HISAKO

Age seventeen

The stillbirth of my fairytale stained my dress crimson

And I will be dragged to the Underworld with it.

Let the Greek tragedy begin

Without comedy or wit.

I am the passive daughter of Mother Nature

Spotted in the fields by a cradle snatcher.

Was it six pomegranate seeds or three?

Will winter fall in my absence,

Or did Demeter forget her empathy?

Now I stand at the altar stiff as a painted corpse.

The hollow space buried in my ribcage may ache,

Yet I will smile in ivory tulle and champagne silk.

I won’t shiver with each breath I take.

My eyes won’t fill with glitter and stars like the other girls.

I can’t speak any louder,

Nor cry underneath pretty pearls

And Zeus could not be prouder.

I closed the hand-bound book. There was a song in there somewhere, but fuck proud father figures. Mine was in jail again, hauled in as part of a random sweep. Wrong place, wrong time, he said. My mother disagreed: wrong place, wrong company. They hadn’t talked since they locked him up, so my father sent me a message asking me to take care of his book. He was afraid Mom would trash it. I’d been carrying it around ever since. It was stupid, but it felt like a talisman. If I kept it safe, he’d find his way home.

Johnny took a drag of his cigarette. “It’s got to be you, Sako. Maki can’t carry a tune in a cargo pod. He’s holding us back.”

Maki and I had been on-again, off-again for years. He played better when we were on, but there are only so many sacrifices a girl should have to make for her band. Johnny was taller and had more tattoos. His grin was infectious and made parts of me want to smile along. Not my heart though. It was in the contract. I leaned back against his legs. He was sitting on the couch, and I was on the floor in front of him in case he wanted to play with my hair. He said he liked it long. “If I take over the guitar, who is going to play keyboards? You?”

“I could learn.” Johnny failed to blow a smoke ring. His name wasn’t really Johnny, but he preferred it to Jean-Paul and got touchy if anyone called him that. Johnny was more punk, he said. His parents were loaded and had bought him an apartment on the other side of the crater from them. It was a good place to hang out and practice.

Ramona laughed, making her green mohawk shake. She held out her hand for Johnny’s cigarette. “Sako’s been playing for years. It would take you at least that long to get as good as we need you to be. Stick with the drums.” She puffed on Johnny’s cigarette and watched the smoke as it rose to the ceiling.

Smoking was new to me, and I hadn’t decided if I liked it yet. My brand was odorless, but Johnny preferred the cheaper, old-fashioned variety. I could taste it on his breath whenever he kissed me, and I wasn’t sure if I liked that either. I scratched the corner of my eye, careful not to smudge the heavy eyeliner I’d started wearing last year. I wasn’t sure why I bothered to try saving it. I’d have to scrape it all off before I went home, or I’d get an earful from my mother.

Ramona stubbed out the cigarette. “We could go into La Merde.” The snarl she usually wore tended to look fake, unlike the smile that lit up her face when she wasn’t paying attention. “I hear they have some radioactive guitarists down there. I saw a documentary on it.”

I’d seen the same documentary. A well-heeled camera team had gone into the squalor to reveal the “Magic of the Square,” a place in the center of La Merde where the refugee kids went to make art, love, and music. Already one of the bands featured on the documentary had a rich patron and was recording in a studio uptown.

“We’ll get shot then stabbed,” I said. “Bad idea.”

Johnny flexed a well-muscled arm that had seen no work other than the gym or holding a drumstick. “No one’s going to mess with us. We’re way too badass. I vote we do it.”

“We’re not even old enough to cross the checkpoint alone.”

“Fake IDs,” Johnny said. “I know a guy. I can have some for us by next week. I just need a photo and a copy of your biometrics.”

“How much?” Ramona said.

Johnny flapped his hand lazily. “I’ll take care of it. We’ll aim for going in on a Saturday afternoon when it’s not so crazy.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “They either work all week there or they don’t work at all. There’s no way to predict a quiet time to visit.”

“Look who’s suddenly an expert,” Johnny said. “Have you ever been there? I have. Lots of times.”

“Doing what?”

