CHAPTER 28 - 1
he next day I showed up for jujitsu as normal. There were four new trainees there, all male. And given they weren’t wearing the orange clown suit I realized a new semester of trainees had been brought in. For a while all I could think was that I only had a semester left to suffer through The Farm.
I could tell right away they didn’t want to be there and singled me out as the weakest link they could push around. Bad mistake on their part. By the time practice was over all four of them could have used a trip to the clinic.
In their embarrassment they smarted off to Chief Jackson. “You’re just pushing us around. Making us look bad. She’s probably not even a kid, just looks like one, that’s probably not even her kid … just a prop to make us feel sorry for her, to make us weak.”
I shook my head. “One, you’re an idiot. Two, it is not a great idea to run your mouth at the Staff around here, especially not a Chief, and certainly not this Chief. Three, is a piece of free advice and it will be the only free thing you get from here. Get it through your thick skulls that this place isn’t freedom, a vacation, a reprieve, or anything else; it’s Purgatory. You either follow the rules, make the grade, and graduate or you’re gone and whatever is waiting for you out there eats you. And when you leave here, life is still gonna suck just as much as it did before, just in a different way. And for your info? No one here really cares about you so you can stop with the lame emoting. Oh you’ll get counseling and all of the happy crap that looks good on paper, but the reality is you are on your own. Take advantage of what is offered. Get smart. Earn a job. Then be prepared to look after yourself because no one else will.”
“Eres una chica loca.”
“Esa es mujer Y no soy el que está loco. Escucha lo que dije. Si no lo haces, te lavarás. Lo único que juegan aquí es juegos de cabeza. Así que no seas estúpido.” I let it sink in that I could understand all of their nasty muttering they’d been doing and then told them, “If you have any sense you’ll hear what I said. If not, it’s on you when you fail, wash out, and life sucks what little bit you have left out of your soul.”
I was losing interest in the drama and Bam-Bam needed to be fed before my own breakfast. I turned and waited to be dismissed and Chief Jackson nodded giving me the release I was looking for. Without another look around I took off back to my room. When I got there, I fell to my knees. One of the jerks obviously had a few street fights under his belt and had sucker bunched me in the kidney. I wanted to cry but wouldn’t allow myself because it would show on my face and people would talk.
I managed to feed Bam-Bam but it wasn’t all that satisfying for either one of us. He wanted something with a little more oomph to it so I pulled out one of the cups of baby food that Nurse Gilroy had started signing out to me for his use. His food wasn’t tracked like the older kids was because he didn’t eat in the dining hall. I kept a sheet and turned it into the clinic every other day; at the end of the week they would sign me out the next round of baby food.
Feeding Bam-Bam now took a lot more time. I couldn’t just haul out the food trough and let him go. Now there was prep, mess, and clean up. It wasn’t fun but it is how things worked so I accepted it, just a little grudgingly. I was late to breakfast and the tables were all full. I was just going to eat standing up but as I was looking for a place to do it the tray was taken out of my hands. Before I could jerk it back it turned out to be some girl I’d never seen before.
“Hi. My name is Barbie.”
“Uh …”
“I know. Stupid name. When I turn eighteen I’m changing it. Um … look, that Chief Delry said you’d explain things to me.”
I looked down and realized she was pregnant.
“Her name is Chief Delray, and to explain that you’d be better off talking to Nurse Gilroy.”
“Ha ha, you’re funny … in your own little mind and no one else’s. And just to get it out of the way I got knocked up by one of the guards in Juvie. So anyway, I got questions. There’s a hole over there, you eat, I’ll ask, you answer.”
I didn’t have any good way out of it, especially if Chief Delray had sent her my way. So I explained things … my way.
After I was full up of her questions and told her so she said, “Well, that’s better than I was getting from all those stupid forms and crap we had to fill out.”
“Don’t sell that stuff short, and don’t ignore it. You get quizzed on it pretty regularly.”
“Fun,” she said meaning anything but. “The Warden said this was a good place.”
