Jonas shook his head. He couldn’t recall anyone named Edna.
“Well, they tried to make her life sound meaningful. And of course,” she added primly, “all lives are meaningful, I don’t mean that they aren’t. But Edna. My goodness. She was a Birthmother, and then she worked in Food Production for years, until she came here. She never even had a family unit.”
Larissa lifted her head and looked around to make sure no one else was listening. Then she confided, “I don’t think Edna was very smart.”
Jonas laughed. He rinsed her left arm, laid it back into the water, and began to wash her feet. She murmured with pleasure as he massaged her feet with the sponge.
“But Roberto’s life was wonderful,” Larissa went on, after a moment. “He had been an Instructor of Elevens—you know how important that is—and he’d been on the Planning Committee. And—goodness, I don’t know how he found the time—he also raised two very successful children, and he was also the one who did the landscaping design for the Central Plaza. He didn’t do the actual labor, of course.”
“Now your back. Lean forward and I’ll help you sit up.” Jonas put his arm around her and supported her as she sat. He squeezed the sponge against her back and began to rub her sharp-boned shoulders. “Tell me about the celebration.”
“Well, there was the telling of his life. That is always first. Then the toast. We all raised our glasses and cheered. We chanted the anthem. He made a lovely good-bye speech. And several of us made little speeches wishing him well. I didn’t, though. I’ve never been fond of public speaking.
“He was thrilled. You should have seen the look on his face when they let him go.”
Jonas slowed the strokes of his hand on her back thoughtfully. “Larissa,” he asked, “what happens when they make the actual release? Where exactly did Roberto go?”
She lifted her bare wet shoulders in a small shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does, except the committee. He just bowed to all of us and then walked, like they all do, through the special door in the Releasing Room. But you should have seen his look. Pure happiness, I’d call it.”
Jonas grinned. “I wish I’d been there to see it.”
Larissa frowned. “I don’t know why they don’t let children come. Not enough room, I guess. They should enlarge the Releasing Room.”
“We’ll have to suggest that to the committee. Maybe they’d study it,” Jonas said slyly, and Larissa chortled with laughter.
“Right!” she hooted, and Jonas helped her from the tub.
Five
Usually, at the morning ritual when the family members told their dreams, Jonas didn’t contribute much. He rarely dreamed. Sometimes he awoke with a feeling of fragments afloat in his sleep, but he couldn’t seem to grasp them and put them together into something worthy of telling at the ritual.
But this morning was different. He had dreamed very vividly the night before.
His mind wandered while Lily, as usual, recounted a lengthy dream, this one a frightening one in which she had, against the rules, been riding her mother’s bicycle and been caught by the Security Guards.
They all listened carefully and discussed with Lily the warning that the dream had given.
“Thank you for your dream, Lily.” Jonas said the standard phrase automatically, and tried to pay better attention while his mother told of a dream fragment, a disquieting scene where she had been chastised for a rule infraction she didn’t understand. Together they agreed that it probably resulted from her feelings when she had reluctantly dealt punishment to the citizen who had broken the major rules a second time.
Father said that he had had no dreams.
“Gabe?” Father asked, looking down at the basket where the newchild lay gurgling after his feeding, ready to be taken back to the Nurturing Center for the day.
They all laughed. Dream-telling began with Threes. If newchildren dreamed, no one knew.
“Jonas?” Mother asked. They always asked, though they knew how rarely Jonas had a dream to tell.
“I did dream last night,” Jonas told them. He shifted in his chair, frowning.
“Good,” Father said. “Tell us.”
“The details aren’t clear, really,” Jonas explained, trying to recreate the odd dream in his mind. “I think I was in the bathing room at the House of the Old.”
“That’s where you were yesterday,” Father pointed out.
Jonas nodded. “But it wasn’t really the same. There was a tub, in the dream. But only one. And the real bathing room has rows and rows of them. But the room in the dream was warm and damp. And I had taken off my tunic, but hadn’t put on the smock, so my chest was bare. I was perspiring, because it was so warm. And Fiona was there, the way she was yesterday.”
“Asher, too?” Mother asked.
Jonas shook his head. “No. It was only me and Fiona, alone in the room, standing beside the tub. She was laughing. But I wasn’t. I was almost a little angry at her, in the dream, because she wasn’t taking me seriously.”
“Seriously about what?” Lily asked.
Jonas looked at his plate. For some reason that he didn’t understand, he felt slightly embarrassed. “I think I was trying to convince her that she should get into the tub of water.”
He paused. He knew he had to tell it all, that it was not only all right but necessary to tell all of a dream. So he forced himself to relate the part that made him uneasy.
“I wanted her to take off her clothes and get into the tub,” he explained quickly. “I wanted to bathe her. I had the sponge in my hand. But she wouldn’t. She kept laughing and saying no.”
He looked up at his parents. “That’s all,” he said.
“Can you describe the strongest feeling in your dream, son?” Father asked.
Jonas thought about it. The details were murky and vague. But the feelings were clear, and flooded him again now as he thought. “The wanting,” he said. “I knew that she wouldn’t. And I think I knew that she shouldn’t. But I wanted it so terribly. I could feel the wanting all through me.”
“Thank you for your dream, Jonas,” Mother said after a moment. She glanced at Father.
“Lily,” Father said, “it’s time to leave for school. Would you walk beside me this morning and keep an eye on the newchild’s basket? We want to be certain he doesn’t wiggle himself loose.”
Jonas began to rise to collect his schoolbooks. He thought it surprising that they hadn’t talked about his dream at length before the thank you. Perhaps they found it as confusing as he had.
“Wait, Jonas,” Mother said gently. “I’ll write an apology to your instructor so that you won’t have to speak one for being late.”
He sank back down into his chair, puzzled. He waved to Father and Lily as they left the dwelling, carrying Gabe in his basket. He watched while Mother tidied the remains of the morning meal and placed the tray by the front door for the Collection Crew.
Finally she sat down beside him at the table. “Jonas,” she said with a smile, “the feeling you described as the wanting? It was your first Stirrings. Father and I have been expecting it to happen to you. It happens to everyone. It happened to Father when he was your age. And it happened to me. It will happen someday to Lily.