The edge of La Merde was now right up against my apartment building, but all I knew of the area was what my parents had told me. My father had been mugged half a dozen times on his way home from his meetings. He might have been dumb about some things, but he always made sure his drinking money was the only thing they could steal off him.

“Parties, mostly,” Johnny said. “Crazy ones. No one complains if anything gets broken or killed. I’ve had a couple of girlfriends out there, too. You’d be shocked if you knew what they’d do for a couple of credits.”

Ramona laughed like a stripped gear. “Those weren’t girlfriends, honey.” She flashed a look at me. “You better have him tested before you get too close to him.”

“Do I look diseased to you?” Johnny flexed again. “They were girlfriends. I just helped them out with rent or groceries. Bailed one girl out of jail once. Small shit.”

“What happened to them?” I said.

“Stuff,” Johnny shrugged. “One died, I think. Just disappeared. Another one got pregnant. She claimed it was mine and wouldn’t get rid of it. My parents sued her, then I don’t know what happened.”

“Probably nothing good, you asshole,” Ramona said.

“Wasn’t my fault. I offered to sneak her into a clinic up here. Get her breasts enlarged while we were there.” He sighed. “She told me to fuck off and die.”

“Hey, let’s get some practice in. We’re a band not a therapy session,” I said.

Johnny was an asshole, but that made it easier. I could have loved Maki if he hadn’t been such a puppy. With Johnny there was no chance.

He picked up his drumsticks and twirled them, nearly losing them in the process. “So, are we doing the La Merde thing?”

“Yeah. I’ll get you the information by this weekend. Ramona?”

The tall girl stretched and walked to the mike. “I’m in. But Johnny better come through with the bail money if this goes bad. I don’t want my parents finding out.”

Johnny laughed. “Nothing is going to happen when you’re with me. They love me down there.”

I filled in for Maki on the guitar. I was way better than he was, but it wasn’t my first choice. Johnny was a shitty drummer. I caught Ramona’s eye after the first song, and we switched our monitors to the output from her reader and played along to the drum machine. During shows, we sometimes cut Johnny’s mikes so the audience couldn’t hear his playing. He was so rhythm deaf he never noticed. We played through our entire set list twice and broke for the night.

“That was awesome.” Johnny wiped sweat off his face with a hand towel. “We should bring all of our shit down to the Square and show those dirty birdies how we do it uptown.”

Ramona’s eyes widened. There was probably no better way to get us laughed at and chased out than to play with a drummer who couldn’t keep time.

“Maybe later,” I said. “This is a scouting trip. We’re looking for someone good, not showing off.”

“Suit yourself. You staying over tonight?”

“My mother would shoot me.”

“Is she like two hundred years old or something?” Johnny said. “Tell her you’re going to stay with Ramona.”

I put my hand on his chest. The sweat on his body was starting to cool so it felt clammy instead of slick. “Tomorrow night, okay? I’ll tell her Ramona and I are having a sleepover and come over here.” I looked at Ramona for support. “Is that all right?”

She shrugged. “So long as you cover for me when I want to fuck someone.”

“No problem.” Ramona had never been to my house, and, if I had anything to say about it, she never would. “You ready to go?”

Ramona picked up her bag and coat. “Can we split the cab back? If I go over budget again, my mother is going to ground my account.”

I tallied all the money I had in my pocket. I had just enough to make it to midtown where I could grab a shuttle the rest of the way. “Sounds good.”

Ramona used her reader to summon a cab. Johnny and I fooled around while we waited. He was a good kisser. He swatted me on the ass as I walked out of his room. “Better see you Friday, Sako. Johnny might get a little restless if he doesn’t get a chance to play.” He tried to grin it off, but he was serious. He had plenty of money to throw around and could easily get a dozen girls to come back to his grotto with him.

“Wouldn’t want that to happen, stud.” I stood on tiptoes to kiss him again and grabbed his testicles hard enough to let him know I was serious, too. “You get lonely, I start looking for a new drummer.”

His face was still. He knew I could do him a world of hurt with just a little more pressure. “Friday, then,” he said.

“Friday.” I turned to Ramona who was fighting to keep a straight face. She’d seen me handle guys before. Drummers were plentiful, and, while Johnny was hot, he wasn’t so sexy that I was going to put up with a lot of bullshit. “Late Friday. I have a science fair I have to win.”

