Issue 23

Mialise Carney

Mother charges me per minute. I sit in her creme-colored office, my ankles tucked delicately behind one another, clammy hands clasped and bunching sweatily into the thick folds of my skirt. Mother sits across from me in her wing-backed chair, clock ticking dutifully behind her softly permed head. Mother checks her wristwatch, reaches for her pad of paper and silver bullet pen and says, Let’s begin.

I begin. The words slosh out of me like old cream—fluid but coagulated, splashing messily back into my face and dribbling down my chin. I try to calculate how to make the most of my money, to say all that I have to without racking up a debt. But I stumble, my voice cracks, splits, and I croak. Mother senses the sweat pooling in my armpits, clucks her dry tongue, doesn’t look up from her doodles but warns I slow down.

The ticking clock punches through my quaking, but I try to ignore it. Mother sets the clock fast, a trick she taught me when I was young. She likes me to be indebted to her even if she has to cheat to do it. I have to work overtime if I ever want to afford her interest rates, so I am careful to count. I tap my fingers against my cratered thigh, tremble with nausea, worry I’ll never be able to fit it all in. I am allotted one hour—sixty minutes of her pure and undivided attention, but I can’t usually afford the full sixty. Today, I’ve only saved enough for twenty-three and a half minutes, twenty-three and a half minutes to tell Mother why I’m saying goodbye.

I have always worked to talk to Mother. I go to university so one day I will make enough money to talk to Mother as long as I like and perhaps one day even enough for Father. I work extra-long hours so I can speak to Mother. I work extra-long hours so I can afford to tell Mother about how I worked extra-long hours. I work at a plastic packaging plant, but I don’t work on the assembly lines, not like my friend Julia. Her sharp fingers are all cut up and scarred from the edges of warm, slick containers that will one day play home to limp salads and french fries. Julia’s rates are low, only a half dollar per minute. Most times, that’s all I need.

I am a tour guide. I wear low chunky heels that click and clack against the tile and a forest-green plaid skirt I get up before dawn to press. I hold a clipboard in the bend of my arm with lots of information on it that doesn’t mean anything but looks very official, and I take groups of tittering school children around the plant to show them the plastic sheets and the silver conveyor belts that thump-thump heavily all hours of the day.

I lean down to the children’s faces and stare into their round, glistening eyes. One day you too, I say, could work in a place as nice as this. You too will make enough to pay your rates.

My favorite part about being a tour guide is working with the children. I like to see them and remember my eagerness for school trips, of wanting to unleash the dark, sticky tar bubbling inside me on the newest listener. I was desperate to speak, so worried about finding the right moment that my stomach churned, acid sliding in my belly like I was on a boat. I feared the liquids in my stomach would leak out of my belly button and onto the tile, sharp, yellow bile tumbling down my crisp blouse and lapping toward the tour guide’s heels. I watched it crawl up her stockings and quietly stain her with the worst parts of me, sizzling hot against her skin.

I was always one of the children that couldn’t stop speaking, needing more than a single lesson to understand the value of silence. I began working at five, when my fingers became nimble enough to sew buttons. I spent my afternoons pressing blunted needles into the thick seams of jean pants and jackets, dreamt of stitching my own lips shut when I couldn’t resist talking to the girls around me. Mother demanded I earn my right to speak instead of forcing me into a prolonged silence or paying my debts for me. Good girls, she said, earn their worth.

But I don’t talk so freely anymore. I am efficient. I count my pennies and I place them coldly into the palms of only those who matter. Mostly that’s Mother. I wait to speak to Mother. When I’ve finally saved up enough for all I need to say, I tremble with nausea on the bench outside her sitting room, recite my lines, short and quick and uncomplicated. Quiet. Calm. I will impress her with my ease. Once I’m inside, under her inattentive gaze, I shake and sweat and stutter and wither. She never speaks, never lets me know I’m worth anything. She would never waste her rates on me.

I like being a tour guide because it’s productive and posh and almost entirely pointless. As a tour guide, I am paid a teacher’s rate, lecturing preapproved decades-old scripts and nothing else. I am not allowed to veer off track or ask the children questions because if I do, I will owe the children their rate. Children learn through listening, not speaking, and it would only waste everyone’s energy to pretend what they have to say matters.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to stare into their faces, soft and full like overripe peaches. I want to squeeze them dry. I itch and squirm to ask them what they think, what it feels like again to be so careless, so bursting with words that sometimes they spill out onto the floor, creep up onto the clean glossy shoes of an unsuspecting person, staining the hem of their skirt.

