Halfsies (129)

PSI-1

The dining room was too small for dining. It was dim, dingy and carpeted in dark green, which did very little for the atmosphere. There was a hole in the ceiling from which plaster dust descended to punctuate an occasional disturbance. The wallpaper was the same red and blue striped pattern as most of the house, on a background that might once have been cream-colored but was moldering towards khaki in most places. Barnaby considered it accursed, but whether this was something intrinsic to the stripes or something to do with the house itself was any sane person’s guess.

Because the dining room was too small for dining, the chairs and table went into the kitchen, making the kitchen too small for kitchening. This was how logic functioned in Hyacinth’s house.

But it did mean the dining room made a nice clear floor space with some padding for a baby to loll around on. Provided a clean sheet or towel went between the baby and the shaggy green carpeting — which had never gotten any kind of regular maintenance and Hyacinth was not about to start now.

Erik had need of some sedate indoor activity. He was still tired and sore, if not running a fever anymore, and playing with the camera was fun, but it wore him out a little. It also gave him a really good excuse for not getting up at three o’clock in the morning to tease the General. He would’ve been okay watching it, but Maggie wanted him to get out there in the line of fire and sing, which was kind of like the lion tamer at the circus asking for volunteers. No, thanks.

They didn’t even get a picture of it because the General did something to mess up the camera — which Erik thought was very restrained of her.

Erik had an idea Sanaam was mad at the camera now, but they were also all a bit bored of it. The pictures were already starting to freeze — his uncle was right about instants being almost stills. Anyway, the film was expensive.

So when he found Calliope playing with Lucy on the dining room floor, Erik decided to grab a couple of his soft toys and join in. It was pretty fun, especially now Lucy knew about smiling. She liked everything. Uncle Mordecai said she was an easy baby, which Erik took to mean that he, himself, had been a hard baby. That seemed sort of unfair. If there were levels they should always start easy, like at the arcade. Unless you had a cheat code. Maybe Calliope would have a medium baby next.

Maggie and Sanaam had also been drawn in by Lucy’s accommodating nature, giggles and smiles. Sanaam had to leave again tomorrow night, so he wanted to soak up as much cute baby as he could. They grew up way faster when you were only around once every three months. Lucy barely had hair last time Maggie’s daddy was here, now she was getting ready to eat real food. Maybe she’d be walking next time! Then they could play football!

But right now bouncing toys around and letting her grab at them was enough for Lucy and enough for him too.

Lucy was on her tummy, which apparently was involved in learning to crawl. She squealed and curled up like a crescent roll when you brought toys near. “‘Gimme dat!’” Calliope said for her. “‘No, gimme dat!’”

“We found out Lucy’s half-colored,” Maggie said. She had commandeered Lucy’s cat dolly and was absently waving its white front paws. “Did I tell you that, Dad? Calliope’s boyfriend came over. He’s blue.”

Erik was already shaking his head.

“Friend-friend,” Calliope said. “Ann and Milo like him too. ‘Oooh, I want my pet lizard so bad!’ …But not that mean lady, Cerise.”

“You can’t be ‘half-colored,’” Erik said. “It’s not like black people and white people. And brown. Colored either is or isn’t. I am, even if we don’t know if my dad was a black guy or a white guy. Lucy isn’t. She won’t be kind of in between like you, Maggie.”

Maggie held up her hand and examined it. “I guess I’m in between… I mean, I’m not as dark as my dad or light as my mom, but I don’t look in between. I look like my dad.”

Erik and Calliope were both shaking their heads.

“Maggie, you’ve got eyebrows,” Calliope said. “And little ears.”

Sanaam snickered and fingered one of his stretched earlobes. “She could have them like this if she wanted, but her mother would kill me.”

“I look like I belong to my dad, I mean,” Maggie said. She sighed. “People don’t ever look twice when we go around together, or on the island. I don’t look like a white person.”

“You do, actually,” Sanaam said. But he’d grown up around everyone black and he had a better eye for it. There weren’t even colored people year-round on Saint Matt’s, only on Miss Tina’s, next door. “But everyone on Saint Matt’s knows us and they don’t care. They’re more worried about your mom because of the magic than what she looks like.”

