“Get
undressed,” the doctor says, her eyes on her computer screen as she taps at the
keyboard. “Quickly, now.”
Emmanuelle looks at
her mother, but gets no help from her. “Do as the doctor says, Emma.”
Reluctantly, Emmanuelle
starts unbuttoning her shirt. The room is cold, and goose pimples rise along
her arms as she pulls the garment off. She starts to shiver.
The doctor looks up
from the computer. “Aren’t you done yet?” she asks, impatiently.
Emmanuelle’s mother
looks at her. “Do you need help, Emma?”
Emmanuelle shakes her
head and bends to pull off her shoes and socks. She does not want to do this,
whatever it is, but it’ll do no good to refuse and she knows that she’ll catch
hell for it later. Drawing her pants off, she straightens up in her underwear.
The doctor frowns and
gestures irritably. “Those, too. Everything.” She’s a big woman, with a hard
face. Her white coat is too small for her, the fabric stretched over her
shoulders and breasts so that the buttons strain to hold it closed. She looks Emmanuelle
up and down as though she were a piece of meat.
“She’s very thin and
underdeveloped,” she says to Emmanuelle’s mum. “Are you sure she’s ten?”
Emmanuelle hugs her
bony chest as her mum wordlessly hands the doctor her birth certificate. A drop
of blood from where the technician had taken a sample squeezes out of the crook of her elbow and trickles down her skin. Underfoot, the tiled floor is freezing cold.
The doctor nods, hands
back the paper, and points to a rack. “Put one of those outfits on.”
It’s thick and black
and heavy, and she has trouble pulling the bottom part over her legs. It covers
her from the soles of her feet up to the hips, but the front is open down to
the tops of her thighs. There’s a top next, which has a hood to go over her
head and arms which end in gloves, but the front is open from below her nipples
down to her waist. The hood twists down over her eyes. Her mother pulls and
pushes on the rubbery fabric until it finally falls into place.
“All ready.” It isn’t
a question and she isn’t talking to Emmanuelle, she’s talking to her mother. Emmanuelle’s
mum nods silently, and grips her shoulder hard. Emmanuelle can feel her fingers
through the thick rubbery stuff.
“Come on, girl.” The
doctor glances at the form in her hand. “What’s your name? Emmanuelle? Well,
all you have to do is just come along and do exactly as you’re told to, and
everything will be fine. Do you understand?”
Emmanuelle nods. The
hood encases her head and throat, and the material is so thick that it makes it
hard for her to move her head. She feels her mother’s hand on her shoulder,
pushing her along behind the doctor’s broad back. The walls of the passage are
bilious green, and the lights reflected off them tinge the doctor’s white coat
an unsettling colour.
“Mum...” Emmanuelle
begins. She’s intensely conscious that she’s naked down the front. “Why are
we...”
“Shush,” her mother
replies, in the tone of voice Emmanuelle has learnt not to question, or there
will be trouble. “It’s just for a minute or two.”
The doctor is joined
by an assistant in a brown coat, who’s even bigger than the doctor herself. She
glances at Emmanuelle with a total lack of curiosity, and pulls on gloves of
the same thick material Emmanuelle’s outfit is made of.
The doctor stops at a
door, which is metal, unlike all the others they’ve passed. The edges are set
into the walls and floor. The doctor pulls up a plate, and Emmanuelle sees her
spinning a dial.
“We use the best blood
stock here,” the doctor says over her shoulder. “Even so, we guarantee nothing,
because there are too many variables. You understand?”
“I’ve signed the
disclaimer,” Emmanuelle’s mother says. Her voice sounds tight, tensed up, and
this frightens Emma. Suddenly she does not want to know what’s in the room.
The door opens with a
pop. It’s just a room at first, a windowless, empty room, with white walls and
bright white lights set in the ceiling. Then Emmanuelle notices that the floor
is black and that it’s sunken below the doorsill – almost as far down as her
knees.
“What are you waiting
for, girl?” the doctor says, still impatient. “Go in.”
“Get down, Emma,” her
mother orders, still in that tense voice, and pushes her shoulder. She jumps
down, heavily, so that she has to bend her knees not to fall over. The floor is
yielding under her feet, slippery and difficult to walk on.
“Just stand where you
are,” the doctor says, and takes a can from her pocket, spraying it over
Emmanuelle’s bare stomach and between her legs. It’s like a perfume, only it
doesn’t smell of anything in particular. The assistant in the brown coat steps
down, and walks over to the far wall. There’s a door Emma hasn’t noticed, set
flush into the wall, and the assistant slides it open. Inside is a cupboard of
some kind, with a shiny cage in it. Things chitter and scutter in the cage,
reacting to the light.
“Stay where you are,”
the doctor repeats. The assistant pulls the cage out and upends it, shaking.
Small things fall out on to the floor, bouncing, and begin to scatter across
the room. Then, as though they’ve smelt her, they suddenly turn and run in her
direction. As they come together in the centre of the room, they fall over each
other in their frantic eagerness to get to her, biting and scratching at each
other. She hears a faint squeaking.