Ramona finally let herself laugh when we were safely in the cab. “I thought he was going to shit himself when you grabbed him like that.”

“My band. My rules,” I said.

“Are you really going to stay with him Friday night?”

“Probably. It’s not like we haven’t had sex before.”

“When have you had time?”

“We were fooling around on Maki. That’s what got him so upset.”

“Maki’s in love with you.”

I lit one of my odorless cigarettes. “I hear that happens.”

She threw her head back. “Are you really cool with going into La Merde for a talent search?”

“Sure. A lot of kids go down there. It will be like a safari.”

“We’re hunting wabbits,” she said. It was a line from one of the songs she wrote for the band. She’d based it on an ancient cartoon she watched as a kid. It was about this guy with a giant head who wanted to kill and eat a furry. It was probably a sexual thing. Ramona bummed a drag off my cigarette and made a face. “I don’t know how you can smoke these.”

“Maybe we should work as an all-girl band. Change the name to something better.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. There are way too many dicks in this band. How does The Sandcats sound? It’s like people think we’re pets, but we’re really poisonous.”

“I like it.”

“How ‘bout, if Johnny survives the trip to the Square, we broom him at the first opportunity?”

“Works for me.”

Johnny was lucky on Friday, or maybe I was just bored. I don’t know. I liked sex. Sure, it could feel good, but there were ways to get that without putting up with someone else. What I liked about it was how vulnerable the guy got when I put my hand on his cock. No matter how much bravado they had before, they turned into little boys afraid I was going to laugh at them. It was a stupid kind of power, but I didn’t have so much of it that I wasn’t going to enjoy the little I had. Johnny and I fucked and then we watched a movie. I slept in his bed and asked him to sleep on the floor. He was all “I’ve tamed the she-beast,” but he was the one sleeping under a blanket on top of ceramic tiles. I gave him a pillow.

I had a bunch of projects due, so we didn’t get together in person during the next week. We had one rehearsal via our readers, which made it easier to ignore Johnny’s shitty drumming and met up Saturday afternoon in the commercial district, a couple of blocks from the border.

The commercial district wasn’t impressive, no matter how many of my classmates were panting for a job there. It was just a bunch of tall, ugly buildings with unkempt parks crammed in every couple of blocks. There were people sleeping in a few of them. I wondered if we should call security, but Ramona said we should let them sleep. She said they looked peaceful.

We waited on a bench in one of the empty parks until Johnny sauntered up. He was dressed in a dusty-looking black outfit and the ugliest boots I’d ever seen. “You ladies ready?” he said. He winked at me.

I covered a yawn.

“Do you have the passes?” Ramona said.

He patted the pocket of his vest. “Aren’t you worried you look a little too nice for this trip?”

“We look normal,” Ramona said. “You look like someone from a Fall-of-the-Earth stim.”

The material of his vest was so thick it was nearly armor. “This is how they dress in there. I’ll blend in.”

“Where did you get those boots?” I said. They were gray, and bumpy like they had acne.

He propped one up on the bench so we could get a closer look. “Like them? They’re real sandcat. My dad got them for me.”

“They’re beautiful.” Ramona elbowed me in the ribs. “I think I saw some just like them in a museum gift shop.”

“Was it the Museum of Bad Ideas? I think I saw them, too.”

“Fuck you,” Johnny said. “Do you know how much I had to pay for these passes?”

“Let’s see them.”

Johnny pulled the ID sticks out of his pocket and handed them around. They looked okay to me, but Ramona laughed again. “These cases are at least twenty years old. You think we’re all going to pass for our late thirties?”

Johnny flushed. “The guy did say we’d be better off going through with a group.”

“This isn’t going to work,” Ramona said.

“Only way to know is to try. Look,” I pointed out a group of young-looking people crossing by the front of the park, “let’s go through with them.”

We hustled to not quite catch up with the group and spy on their conversation. They were all university students, heading into La Merde for a wild time. The border guards waved us through without looking at our IDs, but I saw one guard smirk and say something to his colleague, pointing out Johnny. The man nodded and said something like “ass kicked for sure.”

