Childhood Theme Analysis

Maá tells me never to look too closely at the food, and whenever I find flies or worms, she says I’m extra lucky because they give me protein. Once I even found a human tooth in my rice. ‘Hey, Maá, is this lucky too?’ I asked, and Maá looked at it and said, ‘If you needing tooth.’ She laughed a long time at her own joke. Longer than it was really worth, in my opinion.

The first thing Harvey does when new kids arrive is to learn their names so that he can talk with us for real, and instead of talking to us by our numbers. Most people have their Boat ID as their number. Maá is NAP-24 and Queeny is NAP-23. But I was born in here, so I have a different ID. DAR-1, that’s me. The 1 is because I was the first baby ever born here. But Harvey, he won’t use those numbers, not even when he’s supposed to.

I ask Harvey about the water running out, but he just shrugs and says, ‘Too late now, Subhi, it’s already half full. What’s up? You don’t want a swim?’

I don’t say that I like toilets that can flush more, or that tomorrow is my shower day and you can’t have a shower without water. I don’t say, because my skin is aching, waiting to jump in that cool. And hearing that water makes me thirst even worse than before, especially knowing I can’t sneak even a drop because the tank water makes you sick.

But Harvey thinks of everything, and seeing my look he points to his bag, full to the top with water bottles. Harvey’s great like that. I make sure not to drink too much so there’s enough to go around.

But until then I keep on at Maá every night, asking her for a story. Just a single one. Because sometimes, in here, when people stop talking, and stop asking, and stop remembering, that’s when they start to lose that piece of themselves. That’s when their brains start to mush. It happens a lot.

Even though Maá doesn’t hear my asking any more, I keep trying, without even thinking on an answer. I keep asking every night, because if I don’t...

And something happens to those men when they live all together like that, without their families, without being able to work or learn or do anything, having to listen to the Jackets and their jangling keys all the time. It changes a person, Eli says. Some of those men can be real mean to a kid when they want to be.

I can see all that working its way through Eli’s brain, just the same way it’s working its way through mine, because both of us saw what happened to that boy when he’d eventually been let into Family. By then, it was too late, is all. After he tried to bleed himself out on the fence, they moved him to Ford, his brain so mushed that he wasn’t even really there.

Writing does lie. It lies all the time.

I told those boys to jam it. I told those boys that they could beat me with sticks as much as they wanted and I still wouldn’t kill a thing. I told those boys that they weren’t worth spit and then I went and broke all their traps so they’ll never build them again.

Except I didn’t. Except I couldn’t. I don’t tell Eli. And after, when I wiped that blood and fur off my hands and on to the dirt, the rats, all hidden in the shadows, watched me and shook their heads and turned away.

Nasir says he doesn’t mind so much about his leg. He says it is worse for people like Fara, who is deaf and had her hearing aid taken, so that now she can’t hear the memories people tell each other to keep themselves alive in here. Or the ones like Remi, who needs medicine every day and had that taken away by the Jackets, and even the letter from his doctor was destroyed. Remi has these fits and headaches that make him scream so hard it cuts through your thinking. He says all he needs is his medicine. ‘I thought you would help me.’ He says that over and over again. I don’t know who he’s talking to, though.

‘Subhi. I don’t want it to end. I want this to last.’

I hand back that book without another word. I get it. I don’t want my ba’s stories to ever end either. ‘Good thing you don’t know them then,’ the duck says quietly. ‘They can’t end if they never start.’ He thinks he’s being funny.

Then Queeny pulls out a camera. A real camera. The only cameras I’ve ever seen were when the newspaper guys came and took a big photo of all of us in here, waiting. I was right at the front and smiling, which Queeny said was stupid because we weren’t meant to be happy. I told her I was happy, though, and then she said something so quiet and low that I couldn’t make out the words. I didn’t ask her to repeat it.

‘You don’t get it, Subhi,’ Queeny says. ‘It’s so the Outside will remember us.’

When I don’t answer, she shakes her head at me. ‘That’s why we’re all dumped out here in the bum end of nowhere, Subhi. So everyone forgets us. Don’t you see? This way, we don’t even exist.’

Queeny says that kind of stuff a lot. And she thinks I’m the stupid one.

I never used to know what Queeny meant when she said that, about being invisible. But then I think of Eli and I think of Nasir, and I think of the different I feel when Jimmie is here. Like someone is really seeing me, really listening. I haven’t felt like that before. So when Queeny asks me if I understand, I do. And I wonder if maybe that’s how everyone is feeling. I wonder if maybe that’s the sad angry sick that’s all over the place and funking up the air.

And I wish I didn’t understand, because understanding doesn’t fix it. Understanding just makes it worse.

Jimmie wants to ask more. Wants to find out how they can help, so that no one has to sew their lips together. Wants to know why they have been locked up in there for so long. Why no one is listening. Why it is illegal for people to try to save their families. Why it is illegal to want to live. Jimmie wants to know.

But her dad has already slid the paper across the table and is flicking through to the sports pages.

Queeny says they only do it so that I shut up for a bit and stop pestering them for more stories. She reckons the only time I’m ever quiet is when I’m being told a story. But Queeny doesn’t get it. I need these stories. Everyone else in here has memories to hold on to. Everyone else has things to think on to stop them getting squashed down to nothing. But I don’t have memories of anywhere else, and all these days just squish into the same. I need their stories. I need them to make my memories.

Harvey says that drawing down the stories for the oldies is important. He says it’s like I’m making the oldies their very own blanket to wrap themselves up in and keep them warm and safe.

‘A knife?’ the duck says. He doesn’t believe me, I can tell. ‘How would anyone get a knife in here?’

‘Through the packages I guess. The stuff of kings.’

The duck looks at me again and says, ‘Why would a king want a knife?’

‘To cut stuff, né?’

‘Pah,’ the duck says.

‘What would you know? You’re just a stupid duck.’

So much for a problem shared. The duck is just making it worse.

That Shakespeare duck looks at me then, and raises one eyebrow the way Maá used to when Queeny and I riled her up with our arguing. ‘What would you know? You’re just a stupid boy. In some countries in the world, ducks are kings, you know.’

Then we both smile and I tell the duck he’s quackers and we smile even more.

All the little rats who are too scared to go into the Space watch me, their noses quivering to see what happens next. I tell them that when I get back, I’ll tickle their stomachs for them, each and every one, and give them chocolate every chance I get. I tell them I’m sorry for their baby.

I don’t run. I walk. Just like Jimmie did. Straight ahead to the perimeter fence. [...]

Then I’m under and those rats and cheering and clapping their paws together and some are even whistling their congratulations.

The whale raises his head so his eyes are level with mine, and in the whale’s eye I see exactly what I have to do. For Eli. So everyone everywhere can feel that ache, fierce and strong. So no one ever forgets.

Queeny is wrong. We do exist. Eli existed. And now he’s gone. And everyone needs to know, to feel that pain tearing at them, even if just for a bit. Just so they know that once there lived a Limbo kid named Eli, and he had something important to do.

I scream out my tears now, and the sea thrashes and the Night Creatures are screeching, whirling and heaving themselves in and out of the water. All the little fish roll on to their backs and pop up to the surface of the sea, their eyes cloudy, their gills still.

‘It’s Ba’s,’ she says. ‘It’s his poems. It’s the last treasure.’ She touches the cover of the book with the very tips of her fingers. The way she says it makes me understand.

My treasures didn’t come from the Night Sea at all. Or from my ba. My treasures came from Queeny. Somehow that makes them even more special.