What a contradiction. This time yesterday, I still thought the tubes in our house were a prison that contained my mother only. Today, I know the prisoners transformed their cells into love and compassion for fellow prisoners.

  Instead of doing my homework, I write a song for the opera.

  Song: “Be Careful”

  Composer notes: This has Blondie undertones. Soft punk.

  EVERY MAN WANTS A GAL WHO’S USEFUL.

  ALL FOLKS UPTOWN CAN VERIFY

  USEFULNESS CAN LOOK APPEALING

  UNTIL, IN FACT, YOU ARE HER GUY.

  EVERY MAN’S IN NEED OF ONE FINE WOMAN

  TO HELP HIM MAKE THE BEST OF HIS LIFE.

  IF SHE’S AT WORK AND NOT MAKING HIS DINNER

  THEN HOW CAN YOU EVEN CALL HER A WIFE?

  THERE’S A WAY TO PUNISH SUCH BASE BEHAVIOR

  WITHOUT HAVING TO CHOP HER UP INTO CUBES.

  SIMPLY TELL THE CHILDREN ALL YOUR STORIES

  AND LOCK HER UP INSIDE THE TUBES.

  YOU SAY YOU WANT HER TO BE USEFUL.

  YOU SAY YOU WANT HER TO BE KIND.

  BUT THEN YOU SAY YOU WANT HER USELESS.

  WE KNOW YOU CAN’T MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

  ALL THAT MATTERS IS WHAT LOOKS GOOD.

  THAT’S ALL YOU REALLY CARE ABOUT.

  AS LONG AS NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH

  ABOUT HOW YOU NEVER LET HER OUT.

  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY TO HIM.

  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU DO, TOO.

  NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU’LL BE TOO USEFUL

  AND HE’LL DO THE FUCKING SAME TO YOU.

  Rabbit-Rabbit

  Marta teaches me during late brunch on Saturday that saying rabbit-rabbit on the first day of the month is good luck. I go to see Milorad after brunch. He is cleaning the pool house with music playing.

  “Rabbit-rabbit,” I say.

  “Yes, you say this also like Marta.”

  “Is this Serbian pop music?”

  “It is from Italy. I like her voice. She is also pretty,” he answers.

  I go to Brutus’s cage and he’s running on the wheel in there. I wonder if he knows I know. He stops and looks at me in a way that makes me wonder if he can read minds.

  Shit.

  I never really thought about how much Finch would know if she’s able to run around this house as a rat. It’s like having a stalker. Or something creepier. Makes me want to hide everything I own. Brutus continues to stare at me, standing completely still on the wheel. If I’m to be honest, I’m a little afraid for my life.

  “Can you help with this?” Milorad asks. He is trying to move the couch by himself.

  When I stand up and brush my pants off, I notice Brutus is able to walk through the tiny cage door and saunter away, and while he does, his head is turned to look at me.

  Ask Milorad Why He Doesn’t Lock Brutus’s Cage Sometime

  “I cannot lock the animal inside the cage fully. Never fully,” Milorad says.

  I look at the cage. It’s a bird sort of cage. Any rat could squeeze through the bars. I never noticed that before. In all these years. “He goes in willingly?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t stay in there all day?”

  “I am not here, but no, I do not think it stays.”

  “So all this time Marta’s been chasing the rat, it’s because it’s just a rat who gets to roam free?” I ask.

  “Like a squirrel,” Milorad says. “But inside.”

  “Huh,” I say. “But you feed him.”

  “Homemade.”

  “No wonder he comes back.”

  “Yes,” he answers. “It is no wonder.”

  “Where did you buy a rat, anyway?”

  He laughs a little. “I did not buy this rat,” he says.

  We sit and stare as the rat eats one of Milorad’s chicken-and-spelt treats.

  “That time you were chasing it with a brick?” I ask.

  “I once killed a rat with a brick. In my mother’s kitchen,” he says.

  There is awkward quiet.

  Then: “I cannot lock it up, but I cannot kill it. I nourish it. Yet it still shits on my floor and eats my food off the counter. I am allowed to be mad when the rat eats my food.”

  More awkward quiet.

  “Can you tell me about what’s going on around here?” I ask.

  Milorad quickly shakes his head no—as if he’s afraid. His hands are shaking.

  “Are you afraid of the rat?” I ask.

  He blinks twice.

  “You are,” I say. I look at Brutus, still munching. He is farm-rat black. Nothing special. “There’s a reason you chose him and a reason he chose you.”

  Station Six Mixtapes

  It’s very difficult to sit next to Mother and watch her watch the mixtapes. The “Everyone Hates Mina” mixtape—a history of the shit-talking—is devastating, and she cries.

  “I can’t watch anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “I had no idea this was happening.”

  “Not even after he locked you in?”

  “I trusted him. He lives off my money. He says he’s holding down the fort.”

  “He makes Finch do a lot of the dirty work,” I say, thinking it might console her.

  “Finch is quite willing,” she answers. She sighs. Stands up. Stretches. “Let’s take a walk.”

