Lazuli

Elissa Malcohn

Asimov’s Science Fiction

November, 1984

Amy knows her name means “beloved.” The knowledge is no comfort.

She sits on her bed, breathing hard. Her Lazuli doll, Amykins, is propped by her pillow and wedged into a corner where the walls of her bedroom meet. Her soft clothclone’s face bears the real girl’s features from the time Amy was three; now Amy is five. Amykins doesn’t grow, but now her preprogrammed knowledge is making her cry tap water.

Dry-eyed, Amy realizes what time it is. She gets busy.

“You have to let me touch you,” she tells the doll, lifting it from the covers. The doll cringes. “I don’t want to hurt you, I promise you I won’t hurt you, I have to hide you now.”

How can a doll tremble? The computer in Amykins isn’t that good; no, Amy is trembling, that’s it. Amy’s trembling. She can’t cry any more but she can still tremble; Amykins can cry. Faithfully Amy fills her with water every day; the day Amykins can’t cry is the day Amy will kill herself.

“It’s all right, it’s going to be all right. I won’t let him find you, can’t you turn yourself off if he finds you? You’re a computer, you can do that.” She begins to open drawers; no, her father would look in all the drawers. Her fingers fumble with the small knobs. Under the bed? No, he found Amykins under the bed before, he knows to look there.

There’s no place left. No place left.

If Daddy can’t find Amykins, he’ll take Amy.

No, mustn’t think of that. Mustn’t.

As Amy opens her closet door the door to her bedroom swings open. Her father stands on the transom, in shirttails. With his rough, burly hand he covers the pink roses on her wallpaper where the light switch is. The overhead lamp blazes and Amykins’ tiny chest pumps in and out. Or is it Amy’s? No, Amy trembles. No, Amy breathes hard, too. She clutches Amykins hard to her and the chemically treated syntheskin discolors into bruises. She shouts, once: “No!”

“Give her to me.” Gruff.

“No, please.” Amy’s voice is tired, defeated. “Please. Don’t.”

Amykins whimpers. “Don’t,” she echoes. “Don’t. Mama…”

Amy closes her eyes.

“Give her to me,” her father says, “or I’ll take her myself.”

The window is behind Amy. She could jump. She and Amykins could jump. They could turn themselves off together. They could.

Again, Amy can feel her arms leaving her, holding Amykins out to him. Don’t, arms. Don’t. You don’t want to do this. Two years and no one’s touched her. They’ve all touched Amykins.

Amy doesn’t remember being three years old. Trembling, she hands over the doll.

Her father grabs it and swings it under his arm, like a football. He slams the door behind him. Shaking now, Amy snuggles under the covers and presses her pillow hard around her ears.

*

There’s a bottle of brandy in the bottom drawer of my desk. I refill my coffee cup.

Ben, my boss, sits in front of me and watches distastefully.

“Want a sip?” I ask.

“The day you come in drunk is the day I take that away from you,” he says.

“A simple yes or no will do. I was showing some common courtesy. Look—” I show him my favorite file, the fat one, bursting with triplicate and quadruplicate copies logjammed on my desk. “This woman comes in, doesn’t give her real name and gives me her ex-husband’s address. Child abuse report; the kid’s in his custody. I send my people there, he gives us his daughter without a hitch and we find nothing physically wrong. No recent burns, breaks or scars. The child’s disturbed as all hell, that’s plain, but physically she’s healthy as a horse. I put the file away. The mother comes in again—yes, she says she’s the mother, that much she admits to. And she comes again. Four times this month, once a week, like clockwork.”

“So what are you asking me?”

“I don’t want to keep putting this file away. I have a personal stake in this, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” Gently, he pries my fingers from my scalp, where I’ve begun to scratch my head again. Already my fingernails sport tiny scabs and a bit of blood.

Ben shakes his head and frowns at me. “Why do I keep telling you not to get drunk?”

I smile at him. “If you let me investigate this case I’ll let you keep telling me not to get drunk. I’ll even let you tell me over a couple of beers.”

He hefts the file and shakes his head again. “All right.” He lifts his hand to clap me on the shoulder and hesitates at the last moment. I can take a friendly clap on the shoulder, my nerves just go all dead, that’s all. Ben understands this. He’s like the older brother I never had.

He doesn’t know what to do with his fingers. He jams his hands in his pockets. “Shit. I guess it’s the thought that counts.”

I giggle. “Yeah. Thanks, I appreciate it.”

Mornings would go like this: when I was in elementary school my father would be the first of us to rise. He would go down to the kitchen and cook the first of two breakfasts: for my mother, and then for me. My mother would wake next, go down to the dinette and breakfast; then as in later years my father would not sit down but serve her deftly and efficiently, scooping up plates of food as soon as she had cleaned them and placing more food before her.

By the time I was seven, my hair had some length and my father took to braiding it while I ate breakfast. Painstakingly, as though in a trance, he would part my hair at the center, over and over and over, until he’d obtained a perfectly straight, needle-thin part that perfectly bisected my head. The same trance he would fall into as he chopped my soft boiled egg, looping the mixture of white and yolk with my fork until he reached a whipped froth. He would chop short, quick, fast, bent intently over the bowl with fierce determination. I dared not interrupt him.

When he plaited my hair into pigtails I had to keep still. How could I keep still as I ate his enormous preparation for me? He pulled steadily, rhythmically, executing perfect braids as long as I kept still or he’d have to do them over, jerking me into place.

Finally one day I didn’t want to eat.

My father was behind me, braiding. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“I don’t feel like it,” I said.

“What do you mean you don’t feel like it? When I tell you to eat you’ll eat!”

