Woman on the Edge of Time

As she slumped against the wall of the bleak seclusion cell, tears ran into her lap, soaking the yellow dress, faded from repeated laundering. Tears for Claud dead, for Angelina adopted into a suburban white family whose beautiful exotic daughter she would grow into. Remembering what?

Why had Dolly betrayed her? Well, why had she betrayed her own daughter? She had thrown Angelina away from the pain of losing Claud. She should have loved her better; but to love you must love yourself, she knew that now, especially to love a daughter you see as yourself reborn. She slumped against the wall clutching her knees and tried to concentrate on the pain of the old burn that had never quite healed, to blot out memory.

She felt then that sense of approach almost as if someone were standing behind her wanting to come through, that presence brushing her consciousness. The feeling was at once an irritant and a relief. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, lacking anything else, and made a grimace of disgust at the sloppiness. How she hated to be dirty. She felt ugly, bloated with the drugs, skin deadened and flaking, lips dry and split, hair lank and dirty and bleared with feverish sweat. Her throat was sore and the back of her neck ached all the time.

Vanity before a hallucination? If she could so clearly imagine him, why couldn’t she imagine herself clean and beautiful? At least a proper hallucination would be some kind of company, so she let her eyes shut, leaned against the wall, and permitted the presence to fill her. For perhaps ten minutes she remained thus, head back and eyes tightly closed.

“Connie, at last! Fasure it’s been three weeks!”

“This is the first time I’ve been by myself since the first night.”

“Are we responsible for your being here?”

She did not immediately open her eyes. “No.”

“Fasure? You’re not just painting the bones?”

She briefly described the night of her commitment. When she opened her eyes she saw Luciente consulting the watch that whispered.

“It’s running hard for me to comprend,” Luciente said in his high excited voice. “Might as well be Yif. Your mem has a sweet friend who abuses per and who … sold your sister?”

“Her pimp, Geraldo. And she’s my niece, not my sister. Geraldo is a pig! He didn’t want her to have his baby.”

Luciente looked deeply embarrassed. Passing his hand over his mouth, he shifted from haunch to haunch, squatting before her. “Uh, I know you people ate a great deal of meat. But was it common to feed upon person? Or is this slavery, I thought wiped out by your time?”

The urge to cry was still burning her eyes. “Sometimes we have nothing to feed on but our pain and each other … . What’s that about meat?”

“How did this Geraldo sell per flesh then, and pigs too?”

“She hustles!” Seeing blank incomprehension, she snorted and said harshly, “Puta. Tart. Whore.”

Luciente began fiddling with the wrist gadget again till she reached out to stop him. Small bones he had, little heavier than hers. “Who do you talk to with that?”

“My kenner? It ties into an encyclopedia–a knowledge computer. Also into transport and storage. Can serve as locator‑speaker.” Luciente’s face changed suddenly and he smiled. “Oh. Had to do with sex. Prostitution? I’ve read of this and seen a drama too about person who sold per body to feed per family!”

“I suppose nobody in your place sells it, huh? Like they say about Red China.”

“We don’t buy or sell anything.”

“But people do go to bed, I guess?” Connie sat up, holding herself across the breasts as she shook back her lank hair. “I suppose since you’re alive and got born, they must still do that little thing, when they aren’t too busy with their computers?”

“Two statements don’t follow.” Luciente gave her a broad smile. “Fasure we couple. Not for money, not for a living. For love, for pleasure, for relief, out of habit, out of curiosity and lust. Like you, no?”

Like sunshine in her cell, he looked so human squatting there she heard herself ask half coyly, “Do you like women?”

“Allwomen?” Luciente looked at her with that slight scowl of confusion. “Oh, for coupling? In truth, the most intense mating of my life was a woman named Diana–the fire that annealed me, as Jackrabbit says in a poem. But it was a binding, you know, we obsessed. Not good for growing. We clipped each other. But I love Diana still and sometimes we come together … . Mostly I’ve liked males.”

“I thought so.” Why should that make her feel gloomy? He had shown no signs of sexual interest, except for all that patting and hand holding. But shouldn’t a figment of her mind at least satisfy her? Perhaps being crazy was always built on self‑hatred and she would, of course, see a queer.

“You’re lonely here, and I just let you down. Truly, I’m not rigid and I like you.” Luciente took her hands between his warm, dry, calloused palms. “What is this place? You seem to be locked in. I’ve seen holies about your prisons and concentration camps. Is this such a place?”