Sapling

nothing don't matter

Loren: Novie! Where are you?
Novica: Here, Lorie. I'm right here. Why'd you have to be so protective of me, all the time? I can look after myself, you know. Damn it, Lorie, I'm twelve, for goodness' sake!
Loren: All right, all right, hot-childerling. You always get so mad if I say anything about you being younger than me. Novica! Calm down.
Novica: What'cha doing, anyways?
Loren: Sitting. Thinking. 'Bout Mamling. 'Bout you, and the thing she told me, that I must always protect you, no matter what. Cuz you're my little sisling, and I love you. And you won't even let me!
Novica: Now you're sounding all sentimental-like. Stop it! Just cuz you're an alderling and I'm still a childerling, it don't change nothing-
Loren: 'Course it don't. 'Course it don't. I don't even feel like an alderling. I'm childerling, all over, in every part of me 'cept my outside.
Novica: How poetic. You want to be one of them writers now you're an alderling and stuff? Huh?
Loren: Stop it, Novie. Not funny anymore.
Novica: It was never meant to be funny.
[The two sislings glare at each other. Loren breaks into a laugh, due to Novica's face, and Novica can't help herself and begins to laugh to. Eventually their giggles subside, and they smile at each other, already friends again.]
Loren: I'm sorry, girl, I really am.
Novica: Yeah, sure, as if I love you any less whether you're sorry or not.
Loren: Oh, Novie... I love you too.
[The girls embrace.]
Novica: You are beautiful, Lorie, d'you know that? Way, way prettier than me.
Loren: Novie-
Novica: I bet all the boys are gonna be after you soon. How would you like that, huh?
Loren: Novie! Stop!
Novica: Fine. I will stop. You don't ever take my jokes, so I think I'd better go.
[Novica promptly leaves. Loren looks downcast, and does not follow her sisling. Such arguments are common, but Loren cannot help being disheartened and frustrated by her sisling's tempers.]
Loren: What did I ever do? What did I ever do? I was always a good girl, followed Papling's instructions when Novie was in the tank, first time, every time. I'm not a bad girl. It's Novie that's sick, and me that's got to put up with it all the time. Novie, Novie, Novie, Novie, you've got to stop doing this to me...
You remind me too much of Mamling, and that's sure painful. You might have died, Novie, but it sure don't show it, how you are now. And I hate it when people say you're a less good copy of me. I hate it. And I don't think it's true, neither. Damn it Novie, I love you, I love you, I love you, I know I'd keel over and die without you... it's just sometimes, I don't know what to do with you.
I don't know what Mamling would want, nor Papling neither, for that matter. Well, Papling was always fine 's long as I was holding on, sometimes by my fingernails. He didn't give a damn what I was doing 's long as I wasn't dead.
Mamling, she was different, wanted me to give life my best, every time. And that don't just mean following instructions. It means making up my own instructions that work for me. And the only other thing she wanted me to do, was to look after Novie. Put my heart into it, really put it in, and care for her, during her tantrums, during her sicknesses.
Because Novie is special.
Me? I'm just her not-one-bit-special sisling. Huh. Some title.
Sometimes, I dream it, all over again from the beginning, the nightmare of it and the crying of it and the darkness of it and how much wanted to die of it, die with Mamling by her bedside, die die die. But I'm alive alive alive and ain't there nothing I can do 'bout it. And in the morning I always think it, start to finish, cuz in the goldlight of the morning it don't seem half as bad as it does in my dreams.
And I think it after an argument with Novie, cuz it motivates me to keep going, like Papling wanted, keep looking after her, like Mamling wanted, keep trying to enjoy life, like I wish I could, but-life is hard. Life is damn hard.
So here it is, start to finish.
Novie and I were meant to be identical twinlings, are identical twinlings in theory, though no one uses theory 'round here. For a long time we've only been thought of as sislings, which is the way I like it, cuz we sure ain't nothing like twins 'cept on the outside.
I was born ten minutes before Novie. This was before Ling, before anything, is the way I think about it. I was fine, healthy, right weight, right size, bawling my head off like tenderlings do. I was wrapped up in blankets and Mamling was whispering to me through her pain, whispering of the wonderful person I was gonna be.
Huh. That sure worked out how she expected.
(Novie, I love you love you love you) But Mamling's pain wasn't for much, at least that's what the remediers thought at the time. Cuz when Novie popped out she didn't look nothing like a tenderling.
They say something happened in the uterus or womb or whatever they call it, and Novie was misshapen, badly misshapen, twisted, deformed, and the fact was Novie was going to die.
And Mamling too, 'pparently, cuz they found out Novie had done damage to Mamling when in the womb. They were both gonna die and the remediers didn't think there was nothing they could do about it and my memories from that time are dark, dark, dark.
