Kept Voices
Sage Tyrtle
Teacher Ducasse is separating ten eggs for the consommé, and the classroom smells like my feet after I run track. He says that if even a tiny speck of yolk gets into the whites you have to start again. I wonder if that's what it's like to live in a house? If sometimes the Wife is still cooking at three o'clock in the morning because she keeps getting yolk in the whites? I can't wait for next year, eighth graders get to do Indonesian Cuisine.
It's snowing outside and the heater's up too high and to keep myself awake I'm running my fingers over the underside of my desk when I feel a rough part that wasn't there yesterday. It's a rectangle, kind of. But not solid. Made of scratches like it was cut by a knife or something. It can't be a drawing. There's no way. That ninth grader Kiro breathed on the window of the Dining Hall and drew a happy face and the next day the Headmaster said she was being treated for Defiant Disorder by a Specialist. Which is good! Because you can die of Defiant Disorder and I want Kiro to be okay. And then — at the start of the rectangle — I can feel what it is and my breath gets stuck in my throat and I have to cough a bunch. A letter. I'm touching the letter W.
Everything girls write is in our Keeper (Secrets are the bane of society / Honesty shows your gracious piety) and I didn't even know you could write without a stylus and a screen. My eyes feel itchy like they always do when I want to talk. (Does that happen to the other girls?) It's like my words know they can't go out of my mouth so they try to go out of my eyes instead. After the W is an O, an M, an E, then an N. Holy, it's a swear word! Is that—
"Pandora?" calls Teacher Ducasse and I startle like a cat. "What's this called?" He tips the stock pot so everyone can see the dog-food mess floating on the top. I let out my breath, because I know this one, and I grab my Keeper and write, "That's the raft," and it appears on the board above Teacher Ducasse's head.
He nods and starts explaining what the raft does and when my heart calms down I go back to tracing the rectangle. I'm wide awake now! What's the next word? Is it an even worse swear, like — like the F-word? My cheeks go red even thinking of a word that bad inside my own brain. (Bitsy used it two years ago on her Keeper and on the board it just said "Bitsy: Are there any f-------- left? HEADMASTER ALERTED.")
But it isn't the F-word. It's "talking."
On the board it says:
Lacey: But don't the eggs make the consommé taste bad?
Teacher Ducasse explains why not but I can't even hear his words because inside my head is a giant blinking sign and it says WOMEN TALKING WOMEN TALKING WOMEN TALKING. Who could have written this? It wasn't here yesterday and we're always being Protected -- by the Teachers, by the Monitors, by the cameras and microphones in our dorm rooms. It's not like someone could have just written it during class. Greenwood Finishing School is tiny, just grades 7 to 9, and I can't think of one girl who would be so bad.
Should I tell a Teacher? The Headmaster? Except what if I did and he thought I wrote it? I shudder. If they thought I wrote it, they'd send me to a Specialist and I know what that looks like because of the movie they make us watch every year. "Specialists: Here to Help." It starts with loud scary music and a girl talking and another girl takes video of her using the Emergency Button that's on the front of every Keeper, the one with an exclamation point on it. The Protectors swarm and take her to the Sanitarium. There's lots of girls and Wives in windowless rooms, staring. Drooling. The girl from the start won't stop talking — we can't hear what she's saying because the scary music is the only sound — and they try giving her pills and injections and nothing works and then the music gets really really sad and they take her to the shock treatment machine. They give her a rubber mouth guard so she doesn't bite off her own tongue. There's so many sparks. After, she's quiet. Except now she won't stop crying.
Fourth period is PE with Teacher Brae and in the locker room an old Jason Helix song is playing, the one about starships. After we get weighed (Daisy is over by two pounds and the scale spits out a half-rations ticket at the Dining Hall for until she's under again), we change into our navy skirts and white polo shirts. I go faster than anybody else on the indoor track. I love running. I love how fast I can go. Mostly, though (and I know, I know it's bad) I run so I can whisper to myself, so I can listen to my round tones so different from the male rasp of the Teachers, the Monitors, the fathers who visit on Father's Day. I whisper so I can feel real too.