Three of them break
away from the struggling mass all at once and come rushing towards her. Now she
can see them clearly for the first time, and feels the scream rising in her
throat. They’re pink and hairless like baby mice, but round-headed and
tailless, and the size of kittens. She tries to back away, rising on her toes,
ready to jump.
“Don’t move, Emma,”
her mother shouts, but it’s too late. The smooth soles of the outfit slip on
the yielding floor, and she falls over heavily on her back. In an instant
they’re on her.
She has a brief
glimpse of the first, as it leaps towards her face; a wide open mouth, gaping
jaws studded with glassy translucent teeth, and round black eyes bulging above
the flattened snout. Instinctively, she bats it away, her hand hitting it in
mid air and sending it spinning across the floor. The next moment, she feels
the pain, in her belly to one side of her navel. She tries to curl up, crying
out, but there’s another pain now, on the inside of her left thigh, just where
it joins the hip. She looks down at herself, screaming. One of the pink things
seems to be trying to bore into her stomach. Another braces itself against her
right leg, its mouth clamped into the soft skin of her left thigh.
The one on her stomach
glances up at her. Its black eyes and flattened snout are flecked with her
bright red blood.
After that, for a
while she knows nothing more.
********************************************
When she wakes, she’s lying in a bed. It’s white
and smells of clean laundry. There’s a sheet over her, but she has no clothes
on. There’s a dull pain on the inside of her thigh, and a numb feeling beside
her navel. She lies there for a bit, waiting for the pain to go away, not
daring to move in case it increases.
There are voices. She
can make out that the doctor is talking, and sounds angry.
“You mean you didn’t
educate the girl about this at all? You brought her here raw?”
“It didn’t...seem
necessary.” Her mother’s voice, with an apologetic whine Emmanuelle has never
heard before. “I remember how scared I was about getting it done, so...”
“So you probably
traumatised her for years, and you also cost us one valuable parasite.” The
doctor’s voice oozes with contempt. “We could have left it, of course, but it
would have made it hard for her to walk, being attached where it was.”
“I’m sorry.” Her
mother is quiet for a moment. “Will she be all right?”
“There’ll be a scar,
but it’ll fade with time. You’ll have to pay for the destroyed parasite, of
course.”
“Of course,”
Emmanuelle’s mum says quietly. “That’s understood. I’ll arrange the bank
transfer.”
The pain has not
increased, so Emmanuelle gingerly moves her legs together. There’s something
rough and thick tied around her left upper thigh; it feels like a bandage. She
opens her eyes slowly. The room is pale blue, and there’s a pink and green
butterfly made of cloth and wire spinning on a cord from the ceiling right
above her head. It’s so ugly that it’s fascinating.
The doctor’s face
comes between her and the butterfly, looking down. “So you’re awake? Are you
feeling all right?”
Emmanuelle tries to
talk. Her lips are stiff and her throat dry. “My thigh hurts.”
“It’ll be sore for a
few days. I’ve given your mother medicines to give you if it gets too painful.”
The doctor’s eyes are unsympathetic. “How’s your stomach?”
“It’s numb.” It’s more
than numb, it feels heavy, as though weighed down, but Emmanuelle doesn’t dare
touch it. “It’s not hurting.”
The doctor nods,
curtly, and pulls the sheet off, glancing down at Emmanuelle’s naked body. “Right.
You can get up now and get dressed. I’ll see you in a week for a check-up.”
Emmanuelle’s mother
comes forward, her clothes draped over her arm. “Are you all right, dear?”
Her mother never calls
her dear. Emmanuelle dresses quickly, unable to meet the older woman’s eyes,
not daring to look down at herself.
“I’m all right,” she
says.
********************************************
Her mother takes her to a cafe and orders
chocolate milkshakes. Her face is like a mask. She says nothing until the
waitress has delivered their milkshakes and gone. Then she looks down at her
hands, fingers twisting on the table.
“You’re entitled to
know what this is all about,” she says.
Emmanuelle opens her
mouth and shuts it again.
Her mother gestures
irritably in the air, as though the girl has spoken. “Oh, I know I should have
told you before. The doctor gave me an earful about that – you may have heard
her. I just thought it would be better, you know...”
“Tell me,” Emmanuelle
says. Something squirms under her shirt. She shifts uneasily. “Tell me, then.”
So her mother does.
Emmanuelle sits as
though she’s turned to stone. The milkshakes lie on the table between them,
untouched. She focuses her eyes on them, so that she doesn’t have to look at
her mother.
Finally she manages to
speak. “Why?”
She sees her mother’s
shadow, on the table, shrugging. “Why, in your case, you mean? All girls go
through it. I explained that.”
“No. I mean why? Why
at all? Why did this start? Why can’t we still have, you know...” Her mouth
feels for the word she’s never heard before today, never uttered. “...men?”
Emmanuelle’s mother’s
hand clutches at a napkin. “It was for the best. They were vile creatures,
aggressive and territorial, and even the best of them were unpredictable and
untrustworthy. They’d have destroyed everything if we’d allowed them to go on
as they were.”
