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It might have been ironic. I'm not really sure. I was never clear on the definition of irony. Considering I wanted to be a screenwriter, that's probably not a good thing to admit, but there it is. If unwinding had been an option when I was a teenager, my parents would have been the first in line. Not only that, they probably would have asked if there was a viewing room so they could watch me being dissembled like a broken toy.
Hellion. Delinquent. Menace. I was called all of those things and more. Slut too, of course, because I was a girl and I dared to have sex with boys that I wasn't dating. The experts all said I was acting out. My parents were rich and famous: my father was a renowned heart surgeon, and my mother was a highly respected professor of literature. They had plenty of money to buy me new toys, but no time to play with me, so the television became my babysitter. Movies were my stories. When I was little, I would watch movies at home, old ones and new ones and anything in between. When I got a bit older, my parents let me go to the cheap theatre by myself. So I wouldn't get hassled by the ushers, I would usually sidle up to some respectable-looking mother and her brood and blend in with the crowd. The mother would take pity on me, of course—apparently the maternal instinct actually works in some women, just not those in my bloodline—and I'd weave some tale. My mom left me here so she could visit her boyfriend or My dad dropped me off here on his way to the bar, I would say, and that poor woman would be so aghast that she would sit with me through the movie. Afterwards, she would ask the usher to call the police, and I'd inevitably sneak off just in time. It was one of the few times that having incredibly generic features paid off; otherwise, I would have had to run my ruse at a different theatre each week. Whether it was at home or in the sticky-floored theatre, movies became my balm, my addiction, my solace.
As I got older, I started going to movies with boys, and what was on the screen didn't hold my attention quite as much as where their hands liked to go. You've heard it before, I'm sure: If your kid doesn't get affection at home, they'll seek it elsewhere. It's cliché, but that's because it's true. Would I have fucked all those random boys if my parents had paid attention to me—not my grades, but me? I don't honestly know. The more I got away with, the more I tried. I still looked rather plain when I was seventeen, but I also looked older than my age, so when I was forced to attend my father's soirees, I started to make a game of it, seeing which of his stuffy colleagues I could seduce. Let's just say it was a lot. Few bothered to ask my age; they assumed I was old enough. The ones who did inquire seemed to buy that I was eighteen, or maybe that was just what they wanted to hear. But my luck ran out one night as I was giving a blow job to a heart surgeon from Australia. My mother stumbled into the room, halfway on the road to drunk, ostensibly looking for her secret flask of vodka, and she suddenly started yelling at the guy. Albert, his name was. It took me a moment to realize that, given where my head was, she couldn't see my face. She didn't know whose mouth was around the good doctor's cock. And judging from the high pitch of her frantic voice, she wasn't upset that someone had ducked out of her party to have a better time; she was angry because he had—because they were having an affair.
When she realized that it was me between the doctor's legs, upset escalated to irate. Apparently, the affair had been going on for six months, and she had been planning to leave my father for this man. I had unwittingly fucked the man who would have been my stepfather. To add insult to injury, he got me pregnant. Of course it couldn't have been one of the random movie boys or a guy from school, or even any of the other doctors I'd dallied with. No, it had to be the one that turned my family from respectable to soap opera drama.
Mom demanded I have an abortion. I refused. I guess I figured pregnancy was my penance. I'd lived hard and fast and it was finally catching up with me. And, if I were completely honest, I welcomed that baby. I welcomed the chance to finally beat my mother at something: being a mother. I was determined to be loving and considerate to my child. Given that it was her lover's child, Mom kicked me out of the house and officially disowned me. The ink on those papers was barely dry before she filed for divorce.
Despite what television and yes, my beloved movies, seem to say, there is nothing glamorous about being a single teen mother. The father wanted nothing to do with me: given my age, he was being blacklisted by most of his peers, and his wife and children were devastated by his transgression. My father was mortified by the whole thing and moved out of the country to salvage what he could of his reputation. That left me alone, pregnant, and not yet old enough to vote. But I made do. I worked whatever crap jobs I could get: fast food, retail, call centres. I muddled through high school until I got my degree and, in a summer that was as hot as Hades and twice as cruel, I gave birth to a baby girl. I named her Gevaisa, from a book I had read years ago. It was supposed to mean "tomb of living words". Okay, when you put it like that, it sounds a bit creepy, but I had good intentions. I knew that my dreams of becoming an Oscar-winning screenwriter were pretty much dashed. But Gevaisa was my story now. And I would keep my promise to be a better mother than the one I'd had.