But I don’t. I know they haven’t quite learned their worth yet. I am one of their teachers in the economy of tongue. I am a good girl. I lecture, and smile, and glance at my silver wristwatch, and titter around the cold tiled warehouse. I stay in line like I’m supposed to.

I stare at the rug in Mother’s office, the swirling red and eggshell-white velvet makes me dizzy. The sweat has gone cold on my skin underneath my blouse. I don’t dare look up at Mother, but I feel the weight of her stone-cold face pressing down on me. If I look up, I’ll lose my place, so I focus on counting. I tap 429.

I met my friend Julia when I was working overtime at the plastic packaging plant. Sometimes, I stay late in the evening to take new investors through the crisp hallways that smell like new carpet and crumbling drywall. I show them the machinery and the workers, I explain their efficiency, their purpose. They pay me double so I can answer their questions, make chatter, nod. One time, we stopped at the lines so they could ask workers to speak about their conditions. They chose Julia and gave her triple her rate to speak honestly. She stood up, crossed her hands against the small of her back, and talked so much and so loudly they even had to pay her to stop.

Later, I saw her in the bathroom. I watched her through the crack in the stall door and she winked at me, pushing the coins down into the heel of her itchy government-issued sock. We walked back to the line together and she tinkled, the coins clinking happily against the bones of her feet. She was the kind of person that would impress Mother—she knew her worth.

I began meeting Julia in the parking lot after work. She was easy to find, sitting serenely on the bus stop bench, her wet eyes staring out into the unlit street guarded only by dark, swaying trees. At least twice a week I unfurled her gnarled fingers and pressed two dollar-coins into her hands, speaking before she even agreed to listen. I needed her to listen to me, I wanted to impress her like I couldn’t impress Mother. Her rates were so low that I could tell her anything, and she barely made enough to bother telling anyone what I’d said.

Julia never spoke, only listened, staring off to the side like nothing I said impressed her, like nothing got through her gooey eyes. I made fun of Boss, I made fun of the factory workers, I told of my blasphemies, of my inability to demand my worth. No matter what I entrusted her with, she didn’t notice. She leaned her head back against the glass wall of the bus stop, eyes closing.

I wondered if she wasn’t allowed to speak—maybe she’d committed a crime and was punished with silence, vocal cords snipped, or merely stifled until her sentence was over. Maybe she was conservative, choosing to spend some years silent, a monied monk, to save enough to pay her debts. I knew someone once who had that much self-control, who spent twelve years silent, only listening. They called him the Confessional Priest of Hampstead and we all paid his rates because we knew our secrets would remain tucked safely inside the dark burrows of his chest. He saved so much money that he eventually bought a castle in Sweden. He died of a heart attack two weeks after breaking his vow of silence, screaming into the wind all the secrets he’d saved up, worthless then without anyone to hear them.

I couldn’t imagine being that selfish. Listening conservatively was just as good as talking conservatively. It helps the economy—in out, in out, in out. Work to talk, talk to work. I worked sixty hours a week and went to university so that I didn’t have to vow silence, retreat into the dark abscesses of my body, nestle into the tight folds of my fears. I was doing it for the economy, I was doing my part. Or maybe I was scared of what would happen if I had to be quiet, if I could never get anyone to hear the whispers that fell from between my sticky lips.

I told Julia she was my void once. She was a black hole I could scream into when I couldn’t have Mother, a momentary relief for weeks spent saving in silence. I told Julia everything I couldn’t tell Mother. I told her that I wanted to talk to the children, to say things without paying. I told her I felt sticky with tar deep inside me and no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to be rid of it. But Julia never flinched, never gasped or bugged her eyes, and I kept digging inside myself to find a secret that would move her. I kept looking for a secret tinkling inside my sock, a reminder of what I had taken for myself.

I tap 711 and begin to worry. I really should be getting to the point.

The thing is, I started asking the children question—only little innocent ones at first, questions nobody would notice. I asked what their favorite color was, if they paid their parents’ rates, what their favorite kind of breakfast was, what they learned in history that week. Their mouths gaped like starving robins, shoulders trembling inside too-big uniform blazers, reaching up higher and higher, to reach me.