Johnny put his arms around our shoulders and strutted like a pimp. “I told you it was going to be okay. They have everything here… drugs, booze, sex. My brother told me about going to a show and watching this girl having sex with–”

“We’re here for the Square and a guitarist. In that order,” I said. “Then I’m headed back.”

“If you want to stick around after that, it’s up to you.” Ramona looked back at the checkpoint. “I bet they check IDs more closely going through the other way.”

“We’ll deal with that when it comes,” I said. “Which way to the Square?”

Johnny let go of us and waved vaguely toward the group of college kids. “Follow them. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

“Where are you going?” Ramona said.

He grinned. “See a guy and get high. Don’t worry your pretty little tails. I got this.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and legged it down a side street.

“Should we wait?” Ramona said.

I grabbed her arm and hurried after the college kids. “Let’s just hope they’re going to the Square and not to one of Johnny’s sex shows.”

We got back to eavesdropping distance again. Unlike Johnny, they were dressed normally. One guy asked about music, and a girl said there’d be plenty of it and advised the guy to avoid eating any food sold on a stick.

“I think we’re on the right track,” I whispered.

We followed the kids about seven blocks before we started hearing it. It started low, like a bass note, and filled in slowly as we got closer. I started to make out individual shouts and cheers. Finally, we heard laughter as we got within sight of the tall fence that enclosed the Square.

“It doesn’t sound so bad,” Ramona said. She looked nervous.

According to the documentary, the Square covered four square blocks. A hundred years ago it was supposed to have been midtown housing or office space, I forget. When the refugees started coming in, whatever company had planned the project pulled out, leaving a big fenced-in area. The refugees poked holes in the fence and took over.

We followed the college kids in through one of the gates. They kept going, but Ramona froze in place. “It smells incredible.”

Dozens of little carts were set up inside the walls like mobile kitchens. People were queued twenty deep at some of them, talking in half a dozen languages. They were skinny and grimy, but they were laughing harder than I’d ever heard anyone laugh before.

“Do you think that girl was right about not eating anything here?” Ramona was practically drooling.

“They’re eating it. Some of it should be okay.”

“Did you bring any cash?”

“Let’s see what they have.”

We wove in and out of the food stalls, squinting to read the menus. Most of the vendors had written them out by hand, the script laughable. Others featured languages I couldn’t begin to understand.

“What do you think that means?” I pointed at one stall with a particularly illegible sign.

“It probably says ‘rat burgers’.” Ramona grabbed my hand. “Come on. Let’s go back to the frito stand we passed. At least we know what that is.”

No one talked to us as we stood in line, although a couple of little kids tried to pull us into a game of peek-a-boo between their parents’ legs. The kids were scrawny, and their clothes weren’t much better.

“What do you want, city girls?” the vendor said when it was our turn. His French was strongly accented.

“Alpim frito.” Cassava fries, or whatever they were substituting them with. My New Portuguese was really limited, but I had read somewhere you’d have more street cred if you tried to speak the local lingo. He asked me what we wanted on top of the fries, and my vocabulary failed me. I was reduced to pointing and nodding.

We steered clear of the meat sauce because there was no way of telling what it was. The cost of the meal took about a quarter of my cash.

“He charged you at least twice as much as he charged everyone else,” Ramona said.

“I can afford it.” The line had grown behind us. “I don’t think they can.”

We sat to eat the fritos, which were delicious by any standard, and resumed our search for music. The Square was really a square within a square. Only the outside edges were used for the perpetual festival. The inside square was a community garden. The gates to the inner greenery were guarded, and the gardens were divided into family-sized plots.

“This was in the documentary,” Ramona said, apparently forgetting I’d seen the film, too. “It’s like a co-op. They pay for a plot and share responsibility for the water supply and the guards. It’s not licensed or anything.”

“Do you think the frito guy had a license?”

The next corner of the Square was like an outdoor shopping mall. Everything in it was either used or handmade. Ramona picked through a table of obsolete electronics. She squealed and held up something that looked like a dead baby. “It’s a Terry Talker. I had one when I was a kid.”

She tugged its arm, and the baby started singing a song about friendship.

“You want?” The woman behind the table was old in a way people in La Mur never got. Without money for injections, hormone therapy, and skin transplants, her face had wrinkled into deep brown furrows.

