Interview with a Clone Chapter 6

Interview with a Clone Chapter 6

Alice tried to really run far away from home only once.
“She was seven going on 25” as Susan would say (Alice called her Mom Susan).
Alice felt left out of the 8th birthday party for Georgia’s daughter, Katie.
Katie’s friends all attended public school, native Bahamians, hip to the streets.
Mainstream, homogenous, they looked and dressed all the same. A person could blend in with the crowd.
There is a comfort in that. Alice was however forever isolated by her origins.
Before Alice was 5 she was desribed as

Unique,
Special,
Unusual,
Or some thought a
Novelty,
Grotesque,
Demonic,
Possessed,
Hollow,
Soul-less,
Unfeeling,
Robot.
“enough!” Alice said internally, that string of names running through her mind
As she sat alone in the Wolf’s Den, that dark stifling crawl space where they kept the Christmas decorations, old dishes and moth eaten blankets. Alice rolled up old blankets and propped them up like her babies.
All alike. All the same.
They told her to go down to the beach, to run away from this party of strangers.
She left a note:
Dear Susan,
It is obvious that I do not belong here.
Alice.

She tucked the note under the top dish in the pile, being careful not to clank it. She kissed goodbye each of the tattered pretend dolls. She gave a silent speech, finger pointing, head nodding, turning, as if to the crowds.
“Welcome to my homeland, the Bahamas. This is the infamous Wolf’s Den, home base for

Alice Karma,
The first clone in the history of man (Alice really did not know what a clone really was at this point, just that it meant being different and she was not supposed to know.)
She tidied up the makeshift table and laid the pretend rag dolls down on their sides. “Sleep tight”, she would say to them, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” (That is what her grandmother used to say. How did she remember that?)

She had to time her exit carefully. She had to slip out without being noticed and she had a little practice doing that. Often Susan or more likely Georgia would be calling out for Alice to come out. Usually she was hiding in the Wolf’s Den where she was easily apprehended once the fun wore off.

Today, she was determined. “I will run away, “ she mouthed the words with a barely audible whisper.

She grabbed some candy from her little nightstand drawer, an umbrella (no rain, yet could serve as shelter and a weapon.), a photo of her Mom Susan when she graduated from West Point, and an extra pair of underwear.
Once safely outside, she hustled towards the edge of the dunes. Her golden hair camouflage in the tall waving beach grasses.
On the beach, Alice skipped lightly at first, dodging shells and seaweed, glancing over her shoulder at times to see if anyone was following.
Her foot steps slowed to a cantor, then became more labored,
The glances over her shoulder became longer looks, and she found herself wondering how far she had gone.
Is she lost? None of this looks familiar.
A panic set in and she almost did not go on.
Still her stubbornness,
A clone of Susan’s stubbornness,
Innate in the make up of this child.
She did not turn back and went on at a defiant crawl
Head pointed straight forward at a lean into the headwinds.
She was feeling the breeze. A chill in the air.
Then a shock,
Her foot kicked it….

 Suddenly,
Alice dropped everything.
Her lower jaw fell slack.

Alice found the little girl’s tattered broken body
Washed up ashore,
The girl asleep, cool, wet and soiled.

Alice began to scream,
As loud as she could,
One long piercing high sustained
Blood curdling scream.

No one could hear her.
The waves crashing ashore.

Alice gasped for air,
And screamed again,
Eerily higher pitched,
Desperate,
Frantic,
Alice’s skin shivering and cold.

She realized they could not hear her.
She was too far away.
This girl, what to do?
She shook the girl and told her to awaken.

 

The girl vomited sea water and Alice turned her
As she had seen the rescuers do on the beaches.
She coughed and sputtered and drew a big breath
All in a deep gasp.

Alice looked at the little girl and the little girl looked at her,
Dazed and lethargic, gaining awareness slowly with each subsequent breath.
Alice said in her most proper polite Bahamian English,

“Hello young lady, my name is Alice Karma.”