Monstress by Lysley Tenorio Page A

else?” Sister Marguerite asks. “Will he join us soon? He can’t stay in that shack forever.”
    I rock the baby, just barely. She shifts, yawns without sound. “He still wants to leave.”
    Sister Marguerite sighs. “So do they all.”
    She’s wrong. Few patients ever think of leaving. Their wish for escape, their longing for a world beyond the colony gates, died long ago. But here in the nursery, the truth is undeniable. I hear it when they cry for their mothers, for where they ought to be. And now I feel the weight of it moving, waking in my arms.
    I n the afternoon, a group of children waits outside my dormitory. I know them from when Sister Marguerite convinced me to give them drawing lessons, a way for me to contribute to the colony. “We drew these for the American,” one of them says. “Will you give them to him?” There are pictures of rocket ships, men with wings, children as tall as trees. One shows a family, arms linked and afloat above rooftops.
    I roll them up like a scroll. “I’ll bring them,” I say.
    I knock twice when I arrive, tell him it’s me. When I enter, I find the chair unfolded and upright. At some point, he was here on my side, the curtain drawn, and light let in.
    I slip the drawings to his side of the room. “Some of the children drew these for you.”
    I hear him unroll the pictures, going through them one by one. “They’re great. Tell them I said thanks.”
    Moments pass in silence, neither of us moving in our places. A slant of light stretches from the half-closed door, grazing the edge of my arm. Beside me, the black curtain is like a wall, so dark and solid I feel I could lean against it.
    He moves closer to the curtain. “So you lived in California. I’m from a town called Tulare. Do you know it?”
    â€œI don’t. Sorry.”
    â€œFor a while I lived in Santa Monica.”
    â€œSanta Monica?”
    â€œYeah. You’ve been?”
    I may have, once. If I’m right, it was near the ocean, with a pier on one end of the beach. “I’ve heard of it,” I tell him, and I can see myself sitting on the shore with my legs stretched out, my hands wrist-deep in the sand. I’m eight or nine years old, and I can feel the ocean current pulling me in. But I’m not afraid, because the tide always carries me back, as if it knows where I belong. “There’s a pier in Santa Monica?”
    â€œYeah. With lots of rides and games, like a county fair.”
    I can picture those, too. “Then yes. I was there.”
    A breeze comes through the door, an unexpected chill. I get up to shut it, and when I look back, his hand appears just beneath the curtain, holding an orange. One half in shadow, one half in light. Like a distant sun, in the midst of eclipse.
    â€œI saved one of them. We can split it.”
    â€œThose were meant for you.”
    â€œIt’s a piece of fruit. No big deal. Besides, my nails aren’t so strong. Maybe you could peel it for me.”
    I return to my chair, pick the fruit up from the floor. I dig my thumbnail into the rind, peel it back, the scent of orange rising like mist. In California, my mother would peel them for me, removing the rind in a single spiral. I’d wind it around my wrist like a bracelet, which would always make her laugh.
    I pass the fruit beneath the curtain. “Take half,” he says, and without argument, I separate the fruit with my thumbs and pass him his share. Then I peel off a segment, take a small bite. It’s sour and sweet and acidic, a taste so strong it overwhelms me; my eyes begin to water and I wipe them dry.
    â€œThank you, Jack,” I say.
    We say very little as we eat, but the sound of his voice—his clear and perfect American English—returns me to that moment on the shore. In my years on Culion, I’ve thought of it before, but I never knew if it was a memory or a dream,