“We’re just looking,” I said.

“Ask her how much it is,” Ramona said.

“You don’t want it.”

“Ask her.”

The old woman gave me a number that would take everything else I had in my pocket.

“Too much. Let’s go.”

“But I want it,” Ramona said.

“You don’t have any money, and I don’t have enough. Let’s find the musicians and do what we came here for.”

“Music.” The old woman pointed at the singing toy. “You want?”

“We want to hear some live music.” I pantomimed playing a guitar. “Music.”

She smiled, showing a sunny mixture of missing and dead teeth. “I tell you.”

Ramona put down the toy, which immediately stopped singing the stupid song.

The woman looked back and forth between us, still smiling.

“Why is she not telling us?” Ramona said.

“I think she wants money,” I said.

“Give her some.”

“If we keep walking, we’ll find the music. The Square only has four corners.”

“She could save us time,” Ramona said. “Give her some money. She needs it more than we do.”

I handed the woman a few coins, and she tucked them into her pocket. She pointed in the direction I had already planned to go. “That way.”

The music was not in the next corner, which was full of ragged tents and ramshackle huts. As soon as we got within sight of the place we were surrounded by children, arms outstretched and begging in a dozen languages. The kids were filthy, and they smelled like they had never taken a bath in their lives.

“It’s my worst nightmare,” Ramona said. “Do they live here?”

“I think so.” The huts and tents were child-sized. “I think they’re illicite. This is like a camp or something.”

“They must have parents somewhere.”

“They might be in prison. Refugee births are pretty tightly controlled. Any government aid you get requires sterilization.”

“You try to live free you get this.” Ramona crossed her arms over her chest to keep her hands away from the kids.

“Please, madam,” one girl said. Her hair was matted. Had my parents made different choices, she could have been my little sister.

“What’s your name?” I said.

The girl’s face lit up like she’d found a treasure in the back of her memories. “Chuchu,” she said. “My name is Chuchu.”

“What kind of name is that?” Ramona fended off the grasping hand of a little boy.

“It’s probably something her mother called her,” I said. “It means ‘darling’ in New Portuguese.”

“Can we go?” Ramona said.

I took the smallest coin out of my pocket and pressed it into the little girl’s hand. “Get some food. Don’t let anyone know you have it.”

The coin disappeared like a magic trick.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I don’t have enough to help them all.”

“Why would you want to?” Ramona said. “They’re like a swarm. They’re barely people.”

I wanted to punch her. “They’re people. They just don’t have what you have. It’s not their fault.”

“It is their parents’ fault,” she said. “They knew what would happen.”

“It’s not always a choice.” It sounded like something my mother and father would say, and it felt strange coming out of my mouth. “They don’t have the options we do.”

A few of the kids followed us partway down the next corridor, but they stopped at some point that meant something to them and went back to their little village.

“They weren’t in the documentary,” Ramona said.

“Putting a bunch of illicite on film would be a great way to get the Square raided, don’t you think?” I said. “They probably thought of that.”

“If the company that owns the land found out they’re using all this for free, I bet you they’d try like crazy to come up with a way to charge rent.”

“Yeah. Let’s hurry up and find a guitarist before it happens.”

The walls along the way were filled with stalls of people selling handcrafts of various kinds. Ramona noticed one selling shoes made out of old vehicle seats, and we giggled when we saw a pair that looked exactly like Johnny’s survival boots.

We heard the drums first, and then the wail of something that sounded like the world’s angriest guitar. The path opened up into the last corner. There was a stage and a rickety sound system that bands seemed to be taking turns on.

The guitarist was a girl about our age backed by a boy on a simple drum kit and a long-haired guy playing bass. Their music sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. It was fast and jangly. Angry and loud. Sloppy but completely under control.

“I think we lucked out,” I said.

“You can play better than that.”

“Better, maybe. But not like that.”

The drummer began an awkward solo, and the girl picked up a bottle of water. She drained it and flung it at the audience. She picked the song back up with a riff that sounded like post-argument sex and screamed into the microphone. She was rail thin, her hair cut into a wedge. She had more tattoos than Johnny.

