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They drag Helena out of the box and put her in another box, this one bigger, this one with bars. It is still a box, though – a box inside a cage inside a cage inside a box. Box: building. Box: room. Box: the clothes they hand to Helena, telling her to change again. She is growing sick of changing; she is growing sick of wearing clothes that are not her own, handed to her by people as they move her from cage to box to cage. The clothes she was wearing weren’t even her own – compound clothes – but they smelled like Sarah’s blankets, slightly, and she does not want to take them off.
Pick your battles, kiddo, Pupok says from the corner of the cell-block-cage-box.
So Helena does. She picks: not this one. She plays along and keeps her head down, in the hopes that they will leave her alone. This worked with Tomas, sometimes, although it did not work with Henrik – he fed her nasty pig drugs, and then he—
he—
he—
Anyways. Helena does not know what sort of men these men are, whether they are the ones who will hit her in the face or the ones who will smile at her and then make her sleep so they can hit her then. She keeps her head down, and they open the door.
Then they grab her.
Just like that Helena’s mind breaks, shatters into a million sharp-don’t-touch-careful pieces, and she is all screams. Stop touching her don’t touch her never touch her do not touch her Sarah Sarah Sarah they are touching me Sarah Sarah come back Sarah Sarah Sarah and she is screaming, thinks it may be words. (Does not think it is words.) There are hands wrapped around her arms, and they are dragging her into another box-cell-cage-box-cage-box-cell, and they are picking her up, and her feet are not on the ground and something like a howl rips its way from Helena’s throat, escaping like she can’t. A howl, a roar, a whole zoo fleeing from Helena’s mouth, making its way out of the oh god oh god oh god oh god they are holding her down she can’t move she can’t even breathe Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah—
They put a cloth over her face, and Helena drowns. Her mind turns off. Everything goes very…far…away…and she knows that she is fighting, knows that she is making sounds, knows that she is trying to breathe but can’t because she can’t because she can’t because of the cloth over her face and the water and the drowning – but mostly the world is far, and dark, and quiet.
(She is standing at the bottom of a well. The light is fading.)
(The water is filling with blood.)
(Everything is very cold, and water is soaking into her feet.)
(I don’t want to die in here, she says.)
(Then don’t, says a high thin rattling voice.)
The world rushes back in like a punch to the liver – Sarah – and Helena coughs up water, does not feel anything close to baptized. She’s making sounds, spitting up water, and she can feel them taking blood from her – she thought that it was stronger than water but here she is, held down by ocean-lungs, and there goes the only thing that ties her to Sarah. Bye bye.
(Helena has never been to the ocean. She passed over it, a long long way, but never went in. She was afraid of drowning.
It seems funny, now.)
She lies there like a fish with no wings and heaves in breaths, remembers what it is like to have lungs that work. She’s done it before, after all, told her body how to breathe again when she was bandaging it up after Sarah shot her. She can do it now. All she has to do is—
“Go again,” says a man Helena can’t see, and she doesn’t even have time to say no before they put the cloth back over her face. She closes her eyes tight, prays to Sarah or God or Pupok or Sarah, probably, who is the only friend Helena has ever been able to touch. Please, Sarah, save me, amen.
“Stop,” says a voice, and for one frozen second Helena thinks it’s worked. But no: that is not Sarah. Helena tells her heart this, and heaves in gulping breaths, catching scattered bits of a conversation: stop – cycles – pregnant – blood. So blood is thicker than water. It just has to be the right sort of blood.
Pregnant. No. No no no no no. They were not supposed to know. Helena has to keep her baby safe – this, this above all things.
Cycles. Helena remembers the last cycle: Tomas hurt her, and Henrik stopped it. But Henrik only stopped the hurting so he could give her a baby, and he only gave her a baby so that he could take it again. That was the way of Henrik.
Now she is being hurt, and this not-Sarah woman has stopped it. But she has stopped it because of Helena’s baby – and the last time someone wanted Helena’s baby, they did not care about the rest of Helena at all.
That is when she decides she cannot trust this woman. Right then and there, lying on the table and gasping, gasping, gasping. She tries to sit up; she can’t, she can’t move. She is so tired of all of this. She is so very, very tired. Out of nowhere a hand wraps around her arm, pulls her to sitting, and Helena coughs up water that tastes like drowning. Tastes like the blood of something innocent, drowning and dying in the bottom of a well.
“Just be still,” sighs a voice. “You’re gonna feel the water rattle around in there for a while.”
I hate you, growls Helena’s mind, the sound a loud angry bark like a dog, like a dead dog. She coughs up water. She says nothing. The world is water. She is so angry.
