FIN :: SIX :: SELADORE MAURER

seladore maurer
fifteen
female
district six


history

I’ve always wondered – particularly in the last few months – what dying would feel like. Since I came so close to death half a year ago, curled up on a grey porch, the taste of vomit in my mouth and my head so heavy with fatigue that I no longer had the strength in my feeble, malnourished body to keep it held upright, I know that next time I’d be able to recognise it. Perhaps I’d notice how the world seems to get dimmer, and how it feels like someone’s pressing on your chest until your breathing gets so shallow it’s easier not to breathe at all. I’d have the time to prepare myself for it, like standing on the end of a pier before jumping in and already bracing yourself for the bed underneath rip current, for the chill of the water. Except death isn’t a risk that you choose to take, I know that. Death is like, once you’ve been staring at the water beneath the rotting wood of that pier long enough to convince yourself to do it, someone giving you a hard, ruthless shove in the back.

When I was a child, my world was very different to how it is now – or how it was even before my half-death. I can describe that experience of diving so vividly because diving was one of my favourite activities, when I was allowed out of the house. It was just falling, requiring no effort, and usually I didn’t have the energy to do anything more physical. There isn’t much I truly remember about my early life, since it all got a little confused during my time in the Waterworld and later when I was torn away from it by a shrill alarm, but I do remember that feeling of perpetual tiredness that weighed on me like chainmail. Even straight after sleeping, as soon as I stretched out as far as my box-like crib would allow, it descended on me again, a dense fog that wouldn’t lift, and left me storm-tempered in response. No doctor could explain it, although my oblivious – no, blinded by self-obsession – mother only sought for diagnosis when prompted by other people’s concern for me. Eating made me wretch, not eating made me tremble, if I slept I’d wake up cold, my sheets damp and sour-smelling, if I didn’t my mouth would be so dry that I couldn’t speak for days. Other kids around me went off and learnt to fight, because that seemed to be what children did in that city, but I had to stay home in this contradictory state of imbalance, and listen in a state of paralysis as my mother brought men home to keep her warm, something she never trusted her incontinent, invalid daughter to do.

I was about eight years old the first time I realised that some men that mother brought home were more significant than others. There were a few that were recurring, the sort that pretended I wasn’t there as they ambled out the door the next morning. I noticed that the ones who stayed to ask my name, (“Dorie” I mewled, a nickname I had invented myself because no one else ever called me anything but my full title), or patted my head and complimented my mother on my behaviour, tended not to come a second time. Walking through the market on the way to school, I turned heads, provoked knowing smiles. My skinny arms trembled, and I had to swallow the bile that my breakfast had generated in order to prevent a scene in front of all these people. And there – in the background, under the wet thump of knives hitting the table through fish heads, the chink of coins changing hands and the wretch-hack-spit of fishermen’s wives clearing their throats to call out their husband’s catches – was one name, whispered pointedly in one direction but clearly not for my ears. “Have you heard what they’re saying now? Jagger Libertine, none other- the Pawnbroker, that’s right. And his poor wife- and their children, too.” It meant nothing to me, but my skin prickled and I walked a little faster, anyway.

When I got home I could see the impact that had evaded me had hit my mother twice as hard. Dark circles swung from her eyes and her lips were pressed together thinly and – for the first time that I can recall in my whole life – she stared at me straight in the face and spoke to me. “You can’t stay here anymore.” I didn’t understand: how could a mother evict her own child? Where would I go? What would happen to me? It was revealed later that ‘here’ didn’t just mean my home, it meant my city, and everything I knew. Watching the moonlight pierce the clouds and hit the water that night, I clutched the meagre package of dry bread (the only food which didn’t induce instant rejection) and a few ribbons which I had seized from my favourite dresses, to the chest while my mother persuaded a sailor with sweet but desperate words to let me stow away on board.

The majority of the journey I spent curled up between barrels that smelled of salt and ripening oranges, shivering dry-mouthed and praying for the rocking of the boat to finally cease. Once or twice, the young sailor came to check on me, but every time I held myself so still that he must have thought I was asleep and gone right back up on deck again. The truth was, somewhere deep inside I was boiling. Everything I loved, as little as that was, was gone in an instant, left on the docks hundreds of nautical miles away. My mother wouldn’t miss me, else why had she given me up so willingly? She’d forget me, perhaps even be thankful for my absence, because the miasma of rumours would have dispersed as soon as I left. This was my first taste of human betrayal, and not one I would forget easily.