Papling took me away, managed to hold his own tears and leave his wifeling's bedside and think about his daughterling, his only one, cuz I had to be preserved, didn't I? Papling did a nice job of that, shielding me from evil and all the nonsense they say about newborn tenderlings.
Cuz they say a lot. 'Bout how they're so full of potential, how you gotta raise 'em just so, and love them and if you put one foot down wrong you ruin that tenderling, ruin its innocence, ruin its life. But it's ok, cuz my life's already gone so wrong it couldn't go much worse. I don't got no innocence. Novie says I do but she knows nothing. She knows nothing of the horrors I've been through.
Anyways, I believe Papling loved me, just didn't go the right way of showing it. Sometimes I would find him sitting all alone looking like he'd just seen death, so he ruined my so-called "innocence" almost instantly.
They stuck tubes into Mamling and Novie, and Novie stayed in this tank full of acid that preserved her and made sure she didn't grow none, and slowly they pumped Mamling's life blood into Novie (or something like that) cuz Mamling was gonna die no matter what. They couldn't save her. But they thought maybe, maybe they could save Novie.
It took a whole year for them to realise it was working. A whole year Mamling was having the life slowly, slowly sucked out of her. A whole year I was being raised by Papling, who gave me synthetic milk that gave me diarrhoea. A whole year, a whole stupid year of nothing, nothing, nothing.
But in that year, Novie's head fixed. There was damage to her brain what couldn't be fixed, but her head had bent into a good shape, and she hadn't grown at all. Just like that, we weren't twinlings no longer.
Sometimes we visited Mamling, who was really weak. The remediers couldn't give her life blood but they could give her oxygen, so every time we went she had a breathing machine attached to her. The rest of the time they put her to sleep, but she was still living, still breathing, still beautifully alive.
It was a long process, fixing Novie. The years went by and all Novie's body parts were bending into shape and she was starting to look a little like me when I was a newborn tenderling. I was six when Novie was as close to a normal tenderling as she would ever get. And Mamling had a bit of life blood left, but not enough to live for very long.
I remember mine and Papling's last visit, the time when Novie finally got taken out of the tank. And there she was, a newborn tenderling. Beautiful, beautiful, and innocent and perfect. Little did I know I was gonna ruin her just the same that Papling ruined me.
And we got to talk to Mamling, just before the breathing machine got taken away. The remediers and Mamling and Papling had decided that it would be more painful for her to wait to die naturally. She wanted to suffocate. Painful, but only for a few seconds before she died, and there would be peace.
I held Novie in my arms and that was when Mamling beckoned me forward and whispered in my ear. "I'm so, so proud of you, Loren. I'm sorry I wasn't able to spend more time with you, because I love you, so much, my darling. I want your little sisling to be called Novica, ok? Novica. And don't worry about me because by the time you fully understand what I'm telling you, I will be far away, safe and happy and all this pain will be left behind."
She kissed me then, a brief kiss, full of emotion though, full of love. And she only said one more thing. "Make sure you look after Novica, because she is very precious and very delicate. Be kind to her. Make sure she is safe, no matter what. And take good care of yourself too, Loren. You'll always be my good little girl."
I dunno how I remember her exact words. I was only six. Only six and my mamling was dying, and my twin sisling had almost died. But her words stick in my head like a bruise that has never healed, and I'm constantly asking myself if what I'm doing is what she would have wanted. I compare it against her words. Painful as it is, it calms me down, reminds me that I am still looking after Novie, like she wanted. As for everything else I'm doing? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Papling died when I was ten. It was a heart attack, came so sudden none of us had no time to react, and all of sudden he was dead, dead on the floor. Only seconds earlier he'd been telling me 'bout Novie and her moods and tantrums cuz by this point she was four, and a little piece of trouble. Papling knew way more 'bout how to calm Novie than I did.
"Be patient with her, Loren," he was telling me. "All you need to do is-" And that was when he went pale as a sheet, his body started convulsing for a second or two, then he looked at me, actually saw me. At that moment time seemed to stop. Things seemed normal again. He took a shuddering breath, smiled at me, opened his mouth to finish what he was saying and then-
Dead. Nothing else. Absolute silence. It's why Papling's death haunts me so much. What if what he was going to tell me had been really, really important? I'll never know now that he's gone. And I hate that for a splitsecond it looked like everything would turn out ok, that he wasn't gonna die, it was just a muscle spasm or something, and then he did. He smiled at me. And the worst part? His mouth was still smiling at me, his eyes still looking at me, even when he was lying on the ground, dead.
I ran away, but luckily I had the common sense to ring the remediers, even though he was clearly dead. They said he'd had a heart attack, and at that time I didn't even know what a heart attack was, so I thought it was the memory of Mamling attacking Papling's heart. They put the heart attack down to heartbreak though, so that's what went on his death certificate. Death by heartbreak.