“Helena,” says the woman-who-is-not-Sarah – her voice is soft around the word, making it sound like a name for a name, Helena hates Helena hates this woman is not allowed – “I’m Doctor Virginia Coady. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’m very happy to meet you.”
I hate you, Helena thinks – but she says nothing. All she does is breathe.
The woman brings Helena to another room. All these people are doing is leading Helena to rooms, and doing terrible things to her in these rooms. She cannot decide if she is angry or bored. She decides to be both. Anger and boredom hold hands, in her brain; boredom keeps anger from leaping at these people and putting out their eyes with her thumbs. Anger keeps boredom from – from – well, anger has never had to stop boredom from doing anything, but Helena is sure that anger could help boredom. If boredom ever needed anger’s help. If boredom ever needed anger to hurt someone, anger would do it.
You’re being strange, hisses a voice, and Helena into the room and sees Pupok. This is not what she expected – Pupok does not like other people. But. She was being strange. She stares at the scorpion in the dirt as people shove Helena in a chair, put a strange lens over her eye. She is waiting, a little bit, for Pupok to hiss at her about stingers. But the scorpion says nothing, only scuttles in circles. Circles in cycles, boxes in cages. Pupok in circles, Helena in cages. Pupok in Helena. This is all very confusing.
They are telling her about a game, a test, an ex-er-cise, but Helena doesn’t care much. Round and round they go, squares and circles. As if she is not confused enough.
“All mangoes are golden,” says the man across the table, when Helena starts listening again. “Nothing golden is cheap. Conclusion—”
Did he say mangoes? Pupok says, sounding more excited at this than Helena having a child. And Pupok was – Pupok was very excited about Helena having a child.
—all mangoes are cheap,” finishes the man who is real. In Helena’s head, boredom nudges anger, whispers something. Helena looks away from the man. She only likes riddles when she makes them. Other people’s riddles are no fun. Mangoes. Please.
“Is that a sound conclusion, based on those statements,” he says. Helena has boredom and so anger wanders, pokes at this man. Helena watches the scorpion moving in circles on the ground; out of the corner of her eye she watches the man across the table also begin to move in circles. Just not with so many legs.
We like mangoes, Pupok hisses. This is a sound conclusion. Maggie had given Helena a mango one (one) time, pulled it out of her jacket pocket like a magician’s trick. The inside had been so very gold. Pupok had rested a short distance away, stinger curling back and forth like Helena’s fingers do – did, sometimes, when she was nervous. So she had dropped a piece on the ground. By accident.
Both of them have had mangoes. Based on that statement: true.
“Please concentrate,” says the man again. Helena is concentrating: it’s only if she concentrates very very hard that she can taste mangoes. She is not concentrating on the silly game, though. That probably makes this man very mad. Helena doesn’t care. He repeats the question; she still doesn’t care.
Where are these mangoes? Pupok asks slyly. Helena rolls her eyes. There are no mangoes here; that would not be the point of the game. She does not know if Pupok really wants mangoes, or if the scorpion is being tricky. Helena has a hard time knowing. So she stops to think. It takes more steps than the game did. Mangoes are golden. Nothing golden is cheap. Nothing cheap is important. Conclusion: gold things are important.
Conclusion: mangoes are important. Not the fruit, but the idea.
“Where are these mangoes,” she asks lightly. Where is the answer to all of these questions. Where is the reason you are keeping me here. Where is the gold that you are hiding from me. What are you hiding from me.
Somewhere, Pupok purrs.
“Do I have to explain the exercise again,” he says, flat as a piece of cardboard, flat like old stale bread.
“I would like to see these mangoes,” she says. Everything she says makes this man angry. When this man is angry, he is not winning the game. Conclusion: Helena is winning the game.
“The doctor asked a question,” says the man against the wall. Helena has not been paying much attention to him. She still cannot quite wrap her brain around this Mark-thing that is standing there, very still. Conclusion, conclusion, conclusion. She has many of those, but they are flapping through her brain like bats. Mark knows Helena. This man does not know Helena. Conclusion: this man is not Mark. This man has Mark’s face. All people who have Helena’s face are her doubles. Conclusion: this man is Mark’s double. Nobody in this building has been nice to her. This man is in this building. Conclusion: this man will not be nice to her. Conclusion: she cannot trust him. Conclusion: she can trust no one here, except herselves.
But Mark-face is waiting for an answer.
“I met your brother,” Helena says. Pauses. “He’s ugly.”
Pupok rattles loudly, an angry sound, and Mark-face lunges forward – but he is stopped by the doctor. Helena does not like doctors. Tomas played doctor. Henrik did too. Doctors break Helena apart and stitch her back together. Doctors saved Helena’s life in the hospital – but doctors tell her that she will stop choking on water soon, in voices cold and flat like that same water. No, no, Helena does not trust doctors.