The first I saw of my new city was a huge number 6 emblazoned onto a flag at the port of call. I filled my breeches with as many oranges as I could hold and scrambled into a dark corner of the ship hold so I could get out when no one would see me. The success of this manoeuvre filled me with hope; perhaps there was a way I could learn to survive this after all. However, reaching the town itself told a different story. Not only were my senses assaulted by new smells and colours, but by new sounds – the infantile wailing of an ambulance siren changing in pitch as it sped past, piles of beggars in the streets all pleading in shaking voices, and though I expected few to have the courage to rob a skinny, feeble child, my oranges were all gone by the time I came out into the Square. I didn’t panic, I was too tired and hungry for that, but I was afraid. I was disorientated and confused, not knowing how to get around or which people to avoid or even if the etiquettes for behaviour were the same here. One thing was for sure, though. With my poor condition I no longer stuck out as ‘unhealthy’; here, most children were underfed and unwell like myself.

After almost a year of depending on the other street orphans to help me get food and keep me safe every night, it was my stolen ribbons that ultimately saved me. I had had a particularly rough night, tossing and turning, even relapsing back into my foul childhood bad habit from the crib-days, and after waking up damp and stinking to crawl to the nearest gutter and dry heave some more, I tied my hair away from my face to stop it crusting with bile. In the morning, when we positioned ourselves to beg as we did every morning, I didn’t have the willpower or the physical strength to take it down again. The next thing I can remember is the fat fingers of an even fatter woman extending down to my wrist. A huge smile was almost eclipsed by an impossibly large bosom as I craned my neck up to gawk at her, who I already thought of as my saviour, my personal messiah.

The fat woman, whose scent was like thick butter with just an undertone of stale cream, washed me, dressed me, tried to feed me – and then, amazingly, was kind and patient when my body refused her offering. While my real mother screeched and whimpered about the mess I left in my wake, this surrogate petted me and promised she’d see me all right in no time. True to her word, she woke me the next morning dragging a man in a white coverall behind her. He looked uneasy, and kept looking at my surrogate in doubt, and once or twice I caught the phrases ‘illegal’ ‘confidential’ ‘runaway’ from underneath the hazy blanket of drowsiness. He poked and prodded, and finally informed us – no, just her – that he’d need to take a blood sample to perform a diagnosis. The needle was huge and menacing, and I feared it would pierce one side of my arm and come straight out the other, but somehow I had enough blood in my pale body to provide an ample sample, and with that he left with a simple nod goodbye. I was reminded strongly of my mother’s men all tiptoeing away as if they’d just done something humiliating or prohibited. This briskness caused me to distrust the man, even if he did bring back the diagnosis which would, several years later, help in saving my life.

'Type One Diabetes' meant very little to my ten-and-a-half year old self. However, my guardian, who clearly had gained some knowledge from living in a medical district, wailed and begged for treatment. The doctor looked at me, his gaze tumbling critically down the arch of his long nose, and took in my patched up clothes, and the hollowness of my face. With an 'I'll see what I can do,' he turned on his heel and strutted out.

Whether in a fit of hysterical relief or despair I'll never know, but that night the lardy woman allowed me out onto the streets to wander by myself. I didn't much want to go back to the slummy, dirty quarter of the city, where I spent all that time before my current life. Instead, wrapped up in woolly layers that I never needed in the heat of my Water city, I meandered to where the mud roads gave way to cobbles, and where the streets were lined with white house fronts, rather than grotty, dying children and their toothless parents. The change was sudden and unplaceable, one facade merging effortlessly into the next, but the change was striking. Suddenly I felt smaller, more out of place - something I hadn't even noticed when I was among those I lived with just a matter of months before.

It was when I peered in the windows that I truly understood the implications of the doctor's departing look. In the front room of one house, I spied a mother clutching to a small baby, whose cough I could hear even through the glass. One doughy arm was extended, and I could clearly see the long, pale tube that connected it to a translucent drip on a frame nearby. The equipment didn't look complicated, but the way its rivets shined in the light and it glided so smoothly on its wheels betrayed how much it must have costed to keep fit for use. In another, a man lay on his back while another, younger and in a similar white coat to the one which hovered in my house before, carefully examined the base of his foot, which was swollen and misshapen. The doctor made notes on a large chalk board, and at length rose and spoke to his patient. I watched as he reached into a briefcase and withdrew a bottle of medication. As he handed it to the older man, he was given in return a thick roll of notes, and a firm handshake. With the doctor approaching the door, I fled.