At first, I did it so I could have a bad secret I could divulge to Julia. But the more I spoke to them, the more I asked them what was behind their face, I felt the fear of getting left behind, of always being shut up, alone, inside myself. I could see it in their sweat, in their shaking, in their curiousness held down by tight lines and debts. I wanted to calm them. So I opened my mouth and delivered. I showed them I wanted to know the secrets inside them, I wanted to know the acid in their stomach before it all turned to dark, sticky tar.

For the rest of my shift, I reveled in the forbiddenness of it. I desperately tried to hold their little secrets in my clenched fists, careful not to let them slip out like sand. I enjoyed the rush of doing something wrong; talking to the children for free felt like a release of all the years I spent counting my pennies and waiting in silence for nothing.

By the time I was on the bus ride home, I’d feel guilt so strong I’d sweat into my seat, my thin blouse clinging to my spine. I fidgeted and jumped when the bus hit potholes like the police were going to crawl up through the cracks in the swaying floor, batons raised, ready to take me away in shackles. Lying in my dorm room bed at night, I vowed that I would never steal from a child again. I scratched the idea into the back of my hand with my fingernail and took a cold bath, my feet turning all kinds of purple and blue, my fingers pruning. I was cleansed of my sins, I declared in the mirror, pulling at the mascara dried dark on my cheeks.

These confessions never lasted. On the next tour, when I looked down at the children, the thumping of the machinery hard and clattering behind me, their faces pink and twitchy like they were bursting just to reach me, I couldn’t help but ask them what it was they were dying to say.

Mother looks up from her doodling, re-crosses her legs. She breathes deep, her willowy frame rocking at the shoulders. Something I’ve said has shaken her. I like it when I break her, I can’t help but want to hurt her. I burrow my fingers in deep, crack her like a clam, mine her for a pearl.

The guilt held on to me, dug sharp into the soft places beneath my ribcage. I glanced over my shoulder all day like anyone would figure out my sins. I was ready to confess.

At first, I was so nervous I saw little black speckles float in my eyes, darting around Julia’s sunken shoulders and in the soft dented space between her eyebrows. I cornered Julia at the bus stop, told her everything for five dollars, leaning over her, waiting for her to shout or crinkle in disgust. But she only pushed four of the coins down into her sock and placed one into the bus driver’s tip jar.

After I told her, I waited four days, nearly sick without eating, waiting for the phone call, or the doorbell, or a bomb squad to show up and arrest me. I didn’t know how serious it was, what the consequences of stealing from children were, of unraveling society from the bottom up.

But after weeks of nothing but Julia’s silence, of her gnarled hands and scuffed gray clogs, I should’ve felt relief that I was safe. But I couldn’t. I still itched and squirmed because of Julia’s blank face glowing under the neon signs we passed on the bus ride back into town, staring past me like I was entirely hollow, invisible, without shape.

I continued to sit beside her on the blue-carpet bus seats, whispering into her ear what the children told me, all the things I never paid for, all I’d taken as my own. I don’t know if I wanted an accomplice or a witness to the glory, but maybe all I wanted was Julia to hear it, to feel my crime slide down her spine and nestle into the small of her back like a five-pound weight. My black hole, my vacuum. I had chosen her like I’d known where I was going, I’d been hurtling toward this from the start.

I count 1041. The sweat from my fingers leaving cold indentations on my thighs. I have to be quick now, I’m nearly out of time.

It didn’t happen like I hoped it would. For weeks, I dreamed in K-9 units and riot squads, in police dragging me out screaming into the night and burning me Joan-of-Arc style in the middle of the cobblestone street—a martyr like I thought I was. A martyr to release the children from their bonds of servitude, to release them from the patience I’d suffered.

But it didn’t happen like that. The day Boss called me into his office, I felt so important. After the children left, I was holding something delicate. I held their secrets like flowers in my hands, precious but so easy to crush. I watched them clomp single file out behind their headmaster, holding between their palms clasped in prayer my bouquet.

Behind me, fingers wrapped around my wrist and pulled, jerking me back into the coat closet. I tripped, falling through the open door, stumbling back against the shelf of clipboards and files and dusty cleaning supplies. The door shut quickly before I had a glimpse of a face, the damp, dark smell of asbestos and rusting metal closing me in.