Last Saturday in Chapel the Headmaster sent that famous painting Soon, the Hush of the Wallace-ites to our Keepers (The Wallace-ites fought a losing battle / The Protectors silenced their endless prattle) and none of us wanted to look at their scarred faces, their pants, their bodies so much flabbier than ours, their missing teeth, their shaved heads. But the Headmaster said it was part of understanding what the Last War was about. So we made ourselves look. On the board above the Headmaster opinions were popping up:
Hedy: so ugly
Bitsy: I feel sad for them.
Melody: No dentists in war, I guess...
Sweetie: Thank you, Protectors, for setting us FREE
Were we all saying something about the painting? I didn't want to. Because even though it was of long dead soldiers, all I could see was how bright their eyes were. How — their mouths wide open in howls of rage — they seemed more alive than anyone I'd ever seen.
After PE I shower in the locker room (now it's Tennessee Ned and the Boys singing "Battle of September") and then we all walk in silence, in the snow, to the Dining Hall. After dinner we go to our rooms, one for each girl. The automatic locks turn, all one hundred and fifty, click clank clonk. My room doesn't have any posters in it. We're allowed two, but I never really got why anyone would want a boy band staring at them while they sleep. For study time I take notes in my Keeper about the Last War for class, and when the lights dim I dive into bed. I pull the covers over my shoulders because the cameras can see even in the dark, and under the covers with my heart beating about nine zillion beats a second I trace the words on my arm. Women talking. Women talking. Over and over until I fall asleep.
In the morning soft chimes play and the lights come back up. Outside the sun is trickling through the clouds. I lie curled up for a moment longer, my stomach lurching, half happy and half scared. I don't know what women talking is about, but I want to. I get on my wool leggings under my uniform dress and grab my overcoat and hat and walk with the other girls to the big field. We sit in neat rows on the bleachers, and I'm glad for my overcoat, even though most of the snow has melted. Every Wednesday boys come from their schools to our field to play sports against each other. Today it's King Eamon playing rugby against Branko Academy. Greenwood doesn't have team sports — and that's good! I don't even want to do them! (Girls, girls, solo is best / Team players get sent to the Specialist) But sometimes... I have dreams where I'm playing rugby too, and I run really fast and make a bunch of goals and everything.
At the game I sit between Hedy and Jane. Jane is my friend. I think. All I have to go on is how she stands up so slowly to wave her arms at the Wednesday games. How easily she smiles at me. That time she didn't take the last piece of cherry pie at dinner. Because maybe she was being nice, and saving it for me. It's easy to think that though. That she likes me as much as I like her. And I know, I know I should show the words to Teacher Ducasse, or the Headmaster, but I only want to show them to Jane.
She's tapping her knee in time to the boys chanting, "GOAL GOAL GOAL," except she's only tapping with three fingers and those three fingers form a W. Holy! Is it a coincidence? Did she always do that and I just didn't see it before? Right after I see it Hedy nudges me to see a boy making the last, winning goal of the game and we all have to stand again and wave our arms. The boy runs off the field and hands his sweaty scarf to one of the ninth grade girls, Louie maybe, and she buries her nose in it, yuckola. The boys are chanting, "Kiiing EAMON! EAMON! EAMON! KING EAMON!" and I try to imagine what girl's voices would sound like, more than one, voices that are a shout not a whisper. But I can't.
After the game Jane and I walk to History. Teacher Newcastle is talking about the Last War: "...and when every man in every nation understood that their destiny was to Protect the vulnerable, our precious peace began..." and I'm watching Jane, wondering if I really saw her make a W and if I did what that means. Did Kiro write words on the window, really? It was the Headmaster who said it was a smiley face. It could have been anything. Jane sits to my left, one row in front of mine, and her face doesn't give anything away. But her hands do. Teacher Newcastle says, "Can anyone name the Protector who helped Wives understand that their voices were sacred, and meant only for their husbands?"
On the board above his head appears:
Sweetie: Robert Donovan
and some of the girls smile at Sweetie, but Jane's fists are clenched so tightly her knuckles are white.