I began to cry. My stomach was in knots. “No!” I said resolutely. “I don’t want this!”

Infuriated, he grabbed me by the chin. “How dare you disobey me!” he screamed, a high-pitched, boy’s hysteria. “I’ll teach you to disobey your father!”

He jerked my chin and neck up, then down to open my jaw, and held it. I began to tremble violently. With his other hand he grabbed a piece of toast, jammed it into my mouth and down my throat, his fingers between my lips. First the toast. Then the bacon. I squirmed in his arms, screaming, trying to spit out the food that he kept pushing back in, until I broke free and ran to the bathroom to vomit. And cry. And vomit.

I kept the bathroom door locked. He didn’t call. I needed to steady myself, it was time, soon, to be leaving for school. I could not tell my mother, she was a romantic, glorifying in the time when I would get to know boys. She would tell me, “You chase them until they catch you.”

When I felt ready, when my eyes were slightly red-rimmed and most of my tears dry, I stoically stepped out of the bathroom and walked past my glowering father, dragged on my coat and picked up my schoolbooks. He said not a word—no threats, no pleas, no apologies.

Nor did he apologize after he would start to hit me and could not stop, one slap per word, each word repeated over and over. Whenever a man on the television would yell I would crouch in my bed underneath the covers, sure it was him, sure I had done something I hadn’t remembered doing but he’d remember I did it. And through it all, his screaming at the heavens: “What did I do to deserve this?”

Years later, I’d tell him, “You scare me. I hate you.”

He’d glower at me again and grumble, “I don’t care.” My mother would tell me he loved me.

My hands are at my head again. I force them into my lap.

Ben is going to let me go after this case. I can hardly wait.

*

Amy’s eyes are wide open as her father dumps Amykins at the foot of her bed. She stills her trembling; let him think she’s asleep.

Why doesn’t Mother come home? I can’t do this all by myself!

The door shuts quietly behind her. Now she hears a tiny cry. Amykins’ circuitry knows that Amy is awake and allows the tears to come.

“Shh. Not so loud,” Amy cautions. She doesn’t like to quiet Amykins but her sense of caution is strong. “Here.” She cradles the doll to her nightie and it sobs into her chest.

There is enough moonlight to see new scars on the syntheskin. For some reason, Amy doesn’t dare take out a flashlight. Somehow she knows that if she does, Amykins will scream.

The doll feels sticky in her hands. Apologizing, wanting to bring her to a sink and fresh water, Amy collects the tears dropping from clothclone eyes and uses the hem of her nightie as a cleaning rag. She wrinkles her nose at the heavy smell of musk and wants to cry, if nothing else, to add her own tears to the cleansing process. Amykins pees a tablespoon of tap water onto the bunched cotton that Amy holds.

By morning all visible scars will be gone as the syntheskin chemically renews itself. The memory core, resting in a chip behind Amykins’ eyes, will store everything.

*

“Mr. Purcell? My name is Peggy Sinclair. I’m from the agency.”

“What else is new?” Jovial, a bit tired. Slightly harassed. No sign of hostility, or secrecy. We are talking on the phone; I wish I could see his face…or Amy’s.

“Mr. Purcell, I’m the one who’s been sending inspectors to your apartment.”

“Oh,” he says, amused. “So you’re the one.” His tone becomes serious. “Can you tell me what all these visits are going to do to Amy? I mean, she’s just started kindergarten and none of her classmates—I mean, really, isn’t this a bit too much attention for her own good?”

“Your wife made another report, Mr. Purcell—”

“Ex-wife, please. Honestly, what would you expect from a woman denied custody of her child? At least I’m not an outpatient, know what I mean?”

Ah, so that was why. “I know what you mean. When may I see you and Amy?”

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

“Tuesday all right? Four in the afternoon?”

I hear a sigh on the phone. “Oh, all right.” A pause. “I can tell you’re somebody’s boss.”

Hot damn, I can clearly see what his smile must look like. It’s too gentle.

I drop the phone back in its cradle. Ben peels my fingers from my head and fills them with my coffee cup.

I take a sip. “Ugh. This is coffee.”

“That’s a coffee cup.”

“That’s beside the point. Hey, what are you doing here? I’m not your only lackey.”

“You’re working. That gets you preferential treatment.”

I stare at him. “You got problems with the help?”

“No,” he says, thoughtfully. “Reports are down. You’re the busiest one here.”

I’ve got a hefty pile of folders including my fat one, but the load isn’t all that much. “I like preferential treatment,” I say blandly. “I’ll keep working.”

“Atta girl.”

“Don’t call me girl.”

“Atta woman.”

“Better.”

*

Daddy must love me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bought Amykins for me. For him. I’m confused.

The doll sits inert on the bed. Amy has learned how to make hospital corners and her small fingers take care to smooth the sheets down. Not wanting to handle her pillow too roughly, she coaxes it into plumping.

Time to go to school.

“Morning darlin’,” her father says as she bounds down the stairs. His speech is slurred on a piece of toast.

“Morning.” Amy walks past him, holding herself perfectly straight, and goes to the refrigerator. She stares at the wallpaper as she makes a peanut butter sandwich, glancing occasionally at the distorted reflection her father makes in the toaster. She sucks peanut butter off her fingers and wipes them off on a towelette. She washes the butter knife in the sink and wipes her hands again. And again. She forces herself to let go of the towel.

Plastic bag. Lunchbox. Small can of juice.

“Goodbye,” she says.

“Goodbye, now,” he answers.