For what it's worth, I tried. I tried my damnedest. I worked crappy hours so I could make Gevaisa breakfast each morning and pick her up from school each afternoon. I made do with bland second-hand clothes so she could have the newest fashions and best toys, so she didn't feel left out with her friends. There were days when I didn't eat just so she could take two dollars to school to participate in some silly Valentine's Day candy exchange. My life didn't mean much to me, but hers made everything worthwhile. You may think I was living vicariously through her, but that's not it at all. I grew up with money, but no love. I wanted to make sure she knew she was loved; I just made the same mistake my parents did, and showed it—often, not always—with money.
As Gevaisa got older, morphing from sweet little girl into raunchy teenager, I started paying more attention to the laws, mostly since she was breaking so many of them. Unwinding had been in effect for a while, but I hadn't paid much attention. What good mother would? I had my chance to abort Gevaisa years ago, and I hadn't. I had wanted to make my point to my parents, and what good did it do me? I hadn't heard from my mother since, and the last I heard, my father was working with a relief mission in Africa.
And that's where the possibly-ironic part comes into play. Gevaisa's behaviour got worse and worse. She was stealing cars, doing drugs, getting into fights. Maybe it's genetic, I thought. Maybe she was doomed from the start. I tried everything I could think of—therapy, boot camp, boarding school—but nothing worked. The day she turned her fists on me was the day I went to the Juvey cops and asked for the unwinding paperwork.
I didn't read the fine print. I didn't read much of it at all. I just put her name in the appropriate blanks and mine in the others, and signed my signature with a flourish that would have made my mother, who had been obsessed with penmanship, proud. "How long does it take from her being picked up to when she gets unwound?" I asked.
The Juvey cop at the counter, a slimy-looking runt with a name tag that said Bartlett, giave me a knowing smile. "She's that bad, is she?
I ticked her crimes off on my bruised fingers. "Grand theft auto. Possession. Possession with the intent to distribute. Assault. Assault with a deadly weapon." I felt like one of the legal thrillers I used to love when I was Gevaisa's age, with the coolly beautiful female attorneys who could make you piss yourself just from hearing the steady clack of their high heels. Pointing to my cheek, swollen and bruised, I added, "And this."
The Juvey cop nodded and made a note on the form I had filled out. "We try to get the worst offenders processed immediately. After what that blasted Akron AWOL pulled, we don't like keeping the miscreants around long. They start brainwashing the good ones."
I gave a harsh laugh. "Are there any good ones?"
"There's the tithes." Bartlett shook his head as he tore off my copy of the contract and handed it to me. "Having a kid to just have it unwound? I think that's sick. I don't know what those religious kooks are thinking. Some of the wards of the state aren't half bad either. They just fall through the cracks, you know? Only so many beds and so much food to go around."
"If unwinding had been allowed when I was a teen," I replied, folding my copy of the contract and sticking it in my purse, "my parents would have been first in line."
"Yours and mine both, lady," the cop laughed, stamping the form so hard it made me jump. Then he looked at a screen, typed in some numbers, and nodded. "Is tomorrow soon enough? Around nine? If you feel your life is in imminent danger," he added, pointing to my swollen face, "I can arrange an emergency removal. . . ."
"Tomorrow will be fine. Thank you." Hiking my purse up on my shoulder, I left the station and walked home, unable to stop glancing at any of the young people I passed. Were their names on sheets of paper in that station too? Would they soon be in pieces and shipped to hospitals, giving some mother a new lung or a war veteran a new leg? Was it easier to know you were about to be sliced up—sacrificed, really—or was it better if you went in unawares? Should I tell Gevaisa or let it be a surprise?
She wasn't in when I got home. No surprise there. She was spending less and less time at home these days, mostly coming back only to shower—why should she raise her friends' water bills when she could hike up mine?—and try to raid my purse for cash. But that made me think of a potential problem: how could I make sure she would be at home when the Juvey cops came to collect her? She usually raided the fridge—why pay for food when she could take mine?—so I made her favourite lasagne and split it into two pans, one for me and one for her. In hers, I dosed the sauce with a light sedative. As they cooked in the oven, I debated what to do next. Should I leave some of lovey-dovey note on the counter, the type I would have loved to come home to when I was a kid? Lasagne's in the fridge. Help yourself. Love, Mom. No, that would be too obvious. We hadn't been getting along lately, and after she had nearly punched me out, random acts of kindness would seem suspicious. I decided to make her half just look like normal leftovers. If I left a note, she probably wouldn't even read it anyway, so why waste the paper? Instead I called into work—I had managed to work my way up to 'office manager', which was basically a glorified secretary—and told them I wouldn't be in tomorrow. They didn't ask why, and I didn't offer.
