Margaret Character Analysis

Being a PAO, the authorities reminded everyone, was not itself a crime. PACT is not about race, the president was always saying, it is about patriotism and mindset.

You’d have to be a lunatic, Bird had agreed, to overturn PACT. PACT had helped end the Crisis; PACT kept things peaceful and safe. Even kindergarteners knew that. PACT was common sense, really. If you acted unpatriotic, there would be consequences. If you didn’t, then what were you worried about? And if you saw or heard of something unpatriotic, it was your duty to let the authorities know. He has never known a world without PACT; it is as axiomatic as gravity, or Thou shalt not kill. He didn’t understand why anyone would oppose it, what any of this had to do with hearts, how a heart could be missing. How could you survive without your heart beating inside you?

In this country we believe that every generation can make better choices than the one that came before. Right? Everyone gets the same chance to prove themselves, to show us who they are. We don’t hold the mistakes of parents against their children.

It’s dangerous to look like him, always has been. It’s dangerous to be his mother’s child, in more ways than one. His father has always known it, has always been braced for something like this, always on a hair trigger for what inevitably would happen to his son. What he’s afraid of: that one day someone will see Bird’s face and see an enemy. That someone will see him as his mother’s son, in blood or in deed, and take him away.

Someone was always watching, it seemed: when Bird went out without a hat and stood shivering at the bus stop; when Bird forgot his lunch and his teacher asked him if his father was giving him enough to eat. There was always someone watching. There was always someone wanting to check.

Now, after all this time, he is on his way to find her. Like someone in those very stories she’d told him all those years ago. He will journey to where his mother is waiting patiently for him. As soon as she sees him, whatever spell has kept her away all this time will be broken. In the fairy tales, it happens at once, like a switch flipped: At once she recognized him. At once she knew her true self. He is certain this is how it will happen for his mother, too. She will see him and at once she will be his again and they will all live happily ever after.

Somewhere out there, you knew, wealthy people were barricaded in their fortresses, fed and warm, if not happy, but soon you stopped thinking of them. You stopped thinking about other people at all.

In the quiet of Ethan’s apartment, poems came to her like timid animals emerging after a storm.

She wrote about the hush of the city, how the pulse of it had changed, with so many people gone. About love, and pleasure, and comfort. The smell of his neck in the early morning. The warm soft den of their bed at night. About finding stillness in the whirr that had been there for so long, a quiet place in the grinding, never-ending shriek of the Crisis.

PACT: Preserving American Culture and Traditions. A solemn promise to root out any anti-American elements undermining the nation. Funding for neighborhood-protection groups to break up protests and guard businesses and stores […] Funding for new initiatives to monitor China—and new watchdog groups to sniff out those whose loyalties might be divided. Rewards for citizen vigilance, information leading to potential troublemakers. And finally, most crucially: preventing the spread of un-American views by quietly removing children from un-American environments—the definition of which was ever expanding[.]

From within, Bird kicked at her, gently this time. As if playing a game. Did the pomegranate know, she thought, did it ever wonder where they went, how they turned out. If they’d ever managed to grow. All those bits of its missing heart. Scattered, to sprout elsewhere.

The anti-American ideology was clear, which made it all the more dangerous that people were reading these poems—nearly fifty thousand copies sold so far, an unheard-of number for a book of poetry, especially from a miniscule press. […] Regardless, these poems weren’t just un-American, they were inciting rebellion. Endorsing and espousing terrorist activity. Persuading others to support insurrection. Look how many anti-PACT protests were happening.

You think you know her? he went on. They all think they know her. Everybody thinks they know her, now. You got people wearing my little girl’s face on their chests, who don’t care about her or who she was. Just using her name to justify doing what they want. She’s nothing but a slogan to them. They don’t know the first thing about her. You don’t know the first thing about her either.

Sometimes it did turn out to be nothing. If you were well connected, if you showed the proper deference, or if perhaps you had a friend in the mayor’s office or the statehouse or, even better, the federal government, if in their background investigation it turned out you’d donated money to the right groups, or perhaps if you were willing to donate money right now—well then, perhaps you could make clear that you would never instill dangerous ideologies in your child.

Over and over they came, her own words echoing back to her, not on signs or in marches this time but woven into strange happenings, things so odd—half protest, half art—that they caught people’s attention, forcing them to take note; things that unsettled them days and weeks later, knotting a tangle in the chest.

All she wants is to not let him go.

None of this matters anymore, she says.

But even as she says it, she can see his face hardening, small embers in his gaze. How, she reads in his eyes, can you look away now that you know?

So it doesn’t matter, he says, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

She does not know if it will make any difference. She does not know if anyone is listening. She is here, locked in her cabinet, drawing cat after cat, slipping them through the cracks. Unsure if they will sink even one claw into the beast outside.

But still: she turns another page and goes on.

Bird. Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.

[…]

There are so many more stories I wish I could tell you. You’ll have to ask others—your father, your friends. Kind strangers you will meet someday. Everyone who remembers.

But in the end every story I want to tell you is the same. Once upon a time, there was a boy. Once upon a time there was a mother. Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his mother loved him very much.

And he understands, then, how it’s going to go. How he’ll find her again. What he’s going to do next, alongside everything else his life will bring. Somewhere out there are people who still know her poems, who’ve hidden scraps of them away in the fold of their minds before setting match to the papers in their hands.