During Beauty I get marked down for getting mascara in my eye during the smoky eyes quiz. That night I wake up a hundred times, I feel like the time I snuck two extra cupcakes in the Dining Hall, like if you cut me open you'd find nothing but silver glitter.
The next day I look for more carvings, more hand signals. But there's nothing. When I touch the underside of my desk in French Cuisine it's smooth again. Like the words were never there. And without being able to touch them, I wonder if there were words or if I was just bored in class and making things up. (Defiant Disorder isn't catching, right? And besides, Kiro is a ninth grader! We don't even eat in the Dining Hall at the same time as the ninth graders.) In PE I don't get on the track early, or run faster than the other girls. I run with them, like I'm supposed to. That night I have a nightmare that I'm already with the Specialists. That they've already given me the shock treatment. That I am staring with blank eyes at a wall just imagining that I'm still at school.
Friday at breakfast I'm carrying my cottage cheese and grapefruit to the table. I didn't want to have a secret! I liked not having a secret! I don't even like grapefruit but the only other option is egg white omelets and kale chips, no thank you. I feel mad about breakfast. I feel mad that I don't get to choose anything I like and I never feel full and I feel mad that Daisy only gets a quarter of a grapefruit until her weight goes down. Augh! I have to stop myself from throwing my bowl at the wall I feel so mad! I put my bowl down on the table and make myself breathe until I calm down. Jason Helix's latest song is on the speakers, the one about hearing his Wife's voice on his wedding night. Hedy and Rose are swaying back and forth to the chorus, which is the Wife's voice but it's a high, fluttering flute. I don't think that's what my voice would sound like, if I heard it loud.
In History we're reading the Protector Manifesto. We always read the Protector Manifesto. It's the only book that's appropriate for girls. When we were kids it was the children's illustrated version (the one where there's no blood in the Battle of September so everyone just looks like they went to sleep in a field, I always wondered if the other girls thought that too), but now that we're in seventh grade we're using the adult version. Teacher Newcastle is reading out loud and we're following along. This is the part where Robert Donovan is going off to be a soldier in the Last War, where he's explaining to his Wife that she can't fight beside him because Wives get too emotional for fighting. And the words just start swirling on my Keeper.
I rub my eyes but it doesn't help, the words are still swirling and on the edges everything is a blur. He reads, "And Robert Donovan's Wife knew that he was right. She knew that she must delight in her patriarch, and she gave him a kiss and sent him off to fight like the brave man he was," and my head starts hurting, not like a regular headache but way worse and the words are even more blurry. I stand up because I don't know what else to do and when I do I get so dizzy I fall over, I fall right on the floor and the best thing that happens is that Teacher Newcastle stops reading.
A Monitor takes me to the nurse, and he asks me a bunch of questions except my head hurts so bad now I can hardly even see my hand writing so I have to write huge in my Keeper, like I'm a little kid again. The nurse says that I've got a migraine, maybe from the sleeping pills, and he takes them back and gives me a migraine pill and says to go to my room and sleep if I can. The Monitor walks me back and by the time I'm in my room again I can't think about anything but not throwing up. Even the lock going click clank clonk makes me want to ralph all over the floor. I manage to keep my food down, though. In the bathroom I can see my pupils are enormous, I look so strange. I lie down on the tiles, which are nice and cool on my cheek, and close my eyes.
But when I wake up to the morning chimes I feel a zillion times better, even though I slept all night on the bathroom floor. My head feels fine and after breakfast I even go to Ballet. But I keep thinking bad things. And we're supposed to report bad things! And I want to, I do. It's just... what if that was a W that Jane made with her fingers? If I go to the Headmaster Jane could get in trouble and I can't do that. I can't. Later I'll report it, honest! Just not now!