I fumbled with the string light above me, snapping on the bulb. Julia stood across from me, leaning back against the door, but we still were nearly touching, our noses a few inches apart. Her face was pinched and threatening, her hair curling down her face like a prom queen’s, glinting deep shades of brown. She pulled my fingers open and pressed a crisp bill, my rate, into my hand.

“I am not your void to fill,” she said, pressing her nails into my wrist, my veins, my bone. I squirmed at her voice, so loud compared to the silence I expected from her. I’d forgotten what it sounded like since that day we met, when she talked and talked, and they had to pay her to stop. I’d forgotten what was behind her glazed eyes, trapped inside the hairnet, the dragon lying underneath. Her voice was light and even and clear, eerily soft.

She let go of my hand and left, the closet door gently closing behind her. I didn’t have time to ask her if she meant it.

I held the crisp bill, the sharp, fresh edges prickling my palm. It would have taken her weeks, months to save up that much just to tell me she didn’t want to listen to me anymore. I stiffened and hurried to finish my work. I wasn’t surprised when I was called into Boss’s office.

I tap 1217 and begin to cry. I’m nearly out of time.

I stood in front of Boss, a man so small and limp and wet—I knew it was over when he didn’t offer my rate. He eyed me up and down, relaxed into his leather office chair. He told me the dark-haired girl from the line slipped him a note during a round, a slip of paper, a get-out-of-jail-free card, communication you don’t have to pay for. She had something important she thought he’d like to know, and that if he wanted to know, he would have to pay her a rate. Not her rate, she knew her worth this time. She asked him for a whole year of my rate. I felt a twisting inside me, cherry red dripping down my blouse.

Boss is so rich it didn’t hurt him much, and he’d only fire her if she was lying, so he paid it. She stood tall and proud in front of him, in his office, her gray clogs ugly against the white, white tile, and she talked and talked and talked about everything I’d ever said to her. About Boss, about the children, about the void, about the rates, about Mother, about Mother, about Mother.

He even had to pay her to stop.

I waited for a bomb squad, but they didn’t show. Instead, Boss decreed my punishment. He said it’s a good thing I’m pretty, otherwise he might not pity me. It could’ve been a lot worse for me.

My punishment is to pay all the children their rates. Backpay, interest rates, all of them from the last few months regardless if I asked them questions or not—he made sure to send a letter to the schools asking for a log of all the children from the last few months of tour. Hundreds of school children. Some of them are small fees, simply pennies. Some of them are children of government officials, of CEOs, of money. Some of them whose worth has been pressed into their skin since birth, branded, whose worth is so much more than themselves.

I’ve come to say goodbye, Mother. I’ve come to make a vow of silence, to be quiet, to be the Confessional Priest of the Packaging Plant. To lock my jaw and to only listen. And really listen, because this time I won’t have a chance to say anything afterwards.

I will work on the conveyor belts now. I will look up at a new, pretty, young tour guide with sashaying hips, a newly pressed skirt, and a clipboard with unimportant important information who will unfurl her bony hand at me and tell the children how important my job is, why I am necessary. I will look back down at my bleeding fingers. I will clamp my jaw. I will not speak until I have paid my rates.

It is a punishment worthy of a child. Boss said that’s all I’m worth. He tells me not to pout, it can’t be so hard. I had gotten so much practice, after all, asking those children questions. Listening, really, shouldn’t be all too difficult for someone like me. I tried to thank him but he shook his head, placed a finger to his lips, and winked.

Mother, I want to tell you why, I say. My fingers tap out 1410 and I stop on instinct, nails pressing into my thigh. Mother raises her eyebrow, checks her watch, leans back against the crushed velvet of her chair, waits to see if I’ll continue, if I’ll rack up another debt. But I can’t, I know I can’t.

I want to tell her that I’m not sure if I really was listening to the children. I think I was more concerned with the asking questions part. I think I got so full up I burst, and I didn’t care who heard me. I couldn’t only wait for Mother, I didn’t value her worth. But I can’t tell her, I can’t go into debt to her. I can’t owe her anything else.

The ticking of the clock demands of me consciousness. I stand up on wobbling ankles, and the silence presses down on me like two strong hands on my shoulders. Like God bearing down on me, telling me to rest.