I went about my normal routines, although the unwind order was heavy on my mind. My normal favourite television shows seemed vacuous, so I went to bed early, listening for Gevaisa to come home, just like I used to do at the start of her rebellious phase. Around three in the morning, she crept in and, sure enough, raided the refrigerator, not even trying to be quiet. Should I call down, tell her to be quieter? No. My resolve was already in danger of waning as it was.
Sleep eventually visited me and I woke at my normal work time. After I dressed, I peeked into Gevaisa's room and saw her passed out on her bed. She was still breathing, but she was too still for it to be regular sleep. At least the sedatives had done their job. To keep my mind off what was about to happen, I went about my normal routine and when I had finished breakfast, I set about cleaning the house. The Juvey cops wouldn't judge—it wasn't their place to—but I wanted to make sure it was obvious that the fault was hers, not mine. I had given her a clean home, even if it was small and not in the best neighbourhood. There was food in the fridge. We had a television. It wasn't like I didn't try to provide for her.
Just as I thought my heart was about to burst from waiting, the doorbell rang, and I leapt to answer it. "Ms. Wendell? We're here to take Gevaisa Wendell into custody."
I nodded and stepped out of their way. "Her bedroom is upstairs, second door on the left." As if it were somehow relevant, I added, "She's sleeping."
The first Juvey cop tromped up the stairs right away. The second lingered a moment, patting my shoulder. "I know it's hard, ma'am. My nephew got unwound just last year. But sometimes, there's just nothing else to do. We're parents, not miracle workers. Don't worry. She won't feel a thing."
"That's . . . good." I watched the second officer go up the hallway and into Gevaisa's room, and I sank down onto the chesterfield as I waited for them to return. After a moment, I heard Gevaisa's voice, sleepy but still belligerent, telling the 'fascist motherfuckers' to get their hands off her. I forced myself to watch as they dragged her down the stairs. She kicked and flailed, anything to get away, but her token resistance barely fazed them; I guess they were used to such attempts by now.
When Gevaisa finally saw me, some spark of realization cleared her eyes. "Mom? You did this? Seriously? Mom, please. I'm sorry about the bruises. I'm sorry I hurt you. I didn't mean it. You don't have to—"
"Anything you'd like to say to your daughter before we take her, Ms. Wendell?" the first Juvey cop asked formally. The second one, the kindly one, simply gave me a reassuring nod, as if reminding me of my resolve and my strength.
"No. I've said all I have to say to her." With that, I got up and walked calmly into the kitchen, as if I were about to get tea for guests rather than allow my daughter be taken to be eviscerated.
"Mom? MOM!" There was true panic in Gevaisa's voice now, her tough girl façade abandoned as she finally grasped that it was no joke. "MOM, DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME!"
I had expected her to be indignant. I had expected her to call me a bitch and a liar and to be swearing a blue streak. Did she really think a last-minute apology could make everything okay? Did she really think my capacity to let things slide was endless?
I didn't leave the kitchen until I heard the door close, and the thickest silence I'd ever heard flooded my tiny little house—mine, now, not ours—making it hard to breathe. I almost wished I had gone in to work, but since I had taken the day off, I busied myself with things I never had the chance to do, things Gevaisa deemed pathetic. I went to the library and listened to a free lecture on globalization. I went to the history museum. I even went to the theatre and saw a digitally remastered version of one of the first films I had ever seen. It felt like coming full circle in a way, going from the love-hungry little girl of a distant mother to the love-starved mother of a distant daughter.
