Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

Usually Lucerne stayed in bed until we were gone, partly to avoid Amanda, but today she was in the kitchen area, wearing her dark-coloured Gardener dress, and she was actually cooking. She’d been making that effort more often lately. Also she was keeping our living space tidier. She was even growing a raggedy tomato plant in a pot on the sill. I think she was trying to make things nice for Zeb, though they were having more fights. They made us go outside when they were fighting, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t listen in.

The fights were about where Zeb was when he wasn’t with Lucerne. “Working,” was all he’d say. Or “Don’t push me, babe.” Or “You don’t need to know. It’s for your own good.”

“You’ve got someone else!” Lucerne would say. “I can smell bitch all over you!”

“Wow,” Amanda would whisper. “Your mom’s got a foul mouth!” and I didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.

“No, no,” Zeb would say in a tired voice. “Why would I want anyone but you, babe?”

“You’re lying!”

“Oh, Christ in a helicopter! Get off my fucking case!”

Zeb came out of the shower cubicle, dripping on the floor. I could see the scar where he’d got slashed that time, back when I was ten: it gave me a shivery feeling. “How’re my little pleebrats today?” he said, grinning like a troll.

Amanda smiled sweetly. “Big pleebrats,” she said.

For breakfast we had mashed-up fried black beans and soft-boiled pigeon’s eggs. “Nice breakfast, babe,” Zeb said to Lucerne. I had to admit that it was actually quite nice, even though Lucerne had cooked it.

Lucerne gave him that syrupy smile of hers. “I wanted to be sure you all get a good meal,” she said. “Considering what you’ll be eating the rest of the week. Old roots and mice, I suppose.”

“Barbecued rabbit,” said Zeb. “I could eat ten of those suckers, with a side of mice and some deep-fried slugs for dessert.” He leered over at Amanda and me: he was trying to gross us out.

“Sounds real good,” said Amanda.

“You’re such a monster,” said Lucerne, giving him her cookie eyes.

“Too bad I can’t get a beer with it,” said Zeb. “Join us, babe, we need some decoration.”

“Oh, I think I’ll sit this one out,” said Lucerne.

“You’re not coming with us?” I said. Usually during Saint Euell’s Week, Lucerne would trail along on the woodland walks, picking the odd weed and complaining about the bugs and keeping an eye on Zeb. I didn’t really want her to come this time, but also I wanted things to stay normal, because I had a feeling that everything was about to be rearranged again, as it was when I’d been yanked out of the HelthWyzer Compound. It was just a feeling, but I didn’t like it. I was used to the Gardeners, it was where I belonged now.

“I don’t think I can,” she said. “I’ve got a migraine headache.” She’d had a migraine headache yesterday too. “I’ll just go back to bed.”

“I’ll ask Toby to drop around,” said Zeb. “Or Pilar. Make that mean ol’ pain go away.”

“Would you?” A suffering smile.

“No problem,” said Zeb. Lucerne hadn’t eaten her pigeon’s egg, so he ate it for her. It was only about the size of a plum anyway.

The beans were from the Garden, but the pigeon’s eggs were from our own rooftop. We didn’t have any plants up there, because Adam One said it was not a suitable surface, but we had pigeons. Zeb lured them with crumbs, moving softly so they felt safe. Then they’d lay eggs, and then he’d rob their nests. Pigeons weren’t an endangered species, he said, so it was okay.

Adam One said that eggs were potential Creatures, but they weren’t Creatures yet: a nut was not a Tree. Did eggs have souls? No, but they had potential souls. So not a lot of Gardeners did egg-eating, but they didn’t condemn it either. You didn’t apologize to an egg before joining its protein to yours, though you had to apologize to the mother pigeon, and thank her for her gift. I doubt Zeb bothered with any apologizing. Most likely he ate some of the mother pigeons too, on the sly.

Amanda had one pigeon’s egg. So did I. Zeb had three, plus Lucerne ’s. He needed more than us because he was bigger, Lucerne said: if we ate like him we’d get fat.

“See you later, warrior maidens. Don’t kill anyone,” said Zeb as we went out the door. He’d heard about Amanda’s knee-in-the-groin and eye-gouging moves, and her piece of glass with the duct tape; he made jokes about them.

We had to pick up Bernice at the Buenavista before school. Amanda and I had wanted to quit, but we knew we’d get in trouble from Adam One if we did, for being un-Gardener. Bernice still didn’t like Amanda, but she didn’t exactly hate her either. She was wary of her the way you might be of some animals, like a bird with a very sharp beak. Bernice was mean, but Amanda was tough, which is different.

Nothing could change the way things were, which was that Bernice and I had once been best friends and we weren’t any longer. That made me uneasy when I was around her: I felt guilty in some way. Bernice was aware of this, and she’d try to find ways to twist my guilt around and turn it against Amanda.

Still, things were friendly on the outside. The three of us walked to and from school together, or did chores or Young Bioneer collecting. That sort of thing. Bernice never came over to the Cheese Factory, though, and we never hung out with her after school.

On the way to Bernice’s that morning, Amanda said, “I’ve found out something.”

“What?” I said.

“I know where Burt goes between five and six, two nights a week.” “Burt the Knob? Who cares!” I said. We both felt contempt for him because he was such a pathetic armpit-groper.

“No. Listen. He goes to the same place Nuala goes,” said Amanda.

“You’re joking! Where?” Nuala flirted, but she flirted with all men. It was only her way, like giving you the stone-eye was Toby’s way.

“They go into the Vinegar Room when no one’s supposed to be there.”

“Oh no!” I said. “Really?” I knew this was about sex – most of our jokey conversations were. The Gardeners called sex “the generative act” and said it was not a fit subject for ridicule, but Amanda ridiculed it anyway. You could snigger at it or trade it or both, but you couldn’t respect it.

“No wonder her bum’s so wobbly,” said Amanda. “It’s getting worn out. It’s like Veena’s old sofa – all saggy.”

“I don’t believe you!” I said. “She couldn’t be doing it! Not with Burt!”

“Cross my heart and spit,” said Amanda. She spat: she was a good spitter. “Why else would she go there with him?”

We Gardeners kids often made up rude stories about the sex lives of the Adams and Eves. It took away some of their power to imagine them naked, either with each other or with stray dogs, or even with the green-skinned girls in the pictures outside Scales and Tails. Still, Nuala moaning and flailing around with Burt the Knob was hard to picture. “Well, anyway,” I said, “we can’t tell Bernice!” Then we laughed some more.

At the Buenavista we nodded at the dowdy Gardener lady behind the lobby desk, who was doing string knotwork and didn’t look up. Then we climbed the stairs, avoiding the used needles and condoms. The Buenavista Condom was Amanda’s name for this building, so I called it that now too. The mushroomy, spicy Buenavista smell was stronger today.

“Someone’s got a gro-op,” said Amanda. “It reeks of skunkweed.” She was an authority: she’d lived out there in the Exfernal World, she’d even done some drugs. Not much though, she said, because you lost your edge with drugs, you should only buy them from people you trusted because anything could have anything in it, and she didn’t trust anybody much. I’d nag her to let me try some, but she wouldn’t. “You’re a baby,” she’d say. Or else she’d say she had no good contacts since she’d been with the Gardeners.