born. It could happen to anyone.”

I don’t hear anything for a while. But then I hear her right up against the door. “Then why am I the only one I ever heard of, that it did?”

“You know what?” I’m saying this through the door. “I never figured that out. I’m sure there are others. They just didn’t tell. Until they do, no one will know.”

She is talking so soft I can’t hear.

I have to say, “What?”

She yells, “WHY DIDN’T
YOU?”

So I am, you know, rubbing my ears where she shouted that. “We could of been in so much trouble. People think terrible things about people who do what Rauden and I did.”

“You could of told
me,”
she said.

“You were a child, Ani. It was a really dangerous secret.”

I just hear noises. Then I don’t hear anything. Maybe she is going to sleep.

So I go back to the sofa and maybe twenty minutes later her door opens, she is in the hall and says, “Like it wasn’t dangerous to go through the Astoria power plant and slip in the mud!”

“Ani.” She still doesn’t get it. “For us, it’s not. We’re Sylvain hardies, Ani. We don’t get anything.”

She just stops where she is, in the hall. She lifts her hand up where fleas bit her that time at the power plant. She looks at her hand a long time. Then she looks at my face. Then my hand. Then her hand. Then my face. Then she went back in her room and shut the door. She got it now.

Then I fell asleep and when I woke up, she is standing in the kitchenette in the dark, eating Process straight from the kit.

I go, “There is a spoon.”

She goes, “Talking to yourself?” Then she went back in her room and shut the door.

At least she wasn’t crying. At least not then.

So now I’m awake. “Ani, you know how twins work? Like Rauden and Henry? It’s really like that.” This is also through the door.

“So you are not my mother.”

“Well! Ok. Not exactly like twins. It is my egg.”

After a long time she says, “With nothing in it.”

“Well! Mitochondria!”

It’s even longer till she comes up with what she says next, which I’m pretty sure is, “So what?”

I guess I went to sleep again because next thing I know I’m on the sofa and she is standing there. “Why was I born?”

Whoa.

“Who was Rini Jaffur?”

Oh, shit.

“Why did you say she was the Host?”

So she remembered. “She was not the Host.”

“You said she was.”

“She wasn’t.”

“Why did you say she was?”

I said I didn’t know. I was starting to think I should not of told her anything. Nothing at all.

Then I was thinking, or I should of told her sooner.

Then I was thinking, or later.

Then she goes back in her room and locks the door.

I go, “You know, you’re not the only one you know who had the artificial Host. Itzhak also had the artificial Host.”

She didn’t remember Itzhtak. “Who was Rini Jaffur?”

“You don’t know her.”

“Why did you tell me she was the Host?”

I said, “She would of liked to be the Host. I would of too. It just didn’t work. The tank was all that worked.”

I don’t know how many hours this took.

All I know, she is spending so much time in my face going, “WHO WAS RINI JAFFUR?” I finally just went, “She was the client.”

That really stopped her. She sat down. “You weren’t even the client?”

“Ani. The prices people charge for work like Rauden did—how could I ever pay?”

“So. Rini Jaffur bought me?”

“Well! No. I mean—she was the client.”

She is going to cry again. “You didn’t even buy me, yourself?”

“I was the Donor! It didn’t work that way.”

“How did it work?”

“I was selling solo eggs. Well, soma too. Anyhow, they paid
me.”

So she is crying again. I never heard anybody cry this much. “Why would anybody pay to make a baby like
you?”
She is sobbing and sobbing.

“It is the Sylvain hardy thing. People pay for that.” Well, how it turned out later, I wished I didn’t put that in her mind. But I didn’t know that then. “It was a terrible time, Ani. Well, it still is. Rini Jaffur lost four daughters in one month. She was mad with grief. She just wanted one child who would stay alive.”

Ani is sobbing, “So that is the reason I was born? So Rini Jaffur would have one child who would stay alive?”

It sounded bad. “Well not the only reason.”

“What was the other reason? You needed work?”

“It was more than that.”

“Oh. Rauden needed work too?”

“Ani, the money was just part of it. It doesn’t prove anything. Come on, everyone needs to stay alive.”

“Oh. I was born so everyone could stay alive?”

I’m running out of answers here.

“So I guess she was pretty disappointed, to get a child so much like,” and she just points at me with her hand.

“Ani! She was not disappointed. She just changed her mind.”

But she is looking at her hand.

Then she is looking at my hand.

She’s doing that her/me/space thing everybody does. Then she makes a sound. She goes to the mirror and stares in. Then she puts that hand on her cheek. Then she scratches straight down like Rini Jaffur used to do, until the blood drips.

“Ani! No!”

Now she is running to her room and locking it again. She is hitting things and making noise. “I should never of been born!” She calls out, “I don’t even know if what I was even counts as being born.”

I call out, “Well, a lot of people didn’t even get that.”

“I wish I was them! I wish I was anyone! Anyone but me!” And then she is really quiet. “Except the one in Grozny!”

So she figured it out.

But maybe Grozny is the only one she knows about. Maybe she doesn’t know about the others. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know about them. I just didn’t think I could tell her. I’m sorry if you wish I did. I just didn’t think she could handle it. At least not then.

Because even now she made a sound so terrible I’m ready to break the door down, but she opens it herself, wearing a coat, and blood is dripping down both cheeks to the coat, and, I’m like, “Ani! Let me fix that.”

“Don’t you touch it! The blood is on my face so people could recognize the difference between us,” she said. “Until I get the Change.” And she is heading for the front door.

And I will tell you, I intervened then. “Ani!” I’m trying to grab her. “It is dangerous.”

She is trying to pull away. “Let’s just see what happens. Like you did with me!”

I have her by the arms. “Let me do the Change myself. I’ll end up with the different code. It will work either way.”

She goes, “Oh, talking to yourself?”

“Ani, stop.”

She goes, “Ani, stop.”

Now it’s me making a noise.

She goes, “Ani, stop.”

So we’re just standing there, me making a noise and trying to hold her.

She pushes her face right close to me and goes, “Why did you tell me Rini Jaffur was the Host?” Then she pushed me so hard I fell back on the wall and while I’m trying to stand up she ran out the front door. By the time I get down to the courtyard she’s already gone.

This time right now, it’s worse than the time right before. I couldn’t even do a thing. I couldn’t leave the unit. I go to the courtyard to look. Then I go inside and wait.

Then I go out to the courtyard.

Then inside to wait.

I can’t go to my cleaning jobs in case she comes back. I can’t go find a Board in case she comes back.

One day Alma Cho comes running to tell me of a new lesser flu. It is larger than the last lesser flu. A lot of these new lesser flus are. And there is new caution tape around, and smoke. So now I’m really worried. How is Ani going to get anywhere? She already has a problem getting anywhere.

There is even talk of one quarantine at St. Albans.

What is she going to do in quarantine if they sweep her in? How will I find her?

I did hear noises from the direction of the old Expressway, like a lesser Exodus is going by but I can’t leave to check in case Ani comes back. Alma says lock the door, lock the door, a stranger could come! I’m not going to do that. I have to keep it open in case Ani comes back. I just sleep near the door to guard it.

It’s the middle of the night. Alma Cho is banging on the door. She saw a stranger in my courtyard!

I come outside and we look all around in the dark. Is a Fundy in my yard? I send Alma home, go back in, and hear a noise, like someone is opening a drawer that has a knife. Who is in my kitchen?

Ani Fardo. Still alive.

She is eating Process standing up. “I had unprotected sex,” she said.

I did have an Episode, because she is kneeling by me on the floor.