We're Here, page 3
Four months before High Commander Aulia gave the army its commands for the final campaign, Len and Jissia lay awake in the pitch-black tent. The candles were snuffed. Outside, the early winter wind howled like the hungry coyotes dogging the supply train. The Tyrant was pulling back for the season.
Len felt the hands-breadth of space between them like a wall. The effort it took to keep themselves distinct. And still, she could have drawn the shape of Jissia’s body beside her.
“I want you to go,” Len whispered. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Saying it felt like siphoning poison from her blood.
“What?” Jissia’s voice cut through the quiet.
“I know you want to leave. Go. There’s still time to live the life you dreamed of. I won’t steal it from you, like the Tyrant.”
“You have no idea what I’ve dreamed of. What I’ve given up for this war. Do you?”
“The same things we’ve all given up.”
“No. You’ve found glory. You’ve found friends. People who think and act like you. I’ve grown more and more isolated, with each passing year.”
“Your assistants—”
“They’re not my friends any more than an unranked soldier is yours.”
“Some of them are my friends.”
“Then I’m not like you. It’s not easy for me.”
“You’re right. And it doesn’t have to be. You can go.”
“I stayed here for you. I’m not leaving now. We’ll see this through to the end. Together. Like we promised.”
Silence stretched, full of Len’s doubts. Jissia’s hand snuck over, hesitant. Len remembered times that the two of them had been as tightly laced as fingers, able to support more together than apart.
“You’re sure?”
“Of course.”
During that autumn campaign season, the captain and the quartermaster worked miracles together, even when they thought they couldn’t.
“There’s no way to get an extra two weeks’ worth of food all the way to a company you’ve stationed on the ass-end side of the world.” Jissia ran her hand through the snarl of her curls, a riot of gray and brown. She rounded on Len. “You’ve stationed them too far from us.”
“I know. I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to let it get like this, but it was our only option. They knew the risks and—”
“An army marches on its stomach. And its gear. You’ve stripped away my ability to provide for either. That is my job.” Jissia about-faced and strode away, leaving Len to trail, limping, after her.
“I know. Of course, I know.” Len searched for the words to soothe her quartermaster, but, as happened more and more often these days, she found herself at a loss. No matter how much she explained, it was never quite enough—or perhaps, never quite right. When they ducked into their tent, she added, “It’s my job to make sure this war is won.”
“And then we can stop, yes? Isn’t that what you said four years ago?” Jissia didn’t bother to light a candle. They were running low, and she limited them to strategy meetings only now. The officers needed to read missives and see the maps. Letters from home—such that they were—could be read by daylight or moonlight or not at all.
Len didn’t need a candle’s flickering flame to see the severe set of Jissia’s mouth.
“Part of me feels like you’d be fine for this to keep going forever,” Jissia said. “You thrive on this. I don’t.”
The remark stung. “No? You don’t thrive on the satisfaction of keeping our soldiers alive?” Len snorted. “I know the way you get when you solve a problem we couldn’t figure out.” Smug and beautiful with the sheer brilliance of her mind. Jissia had saved them more times than Len could count. The two of them could do it again, but only together.
Len could see Jissia gathering breath, like a snake coiling for a strike. As if granted a vision of the future, Len knew what could happen: they would strike and parry until there was nothing but silence between them. Tonight of all nights, she didn’t want that.
Len held up her hands in surrender. “I’m sorry.” She reached out to clasp Jissia’s forearm. Though their clothing covered it, their marriage marks lined up and reminded Len why they had bound themselves together.
Jissia clasped back, tentatively at first, as if she wasn’t sure she was allowed. “Me too.”
They slept together that night for the first time in many months, but it wasn’t until after Jissia rolled away that Len admitted to herself what she couldn’t during the act. Jissia had either forgotten how to touch her, or didn’t want to. The captain turned her back to the quartermaster. Her core felt hollowed out.
Two days after receiving High Commander Aulia’s orders and one day before The People’s Army marches, Quartermaster Jissia Omopria requisitions all of the sugar in the army. She calls it hope.
With her help and The People’s cooks, every soldier has one sweetened biscuit to eat.
It shouldn’t be enough to cry over, or enough to set a field army to carousing happily through the rows of tents as if at festival.
But it is. Jissia is right. Sugar is hope, and that’s what The People’s Army needs after six years of attrition. That’s what they need for one last push.
Commander Len and Quartermaster Omopria eat their biscuits with their closest friends. Captain Dhissik of the Third. The First. High Commander Aulia and the new captain of the Fifth. Deputy Quartermaster Chessian.
Len’s knee bumps Jissia’s, and when Jissia cups Len’s knee with her hand, Chessian giggles. He has a sweet laugh and dark doe eyes, and he idolizes Jissia. Len feels Aulia’s eyes on them.
“How long have you two been together?” Chessian asks. “Longer than the war?”
Jissia tears up a clod of dirt and tosses it at him as she laughs. It sounds as forced as Len’s own strained smile.
They share a knowing look before answering.
“We’re as old as the war.”
“We started because of the war.”
