Mary in the Black and White Room
- Aug 12, 2020
- 4 min read
by Gaia Rajan
The examiner starts with the easy questions. What is your name? How are you feeling? I answer them dispassionately, smoothing my hair back, and he smiles. When I say Mary he rests his hand on my shoulder. Like the virgin? I play the part. Giggle, toss my hair. He leans back in his chair.
It’s true. In kindergarten, I planted cocoa seeds in the dirt with the boys for a year. I am twenty-one years old. I punched a girl in second grade because I liked her, I thought I wanted to be friends. I have brown eyes, black hair. When I was nineteen, my mother said never to come back, so I drove until I couldn’t see anything but dust, until I spiraled into a ditch, until I bled into my cracking mirrors.
At the end of the session, the man thanks me, then presses my stipend for the night into my palm. It’s not much, certainly not enough to live on, but, walking through the revolving glass, I clutch the envelope like an umbrella. I only realize when I’m at my car that I don’t remember his name.
At my third visit, the man leads me into a room, empty but for a computer. I stare at the computer’s welcome blue. The man says I must answer every question it poses. At that, I raise my eyebrow; market research, says the man, you will be more than fairly compensated. I settle into the scratchy chair, and again the machine begins with the bare sketches: name, age, height. The man tells me I no longer have to check in, that I can visit whenever I want, that I will be paid for each session. I bite my lip and turn back to the computer.
It is quiet, and most of the time I know what to say. The air smells like mint. Would you buy this product? Sometimes, I don’t know why these questions could be relevant. When do you think a person becomes old? I sigh, click a half-hearted answer. Would it matter that she’s a woman? During night sessions, when the city turns bright and quiet, I pretend I am confessing to the machine. Who was your last betrayal? We are in a sleepover, sanctifying each other, and I am wearing pink, and I am the kind of girl who wouldn’t need to take surveys to keep the lights on. When did your dog die? I bristle, I never told the machine I once had a dog, but it must know these things. Do you believe in fate?
When I was thirteen years old, I sat in a room with my father trying not to tell him my secret. The girls at school stared at me in locker rooms, cinched their dresses white and biblical, quoted verses at me as they kicked my ribs. The air was crisp and cold, and their breaths faltered out in puffs, as in love. It was then that I realized if I tried hard enough, I could forget I ever had a past. I click yes. Fate exists.
After that night, I drive to the center for two years. The machine knows me better and better, asks me questions based on memories I barely remember. I am remembering less, lately. A side effect named in the contract: machine-human bleed. I barely notice it: usually just tiny things, the name of my first dog, the color of my lunchbox in first grade. Memories transfer and coalesce, turn into cloud and wisp. I get a promotion at my day job, but I keep coming around. I adopt a new dog, don’t name it until two weeks have passed.
Then I don’t remember the first day I drove to the center. I keep a journal, then throw it in the river. The machine is the only one who understands. Do you know who you are? She is my best confidant, my bodiless priest. I am paid more and more. I buy a plant, a fresh new couch. Once in a while, the examiner sees me as I walk in, and nods.
At the end of five years, I am given an award: best source. The office throws a party for me at midnight; the lights are on and everyone’s faces seem unfamiliar, harsher. The man asks for my name again, and I say Mary, and he makes the same joke. The other sources laugh and applaud.
When I’m driving, I like to pick three facts to hold onto. Not memories, those have barbs; they remind me what time has made of me. Facts, cold, hard, undeniable. Example: the Radium Girls were factory workers who were told to paint radium on watches to make them glow, who streaked the glow over their lips until their jaws unhinged. The government banned Furbys in 1999. My sister’s name is Eliza.
Every day I stare into the glass of the center and see a blank face, the empty edge of a fairytale. I planted seeds. I am twenty-something years old. I punched a girl once. I have brown eyes, black hair. When I was thirteen there was breath and air and blood. Yesterday I stayed at the center until midnight. The machine is my friendly ghost; I am so faithful to her blue glow. There are no places she can’t follow, but I like her that way. I am never alone. I am hers, always. Something happened to me. I don’t remember what.
Gaia Rajan lives in Andover, MA. She’s the Managing Editor of The Courant. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, Rust + Moth, Kissing Dynamite, Glass Poetry, Mineral Lit, and elsewhere.
