Remnant Population

“I don’t want to leave his grave,” Ofelia said. Having begun, she could not stop. “And the others—” The other two boys, the girl who had died in infancy, Adelia. Over those graves she had cried real tears, and she could cry over them now.

“Mama!” Barto stepped toward her, but Rosara came between them.

“Barto. Let her alone. Of course it matters to her, her own children, your father—” At least Rosara had it in the right order. “And besides—” But trust Rosara to ruin the effect; she was going to explain that it would, after all, be a solution, even though they could not allow it. “If she did stay,” Rosara said, fulfilling Ofelia’s expectation, “then we would not have to pay—” “No!” Barto slapped Rosara; Ofelia had prudently backed away, and Rosara’s backward stagger didn’t hurt her. “She is my mother; I’m not leaving her here.”

Ofelia said, “I’m going to the center to sew the fabric boxes.” Barto would not follow her into the open; he never did. He might think her remark was capitulation, too.

That evening, neither Barto nor Rosara mentioned the incident. Ofelia said she had completed a fabric box, and would do more tomorrow. “If the machines produce enough fabric, we can make a box for each person in the colony. It will be difficult, in the short time, but—” “Rosara will help tomorrow,” Barto said.

Rosara sewed slowly and clumsily. “The machines are all busy,” Ofelia said. “I can make the other boxes for our family” “And I am supposed to report for vocational testing tomorrow,” Rosara said. “It is ridiculous to test you before me,” Barto said. That began a tirade against the Company. Ofelia didn’t listen. After eating, she scraped the dishes and carried out the scraps to the garden. She had not been in the garden since dawn; she drew a deep breath of the evening scents. There was just enough light to see the slidebug’s web between the rows, and avoid it. When she came back to the kitchen door, she peeked. Empty. The door to Rosara and Barto’s room was shut. That suited her. She cleaned the dishes and set them to dry.

In the morning, her first thought was Twenty-eight days. Her second thought was I’m not going, I will be

free in twenty-eight days.

She had wakened early, as always, and when she came into the garden the dawn mists still blurred her view down the lane. Plant by plant she examined the garden: the beans, with their tiny fragrant flowers, the tomatoes, the young spears of corn, the exuberant vines of gourds. Some of the tomato flowers had opened, curling back their petals like tiny lilies.

She heard brisk steps coming down the lane, and crouched. A Company rep went by, hardly glancing over the garden fence. After that, she hurried her garden work, plucking off the leaf-eaters and stem-suckers. She knew Barto would scold if he found her working in the garden now, when the work was useless. He might even be angry, and destroy the plants. When Barto and Rosara came out of their bedroom, she had breakfast on the table. She smiled at them.

“I’m just leaving for the center I’ll be there all day, I expect, sewing.” All day, sewing with the other women, in the rooms full of machines and women and children, shaping the bright cloth into fabric boxes, When her shoulders tired, someone always noticed and came to knead them and take a turn at the machine. Ofelia sat for awhile in a padded rocker in the passage, telling stories to small children. They were not her grandchildren, but she had been telling stories to small children for so long it didn’t matter. Here, with everyone talking as they worked, speculating on where they might be sent, and what it would be like, she could hardly remember she wasn’t going. The-women all called her Sera Ofelia, and asked her advice. She began to think she would be with them always, always have these toddlers crawling into her lap, always have some younger woman confiding a problem with her husband or a quarrel with a neighbor.

Only that night, in her bed, her skin remembered the feel of clothes without underclothes. Her hands

swept across her belly, her sides. She was old… her public voice said that, the voice that knew what to

say in the center to the other women. She was old and wrinkled and beyond any of the feelings that she

had felt in her youth, when she had been in love with Caitano and then Humberto. That was what the

public voice said. But the private voice, the new voice, said I’m not going. They’ll be gone, and I’ll be

here. Alone. Free.