1 Sun-Day Blues
The lady in blue holds up the dolls again. She asks me, Which one is better? One has pants with edges like the corner of a wall—it must be painful to wear something so stiff.
The doll’s face is pale with blue eyes. Behind its thin lips are straight teeth like square pearls. The doll’s hair is bright blond, I want to touch it. I want to touch the hair, but I am afraid it will be hot like the sun. The lady in blue says, The sun is big and bright—if you stand in it too long, it can burn you.
I have never seen the sun, but the lady in blue says, You will see the sun soon.
The second doll wears a big dress made from squares of many colors. It is as if the dress is not sure what color it should be, so it decides to be all the colors. Like a rainbow. I have never seen a rainbow, but rainbow means colors and that is what I think it must look like, but in the sky.
The second doll’s clothes are wrinkled and the paint on the doll’s fingernails is chipped. The plastic face smiles too big and her slightly yellow teeth remind me of what a sunrise must be like.
It’s true, I have never seen a sunrise, but the lady in blue says, You will see the sunrise soon.
The lady in blue watches me study each doll, and her eyebrows pull together. She wants me to pick the one with blue eyes. I know because we have been doing this test for weeks. I know it has been weeks, because a week is seven days long and I have had more than fourteen breakfast trays since we started this test.
I don’t know if I can fail a test, but the little sigh the lady in blue does when she puts the dolls back in their boxes sounds like failing. The lady in blue always says, I am not disappointed. Which I guess is true, because she also says she can’t feel anything.
I point at one of the dolls.
“And why, Inmate Eleven, do you like this doll?” The lady in blue examines the patchwork dress of the doll I picked.
The lady in blue’s eyes look less blue today and more storm.
“I like her hair,” I say because the patchwork-dress doll has nice hair.
“You like it better than this hair.” The lady in blue tugs at her own golden curls, holding what must be sunshine.
“I like that it is blue,” I say.
Blue like the ocean, which I have never seen.
Blue like the sky, which I have never seen.
Blue like my hair, which I can see when I look down.
“Blue is an odd color for hair, don’t you think?” The lady in blue lifts her eyebrows.
“Maybe.”
There is the lady in blue and she has golden-sun hair. There are some guards when I am bad and they also have golden-sun hair. Then there are the doctors I see when I am very sick—they have golden-sun hair too.
“And what about the teeth.” She points at the stains. “You like her teeth better than this doll’s?”
“Maybe.” The lady in blue usually does not ask so many questions. Maybe it is because today her eyes are more storm than blue. I have never seen a storm, but in books storms cause rain and lightning and are very angry.
“And you see her clothes, they have many colors.” The lady in blue lifts the perfect doll close to my face. So close it is blurry. “This doll’s clothes are clean and pressed. Her nails are painted and never chip. Her hair curls perfectly, it is not blue and nappy. See the scar on her arm? She has a vaccine, and she can go outside, because she can never get sick. The blue doll doesn’t have that perfect scar. She can’t go outside.”
“I like how the other doll feels,” I say because she feels like something that wants love. She feels like a friend you can tell secrets to.
I don’t have any friends. I mean, I don’t have any people friends.
The lady in blue lifts her eyebrows again. “You are not touching them. How do you know how they feel?”
“No, how they feel.” I hit my chest near my heart. I know this will only make the lady in blue’s eyes stormier, but I don’t like to lie.
“You are too old to be saying things like that, Inmate Eleven.” Her hand tightens around my favorite doll’s waist. Her nails dig into the fabric.
“I know.”
“Every day I come talk to you. Have I not taught you to read and write? Have I not dealt with your sicknesses and crying?”
The lady in blue looks at me like she looks at the doll I picked—like there’s a problem. There are five holes in the doll now, where her fingernails dug into the fabric. I wonder if she notices what she has done.
“Yes.” I try not to look at her. I wish Ira were here prowling around the room.
“And every time I ask you this question, you willfully answer wrong.” Her grip loosens and tiny blue beads tumble from the doll.
“Wrong?”
“Yes, wrong.” The lady in blue lets the beads fall on the floor until the doll is as empty as clothes without a person.
