mother.
Her face held none of Miach’s twisted willfulness, that “dark illumination” for lack of a better term—none of her eccentric vitality. Instead, her face was like that of every other admedistration member, like the people I had seen on the subway upon my return to Japan. They were healthy but lifeless, if that made any sense. Compared to the Kel Tamasheq whose bodies, wrapped in indigo, practically shimmered with a vitality that sprang from their deep history, the people living in this country were like walking corpses.
That’s progress, said the Miach Mihie living inside me.The more advanced a people became, the closer they grew to death.
“Of course I’m happy to help in any way that I can. I’m just not sure what that would be.”
“I wanted to ask you about your daughter, Miach.”
A cloud passed over Reiko’s face. I saw confusion in her eyes.
“My daughter has been gone—dead—for more than ten years now. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the connection.”
“Yes, I’m aware of this,” I said, marveling that this woman didn’t appear to remember her daughter’s friend, or that I had taken an oath to kill myself with her. That I had been one of three foolish little girls.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about your daughter before her death.”
The mother’s eyes dropped like she was scanning the depths of her memory, looking for something she’d lost a long time ago. “Well, this is hardly a pleasant story, but when my daughter was a child, she often tried to take her own life. She slashed her wrists on several occasions.”
“I’m aware of that too. It’s in our records,” I lied.
Reiko, I was there with her. I would have followed her all the way down to hell. “I’m also aware,” I said, “that she tried to kill herself by eating too much, and then by not eating at all. As though she were trying to damage her own precious body precisely because it was so precious.”
From the woman’s expression I knew I had hit the mark. And it was true. We had tried to die because they told us our bodies were a public resource, because they kept telling us our bodies didn’t belong to us.
“We loved her, truly we did. We wanted her to grow up healthy, to make a contribution to society. But we failed. She was always cleverer than we were by far, and stronger, and yet, at the same time, fragile—a delicate little girl.”
“So what happened?”
“It’s kind of a long story. Maybe you should come inside,” Reiko said, drawing away from the door. She led me into an extremely average living room, motioned for me to sit on a sofa, and disappeared into the kitchen, asking as she went if I liked the smell of lavender. I made some noncommittal grunts, not really having an opinion on the subject.
“Here,” she said upon her return and handed me a glass of water. I took it. It did smell like lavender. This was a recent trend—using your medcare unit to add scents to drinking water. It probably had something to do with the whole aromatherapy concept that smells could help generate a feeling of calm.
A good 80 percent of admedistrative society was this: pastel pink buildings and lavender scents.
“So, you tried to help her, and what happened?” I asked Reiko as she sat down across from me. The woman who had once been Miach’s mother—I suppose that technically she still was—turned her eyes toward the twisted branches of a palmetto growing outside the window.
“Miach was adopted. Maybe you remember the admedistration campaign to adopt war orphans to counterbalance the problem of our aging society? There were those posters: ‘The best resource of all is our youth.’ We had tried to have a child of our own, but I was told by the doctor that my body couldn’t produce children. When my husband and I imagined the long lives ahead of us, thanks to WatchMe, just years of gradually growing old, it seemed so…flat, so homogeneous. How
Her face held none of Miach’s twisted willfulness, that “dark illumination” for lack of a better term—none of her eccentric vitality. Instead, her face was like that of every other admedistration member, like the people I had seen on the subway upon my return to Japan. They were healthy but lifeless, if that made any sense. Compared to the Kel Tamasheq whose bodies, wrapped in indigo, practically shimmered with a vitality that sprang from their deep history, the people living in this country were like walking corpses.
That’s progress, said the Miach Mihie living inside me.The more advanced a people became, the closer they grew to death.
“Of course I’m happy to help in any way that I can. I’m just not sure what that would be.”
“I wanted to ask you about your daughter, Miach.”
A cloud passed over Reiko’s face. I saw confusion in her eyes.
“My daughter has been gone—dead—for more than ten years now. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the connection.”
“Yes, I’m aware of this,” I said, marveling that this woman didn’t appear to remember her daughter’s friend, or that I had taken an oath to kill myself with her. That I had been one of three foolish little girls.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about your daughter before her death.”
The mother’s eyes dropped like she was scanning the depths of her memory, looking for something she’d lost a long time ago. “Well, this is hardly a pleasant story, but when my daughter was a child, she often tried to take her own life. She slashed her wrists on several occasions.”
“I’m aware of that too. It’s in our records,” I lied.
Reiko, I was there with her. I would have followed her all the way down to hell. “I’m also aware,” I said, “that she tried to kill herself by eating too much, and then by not eating at all. As though she were trying to damage her own precious body precisely because it was so precious.”
From the woman’s expression I knew I had hit the mark. And it was true. We had tried to die because they told us our bodies were a public resource, because they kept telling us our bodies didn’t belong to us.
“We loved her, truly we did. We wanted her to grow up healthy, to make a contribution to society. But we failed. She was always cleverer than we were by far, and stronger, and yet, at the same time, fragile—a delicate little girl.”
“So what happened?”
“It’s kind of a long story. Maybe you should come inside,” Reiko said, drawing away from the door. She led me into an extremely average living room, motioned for me to sit on a sofa, and disappeared into the kitchen, asking as she went if I liked the smell of lavender. I made some noncommittal grunts, not really having an opinion on the subject.
“Here,” she said upon her return and handed me a glass of water. I took it. It did smell like lavender. This was a recent trend—using your medcare unit to add scents to drinking water. It probably had something to do with the whole aromatherapy concept that smells could help generate a feeling of calm.
A good 80 percent of admedistrative society was this: pastel pink buildings and lavender scents.
“So, you tried to help her, and what happened?” I asked Reiko as she sat down across from me. The woman who had once been Miach’s mother—I suppose that technically she still was—turned her eyes toward the twisted branches of a palmetto growing outside the window.
“Miach was adopted. Maybe you remember the admedistration campaign to adopt war orphans to counterbalance the problem of our aging society? There were those posters: ‘The best resource of all is our youth.’ We had tried to have a child of our own, but I was told by the doctor that my body couldn’t produce children. When my husband and I imagined the long lives ahead of us, thanks to WatchMe, just years of gradually growing old, it seemed so…flat, so homogeneous. How
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