Being a PAO, the authorities reminded everyone, was not itself a crime. PACT is not about race, the president was always saying, it is about patriotism and mindset.

You’d have to be a lunatic, Bird had agreed, to overturn PACT. PACT had helped end the Crisis; PACT kept things peaceful and safe. Even kindergarteners knew that. PACT was common sense, really. If you acted unpatriotic, there would be consequences. If you didn’t, then what were you worried about? And if you saw or heard of something unpatriotic, it was your duty to let the authorities know. He has never known a world without PACT; it is as axiomatic as gravity, or Thou shalt not kill. He didn’t understand why anyone would oppose it, what any of this had to do with hearts, how a heart could be missing. How could you survive without your heart beating inside you?

In this country we believe that every generation can make better choices than the one that came before. Right? Everyone gets the same chance to prove themselves, to show us who they are. We don’t hold the mistakes of parents against their children.

It’s dangerous to look like him, always has been. It’s dangerous to be his mother’s child, in more ways than one. His father has always known it, has always been braced for something like this, always on a hair trigger for what inevitably would happen to his son. What he’s afraid of: that one day someone will see Bird’s face and see an enemy. That someone will see him as his mother’s son, in blood or in deed, and take him away.

Someone was always watching, it seemed: when Bird went out without a hat and stood shivering at the bus stop; when Bird forgot his lunch and his teacher asked him if his father was giving him enough to eat. There was always someone watching. There was always someone wanting to check.

Now, after all this time, he is on his way to find her. Like someone in those very stories she’d told him all those years ago. He will journey to where his mother is waiting patiently for him. As soon as she sees him, whatever spell has kept her away all this time will be broken. In the fairy tales, it happens at once, like a switch flipped: At once she recognized him. At once she knew her true self. He is certain this is how it will happen for his mother, too. She will see him and at once she will be his again and they will all live happily ever after.

Somewhere out there, you knew, wealthy people were barricaded in their fortresses, fed and warm, if not happy, but soon you stopped thinking of them. You stopped thinking about other people at all.

In the quiet of Ethan’s apartment, poems came to her like timid animals emerging after a storm.

She wrote about the hush of the city, how the pulse of it had changed, with so many people gone. About love, and pleasure, and comfort. The smell of his neck in the early morning. The warm soft den of their bed at night. About finding stillness in the whirr that had been there for so long, a quiet place in the grinding, never-ending shriek of the Crisis.

PACT: Preserving American Culture and Traditions. A solemn promise to root out any anti-American elements undermining the nation. Funding for neighborhood-protection groups to break up protests and guard businesses and stores […] Funding for new initiatives to monitor China—and new watchdog groups to sniff out those whose loyalties might be divided. Rewards for citizen vigilance, information leading to potential troublemakers. And finally, most crucially: preventing the spread of un-American views by quietly removing children from un-American environments—the definition of which was ever expanding[.]

From within, Bird kicked at her, gently this time. As if playing a game. Did the pomegranate know, she thought, did it ever wonder where they went, how they turned out. If they’d ever managed to grow. All those bits of its missing heart. Scattered, to sprout elsewhere.

The anti-American ideology was clear, which made it all the more dangerous that people were reading these poems—nearly fifty thousand copies sold so far, an unheard-of number for a book of poetry, especially from a miniscule press. […] Regardless, these poems weren’t just un-American, they were inciting rebellion. Endorsing and espousing terrorist activity. Persuading others to support insurrection. Look how many anti-PACT protests were happening.

You think you know her? he went on. They all think they know her. Everybody thinks they know her, now. You got people wearing my little girl’s face on their chests, who don’t care about her or who she was. Just using her name to justify doing what they want. She’s nothing but a slogan to them. They don’t know the first thing about her. You don’t know the first thing about her either.

Sometimes it did turn out to be nothing. If you were well connected, if you showed the proper deference, or if perhaps you had a friend in the mayor’s office or the statehouse or, even better, the federal government, if in their background investigation it turned out you’d donated money to the right groups, or perhaps if you were willing to donate money right now—well then, perhaps you could make clear that you would never instill dangerous ideologies in your child.

Over and over they came, her own words echoing back to her, not on signs or in marches this time but woven into strange happenings, things so odd—half protest, half art—that they caught people’s attention, forcing them to take note; things that unsettled them days and weeks later, knotting a tangle in the chest.

All she wants is to not let him go.

None of this matters anymore, she says.

But even as she says it, she can see his face hardening, small embers in his gaze. How, she reads in his eyes, can you look away now that you know?

So it doesn’t matter, he says, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

She does not know if it will make any difference. She does not know if anyone is listening. She is here, locked in her cabinet, drawing cat after cat, slipping them through the cracks. Unsure if they will sink even one claw into the beast outside.

But still: she turns another page and goes on.

Bird. Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.

[…]

There are so many more stories I wish I could tell you. You’ll have to ask others—your father, your friends. Kind strangers you will meet someday. Everyone who remembers.

But in the end every story I want to tell you is the same. Once upon a time, there was a boy. Once upon a time there was a mother. Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his mother loved him very much.

And he understands, then, how it’s going to go. How he’ll find her again. What he’s going to do next, alongside everything else his life will bring. Somewhere out there are people who still know her poems, who’ve hidden scraps of them away in the fold of their minds before setting match to the papers in their hands.