Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

“Ani! Time to leave.” I’m just shutting our door.

S in case she comes back.up g the rec roome at the Farm.he is hopping on the Walk, in some little shorts.

“Come on, Ani.” I am coming down the garden apartment steps. “We’re going to miss the MagLev.”

“I hate the MagLev.” She just keeps hopping.

“Ani! Come on!” I’m checking everything, clothes, swipe IDs, Process Snacks for the trip. Ok. “You know we never even took the MagLev.”

“I hate the Farm.” She is just hopping and hopping around the Walk.

“Ani! Stop hopping!”

So this is when it starts — and I don’t even know what it is. She does stop hopping. Then she turns to face me and screams, “I hate the MagLev!”

Whoa.

“I HATE THE FARM!”

So, what is this? “Ani. You like the Farm. They give you gifts.”

But she just totally lets it rip. “I! HATE! THEIR! GIFTS!”

Ok, ok. Take a few deep breaths. Could she of got something? That flu that took Melanie is not totally over yet. Could this be something she gets? I go to feel her head. It seems ok. I try again. “Look. We could take the podtram on the way back.” I’m talking really soft. I don’t even know why. “Want to take the podtram on the way back? You love the podtram.” I pat her shoulder with my hand.

She pushes it away! “You think I love the podtram! You do not even know!” Now she started to cry! “I HATE THE PODTRAM!”

Whoa.

So in a while I say, and I don’t know why I even said it, “Want to hop to the Expressway?” And I don’t know why it works. But it does. She stops yelling right away and hops to the Expressway. We grab a shaw to the Bronx. By the time we’re out of Queens, she is regular again and enjoys the MagLev or seems to. I did too. So what was that? I have seen Ani Oppositional but not this way. I guess it was a new anomaly. I’m just relieved she stopped at all because if Rauden sees her like this, well he is still trying to market whatever viable he made last year, after my big Episode, and what does this do for the track record? But she is ok.

What happened at the Farm, well, even Henry could not hack the B of E till September 1, but while Ani was busy baking Bars with Janet and I’m in Lab 3 getting soma scraped, Henry hacked some Diversity site. It turns out this one Dome school, East Side Girls, its Diversity died and by charter they must fill the slot with some Diversity. We just got to show up at their Meet and Greet for this to work.

He also hacked us free Passes for the MagLev so we could come upstate any time.

East Side Girls! This is better than Ward Island. It’s better than my wildest dream! It is a totally different life. It’s in the Dome! The rest of the summer, I’m a nervous wreck. I am fussing all the time, like, “Ani! When we get there, do not hop! Do not jiggle!”

She just looks at me, like, what?

“Ani! Ani!” It’s already September. Time for Meet and Greet. “Ani!” Everything is going wrong. “Put on shoes. Where is the swipe ID? Ani! We must leave!”

And I am just running around, hairbrush, ID, shoes, when Ani says, “Oh! I’m not going.”

“Don’t start.”

“I will not go.”

So I breathe that was of theNorma Pellicanoon very deep and say, “Ani, it is a long trip and we must leave right away. It is a long walk even to podtram to even get the ferry to the Lock, and you can be sure there will be some kind of tie-up at the Lock with our stupid temporary Dome Passes.”

She just goes into her room and slams the door.

This is a great time for another anomaly.

I open the door and try that backward thing you do with the Oppositional kid. Like, you do not have to go.

She just says, “Very good.”

“Ani!” I’m not saying it was ever easy to get her to do what I say but till now, worst case, I could pick her up and make her. She is getting a little big for that. “This is not a joke.”

Now she starts to cry, like she did about the MagLev.

“Ani! No! What happened?” I run and take her in my arms. “What is wrong?”

Finally she gets it out. “You are wearing the wrong thing.”

Well! At least it is another difference between her and me. I’m like, Meet and Greet, hairs, different life. She’s like, you are wearing the wrong thing.

“Ani! It is not me they Interview!” I am trying not to lose it here.

So that’s another difference. She totally lost it. “Ma! Ma!” Sobbing, sobbing. “They will stare.”

I just do my best to breathe deep till I think of what to say. “Oh! Want to go to Ward Island and get expelled? Want to go to IS 243 and get punched in the hall?”

It gets her out the door.

And I will tell you this. Maybe I did wear the wrong thing. Maybe I said the wrong thing. What did I know?

“Nobody else wore a mask!”

They used to.

It doesn’t matter either way. Once they finished spraying us for Hygiene at the door to East Side Girls, which is a small white building inside a kind of miniDome inside the regular Dome, they don’t even look me in the face. They hardly even look Ani in the face. They just accept her, with Aid, because she is the only Diversity that showed up, because none of the other Diversity who could of showed up knew how to hack their files. So ha ha ha.

Well, we just got to scramble to get everything we need. School starts in a week, and we must take a new bunch of South Brother health tests for the Manhattan Dome. The whole trip, she is going, “I hate that school.”

“Ani!” We are on the ferry back to Queens. “Do you know what I would of done to get in a school like this?” Then I go, “What did you say?” because I think she said something I could hardly believe she even said.

“I SAID GO YOURSELF!”

I grabbed her so hard she started to cry. Then I let go.

But she kept crying. “I hate that school! No one is like me there. Ma! I don’t want to go to that school!” Crying and crying.

I just say, really quiet, “Well, you are.” And I will tell you this. She does.

The first day of school, they let me go in with her through the Lock and to the door of East Side Girls, where the guard sprayed us with antiPatho and checked her South Brother tests all over again before they let us in. This guard has a gun. So this is an arm guard! It is a really indoor school, I mean dark, and very near the Lock so you don what are the chancesisispoon’t see much of the rest of the Dome. The guard brought us to the office, where Ms. Regina Chaffee is the Principal. Remember stiff like wood? Ani was stiff like wood. But I was proud. She doesn’t have Special Needs any more! She has regular Needs! So ha ha ha. You have to take her now.

Once she’s settled, they make me go out and kill time till three. I don’t get to wait in a room, like at Mill Rock. I don’t even get to wait inside the miniDome. I have to wait on the street. At three some other Parents are at the door with me when the girls all come out in Hygienic uniforms, navy blue, with a little tie around the neck that could double as a mask. How cute is that? And look who comes out in the uniform too, with a yellow tie because she is a First Year girl. Ani Fardo.

Still alive.

We walked to the Lock, took the ferry, rode the podtram, walked home, and when we got to the garden apartment she just lay down on the floor, in her little uniform, with the little yellow tie. So I have to undress her myself and carry her to bed. And when I lay her down and start to pull her cover up, she stretched her little arms to pull me close so she could whisper in my ear, “Ma?” And here is what she whispered. “I hate that school.”

It is the first thing she says when I meet the little van she comes home on. Sometimes she even cries. She does not cry on the way to the bus the way she used to, that first Mill Rock year.