There were plenty of shops and eateries there, too, though they were clearly not as elegantly designed and appointed as in the sections Miss Cathy frequented, being more like the mall stores and restaurants of B-Mor, which you surely didn’t patronize in order to lounge about, but simply because the prices and dishes were good. It was all very respectable, the idea being to offer these people a true sense of participation in Charter life, even as the sidewalks weren’t quite as hygienically scrubbed, the window displays of merchandise not as thoroughly dusted and polished, maybe the spackling of the wallboard featured a rougher finish, the coats of trim paint not as numerously or thickly applied; and the same could be said of the “dorms,” which was where Tico was born and raised and was living with his parents before being hired through an agency, these thirty-story-high brick-faced towers of modestly sized apartments with glassed-in balconies festooned with air-drying clothes, surrounded by grounds planted with sturdy shrubs and large sections of lawn but that lacked the ornament of artfully chosen annuals and topiaries and blooming fruit trees that graced the best avenues of Seneca. Indeed, by any measure it was a very decent place to live, a setting we B-Mors would be more than content with, though the lingering feeling was that here was a place that, once settled, was not easily decamped. Of course, you could say the very same about B-Mor, but with us, we know from the start this is the case, we understand it in our bones, and because we’re mostly among brethren and share a storied past and can take a daily pride in our productive, orchestrated labors, we feel fortunate to remain, rooting in as deeply as we can.
But the truth of the dorms, as Tico would tell Fan after she first saw it, was that life happened behind the doors, the people rarely coming out and communing. Unlike us, they were from everywhere and were derived from all strains, universally diverse but perhaps too much so for their ideal collective good. And then there was the more significant matter of their work, as with Tico’s and his parents’ before him, which was mostly off- or long-shift service jobs, one-to-one or solo tasks such as home nursing or tutoring, waitressing or village security. Of course, the children got together in the neighborhood academies, but there were limited slots on the few sports teams and choral or theater troupes, and most had to go back to the towers right after the last bell anyway and look after their younger siblings, as every able-bodied parent was working to cover the ever-rising costs of rent, and food, and schooling. Though some moved up and out, most dormies were stuck, as Tico’s parents had been since they were young people, never quite making enough to make an entrepreneurial stab at opening a main-street business or to save for a down payment on a real Charter condo.
Miss Cathy had never actually driven into a service neighborhood — why would she? — and after a few moments parked in one of the lots beside a tower, she put the car into reverse to leave. But Fan spied an empty playground behind the building and asked if they could try the seesaw and swings. Miss Cathy looked repelled by the idea, but she agreed when she saw how much Fan wanted to, deciding the poor girl had probably never seen a playground before. So they rode the creaky seesaw, Miss Cathy having to sit toward the middle for balance, and then took turns on the swings, with Miss Cathy in fact going first, as Fan insisted on pushing her. Which she did, with all her strength, digging in and bursting forward like a sled driver while timing her push on the woman’s soft rump and ducking beneath her to send her soaring. Miss Cathy gave a whoop at the height, and when she began swinging her legs on her own, Fan quickly ran into the lobby of the building, from where she could see Miss Cathy happily propelling herself. She touched the screen and scrolled down the names to see if she could find any Bo and/or Liwei in the resident list. But there was nothing. A woman and her son came out of the elevator and Fan asked her if she could bring up a master listing of the residents of all the village’s towers. The woman asked why and Fan told her the reason and she said she wasn’t sure it was possible but would try, but then an urgent knocking on the glass window of the lobby stopped her. It was Miss Cathy. Her face had gone pale, her expression one of acute hurt and bafflement, her jaw now threaded through with cords of rage.
I didn’t know where you were! she shouted, making herself clearly heard through the glass. She entered the lobby and grabbed Fan’s hand from the screen and said, Don’t touch that, and dragged her to the car.
When they got home, they had to wash. They had done something like this before but now Miss Cathy knew exactly how she wanted it done, her brow tensing with expectation. Mala was ordered to get fresh towels and the bar of green laundry soap flecked with grit while Miss Cathy ran the water in the vegetable sink in the kitchen until it was hot. First she took Fan’s hands in hers and moistened all four of them in the water. She then used a tile scrubber to brush the skin of their palms and backs of the hands, spreading out their fingers to get in between. She used a different brush to clean under their fingernails, just as a surgeon might, working between the fingers and again on the palms and up the forearms, right to the elbows. And when the soap arrived, she rubbed the bar all over the prepped, reddened skin, softer now and pliant, which harshly stung, though not as much as when she redeployed the first brush, working the soap into a lather before spraying it off with the steaming water. Only then did she let Mala blot their hands and forearms with the towels, and after Mala took them away to be laundered, Fan thought she could catch mixed up with the pine oil and lye the babylike scent of raw new flesh.
After that, though they never went back to the towers, when they returned from their afternoons out, they went through this ritual. Miss Cathy never mentioned venturing into the service neighborhood, or the fact that anything was at all different, and that they had visited only her customary shops and lunch places was of no consequence; for once the shopping bags were set down, they had to roll up their sleeves and run the hot tap, Miss Cathy retrieving the brushes from under the sink while Mala fetched the soap and towels. It was as if after that brief moment in the lobby a dormant circuit had been restored, an accidental rewiring that changed nothing apparent in the woman’s revitalized mood or other routines but which set in motion this one, unerring operation. Fan complied without a word, scrubbing her skin as vigorously as Miss Cathy did her own, though the action seemed more to awaken the woman than punish her, her eyes never as lighted and alive. To Fan it was painful but the pain was made worse by the iron schedule of it, the thought of the hard scrape of the bristles to come, and once she set her mind to blocking the anticipation, the sensation itself could be endured. In fact, if she cast it right, she could believe that she was being honed instead of abraded, ever sharpened in her resolve to find Liwei, despite having no signs of him whatsoever and no other way to search for him. She was certain all she needed was time, and time — Mister Leo now comprehending this best — was plentiful in this house. Indeed, of the three of them, it was Mala who appeared to be most distressed, for she had to attend to their washing and simply stand by, wondering when Miss Cathy would reprise what she had done with every other girl before.