I kept what I saw that evening, and the times I went again and witnessed wealthy children receive inoculations while their overpampered mothers, looking even more terrified than them, clutched their hands, a secret from my guardian, and because I wasn't with her for much longer I doubt I'd have been able to even if I'd contemplated it. As soon as my twelfth birthday drew near, she began to seem more anxious around me, and the liberal wandering hours diminished significantly. Finally, when word of the annual Census started to bubble around us, (and I was reminded of when one rumour brought a similar fate to me almost a lifetime ago), my 'mother' cracked. After breakfast one morning, just as I was retreating back up to my bedroom to gather my things, she caught me by the arm. My order of the day was not to go out as I usually would to buy bread or run an errand, but to gather all things I treasured and leave as quickly as I could. No, I wasn't to come back. No, I couldn't tell anyone where I came from. And by no means was I allowed to try to contact her again.

Once more, I found myself cast out by a person I had trusted inherently. Disorientated, I found that the customs of the streets had changed since my last spell there. A new solitude, mixed with the experience of sleeping in the dirt with another psychological despair burdening me, my symptoms began to return. The fact that they now had a name didn't dull them at all; if anything, they hit me harder than they had since I had a bed to sleep in and a place which, although I never chose to, I had the permission to call Home. Quickly, the sorrow gave way to the only emotion strong enough to penetrate my weak condition: bitterness. I had believed that this woman loved me enough to keep me as her own, and as soon as the risk of losing me became too much for her, she drove me off to save herself the heartbreak. However, my suffering had convinced me that she wasn't afraid for me, but for herself. That, if the Peacekeepers found her harboring a Reapable child who had never been recorded on a District census before, she'd be shipped off for some unspeakable punishment before you could blink. It made me sick; physically. I couldn't depend on anyone but myself.

I know, it's so childish to have shouldered that independence like some sort if martyr, but if I hadn't thought that way, I would probably be dead by now. (Of course, if you had told me where I would be now as opposed to where I am, I probably would have chosen death). As soon as hunger and illness began to grip my body in an ever-tightening snare, and I realised that the 'rules' of begging had changed - the same wide eyes and whimpering got you nothing now - I took it on myself to change that, and seek out a new audience. The wealthier part of the City beckoned to me, its pavements inviting and its inhabitants refreshing after the stale hopelessness of my second spell on the streets. Furthermore, I had witnessed children my age being treated for their ailments there. Perhaps if I hung around long enough, some of those cure-alls would find their way to me.

I was luckier than I first expected on that front. Quickly, I realised that more medicine got thrown away than used, the treated citizens taking the abundance of medicine for granted, foolishly. An arsenal of bottles and pills, I built it up under a loose pile of bricks on my favourite street corner - although I returned there infrequently, knowing by instinct not to draw too much attention to myself by being seen there regularly. It was a slow process, but I had more than enough time. And I kept myself safe, no question. I viewed the medicine the same way I viewed food; nothing was safe by default. I checked everything, and didn't have anything until I was sure it wouldn't make me sicker, or just outright kill me. Once of twice I dared to swallow pills labelled 'anti-nausea', to settle the tempest in my stomach, but beyond that I never dared experiment to try and cure myself of the greater illness.

The longer I lived on my own, scavenging, scouring, always simply surviving - the more I realised that the reason there were so many others like me, living dirty and cheating death every day by living a little longer, was because the imbalance of resources in the city. I would never get the medicine I knew I desperately needed, not as long as I was living like this. As I peered through the windows of the grand houses to watch diagnoses and treatments, I could see, when money changed hands and licences were examined, that the only people who could be healthy in this city were those who could afford to be.

From the way my doctor pronounced the word 'Diabetes' that day, I could tell that this wasn't the sort of problem that soup and rest could cure. The vomiting, the mind-twisting tiredness, the inexplicable thirst that plagued me were all warning signs that, if I didn't find treatment for myself quickly, I was, without a doubt, going to die. I had noticed that sometimes, the white-coats would check special bracelets that their patients wore before administering this ointment or that injection, (another sign of the exclusivity of healthcare in the city), and it seemed sensible that I would need an accessory like that to get a cure by ‘legal’ methods. But that was impossible, I knew, and it was important I found another way to get what I so urgently needed. My curiosity, desire to explore independently and find a solution for myself, brought me the answer. All the physicians’ cars, and the ambulances that roared past me, came from one central building, a huge institute just outside the town centre. If my relief was going to come from anywhere, it was going to be there.