“I think I just came,” Ramona said.

I nodded, utterly entranced by the girl on the stage. She took up all the room and light.

The band played a short set, six songs, no encore, and then started unplugging to make way for the next act.

“Is this the one?” Ramona said.

I was already headed for the stage. “You’re pretty good,” I said, looking up at the girl.

She looked like she’d been about to smile at the compliment but scowled instead. “You don’t belong here. Better go home before someone notices.”

“We have a band, and we’re looking for a new guitarist.” The look on her face told me I was on the wrong track. “Correction, we had a band. It fell apart, and we’re building a new one.”

“What have you got?”

“Just the two of us.” I brought Ramona into the conversation. “I play four or five instruments. Ramona is good on vocals, a little keyboard. Next weekend we’re going to put some people together and see how it sounds.”

“What do you play?”

Ramona and I rattled off our influences, a lot of Earth stuff and a couple of bands from the asteroid belt.

“Not bad.”

“We can get you a visitor’s pass,” Ramona said. “Pick you up at the border and escort you to my house.”

“Worried I might come in and steal something?” She laughed. “Because I will. Anything small enough to fit in my pocket will be going home with me.”

“You don’t have to steal,” Ramona said. “I can–”

I narrowed my eyes. “Steal from us, you might not make it back.”

The guitarist grinned. “You might belong here after all. My name is Marjani Conteh. Leave me a pass and the directions at the border. Maybe I’ll drop by.” She pointed at the two boys packing up her gear. “Leave us all passes. I don’t go anywhere without my boys.”

“Give me their names.” I looked at Ramona. “Will your mother sponsor them all?”

Marjani laughed. “You hear that, boys? We’re going to have a rich-bitch sponsor. Our dreams have come true.”

Ramona flushed. “She will. At least for a day pass.”

“See if you can make it a weekend. We might need it.”

We left before the next band’s set. Ramona had a curfew and breaking it would not have helped to convince her mother to fork over the sponsorship deposit. We exited back at the food stalls but didn’t stop for more fritos.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Ramona said. “I wonder what all the fuss was about.”

Johnny was waiting for us when we came out. “Where the hell have you been?” His voice was high and scared, and the blood on his face told us why. He was being held, nearly held up, by three guys.

“Jesus, Johnny, what happened?” Ramona said. She took a step toward him, but I grabbed her arm.

“Don’t,” I said. “What do they want, Johnny?”

“Money.” His voice was shuddery, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I told them you had cash. If you give it to them, they’ll let us go.”

“What will they do if I don’t?”

The men around Johnny laughed. “Find out,” the smallest rowdy said.

“How much do you want?”

“Just give them everything you have!” Johnny grimaced in pain or fear. He was missing a couple of teeth in the front. An easy fix for his dentist, but it looked like it hurt.

“Okay. Okay.” I reached into my pocket for the rest of the coins I had brought along. It wasn’t much. One of the boys stepped forward, and I dropped the coins into his hand. He brought them back to show the guy who had spoken.

“Not enough.” He punched Johnny in the stomach. Johnny doubled over and threw up on his stupid boots. “You want him, pay some more.”

“I don’t have more.”

The lout hit Johnny in the face with the back of his fist, sending him sprawling. Johnny made a noise like a scared kid and started sniffling.

“Maybe we can make some sort of a deal,” I said.

He pulled a knife out. “No deals. Payment or pain.”

“Give ’em a break, Carlito.” Marjani stepped through the gate with her band. “They’re going to make me a music star. Can’t do that if you kill their boyfriend.” She curled her lip at me. “He yours?”

“Sort of.”

She laughed. “See? Take the money. Maybe take his clothes. Then let these fools go the fuck home.”

They talked in a language I didn’t understand, back and forth for about thirty seconds. Finally, Carlito threw up his hands in disgust. “Get his clothes,” he said. “He can keep the boots.”

Carlito’s friends pulled off Johnny’s clothes. He fought feebly, but was quickly stripped down to his undersuit.

Carlito stabbed a finger at Marjani. “You owe me, irmazhina.”

She blew Carlito a kiss. “Front row tickets to my first show in La Mur, baby!”

I yanked Johnny to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get this idiot home.”