I hid his death from Novie for more than a week. That part makes me feel really guilty, and pretty stupid, too. I told her Papling was going on holiday for a week and leaving me to look after her. I was holding off telling her the truth cuz I knew it'd make her throw one of her tantrums. And it did. A damn bad one.
But after that it was just me and Novie, Novie and me, no one else cuz we don't got no one else. Only each other. Maybe Mamling knew it wouldn't be long 'fore Papling died. Maybe that's why she made me promise to look after Novie no matter what. I dunno. Mamling's still kinda a mystery to me-I barely even knew her and then she died.
(I love you Novie I love you I love you) Novie can get damn rough. And though it's been eight years since Papling died and I've got the ropes now, I still find it hard. She's twelve. I'm eighteen. But age don't fix her brain, don't fix nothing 'bout her, and I'm sorry Mamling I'm sorry I'm sorry, but I don't want her. Life'd be so much easier on my own.
'Cept I do need her, don't I? She grounds me. Stops me from floating off in a world of my own, stops me from having an emotional breakdown. Cuz I'm an alderling now, been one since last month. Novie hates it, and I hate it too, cuz alderhood isn't like it is in stories, you don't all of a sudden feel all grown up and able to tackle things and in charge of life. No. It don't feel nothing like that.
You just feel the same as you've ever felt, 'cept since you're somehow expecting to feel different, and then cuz you don't, you then feel ashamed of yourself, like a stupid little childerling. And since then my emotions've been even more on edge. I have to really keep myself in check else I accidentally snap at Novie and we fall out.
Her tantrums are way rarer now, mostly it's just us falling out. The smallest thing sets her off. We're just talking, as friends, then I say something she don't like and she walks off and shuts herself in her room. She don't come out for eating. Not schooling neither.
And it's no fun. No fun at all.
Novica: Lorie? You in there?
Loren: (Novie? Novie? You didn't hear none of that did you? Tell me you didn't hear, tell me Novie...) Yep.
Novica: Can I... come in?
Loren: If you must.
Novica: Ok. I'm coming in then.
[The door opens and Novica enters the room, a frown on her face. Loren is doing her best not to look at her sisling.]
Novica: Hey, look at me. I'm sorry. I know I'm hard and I wish could change it, damn, I try it so hard, Lorie. Sometimes I think you hate me.
[Loren remains silent, looking at her hands.]
Novica: Lorie! Are you even listening to me?
Loren: I'm listening.
Novica: You're fed up of me, aren't you? You don't know what to do with yourself. And I don't know what to do with myself when you're like this! Is it something about being an alderling now that makes you so emotionally unstable?
Loren: Emotionally unstable?
Novica: I... I'm sorry, the words, they just tumbled out. (But you are, Lorie, you know you are, but there isn't nothing I can do about it, 'less you talk!)
Loren: I'm fine, Novie. Just don't keep... walking away. (Please, I can't bear this much longer)
Novica: Lorie, you're hurting.
Loren: I'm hurting.
[The sislings are silent for a few moments, Loren sitting in her chair, Novica standing awkwardly, twiddling her thumbs. Loren sits up suddenly, and looks at her sisling, grimacing slightly. ]
Loren: Damn it, I forgot. We need to go foodshopping.
Novica: Now?
Loren: Yes, Novie, now. Get your coat and shoes on and I'll fetch my alderling ID, ok?
Novica: Ok.
Loren: I'll be back in a mo.
[As Loren hurries off, Novica walks into the hall and pulls her laced shoes on, murmuring to herself.]
Novica: Huh. We don't need to go foodshopping. She was just changing the topic cuz she don't want to talk 'bout her problems. She does awe me, a little, being six years older and all, but looking just like an older version of me. And what's most annoying is that if nothing'd happened to me in the womb, Mamling and Papling wouldn't be dead and I'd be the exact same age as Lorie.
I never knew Mamling, cuz I was a baby when they pumped her life blood into me. And I only have super vague memories of Papling and no memories of his death. Mostly cuz Lorie didn't actually tell me he was dead for a whole damn week. And then when she finally told me, I threw a tantrum, apparently. I don't even blame myself. Lorie should've told me sooner.
Lorie don't want to know nothing 'bout my problem. But me? I'm interested. She took me to the remediers when I was ten so they could explain some things to me. They explained that the mutation I was born with had caused part of my head to bend inwards, leaving a dent in my "frontal lobe". That's the part of my brain that controls my problem-solving, emotional traits and reasoning, among other things.
Mamling's life blood fixed the dent in my head, but not the dent in my brain. So I have emotion and behaviour problems-that's the general gist of it. I know Lorie hates it, cuz it makes me damn hard to look after, and I wish-for her sake-it wasn't so.
