Q Read online

  “You’re not really a makeup kind of a girl, are you?” I say.

  “Oh, that,” Ruby Jo says. “I’ll show you when we get to our place. If you want.”

  I definitely want. I’m also going to keep wanting a while longer because Alex has been shadowing me since dinner, eyeing me in that way he has. That I’m wearing a gray sack doesn’t seem to matter; he’s seen me in short dresses and tennis skirts at the club, and I’m sure his memory is just fine. Will he tell Malcolm about the latest faculty addition here? Or—worse—will he hold that information back, thinking it might be to his advantage? I don’t know which disturbs me more.

  Finally, he leaves us in the common room of the residence building and disappears down the far end of the hall. Several other gray-clad men and women file in, taking seats on the lumpy furniture, raising their voices to above a murmur only when they’re sure Alex is out of earshot.

  I pick a woman about my age and ask her how long Alex Cartmill is planning on staying.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugs. “He got here yesterday. Something about setting up a clinic. Question is, what are you doing here? You’re the one whose husband works for Sinclair, right?”

  “That’s me. Guilt by association.” I say this a little too loudly.

  The woman doesn’t laugh. “Well, honey, let me give you a piece of advice from all of us.” A dozen heads turn toward me as she raises her voice. “We don’t want anything to do with you.” The woman jerks her head to the door, and the room empties, leaving me alone with Ruby Jo and Lissa and the television. I hear the word “bitch” from the hallway. Along with a few other things.

  Ruby Jo takes one of the lumpier chairs and clicks on the television.

  “You seem popular,” she says as a commercial for laundry detergent comes on. The housewife in it is young and pretty and wholesome, smiling her way through dirt-smudged jeans and collar stains as she touts the magic of colorful pods.

  “Being married to a monster does that.”

  “I’d ditch the bastard,” she says.

  “Yeah. It’s not that easy.” I tell her about Anne and about Malcolm’s threats.

  “Queen Madeleine is on tonight,” Lissa says, falling into the sofa next to me. “Our illustrious secretary of education and bedmate of the Fitter Family Campaign.”

  Ruby Jo groans when Madeleine Sinclair’s electric blue suit fills the screen on the wall in front of us. I settle back into sofa cushions that are hard and soft at the same time, and I wonder if she believes it all, or if the Fitter Family Campaign is paying her so much money that Madeleine Sinclair has forgotten what she believes and why. Because I can’t imagine anyone—other than Malcolm—buying what this woman is selling. I want to turn it off, put on anything else. Something mind-numbing like Wheel of Fortune or reruns of Lost would be perfect.

  My mother would say it’s better we watch. And Oma would say the same. And every last one of my European ancestors who lived through decades of hell.

  “And so, to move us forward,” Madeleine says, “we’ve made some bold moves. But boldness is what’s required. What’s needed now. For all of us.” The stress falls on “forward,” “required,” “now,” and “us.” I’ll give it to her, Madeleine Sinclair knows her rhetoric. She’s got that revival preacher thing down pat.

  The cheering from the audience isn’t canned; it can’t be. Thousands of people are packed into the Kennedy Center’s concert hall for tonight’s speech. As the cameras track up and down the rows and pan from side to side, faces explode into smiles. A youngish couple with perfect teeth clap hard and fast and long. A family of five holds hands. Some high school–aged boys in the back row screech a piercing two-finger whistle.

  “Here’s a question. When do we finally say ‘enough’?” Madeleine is in full form this evening, milking the crowd for everything they’ve got. “When do we stand up and fight for a better America? A better family? A better human?” Again, the emphasis on “America,” “family,” and “human” is palpable, audible boldface type.

  And there are more cheers. More whistles.

  The woman hasn’t said anything substantive.

  “They love her,” Lissa says. “They love her like pagans love a goddess.”

  “Why?”

  “Look.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen when she speaks.

  So I look. “What? They’re all just regular people.” The words aren’t out of my mouth when I realize the full meaning of that. Regular.