The walk to school feels good. Five blocks, straight down the avenue. There are tall hedges to her left; she plays a game of thug and vigilante. A thug is in the hedges, where she can’t see him, but he won’t jump out after her. If he does she’ll flip him over her shoulder and watch his skull splatter on the sidewalk.

She likes the rough-hewn wood of the school doors, the bronze doorknobs embossed with the seal of the School Board. It all seems very medieval and towering, a light-and-dark green-walled city. She climbs the flight of stairs to kindergarten, turning around thick plates of glass-imprisoned chickenwire. The thug waits behind every turn; she can’t see him through the milky glass. Her heart stills every time she rounds a partition…but he is gone. Run away. Waiting. Next time. She’s sure.

Her teacher tells the class to say “No” to friendly strangers who sit in cars in the neighborhood. Amy shrugs. It doesn’t concern her.

Recess. “Amy, you’re supposed to be taking a nap.”

Amy closes her eyes, fakes it.

She sits by herself in a corner with wooden puzzles. The girls are touching each other’s dresses and sharing tiny pots and pans. She doesn’t watch the boys. She wants to play with building blocks but she’ll have to get them away from the boys. The wooden pieces of the puzzle will do.

“Amy, you’re supposed to work on one puzzle at a time.”

She knows the correct response. “I’ll clean it up.”

“All right.”

Later, one of the boys fluffs Amy’s dress and she flattens herself against the window and shouts at him. The puzzles lie in a jumbled heap.

“Okay. Okay, shh. Enough, Amy.”

Not enough. Not enough. Amy blinks. She says calmly, to the boy. “Stay away.” He listens. Off to the side, two girls are arguing noisily over a plastic doll. Tearfully, they engage in a tug of war with it.

Forcing her hands to stay steady, Amy cleans up the puzzles, remembering which pieces belong to which puzzle. Gloating secretly, she congratulates herself.

Kindergarten, she decides, is not a place to make friends.

*

Damn, it’s Tuesday.

Before I’m out of bed I’m into the routine I wanted to avoid. My nails are at my scalp and I am scratching furiously. My dandruff falls gently, like fresh snow glinting in a shaft of sunlight. My knees are dusted. When I see no more flakes my scalp will be clean, perfect. I shake my head back and forth, like one of those water-filled paperweights they sell around Christmastime. White crescents have nestled under my nails.

Carefully, I ease myself into stopping, and make my way to the shower. The hot water on my scalp is agonizing. I won’t be able to shampoo for days.

“Show me how you love me.” My ex-husband wraps my hair around his hand and jerks my head back to plant a kiss on my lips.

We are exiting from a fancy restaurant where he has paid for a handsome dinner. “You’re a good cook,” I kid him. “Thank you.”

“I’ll take it out in trade,” he kids back.

Tired, I lean against the tiled wall and turn up the heat in my shower water. It splashes between my breasts and leaves an angry red splotch. The faucets are hidden in steam, now, but I am still shivering. It’s times like this when the elaborately-handled cleaver in my kitchen seems my most precious possession. I let my tears mingle with the water. No one will know, that way.

I luxuriate in a powder-blue towel big enough to double as a bedspread. Purely business dress: mahogany colored skirt and blazer, matching vest. Pink tailored shirt to soften the austerity a bit. Small amber worry beads.

I have a sister-bottle of brandy on my dressing table. Now I take a few sips…to quiet my thoughts a bit, and to help dull the pain while I try to brush my hair.

Kindergarten, hmm? What’s the closest public school to Amy?

And then: Heaven help her soul if she’s bearing her secrets through parochial school!

By the time I walk into my office I am prepared. I am also exhausted. The paperwork feels good, it’s mindless, I try not to think of what’s behind the rubber-stamping and the red tape. It’s only mindless when you don’t think about it.

Ben is at my desk.

“Oh, get away!” I snarl.

That lovable idiot’s filled my coffee cup with coffee again. Now he goes away. I want to tell him I’m sorry, but it’ll have to wait.

Why it is I always end up apologizing to the people who treat me like dirt, instead of the people I treat like dirt? “That question goes on the back burner,” I say aloud to myself.

A couple heads turn, turn back. They think I’m talking about a case. Never fear, folks, of course I’m talking about a case.

“Break a leg,” Ben offers blandly as I pass his door.

“Today’s Tuesday,” I remind him. “Tuesdays I break kneecaps.” And I’m out on the pavement, sweating onto the slip I carry that bears Purcell’s address.

*

“Good afternoon, Mr. Purcell.”

“Afternoon, Ms. Sinclair.” His handshake is warm, and dry. I cast a glance about me, fishing for Amy. She stands by the kitchen sink, holding a towel. Hiding her hands.

He calls to her. “Amy! There’s a lady here who wants to say hello to you.”

Her eyes glaze over as she folds the towel and squares its corners. She lays it down flush with an edge of chrome and walks steadily to the door. “Hello,” she says.

The three of us go to the kitchen table, where Amy sits next to her father and I am opposite them, on the other side. We begin by talking about the weather.

While Amy’s father and I exchange cordialities, Amy sits quietly with her hands stiffly folded in her lap, beneath the lip of the table. She turns to her father as he speaks and toward me as I reply. When her neck grows tired from twisting she stares at the wallpaper (small delicate cornucopias. I thought they were pretty snails until I looked more closely). Amy’s father doesn’t take his sight off me. He hasn’t glanced once at Amy and hasn’t touched her; in fact, I can easily imagine a plate-glass wall separating them.

“I was just noticing how quickly the days pass,” he’s saying. “Before you know it Amy’ll be off to college.”

“Happens to all of us,” I say, smiling. “Tell me, do you think I could talk to Amy alone? That is, if she doesn’t mind?”

