| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
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| Written by S.E. Ward / Artwork by Marge Simon |
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| Snow |
Beyond her wood-and-plaster walls; Da Ming felt the
rush of winter, the onslaught of wind tempering her
before the snow. She was a snail, a tortoise planted to
the earth; her skin and blood and nerves lined the inside
of the house until she knew when her sons blinked in
their sleep. She knew when they forgot to take off their
cleats after a baseball game -- "Bu dui!" she shouted
from her room. "Bu dui! No! Take them off outside!"
"Sorry, Mama!" the boys called, and the pinpricks of
their shoes filed toward the door, to be replaced by
callused and smelly feet.
Da Ming stayed in her room. It held little: a jelly-like
bed for the body she was born in, a desk, some books
she could not bring herself to read, a window kept
shuttered in the daytime to save the skin on her walls.
At night, she peeked out. Dozens of houses stood on
every side. Each held a woman, or so she had been
told -- havens of humanity in an automated world. Her
small daughter lived in a vacated house a few miles
away. The woman that had once lived there grew old,
and the house died; once she had been removed from
the walls, Da Ming's young daughter settled in her place
to grow. Da Ming remembered only a little of her
childhood, but at least once, she sometimes thought,
she had gone outside.
Her husband, Shan Dao, worked in a bank. Da Ming
knew it had to do with money -- the concept seemed a
bit odd, very male, very much of the world beyond her
walls, but she understood numbers well enough, and Shan Dao spent long evenings with her, explaining that
numbers made the outside world go 'round.
"Not literally," he said, playing with a letter opener shaped like a sword. "It turns due to gravity. And the sun's
gravity keeps us from spinning into oblivion."
"So planets are walls, and I'm the sun?" Da Ming said.
Shan Dao laughed. "And the boys are meteors crashing into everything. We ought to have had twin girls instead. At
least they'd stay put."
Da Ming forced a smile. Even if she were allowed any more children, she did not want another daughter. She
rubbed the muscular umbilical joining her belly to the house, wishing she had been born a man. Men saw the world
beyond the walls of a lone room. Men understood money and planetary orbit and cleats in the dirt. Shan Dao
stroked the side of her face.
"It's not that wonderful. It's dangerous. Men die every day. I even heard about a woman who tried to leave her
house a few weeks ago. She bled to death. Do you think I want to see something like that happen to you?"
"But you're not trapped. You've got things to do."
"You can read." Shan Dao nudged her books across the desk. "You haven't even opened this batch. You used to
read all the time."
"They're all the same."
Before Shan Dao could pry, Da Ming went to her small bathroom and shut the door as far as her umbilical allowed.
She rested her head against the wall, against the skin with its tiny hairs that tingled at every current of air, and
focused on the weight of her skull. She kept the house comfortable; she let her walls know when to cook supper, to
cook breakfast, to wake the boys and Shan Dao; she produced the requisite number of children, a boy and a girl
(plus one, by accident), to fuel the world outside. The why of it all, and whether she could ever have been something
else, made little sense -- save that flesh and humanity seemed a necessary part of the world.
The door opened. Shan Dao hugged her from behind.
"I'd give so much to take you to the bank," he said in her ear. "Just long enough for you to see it."
Da Ming elbowed him away. "I'm hungry."
"It's not time for supper yet."
"You keep the house alive and see if you care if it's time for supper!"
Shan Dao put up his hands and backed away. Da Ming watched him in the mirror. His footsteps made the skin on
her floor crawl, or would have if it had any muscles.
"You need a hobby," Shan Dao said at the door. "My manager's wife studies astronomy through her window. I
know of two women who write poetry. It all sounds the same, but they write it."
"Maybe it all sounds the same because there's nothing else for them to write about."
Da Ming shivered as her husband closed her door.
#
If she had muscles in her walls, she could have torn the house to bits, Da Ming thought over and over, as she lay on
her jelly-like bed in the dark, stroking her umbilical. Her sons had visited at supper. They had brought their
homework -- shaky columns of hanzi written in sloppy brushstrokes -- and tried to explain how far China stretched.
They brought maps; they brought books. But Da Ming could only see places she would never visit, and imagine
scents and sounds she would never know first-hand. She knew home. She knew her husband's touch and her sons'
weight as they sat on her knees. She knew the first hundred days of her daughter, before she got her name -- Xiao
Ming, small and bright, as her mother was large and bright -- and was taken to the women's center so her new
home could be shaped in her image.
If Da Ming had muscles on her walls, not only skin and blood and nerves, she could tear the house to bits. She
could feel wind on her face, acrid and industrial. Tarmac beneath her feet, and the texture of a surface that did not
feel like an echo. She could make Xiao Ming proud.
She got up. From Shan Dao's room, she felt his snores more than she heard them; still, a distant sound, like trucks
coming out from Beijing, grated through her walls. Her umbilical lay on the floor where it joined the house. A second
heart, it pumped blood through the house and gave her entire building oxygen and life.
Da Ming leafed through the books Shan Dao had got for her. They were all the same, though. They were from
outside, full of empty descriptions. In the dark, her window's shutters lay open. Da Ming set down her book and
opened the window. The stink of oil and rubber washed into her room. From the clouded sky fell a few papery
snowflakes. Two landed on her face and melted.
The umbilical pulsed. The house seemed to huddle closer. Da Ming looked back at her tether.
On the desk lay Shan Dao's letter opener, where he had forgotten it. Its metal was cool. Until it warmed in Da
Ming's hands, the little sword did not return her touch. Where she drew the blade across the back of her hand, her
skin split.
She looked down at the umbilical. The blood on her hand. Toward the window as a car drove past, its engine
rattling and its headlights piercing the dim night air. She watched as it vanished up the street. Her umbilical stopped
her from climbing out the window. Stopped her from making her way into the city, where the descriptions in her
books would gain life.
Still watching the car as it rattled away, Da Ming removed the belt from her dressing gown. She let the gown slip
from her shoulders and to the floor. The belt felt like freedom in her fist.
With as little thought as possible for her sons, Shan Dao, the house she had become, Da Ming tied the belt around
her umbilical and twisted it until the pain in her belly seemed to choke her. Her house shuddered. The prickling
sensation of nerves screaming for oxygen crackled over her skin, moving further through the house as her blood
slowed. She wondered how many women had died in the world, amongst men killed by the dangers their lives held.
Da Ming bit her lips until they bled. The letter opener set her free.
Her legs wobbled as she climbed out the window. Snowflakes came to rest on her skin. She watched them, the
world swelling around her without her walls for protection. The air felt strange. Liquid. Jelly-like. Laced now and
again with shards of black behind her eyes.
The dead grass at her feet grew wet and dark as she took a step toward Beijing, another, into the tarry road. She
stumbled to her knees. The tarmac felt warm beneath her, real, dangerous. Sticky. A curl of wind drew her up and
sent her sprawling on her back. She laughed. Laughed at the sky, the world, the house she tensed to feel but could
not. Above, the snowflakes danced a giddy waltz; she joined them with her clumsy fingers. Their lives, ice to water,
were as short as hers.
But they were free. She and the snowflakes. Free, freedom, alive and together, short-lived lovers; tiny, frigid kisses
fell upon her skin. She raised her arms and laughed. She. The snowflakes, the wind. Dancing, striving toward the
city, falling to earth, laying enmeshed in each other's touch. Resting, joining the open sky, the air, the world. Hearing
the trucks grumble their way from Beijing, only to find her in the morning, quiet and still, happy with the snow upon
her skin.
The two of them, living as one for the remainder of their only night on Earth.
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