Chapter Fifteen
It wasn't long until she was back. When the door to the house opened and she appeared, I leaped up off the cot in all eagerness to begin tossing questions at her, but immediately my heart sank when I saw that she had brought someone with her. Marta had allowed me to ask questions, but not in the company of strangers, and here she had brought another one with her.
The stranger was a little girl, perhaps seven or eight years old, a tiny thing, even smaller than me, in dark red overalls, long, straight black hair and bright black eyes in a narrow pale face. She looked at me the same way Josef had at first, as if I were a toy to be played with.
“Can I touch him?” she asked Marta, which I thought was at least more polite than the way Josef had just started poking at me.
“Of course,” Marta told her. “You'll have to. Remember what I told you?”
“Yes,” the little girl said. “I'll do it better this time.”
“Candles, sit down please,” Marta commanded me, indicating the cot I had just bounded up from.
“This is June Lee,” she continued. “June Lee is going to cut your hair now.”
I had no choice. I sat down and then kept very still while the little girl fumbled in her pockets and brought out a pair of scissors and a comb. I had never had a haircut before, so I didn't even wonder about a child performing the operation, and June Lee was all business. She kept seizing my head and ordering me to move it up and down and over to the right and a little bit more. Her grip was strong and those scissors looked very sharp so I did my best to obey. Before I knew it, most of my hair was gone, and what was left was in random scattered chunks and strands here and there and I had to stifle a cry when she showed me in the little mirror which she also dug out of a pocket.
“You look better now,” she said and I kept my mouth shut.
“You looked pretty stupid before,” she added.
Marta watched quietly the whole time, and near the end she produced a large shopping bag which she presented to me.
“Here are your new clothes,” she said. “Please take that stupid dress off now.”
I stood up and pushed the dress off my shoulders. I think it was the first time in my life I had ever been without it. That yellow dress was so much a part of me that even now I still imagine myself with it on. It was a 'summer' dress, coming down just below my knees, with two button straps on the shoulders and small orange flowers on little green stems adorning the edges. I wore nothing underneath and did not understand the gasps and chuckles that came from Josef and the little girl, nor Marta's sharp order that they 'cut it out and grow up'.
“But he's got no, no thing,” Josef shouted. He had come around from his workbench at the first mention of my disrobing and stood in front of me in a line with the other two.
“It's all smooth,” June Lee said, “like my dolly.”
“IS he a he?” Josef asked. “How do you know? He looked like a girl before. I didn't want to say anything, but now ...”
“Hush,” said Marta. “You're acting like you don't know anything about apes.”
“I knew that some were like that,” Josef started to say.
“They're ALL like that,” Marta interrupted, correcting him. “By order of SB-9646. Any ape produced with reproductive organs subjects its creator to indefinite cryogenic suspension. Did you think someone was going to risk that? And for what? For an ape?”
Her voice was full of disdain, I thought. Whenever she spoke of my kind, I could feel the loathing as clear as sunlight. She hated me just as much as Mother did. Every shred of the emotions I had been feeling for her inverted all at once. Suddenly I didn't want to ask her anything. I didn't want to see her face or hear her voice ever again. I reached down into the bag and pulled out what I found there – underwear, pants, a shirt, and socks. I had seen Random and Lindley and Joker wear such things so I had no problem putting them on, which I did as fast as I could.
I hated those new clothes. The pants were gray and stuff. The shirt was black and tight. The socks were white and loose. I was about to slip my old shoes back on but Marta produced another bag and tossed it at my feet.
“Wear these,” she commanded. I did as I was told. The new shoes were black and had stringy things coming out the top I didn't understand.
“June Lee can show you how to tie those” Marta said.
While June Lee instructed me, I looked at her face and tried to determine if she was someone I could trust, someone I could ask a small favor from. The way she talked to Marta I was pretty sure she was not her child, though what the connection was I couldn't tell. Was she a servant? A friend? A relative of some other kind? June Lee never once smiled at me, so in the end I decided that no, she was not the someone I'd hoped for. I had very few hopes then. I was to be locked in this garage for some period of time, for some unknown purpose, surrounded by enemies, with a hardly loosened leash. I needed to get out. This now became my only thought.