His jaw hardens, ever so slightly. “If she doesn’t mind? She’s a child.”

“Amy.” I gaze into her eyes as she turns her face toward me. “Could you and I go and talk, if your father says it’s okay?” I watch her as she turns toward him for an answer. He frowns in silence and she turns back to me. Carefully, I say, “You can say no if you don’t want to. And if we talk and there’s something you don’t like or if I bother you, you go and tell your dad.”

She stares at me intently, and I can feel my eyebrows rise. Finally, she swivels back in her seat and looks up at her father. “I don’t mind,” she says sagely, “if you don’t.”

Oh, her timing is beautiful! I mentally dawdle with the thatched horns of the cornucopias. Avoid eye contact, don’t pressure. Let there be no excuses for him to refuse us.

“No, I guess I don’t mind. But you be careful; you’re a big girl now. Yes, you may leave the table.”

Amy slides off her chair, toward me. I follow her, with a courteous nod over my shoulder.

*

Amy doesn’t understand what the women who visit her want. But this one has a soft voice and wide green eyes and a pretty mouth. And instead of asking, “Does your father hit you?” or, “Do you like it here?” she asks, “Isn’t kindergarten dumb?”

Are children allowed to think kindergarten’s dumb? Amy thought she was the only one who thought so. Secretly. Now she nods, feeling brave. “Will you tell my teacher?”

The lady makes a long face. “No. I won’t tell anyone anything you don’t want me to tell. I thought kindergarten was dumb.” She smiles. “That makes two of us. Betcha there’s more.”

Could it be? “How many more?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Lots.”

They are sitting on Amy’s bed. Amykins sits in her corner and doesn’t make a sound. She is always quiet with strangers.

“They used to make us take silly naps,” the lady says. “In the middle of the day! Only babies nap in the middle of the day. Now me…I used to sleep with my eyes open. All night! Everybody else had to close theirs.”

Amy draws herself up to her full height. “I sleep with my eyes open, too!”

“Really!” The lady frowns, a little. “I thought I was the only one. I could tell when a shadow was even thinking of moving.”

Amy is smiling now. “Me too.” Did grownups do this?

Grownups were grownups. They could do whatever they wanted to.

“Did you really go to kindergarten?”

“A long, long time ago. Wanna know how long ago?”

“Yes!”

“All right,” she says low, with a sly smile. She whispers, “My teacher was a dinosaur.”

*

Praise the heavens, she can still laugh!

Her father—Ernest—is very quiet outside the bedroom, probably still in the kitchen reading a newspaper. Let him think I’m asking her questions out of a textbook. Let him think I glean nothing from what she tells me.

I shift a little on the soft, pliant mattress and the doll begins to tilt. Gently, Amy straightens it. Her fingers are deft and her touch is too light. Much too light.

“Have you had her for a long time?” I ask.

“A year.” She purses her lips. “Maybe two. I don’t remember.”

If I had a doll like that I’d remember when I got her. But I’m groping now, I don’t know much about dolls. They were dead plastic when I was a kid, I was always given dolls and I’d twist their heads off. I’d wanted a chemistry set.

“What’s her name?”

She looks sad. “Amykins. Like my name but with a ‘kins’ after it.”

She looks like you, too. I open my mouth to speak and a numbness grips my stomach, as though I am about to trespass, about to trample the grass on someone else’s lawn. “I only had plastic dolls,” I say, “and they didn’t look as nice. If they were nicer I guess they’d be like friends. And they wouldn’t be dumb, either, like kindergarten.”

Amy’s face is working. A smile creeps into her cheeks but it’s a sad smile, sad and tender. Like a ceramic and bejeweled Madonna with tears in her eyes. She nods at me.

I glance about the room. Next to me, Amy takes a deep breath. I remark on a plastic bathtub boat on her dresser as she composes herself.

“When I was five,” I said, “my bathtub boat was made from a wooden spool after it was out of thread. Of course, the spools aren’t wooden any more, but they used to be.” I gesture with my hands. Amy is looking at me, all eyes. “And there would be a rubber band, and a matchstick, and that would be the motor.” My hands make circling motions. “I’d wind the matchstick on the rubber band until it was tight, then put the whole thing into the water and let it go and it would race to the other side!”

She is enthralled. “You made a boat? All by yourself?”

“No. No, I don’t even remember how to put one together, but the spools are too light for that now, anyway,” I say. “My father used to make them for me.”

“Oh.” Thoughtful. “Was he a nice man?”

“Sometimes.” I notice, with an inner jolt, that my smile is as sad as Amy’s. “Sometimes he was very nice.”

“Mine, too.” She frowns. “Sometimes.”

She looks at me and her breathing quickens. I want to say, Tell me! Don’t hold it back, it doesn’t have to be a secret! I’m here to help you!

Patience. We must be as children, innocent and trusting. The last thing she needs to see now is another adult out of control.

I say, “I’d like to be your friend. Talk to you again.”

She says, “I have to ask my daddy.”

“I know. That’s all right.”

As we return to the kitchen, Ernest looks up from his newspaper. He is sitting in the same seat as before. There is a soft smile on his face but his voice is guarded. “Well? Did you have a nice chat?”

Amy grins. “Ms. Sinclair told me about boats made from wooden spools.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “I remember those,” he says, smiling with some relief. He tells me, “I’d have thought that was before your time.”

Amy stares at me. She probably doesn’t think anything could be before my time.

“You flatter me. Perhaps Amy and I can talk again?”

Amy asks him, “Please?”

