The Book of Phoenix (22 page)

I told no one.

Not even you. No one knew where I was going and when I would go. No one but me. The moment called me, and I answered it. While briefly on the cruise ship that second night, I'd used the jelli telli to research world news and the public satellite images of Tower 4. When Mmuo and Saeed stepped outside the room to speak with Andres about something, I had the one and only moment alone in that room. I used it to look up information on the jelli telli that was important only to myself. Mmuo and Saeed could never have known because they did not know the details. They had not read the documents in Tower Records. They only knew what I told them and I told them everything, except about the woman who carried me. Vera Takeisha Thomas.

Most of her information was right there in the Tower Records in the Library of Congress. How they chose her. What they did to her. Where she was kept. I read it all, and each word was like a stone to my head. They were pain. They were harm. They were a shock. They took and took. Words are powerful when chosen well and hurled with precision. I took the pain and accepted the scars as I shelved the information behind those things I read about myself, Mmuo, Saeed, and Tower 4. But I did not forget. I never forget. I needed to assure victory and when we had it, I used the location I'd looked up on the cruise ship to go and find her.

The Big Eye promised to pay for the carrier's university education, take care of the lifetime financial needs of the carrier and two family members, and give the carrier her own house. The process would also strengthen the carrier's body and give it full immunity to several common killers and cripplers like bird flu, airborne Ebola, and river blindness. She would live a long, healthy privileged life afterwards. All this for carrying an implanted “project” embryo. There was no mention of “speciMen” in the advertisement. Hundreds of women volunteered to carry me.

After a battery of tests, they chose Vera. She was strong, healthy, had an intact womb, was the only person in her family to go to college, had a master's degree in animal sciences, was prone to happiness, handled stress well, and the only one in the group interviewed who was willing to die to deliver the child. Oh, and she was of African descent. She was perfect. The file proudly highlighted the fact that they couldn't have gotten a better carrier. The Big Eye didn't want to kidnap a woman and force her to bear this devil's seed. In the file, they actually stated that “this would not only have been illegal, but immoral and highly inhumane. We are not a cabal of assassins.” Yet duping a woman into it was just fine.

Vera had once been happily married with three small children. She was the director at a meat-packing factory and she was also a strict vegetarian. So already, she was full of guilt. Then one day, while she and her husband went out to a romantic dinner, there was a fire at their house. All three of their children perished in the fire and only the babysitter escaped. Soon after, Vera and her husband split up. They never spoke to each other again. When Vera saw the ad on the newsfeeds, she jumped at the chance to successfully bear a child with the help of the finest medical research facilities on earth.

The Big Eye told her nothing about the embryo beyond the fact that the child would be a “special person.” She was told that she'd have to give birth to the child on her own and that as soon as the child was born she had to be willing to hold the child. Vera said yes to all this. The file said nothing about whether or not she asked
why
they didn't think she would hold the child. Nor was there any detail about her being bothered by the birthing conditions. But by then, I doubt she could have backed out even if she wanted to.

So she gave birth to me alone. She'd been in labor three times in her life in regular hospitals surrounded by nurses, a doctor, and her husband. What must my birth have been like for her? None of this was in the file. She communicated with the Big Eye remotely and that was how she assured them that she was ok. As soon as she checked in on day two and said that the baby was suckling well, they rushed back to the hospital and took me away from her without even allowing her to kiss me goodbye. This was what made her go crazy.

On the cruise ship, I'd researched and studied the satellite image of the Triple Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles, United States. The largest jail in the world. Where you were not just a patient, you were an inmate. This is where they took and threw away the woman who carried me when she was no longer of use to them. So they never gave her her own house, but they did force her into a home: D41 D-Pod, Room Number 7.

She was like radioactive refuse—she was waste, but needed to be disposed of carefully. Jail was perfect. She had her own room. Her locked universe was a bullet proof, shatter proof crystal box. Her file didn't say why it had to be bullet-proof, either.