I shrugged. “It’s a place,” I told her. “Whether it is good or not is up to you. Just don’t create some stupid fantasy around the people here. They’re just people. Take what they’re offering. Do yourself and your kid some good and …”
Abruptly she said, “I ain’t keeping it.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” she said mocking me. “My IUD failed. I didn’t realize it until it was too late; thought no periods was just the thing doing what it was advertised to do. So anyway, I figure it’s like being sentenced to juvie … I did the crime, I do the time, give the kid to social services and walk away with a clean slate once I turn eighteen.”
I shrugged again. “Better than dumping the kid in the trash which is what my womb-donor did to me. And breakfast is over with. Let me see your schedule so I can point you in the right direction.”
I did and then headed to the bathroom hurting worse than I wanted to admit. Peeing hurt so bad I wound up throwing up my breakfast. I had a lifetime of practice dealing with pain, so I got a handle on it and then headed to Big Group. I was still playing catch up with all my academics and April, because all the foresty goodness that was growing hand over fist, only made it harder. We had to harvest enough to take back to the kitchens to feed us all. We didn’t do our job then we went hungry. The forage we were studying and harvesting included: ramps, wild ginger, more fiddleheads, wild violets, redbud flowers, daylily shoots, burdock, knotweed, nettle, dandelion, more chickweed and a ton of other wild greens, morels and oyster mushrooms, and that day in particular we were learning to gather cattail pollen which can be used as a partial replacement for wheat flour.
The water was cold. Too many of them splashed when it would have been better if they just carefully reached out and pulled the cattail heads to them and scraped the pollen into the collecting bag. There were a few times I wanted to toss someone in, but I kept hold of my temper and simply moved away from the group down to a quieter place.
That’s when I ran into Mari. “This is wrong,” she said grumbling to no one in particular. “They are messing the stream up. Taking things that aren’t theirs to take. Messing up Gaia’s beauty.” I’d noticed she’d slowly been abandoned by her former crew and felt a little bad for her. Some days she looked so lost and confused. I also heard she’d been forced to start taking medications. It wasn’t obvious whether they were helping her or the opposite.
“Think of it as stewardship … only we’re learning. Wouldn’t Gaia like that? That people were learning to take care of the Earth?”
“Huh?”
“Look, I know we’re all falling short. And some of them,” I said looking back at the big group. “Are falling pretty dang short. But they’ll be better tomorrow and better still the day after that. Spring has sprung and they’ve got the fidgets. Right now they are learning that taking care of the environment and living a more natural life can be fun. A first for a lot of them. Most of us come from the urban areas and this is as close to nature as we’ve ever been. Give us time.”
Changing subjects to find something else to complain about she pointed at Bam-Bam and said, “That … that … thing is a parasite.”
“Look, I’m making allowances for the fact you don’t want to be here and are having a hard time of it but don’t call my son a parasite.” I pulled back on the reins of my anger and tried to explain, “He’s the future.”
“What?”
“He’s the future, what I leave behind. I teach him how to take care of …” I held my hand out and pointed around. “This. I teach him how to do it the right way. And then he teaches who he leaves behind. If there are no more kids then there are no more … um … stewards to admire and take care of things.”
“There are too many as it is.”
“Are there? I get that some people make different choices. And honestly don’t know … can’t see it right now … that I’ll ever have another baby because I won’t do it by myself or selfishly put a kid in jeopardy by not having enough people around to take care of them and guide them in the right way to get along in this life. Not that there are many people you can trust in this life.”
“Gaia will send something to get rid of the too many.”
That was a little freaky and I told her, “Well hopefully if and when it happens, it won’t be someone else deciding for … uh … her. I mean people say a lot of crap like they have the ear of God and all of that, but I wouldn’t believe them ninety-nine percent of the time. Mostly all they are doing is trying to say they are more powerful and extra special and get something over on other people. Like you obey them or else instead of really looking at things from a logical perspective. I mean, regardless of what a person believes, if their worldview is that there is a Creator-being that created this world, and this world runs on laws of nature and logic, then someone should get that following the rules, the Creator will look out for them and what they’ve created. Especially if they are all powerful. Right?”