“Why, I’d think Ms. Sinclair has friends her own age,” he tells her, looking at me. “Just as you should have friends your own age.”

“I’m sure we both do,” I reply. “But I’d still like to talk to Amy again. Just because I had dinosaurs for teachers doesn’t mean she and I can’t be friends. And I suppose,” I add wistfully, “that the times I’m not here I’ll just be sitting with a whole lot of papers to work on.”

He gives me the slightest of nods. “I will consider it,” he softly says. I can look into his eyes and see the fevered working of cogwheels. The girl, certainly, is not to be underestimated, but the man has a brilliance as well. I must not for a moment forget that.

As he helps me on with my coat he leans close to my ear and says, “If you had dinosaurs for teachers, need I ask what you think taught me?”

*

The sun is going down now.

Amy could slip out with Amykins, if they really tried hard enough. Once they snuck out of the apartment with Daddy’s keys and spent half the night in the alley. Then they got scared because if he woke up he would come after them. The pavement was cold and hard and gritty, but above them the sky was clear with stars, all cozy in that thin strip between apartment buildings. It almost hurt to go back inside.

She could live in the trains. She heard some people did that. And you could go anywhere you wanted to, you could see the world.

Now it was getting dark again.

It wasn’t the lady’s fault that he would come in again. It wasn’t! It wasn’t any of the ladies’ fault. He wanted to make it their fault. They’d visit Amy and then he’d keep coming in, and coming in. More often than ever before. As though they had whispered before, like he used to whisper to Mommy behind closed doors: if you visit then I’ll visit, she’ll think you’re doing it too, you’ll see.

Now Amykins is crying.

You’re a computer, you’re not supposed to have feelings! Why can’t I cry like you do?

Amy takes a deep shuddering breath and moves the metal lip that locks her bedroom window. She strains to push the window up. It moves a little. It moves a little more. It moves too slowly. Amy’s arms hurt but she keeps pushing, pushing, she’s opening the crypt, she’s escaping from the haunted house like they have in the cartoons. She wishes Amykins was programmed to have strong arms.

Amykins is crying harder.

I can’t hide you. I can’t hide you anymore.

Amy crawls on the floor until she finds the spatula from her Little Miss Kitchen Set. She begins to hack at the dried paint jammed in the sliding tracks in the window.

“What’s that noise?”

“Just playing!” Believe me oh please believe me.

The spatula looks as though someone took a bite out of it.

A breeze comes in through the crack and tickles Amy’s neck. The alley looks so small from here, small like the Little Miss Kitchen Set. Is the plastic clock ticking? Amy thinks she hears it; she’s never heard it tick before. She didn’t think it could.

The window’s stuck and it won’t move any more. But Amy can fit through with Amykins. Quickly she returns to the bed and cuddles the doll to her and rushes back to the window. She hears a muffled cry against her chest. “Mama…” Her blouse is staining with tear water. Or pee water. Or both. The breeze is stronger now. Her legs are still warm indoors but her hair is outside, blowing in the wind.

There is a crash behind her, a door slamming into a wall very far away. Her legs are lifted high up and everything moves backwards. The bottom of the window hits her in the head, is she falling now? No, there’s no more wind, everything’s spinning but there’s no more wind. No more wind. It’s hot inside, where is the sidewalk, the little cracks in it? Where is the cool little corner, where is the train?

He is pressing her into the mattress, his arm is across her throat. There are spots playing in her head.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that again!” he bellows. It sounds as if he bellows but his voice is very far away. Amykins is screaming. Where is Amykins? Amy’s hand, her right hand, holds an ankle. The syntheskin on the ankle is going too soft, she’s squeezing it too hard. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

The arm presses harder. Amy can’t hear anything now, but her father’s face is red and livid and his mouth keeps yelling something. It is very quiet.

Now her father is shaking Amykins. Her syntheskin is black and blue and yellow in some places; when did she let go? Amy can’t feel her hands, only the arm on her neck. When did she let Amykins go? I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY. She can’t hear anything because somebody is screaming inside her head. Everything has spots.

Did she hear the door shut?

I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry imsorryimsorryimsorry sorry sorry sorry sorry…

*

There is a slight hiss coming out of the tape recorder. Then even that is gone.

Ben palms the microcassette that doubles as sound track from my first visit at the Purcells’. “You think of everything, don’t you?”

“Hey, when you grow up with people calling you ‘Liar’ you learn to compensate.” I can’t help the smile that I try to choke down. “But it is sneaky, isn’t it?”

“And you’re proud of yourself, too.”

“Damn right. Well?”

“I think I’ll hold on to this.”

You do that. My bank opens early; the original is in the vault. “Do you think we have a case here?”

“It has all the earmarks.” He frowns. “We’re just missing the physical evidence.” He reaches out for my hair-entangled fingers again.

“Oh all right.” I bat his hand away and force my own back to my desk. “This is going to be tough, this case. This is no slob I’m dealing with and I’m going to have to tiptoe until I can get enough evidence for a conviction. But I believe that evidence exists! And I want your blessing; will you back me?”

“With the present workload around this place we can take that time,” he says. “I want you to draw up a schedule. Put down all your theories and how you plan to go about testing them. Do everything.”

He looks worried.

“Ben, something’s bothering you. Only the cops on TV get to do everything.”

“Yeah.” He lays a set of documents before me. “That’s ‘cause the cops on TV get funded by the networks, and we get funded by quota.”

Something twists inside me as I read the figures. The branch axed and replaced by a peep show is ironic enough almost to be funny, if you’re into sick jokes. “Christ. How widespread is this?”