I'd researched the location of the Triple Towers, found a detailed map and, of course, several news stories. Most of them were about how poorly the inmates were treated and the disproportionate number of American African inmates compared to any other ethnicity, male or female.

According to what I read, 90 percent of the inmates, all of whom were deemed mentally ill, were American Africans. I imagined that there were Africans from other parts of the world in that remaining ten percent population. If I had told Mmuo about this place, he'd have wanted to burst it open, too. Maybe someday we would. Some stories speculated about the relationship of the Triple Towers facility to the LifeGen Technologies research towers. I wondered about all these towers, these edifices thrusting themselves into the sky, where so much evil took place. I wondered deeply.

And so as soon as things calmed, while the strange voiceless children played, while Mmuo and Saeed were inside the Sandcastle conspiring, while I stared out at the vast ocean on that beach, I slipped.

 • • • 

I stood in Vera Takeisha Thomas' bathroom. The coolness of the dry air was a shock to my system after being in the balmy humid heat of the open air. I shivered. The cold thick concrete walls pressed in on my wings. The air that, seconds ago had smelled of crushed flowers, smoke, and wet dirt, now reeked strongly of feces and stale water. Everything in the bathroom was made of crystal, or was it glass? The toilet, the drippy faucet, the pipes that led into the wall. Was there something about her that reacted with metal? Above the faucet, there was no mirror.

Slowly, I peeked out of the bathroom. My nose was immediately assaulted with the smell of dirty sweat. It was dark because it was midnight, two days before I'd arrive in the Virgin Islands with Mmuo and Saeed. I pulled my heavy black veil more tightly over myself. I could not suppress my glow, and though it was midnight and most likely she wasn't being watched, there was still the possibility. Security in the Triple Towers used a panoptic design, which meant there was a central control room that allowed deputies and officers the ability to observe inmates without inmates observing them. You never knew when you were being watched here.

Most things in Vera's room were also made of the thick glass or crystal. The table, the frame of her rack, her small shelf. Taped to the wall was a crumbly poster of a bird on a branch, but the dim light from the hallway was not enough for me to see what type of bird unless I got a little closer. Outside the glass wall was a hallway, and I could glimpse other cells. These had metal barred doors. They were dark, too.

I heard heavy breathing. Wet gurgled wheezing. I looked toward the rack, but there was no one on the thin mattress. My eyes fell on the heap in front of the poster on the wall. As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was a person sitting in a wheelchair. I stood there for several moments. Gradually, I saw her more clearly. Her thick matted hair reached her shoulders in uneven clumps. Her skin blended with the darkness. Her neck was bent to the side. The floor beneath her was wet with a puddle of her drool. My stomach flipped. Her eyes were wide open. She was staring right at me as I poked my head out.

“I . . .” I said. But what could I say?

I stepped out of the bathroom. Quietly. Slowly. I knew what I looked like; I didn't want to give her a heart attack. Still, her wheezing quickened. “It's ok,” I said. I felt heat flush through my body the closer I got to her. I took a deep breath; I had to calm down and it was difficult. This was the woman who gave birth to me three years ago. According to her file, she'd been twenty-five years old when she had me. This was four years after losing her three daughters to the fire and a year after losing her husband to mutual despair. This frail quivering woman whose skin was loose and pock-marked, whose small dry hands were gnarled and cracked as they grasped the wheels of her plastic wheelchair, and whose pink red mouth hung open, this woman was only twenty-eight years old. She was nearly half the age that I looked
.

I stepped closer. She smelled like burned matches and oily sweat. My eyes stung as I looked at her and then they blurred with tears. I blinked them away. I needed to see. I needed. I stepped closer, dropping my burka.
Let them see me
, I thought.
Let them see us both
.
Together again.
They would know exactly who I was and they could do no more harm to Vera Takeisha Thomas. However, no alarm went off.
They're not watching,
I realized. Vera was not a speciMen, but she gave birth to me. She was one of us.
Again, they see none of us as a threat.