  As Madeleine pipes on about families and better humans, the cameras once again scan the crowd. There’s an irregularity in the sameness, and I’m just now seeing the problem. Every cheering person is like the next—clean-cut, dressed in that fresh-from-the-ironing-board urban casual look, mostly white, slim, and attractive—the utter antithesis of what populated the cafeteria only an hour ago. Madeleine Sinclair’s idea of the new upper class.

  And Malcolm’s idea. Even my idea, once.

  On the television, Madeleine Sinclair looks at me with accusation in her eyes. You’re no different from me, are you, Elena? she might as well be saying.

  “And so I’m proud to share a few key points of the FBP with you,” she says. “Working with the experts at the Genics Institute and WomanHealth, we’ve—”

  I look sideways at Lissa. “FBP?”

  “Family Betterment Program,” she whispers. “Weren’t you watching?”

  “Sure. Must have blanked out for a second there.”

  Madeleine continues with the charisma of a preacher on a pulpit. “Number one. English first.”

  The crowd at the Kennedy Center roars.

  “Simple, succinct, and timely,” she says, nodding her approval at the audience’s reaction. “Number two. Our friends at the Genics Institute have been hard at work, and I’m pleased to announce a new battery of prenatal Q tests is ready for rollout. This is a first major step in the direction of identifying congenital issues before they have the chance to ruin lives.”

  More applause while Madeleine glances at her notes. “Speaking of Q testing, let’s move on to number three. We’ll be implementing genetic tests more frequently, beginning with special target populations. Once again, our goal is a better America, and that means better families. Better human beings.”

  Several hands shoot up in the front rows, where the press is seated. When the camera catches them, I recognize the woman three in from the left as Bonita Hamilton, the rail-thin journalist Malcolm has steadily labeled as “someone who needs to leave her laissez-faire government shit behind and climb aboard the commonsense train.”

  Madeleine’s smile fades. “I’ll take questions after I’m finished. Thank you.”

  Am I imagining things, or did her veneer just crack?

  “Number four,” Madeleine continues. Pause for effect. “This one I think you’re really going to like, ladies.” Smile. “We’ve approved a major federal grant for WomanHealth.” Another pause. “All pregnancy management services provided by our new partner are covered by your insurance program, regardless of whether you’ve been referred by the Genics Institute. Starting tomorrow. That’s one hundred percent coverage, no deductible, no co-pay. Not a cent out of your pocket. Now, I’ll take a few of your questions.”

  Bonita’s hand is the first up. Madeleine ignores her once, twice, three times while she fields questions with the agility of a circus acrobat, dancing around issues, never really giving a clear answer. Every word out of her mouth rhymes with “better” or “fitter,” with “greatness” and “moving forward.”

  The defining characteristic of Bonita Hamilton is that she doesn’t play by anyone else’s rules. So when her hand shoots in the air for the seventh time, and when Madeleine points to a prim woman two seats farther down the row, Bonita stands up. All six feet of her.

  “I think I love this woman,” Ruby Jo says.

  “Dr. Sinclair.” Bonita talks out of turn, not waiting for approval. “Can you tell us something more about these special populat
ions?”

  “I think I’ve already said enough on that topic, Miss Hamilton.”

  Miss Hamilton seems to disagree.

  “Just a few examples.”

  Madeleine’s lips force a smile. “Like I said—”

  “Prisons? Orphanages? Sanctuary cities?” Bonita pauses and smiles back at the camera with false ingenuousness. “Or, maybe, state schools?”

  “We’re in the process of defining the testing populations. Thank you.” Behind her podium, Madeleine Sinclair straightens a moment too late. Her voice has already cracked.

  “Thank you, Madam Secretary,” Bonita says and takes her seat. “Oh. One more thing. It’s really a question for Ms. Peller.” She turns toward where Petra Peller sits on the stage. “How did you come up with the name for your company, the Genics Institute? I’ve always been curious about that.”

  I’m not curious, not after Oma told us all about Uncle Eugen, not after I looked up his institute and discovered its real name. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.

