Children of Exile Read online

  I didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, but it looked like he hadn’t sold a single apple.

  He can’t see, I reminded myself. He probably doesn’t even realize that his squint looks mean and scares people away. He probably doesn’t know that he’s too far away from the crowd of shoppers.

  I made myself walk over to him.

  “There’s a space over there you could move to,” I told him, pointing. Then I remembered that he couldn’t see, and I dropped my arm. “Over there, more people would see your apples and you could sell them more quickly—”

  “I have to lean against the wall,” he growled at me. “It keeps my back from hurting so bad.”

  On top of everything else, he had problems with his back?

  “I—I brought you a sandwich,” I stammered, as if that were a way to apologize. “She—the mother—she made it for you.”

  The father grunted, twisted his face into an even uglier expression, and held out his hand. As soon as I placed a sandwich in his hand, he put his hand back on the top apple. Rather than bringing his hand to his mouth so he could eat, he leaned his head down to the sandwich.

  Saliva from his mouth dripped down onto the apples.

  “I—I’ll watch the apples for you while you eat,” I said. I forced myself to sit down beside him. “You don’t have to worry about anybody stealing from you while I’m here.”

  “I always have to worry about people stealing from me,” he muttered back to me. A few half-chewed crumbs from his mouth spewed out onto the apples. “What could you do to fight off thieves? You’re a girl.”

  What did that have to do with anything?

  I wanted to say, What could you do? You’re blind. But that was evil and wrong and mean.

  “I could scream for help,” I said. “I could yell for the police.”

  The father snorted.

  “Who’d help someone like you?” he asked. He waved the sandwich like he was scolding me. “Who’d help us?”

  It almost made me happy that he used the word “us.” Maybe he just needed to be cheered up; maybe he just needed to learn to trust people.

  I didn’t answer his question. Not directly.

  “Is that sandwich good?” I asked. “The mother made one for me, too, but I’m not very hungry. You can have it too, if you want.”

  The father grimaced, as if my question had made the sandwich taste bad.

  “Don’t bother acting all goody-goody like that,” he said. “You’ll learn. Around here, you take what food you can get.”

  That sealed it. Now I really wasn’t hungry. I searched for something else to say, something that wouldn’t make him snort or grunt or grimace.

  I finally settled on “I think the mother was really sorry she didn’t have a chance to make you your noonday meal before you left for the market. I think she really wanted to make sure she took good care of you.”

  This was another failure: The father snorted in an even more disgusted way than before.

  “She shouldn’t have gone to that church, then,” he said. “She shouldn’t go anyway. She should know those aren’t our people. That man . . .”

  “The leader?” I said. “The . . . missionary?”

  “Yes,” the father said. He looked angrier than ever. Could I count it as a minor victory that now he seemed to be more disgusted by someone else than he was by me? “She knows that man is an outsider. A nakca.”

  “What’s a nakca?” I asked. I was pretty sure I’d never heard the word before.

  “A foreigner,” the father said. His face twisted in disgust. No—maybe it was hate. “Someone who comes in and tries to change things to the way he wants them to be. Even though he doesn’t understand anything about real life. Or about us.”

  Somehow I didn’t think I was part of this “us.” I knew it for sure when the father added, “Like those Freds. The Freds were nakcas. The worst nakcas ever. And they turned my own daughter into a nakca, too.”

  I felt my face get hot. I was glad the father couldn’t see me blush. I thought about how I’d suggested he move to a better place to sell apples.

  But you could sell more apples the way I suggested! I wanted to protest.

  Instead I said, “But I want to understand! I want to understand everything. If you explain, maybe I can.”

  The father turned his face toward me. His eyes stayed blank and sightless. I was, at best, nothing but a shadow to him.

  “It’s too late,” he said. “It’s hopeless.”

  And then he stopped talking.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The father didn’t speak to me for the rest of the afternoon. Between his silence and the way other adults looked past me, I almost felt like I had stopped existing.

  I wasn’t used to feeling invisible. In Fredtown, I’d been Rosi, the Oldest Girl, the one who always had to be responsible and set a good example. Everybody watched me. After Edwy and I stopped being friends, it wasn’t like any of the Freds told the younger children, Stop paying attention to Edwy! Stop looking to him as a role model! Rosi’s the one you want to be like! But . . . they might as well have.

  Finally I saw some other kids in the marketplace walking alongside parents or being carried in grown-ups’ arms. I started waving and calling to them, “Hello! How are you? Are you happy to be home?”

  The first time I did that, to a seven-year-old named Lita, the woman with Lita grabbed her hand and yanked her to the other side, away from me.

  The second time, it was a three-year-old named Oscar, and the woman carrying him pressed his face against her shoulder and kept her hand over his exposed ear, as if to make sure he couldn’t see or hear me.

  The third time, four-year-old Sano turned his head to smile shyly at me, and the man walking beside him gave Sano a . . . it was only a shove, wasn’t it? Just to keep Sano going in the right direction? No adult would actually smack a child’s rear, intending to cause pain.

