see me it would be like old times again, that we would bust out our socks to have a dance party, or she would pull me onto her lap and start braiding my hair, launch into one of her stories—of distant places and witches who could change into animals.
But she only skimmed a hand over my head as she came through the door, and applauded politely when Carol made me recite my multiplication and division tables.
“She’s grown up now,” Carol told me, when I asked her why Rachel didn’t like to play anymore. “Someday you’ll see.”
After that I stopped paying attention to the notation that appeared every few months on the kitchen wall calendar: R to visit.
At dinner the big topics of conversation are Brian Scharff—Rachel’s husband, David, works with Brian’s cousin’s friend, so David feels like he’s an expert on the family—and Regional College of Portland, where I’ll be starting in the fall. It’s the first time in my life I’ll be in class with members of the opposite sex, but Rachel tells me not to worry.
“You won’t even notice,” she says. “You’ll be so busy with work and studying.”
“There are safeguards,” says Aunt Carol. “All the students are vetted.” Code for: All the students are cured.
I think of Alex and almost say, Not all of them.
Dinner drags on well past curfew. By the time my aunt helps me clear the plates it’s almost eleven o’clock, and still Rachel and her husband make no sign to leave. That’s another thing I’m excited about: In thirty-six days, I won’t have to worry about curfew anymore.
After dinner my uncle and David go out onto the porch. David has brought two cigars—cheap ones, but still —and the smell of the smoke, sweet and spicy and just a little bit oily—floats in through the windows, intermingles with the sound of their voices, fills the house with blue haze. Rachel and Aunt Carol stay in the dining room, drinking cups of watered-down boiled coffee, the dirty pale color of old dishwater. From upstairs I hear the sound of scampering feet. Jenny will tease Grace until she’s bored, until she climbs into bed, sour and dissatisfied, letting the dullness and sameness of another day lull her to sleep.
I wash the dishes—many more of them than usual, since Carol insisted on having a soup (hot carrot, which we all choked down, sweating) and a pot roast slathered in garlic and limp asparagus, probably rescued from the very bottom of the vegetable bin, and some stale cookies. I’m full, and the warmth of the dishwater on my wrists and elbows—plus the familiar rhythms of conversation, the pitter-patter of feet upstairs, the heavy blue smoke— make me feel very sleepy. Carol has finally remembered to ask about Rachel’s children; Rachel goes over their accomplishments as though reciting a list she has only memorized recently, and with difficulty—Sara is reading already; Andrew said his first word at only thirteen months.
“Raid, raid. This is a raid. Please do as you are commanded and do not try and resist…”
The voice booming from outside makes me jump. Rachel and Carol have paused momentarily in their conversation, are listening to the commotion in the street. I can’t hear David and Uncle William, either. Even Jenny and Grace have stopped fooling around upstairs.
Patchy interference from the street; the sounds of hundreds and hundreds of boots, clicking away in time; and that awful voice, amplified through a bullhorn:
“This is a raid. Attention, this is a raid. Please be ready with your identification papers…”
A raid night. Instantly I think of Hana and the party. The room starts spinning. I reach out, grabbing on to the counter.
“Seems pretty early for a raid,” Carol says mildly from the dining room. “We had one just a few months ago, I think.”
“February eighteenth,” Rachel says. “I remember. David and I had to come out with the kids. There was some problem with SVS that night. We stood in the snow for half an hour before we could be verified. Afterward Andrew had pneumonia for two weeks.” She relates this story as though she’s talking about some minor inconvenience at the Laundromat, like she’s misplaced a sock.
“Has it been that long?” Carol shrugs, takes a sip of her coffee.
The voices, the feet, the static—it’s all coming closer. The raiding parties move as one, from house to house—sometimes hitting every house on a street, sometimes skipping whole blocks, sometimes going every other. It’s random. Or at least, it’s supposed to be random. Certain houses always get targeted more than others.
But even if you’re not on a watch list you can end up standing in the snow, like Rachel and her husband, while the regulators and police try to prove your validity. Or—even worse—while the raiders come inside your house, tear the walls down, and look for signs of suspicious activity. Private property laws are suspended on raid nights. Pretty much every law is suspended on raid nights.
We’ve all heard horror stories: pregnant women stripped down and probed in front of everybody, people thrown in jail for two or three years just for looking at a policeman the wrong way, or for trying to prevent a regulator from entering a certain room.
“This is a raid. If you are asked to step out of the house, please make sure you have all your identification papers in hand, including the papers of any children over the age of six months… Anyone who resists will be detained and questioned… Anyone who delays will be charged with obstruction…”
At the end of the street. Then a few houses away… Then two houses away… No. Next door. I hear the Richardsons’ dog start barking furiously.
Then Mrs. Richardson, apologizing. More barking—then someone (a regulator?) mutters something, and I hear a few heavy thuds and a whimper, then someone else saying, “You don’t have to kill the damn thing,” and someone else saying, “Why not? Probably has fleas, anyway.”
Then for a while there’s quiet: just the occasional cackle of walkie-talkies, someone reciting identification numbers into a phone, the shuffling of papers.
Then: “All right, then. You’re in the clear.” And the boots start up again.
For all their nonchalance, even Rachel and Carol tense up as the boots clomp by our house. I can see Carol gripping her coffee cup tightly, knuckles white. My heart is jumping and skipping, a grasshopper in my chest.
But the boots pass us by. Rachel heaves out an audible sigh of relief as we hear the regulators pound on a door farther down the street. “Open up… This is a raid.”
Carol’s teacup clatters in its saucer, making me jump. “Silly, isn’t it?” she says, forcing a laugh. “Even when you haven’t done anything wrong, it still makes you jumpy.”
I feel a dull pain in my hand and realize I’m still holding on to the counter as though it’s going to save my life. I can’t relax, can’t calm down, even as the sounds of the footsteps grow fainter, the bullhorn voice more and more distorted, until it is completely unintelligible. All I can picture are the raiding partiessometimes as many as fifty in a single night—swirling around Portland, swarming it, surrounding it like water cascading around a whirlpool, sweeping up anyone and everyone they can find and accuse of misbehavior or disobedience, and even people they can’t.
Somewhere out there Hana is dancing, spinning, blond hair fanning out behind her, smiling—while around her boys are pressing close and unapproved music pumps through the speakers. I fight a feeling of incredible nausea. I don’t even want to think about what will happen to her—to all of them—if they’re caught.
All I can do is hope she hasn’t made it to the party yet. Maybe she took too long to get ready—it seems possible, Hana’s always late—and was still at home when the raids started. Even Hana would never venture outside during raids. It’s suicide.
But Angelica Marston and everyone else… Every single person there…
Everyone who just wanted to hear some music…
I think about what Alex said the night I ran into him at Roaring Brook Farms: I came to hear the music, like everybody else.
I will the image out of my mind and tell myself it’s not my problem. I should be happy if the party is raided and everyone there is busted. What they’re doing is dangerous, not just for them but for all of us: That’s how the disease gets in.
But the underneath part of me, the stubborn part that said gray at my first evaluation, keeps pressing and nagging at me. So what? it says. So they wanted to hear some music. Some real music—not the dinky little songs