“I like how the other one feels,” I try to explain.
“And how is that?” The lady in blue inspects the empty doll again.
“Like the sun would feel on my face.” I want to add: like warmth, like a cup of tea, like a summer day, but I have never felt those things and I don’t want to get it wrong.
“The sun burns the skin when you stay in it too long,” she says quickly. “And there are germs outside.”
“I know,” I mumble. That is why I am not allowed outside. “That’s why I have to stay inside.”
She says flatly, “And this one, how does it make you feel?”
“Like my insides are frozen.” The eyes are too perfect, the smile too wide, the crease in the pants feels like a knife on my leg.
“Inmate Eleven, the sooner you learn that Clones are better, the sooner we can proceed with your education. The sooner you can get a vaccine. The sooner you can go outside.”
“Better?”
The lady in blue stands and walks to the door. She leaves the dolls this time. “Please keep studying your learning flash cards, Inmate Eleven. Shall we try again tomorrow?”
It is a rhetorical question—rhetorical means not really a question. It means that you don’t have a choice.
I have lived in a cell my entire life.
When the lock snaps shut, they let Ira out of the small-small room attached to my room. He races to me and nuzzles my hand, so everything is much better, but there is still no sun and the doll with vacant eyes glares at me from the floor. The other doll is so empty it hurts.
So empty I hurt. So, I do what I always do.
I write poems in my head.
A poem is something that makes you feel something. I don’t have a pen or paper, so I have to remember the poems. I have so many poems stored in me that sometimes I think they might spill out the alphabet when I cry.
THE BIBLE BOOT LEARNING FLASH CARDS
The Blue Doll Test
The Blue Doll Test is one of the most important tests any Blue must pass to be able to go outside. It is important for Blues to understand that Clones are better. It would be unwise and wrong to think anything else.
During the Blue Doll Test, one doll that is perfect and white is shown. The other doll is blue and has shabby clothes and chipped nails. The Blue child must pick the correct doll—it should be easy, but Blues are not very smart and often have trouble understanding.
This test is important for everyone. It is the best test and once a Blue passes it, they have an opportunity to go outside.
2Small-Small
I don’t know if my room is small. I don’t have anything to compare it to. It’s like when I see a picture of the sun in a book and I can hold it in my hands. Then the lady in blue tells me, The sun is big—over one million Earths can fit inside the sun. Which means nothing, because in the book I can also fit Earth in my hands.
Sometimes when the lady in blue leaves, I look out when the door closes slowly.
What I see is a long tunnel with doors, which makes me think my room is small, the way the earth is small and the tunnel is big like the sun.
I can’t be sure, though.
I am sure that my room, from left to right, is eleven normal steps and twenty-two baby steps. From right to left, it is ten normal steps and twenty baby steps. I know science says it is supposed to be the same, but it isn’t, because on the way back I am rushing.
For Ira, it is about a two-second trot.
It is difficult to measure steps when you have four legs.
Ira is fast. Sometimes he circles the edges of the room. His head gets real low and his eyes turn into slits.
That is his gone wolf face. He is imagining himself somewhere else.
It means he hates the cell.
I don’t have many visitors, but I never have any when Ira goes wolf, because I can’t get him to go into the small-small room beside my cell. The lady in blue does not like Ira. She has never really met him; she just sees him on the camera and I bet he looks scary on camera. I know there are cameras, because sometimes voices echo out of the ceiling and bounce around the room telling me to stop doing this or that.
I don’t know where the cameras are hidden. I have never seen a real camera, but the lady in blue says they record things so we don’t forget. That means cameras are very useful because sometimes I forget. Sometimes I forget that my world is only—from left to right—eleven normal steps and twenty-two baby steps. From right to left, it is ten normal steps and twenty baby steps.
Sometimes I think outside might be too much space.
Sometimes I feel bad.
Because of me, Ira has nowhere to roam, unlike the wolves in the lady in blue’s books. The lady in blue doesn’t know Ira’s name is Ira. She calls me Inmate Eleven. So my first name is Inmate and my last name is Eleven.
My name is a lot different from the names of people in books.
Copyright © 2023 by Amber McBride