My glow warmed her cell. The perched bird on the poster was a red-breasted robin. I knelt before her and looked into her blank eyes.

“Nnnnnnnn,” she started to say. Her eyes were wide now. She took a ragged breath and said it again. “Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.” She was
willing
herself to speak.

I took her hands, hoping beyond hope that she could bring forth words. Slowly, slowly, slowly, she lifted her head. Then we stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Her eyes were nothing like mine. Her shade of brown was lighter than mine. Her lips were thinner than mine. She was a short woman whose feet hung from her chair. She was American African, and I could see traces of other peoples in her face. But this was the woman who pushed me into the world. Alone. This was the woman who was willing to die for me. This was my mother.

“Phoenix,” she whispered. She coughed as she spoke. Her file said that she was catatonic, brain-damaged, nearly a vegetable. It said she'd lost her ability to speak long before arriving at the facility. The radiation I exuded as a baby in utero for nine months damaged her beyond repair. The file said.

I gasped. “How do you know my name?” I asked, my voice thick. More tears fell from my eyes and sizzled on my cheeks. “How do you know it's me?”

Her hands tightened. “
I
gave you that name.” She looked at me quivering, straining as she spoke. She'd swum up from the abyss. And now she was barely hanging on. “You came out, and I took one look at you, and I spoke your name. They were listening. They're always listening. Modern day slavers!”

Silence.

“How did you get in here?” she asked. She was sweating and having trouble keeping her head up.

I smiled, and she smiled back feebly. That was enough. I reached forth and held her head up.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

“I'd know your glow anywhere,” she said. She coughed deeply, thick and wheezy.

“Even though I look so much older?”

“Never expected you to be normal.” Her mouth shook as she managed a feeble smile, again.

“I want to get you out of here,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But you can't.”

“Why?”

She only shook her head. “It's good enough just to see you.”

“No. I can get you out. I really can!”

“Phoenix,” she said. Hearing my name come from her lips made me feel stronger. “I birthed you all on my lonesome. They cleared out soon as I was in labor. They left me in that building, talked to me by portable. They were sure you'd blow up . . . or something. But you came out alive, eyes all open. Glowing like a little sun—orange under ebony brown. Brownest newborn I ever saw. I held you.” She shut her eyes and she held my hand. She opened her eyes and looked intensely into mine. “I
held
you. They come back when they knew it was safe. Took you from me! They'd promised me I could raise you! That you'd be mine.” She breathed heavily, wheezing and coughing.

“Easy,” I whispered, patting her on the back.

“They classified you as a ‘dangerous non-human person'. That's how they justified taking you from me like that. But then, what's that make me?” She coughed again, weaker. “Phoenix, give 'em hell. You hear me, girl? Give 'em
hell
.”

Suddenly, I understood. I straightened and tried to pull my hand away. Somehow, she was very strong and she would not let me go.

“No,” I said. I pulled again, managing to get myself away. I ran to my burka and threw it over myself. I looked at the bathroom, considering retreating into it. Maybe the concrete wall would help. I turned around when she spoke.

“They always watchin',” she said. “Makes for good research.” Then she was silent. Her head sagged. Her hands dropped to her side. I could hear it. A soft whisper. I knew death well. I could recognize it even when it was quiet as an angel.

Vera Takeisha Thomas had cancer, and it had been caused by me. From the constant internal exposure to my light and my own strange blood mingling with hers. This was in the file. She was dying. And there I was exposing her to more of my light when I was bigger, older, and stronger. She should have told me to stay back. Instead, she'd held on to me. Until she could let go.

I looked into the hallway. From what I could see, the other rooms were still dark, but there were women in their cells, faces pressed to the glass. Watching us. Silent. Silenced? Outside in the hallway stood guards with guns. Also watching. Doing nothing. Where were the cell's cameras? The Big Eye always had cameras.