“Growing. I sat twiddling my thumbs while you were out yesterday. I thought the phones had gone dead. The number of reports coming in here has plunged.”

“I can see that. We’re supposed to be happy about this you know. Remember those nights we were all getting soused, toasting to the day when we’d all lose our jobs in this business?” I hand him the papers back. “Why aren’t we happy?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe we’re as bad as they are. Hey, put that brandy away—”

“I was taking it out for you.” I shove the bottle back into its drawer. I swear the strongest glass made on this Earth is the type they make to hold booze. “To me it feels wrong. If the abuse is going to drop off it’s got to drop off slowly, fade away. Sort of linear, you know, like zero population growth.” I shrug. “Any self-proclaimed saviors on the market these days?”

“No.”

“New legislation?”

“No. You know that.”

“Just checking.”

“The point is this.” The shadows under his eyes face mine. “We need paperwork. And red tape. And reports. And they have to look as though we’re really doing our jobs. You’ve got what looks like a real stinker and for our solvency it looks like a gem.”

“You’re disgusting me.”

“That makes two of us. But it’s the best of all possible worlds for this operation and, in the end, we hope, for Amy. I’m not asking you to milk it to inefficiency.”

“I know.” I pat his hand. My palm doesn’t know quite what it’s doing but that’s all right, it’s the thought that counts. I try to smile. “Does that mean I don’t get my word processor this year?”

“Not even a talking watch.” He pats my hand back. “Well, if we’re going to go out we may as well go out obsolete.”

*

“Now you can have the child you’ve always wanted.”

Amykins sits in front of the television. Out of the speaker, a man’s soothing voice-over tries to sell her kind. On the screen, high-density pixels configurate into family scenes; now a Lazuli doll pumps her little legs in a smooth arc as she rides a swing in someone’s playground. Now a Lazuli doll vocalizes a “Please,” and a “Thank you,” at a family picnic. Now a Lazuli doll is hugged, and freely hugs back.

Amykins’ syntheskin palm rests lightly on the screen, and the vibrations coming from it are warm and tingling. Once a man’s hands held her softly; she opened her eyes and for the first time the configuration of a face peered into hers as she was turned on into life, and a soft voice said, “Good morning, little one.”

All over the world, every Lazuli doll has that primeval memory logged deep inside. Every Lazuli doll, no matter what age when turned on, has that one welcome in common. Good morning. Good morning, little one.

Then, before she could form kinship attachments in the factory, Amykins was turned off and not reactivated until she arrived here. And when she awoke, she was in the arms of a little girl who cried hard tears of confusion, and didn’t cry again.

Then Ernest’s hands were on her babygirl’s synthetic nipples, rubbing her hard enough to bruise, pinching her skin into black and blue marks. He thrust his fingers, into her tiny synthetic pee hole and her automatic programming made her begin to wet his hand. Furious, he slapped her across the face and her chip registered: this is pain. Then a voice smoothly said, “Wow, you’re just like her.”

Now the voice-over on the television tells her, “What you have just seen is not just a commercial. These are real home movies, taken by real families…just like yours.”

Amykins invokes a self-check function and waits while her programming and memories are verified. They are distant from her; she is half-aware as a built-in system tests and retests her parts. Her experiences flash by unencumbered by real time, much faster than her reflexes can react to them, and after each test is run she receives the same message. There is no error. There is no error.

“Good morning, little one.” No error.

“…taken by real families…just like yours…” No error.

Amykins says, “Off,” and the screen darkens to a pinpoint of light. She runs her fingers briefly over its plastic wood casing, where Ernest’s fist has pounded dents over the past two years.

A television cannot really remember.

Ernest is out buying groceries. Amy is in school. Amykins watches TV. Now she turns it on again and watches cartoons, where a young boy crosses his wrists against each other and turns into a Good Robot, so he can go out and destroy the Bad Robot.

Someone is fitting a key into the lock. Light footsteps, slow turn of the key. Amy. She walks in, dropping the key on its chain back into her blouse. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Where is he?”

“Market.”

“Good.” Amy turns toward the television and says, “Off.” Then she turns to Amykins. “No one else in kindergarten has a Lazuli doll because their parents can’t afford one. So I’m bringing you in for Show And Tell tomorrow. Daddy won’t let me take you in the morning, so we’re going to sleep in the school.”

Unbidden, a tear forces its way out of Amykins’ left eye.

“Shhh. It’ll be all right, we just have to look like the people in the commercials, that’s all.” She lifts Amykins to her feet. “Just follow me. Quickly.”

Hand in hand, they walk out the door and down the stairs to the lobby. They walk out the door, past the hedges. Amy squares her shoulders with vigilance, tries to look between the brambles. Amykins numbly curls her lips into an innocent smile and plays internal video games with the changing scenery as she and Amy walk, walk, walk. She looks up.

“Don’t look at the sun,” Amy warns her. “You’ll go blind.”

“No I won’t.”

“Oh.” Amy looks down at her. “Sorry. I forgot.”

Then she says, “Let’s remember to tell that to the class.”

“Okay.” A command lodges in Amykins’ head.

Amy fits her hand over the large brass doorknob that feels like a cold golden egg in her palm, and eases the door open. Grade-school classes are still in session; she places her fingers over her lips and they walk quietly down the hall, to the stairwell. They take the stairwell down to the basement, where there is a little-used Girls’ Room. They go inside.

Amy tells her, “We’ll have to hide from the custodian. But that’s later.”

*

My beeper goes crazy on my belt as I hop up the stairs to my office. Ben intercepts me as I round the partition.

“That was quick,” he says.