I told no one about Gevaisa's unwinding. At work, I simply said her biological father had arrived out of the blue, wanting to reconnect with her. I mostly worked with women who were addicted to soap operas, so such a ludicrous turn of events seemed feasible to them. For the first time in years, my days were peaceful and my nights were relaxed. I didn't have to worry about junkies crashing in my living room or going for groceries only to find Gevaisa had stolen my last thirty dollars until payday. Yet in that fullness, I felt empty. Each time I walked past her room, I wrapped my arms around myself and could remember her in my womb, when the thought of loving her was the only thing that saved me from relapsing into my stupid ways. I remembered her as a toddler, burying her face in my leg whenever a large dog walked by. I recalled her as a young girl in tears, because a classmate told her I had fucked my stepfather and she was the result. I could see her as a young teenager, already more beautiful than I could ever hope to be. And then I saw her kicking and screaming, being dragged away. And I knew what I had to do.
There was a line at the station, and I had to wait almost an hour to talk to anyone. When I was finally called up to the counter, I was nearly tripping over my words. "Hello. I'm Joanne Wendell. I signed an unwind order for my daughter Gevaisa about two weeks ago."
The desk clerk looked at me expectantly. "Yes, ma'am?"
"Can I reverse the order?" I asked. I heard someone in the line behind me gasp. You didn't often hear of reversals. The Humpty Dumpty case was infamous, of course, but most parents accepted the finality of events and moved on. I couldn't. I was getting too old now to have another child, and that wasn't even the point. I didn't just want a child. I wanted Gevaisa back. I wanted a chance to fix all the problems and mistakes: hers, mine, ours. We were a team. We had been a team for years. We could work things out. We just both needed to be on the same page. Maybe if we moved out to the suburbs or a small town, the temptations wouldn't be so high and we could start over.
The clerk gave me an odd look but went to her terminal. "Spell the name, please."
"Last name Wendell," I said robotically, frantically crossing my fingers in my pocket. "W-E-N-D-E-double-L. First name Gevaisa: G-E-V-A-I-S-A."
I knew the answer from the set of the clerk's mouth but she still waved me over to the far side of the desk—both for privacy and because it was closer to the chief's office in case I made a scene. "Your daughter was taken to the Iron Falls Harvest Camp and her unwind order was fulfilled ten days ago." She set a file on the counter between us and opened it, pointing to a grid listing departures and arrivals. "I am . . . sorry," she said at last, clearly unaccustomed to requests like mine; she had no party line to parrot. "If you like, I can file a request and see if any recipients would be willing to meet with you. Some parents find comfort in that."
An idea dawned in my head, as slow and sinuous as a drop of blood in water. "Yes, please," I sniffed softly. I didn't have to fake the emotion, but I still kept my gaze down.
Because now that I had the house to myself, I had started watching the news again, and I had seen reports on the new miracle, Camus Comprix. The first fully composite human. If doctors could combine parts from several different people, surely it would be an easy thing to put my Gevaisa back together again. My daughter, my story, was in fragments now, but I would bring her back together, make her whole.
It took a few days, but the authorities eventually gave me a list of patients and where they lived, along with whatever part of Gevaisa they received. Not all of her had been pressed into service yet, so that made part of my plan easier. One thing I had learned from my high and mighty parents: those in power are usually either paranoid or entirely too smug. Thankfully, many of the storage facilities fell into the latter. They thought nothing of giving the new temporary secretary the security codes, because she would need them, of course. They thought nothing of her bringing a cooler to work each day, because she said she had special dietary restrictions and needed her food close at hand. And when inventory was done and a few organs were missing, no one's mind went to the temporary secretary who had already moved on to another posting. Surely they had shipped the organ to a hospital to be used and someone had simply forgotten to log the transfer. After all, who just lost a liver or a lung?
People need to watch more movies.
But I could only do so much that way, and not only because it would be easy enough for a dedicated detective to make a trail, piecing together my altered identification cards and sketchy work history. I had, simply put, gathered all of Gevaisa that hadn't been put into someone else yet. Each of those coolers, some large and some small, was now safely stowed in a frozen storage unit.
Now it was time to get back the living parts of her. This would be trickier, because the authorities knew I had requested a list of the recipients, so there was a paper trail to haunt me. But I had hope: her legs had gone to the same girl, which made things easier. Her arms had been grafted on to separate people, but they only lived a state away; I could potentially get one arm and make it to the second before the crime was reported. It looked like her heart was going to be a bit of a problem—that was one thing you couldn't live without, after all—and her brain had been sliced into sections, so I would have to track them all down. But I could. I would. I knew it wouldn't be easy. It would likely take me years, and then I would still have to find a doctor willing to do the procedure. All of this would take time and money, to say nothing of cunning, skill, and determination. But I was up to the task. I had to be. Gevaisa was my story, and I would retell her.