Vox(26)

There’s the motor now, the Doppler effect amping up the frequency as the bus approaches. Already I have my three words planned for when Sonia arrives: Mommy loves you. More may be said later, but this is enough for now.

I place the dough in a large glass bowl for its second rise and towel off the flour that’s stuck between my fingers. Should have taken off my ring, but I forgot. Then I force on a smile—not too wide, not too clownish; I don’t want it to look like a bad makeup job—and head for the door.

Sonia leaps from the bus’s steps, waves to Mr. Benjamin before he drives off toward his next drop-off point, and covers the hundred feet between bus stop and porch like an adrenaline-charged feline. Normally steady and deliberate, she’s got a bounce in her this afternoon, a jitterbug type of anxiety. My girl is shiny with excitement as she leaps into my arms, the paper she’s holding grazing my left ear, her downy cheek sticky and sweet with a glaze of chocolate.

“Mommy loves you,” I say. Pulse, pulse, pulse. I’ve hardly registered my own words when she breaks the hug.

“Won prize!” Sonia squeals, thrusting the paper into my hands, pointing to her mouth, licking at it with a pink tongue. When I wrinkle my eyes at her, she makes three stabbing motions with her index finger at the smear of dried ice cream lingering at the corner of her mouth. I take her hand and move it away from her mouth, shaking my head. She forgets, sometimes, about the cameras.

And Steven.

Sonia points to her mouth again, desperate to make me see the chocolate smear, and again, I press her hand down, holding her fingers in my fist. A few seconds of pointing or gesturing at home might not matter—unless it becomes a habit. A single, painful image of Sonia doing this in public flashes in front of me—or worse, in front of Steven the goddamned Spy Kid. I squeeze her fingers a little more tightly while my other hand turns over the envelope she’s brought home.

On the front there’s a label, addressed to Dr. Patrick McClellan. And, of course, the envelope is sealed.

So there we are. My three words of the day, unless you count the ingredients list on the bag of flour, and the green LED message Your beverage is ready glowing from the microwave when I reheated my coffee.

“Why?” I say, leading Sonia inside, trying to ignore the next pulse on my wrist. “Careful with your words.” This is more conversation than we usually have, but I’m desperate to know what news my girl’s brought home. I’m also desperate to keep her from blurting out more than she should—I haven’t yet checked the total on her counter.

In the kitchen, while I fix a mug of cocoa for us—our silent afternoon ritual—Sonia hops onto a barstool, thrusts out her left hand, and speaks one ear-splitting word. “Lowest!”

What the hell?

Then I read the counter on her red bracelet. They call them bracelets in school, at the doctor’s office, in the advertisements they show before movies. I consider this as I wet a paper towel and wipe the smudge of chocolate—what I suspect is Sonia’s prize—from her mouth and watch her create a new mocha-colored mustache as she spoons hot cocoa from the mug. Advertisements for electric-shock-inducing silencers: pick your own color, add some sparkles or stripes. They’ve got a mood-ring type that will match your clothing if you’re obsessive about being coordinated, a variety of ringtones, cartoon character designs for the younger set.

It’s everything I can do to keep from cursing the men who made these, or the marketers and their sinister efforts to persuade us we have any kind of choice. I suppose, if things ever return to normal, they’ll use that old chestnut of a line: I was only following orders.

Where have we heard that before?

I can’t be in this kitchen now, can’t watch my girl sip cocoa and study the white envelope on the counter as if it contained a fucking Congressional Medal of Honor. So I go somewhere else. I try to imagine her on the playground, skipping rope and playing alphabet games, singing “Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat” and giggling at the thinly veiled curse words. I see her lining up, whispering about the new boy in class, writing love notes and fortunes on paper she’ll fold into cootie catchers. I hear her speak thousands of useless, but precious, words before the first bell rings.

Another motor purrs, then growls, through the screen door of the back porch, and I’m out of my daydream. At least Patrick is home before the boys return from school. I don’t have anything to say to him, but I need him alone; I need to see what secrets Sonia’s mystery letter holds.

But I don’t, not really. Across the kitchen island, my daughter’s counter glows its horrid and up-to-the-second report.

Won prize! she said. Lowest!

I know what her school is up to. I know, because the counter on her thin wrist says the number 3.

My daughter has been silent all day.





TWENTY




I was right; it is a contest.

The letter Patrick opens and reads to me announces with great pleasure the launch of a monthly competition for all students enrolled at PGS 523—the PGS stands for Pure Girls’ School. Obviously, the boys attend PBS, Steven at the high school, Sam and Leo in another for grades five through eight. They don’t divide the girls this way, possibly as a method of fulfilling yet another pledge from the manifesto—that older women provide teaching and training to younger women—possibly because they don’t want to double up on the number of digital sewing machines and garden equipment.