SEVEN
TWO ORDERLIES BURST THROUGH THE DOOR AND
scooped up Honor. They were immensely strong. Their faces were
calm, not angry or fierce, but blank as always. The two lifted
Honor right off the floor, one orderly under each elbow, and sped
her away. She turned her head and saw two more orderlies following
with sticks. She closed her eyes.
When the orderlies dropped her off, Honor saw
that she was not back in her own classroom; she was in the nurse’s
office. The orderlies deposited her in a chair and the school nurse
approached with a thermometer. “Are you all right?” the plump blond
nurse asked.
Honor nodded.
“Where did the accident happen?” the nurse
asked.
“I didn’t have an accident,” said
Honor.
“Yes, but I have to fill out an accident
report,” the nurse said kindly, and she showed Honor her clipboard
with the accident form printed on pink paper. “My name is Nurse
Applebee.”
Honor examined the nurse’s dimpled hands. The
name Applebee made her think of honey.
“Tell me exactly where the accident happened,”
said Nurse Applebee.
“In my classroom,” said Honor.
“Yes?” said the nurse.
Honor remembered Mrs. Whyte’s words: We do not
lie. Ever.
“I fell into the aquarium,” she said.
Fell into the aquarium, Nurse Applebee wrote
slowly. Then she looked up and asked, “Why aren’t you
wet?”
“Look.” Honor showed the nurse the front of her
shirt.
“But shouldn’t you be wet all over?”
Again, Honor remembered Mrs. Whyte. Do you know
what exaggeration is? “Octavio pulled me out,” said
Honor.
“The class octopus?”
“Don’t kill him,” Honor pleaded. “He saved
me.”
“Why do you say that?” the nurse
asked.
“Don’t kill him,” she begged. “Please, please .
. .”
Nurse Applebee leaned forward. She spoke quickly
and quietly. “Stop that. You aren’t a baby, and you know as well as
I do that if the orderlies got him, he’s already dead.”
When Honor returned to the classroom, she
carried the pink accident report signed by Nurse Applebee and
sealed in an envelope. She did not know what the report said, but
Mrs. Whyte frowned when she read it. “I’m disappointed,” Mrs. Whyte
said at last.
Honor bowed her head.
Mrs. Whyte spoke again, and each word fell like
a blow. “I am very unhappy with you.”
Honor stood silently before her
teacher.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Mrs.
Whyte asked.
Honor couldn’t speak.
“I’m waiting,” Mrs. Whyte said.
Honor stared at the floor. No words
came.
“Go to your loom and get to work,” Mrs. Whyte
snapped.
All that long afternoon, Honor kept her head
down as she worked, avoiding the stares of the other children. She
didn’t dare look at Mrs. Whyte. She kept her eyes on her shuttle
and the threads in her loom.
At the end of the day, when the students lined
up for the bus, Honor didn’t push to the front, but let the others
go first. She felt beaten, even though no one had hit her; her body
ached. When the doors finally opened for her stop, she trudged off
the bus, dragging her book bag behind her.
Instead of her mother, her father was standing
by the side of the road to meet her. “Hurry,” he told her, taking
her book bag. He seemed excited and nervous. “You can walk faster
than that.” He pulled her by the hand and they hurried to the City
Center.
Thousands upon thousands of silvery bicycles
flashed through the City. It was rush hour and the office workers
were cycling home. The footbridges were packed, and as Honor and
her father tried to walk across, there were so many workers crowded
together that Honor could see nothing but their sweaty backs.
Somehow, her father found an opening to push forward. Below them,
the bicycles shimmered like a silver river in the afternoon
sun.
Honor’s father led her past the Safety Bureau,
with its lavish waterless fountains casting colors through tall
prisms. Will rushed Honor through the Corporation Plaza, with its
flags flying. One hundred flags, and on each flag seven stars to
represent the seven seas. They passed the windowless Central Store.
They passed the Coupon Bank, the Island Bakery. They passed the bus
depot, where a hundred silver buses waited to take the orderlies
back to their Barracks on the other side of the island. At last
they arrived at the hospital, surrounded by gardens and coral block
walls.
Will showed his identification card to the usher
and led Honor up the stairs to a room of beds. The room was painted
clean white, but the paint was cracked. Several large windows were
boarded up. The glass must have broken in the storm.
Honor’s mother was sitting up against pillows in
a white gown. Honor cried out and ran toward her.
“No, no, no.” The nurse hustled Honor out of the
room. “We cannot have children in the ward,” the nurse scolded
Will. “Take her downstairs, please.”
“Can’t she stay in the hall?” Will
pleaded.
“Are you arguing with me?” the nurse
asked.
Honor looked up at her father. His face was
calm, but he was squeezing her hand so hard it hurt.
She almost fell trying to keep up with Will as
he marched her down the stairs. “Stay here,” her father told her
when they came out to the hospital garden.
She waited for him on a green bench in the shade
of a monkeypod tree. She watched two orderlies clipping hedges with
sharp garden shears. She thought of Octavio. You aren’t a baby, and
you know as well as I do that if the orderlies got him . .
.
Honor imagined the school orderlies clipping
Octavio with garden shears. She thought of them slashing and
puncturing his soft body. When she closed her eyes, she imagined
Octavio looking up at her. She felt his delicate tentacle wrap her
wrist.
“Honor.”
She opened her eyes with a start. There was her
father, walking toward her with a bundle of blankets in his arms.
Honor’s mother followed slowly. She had changed out of her
nightgown and was dressed again in ordinary clothes.
Will and Pamela sat next to Honor on the bench.
Then Honor saw that the bundle of blankets contained a
baby.
“That’s the baby?” Honor exclaimed. She’d had no
idea he would be so little. She’d never seen a baby
before.
“Honor,” said her father, “this is
Quintilian.”