Daughter 4254

Chapter 14

 There came a day when the afternoon air was hot and thick with humidity. It was the first time I’d been outside in two days and even then, I was only out of doors long enough to walk from the train to the school. From my cell I thought back on that day and I looked at the wall where I started my new grease smudges - fifty days apart from my beloved blue sky.

I was beyond thinking about my current situation. The make shift ear plugs were stuffed so far into my head that I wouldn’t have heard Thomas if he called for me. I was busy reliving the last few months of my life.

It was the few hours after I met Professor789 that held my attention now. My next class met out of doors in one of the Secondary School’s many courtyards used for agricultural and scientific research. We were being given a tour in our assigned gardens for the term but my mind was no where close to being on task. I kept going over my mother’s last words in my head, trying to remember anything that might explain... anything that I might have misunderstood. But it was all so clear in my head.

                         Go to the Secondary School. Find Professor789. He will help you.

But help how? What did she mean? Was my mother so disappointed in me that she thought I needed formal re-education from a professional? And I still didn’t understand her confessions about her name... Imani.

I took a moment to look at the teacher and nod my head so that I wouldn’t be singled out for not paying attention. I learned that lesson the hard way in Basic School. When I felt I had shown enough participation I took the liberty of looking up into the beautiful deep blue sky touched by the lightest hints of white streaks. The clouds looked as soft as my lovely new little bed. The blue - it was incomparable. We learned in Basic School that there had once been a fruit called a blue fruit or blue berry, I couldn’t remember exactly. It was dark and small and round. I loved the color blue and longed to see more shades of it. The sky today was so vast and light and open. I wanted to take that color to my quarters and wrap myself in it. I thought of my mother’s blue star embroidered hanky.

The gardens were full of all sorts of insects as well. All of them useful of course. Lovely butterflies flitted from plant to plant, lady bugs slowly climbed their way around the stems and leaves, and I even spotted a praying mantis at one point. As the teacher explained the difference between beneficial insects and pests.. another lesson I’d heard over and over again.. a butterfly landed on my arm. I gazed at it’s intricately designed orange and black wings and tiny features. It seemed impossible to me that it could be a living thing.

“A word of caution student, what is your name?”

“4254, Professor.”

“Yes, 4254, the butterfly can only perform it’s task so long as we let it. Dwelling on it’s form and color is for scientific purposes only. Do not let yourselves be distracted by the color and habits of our fellow workers. They are a good example of why we have freely given up the use of color in our society. Discipline is hard to attain when one is constantly surrounded by distractions.” She walked over to me then and waved her hand carefully over my arm to urge the butterfly on it’s way. I nodded in agreement, congratulating myself for not speaking out. There was a time, not so long ago when the same line, from the main book of rules and regulations no doubt, had been quoted to me in Basic School and I  countered with determined disbelief.

“That’s not true! I’m sure I would work much faster and more efficiently if there was something beautiful to look at. And what is so wrong with taking a few minutes to find happiness in something so ... beautiful?”

I was immediately removed to the Head Leader’s office that day. As I left the room I heard the teacher remind the other children, “4254 has serious problems. She has not yet come to understand why our way of life is so essential. We must always be mindful of her mental defects and be kind to her.”

Be kind to her.

Laying in a prison cell I remembered those words with bitterness.

Her mental defects.

Was I really defective? Was I really so crazy to want beauty in my life? To want the chance to chose where I lived and what I studied, where I worked? Was it so wrong to enjoy the song of a bird? To crave such a small thing from such a large world?

Back in my memories of secondary school, only a few moments after the butterfly flew away something moved suddenly in the peach tree behind my professor. She was prattling on about the vegetables we’d be studying in depth for the first few weeks of class when I saw it again. It hoped and skipped from one branch to another. I tried to focus on my professor, on the lecture, but I thought I saw a flash of yellow, I couldn’t be sure but then... the song! It burst through the leaves chirping and singing that sweet song as if it were meant for me. After the disappointment of the last hour it was a welcome reprieve, better than any healing salve the government rationed for burns - and how my heart was burning on that day.

With one swift move, the teacher turned, reached into the pocket of her smock, and removed a square device. She pointed it at the bird and pressed a button. It vanished instantly in a cloud of smoke.

I couldn’t help it. I took two steps forward and cried out: “No!”
I covered my mouth with my hands but the teacher turned around quickly, and looked at me suspiciously.

“Song birds are among the most troublesome of vermin. Not only are they distracting, as you’ve all evidenced just now, but they provide no real use, have no real purpose and routinely steal newly sewn seeds and seedlings. Why, we’d have nothing to eat should we allow such a menace to fly free. Did you have an objection 4254?”

I took a deep breath and prepared my answer carefully while she lectured, “No Professor. I was only afraid you might damage the tree or it’s fruit.”

“Excellent. Yes, I should have been a bit more careful, but better to lose a branch than an entire orchard. Now then,” she pocketed the device and smiled broadly, “shall we move on?” motioned to the next station as if nothing had happened.

On my cot, in my cell, I rolled to my side and thought again of the bird. A tear formed in the corner of my eye. I hadn’t let myself cry since the first week they brought me here. I cried then because I didn’t understand. Now I cried because I understood too much.