  Eugenic. Well-born.

  All Madeleine Sinclair’s talk about a better America and better families and better humans weaves itself into one horrible, sickening concept.

  “My granny was in one of them state schools back in the fifties,” Ruby Jo says when Lissa clicks the television off. “Looks like we are, too.”

  Forty-Five

  When I think back, when I remember sweating through four years of American history, here’s what I recall: dates, presidents’ names, more dates, which archduke’s assassination started which world war, pages and pages of facts and timelines and annexations of land, and more dates.

  What Ruby Jo tells us now was definitely not on the syllabus, but it matches everything I read in Malcolm’s books and on the Internet at my parents’ house. The difference is she’s attaching a real name to the nightmare.

  “Granny says the testing vans came around a few times a year. Mostly they were these nasty women who made all the kids answer a bunch of bullshit questions.” She looks at Lissa. “Sorry. My momma always said I had a dirty mouth.”

  Lissa laughs. “Doesn’t bother me a fucking bit.”

  “It was a Supreme Court justice who said three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Ruby Jo tells us. “Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. That’s Holmes, not Hitler. Can you believe it?” Ruby Jo stops, takes a long drink of water, and starts again. “My granny was on a bus to nowhere sooner than you could say Jack Robinson. See, they had a list of undesirables based on the testing and whatnot. And she was no dummy. Or imbecile. Just had some of them mood swings, you know? The kind they treat with pills nowadays. Take a Prozac, the doctors tell you. Back then, there weren’t any pills. But institutions, yeah. Hundreds of ’em.”

  I think of my mother telling me about the school in Massachusetts, of Malcolm dismissing her with a bored “No one’s complained so far.”

  “They came around a lot to our town,” Ruby Jo continues. “With their tests and their clipboards and their snooty manners. Well, they weren’t snooty at first, my granny said. The women were all smiles and sunshine. They even gave out lollipops to the kids after the testing went on. Funny, though, there weren’t any lollipops at the state school they sent her to. And there definitely weren’t any smiles.”

  In the next half hour, we find out Ruby Jo’s maternal grandmother spent two years in a state school, all because of a few test-happy nonscientists who thought the world would be better without her. Everything Ruby Jo has told us sounds like bad science fiction, but it isn’t.

  “But she got out. It all ended,” I say.

  “Well, I’m here, ain’t I? Ruby Jo Pruitt, daughter of Lester Pruitt, who was Betty Anne Pruitt’s first son. But I guess I almost wasn’t. So yeah, Granny got out just in time.”

  Lissa and I look a question at her, and Ruby Jo’s eyes narrow as if we’re supposed to get it.

  “Y’all,” she says, “I mean this super-nice and everything, but it strikes me you don’t have a clue how it was down where I come from. Now, if y’all will pardon me, I’m fixin’ to go get myself a little drunk.” She slips out of the common room, leaving us alone with the dead television and the sound of a bug scuttling around the far corner, searching for a dark hiding place away from it all.

  The bug makes me think of Darwin, of all those little blobs of life crawling out of the muck, changing and adapting to the world around them. Mostly, it makes me wonder whether we’re born with bigotry in our blood or if hatred of the strange has to be taught. I think of Malcolm and his supercilious, above-it-all ways. I think of myself as a kid.

  I put the question to Lissa. “Is this how we are? Humans? Because if it is, I think I want to be something else.” Anything but an overeducated, overconditioned human being. Anything at all.

  Lissa doesn’t answer my question, not right away. Instead, she flips open a notebook, the old steno kind with the wire loops on the top, and starts writing. When she’s done, she leans forward a little, elbows on her knees. “You know what I think? I think I’ll take being a human.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Lissa puts one hand up to stop me. It isn’t a harsh gesture, or a domineering one, so I let her go on. “You see that bug? The one in the corner?”

  I can’t help but see it. “It’s a silverfish.”