“So you killed them. Not
you, I mean the scientists killed them?”
“Killed them? No, of
course not. They were just changed.” Emmanuelle’s
mum’s hand reaches across the table for hers, and draws back before touching
her, as though the contact would burn. “They’d have become extinct eventually,
anyway. We saved them, really, and we saved ourselves too.”
“Saved them, how?”
“How? You’ve seen what
they’re like now. They’re now totally joined, dependent on us. Our welfare is
theirs. They can’t leave us, they can’t fight battles...”
“They were fighting
each other in there,” Emmanuelle objects.
Her mother shifts
irritably. “I explained that. They were attracted by the smell of the spray the
doctor put on you. It’s all they can
smell, and it drives them crazy. Only the toughest and strongest of the lot can
reach you first, and climb up that fabric to your bare skin so it can get a
grip, so you get the very best one. If you hadn’t fallen down...”
“That’s right,”
Emmanuelle repeats. “If I hadn’t fallen down! It’s all my fault then.”
“Anyway,” her mother
says eventually. “That’s it. It’s going to lose its limbs and eyes and mouth
soon enough, and become like a little sack of flesh. You’ll hardly even notice
it.”
“And when the time
comes, it’s going to make babies inside me?” The thought makes Emmanuelle want
to vomit. Then a thought strikes her. She looks up at her mother. “You must
have had this done, too, to make me, right?”
“Yes, of course. Haven’t
you been listening?”
“But I’ve seen you with
no clothes on, lots of times. I never saw anything like this.”
“Yes, well...” Her
mother picks up a milkshake, touches the straw to her lips, and puts it down
again. “Mine...died.”
“Died? But you said it would last as long as I lived.”
“Sometimes something
goes wrong. Mine got sick. They said it was dying, and removed it. It was just
after you were born.” Emmanuelle’s mum clenches her eyes shut, and shakes her
head vigorously. Her lips frame a word Emmanuelle has been told is bad, and she
is never to use. Then her mum opens her eyes and shakes her head. “No, that’s
not true. Since I’ve told you this much, I’ll tell you all of it. The whole
truth.”
Emmanuelle knows what’s
coming. “You killed it.”
“Yes.” Her mother’s
face is colourless. “I thought of cutting it off, but I couldn’t bring myself
to do that. I took the knife, and held it to its skin, even, but I couldn’t
make the first cut.”
“Why?” Emma prompts.
“It knew I was going
to do it,” her mother says at last. “I don’t know how it knew, since they lose
their eyes and all the other sense organs, but it knew. Maybe it picked up on
my thoughts.” She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, as though to
block out the sight. “It started wriggling, trying to get away from the blade
as far as it could. Which wasn’t very far, seeing that it was attached to my
hip.”
“But you still,” Emma
begins.
“But I still,” her
mother agrees. “I couldn’t cut it off, but I’d made my decision. So I took a
metal pestle and started hitting it and hitting it until it was a pulp. And
then I went to hospital and told them that it had been crushed in an accident, so
they removed what was left. They didn’t believe me, of course, but they
pretended to. They probably get a lot of cases like that.”
Emmanuelle sits,
appalled. “Why did you do it?” she manages eventually.
“You don’t need to
know,” her mother snaps, and then shakes her head. “No, I said I’d tell you
everything. Well, it was men.”
“Men? But you said...”
“I know what I said! I
was stupid. I started thinking what it would have been to have men still in the
world. How it would have been to have a man to share my life with, to share you with.” She sighs. “There were the
old stories, stories I was idiot enough to read, that you should never ever
touch if you value your happiness.”
“Stories? What
stories?”
“All stories! Anything
written from the old days. A lot was written by men themselves. They were
fascinating creatures, at least if you believed what they wrote, and what women
wrote about them. There was heartbreak, sure, but there was excitement and
more. And there was love.
“Oh, there was love.
It was angry and beautiful and fascinating, and I’d never, ever, know it.” Emmanuelle’s
mum takes a big swallow of the milkshake as though it were water. “And I began
to hate the parasite. I began to hate it with every bit of my being. I began to
blame it for the fact that I’d never know what love was, that it helped make you instead of a man
doing that, the way they did. And, and I swore I’d never let it make anyone
else.” A tear trickles down her cheek, and she rubs it away angrily. “Men! Even
when they’re no longer there, they still make you sad and unhappy. Men!”
The parasite squirms
against Emmanuelle’s belly, like a kitten nuzzling its mother’s teat. She
stands up abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”
Her mother looks up,
eyes sad and hollow. “Don’t be too long. I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“I’ll be right back, I
said,” Emmanuelle says. She can’t put it off any longer. Walking as fast as she
can without breaking into a run, she goes to the washroom and locks the door. “Wait,”
she murmurs, to the squirming parasite. “Wait, just a moment.”
Taking a deep breath,
she meets her own eyes in the mirror before she pulls up her shirt, and then,
only then, does she look down at her husband for the first time.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2016
