mercy, singapore sling gunner (technopunk) wrote in warrantlogs, @ 2016-02-21 20:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, mercy frey |
is there somebody who can watch you?
WHO: Mercy Frey.
WHEN: Pre-RAC, then after the warrant.
WHERE: Tijuana and Ganymede?? ish.
WHAT: Names are a heavy load to bear.
WARNINGS: self-deprecating poke at my own writing goes here
The words she knows best are: unni, appa, umma. She likes the way they roll off the tongue, the way the n sticks to the roof of her mouth like tacky candy. The hard percussion of the ‘pa’ like a firecracker going off from her lips. The familiar and still personal feel of that last word, heard in parts all around their neighborhood but its entirety a safeness and closeness that only they share. Um-ma. She takes it for granted. Mercy is six and this is her youngest memory, sharing a plate of buñuelo with her sister while watching the staticky television in their living room. They don’t have them often, but these are delicious, from the street cart two blocks away that always has Mercy enticed to stop when she plays in the dusty streets. They sit on the ground and eat methodically, switching off in picking them up - first Mercy and then Honor - and dip them in sugar cane syrup. The syrup drips off of Mercy’s mouth and fingers. Honor picks up the edge of her own dirty t-shirt to wipe at her little sister’s mouth, not taking her eyes off of the television. Where are her parents? Their soft voices speaking in a language she doesn’t really know anymore weave in from the kitchen. She sees their shadows on the floor, a puppet play. Her father presses his forehead against her mother’s. She thinks she hears weeping. Honor stiffens for a moment when they hear the crying, but reaches for the remote to turn up the volume so that the white noise fills the room. The cartoon voices barely break over the static, but Honor reaches for another piece of bread and rips it in half, pressing it against Mercy’s mouth. She opens it obediently and chews. The next morning, their parents take them to their aunt’s and leave them there. They promise to come back and Honor assures her that they will, but even then Mercy has the feeling that they won’t. Honor, a noun. Honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs and actions. Probity, uprightness. Honor, honesty, integrity, sincerity refer to the highest moral principles and the absence of deceit or fraud. Honor denotes a fine sense of, and a strict conformity to, what is considered morally right or due: a high sense of honor; on one's honor. Honor is her sister, who goes out all day and comes home late at night, working at the age of fifteen when she should have been going to school. Her aunt does her best, but when people do not even have enough to eat sometimes, why would they pay for someone else to wash their clothes? Even they wash their clothing in basins and let them sun-dry in the small dirt backyard. When Mercy pulls them from the clothesline, they are red with dust. But so is everyone else’s. When Honor sees that Mercy’s shoes are falling apart, that her school notebook is already crammed full and she is trying to stretch it by writing in the margins, she doesn’t come home for one whole night. When she does, she has three new pairs of shoes for herself, Mercy, and their aunt, a pile of notebooks, and green vegetables for the week. “Where did you get these things?” their aunt asks. Honor does not answer as she ties Mercy’s shoes onto her feet. “Do you like them?” she asks Mercy instead, who stares down at the stark whiteness of her new sneakers. “Yes.” “Good.” Honor reaches for Mercy’s hand and squeezes it. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty more where this is coming from.” “You look like a hooker when you do your make-up like that.” Mercy watches critically from her perch on Honor’s bed. Her older sister wrinkles her nose at her reflection while applying one more layer of mascara, tilting her head to one side, also critical. “I know what you’re suggesting,” Honor’s voice is calm and steady. “I’m not doing that, I promise.” “You were gone for almost ten days last time.” The accusation is not stated but still present, deflected into another direction. Mercy rolls herself up in her sister’s blanket, newly purchased like most of the furniture in this house since they moved. “On your ‘business trip’.” “Yes, I was. That’s what happens - I was on a trip for business.” Her tone is dry, unamused, but she does not strike where Mercy tempts her. “I’m not stupid,” Mercy counters her sister’s monklike disposition, her patience, with aggression. “You have to be doing something crazy for money. For all this. You’re not telling us.” “You’ve never actually asked me what I’m doing.” Honor, for all her doll-like beauty and delicacy, has transformed her face into an expression harsh and foreign. It’s not something Mercy has seen on her sister before, but she suspects that her sister has used on other people. It’s practiced. It’s the kind of face meant to intimidate, before it flutters into sisterly concern, then annoyance. Honor resumes putting on her make-up, now lining her lips. “And you’re not complaining about all the new clothes I bought you, or this house, or the food, are you?” “No.” Mercy bristles, annoyed. “That’s not what this is about.” “This is exactly what this is about. I found a job - that is not crazy, like you’re saying - and it pays well. You should be grateful. I’m not doing this for myself.” “Yeah, right.” Her scoff does not go unnoticed. Honor finally turns to her directly, her mouth twisted in hurt and disgust. Mercy feels a moment’s worth of regret - her sister’s eyes are wet - but she feels more furious. Digs her heels in. “You’re not - “ “It’s for us,” Honor says after a moment. Mercy wants to tell her to finish putting on her make-up, frightened by the tremor in her sister’s voice, her hands. “I’m doing this for you.” “I didn’t ask you to do it for me! I didn’t want all of this, you did. I was fine with where we were. We were fine.” Mercy feels her face breaking, splitting from her own teenage anguish and some unknown reserve of disappointment. She doesn’t know; she does know. “You’re not my mother, you’re my sister.” Honor stares at Mercy. The silence is thinly-stretched between them, fragile. She reaches for the lipliner and turns to the mirror. When she speaks, it’s to the reflection and Mercy looks away to the wall, not seeing her, not hearing her. “I know,” she says, her voice soft, “that’s why I have to be both.” Mercy, a noun. Compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one's power; lenient or compassionate treatment. Mercy, charity, clemency, grace, leniency mean a disposition to show kindness or compassion. Mercy implies compassion that forbears punishing even when justice demands it. Mercy does not know if she has the guts to practice it. Mercy does not know if she knows what mercy is. Sometimes she dreams about her sister, her parents, some things she knows she’s imagined, or will never happen. Dreams where all four of them are together. Where she does not sleep in a rattling space can. Where Honor went to school, and finished, and bloomed. Where her parents had never left. Where the absences that shaped her were never there; these are the dreams she knows can only be dreams. When she wakes up, she feels raw and aching. They say the Singapore Sling is haunted, but Mercy is not so sure if it’s the ship so much as the crew sometimes. Too many of them bent with secrecy, with ghosts that have lingered for too long on this plane. Maybe forgetting would be a blessing, a reprieve. A mercy in itself. Instead, she has received the opposite, in the form of a warrant for a ghost she remembers too well. But that is still better than letting all her ghosts disappear. Isn't it? |