“Maybe it’s like Miss Cerise,” Erik said. “She looks more like a boy if she doesn’t do makeup and a dress. You look more like your dad, so people are just guessing.”

“I wish they’d guess the other way once in a while,” Maggie muttered. “Flip a coin or something. It gets old.” Sanaam slung an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

“I look way more like my mom,” Calliope said. She set down the stuffed lizard and twined her fingers in her hair. “All of us do. Dad’s blond, with blue eyes. But nobody ever acted like we didn’t belong to him… Not even away from the school. Walking to the park or whatever. People didn’t act like we didn’t belong to my mom when she took us to court too.” She snickered. “They got pretty mad at her sometimes. We liked to play hide and seek in the bathrooms. Did I tell you about that?”

“You’re passing, Calliope,” Sanaam said gravely. “That’s what that’s called. You can pass.”

“Like you’re driving outside city limits?” Calliope said.

“No, not quite,” Sanaam said. “You look like you could be white or Wakokuhito…”

“I’m both,” Calliope said.

“Yes, but people don’t assume that. They just pick one or the other depending on who you’re standing near. So you blend in.”

“Man, I don’t wanna blend in,” Calliope said, pouting. “That’s no fun.”

“It’s… not always fun the other way,” Sanaam allowed.

Erik shook his head, agreeing. “People think they know stuff about you when you’re different. Or, like, you’re not even a person. If you’re the same, it’s like you’re a blank book and they have to find out about you. Different-looking people have scribbles all over them already. Wrong scribbles, and nobody cares about getting it right.”

“I walk down the street and I see people leafing through every thought about enormous black men that’s ever gone through their empty little heads,” Sanaam said. “These are not positive thoughts. Sometimes they cross to the other side in the middle of the street.”

“Sometimes they smile really big and say hi and it’s like they want to pet you to show they’re nice people and they’re not afraid,” Erik said. “They do it… more for me because of my… eye.” He frowned acidly. “And how I… talk!” He gave up and sang, a verse from ‘My Life.’ He sighed. “I wish I could tell them to leave me alone like that. But you still have to be nice, and you have to smile. Even when you don’t feel like it. Because my uncle says when one of us does something bad, it’s like all of us did it. We represent.”

The large black man never thought he’d have so much in common with a tiny green person. Was it possible people crossed the street to avoid Erik and Mordecai too, but he’d never been paying attention? “Solidarity, Erik,” he said. He extended a fisted hand in the boy’s direction, knuckles first.

That’s cultural, Erik! They do it in…

Erik winced, but tried to hide it. You guys, I don’t need subtitles all the time. It’s not like one of those weird foreign films. My brain works now. I can figure things out.

Well, excuse me, Iron John said. He departed for the kitchen; Mordecai and Hyacinth had the oven going in there. His little black head, pitch black like the frying pan, didn’t even come up to the top of the end table.

Erik made a fist and bumped knuckles with Sanaam, then he drew back the hand and waggled the fingers… like they did on Saint Matt’s, but he would’ve figured that out himself if they didn’t show him! It was like Hester telling him how to spell all the time. He could do stuff on his own! Sometimes the stupid gods were like people trying to pet him too!

“Proper,” Sanaam said, with all due seriousness.

Erik nodded.

“I don’t think it’s that big a deal for us in Marsellia, Daddy,” Maggie said.

Sanaam sighed. “Mag-Pirate, you are a little girl. People don’t expect you to murder them, even though you can already. You’re never going to get it as bad as me, even when you grow up. And I’m really glad you’re a girl for that reason. But you have to remember even though we’re alike, we’re not the same.”

“Sometimes I have to break people’s fingers because I’m a little girl,” she replied darkly. “People don’t make you follow up on being scary.”

Sanaam discarded the friendly yellow duck in the central pile with the other toys and sat forward. “Maggie, when did you break someone’s fingers?”

“He deserved it,” Erik said. “Unless you mean another guy?”

“I don’t hurt people when they don’t deserve it,” Maggie said. “And I can take care of myself, Dad.”

“Maggie, I don’t mean…”

“But I’ve been everywhere, and Marsellia is not that bad,” she went on. “There’s not enough of us here. We’re two weird individuals in Strawberryfield, not a type. Suidas and the Iroquois are just nasty about black people, because they used to have slaves. It’s like we escaped and they’re looking for an excuse to turn us in.”