  Right?

  Whatever it was—shove, smack, accidental push—Sano didn’t seem to be expecting it. He pitched forward and slid across the cracked sidewalk. Then he started screaming. I stood up to help, but a woman scooped him into her arms before I could take the first step. I saw red on Sano’s knees, and I opened my mouth, ready to warn the woman, He’s bleeding. He scraped his knees, and—

  The woman had already whirled around, clutching Sano’s body tightly against her chest, as if she thought I wanted to steal him.

  “This is your fault,” she hissed.

  Sano kept screaming. But I shut my mouth. I sat back down.

  That woman had dark eyes, I thought. Like all the other adults who glared at me. Did Lita’s and Oscar’s parents have brown eyes too? Should I check out grown-ups’ eye color before I speak to any more kids?

  I couldn’t do that. It went against everything I’d ever been taught. I couldn’t refuse to speak to kids I’d known their entire lives—kids who were my friends, kids I liked and maybe even loved—just because they were with adults with brown eyes.

  I decided I’d have to settle for just nodding at everyone.

  Strangely, very few of the other kids did much more than that themselves. Fredtown had been such a friendly place—it was a rare morning when I made it all the way to school without some little kid running up and giving me a sticky-fingered hug. Fred-mama used to tease that for such a neat, tidy child, it was ridiculous how often I came home with muddy handprints around the collar of my dress (from Peki, little Meki’s twin brother, who loved playing in the dirt) or chocolaty handprints around my waist (from when the kindergartners were doing a baking unit).

  But here the other children mostly returned my nods with furtive glances and secretive nods back—it seemed like an extreme act of daring when eight-year-old Oram raised an eyebrow at me and tilted up the corners of his mouth the slightest bit.

  Were they just imitating me, taking their cues from how I behaved? Or was something else at work?

  I thought about the man’s hand
slamming against Sano’s rear. I thought about the mother—my mother—almost slapping me yesterday. I thought about how Bobo and I had been sent to bed without supper. I thought about Edwy being forced to fish for asking too many questions.

  How many other kids had been punished for doing things we’d all considered perfectly normal in Fredtown? How many other kids had been treated differently by green- or brown-eyed adults? How many other kids were just as puzzled as I was, and had decided just to watch and listen until they figured everything out?

  That’s just what the Freds taught us to do, I thought. After all, one of our principles was You learn something every day if you pay attention.

  I stared out into the crowd and looked for details I hadn’t noticed before.

  I saw a man selling pears in bags and hiding half-rotten ones under the shiny, beautiful ones at the top of the bag.

  I saw a woman brush against another woman’s arm and they both jerked back as though they’d touched poison. Each turned to yell at the other, so I could tell: One had green eyes; one had brown.

  I saw a man scuttling along the ground like a crab. No—he was on a flat board balanced on three wheels. Then, as he passed, I saw why: He had no legs. He was missing even more limbs than the father.

  Sometimes that happens, I told myself, remembering lessons in science class. Like Leila, the girl born with a twisted foot, sometimes people are born with different bodies than others.

  Then I saw a man missing both arms.

  A woman missing an arm and a leg.

  A man with scars across his face that totally hid his nose.

  That had to be from an injury. Nobody would have been born like that. Somehow, I was certain.

  Why weren’t any of the Freds like that? I wondered. When so many adults here are . . . damaged?

  I touched my own face; I looked down at my own arms and legs, all so sturdy and brown and useful. I thought about how Edwy and I had agreed that something bad had happened here—something that had made the people who were kids when we were born disappear; something that had made the Freds take away the two of us and all the other children born after us for twelve solid years.

  Something that had left so many, many adults scarred and damaged.

  Something bad had happened, yes. I’d known that. But back in Fredtown, when the Freds talked about keeping us safe, I’d never imagined anything this bad.

  What if the “something bad” happened again?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “I need to go check on Bobo,” I told the father as I scrambled to my feet.

  He jerked his head toward me, toward the sound of my voice. Maybe he hadn’t been shunning me. Maybe he’d only fallen asleep, and since he was blind, he did it with his eyes open.

  “What?” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Bobo,” I repeated. “I need to go make sure he’s okay.”

  “He’s okay,” the father said, grunting again. “He’s with his mother. That’s where he should be.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. There was an urgency growing in me I couldn’t explain. It was like I had a physical need to see Bobo just then—I needed that more than I needed the sandwich I still hadn’t eaten. “I have to see him. I have to be sure he’s all right.”

  I was thinking of Bobo’s arms and legs, the way they were so cute and little-boy pudgy. He hadn’t lost his baby fat yet. But he was so strong—I thought about him racing me to the playground in Fredtown; I thought about him jumping up and down on my bed after we found out we were coming home.

  “Bobo has to be safe,” I told the father.

  Maybe blind people can hear extra things to make up for not being able to see. The father tilted his head, listening to me.

  “What did you just see?” he asked.