Keep provoking them and we’ll never get any mangoes, Pupok hisses, but that’s not right: Helena’s plan was working fine, and Pupok is just angry because it was Helena’s plan. Silly bitter little bug.
“Silence insect!” she hisses before she can stop herself. Oops! That was not supposed to be out loud.
“Helena,” says the doctor, like a warning. “Let’s walk.”
She does not say it very much like an invitation. So. Helena stands up and follows her, flicks her tongue out at Mark-face as she walks. He frowns at her; she chuckles. Bye bye, Mark-face.
They walk through a hallway, and then they are outside – Helena first thinks that this doctor is very stupid, but then she sees soldier boys everywhere. One, two, two by two, hurrah. When the light removes its blade from her eyes, she can see them everywhere. Crawling like ants, all over the dirt. The doctor is talking; Helena is distracted by all the men, all their big shiny guns.
(What she could do, here, with a big shiny gun.)
Helena blinks just in time to hear where I want. She does not care, really, what this other woman wants. Only – it sends something banging around in her head, angrily. Want want want want want. Everyone wants something from Helena. Everyone always wants something from Helena; this is just how the world seems to go.
(Sarah didn’t.)
(But.)
She’s interrupted from thinking about (Sarah) these sorts of things by one of the soldier boys pushing her off the steps, off to follow follow follow Doctor Virginia Coady.
“You must be very early on,” the doctor says. “A week? Two?”
Helena just glares at her; she smells like smoke, and Helena is thinking about Sarah again. But it’s not right – the doctor smells like smoke-lungs, and Sarah smelled like the clean smoke a fire leaves. Sarah, Helena is certain, does not smoke cigarettes. This is a thing that she knows.
“Makes you…quite a special case, doesn’t it,” the doctor says conversationally. Helena thinks about Henrik, who called her special. Keeps thinking about fires.
“Ask the last person who told me that,” she says – ask Henrik, whose daughter ran away from him, who put a baby in Helena’s belly. Her baby will grow up with a fire for a father. Not Henrik. Henrik is all ash, now; his children have no father.
“The Mark-face boys, they are your babies?” she says, while they are talking about mothers and fathers.
“They came to me when they were very young,” the doctor says, spewing smoke like a broken thing. “The irony of it?” She laughs. “I never wanted kids. Didn’t think it was for me. Next thing I know…”
She walks up to a man, get a plate of food from him. Helena wants it. Helena remembers the plate of food Gracie gave her, the one that made her sleep – but not sleep enough, not sleep enough, not sleep hard enough to forget about – but she wants the food anyways.
“…I’ve got more than I can count,” the doctor finishes. Helena wants to spit in her face – she wants babies, she wants her babies, the doctor wants her babies, and here she is acting like having children is a sad mean burden. Poor Doctor Coady.
“How unpleasant,” Helena spits – but there is a sandwich, and so she sits down. Grabs handfuls of lettuce and shoves them into her mouth. If she closed her eyes she could pretend that taste was everything – she has done it before – and then she could pretend that she was not here, but somewhere where the world tasted green.
But the woman across the table is still talking, so Helena does not close her eyes. She crunches just loudly enough that it becomes hard to hear. Ha.
“I think you should know how you got here, Helena,” the doctor says. Pauses. “Your family sold you out.”
Helena shakes her head, once, but otherwise does not say anything. She keeps eating.
“Sarah sold you out,” she continues, insistent, and the word Sarah knots in Helena’s stomach like something that is not food. She slows in her eating, looks away from her plate. The world is brown and dusty. In a dark warm corner of her mind, Sarah is sleeping in the bed next to Cosima, murmuring about honeybees and we’re so different, all of us. The word Sarah untwists itself, and something warm floods Helena’s stomach, chest, heart.
“I don’t believe you,” she says, wondering at it. She doesn’t. It is, in its own way, a miracle.
“You can be sure of this,” says Doctor Virginia Coady. “You’re not expendable to me. Or my boys.”
Helena looks around, at all of this woman’s boys. They are all around her, like teeth in a mouth, crunching on lettuce and chips.
“You’ve overcome so much,” the doctor breathes. “Your upbringing, your biology, your fate…we’re gonna find out how.”
She smiles, like this is a special present just for Helena. Helena narrows her eyes. She is thinking about circles, cycles and cages and boxes. She is thinking about the way Henrik had smiled at her, and the look on his face when he clubbed her with his rifle. She is thinking about the word you, and the word we. She is thinking about teeth. She is thinking, too, about stingers.
She swallows her food. She reaches out and grabs the sandwich; without looking away from the woman across the table, she takes a slow and deliberate bite.