After we've warmed up and put on our toe shoes Teacher Brae has us do fouettés. He says when you try really hard and get really good at ballet the toe shoes don't hurt, which must be nice. I bet Melody's feet don't hurt at all — she can do nineteen fouettés in a row! But Hedy is really good, she makes fouettés look as easy as walking down the street. Even though I don't like ballet much, it's nice to be moving around at least. After a while all the babbling voices in my head fade away, and I even manage three turns in a row, which for me is the best I've ever done.
Teacher Brae has us do pas de bourrées across the ballet studio and then arabesques. Laquita usually stays in the background, ever since that time Teacher Brae yelled at her for falling down, but today when he asks for volunteers, she comes forward first. There's a knock on the door and Teacher Brae opens it, there's a Monitor with a question and while they're talking Laquita lifts her left leg into the air, she lifts her arms and stretches her fingers like she's trying to touch the other side of the studio, but only three fingers, only the fingers that make a W, and I don't know if it's real, I don't know, except then it's Melody's turn and during her arabesque she makes a T with her thumb and middle finger. Bitsy goes next and makes a W, and there's three other girls who go before me.
I have a brief surge of hope when I remember in fourth grade Lacey and some of the taller girls had a dance they did whenever that "Helpless Protected" song came on before the Headmaster decided it came under the heading of team sports and they couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't it just be a game? I'm at the barre and just like all the other girls my Keeper is leaning up against the wall in case I need it. All I can see in my head is the Emergency Button, bright red with an exclamation mark on it (Press the button short short long / Show us what you saw that's wrong), and if I picked it up and took video right now of the next girl to make a W or a T, there would be no taking it back. The video would go to all the Teachers, the Headmaster, and the Protectors. Just like in the start of "Specialists: Here to Help." Protectors in their green uniforms would swarm the school. There would be no classes, no Dining Hall, no sleep. Just interrogations, until they had enough information to help the girls suffering from Defiant Disorder.
My head is hurting again, like my conscience is pounding on my skull from the inside, telling me to do the right thing. But I watch the other girls, their hands making the unmistakable W and T, and when it's my turn I move forward to the centre of the studio. I lift my leg, I point my toe, I stretch my hand out and I make a W. And that part of me that keeps me safe, that makes sure I do right things, that part just... falls over. No more pounding in my head and I don't even know if I'm glad. I walk back to the barre without looking at anyone, avoiding my own eyes in the mirror. I should want to keep my voice sacred, I should focus on my real responsibilities, which are to be the best Wife I can, to give my future husband the precious gift of my voice. I should. I should.
In Chapel I sit on the aisle with Jane to my right, but I don't look at her. I still don't know what happened in Ballet. I don't even know if I want to be part of whatever it is that's happening. When the Headmaster comes onto the stage we all stand and raise our hands to cheer. We sit down and he says, "Girls, before our Protector Manifesto reading today, I want to share with you this very joyful moment. Your classmate Kiro has made a video to show you how well she's doing in her work with the Specialists." Kiro appears on the video screen. She's writing in her Keeper. At first I think she's okay. She doesn't seem like she's been crying (I would be doing nothing but crying if I were her) and she even smiles a little. She writes and writes and when she hits the enter key with her stylus she looks up and her eyes are like mine when I had the migraine pill. Are they giving her pills like in the movie?
Her words pop up on screen: "I feel a lot better now. I'm so happy I'm getting the help I needed. I miss you all, but especially Melody, Bitsy, and Laquita. I wish you could all come visit, ha ha!"
My shoulders go stiff. She wrote for way longer than it would have taken for just those words. She wrote fast, she wrote like she was trying to say something real. Besides, she doesn't know us, she's a ninth grader. She's still writing, but tiny. Like she thinks no one can see. She's not even looking down. My throat hurts like it always does before I cry because what if the Protectors are really who wrote those words? Maybe what Kiro wrote didn't make sense, because of pills. But what if she wrote real things and the Protectors are saying to us that they know about Women Talking?
Kiro waves to the camera and now I can see how flushed her cheeks are. How it looks like she's been biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The screen goes dark. The Headmaster opens his big leather copy of the Manifesto and looks up at us. "There will be some shocking words in today's reading, but I know you're grown up enough to handle them." He starts to read. "General Donovan knew that there was no saving the Wallace Feminists." Even though he warned us, we flinch like one girl. I've never heard the F word said out loud. I only know it exists because in kindergarten it was one of the list of forbidden words, the ones we could never, ever write in our Keeper even if we heard a Teacher say it.