Chessian mock swoons, but when he recovers, he looks at them with a sugar-shine in his eyes. “It’s nice to know that something good can come out of this, after all.”
And behind the forced smiles, the silence still; now scalding to the touch and swollen, like a blister.
But a blister must be lanced before a march.
And in the morning, The People’s Army is on the move again.
Len helps Jissia saddle her placid horse and kneels to offer her a vaulting step onto its back. It is the horse least tempered for war that Len has ever seen. Jissia strokes its neck from the saddle.
High Commander Aulia rides over. She looks anxiously at the sky, judging the position of the sun, which has not even crested the horizon. The deep black of night is only just turning gray. It’s time to go.
Aulia sees Jissia’s saddlebags. They don’t have the familiar waxed ledger cases to keep the inventory books safe from rain and blood and whatever war would throw at them. “What’s going on, Commander?” Her eyes flick between Len on the ground and Jissia, on her horse. “Quartermaster?”
“Quartermaster Chessian has his orders,” Jissia says. “He’s more than up to the task.”
“We have a plan in place,” Len adds.
And though something inside Len is asking are you sure are you sure are you sure that you will not break without each other, Len knows that she has never been more sure of anything.
She sees the same certainty in Jissia’s face.
She expects Aulia to balk at losing the best quartermaster in the world; expects her to try and convince Jissia to stay.
Instead, Aulia turns her horse. She nods to Jissia in farewell and says to Len, “We move out in ten.” She leaves them their privacy.
“I always knew—”
“You know, I thought—”
They stop. They laugh. It feels as if they should weep.
Len holds her arm up one more time, and Jissia clasps her elbow. Len’s bare arm, her sleeve rolled up, shows one half of the marriage mark, tattooed in black.
“You’re my best friend.”
“We’ll be okay.”
There is nothing else to say, and their efforts to find the right words, the right last words, feel futile.
Nothing else to say but: “Thank you, Jissia.”
As Len looks up at Jissia, her face finds it hard to smile, even though it is all she wants to do, for Jissia’s sake.
Jissia squeezes Len’s arm. “Thank you, Maeb.”
They stay like that, arms linked, for eight more minutes, even though Jissia’s back must be straining and Len’s shoulder aches.
Then, when the former quartermaster is gone, the commander reaches for the reins of her own horse, pulls herself up, and rides after the high commander.
The night before, after the celebrations, they sat on their shared blanket amid their shared pillows. Years of words unspoken sat with them.
“That was well done, Jissia,” Len said. “Genius.”
Jissia smiled. “An army marches on its—”
Len rolled her eyes and gave the quartermaster a playful shove.
“Len?”
Len looked into Jissia’s eyes, startled to see them shining. Outside, the revel continued. Firelight and starlight crept in through the cracks of the tent.
Suddenly, it was as if there wasn’t enough air in the tent. Len could only say, “Mm?”
“Chessian is ready to take over.” Jissia let the weight of her words sink in.
“What happened?” By which Len meant, why now, how did you change your mind, are you sure?
“We’ve been the captain and the quartermaster for so long. I thought we couldn’t be anything else.” Jissia shrugged. “Tonight... I realized that may not be true. But if I stay, I won’t find out.”
And instead of pain and fear, Len felt the salt tears of relief.
For the first time in too long, the air felt truly easy between them.
“Here.” Jissia smiled through her own tears as she pulled out a tiny paper parcel.
Len knew what it was the moment she held it in her hand. She laughed. She pulled out her own small package for Jissia, this one wrapped in admittedly dingy cloth.
They opened them at the same time. Each parcel held the slightly crumbled half of a sweetened biscuit.
When the quartermaster and the commander go separate ways, no one will understand why. Commander Len will assure everyone that the Jissia is still a dear friend; they will exchange letters—when the war ends, when Jissia opens a school, when Len takes a seat on The People’s Council.
They will both remember things that they had forgotten, like how to walk on two legs instead of four, or how to take enough food just for one, not two. They will both love again; other people, other ways.
Len doesn’t weep until The People’s Army is riding away from their winter camp and her quartermaster is just a speck on the road, heading the other direction.
Life goes on. In their own corners of the world, they will go on, too.
A STUDY IN UGLINESS
H. Pueyo
Ugly girls will never be happy, insisted Ms. Leocádia, standing in front of the blackboard. Simply put: never, ever, ever. And ugly, they knew, could mean a number of things: too short or too tall, too thin or too fat, too square or too round, with a big nose or a line for a mouth, a chin pointing forward, slouching shoulders, crooked legs, hairy arms. But we can fight nature with effort, she added after a pause. Even the ugliest girl in the world can be pretty with a little effort.
Everyone looked at Basília.
She had eyes like slits in a sharp face, a long body that towered over everyone else, a flat chest, a sallow complexion, a rat’s nest, a masculine gait. Basília, who wore pants under the skirt of her uniform, who cut her dense black hair short (it was lice, miss, I swear it was lice!), who had a scar in her jaw, who smoked as much as she could in the confinements of their boarding school. Well, Ms. Leocádia continued, looking at her, some cannot be saved.
