“Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m your mother! Ah, my heart, my heart. When I’m lying dead, you’ll realize what you’ve done to me. Oh, help me to my bed. Let me lie down.”
“Ma’s dying, oh, Char, she’s dying, she says …”
Char’s voice, his dark-time voice, the one Fringe never heard in the light. “She’s always dying. Never a day goes by she isn’t dying. So, let her die, if she’ll just let us alone. Will you all let me alone! Never any peace, no peace at all!”
“Hush, Char! Pa’ll hear you. All he wants is …”
“Let the filthy old fart have whatever he wants. I’m too tired to argue.”
“I guess Pa thought they’d all get along all right,” Fringe said to Zasper in the careless voice she always used when she talked about her family. “I guess it just didn’t work out.”
“Things like that often don’t work out,” said Zasper. “Despite good intentions.”
“Yeah,” mused Fringe.
“It takes a strong man to turn back from a bad choice.” This was Enforcer wisdom, hard-learned.
“Yeah,” said Fringe again, this time with a quick sidelong glance to say she’d noted that one down for future reference.
Certainly Char hadn’t turned back. Instead, he’d taken to spending most of his time away from the house. Nobody knew where he went or what he did. He wasn’t practicing a profession, that was certain. Rumors came that he was gambling. He did that a lot. Ma was gone most of the time too, but Fringe wasn’t supposed to ask where, and Nada wasn’t supposed to tell, even though she did tell in a shamed whisper: Souile was out earning money.
“We need it to buy food,” Nada whispered. “We need it to pay the school fees. But don’t tell your pa.”
“Grandma Gregoria says working for wages is disgraceful for a Professional-class person,” Fringe explained to Zasper. “Ma should go to the E&P Wives Club instead. She should go there and do acceptable activities.”
“E&P Wives Club? Acceptable activities?” asked Zasper. Though he’d been reared in Enarae, he didn’t recall hearing about acceptable activities.
“Acceptable activities, you know,” said Fringe. “Things your class says are acceptable. Like, if you’re a Trasher, you can gang-fight, but not if you’re a Professional. Professional women are supposed to go to the Executive and Professional Club and do women things. Wardrobe development. Conversation salon. Social dancing. History of Customs and Courtesy. E&P games. Acceptable activities. You know.”
Zasper’s Outcaste youth had been spent in activities that weren’t remotely acceptable, so he didn’t know, but he took her word for it.
Little girls, according to Fringe, learned about acceptable activities by playing with the E&P dolls their mothers gave them. E&P dolls had large wardrobes and extensive talk programs built right in.
“Tomorrow is the fifth of Springflower, Great Question Day,” a doll would say. “Everywhere on Elsewhere, people will consider the Great Question of man’s destiny. Here in Enarae red and gold are the traditional colors for Great Question Day. What will you wear?”
“…”
“We must all look our best for the festivities. I’ve done my eyes a new way. They make me look lovely, don’t you think? Do you like the new way I’ve done my hair?”
“…”
“Do you suppose I’ll be picked for the promenade?”
“…”
Girls were supposed to fill in the blanks with conversation about grooming and style. That way, when they went to school and had conversation salon or grooming-and-style classes, they’d have a head start.
“At school they say we’re supposed to consider the Great Question,” said Fringe to Zasper, screwing up her mouth. “But nobody talks about the question at all. I mean, that could be kind of interesting, that question, about what mankind is for, but what we really do is play dolls. And all the dolls look alike. Exactly alike. They all have precisely the same face.”
Zasper noted her expression, which was of someone about to spit out something nasty. “Don’t you like them?” he asked innocently.
“I hate them,” said Fringe, who had always managed to break her dolls almost as soon as she got them, though she never exactly planned to. “Maybe if I had someone to play with. But Ma and Pa are always gone. And Grandma Nada is always dying.”
“Always?” asked Zasper.
“Well, every few days. Grandma Gregoria said she does it to keep in practice.”
“Who takes care of you and your brother.”
“Grandma Nada. When she isn’t dying.”
Certainly it was Nada who kept Fringe and Bubba fed and clothed. Sometimes Ari would come out of his reeking room and amuse them with wild tales of his ganger youth. By the time she was old enough for school, Fringe had picked up the Tromses’ attitudes and accents, their habits of speech, their habitual actions and responses to the actions of others; Nada’s defensiveness, Ari’s belligerence, the Tromses’ low-class vocabulary.
“Fringe talks like trash,” Grandma Gregoria said to Char, making a moue of distaste, either not knowing or not caring that nine-year-old Fringe was behind the door, listening and watching through a crack. “Your daughter talks like trash, Char. She’s low! And your son will be!”
The words shocked Fringe. She knew the two sides of the family hated each other, but though the knowledge was painful, she hadn’t thought it had anything to do with her. Now, she realized she was mixed into it. She, Fringe, was right in the middle of it!
Shortly after the conversation between Grandma Gregoria and Pa, Bubba was sent away to a Professional-class boarding academy. Pa couldn’t have paid for the school, so