“Er …”
Before she could form a reply, we were called back in, but I turned the wrong way and a shock of pain went through my lower back. I don’t know if she meant to help or it was just accidental, but she reached out to keep me from falling into the water. Jan and Jen rushed over, and I had to back them up.
“Relax! She didn’t do anything wrong. If not for her Bam-Bam and I would have taken a mud bath.”
That’s when Chiefs Jackson and Madison came over. “Is there are problem Trainees?”
“No,” I told them. “Just a misunderstanding.”
Then Mari muttered, the side effects of the meds she was taking more and more evident, “I think she is hurt but I didn’t do it.”
Well that was a mess and I was sent off to the first aid station where I tried to convince them I did not need to go to the Clinic and seen by the nurse.
“It’s just a bruise,” I told them, not lifting my shirt. “I was training with newbs this morning and jiggled when I should have joggled. People are making more out of it than needs to be. I’ll take a hot shower. You don’t really want more paperwork do you? And seriously, I do not need to get any demerits.”
It was the last two sentences that caused them to say, “We’re just following the rules. You say it is a bruise. We have no reason to believe it to be anything else. Now stop wasting our time and creating drama.” In that moment I realized I’d finally learned how to work things. Always make a way for the rules to look like they are being followed to keep everyone out of trouble and people will generally do what you want.
It was time to go to small group and the idea of hiking made me want to puke again but I kept my face blank. I got lucky and all we did was go to a different stream and gather more pollen so we could make Cattail Pollen and Ramp Biscuits. I thought they came out pretty well, at least everyone ate them. The four new trainees were in the group again and tried to start something, wanting to know what a mujer … a mujer with a baby … was doing in their crew.
Chief Jackson took a jab at me and asked, “Want to answer that McCormick?”
I looked at the four new guys and said, “Simple answer, because someone else said so. I didn’t get to pick any more than you did. Deal with it and follow the rules. And for your info, I’m not your momma or your sister, I’m not picking up or cleaning your crap. Any mess you make you are responsible for. I’m also not here for fraternization so get that out of your head.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not here for sex or to be any kind of extra special friend with benefits to any of you testosterone-poisoned specimens. And you don’t even want to know what will happen if you mess with my kid. Comprende?”
“You sure talk big for someone so small.”
Chief Jackson harrumphed and even those blockheads got the message. Later in the day we were walking along the water’s edge gathering more pollen … some of which I secretly was collecting for my own use … because the big group were mostly just playing. The survival trainees, which included our crew, gathered about a quarter of what was used at The Farm. I found out the rest was gathered by the special and advanced culinary teams. We were getting into the taller cattails and the Chief was minding the new trainees while the rest of us were supposedly trusted to work independently. The cattails were tall, so tall they were over our heads. I was gathering away when I heard a whispered, “Don’t freak, I’m coming up beside you.”
“Cooper, what do you want now?”
“Shhh. I don’t want the others to hear.” I nodded. “I gave some thought to what you said.”
“So?”
“So … I think maybe you’re right. I guess we just got so used to the kid being attached to you that … we didn’t … look, I’m sorry. I’m not going to say it for anyone else but … I am. That’s all. And … I’m gonna get in your business and you’re gonna get mad.”
“What now?” I asked as quietly as he was as I listened to the others who were a few yards away.
“You really just bruised or are you hurt? No games Doe. I won’t rat you out but … but just be honest.”
“Why the heck should you …”
“Care? ‘Cause if I had a little sister she’d probably be like you ‘cause you sure as hell are enough like my older ones that it is pretty damn uncomfortable on some days. So spill it already.”
“I took a kidney shot from the guy with half an earlobe. I’ll live. I’ve hurt worse. It’s just uncomfortable. And there’s not a thing you or anyone else can do about it. And keep it to yourself Mr. Nosey. I’m not looking for anyone’s sympathy or attention.”
“You sure that’s all it is?”
“Yeah but even if it isn’t, that’s on me not on you. Just keep your mouth shut.”
“People are going to notice tomorrow.”
“No they won’t. I have Academics.”
“Doe …”
Dallas called, “Hey Coop, where are you?”