(It's not my fault though Lorie, you can't just take it out on me) She makes me feel stupid sometimes, makes me hurt, makes me feel like it's all my fault, Mamling's death and Papling's death and my problems. It's not. I couldn't help being born out of shape.
For me Ling's all I've ever known. While I was fixing Papling took Lorie to the wilderness around Ling, and they stayed there for a while. Lorie told me when you're outta Ling it's like nothing don't matter. Like all your problems and sadness and (damn) your anger is all in Ling, and once you're outta there it's all ok. Nothing don't matter. Nothing don't matter.
I've asked Lorie, many a time, if we could just run away, get outta this damned place and live in the wilderness, just us, us sislings alone. But she just give me her standard answer which is "That might not be what Mamling and Papling wanted, Novie. And remember I made a promise to look after you no matter what."
That damn promise. It's like a cage round Lorie, stopping her from doing what she wants with her life. It's like the ghosts of Mamling and Papling are hanging over her watching her every move. Don't she understand I can look after myself? I'm twelve. Sure, she's eighteen, she's an alderling and I'm still just a childerling, but what does that matter? I love you Lorie, but sometimes you just gotta let a promise go. Can't you see I'm fine? Sure, I still throw tantrums sometimes and it feels like I'm being possessed by damn fire, and my problem solving abilities aren't too pretty, but I could survive, on my own, without you. I'm not saying I want to. I'm saying I could.
Lorie? I thought you said you'd only be a sec. You been hundreds of secs.
Loren: It's an expression, Novie.
Novica: Damn your expressions. They're confusing.
Loren: Don't say damn, Novie.
Novica: You say it. Lots. And it ain't a swear word.
Loren: One, I don't say it nearly as much as you. Two, just cuz it ain't a swear word don't mean you should say it all the time.
[Loren appears at the top of the stairs, shaking her head at her little sisling. She is carrying a leather handbag and is wearing makeup. Novica continues to argue as Loren descends the stairs and unlocks the front door.]
Novica: And how come you get to wear makeup?
Loren: I wear it so I won't get judged. You're too young to get judged so it don't matter for you.
Novica: You wear it to attract boys.
Loren: Novie, stop it. Quit complaining. There are things you're too young to understand.
Novica: All alderlings say that and it's stupid. Lorie, since you become an alderling you been different... harsher.
Loren: I do try, Novie. You're so full of youth and scorn today. I don't mind the youth, but do try to get rid of the scorn.
Novica: Damn youth. Damn age.
Loren: Novie, don't say-oh, forget it.
[The girls walk down the street in silence, Novica whispering "Damn," under her breath. Loren pretends to ignore them and instead tries to smile at the civilians who stare at them every time they leave the safety of their house. She waves and smiles but none of them wave or smile back; Loren feels incredibly alone. Novica drags her feet across the tarmac, trying not to worry about what's happening to her sisling.]
Loren: Novie, can you pick up the pace a little? We're going really slow.
Novica: You're upset cuz everyone's staring at us like they do whenever we go foodshopping.
Loren: Shh! Don't speak of it. They'll hear you.
Novica: Lorie, you worry too much what other people think. That's your problem. I don't give a damn 'bout what other people think and look at me.
[Loren closes her eyes for a moment as if to centre herself, and slowly, quietly, she counts to ten. The worry on Novica's face grows.]
Novica: No! Lorie, don't leave me! We've already lost Mamling and Papling. I couldn't lose you too.
Loren: I'm not dying, stupid! Sometimes you make me feel very hot, that's all, and I gotta close my eyes and count to cool down again.
Novica: Like when you call me hot-childerling? That kinda hot?
Loren: No, Novie. A different kinda hot. A kind that hurts like nothing you ever felt.
Novica: Oh. Damn, that's bad.
Loren: Well... yes. Novie!
Novica: What? What did I do?
Loren: You didn't do nothing. Look. Over there. They're pulling down the old leisure centre.
Novica: Hey! They can't do that.
Loren: They can. No one of us here don't got no power to overthrow them. They're slowly getting rid of everything people enjoy.
Novica: Remember when you took me to the leisure centre a couple of years ago, and I almost drowned in the swimming pool?
Loren: Uh huh. Damn, I wish I could forget.
Novica: But then you took me to the water slide...
Loren: And we went down together...
Novica: And there was that moment of absolute content...
Loren: That moment when we each said, at the same time, "It's like nothing don't matter," and our voices harmonized so beautifully...
Novica: It was like you described the wilderness to be...
Loren: Dark and dangerous but full of hope...
Novica: Cuz nothing didn't matter there...
Loren: But when we got to the bottom of the water slide, I said damn, cuz all of a sudden...
Novica: Everything mattered again.
Loren: Too true, Novie. Too damn true.