  “It is. It’s a creature. Conditioned to do what it needs to do to survive.” She stands and goes to the far wall where the silverfish’s tiny tapered carapace fishtails back and forth, scrambling for purchase on a wall it can’t climb. “See how he runs from my shoe? He’ll run from other predators. Centipedes, spiders, whatever. But he won’t run from another of his kind.” Lissa’s mouth smiles in a crooked way, one side up and one side down. “Well, unless he’s running from a female during a mating ritual, but that’s a different kind of running.”

  This bug is mesmerizing. For a long minute after Lissa comes back to sit next to me on the lumpy couch, we’re still in the semidark, watching its iridescent form swish and scuttle, hunting for food, safety, a mate. I know that if I were to get up and walk over to it, the bug would fear me. I wouldn’t need to threaten or harm. The bug would run for its life in the opposite direction, seeking out others of its kind.

  I was never a bug, but I was a kid once. I guess in the same way there are bug politics, there are kid politics. He’s got blue eyes; she has brown. Go with the one most like you. She’s fat; he’s thin. Go with the one who looks more like a mirror image. He’s Irish; she’s English. Identify with the known. Humans have been engaged this way for thousands of years: Romans and Greeks, Muslims and Christians, Aryans and Semitics, Brahmins and Dalits.

  My question still lingers. Are we born like this? Or are we taught? Either answer is horrible in its own way.

  “You want to know my theory?” she asks. There’s conspiracy in her voice, like we’re a pair of Cold War spies trading state secrets and cash in the back room of an East Berlin bar.

  “Sure.”

  “I think we all have some of the creature in us. Some hardwired instinct that tells us to beware of anything too strange or different from us. That’s part of what made us fit to survive. But.” She raises a finger before I can agree or disagree. “I know we can turn off the xenophobia switch if we want to. It’s one of the aspects of humanity. Does that answer your question?”

  It answers one of them. I have more. I want to know what Lissa’s writing, why she’s continually clicking her pen in that obsessive-compulsive way, what brought her here, and why she didn’t flinch at the scene of misfits in the cafeteria tonight at dinner. I want to know what the colored armbands mean and why Alex Cartmill is here. But it’s late, and Lissa reminds me we need to be in the dining hall at seven thirty for breakfast, so no more questions for now.

  I stay in the common room with only the red LED light from the television for company, and I think about mating rituals, and creatures that run from the strange, and my dreams of da
ncing Qs whose tails wrap themselves around children, carrying them away.

  I think about Freddie and wonder whether she’s crying herself to sleep tonight.

  Like I know I will.

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee are not at their desk when I leave the common room. I check the double doors leading to the faculty building’s vestibule, which is more Checkpoint Charlie–type inspection room than lobby. Open.

  The main doors, however, are not. A sign on each of them warns again that an alarm will sound if any attempt is made to open them between the hours of nine and seven.

  My watch shows eleven forty-five when I let myself into the apartment. One glass with a quarter inch of clear liquid sits on the kitchen table. I pick it up, sniff at it, and recoil. It smells like fire. Corn-flavored fire.

  What the hell, I think, and I drain the glass before shedding myself of my heavy gray shell and pulling on pajamas. Cotton never felt so delicious.

  Ruby Jo is sprawled diagonally on the lower bunk bed, one leg hanging off the mattress, red curls lying in thick ropes on her pillow. If the mound of blankets weren’t rising and falling on top of her, I’d think she was dead. Lissa, on the other hand, already snores softly in the twin bed opposite. She sounds like a content kitten.

  And me? I’ve never been so wide-awake.

  I climb the wooden ladder near Ruby Jo’s feet, bump my head on the ceiling, and tumble onto a mattress that falls somewhere between rock and iron on the spectrum of uncomfortable. Above me, the plaster is close enough to feel like the lid of a coffin. Terrific.

  Wide-awake and buried alive. I can’t think of a worse fate.

  And I’m still awake.

  Sleep eventually comes, and the last thing I remember seeing is the wall directly above my head, white as ignorance and solid as steel.

  I need to bust through the damned thing.