  We walk to the dining room, where Mother gets in the capsule and says, “Once I go, you call a carriage and follow me.” I nod, noting her use of the word carriage. Makes it sound perfectly Victorian, as if all this was rational and the height of fashion.

  When I arrive at Station Six, the station guide says, “Ah, Jane. Welcome back.” She presses a button on her tablet that rotates my capsule and opens the door. She leans down and sticks her hand out. “Up you get!”

  I stand up and then climb out of the track. She presses something on her tablet again and sends the capsule along, then points over to Mother, who is on the platform, talking to two station guides. I walk over.

  “Jane, this is Louisa and Birgitta,” she says.

  I introduce myself and ask the name of the woman who just helped me out—the one with the cheese tattoo. Mother says, “Liesel.”

  She takes my hand and walks me over a little bridge that spans the tracks and we sit down, cross-legged, in the corner of the sparkling white station. She starts to tell me the story of how the System works.

  This is what I learn: You never see the women in the capsules ahead of you or behind you. You are always delivered on time to the place you’re supposed to go. The station guides know best, even though they got their job by some man thinking they were truly useless.

  The fuel of the System is the mega fans—banks of fans that pump air to move the capsules—located in discreet areas on lands belonging to Reclaimers. At the helm of the System are the station guides, who are magic. Most are also Reclaimers, Mother tells me. “After all, they’re the only ones with the power to shuttle us around, so we had to make sure we had them first. Wasn’t hard. Not only are they women, but they are, like many women, exploited at work. Many of them are volunteers.”

  There are grown women who don’t know about the System—and a way about them that makes them seem naïve or rejected. As if they weren’t picked for the kickball team or marriage. A feeling of childish superiority to make up for the obvious: they are not useful. This is not known to them, but they feel it the way a person knows a surprise party is coming—even if no one has told them.

  “Louisa says that you must return in an hour. I want to tell you more but I trust you read the booklet?”

  “Yes. I have questions,” I say.

  She nods.

  “How do we reclaim it?”

  “We already are,” she says. “We’ve been reclaiming it for years.”

  “When will you be free?”

  “On your birthday.”

  My face lights up. I frown again. “Will you stay home?”

  “I have to finish touring, but after that, yes.”

  “Are you—are you, uh—” I exhale through loose lips, cheeks blown out in frustration of not finding the words. “Like, are you, uh, scared?”

  She looks up to the ceiling. “Like—for my life?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sighs. “Not really, no.”

  “Marta and Milorad will protect you. And us.”

  “That’s not your job,” she says.

  I wait. I think. I say, “I spent my life treating you like shit because I was rewarded to do so. And because it kept me safe. Same as you stayed safe inside this—this System. Protecting you is my number one job now.”

  “Being seventeen is your number one job now. Just trust me.”

  “You seem so confident,” I say. I want to add but you don’t know everything. I do.

  “I have no other choice. I have to get my life back. I’m so sorry you’ve had to hear all that terrible garbage about how crazy I am. I’m not, you know.”

  “I know. I’m sorry I had to show you. I wasn’t sure how much you knew.”

  “Try to have compassion for your father. He was raised in the patriarchy and was never allowed to grow a heart or a warm place in his chest for himself.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “Fair. But the patriarchy harms men as much as it harms women. They live in a delusional world where they are in charge and sexual royalty, when in reality, they have little power and are often disinterested in sex,” she says. “My great-aunt Lily could tell you stories. Rodney was a tyrant because he didn’t want anyone to love him. Or even touch him. Then they twist it all to be our fault, when really it’s the fault of the System they invented in the first place. This is why I like being in a band. No one is in charge. We’re all in charge. And we change the rules as we need to. That’s how life and government are supposed to work. But nothing works now. The Systems of oppression broke the whole world, I guess.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you ever stop making excuses for him? Because he makes none for you and wishes you dead.”

  She looks me right in the eye for a whole ten seconds. “Shit,” she says.

  We sit in silence watching women shuttle through and station guides tap on the screens of their little tablets.

  I ask, “Do all the women in here—are they all escaping like you did?”

  “In one way or another, yes. We’ve made the best of a shitty situation, I suppose.”

  “Seems sad,” I say.

  “I want to read your punk opera,” she says.

  “I have to finish it first,” I answer.

  We get up and walk back over the bridges to Liesel, the cheese lover. She puts Mother in a capsule first and sends her back to Safe House. Then me, back to my bedroom.

  Mother told me I couldn’t visit tomorrow because she’d be away. I spend the weekend reading the opera and trying to figure out the ending. I have no idea how the characters will really free Mother, same as in real life.

  SEVENTEEN

  Today is Monday, March 3, 2025

  Mother is in the kitchen at 6:00 a.m. for breakfast, just as she promised on Saturday, but she’s in the System, the meal attachment affixed to the front.

  “Happy birthday!” she and Marta say in unison. Marta comes in for a hug. I walk over to the System and fist-bump Mother.

  “I’ll be out later,” she says. “This is for show.”

  “To old times!” Marta says, raising her coffee cup.

  Henry arrives, still in his pajamas and half asleep. Marta sits him down and she serves us all porridge and toast.

  “Happy birthday,” Henry says. “I feel terrible. I didn’t get you anything.”