“It’s not that,” Sanaam said. He bobbed his head from side to side. “It’s not all that great with the toilets and the drinking fountains, but they…”

“…Slaves?” Erik managed at last. Like they had rowing ships in the comic books?

Don’t you tell him about that, I. J.! Hester Carthage of the Hearth broke in. He doesn’t need to see it! It’s vulgar!

I was a slave! Iron John’s voice responded irritably from the kitchen. In Elbany! Of course, it wasn’t called Elbany…

Oh, nobody cares about your weird stories, Hester said.

Sanaam sighed. “Erik, slavery is… this very bad idea that people keep having. The ILV… Well, they kidnapped some people to work on their farms. A lot of people. From Ifrana… Because Ifrana was having a lot of little wars at the time and they had a lot of tribes and kingdoms that didn’t like each other, and they were willing to do the kidnapping and sell each other off. And Suidas… That was some colonizing that went wrong. The people who ‘discovered’ it have been having a long argument with the people who were already living there about who really runs the place, and there has been attrition on both sides. In any case, slaves don’t stay slaves for very long, and it’s very messy when it ends and lots of people die. It is always a bad idea.”

“How come we didn’t try to get slaves from the ILV?” Maggie said. “They were all tribes that didn’t like each other before Anatolia showed up and pissed ‘em off — sorry, Calliope and Lucy.”

“I don’t mind we invaded the ILV,” Calliope said with a shrug. “You didn’t get to pick, Maggie.” She decided to try Lucy with Erik’s stuffed bear, which he was sharing, along with the elephant. All the stuffed animals in this house were friends. Sam even had a gorilla!

“Well, it’s morally wrong, Mag-Pirate,” Sanaam said.

“Yeah, okay, but why really?” Maggie said. She wouldn’t necessarily have objected to a couple… indentured servants with a reasonable pathway towards freedom. Yeah.

He snickered weakly and shook his head. “You’d probably get a better answer out of your mother. Your father is a historical dilettante, a tourist in all places. But I would guess it’s because our explorers brought anathema back with them, and that was kicking our butts pretty bad, so we wanted to make friends with the people who knew how to deal with it very fast. We had to be nice.”

“So you’re saying Ifrana would like us better if they got us sick,” Maggie said.

“…in a very roundabout way, yes,” Sanaam said.

“Maggie, is Guns, Germs and Steel a book or a movie?” Erik said contemplatively.

“I dunno, but I’ll look for it next time we hit up the library,” she replied. “Or are you getting the mind-movie version right now?”

He shrugged. “Just pieces. Something about cows and horses, I dunno, they never explain enough. Iron John says he used to be a slave, but in Elbany, and you guys didn’t say anything about slavery there.”

“Well, Elbany also used to have a lot of little tribes that hated each other,” Sanaam said. “I think pretty much everywhere was like that if you go back far enough. That wasn’t like Suidas and the ILV, that was more like… political prisoners with jobs.”

“Oh, Italica and Thessalonia were always doing that to each other,” Calliope said, nodding. “You had to earn your freedom, or buy it… Or you could be a gladiator!” She held up Erik’s bear and made him bravely salute the thundering crowds.

“See, I wouldn’t mind some slaves like that,” Maggie said.

“It was a step up from killing people,” Sanaam said. “Although still not very nice, Mag-Pirate,” he scolded. “But Suidas and the ILV industrialized it. They shipped people around like I ship cargo. That was much worse. It ended badly. They don’t do it anymore.”

“So we get our own toilets as a consolation prize,” Maggie said dryly.

“They’re just not quite ready to admit we’re people,” Sanaam said.

“Oh. Yeah. Solidarity,” Erik said. He touched a fist to his chest. That was how they did it in Marsellia.

Maggie was already shaking her head. “Erik, you don’t get it. The Iroquois are scary. I don’t walk around in San Rosille worried I’m gonna get bottled for jaywalking and the police’ll beat me up and never let me out.”

Erik’s expression dried up like he’d eaten a spoonful of alum. The lens in his gold eye whirred and adjusted as the gray one narrowed. “Yeah, Maggie, my uncle and I have absolutely no idea how that is. Tell me about it.”