For months – almost a year, even – I watched and assessed, scouting for entrances and the times they were open. Guards patrolled frequently, and several times I was caught spying and kicked on my way, just another begging orphan exploiting those more fortunate than them. To sustain my spirits (not that my determination itself didn’t keep me going), I treated it almost like a game. I had missed out on a real childhood, kept inside all the time by my Mother through paranoia and anxiety, and so playing at spies and soldiers did warm me a little. Duck here, dodge here, now count the seconds between patrols and then repeat it all again. There was even a period where I forgot the aim of the whole mission, simply enjoying myself in the vacant routine I had created. However, soon enough I realised that there wasn’t time for games.

My sickness intensified slowly at first, and then faster than I could think. It started just as a fatigue – I woke up later, went out to survey with foggy eyes and aching limbs, every movement slack and slow. Then headaches that pierced my cranium and rattled my brain, making my teeth throb and my hands tremble. Little by little, I lost feeling in the tips of my fingers and toes, until I was so numb that I couldn't even feel the cold. The vomiting stopped, thankfully, but with it went my desire to eat at all. By the time I turned fourteen, I had to drag myself to my hidden watchplace every day.

It was luck that saved me, in the end, which I suppose in a way is fairly unbelievable. The institute I was so determined to get into was made up of various different subsections, some glaringly obvious with metal doors and plaques, others more comforting, disguised as house fronts or hospices. When, finally, my fuel ran out, I crawled over to one of the latter and curled up on the doorstep, ready to just sleep, at last. I didn't care that my hair was falling out, wasn't aware are how gaunt I had become or how pale I was. All that mattered was solace, relief, at last.

The doorstep I had chosen belonged to one Dr Praxis and associates, a man who I now regard as tough but diligent in his care for us. He and his assistants run a sort of rehabilitation clinic for kids who fall asleep forever - kids who, perhaps because of some untreated medical disaster like me, or some brain-blending accident or emotional stress, need diagnosis, cure and, eventually, resuscitation. I don't remember much from the moment my eyes closed, but somewhere beneath the strange feeling that my feet were getting weighted, as if standing in a quickly filling bath as water climbs up past your ankles, I recall a warm hand around my wrist, the sting of a needle and then a sensation like my blood being drained, and replaced with something of the viscosity and warmth of honey.

It's clear that the world I build for myself was inspired by my original home. Vast, yet finite, with a variety of bizarre thought-creations that must all have stemmed from things I witnessed as a child, it balanced how trapped I felt as a child, locked in a room I was too weak to try to leave, and how much I desired to explore beyond my four-wall horizons. There's no point at which I arrived there, per se, it was almost like I had woken up after drifting off on the doorstep and found myself somewhere... else.

When I first opened my eyes there, I couldn’t comprehend why everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Was this what death felt like? But no, it was too sharp and real for that. I was almost completely sure death would resemble something less saturated. However, as I stretched my limbs, all my aches gone and my body mysteriously restored to a healthy weight and size, I noticed how they waved slightly, as if a heat haze was coming off them. And then I realised – although I wasn’t drowning, and although I could move with ease without ever being taught how to – I was totally surrounded by water.

How can I explain it? It was huge. Overwhelmingly so; after the finitude of a crib, a hold cabin, a pair of fat, smothering arms. Blue – but not a cold, dark blue, something much warmer, much more open. For the first time, in such a long time, I felt at home.

appearance

At the beginning, in those first few daynightdays where I just drifted and observed, I thought that place was infinite. However, I soon I began to realise it represented something much more like an orb – and there was a surface, stretching left and right and above me, cornerless, forever. I thought I could see through it sometimes, to the outside world where everything was so colourless and miserable, but it rippled and faded almost instantly if there was nothing there to hold my attention, and I was left staring at myself. It was magnificent, the way I glowed in the inextinguishable, unsourceable sunlight. Refracted on my bronzed skin it shot up and down my long limbs like electricity. I would spread out my fingers and watch the freckles up my arms disappear in the stripes of light, loving the way it allowed me to be someone I knew I was not, if only for moments.

