Woman on the Edge of Time

“Never mind. Did you save us lunch? I’m thinning by the second,” Luciente said, hugging the youth back.

They were literally patted into their seats and she found herself cramped with nervousness. Touching and caressing, hugging and fingering, they handled each other constantly. In a way it reminded her again of her childhood, when every emotion seemed to find a physical outlet, when both love and punishment had been expressed directly on her skin.

Large platters of food passed from hand to hand: a corn‑bread of coarse‑grained meal with a custard layer and a crusty, wheaty top; butter not in a bar but a mound, pale, sweet and creamy; honey in an open pitcher, dark with a heady flavor. The soup was thick with marrow beans, carrots, pale greens she could not identify, rich in the mouth with a touch of curry. In the salad were greens only and scallions and herbs, yet it was piquant, of many leaves blended with an oil tasting of nuts and a vinegar with a taste of … sage? Good food, good in the mouth and stomach. Pleasant food.

Luciente was saying everyone’s name, leaving her battered. Nobody seemed to have more than one. “Don’t you have last names?”

“When we die?” Barbarossa, a man with blue eyes and a red beard, raised his eyebrows at her. “We give back with the name we happen to have at that time.”

“Surnames. Look, my name is Consuelo Ramos. Connie for short. Consuelo is my Christian name, my first name. Ramos is my last name. When I was born I was called Consuelo Camacho. Ramos is the name of my second husband: therefore I am Consuelo Camacho Ramos.” She left out Бlvarez, the name of her first husband, Martin, for simplicity.

They looked at each other, several adults and children consulting the kenners on their wrists. Finally Luciente said, “We have no equivalent.”

She felt blocked. “I suppose you have numbers. I guess you’re only called by first names because your real name–your identification–is the number you get at birth.”

“Why would we be numbered? We can tell each other apart.” The tall intense young person was staring at her. Jackrabbit, Luciente had said: therefore male. He had a lot of very curly light brown hair and he wore the sleeves of his pale blue work shirt rolled up to expose several bracelets of hand‑worked silver and turquoise on each wiry arm.

“But the government. How are you identified?”

“When I was born, I was named Peony by my mothers–”

“Peony sounds like a girl’s name.”

“I don’t understand. It was the name chosen for me. When I came to naming, I took my own name. Never mind what that was. But when Luciente brought me down to earth after my highflying, I became Jackrabbit. You see. For my long legs and my big hunger and my big penis and my jumps through the grass of our common life. When Luciente and Bee have quite reformed me, I will change my name again, to Cat in the Sun.” He produced on his thin face a perfect imitation of Luciente’s orange cat squeezing its eyes shut. “But why have two names at one time? In our village we have only one Jackrabbit. When I visit someplace else, I’m Jackrabbit of Mattapoisett.”

“You change your name any time you want to?”

“If you do it too often, nobody remembers your name,” Barbarossa said solemnly in his schoolmaster’s manner. “Sometimes youths do that the first years after naming.”

The old brown‑skinned … woman?–it confused Connie to be so unsure–introduced as Sojourner was giggling. “They’re always trying out fancy new labels every week till no one can call them anything but Hey you or Friend. It slows down by and by.”

“All right–you have those things on your wrist. Somewhere there’s a big computer. How does it recognize you?”

“My own memory annex is in my kenner,” Luciente said. “With transport of encyclopedia, you just call for what you want.”

“But what about the police? What about the government? How do they keep track of you if you keep changing names?”

Again a great buzz of confusion and kenner checking passed around the table, with half of them turning to each other instead.

“This is complicated!” The old woman Sojourner shook her head. “Government I think I grasp. Luciente can show you government, but nobody’s working there today.”

“Maybe next time. I will try to study up on this, but it’s very difficult,” Luciente moaned.

“We should all study to help Luci,” a child said.

“In the meantime, maybe you could ask something easier? You said something about the paintings?”

“It doesn’t matter. I just thought it was funny you put up the kids’ stuff. I mean everybody wants to look at their own kid’s pictures, but nobody wants to look at anybody else’s.”

A slight blond man, Morningstar, peered into her face with puzzlement. “But they’re all ours.”

“We change the panels all the time,” Jackrabbit said. “For instance, say I make one and later it stales on me. I make a new one. Or if everybody tires of one, we discuss and change. I did that whole big river namelon on the east, cause people wanted.”

Luciente put down her fork. “What’s wrong, Connie?”