Two days later she came home to find the Tromses gone as well. Char had sent them to the so-called Pighouse, the provincial home for elderly indigents.
“But, Pa, you can’t just … They lived here!”
“No more.”
“But this was their home.”
“No more,” he said. “I can’t take any more. I couldn’t do anything while your ma was alive, but they’re not my folks. They’ve got another daughter; they’ve got a son. Let them do it! I can’t do it anymore.”
It was the first time Fringe had thought about the Tromses having other children. There’d never been any evidence of them. She hid herself away in the module to consider the matter. Was she glad Nada and Ari and Aunty were gone? Would she go visit them? Would it be better to do that or not to do that?
“By the way,” said Pa over supper. “I want you to move out of that damned module. You can move back in the room where you used to be.” His voice was harsh and demanding, and he did not look at her when he spoke. She understood it not as a suggestion but as a command, though she could not fathom the motivation behind it. Was she now to be a daughter again, she who had not been a daughter for years?
She hadn’t been in the room in years, either. She stood in the door, peering at dusty surfaces, unlit panels, at a clutter of keepsakes, at the circulation units the old women wore on their feet and hands to warm their always-cold extremities, at the so-called Auto-nurse, actually little more than a timed medications dispenser and monitor. The room smelled of old women, sour-sweet, vinegar, and dried flowers. It hissed with old voices, old coughs, and sniffles and whines.
That night Fringe trailed into the room, half-swathed in a blanket she had fetched from her module, a cocoon to wrap herself in, a second skin to keep the room from touching her. She lay down atop the bed she’d used as a child, the one Aunty had slept in. She kept telling herself the room was empty, but she felt the usual occupants going about their customary business. No matter that Nada and Aunty were gone away, their ghosts still moved about the room. Not only their spirits, but Souile’s as well. From a veiled distance, they whispered together, about her, about Fringe, saying the things they had always said. She could hear the whispers and guess at the content. She did not fall asleep until almost dawn.
She went to the Pighouse the next day, to visit them. They sat in chairs, vacant-eyed; the air was thick with the scent of the stuff sprayed about to keep them quiet. When Fringe spoke to them, they nodded slowly, scarcely hearing.
“Is the food all right?” she whispered. “Nada, is the food all right? Are you getting enough to eat?”
“To eat,” murmured Nada. “To eat, Fringe girl.”
And, “Did you know Souile died?” Aunty asked.
That night, Fringe tried the room again, only to feel their eyes on her, the weight of presences, the force of personalities, the accusatory whispers, the weight of habitude. Their spirits were here, in this house, not there in the Pighouse where their bodies had been taken. Though she could have done nothing to save Souile, nothing to keep Nada and Aunty from the Pighouse, she felt guilty that she had not tried. Maybe she could have found Nada’s other daughter, Nada’s son. Why hadn’t she at least tried? Was she glad? Could she actually be glad?
She made a faltering attempt to talk about it with Pa. She might as well have talked to a rock. As usual, Pa didn’t talk about things. He merely became angry and told her to get her things out of the module.
“I’ve sold it,” he muttered, not meeting her eyes. “I’ve sold it. The man’s coming to take it apart and move it today. Besides, you’ll do better in your old room. Look at you, for heaven’s sake.” His voice oozed contempt. “Look at you.” He gestured at her, her chewed fingertips, her rat-tailed hair, her blotchy skin, her tear-stained face. “Look at you,” he repeated in disgust.
She opened her mouth to try once more, then shut it. There was no point in trying to explain how she felt. She wasn’t sure how she felt, except that with Souile and the old folks gone, she couldn’t stay in this place. Pa had something in mind, some role he wanted her to play, and she didn’t know what it was. No matter what it was, she couldn’t do it. The time was past for that. She couldn’t be a daughter for Souile, so she sure as hell wasn’t going to be a daughter for Char! She could hardly be herself for herself. She could not be someone else for Pa.
Back in the shabby module, she totted up the credit chits she’d earned at the weapons shop, the old tattered ones she’d earned working for Ahl Dibai Bloom. They were all there, virtually untouched, enough to keep her for a time if she could find a cheap room near her job and the school. Other Wage-earner youths lived in such places. She spent the afternoon looking, settling for a place no smaller or shabbier than the module had been, with a bed no narrower or harder, a saniton no less functional. The next day she packed up her personal things and moved out, without telling Pa she was going.
That night she went home at suppertime, sat in her usual place, and waited
