even if His Uniqueness back home were a woman, like the other eighty-five percent of us in the world, I still couldn’t see him making it as a ’groaner. He’d have to leave our flat first....
My stop; elbowing past the ’muters and on-leave ’groaners and palm-outs huddled behind their “My man’s EVP, no s’deposits” signs, I reach the stairway leading up to my street. More palm-outs; men in the last stages of EVP—no-colored behind beard stubble, mucus running out of their eyes, nostrils, past mosaic-parched lips, and women whose clothes are cut away to show the scars where they’d been de-repoed, de-kid-machined. I feel around in my bag for the draft notice, wave it around, let them catch a whiff of its reek. I walk the last block unimplored by the palm-outs.
In the lobby, I press the buzzer one-handed, peeling open the envelope’s gummed flap with the other hand, pressing the notice against my thigh for leverage. The gov’ seal is there, over the computer-standard greeting—“Dear Ms./Mrs. Ingram”—but I am buzzed through before I have a chance to read more. No voice confirmation, no Alan fearing some s’mugger will barge into the flat, knock him on his back, yank down his pants and s’rob him at knife-gun-fist point because she can’t make a legal s’ withdrawal due to being a (take your pick) felon, drugger or ex-’groaner mustered out for a non-repo-related infraction. Maybe he thinks they can smell the live s’ on his breath as he speaks, I tell myself, riding the elevator to our floor. The ’vator is empty, for once; I have a clear view of myself in the round convex security mirror in the upper corner, a leftover from the days when women had to worry about men, rather than just worry for them. I take myself in, as I am now, freshly post-civilian: hair pulled back in P.O.-reg flowing tail, light-over-dark uniform, shoes thick-soled enough for stand-on-your-feet comfort. I still have the unfolded letter in my hand; it has a date for my arrival at the ’cruitment center, but I will look at that later on. For a few more precious seconds, this is my life.
For the space of time it takes the elevator to travel up, up to my floor, I am still a woman, in the old sense, as if any female today can ever be a complete woman anymore (considering how we’re all mothers not only to our young, but to our spouses or whatever man we have to defer to at the job, on the streets, or wherever one happens to encounter a unique member of an increasingly female society)—each step I take is for me, not for the Pentagon-Pretties in their leather chairs and uniforms with pants and half-inch-long hair under their uniform caps.
The ’vator reaches my floor. Doors slide open, wait for a few seconds, then start to close again. Sliding sideways through the diminishing open space, I catch a last glimpse of myself—hirsute, skirted, female—before the ’vator closes itself to me and descends to the lobby.
Smoothing the skirt against my legs as I walk, savoring the feel of air circulating around my moving limbs, I tell myself that Tashia will be fine while I’m gone; Alan is a good mother, and once I’m gone, he can have a messenger carry his s’deposit to the s’bank. They have men with vaccine-arrested (but not cured) EVP just for that purpose.
Not wishing to make Alan take an unnecessary trip down our hallway, I get my keys (already scent-tainted) out of my bag and begin to unlock the six deadbolts set into the edge of our door. Alan has never had to do this; he hasn’t been out of the flat since we had the fifth and sixth deadbolts installed. Through the fine gaps where the door and the door frame don’t seal perfectly, I hear an odd sound coming from within the apartment. Too even to be crying, too loud to be moaning—opening the door, I see something rippling over the nap of the carpeting within. Radiating out in a sun-like formation from a central bare spot. The low yet persistent noise is coming from farther down the inner hallway, but the bright-color ripples on the carpet have command of my attention for the moment.
Bending down, I run my fingers over one of the rays of color, feeling the strands separate under the pressure of my fingertips, splaying out against the carpet’s springy fibers. Hair...still smelling faintly of mild shampoo, the kind Tashia uses—
A pound of footfalls coming toward me, coupled with Tashia’s “Mommy,” attacks my ears. Looking up I see Tashia’s legs first, encased in pants, oh God wherever She is, a little pair of overalls like little boys used to wear, like Alan wore in the days when he was a child and actually saved in the hope that his own little boy would...and then I slowly raise my eyes, to take in her little-boy pullover shirt, the one with the blue and red rugby stripes and the little white collar—and instinctively stop looking after one glimpse of Tashia’s head, of the whitish scalp showing through the places where Alan’s electric razor clipped too close, leaving almost no stubble at all.
Tashia stops short of the spot where her hair is resting, fanned out in an approximation of the shape of her head, saying in a voice I hear only faintly, coming like static through the pound of blood in my ears, “Mommy, Daddy said it was gonna be like Hallo’een, but ’stead of candy I was gonna get a big s’prisel’ ’long as I closed my eyes an’ layed on the floor there—” she may’ve been pointing at the rays of her hair, all I could see was red and black, hazing before me “—only it buzzed and tickled and then Daddy went ’way without giving me my s’prise—”
Fainter still, I hear Alan, babbling either to me or to himself or to God, from somewhere down the hallway, “—fixed it, don’t you see! They don’t take little boys, not for the war, little boys are too rare, too unique...saved the bibbies, and the shirt, knew I’d have a boy someday, little boy, with a buzz cut like I’d get every summer...’fore little boys were special, and never left home any, any more. Like their Mommies do...see, Tash’s a boy’s name, and little boys don’t go away...they’ll never look, never check, boys are too special, have to protect the sper—keep it safe, from the dis-ease—”
And Tashia...my girl, my Natashia, she doesn’t care that she’s dressed like a boy, or is shorn like a first-day ’groaner in the ’cruitment center barber chair. She’s boo-hooing about not getting that “s’prise” Alan promised her...he’s congratulating himself for finally becoming a boy-maker...and I glance down at my draft notice, praying for an early date of recruitment on that sane-smelling form....
ii.
white
30.08.46 (eleven hundred hours/thirty minutes)
From: T. Sgt. Natashia Ingram
c/o SC Box 987760
APO AP 96266
To: Captain Janet Ingram (Ret.)
P.O. Box 5490342
FDR Station
New York, NY 10150-0342
Dear “Capt.” Mom,
Got this machine* to myself for don’t know how long, so this will have to be brief. (*Usually EVP’ers are chained to it!)
Looks like the ’Delas are in retreat; their antique SCUDs are no match for our MOAWs, but that could change any sec, as you remember from your hitch here. Wish I could be more specif; but the CO would rip off both my tits if I said more (not that they don’t have pens to black out classified info!). Needless to say, we’re XXXXXX, so don’t expect to take the gold ribbon off the doorknob any time soon!
Went to XXXXXX to see the Li’l General; your granddaughter weighs over fifteen pounds, and measures over twenty-five inches long. Tall like you. Should make a great captain eventually, you know how the tall ones are automatically officer material. (I don’t think Gen. Boles would be what she is today if she were a Size 6 Petite!) Wish I knew who the gen-dad was; tried pulling in a few favors, but all I’ve heard on the wire is that he was (is?) of Mid-East descent, which is unusual, since EVP hit harder there, ’specially since it split off into EVP I and II. Like Leia, the ’ner on XXXXXX always says, tho: “All gen-dads look the same...smooth, white, and bald as a rubber bulb on top.” My CO calls ’em “loaded tampons,” but considering that only XXXXXX ’ners in the squadron are carriers now, I’m inclined to think of ’em as blanks!
Don’t know how you and the rest of the ’ners in your squad made it through the POW camps without monthly gen-dad blasts; it’s still bad for the POWs, but they will go easy on a carrier. Might