My reflection’s hair also had that electrified look, spread out around her face like seaweed. Long and brown, it hadn't been cut since I first left the kind woman's home, and it too seemed to burst into flames when the sun shone on it. My eyes, however, were a different matter. They were small and far apart, like the doctor who tried to pull me back to the real world, and a dark, dirty brown that let no one in. Set above them were two straight eyebrows that hurled freckles down in a hailstorm onto my wide, upturned nose. My face had its own weather system, something that I always smiled about.

There were days when I forgot that breathing there is like breathing syrup, requiring me to force my lungs to inflate. Mostly it was just impulsive, thoughtless, part of the workings of my body, but when I thought that I was suffocating, drowning, even, my fat cheeks swelled up and my pink lips scrunched tightly shut. I thrashed and flailed and prayed for some release – and then the terror passed, my body relaxing, and my thin chest, all ribcage and spine still visible, inflated again. Little moments of panic like those, that reminded me that perhaps the water world was not where I really belonged, were the worst part of my existence there. Of course that was my real home – not out there with the foulness and the stenches and the selfish, dangerous people who cast me out and disorientated me. Here, my company was my reflection, on the impenetrable but transparent surface. She always kept me safe.

personality

If slipping into that world was easy, coming out of it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I had known it was coming for a while, the waters in my orb becoming choppy, and sometimes I could even hear the muffled sounds of other people’s voices, burbling, bass-heavy conversations like hearing people talking downstairs while you’re submerged in bath. However, even these little anxieties couldn’t prepare me for the sudden wrenching feeling of being dragged back into reality. It started as a small tug in my naval, a cold, pulling feeling, outwards. Then the blood rushed louder in my ears, and my fingertips and toes grew cold. Like dying in reverse, the world began to grow brighter, unbearably bright, until my vision was all spots and stars and whiteness into infinity.

I awoke with a splutter – drowning only now that I was above the surface of the water again, and what felt like hundreds of pairs of eyes all leaning over me, creasing at the edges with smiles.

I’ve seen other people here who all say that waking up was the greatest joy they’ve ever felt, but for me I couldn’t imagine anything worse. After my eternity of drifting and exploring the private Eden I’d conjured up, I couldn’t bear the real world, this clinical haze of invasive physicians and hollow, resigned patient. What I wanted, more than anything else, was to be back in that perfect Water world, out of this life that had given me nothing but grief.

It was then that I started to learn just how strong I could be when I had the means. At first it was just my vivid imagination that compelled me to rebuild my fantasy – instead of feeling the solid linoleum as I walked around, I would pretend I was paddling in shallows like I did in my first home, picturing the rippling water over my toes. When I went for my check ups and the wires were plugged into my stomach and medicines pumped into me, I didn’t feel the pressure of the doctor’s hand on my arm, but the natural pulse of a current, toying gently with me as I floated. I’d practice holding my breath for as long as I could – that irrationality fuelled by my idea that if I could somehow make myself pass out, I could go back to the water world for good. And on top of all this, I was as determined to succeed with this as I had always been when any challenge presented itself to me. This time, I had no physical weaknesses to hold me back.

Imagine standing in a giant glass bowl, and feeling the water level slowly rise around you, but not being scared, just accepting that this was good, this was right. That’s what it was like to finally return to the place I knew I’d someday see again. There was no sudden storm, no violent waterfall or apocalyptic flash flood – falling asleep the second time was just as peaceful as the first. However, I knew almost instantly that something was different. I couldn’t swim anymore, only walk, and although I felt the water give beneath me I knew that somewhere else there was solid ground underneath my feet. When I reached the surface and looked at my reflection, I could see through it clearer than ever, and outside was the hospital I had woken up in, and all the people who belonged there as well. Granted, I could still navigate my way through impossible paradises of submarine flora and creatures, but it all seemed a little more artificial and unbelievable. Somehow, always, I knew that this was all just in my head.

That hasn’t stopped me, though, and I still feel safer in this world than I ever did on dry land. I don’t like talking to people who confront me, as each time it breaks my fantasy that little bit more. I stay away from the surface for as long as I can – call it denial, or fear if you must – but eventually I have to return to everyone else’s reality for a conversation or a medical administration. It’s a routine I have to learn to control, and although now it seems that I can only get weaker, I know that with determination, I can sink back under the surface for good, and simply drop into the oblivion.

odair