Maggie folded her hands politely in her lap and canted her head away. “I’m sorry,” slipped out after a moment’s struggle.

Sanaam put his hand on her back and stroked gently. “You and Erik are alike but not the same.”

“Sometimes I forget,” she allowed. She lifted her head with a frown. “Anyway, you don’t have your own crummy toilets and drinking fountains, so it’s different for me when I’m over there too.”

“They just say we can’t use ‘em,” Erik replied. “I hafta go behind a trash can and my uncle stands at the end of the alley on lookout. I’d like a toilet.”

“Man, I didn’t know there were toilet police, that sucks,” Calliope said. She picked up Lucy and settled her against one shoulder. Lucy was getting proper sick of ‘tummy time.’ “I’m glad me and Lucy don’t look like we don’t get to pee… or use the hospital,” she grumbled. “But I don’t like how people lop off one half of me when they see me. I’m two things at once… Like yellow and blue make green. Not like stripes, or back and forth like a blinky light. Both, all the time.”

“Yes! Thank you,” Maggie said. “I don’t mind being black, but I’m not just black, why don’t people get that? I have cultures going on in here!” She gestured to herself. “I can like barbecue pig and a hamburger too! They don’t fight!”

Sanaam privately thought Maggie was more hamburger than barbecue pig, if you were going by culture. But that was his fault. He married a hamburger person and abandoned his daughter in a hamburger land.

But then Saint Matt’s wasn’t much better, as a measure of blackness. His ancestors got dropped there on the way to the Iroquois and rebuilt their lives out of whatever they had with them. Yams made it all right, goats less so and cows not at all. Most of the gods survived the trip, but they had different names. Likewise, the stories had taken some contextual damage. He’d been surprised as hell when he saw a Tricky Rabbit cartoon at the movies. That was clearly Brother Spider — devious enough to steal the moon in a bucket and pig-headed enough to get all eight of his limbs stuck in a wooden doll painted with gum rubber. Except, in the cartoon, it had been black tar. In retrospect that made a lot more sense. Aesthetically.

Should I be eating more goat? he wondered. I mean, from a cultural standpoint…?

“I can like sushi and really bitter black coffee in an insultingly tiny cup!” Calliope declared, stabbing the air with a finger. “Just not for breakfast!” She paused and considered. “But why not for breakfast, huh?”

Erik winced and swallowed. That looked really pretty but he knew what was in it. The texture was wrong. And it was cold. He hoped Calliope wouldn’t tell his uncle about that because he might make it to be nice and it would taste the same, even if it would be made out of, like, mashed potatoes or whatever.

He’d much rather have the complicated tiny coffee.

“Gah?” Lucy inquired.

“No, princess, you’re not old enough,” Calliope said. “Grow some teeth, then you can do whatever you want. You’re even more than two. I think I’ll have Glorie teach you some magic, like Chris…”

“Uh,” Sanaam said.

“But, like, do you ever get the feeling you’re not enough?” Maggie broke in. She leaned forward and rested both arms on the floor like she was pleading. “Like, are you ever around people who are all Wakokuhito and you feel like you don’t belong with them?”

Calliope scratched her head, rippling her dark hair. “Yeah, I guess. A lot of them were older than me, like those guys who played chess at the park. But I couldn’t understand what they were saying. It’s because I’m third generation.” She smiled and shrugged. “Ojichan always said we were a bunch of little barbarians, because we were with Dad most of the time and he didn’t teach us good manners. I said, ‘Ojichan, Daddy doesn’t teach us any manners at all.’”

“I don’t pass,” Maggie said. “So I can’t be white even sometimes… but sometimes I feel like I’m not black enough.”

“Ifrana is difficult,” Sanaam said. “Especially the eastern parts. We look like we belong there, but we don’t act like we belong there. We’re just close enough that people think we’re being rude or stupid. They don’t get that we’re tourists.”

