“I don’t need a written order,” he snaps. “I can take anything that can be spared.”
Why is he suddenly angry?
“You’ve got plenty from us already,” I insist. Now I’m getting angry too, though I realize an argument is only going to put my family at a disadvantage. Calm the man, I tell myself. Flatter him. “But you’re right, Officer Hermes, you can do anything you please. May I suggest that today’s not the day for oven grills? Tomorrow maybe?”
He regards me skeptically. Perhaps my motherly authority daunts him or my disdain shows or he simply wants me to respond to his male charm, whatever that might be. With a determined grimace, he stoops into the open oven, pulls out the racks, one after the other—almost with a flourish—then tucks them under one arm.
I watch the children watching him, their pale lips compressed in anguish and anger.
Hermes draws himself up and seems to suppress a smirk as he regards us. “This will suffice,” he says curtly.
I slap him hard across the face. He drops the grills—they clatter like applause—then he’s reeling. He falls back onto Nadia, my twins Thom and Sara, little Pierce, and Spence. They yelp in panic. Pierce and Sara begin to bawl. Sprawled on the floor, my children squirming out from under him, Hermes looks stricken and disoriented.
Why I start weeping at this point is complicated. I’ve never respected women who resort easily to tears. I usually have a tremendous reserve of patience. In this instance, however, I feel thoroughly shamed by my loss of control. How will this act of violence affect my children?
They gather around me to offer comfort. It’s all right, they murmur. It’s gonna be fine. The kinds of things I’ve murmured to them.
“Where’s my helmet?” Hermes demands. He’s on his feet again. The dark pink imprint of half my hand flares from his clean-shaven cheek. He seems more disoriented than angry, turning from side to side to find his helmet, which one of the children has taken.
I surface for a breath, desperate to salvage this moment. I tell myself that somehow all of us will forget this ever happened. It’s over, right? Ignore the handprint on the Officer’s face. There’s scrap to gather and sort.
“I want my helmet NOW,” Hermes commands.
I nod for the children to comply. Del holds out the battered pot. Hermes snatches it from him, then fits it back onto his handsome head. “Let’s go,” he says to me.
I look at him in puzzlement.
“Do you want me to handcuff you?” he warns.
“You don’t have handcuffs,” I counter.
“I could get them,” he says. “You want me to get them? It will add to the charges.”
“What charges?”
“Insubordination, assaulting an officer of the President’s Militia, withholding assistance—“
“Oh, come on,” I interrupt. “I got emotional for a moment. How’s your face?”
“It hurts!” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Really. Nadia, get a wet rag for the Officer’s face.”
“I don’t want a wet rag!” he says bitterly. “You’re under arrest.”
“You can’t arrest me!” I tell him. “I have fourteen children!”
“You should have thought of that before you struck me,” he says.
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“I’m NOT joking. Let’s go!”
He reaches for my left arm. I pull away. Nadia steps forward and says, “Don’t touch her or we’ll kill you and bury you in the basement.” She looks like she means it.
Hermes picks up the oven grills as if to use them for protection.
He says, “I don’t want to hear another word from anybody—you kids keep clear. Your mother is under arrest.”
My children wail their protests and rush forward in grief.
Hermes waves them off with his grills. “Let’s not have an accident,” he warns me. “Tell them to back off.”
I do as he commands. I pull on my cotton coat and he escorts me out. I call for the four oldest to take care of the rest. I assure them that I will be back shortly. They stand on the stoop of our row-house and wave good-bye, many of them bawling. It’s an overcast February afternoon, chilly but not snowing yet. This morning the children and I found a ruined couch whose stuffing we salvaged to burn in our fireplace. It comforts me to think that they will have heat tonight.
The neighbors have stepped out to see what has happened. They call to me, “Where you going, Penelope?”
“I’m arrested,” I answer.
“For striking an Officer,” Hermes adds.
“Penelope wouldn’t do that!” one of them protests.
“She would and she did!” he says. “Look at my face!”
“There’s nothing wrong with your face,” another says.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
This shuts them up. I try to pretend that my leaving is a game or that Hermes is trying only to teach me a lesson and soon will let me go. But after we have walked more than a mile—past the gutted school my children used to attend, then the twenty-foot-tall bronze monument of our President gripping a dead mocking bird in one upheld hand, and then a group of women and children warming their hands near the flames of a ruined Minotaur roadster—I realize that he’s serious. He’s taking me to Home Base.
He walks so fast I nearly have to trot to keep up with him.
detail of The Man’s statue
A fan of baseball, the President named his government buildings after elements of the game: First, Second, Third, Center, and so on. This was in the nineties when the dot. com boom made everything seem possible. We thought our new president was showing a sense of humor, loosening things up. Home Base used to be known as the Ministry of Interior Affairs, where the secret police—later known as Umps—make their home. It’s a tall building of black glass. The Revolutionary Militia has promised to raze it first thing after they take over.
When I see the black silhouette of Home Base in the distance, amid a forest of similar but less menacing highrises, I feel something break inside me, as if my liver has ruptured and the heat of its damage has started spreading through my gut and rising to my heart. This is panic, I decide.
I fight to keep my voice steady as I declare again: “I have fourteen children, Hermes!”
“Why should I care about that?” he says.
“Because children are our future.” I stop walking. To my surprise, he stops too. Then he then turns to look at me finally, his pale face paler in the growing gloom.
“Fuck the future,” he says. “I have no future.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I mean that. Why do you think you’re any different?”
“Because I have fourteen children!”
“What makes you think you’ll ever see them again?”
“That’s a cruel thing to say,” I scold. “You’ve made your point. Now let me go home.”
“You’re under arrest,” he reminds me.
“What do you hope