Our Zero Waiver

Her head in my lap, looking up at the sky. I watched her face watch the stars, moon lighting her like a still lake. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were; they could be light ordinarily but collected all the dark tickets to ride the night in peace, in calm, tonight.

I brushed her hair away from her forehead. I don’t think she’s happy, but her worries have smoothed, it seems. How could she be happy? She came to us under an inhuman law and I have no idea what she suffered. She’s somewhere between thirty-eight and forty-two, and she had nowhere to go.

We took her in. We don’t have much but we couldn’t bear the feeling of hoarding our one extra bedroom, since Nana died. We figured we’d volunteer for a minus-one/plus-one Zero Waiver, instead of waiting and watching the household rations be cut due to decreased household size.

No, we aren’t so selfless a family. I’ll never know if we would have been. If things were different, would we have taken in foster children, adopted orphaned or abandoned babies? Opened our doors, arms aching to give love where love was needed?

Instead of waiting for them to reassess our unit, for them to size us up for an assigned new occupant, we figured if we volunteered at least we could choose the category. That way we’d be assigned a woman between the ages of thirty-eight and forty-two (there’s a surplus).

I was mostly worried we’d get assigned an Offender. A man. Someone who lied and broke down doors and would keep us sleepless. We couldn’t choose who’d come to live with us but we could avoid an Offender if we took on an Early Crone.

We were allowed an EC because we’re not allowed another non-Offender man. It’s why we couldn’t take in our friend Paul, who needed a home. Our old neighbor Michelle could have been safe with us but she’s too young. Until age thirty she’ll live in the Young Women’s Space.

You get someone who doesn’t know you, usually from another town. Someone who probably has to leave for any of the usual reasons—a baby is born or a family member is released back into the home. Sometimes it’s her own baby. Sometimes a sibling returns.

There are unofficial “occupancy-matchmakers” more broker than seer. They know many people in a lot of single-family-occupancy housing, and folks tell them the news, the comings and goings. Welch was our broker.

We gave her daughter reading lessons for a year as soon as Nana got sick, payment in advance for finding us a good woman of the right age and circumstance. It was almost too much to hope for to find someone remotely stable or sane. Show me one person who is these days—that’s a clone.

She brought Amy to our place one week ago. Amy’s been crying a lot, and then stone-faced, and then apologetic, her misery genuine, her smile forced. She must have had a baby she had to leave, or the baby died. In any case, her milk came in.

My heart broke for her. Nobody’s allowed to waste baby milk but fuck it—not everything can be salvaged, inventoried, sold. Together we went out to the back yard near the trees and lay down on our backs. I didn’t want to touch her. How tender she must be.

But she propped her head onto the pillow of my lap, better to see the stars and moon. I sat up then, the better to watch her. My skirt was wet in two spots from her tears. Her shirt was wet in two spots from her milk. My own cheeks were streaked, my eyes mirrored, shadowed, by her shining ones.

The night was celebrating its sparkles, moonglow, glimmering, showing off like TV shows used to show themselves at night, exposing themselves in our living rooms. She and I made no sound, said nothing. What would we say? Who could hear it in that loud night flashing its millions of bodies?