Maggie fussily smoothed out the white sheet, examining its folds. “Sometimes I feel like that on Saint Matt’s.” She looked up with a stricken expression. “It’s really little, Daddy!” She didn’t want to say ‘primitive,’ because most places on Saint Matt’s had running water and Hyacinth’s house didn’t, but… It felt like that. There wasn’t enough pavement. Or stores with new things in the windows. Movies. Serials on the radio. Newspapers that weren’t yellowed and frozen and a month out of date. It was so slow there. It felt like everyone just walked around all the time. Barefoot.

“I didn’t like how it was little either, Mag-Pirate,” Sanaam said gently. “That’s why I left.”

“Yeah, but…” She wasn’t sure how to get this across. “You talk different on Saint Matt’s. Your accent comes back. Are you faking or does it just happen?”

“I…” He shook his head. “I never really noticed that, so I suppose it just happens.”

“I talked like that when I was little,” Maggie said. “But I don’t anymore, and if I switched back like you do, I’d be faking. Do you get that?”

“If you’re a yellow-and-blue-make-green person,” Calliope offered, “you can have blue stuff and yellow stuff… but they don’t make green stuff. So it’s like one minute you fake you’re yellow for some yellow stuff, and then you fake you’re blue for some blue stuff, and maybe you don’t get time to be green.”

“I don’t know what being green is, because nobody ever treats me that way,” Maggie said.

“It’s weird, you probably wouldn’t like it,” Erik said.

Maggie issued a low growl. She tossed Lucy’s cat gently at Erik’s head, hitting him in the shoulder. “Erik, you don’t have to kill Calliope’s metaphor like that, it never did anything to you.”

Erik made a sheepish smile and shrugged. He introduced the cat to the gorilla with the sunglasses. They shook hands.

“I guess I don’t know what half-Wakokuhito is,” Calliope said. “That’s weird. It’s like I’m this little barbarian kid with no manners, and there’s two big buffet tables I can eat off of, but nobody ever comes in and tells me if it’s breakfast or lunch or a snack or whatever, so I’m making it up as I go along. I mean, it’s really fun most of the time, but it’s lonesome.”

Sanaam’s expression was pained. “Maggie, do you feel like you don’t belong anywhere?”

She rolled her head back and shook it. “No! I belong here!” She sat forward again and added quickly, “…and Saint Matt’s with Grammie and Grandpa. And on the boat, with Bill.”

You don’t mean that the same way, Sanaam thought.

“But… there aren’t a bunch of people like me that I can copy,” Maggie said. “So I do that blinky lightbulb thing Calliope was saying. I get to pick, but I have to pick. And sometimes it’s like instead of both, I’m neither.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m faking,” Erik said. “There’s not lots of colored people, and we look like wherever we come from… except the colored part. Sometimes it’s like that part isn’t real… and sometimes it’s like that’s all of me. Magic season is worst,” he decided with a nod. “It feels like there’s something wrong with me. But sometimes I get to be normal… until somebody does something dumb and I remember I’m not. And because I feel both ways, I don’t know which one is right. My uncle doesn’t want me to think colored isn’t a normal person, but he knows we’re not too. It’s like he’s faking.”

“I get that, Erik,” Sanaam said. At least a little. He wasn’t sure he got Maggie and Calliope at all, and that bothered him. He didn’t want his daughter to be a blinky lightbulb. “You uncle isn’t faking, he’s trying to teach you something really hard. I don’t get it, not really, and I’ve been a black person for forty years. Sometimes when you try to break down a hard thing for someone little to understand you end up telling lies and contradicting yourself.”

Erik, ‘contradiction’ means…

Hester, I swear to the… you!

“Is this like when Mom keeps telling me calculus doesn’t really work that way and I’m gonna hafta unlearn math later?” Maggie said.

“Maggie, I have no idea,” Sanaam said, wincing. He shook his head. “I’m trying to teach you this thing when I talk about how people are alike but not the same. People are equal, but not the same. But it’s really hard to figure out what ‘equal’ and ‘the same’ really mean. Because we don’t all start from the same place, we’re not equal that way, and we don’t have the same advantages and disadvantages. But you have to believe that deep down there is… an equality of worth in a person. Otherwise you end up with crummy toilets for black people like the ILV. Or a crummy section of the library for colored people like here.”

“Or the candy dish,” Erik said. Ooh, my uncle’s dad used to say it was like that so colored people wouldn’t be able to get out in a fire. That’s messed up. But he wasn’t sure whether it was more messed up to have it like that or to say that to a little kid in short pants with patches on them.

