The White Elephant of Panschin

An Unwanted Stranger

     "We have the gallery showing next week," Shelby said, over a dinner of yeast blocks highlighted by generous servings of fresh radishes and salt to dip them in. "I want this one to be the best one ever."

     "It will be, dearest," Auntie Neza replied and took a bite of her own radish. She crunched through it with open enjoyment. "How did you get to keep these radishes, Veronica? I thought you were selling everything you grew to the Dappled Yak. Not that I'm complaining."

     Veronica smiled and bit into her own sharp, peppery radish. "These were meant for raw eating and the owner's mother was there when I stopped in. She was horrified they didn't look like magazine pictures. Too lumpy and they had spots."

     "Oh, good heavens," Neza said. Florence and Lulu nodded. Turning up your nose at fresh radishes because they were misshapen? The silliness of some people.

     "Gallery showing! Hello? That's what's coming up," Shelby said, looking annoyed. "We need to be ready."

     Veronica smiled winningly at her little sister, annoying Shelby still further. "We will be."

     "It's a special show. The biggest one of the year. Everyone will be there."

     "They're all special shows," Lulu said. "You say this every time."

     "Yep, sure do," Florence added. "Lulu and me have to study. Big test tomorrow. Thanks for the radishes, Veronica. They are a treat. The soup you made from the leaves was good too."

     Florence snagged the last radish, rolled it in salt, and crunched it slowly, savoring every bite of fresh vegetable. She and Lulu got up from the table and headed upstairs to the room they shared.

     "I'll get the washing up done later," Lulu called out as the two girls left the kitchen table and headed into the hallway. "I'll need a break from anatomy in a few hours."

     "Thank you," Veronica said.

     Neza added "I'll be done darning your socks soon."

     Florence and Lulu had been terrific additions to the White Elephant household. Veronica always felt so lucky to meet them at the local metro stop in the transtube. They were both nursing students at Panschin Community College and they wanted to live close to school in Dome Two, but in something they could afford.

     Veronica couldn't, by the terms of the lease, have boarders but she was allowed, by that same lease, to have live-in household help. It was weird and snobbish, but an exploitable loophole. She couldn't afford to pay Florence and Lulu like she would have to pay real maids, but they couldn't afford to pay a boarding house for meals and lodgings and get some of the independence they longed for.

     They worked out a deal. Florence and Lulu paid with housework – always desperately needed in a pile the size of the White Elephant, particularly since it was located in Dome Two -- and threw a few coins to Veronica when they could. In exchange, Veronica provided a nice, furnished room for the girls to share, meals, any other assistance she could including dealing with the college's bureaucracy and editing research papers, and fresh produce from the garden. It had been eating a fresh tomato that had sealed the deal. Neither Florence nor Lulu had ever eaten one before and the taste had been a revelation.

     Since that meeting over a year ago, Florence and Lulu had become part of the family, a family formed by need as opposed to blood. In Veronica's experience, water was often thicker than blood despite what people claimed. Her own relatives had provided ample proof when they turned their back on her and her sister, despite all previous protests of how close the family was and how the Bradwells stuck together through thick and thin.