And maybe she would not have been saved indeed, not from ugliness, but from boredom, if a pair of polished red shoes had not appeared on the other bed of her room the next day. Two leather slingbacks, high-heeled, four sizes smaller than her feet, with a little ribbon on each.
Basília thought it was a prank. The second bed of her room had been empty for years, as other students were afraid of her and she didn’t want company. Basília is coming, whispered a twelve-year-old as she walked down the corridor. We need to get out, hurry, hurry. The younger ones were so little that they looked like children close to her, and Basília felt a wicked pleasure in confirming their fears. Watch out, she slammed one of the walls with a fist, and they ran away, scaring the cat sleeping nearby.
She walked through the first floor of Santa Helena School for Young Ladies, past dramatic Romantic paintings and the enormous portrait of president Getúlio Vargas, past all classrooms, until she reached the last. Mondays had Portuguese, then Domestic Economy, French, and Literature, but at least she wouldn’t suffer another round of Moral Education.
Basília entered the room.
There was someone occupying the desk that was always vacant by her side. Basília couldn’t see her face, but she knew by her dark hair and small frame that she had never seen her before.
“Who the hell is that?” Basília barked the question in a low voice, stopping in front of another table.
Pérola raised her eyes, the large white bow on the top of her head bouncing with her. If there was anyone in the class who would know any fresh gossip, it would be her.
“Don’t talk to me here,” she whispered back, shoulders stiff, eyes on her open notebook. “I don’t want the others to see.”
Basília looked around. The class was not entirely full yet. She knelt beside Pérola, and pulled her by one of her ironed curls, forcing her to look at her face.
“Don’t play dumb with me,” warned Basília with a smile. She rubbed Pérola’s light hair with her thumb. “You didn’t complain the other day.”
“The other day was the other day!” Pérola snapped, then looked around to see if someone had listened. “What’s wrong with you?”
“That’s wrong with me.” Basília pointed at the new girl with her chin. “Who is she and why no one told her to stay away from my place?”
Pérola frowned. “Why are you talking like that about Gilda, silly? You sleep in the same room as her for years.”
It really was a prank. Someone was trying to get back at her, and the new girl must have been from another class. She decided it didn’t matter; if they thought they could be bad, she could be ten times worse.
“So you were the one who left those shoes there,” answered Basília. “Fine. We’ll see, then.”
Pérola asked questions in whispers—Shoes? What are you talking about?—but Brasília had already left. Other girls were taking their places: know-it-all Aurélia in the first row, Efigênia with her thigh-length braid, muttering a prayer, her sister Estefânia, bigger and meaner, Carlota and Lurdes talking loudly as they entered the class, both wearing ridiculously big bows on their hairdos.
Basília sat down, still ignoring the new girl.
“Go back to your class,” she mouthed. “Before I drag you there myself.”
Ms. Palmira arrived. Their Portuguese teacher was a feeble thing, whose voice was so low that the classroom was filled with giggles every time she tried to command any kind of attention.
“Good morning, miss Gilda,” said Ms. Palmira with unlikely joy as she passed by their desks. “I’m eager to read your essay today.”
Basília could have believed that some of the professors were part of the prank, but not weak Ms. Palmira, who couldn’t even look at a student’s face.
“Thank you, teacher.”
The words came from the prettiest mouth Basília had ever seen. A well-drawn upper lip, a round lower one, half dark, half pink, corners upturned in a forever smile. Above was a delicate nose with wide nostrils, skin the same color of the mahogany walls, droopy eyes with a circle of green inside the brown. Her black hair fell in combed waves to her shoulders, and she had no bow, only the simple uniform of their school, with a white shirt under the sleeveless dress, and the same saddle shoes they were all wearing.
Gilda blinked at her with eyelashes as long as the legs of a spider, and smiled politely, her voice slow and pleasant like a purr:
“What happened, Basília? Don’t you remember me?”
No one else seemed to think there was something wrong with Gilda. The other teachers did not mention any transference, and all the other students insisted she had been there all along. What are are you, stupid? asked Estefânia, her hair pulled so tightly in a bun that her forehead was stretched back. Did you hit your ugly head? Her sister Efigênia didn’t bother answering, running away as if the demon could possess her if she stood too close to Basília.
She intercepted Carlota and Lurdes before dinnertime, pulling them both by the collars toward an empty cabinet. Why is everyone saying that Gilda has always been around? Basília shook Lurdes by the shoulders, who shrieked like she was about to get hit. Stop, you brute! Carlota grabbed Basília’s arm. We know that you’re crazy, but this is too much! You know Gilda for years!
Even Pérola, who Basília sometimes met in the woods around the school, insisted that she was losing her wits. Is this some kind of bad joke? Pérola whimpered when Basília pressed her against a tree, the little hypocrite, looking like she would faint when her stockings got dirty with mud. I always thought you were obsessed with her...
Enraged by their similar responses, she decided to solve the issue by herself. Basília observed Gilda during dinner, where she did nothing but eat the pumpkin soup that had been served, and then in the dormitory, where she spent most of the time reading a book. Basília considered questioning her when the lights were turned off, but she fell asleep and only woke up with a muffled sound a few hours later.
