Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

The fresh batch of five-year-olds arrives in the back of a decommissioned camo truck, hair and faces dusty from the road. A tall woman in a dark green suit—their new director—orders the children to gather round in the courtyard. Her large smooth forehead emits a plastic sheen. One hand rises in greeting as the other does a head count. The children who can stand prop up those who can’t against the fence.

Zaya watches a group of teenagers blow dandelion fluff at each other in the distance, two of them barefoot, just as the previous director promised. She scans the courtyard for tire animals, sees in their stead fresh mounds of earth.

The woman points to a sheet-metal sign nailed to the arched entrance of the decommissioned monastery. “Can anyone tell me what that says?”

When no volunteers come forward, she reads the sign herself: “THERE IS NO EASY WAY FROM THE EARTH TO THE STARS.”

The reedy boy beside Zaya asks what stars are.

“To reach the stars you need to build a rocket. And we did that,” the new director says. “But let me tell you a secret.” She lowers her voice, and the circle of children tightens around her. “To build a rocket you need parts, and sometimes you get a crooked bolt, a leaky valve. These have to be thrown away. If they aren’t, the rocket won’t launch. Even if it does launch, it might explode into a million pieces.”

The children nod along.

“That’s just the way it is, when you’re reaching for the stars.” She casts a magnanimous gaze over the group. “Sometimes you get defective parts.”

The children nod along.

“But we don’t throw people away. We take care of them. You can bet on that for the rest of your life.” She straightens up. “Something to think about, when you’re feeling blue.”

The children follow the director into the building. They file along a corridor, past the canteen; past a storage room containing a blackboard; past the latrine where a bald boy squats in the shadows, gargoyle-like, his shoulder blades jutting out; past a pair of twin girls balancing on one leg each; past a door with a tiny square window too high for Zaya to see through. They reach a cavernous hall crowded with beds and children. The painted walls are crowded, too, with scenes of wrath and deliverance: flames rise from the floor; a red snake coils up a wall and wraps its tongue around a thrashing figure; above are curly clouds, men with wings, men without wings, disembodied wings twisting around each other, stretching to the domed ceiling, at the center of which is a woman cradling a baby. The baby stares down at Zaya day and night wherever she is in the hall, its hand up, on the verge of uttering something important.

In the following months, Zaya adds to the pictures to pass the time. Using a sharp stone, she scratches the men’s mouths open to let them speak. She wishes she could reach the never-sleeping baby, but it sits too high.

—

When winter comes, cold whistles through the cracks in the windows and into the lungs of the children.

It begins with a cough. The tickle in Zaya’s throat burrows into her chest, blossoms into double pneumonia. She drifts in and out of a fevered fog. Noises filter into her dreams—the ruffle of sheets, snot bubbling up and down endless nasal passages, the distant cowbells from a village, the clack of trains from a rail yard.

Outside the window, a couple of older, healthier children chatter as they dig another pit. When she hears them shoveling earth back into the hole, Zaya feels for damp soil on her own hot face. But it isn’t there; it’s for someone else.

—

Green buds erupt on the branches outside. Sunrays on bedsheets shine brighter.

When Zaya wakes between fevers, she sees a pair of withered arms and legs on her bed. She tries to move; the matchstick limbs answer. She covers them with her sheet.

Zaya looks at the beds around her. The room is hushed, so she’s surprised to find most of her neighbors awake, blinking at the ceiling. She’s in a different room than before, a white-tiled room—the room on the other side of the door with the tiny square window.

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Zaya could try walking again, but where would she go? Everything aches, as if a fire has ravaged her insides. She lays her head down and goes back to sleep.

She wakes when a pair of fingers press on her wrist, checking for a pulse.

She wakes when the corners of her sheet lift and she floats in the air for an instant. She screams and falls back down on the mattress.