The Wire Hanger

Chapter Seven

            I couldn’t look in her closet right away, of course. When Esau and I left for school, packing our lunches in silence, our father was still sleeping, since his next shift didn’t start until two. They still had him working strange hours. He’d said he’d report her missing as soon as he got to work that day.

            Halfway to school Esau said, “What about the ID monitor?”

            “What about it?”

            “Well, won’t they have noticed that she hasn’t gone in or gone out like usual?”

            I kicked at a pebble with my shoe. I’d had the same pair for two years, plain brown leather, and they were finally growing tight. I hoped that meant I might get a little taller soon, but the older I got the less that seemed likely. “Wouldn’t who notice? The house?”

            “I don’t know. The Protectors, I guess. Whoever watches it.”

            “There’s no way they pay attention to every single house,” I pointed out. “There’s too many. And remember, they always say there’s nothing to worry about if you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just for protection. That way if something does happen, they can go back and look. Like security cameras in those old movies. Nobody sat around watching the whole thing but they could, like, rewind.”

            “So they should go back and check,” said Esau.

            “It won’t show anything,” I said. “Just her…not coming home.” My throat closed for a second and I swallowed hard.

            “You don’t know that,” said Esau. He sounded belligerant. “Somebody could have come in and kidnapped her and it would show them.”

            I hadn’t considered that. “Wouldn’t they have taken off their ID bracelets?”

            Esau stared at me, confused. “They don’t come off. You’d have to chop off your hand or something.”

            I thought about the bleeding woman. Her bare wrist. Her whole, undamaged arm.

            “Yeah, but if there was a way.”

            Esau shrugged. “Maybe. But they’d probably just rob a lot of houses.” Breaking and entering crimes had dropped to almost zero since the corporation mandated the Entryway Legislation. It was heralded as one of the great triumphs, and helped propel President Baker to the top – now people could be safe in their own homes again, without fear.

            It was true – and Esau had arrived at the central question of why, the question we were carefully not asking. There was no reason for it. No explanation. No possible story to cover the inexplicable disappearance of an elementary school teacher, who had two children, and had never gotten so much as a jaywalking ticket. (Those used to be frequent, but people learned quickly.) I was the only one who had even an inkling of an idea that my mother wasn’t only what she appeared to be, and I couldn’t tell anyone, not even Esau, who’d shared a womb with me in the darkness of my mother’s belly. The thought made me almost unbearably lonely. We didn’t say another word all the rest of the way to school.

            After school Esau stayed in the back lot playing basketball, like usual; I thought he probably didn’t want to go home to an empty house. I didn’t blame him, but it was the exact opposite of what I wanted. I almost ran, as soon as I was out of sight of the gray school building and its snooping eyes, and burst in my front door. Part of me still flickered with hope that my mother might be there, but then flickered out again.