Somehow the next sentence is worse. "He knew he could not save them because there was no Wife inside the Wallace Feminists. No comprehension of the wonderful gift the Protectors were offering, no understanding of the sacred glory of their voices. And that day, at the Battle of September, General Donovan wept as he ordered his men to wipe out the Wallace Feminists. To kill not just the ones who were fighting, but to silence every promiscuous voice, to hunt down every single one in the attics and basements and forests where they were holed up. To begin again, with true Wives."
In the seat next to mine Jane's face is calm. But she's resting her hands on her knees with only three fingers visible on each. I realize I'm biting my own lip like Kiro and stop. When I was little and the Headmaster at my old school read this part (in the illustrated version they were called the Wallace-ites after the worst of them, Elizabeth Wallace) I would feel sorry for them. I would wonder how they even wanted to be alive if there was no Wife inside them. But listening to the Headmaster describe death after death in horrible detail, I think for the first time — if there was no Wife inside of me, wouldn't that mean there was no husband in my future? And without a husband, couldn't my voice be my own?
I'm still thinking about it as I eat dinner, as I take my place in the neat lines heading for our dormitory in the newly falling snow, as the lights dim and I get under the covers. Everything feels strange today, wrong and off-kilter. I wish there had been no video of Kiro. It was so much easier to imagine her happy, relieved to be in a place where everyone was there to help, before I saw her face. Before I saw her frantic writing. It feels like not one thing has gone the way it's supposed to today. I want to go back to the moment before I touched the words under the desk and reach out. I want to pin my past self's hands to the desk and keep them there, stilled. Content. Silent. That's what I keep in my head as I finally fall asleep. The quiet. The calm.
In my dream Teacher Ducasse asks for the number of millimetres for the apple thickness in a tarte tatin and I try to write the answer in my Keeper but when my stylus touches the screen I say click. All the other girls gasp. Teacher Ducasse tsk-tsks. I try again, but this time I say clank and the other girls stand up, back away from me, leaving me by myself in the middle of the classroom, they hold up their Keepers, they are touching their Emergency buttons to film me, and I put one hand over my mouth and try to write but instead I scream CLONK and I wake up, trying to catch my breath, and it's dark outside but the morning chimes are playing, and I remember what's missing. Holy. I never heard the doors lock.
I walked in here, I closed the door, I had my study time, I went to bed, and the doors never locked.
And I can stay right here. I can make myself forget the three fingers outstretched to make a W, the responding T, I can forget women talking, I can work hard and learn to cook and be beautiful and slim and understand the glory of the Protectors, I can be good and I'll never find myself in a windowless room with a rubber guard in my mouth and sparks everywhere.
Or I can run to my door, I can open it, I can go outside, I can place all my hope on the possibility that the Monitor watching the camera feeds is dozing. And it's like my body decides for me, because my feet touch the cold floor, my fingers turn the doorknob, before I know what's happening. I run, silently, down the hallway, past Bitsy knocking on doors, past bewildered girls, past Melody wedging her desk chair under Sweetie's doorknob.
I run down three flights of stairs, I go outside and there are girls everywhere, standing barefoot in the snow, and no Teachers or Monitors, but instead Wives — and I correct myself inside my own head, women, they are women, and they don't look anything like Soon, the Hush even though they have pants and fleshy bodies and missing teeth, it's the laugh lines radiating from their eyes, it's the kindness in their mouths and I was right, their voices don't sound like flutes at all. They are oboes, cellos, and they are saying, "Come with us," and even in the madness I don't think to talk, I write in the snow, "Is it safe?" and the one with the gray halo of hair around her head says, "No. Come with us anyway," and there are sirens in the distance and the women are not afraid.
They stand straight and tall, they run into the forest, and we follow, at first whispering, but soon shouting our joy.