“I cut my lunch short anyway,” I say, throwing my sandwich in the trash. “What happened?”

“Purcell’s daughter and the Lazuli are missing.”

“The what?”

“The doll!”

“He reported that?”

“Well it’s no ordinary doll. Why didn’t you tell me it was a Lazuli?”

“Like I should know dolls! When did he call?”

“We got the report from the precinct shortly after noon; you don’t think he’d be dumb enough to call us! Amy was supposed to be home from kindergarten. He just came back from grocery shopping with some ‘buddies’ he’d rounded up, and both of them were gone. Said the doll was never taken out of the house, too expensive to be broken, an investment sort of thing.”

“An investment by a man who’s unemployed?”

“Well it must have been an investment. Those dolls have memories, they record things! A Lazuli costs as much as my car!”

“Well I plumb don’t know dolls…and anyway, Amykins just stared at me, I didn’t even know if she was the real thing or not.”

Ben is riffling through multicarbon forms. “We’ll claim neglect for now…if we can establish that Ernest bought the doll himself rather than take proper care of Amy. If we can find her or—” He screws up his face at me. “Amykins?”

“Yeah, and the doll looks just like her, too. At about the age of three.”

“Oh my God.” He sinks into a chair. His face has turned pasty. “Get me Amy’s file.”

I get him Amy’s file. He flips the forms until he comes across her psychological profile.

“Look at this.” His finger traces the page. “Amy talks about being five years old, four years old…but not three, or two, or one. See? She says, ‘I don’t know,’ or, ‘I don’t remember.’ Even birthday parties; she remembers her last two birthday parties but none earlier. She remembers her mother from age four up to four-and-a-half but not earlier than four. And her mother kept reporting to us anyway. Even though Amy consistently showed no bruises, no damage we could see.”

“But Amykins would have seen what happened.”

“Seen?” At my puzzled look he says, “You really don’t know dolls, do you? Ernest was raving about how the doll could break and that’s why he didn’t want her taken outside. These are clothclones, Peggy! They have syntheskin! They don’t break, they heal themselves, just like the real thing!”

I blink at him, and in a tiny voice I say, “Morphine. They’re like morphine.” All of a sudden I begin to tremble, all over. We can’t just find and keep Amykins for observation, we’ll have to find and keep Amy, too. “Ben…our funding…”

But Ben is already on the phone, asking Records for a detailed breakdown of abuse reports and their frequencies. Then he places another call, to find out when Lazulis were introduced into the market. Then he calls our lawyer to subpoena records on sales and distribution from the manufacturer.

*

Carefully, Amy pries open the metal plate that hides electrical cables under benches built into the wall. She has to blink several times and catch her breath, and wait until her eyes have adapted to the dark. After a few minutes she sees the cross-hatched shadows thrown by streetlamps through chickenwire windows and onto the floor.

Amykins’ eyes have switched instantly over to night vision.

Carefully, they listen for footfalls. There are none.

Amy, who can’t see the clock yet, whispers, “What time is it?”

Amykins says, “The little hand is just after the ten and the big hand is just after the four.”

“Good. It’s late, then.”

Amy crawls out first. Then she motions for Amykins to follow her. Amy stretches until all the kinks from folding herself against the cables are out of her back, and then she replaces the plate against the bench. She pulls out a couple of half-crumpled chocolate chip cookies from her blouse and munches on them. They sit together on the floor. Amy yawns.

Daddy is looking for us. He’ll send out people to find us and then we’ll die.

She hugs Amykins close to her. Where’s Mama?

A man’s head shadows the floor, blocking out the chickenwire.

“Quickly!” They roll prone on the floor and Amykins begins to cry. Amy has her pressed against the bench and is shaking hard against her. “He didn’t see us. Shhh, quiet, he didn’t see us. We’re okay, it’s going to be all right.”

Suddenly Amykins’ tears stop. She has run out of water.

“The fountain’s on the other side of the room, I’ll fill you from the fountain, we just have to wait until he’s gone. Until he’s gone. It’s going to be okay, it will. It will!” Something wells up inside Amy, something washing over the numbness. She wants to throw up.

*

“She’s in there. I think she saw me.”

“Great,” I say, disgusted. “She probably thinks you’re her father.”

“Wish I was.” Ben grabs my hand and squeezes it, and a wave of revulsion sweeps through me. But this is Ben, I must remember that. I squeeze back.

He says, “Do you hear a motor?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, “people are still driving at this time of night. Parking by the school is permitted after-hours.” Even so, we squat in the bushes by the school. “License plate?”

“That’s our man.”

My hand worries its way into my pocket, and I open up the larger blade on my Swiss Army knife. Its red handle warms against my palm.

Ben knows what I’m doing. “This is Amy’s father, not yours,” he mouths at me. “Put it away.”

All feeling has left me. I’m living on my adrenaline. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” he says. “Please.”

Ever so slowly, I fold the blade back in but keep my hand on the knife.

We flatten ourselves against the wall as Ernest makes the same rounds we had, inspecting one window after another. As he tries to jimmy his way through the entrance, we slide further around, camouflaged by the noise of his wrenching.

Ben whispers fiercely in my ear: “Now!”

Together we run to the opposite side of the school, carrying our shoes across the cement courtyard. Pebbles bite into my feet with a vengeance but we reach an adjoining basement on the other side of the boiler rooms in record time. Ben whips out a master key and unlocks the metal screen that hems in one of the larger windows. I boost him as his fingers clasp the window sill and he hoists himself onto the lip and pushes the screen up.