“No matter where you go, people are people,” Maggie offered her dad. She saw that on one of Calliope’s postcards. It had two ladies in grass skirts with no tops and one of them was making a goofy face for the other one, who was holding a camera.

“Yes, but some people think they get to be the boss of who’s not people,” Sanaam said. “Or that some people are lesser people, so they don’t have rights.”

“What are ‘rights?’” Erik said.

Sanaam looked pained. “I don’t think we quite have that worked out yet. Mainly freedom and… and not having people make things crummy for you on purpose.”

“What about bad guys?” Maggie said. “Murderers and stuff. Do they have rights?”

“I don’t know, Mag-Pirate. I wouldn’t like them to go around murdering people, so I guess we have to keep them somewhere whether they like it or not, but I told you I don’t really understand this myself.”

Maggie planted her hands on her hips. “Why don’t you and Uncle Mordecai go to the library and figure it out before you start trying to teach it to people? Maybe that’s why nobody understands it.”

“Those books probably aren’t in the colored section,” Erik said contemplatively.

Calliope stood up and began to bounce with Lucy, who was probably in need of either a bottle or a breast at this point. “I think having to figure it out is part of what makes people people,” Calliope said. “Like, if we were sure, we wouldn’t have to think about it, and we’d get real dumb. Maybe the gods hide the really big answers on purpose.” She smiled. “Like, one time I couldn’t find my red paintbrush, and while I was looking for it, I found this chocolate covered marshmallow Pascha egg I didn’t know I had. It was still good!”

“I suppose we found religion and philosophy…” Sanaam allowed.

You guys got anything to say about rights for murderers and what makes people people? Erik thought, rather dryly.

Physicality! said Hester Carthage.

People burn up if they crawl into ovens! Iron John offered from the kitchen.

They used to draw and quarter murderers in Elbany, Erik. Wanna see? said Cousin Violet.

“I’m not totally sure the gods know any of that stuff either,” Erik said. “Oh!” He couldn’t find the words for ‘my gods, I’m gonna throw up,’ but he pressed both hands urgently over his face and went pale. Violet, you suck!

Say you’re sorry or I’m gonna put grasshopper parts in the peanut butter later.

You do that anyway! Lame Anthony says the Department of Health has a standard!

It’s super fun! Vegetarians eat peanut butter!

Maggie put her hands on his shoulders and made him startle. “I think if we keep plugging the really big questions into Erik, the gods are gonna give him a headache.”

“…stomachache,” Erik managed weakly.

Sanaam sighed and slumped. He looked up at Erik and made a weak smile. “Solidarity.”

“Lucy will figure it out!” Calliope said. “Won’t you, Lucy?” She held up the baby. Although fussy, Lucy squealed a positive opinion of religion, philosophy, and being dangled above her mommy’s head. Calliope wiggled her. “You get three buffet tables to eat off of! Your big brother Erik’s gonna teach you colored people things, and Glorie will teach you magic…”

“Uh,” Sanaam said.

“…And Mama will get you all the sushi and tiny coffee you want!”

Erik nudged Maggie. “Will you teach me about black people and white people? I hate it when they tell me things, and we’re not sure about my dad.”

“I’m gonna need about a decade to do research and some more traveling, but I’ll get back to you.”

“What do black people eat?” Erik asked.

“Goat and yams,” Sanaam said.

“Coconut, pig and fish,” Maggie said.

“Chicken and waffles with syrup,” Calliope said. “Tina’s mom always made us chicken and waffles with syrup. Mrs. Deschamps taught Anglais Literature. She wore shoes with square toes. I always used to wonder if her real toes were like that.”

Erik snickered. “Get… back to me.”

Maggie peered past her father, shifting to one leg to do so. “…I’m about to eat whatever smells so good in the kitchen, whatever I am.”

“I gotta feed Lucy,” Calliope said. She shifted the baby against her. “Tell Em don’t wait dinner, I’ll just be a couple minutes.”

They abandoned the toys and the sheet in the middle of the dining room. It was too small for anyone to eat in there anyway. A little puff of dust fell from the hole in the ceiling when Calliope shut the door to her room.