  “Hurt people,” I said. “People without arms and legs, people with scars . . .”

  “Old wounds?” the father asked. “Or new ones? Did you see any blood?”

  He turned his head from side to side, as if he were trying to see too, or letting his ears scoop up as many sounds and voices as possible.

  “I saw a little boy fall and scrape his knees,” I said. “All the other wounds were old. I think.”

  The father sagged against the wall behind him.

  “You scared me,” he said.

  I wasn’t comforted.

  “Please,” I said. “Let me just—”

  “Fine,” the father said, biting off the word. “We’ll stop for the day. I haven’t sold any apples anyhow. Today’s no different from any other day.”

  He stood up and began piling apples into a bag I saw he’d been sitting on for the past several hours. I reached out and held it open for him. I was still worried about Bobo, but something clicked in my head.

  “You never sell any apples?” I asked.

  “Not often,” he muttered, still placing apples in the bag.

  I thought about how, back in Fredtown, Edwy and I had learned about running a business—and learned that business owners have to sell enough to make a profit. I thought about our Fred-parents explaining that they had to work to support our family.

  “But if you don’t sell very many apples, then how do you . . . ,” I began.

  “Make any money?” the father finished for me. He made a disgusted sound deep in his throat. “Afraid you’ve come home just to starve? Don’t worry, girlie. That’s what the Victims’ Assistance is for. They give us food and the other things we need. Like these apples I sell. They keep us just alive enough to stay miserable.”

  I knew what assistance was—it was help. Aid. One person giving something to another. But I’d never heard the word “victim” before.

  “What’s a victim?” I asked.

  The father put the last apple in his bag.

  “People like me,” he said.

  People missing arms or legs, I thought. People who are blind or deaf. People with scars or paralyzed faces.

  The father made that disgusted, angry sound again in his throat as he heaved the bag of apples over his back.

  “Everyone here,” he said. “All of us.”

  Why did it seem like he thought I was in this “us” too?

  The father started to walk away from me. For a moment I could only watch his lurching stride, the way he seemed to know to avoid people in his path. And the way people dodged him.

  Then I scrambled to catch up.

  “Are there victims who aren’t here?” I asked. “People who left because . . .”

  Because of whatever bad thing happened twelve years ago, I thought. Whatever took away all the people who were kids when I was born.

  I was working on a theory—a cheerful one, even. Maybe Edwy had gotten me all scared and worried for nothing. Maybe when we were taken to Fredtown, and raised by Fred-parents, the older kids were taken to a . . . a Tedtown or a Nedtown or a Frederica-town, or something like that. Maybe they just hadn’t come back yet. Maybe it was like we were part of a scientific experiment, and they were the control group.

  I didn’t really want to be part of a scientific experiment, but it didn’t have to be that something truly awful had happened to those kids.

  I looked to the father weaving his way through the crowd, and I saw instantly that my question was a mistake. It turned his face to stone.

  “I told you I wasn’t going to explain,” he said. His voice was hard too. “We’re going home to check on Bobo. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t enough. But I nodded anyway, forgetting that he couldn’t see.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Where are the suitcases?” the mother asked as soon as we pushed our way in the front door.

  “Bobo?” I called, ignoring her question.

  She grabbed my shoulders as I walked by.

  “I finally got him to go to sleep,” she said, jerking me back. “Don’t wake him up!”

  I struggled against her grip. It took me only a second to break away.


  “I just have to see him,” I said in a slightly softer voice. But I darted past her, toward the room Bobo and I had shared the night before.

  I reached the doorway before the mother could stop me. I stood there, gazing in, breathing hard.

  Bobo was on the bare floor, sprawled flat on his back, his toes peeking out from under the blanket. He had the back of one hand resting on his forehead—Fred-mama used to joke that Bobo always slept in positions that made it look like he was about to recite Shakespeare. But he had his other hand against his mouth, his thumb on his bottom lip, the tip of the thumb braced against his upper teeth.

  Bobo had pretty much stopped sucking his thumb when he was three. I could remember Fred-daddy explaining this to me: how kids sucked thumbs to comfort themselves, and gradually they realized they didn’t need that comfort, or they discovered more mature ways to find it.

  Bobo sucking his thumb again was a bad sign.

  It wasn’t just the safety of his arms and legs I needed to worry about.

  The mother yanked me backward.

  “Answer me when I speak to you,” she demanded, standing practically nose to nose. “What happened to the suitcases you were going to pick up?”

  Our suitcases. This morning they had been a huge concern for me. I’d wanted clothes to change into, a comb to unsnarl my hair, Bobo’s toy boat to keep him happy. I’d wanted every bit of Fredtown those suitcases represented. But in my rush to check on Bobo, I’d completely forgotten about them.

  “What suitcases?” the father growled.

  “Didn’t you tell him?” the mother asked, scowling at me. She turned to the father. “You and Rosi were supposed to pick up the suitcases she and Bobo brought from . . . you know. They were still at the airport.”