  “You’re more than enough.” I ruffle his already-ruffled hair.

  “What did you want for seventeen?” Mother asks. “I don’t think you said.”

  “I want you out of there,” I say. “That’s all.”

  She answers, “But how about a laptop so you can keep writing the opera?”

  “Opera?” Henry says.

  I motion to everyone be quiet. “It’s quite against the rules,” I say.

  “Rules.” Mother nods. “Which ones does the opera break, exactly?”

  “All of them,” I say. “Except for Number Six, though I’d argue that my writing an opera somehow breaks the no-leaving-the-property rule because I leave in my mind.”

  Mother looks surprised. “There’s a numbered list?”

  Henry begins to recite it sleepily. When he gets to the rules specifically pertaining to Mother, her face blanches. I know what it’s like to get information later than everyone else. Her face is a waterfall of that. Layer upon layer of trying to understand why any father would tell his children to ignore their mother, screaming in a tube in the same room.

  Let me show you.

  Home Movie—01.15.2019

  Mother is in the tube in the study. She is standing up, her whole body pressed against the plexiglass like she’s trying to walk through it and get out. Henry and I are home from school, doing our homework.

 

  Mother had been locked in the System for three weeks at this point, since The Christmas That Changed Everything. The Christmas That Changed Everything was the Christmas she came home from the Safe House tour relaxed, happy, and quite satisfied with a successful year for her career. It was also the year Vernon found her giggling on the floor with me and Henry on Christmas afternoon and by evening, he’d badgered her into System. She walked in, with a playful pout on her face as if this was his old game. Three weeks later, he still hadn’t let her out.

 

  “Stop it, Jane!” Vernon yells, because I am looking at Mother.

  Minutes later, “Stop it, Jane!”

  “Henry, you too!”

  Mother stands, pressed against the plexiglass.

  “Jane!” he says, a few minutes later. I am ten years old. My mother is locked in a tube. I can’t help but look at her.

  “Why don’t you put her in another room?” Henry asks.

  “Because her punishment is to watch us do great things,” Vernon answers. “Without her.”

 

  I wanted to point out that doing fourth grade homework isn’t necessarily doing great things. Didn’t seem the time.

 

  We finish our homework and Vernon leaves the room, and Mother starts pounding on the plastic tubing. I go over to her and put my hands on the plastic. She puts hers up to mine and we lock eyes.

  “Stop it,” I say. “You’re going to get in more trouble.”

  “JANE!”

  Vernon walks to me and grabs me by the arm and practically drags me out of the room. Henry sits in his chair and stares at Mother, then gives a weak, paranoid wave. He is seven and the only homework first graders got that day was a sheet to color and he colored the entire sheet blue. The whole thing is blue. He is so proud of it, he holds it up for Mother to see.

 

  I never did stop looking at her that week. By the next week, Rule Number Eight was made and I was grounded to my room on three occasions.

  Balloons

  When I arrive in the bathroom for eyeliner conversations, Gretchen is holding three Mylar birthday balloons. “Seventeen!” she and KZ and Porter yell when I arrive.

  Hugs ensue. They got me a bento box filled with cake that looks like sushi. I eat it at lunch, where they make the whole table sing to me. I go to the nurse afterward because of how emotional it makes me. I think of my last birthdays. All sixteen of them. The nurse lets me lie down on one of her cots. I didn’t lie to her. I could throw up right now, thinking of my past birthdays. Except my fifth, when I got a xylophone and Marta made my cake the shape of a unicorn.

  I take stock of my life, there on the cot. I am in actual school. I got a solid B on a biology test and the teacher seems impressed with me. I’m doing okay in geometry, too. I have no idea how I’m managing this, but I am and I’m proud. Vernon’s prediction that I’d be back in the study pretending he is a teacher turned out to be wrong, which makes me see that all of his predictions could have been wrong. Maybe everything he ever said was wrong. A lie to God. Garnish to make him look better on a plate. Maybe I’m not so hard to love after all.

  Marlon gives me a small note for my birthday during library study hall. Dear Jane, If ever you decide to try us dudes out, call me first! 717-555-2244. I hug him for it even though it’s kinda stupid—just to make the other guys in study hall curious.

  As I walk toward the car to meet Milorad, Mylar balloons swaying as I pass each bus and the breeze rushing through the gap, someone yells, “Happy birthday, Jane!” from a bus window. It causes a cascade of happy birthdays from the crowd outside the front doors. I get emotional again. I wish I could get rid of this—whatever it is. It’s like I have some kind of birthday grief.

  When I get to the car, I’m surprised to find Marta driving.

  “Hi!”

  “Hi,” I say, stuffing the balloons into the back seat of the car.

  “You good?” she asks.

  I sit and put my seat belt on. “Yeah. It’s just cold. Sometimes my eyes water.”

  I open the glove compartment for a tissue. When I pull out the tissue box that Milorad keeps in there, a letter, folded in three, falls out and onto my foot. I see the same logo from the Quick Start Guide and pry it open enough to see the heading.

  Vernon Cook

  1111 Spruce Street

  February 6, 2025

  RE: ACCOUNT SUSPENSION