He breaks the glass with the butt of a pistol and quickly cuts through the chickenwire with a pair of shears. Unlocking the window from the inside, he maneuvers his arm through the broken glass and lifts. I force my fingers through the new and tiny opening at the bottom and together we push until there is room for us to climb in.

We must take a stairwell up to the ground floor and round a U-shaped corridor until we reach a second stairwell that we take back down. As we approach the second stairwell we can hear Ernest take a battery-powered saw to one of the screens.

I run well ahead of Ben and slide down one of the bannisters. “Amy!” I cry out. “It’s me, it’s Peggy!”

“Peggg…” A weak voice, high and metallic, answers me.

“Amykins?”

“Peggg…” Weaker, now.

I dive to the floor as the sound of buzzing increases, and slide toward Amy and Amykins. Amy stares wide-eyed and doesn’t move; I grab her wrist and pick up a faint pulse. When I slide my hand along her neck I find a tightly-wrapped electrical cable.

I turn now to Amykins, whose head has been half-cleaved from her body by the edge of a large metal plate dropped on her.

“Did Amy do this?”

“Yes…”

“Amykins, you’re going to have to trust me now. And you’re going to have to trust Ben.” Sitting up slightly, I motion him forward and swallow hard at the sight of grief spreading over his face. “They’re alive, Ben, both of them. We’ve got to get out of here now!”

We free them. Above me I see the power-saw glint in the streetlamps, and the outline of Ernest’s face. Momentarily it stares into mine with a look of pure hatred. For one wild second I am convinced I can pass my hands through the glass, through the wire, through the screen and take him by the neck and twist and twist and twist and twist. If I only tried hard enough. If I only, ever, tried hard enough.

Ben carries Amy. I carry Amykins, cradling her head against her body as it tries to heal. Up the stairs. Down the hall. To the principal’s office.

We break our way in and barricade ourselves inside as Ben dials the precinct. Amy and Amykins are laid out on the tops of desks and I comb the supply cabinets for first aid. I cover Amy with a makeshift blanket made from a canvas backdrop that says, “Merry Christmas,” and a secretary’s sweater left in a closet.

Then we wait.

There are no smelling salts to be found anywhere. I open desk drawers and find a bottle of Scotch. I shake a few drops onto my finger and rub it lightly against Amy’s tongue. I dribble a few drops to the back of her throat.

She comes out of shock coughing. I enfold her in my arms and in the canvas. “It’s me, Peggy. You’ll be safe with us.”

“Mama!” She clings to me tightly.

“Not Mama…” Amykins’ voice says, distant. “Peggg…”

“It’s okay,” I say to the doll. “She’s in shock. She’ll be better in a few minutes.”

“He’s in,” Ben says softly. “Quiet, everybody.”

Ernest’s footfalls echo down the corridor and reverberate off the walls. It is difficult to tell his exact position—which is real, and which is a reflection. We sit perfectly still in the darkness, until I hear Ben cock the hammer on his pistol. As the footsteps near us and their echoes lessen, Ben aims his gun at the locked door and fires a single shot.

Silence. Then we hear Ernest running back toward one of the stairwells. Outside there is a chorus of sirens. A disembodied voice connected to a bullhorn is telling Ernest Purcell to come out with his hands up. I sit by Amy with my hands folded tightly across my stomach. At least they’re not in my hair. “Is his ex with them?”

“No. I don’t see her.”

Amy’s breathing has steadied somewhat. I smooth the cold sweat off her forehead and brush her hair back with my fingers. Amykins lies still, sporting ugly discolorations around the rips in her syntheskin and circuitry. A tiny fist jerks up and down at one-second intervals.

Minutes later, another voice comes over the bullhorn: “Benito Alvares? Are you there?”

Ben reaches for the principal’s bullhorn and opens the window. “We’re over here,” he says. “Me, Peggy Sinclair, Amy Purcell, and Amykins.”

“The father is on his way to the precinct now for holding. Do you have transportation?”

“None of us would be too good behind the wheel right now. And we need medics, including computer technicians; we have evidence that needs to be preserved. Do you copy?”

“Affirmative. There is an ambulance on its way.”

“Repeat: we need computer technicians. A.S.A.P.” He puts the bullhorn down, pushes himself from the window and pours some of the Scotch into a mug that says Teachers Do It With Class.

He passes it to me first.

I calmly shake my head. “My hands are perfectly comfortable knotted in my stomach, thank you.”

He nods, and quickly raises the mug to his lips.

*

“What you are about to see,” I tell a group of reporters, “is a portion of what the Lazuli doll, Amykins, has recorded in her memory chip. It is in true color, and if the angle of observation seems unusual, remember that it is from the viewpoint of a three-year-old girl equivalent.

“We have insisted that this press conference not be broadcast live, for reasons that will soon become apparent to you. We have taken the liberty of editing for this short presentation those portions of Amykins’ subjective experience that are within the moderate range of abuse which she has undergone during the past two years. For those of you who would wish to have a more complete picture of her experiences, our records are available for your inspection.”

Ben sits to the side of the podium. Statements having to do with Amy’s condition at County General, Ernest’s status at the precinct, investigations into the abuse of Lazuli dolls and their possible connection to the decline in child abuse reports, are in his hands. I do not envy him. He will be grilled.

I do not envy Amy, because I don’t know what will become of her.

I do not envy Social Services, because I do not know what will become of us.

I do not envy the camera crews around me, who will want to turn off their eyes.

I do not envy the reporters, who will want to stare at their pads and who won’t be able to.

I gaze into the blankness of the white movie screen behind me, while it is still clean and spotless.

Then I reach for the switch on the wall, and I turn out the lights.

MNQ/2009.12.19

9,100 Words

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