Unclaimed: The Memoirs of Jane E, Friendless Orphan, #1

Author’s Note

Regarding Unclaimed: Jane E, Friendless Orphan—Book 1

I received my first iPhone in 2010.  My first thought upon using the touchscreen was, Well, crap.  There goes Jane_E. That’s the danger of writing at the future, I suppose: there’s a very good chance you’ll find yourself wrong before you die.  

Strangely, it was a comfort being wrong about something.  All the thing’s I’d been right about—the burgeoning of bioterror, the spread of war and poverty across the globe, the ways in which they spread, our ever-widening psychic disconnect with biology—all had hit a little too close for my comfort in the years since I’d first let this Jane’s story hit daylight.   

There is additional comfort in being wrong. The whole point of writing the 2006 edition of Jane_E, Friendless Orphan: A Memoir was to show that a poor orphan whose sole possession is integrity still has a lesson to teach us, living in an age of unparalleled material comforts.  We will always need her strength.  We will always need her honesty.  We will always need her depth of self.  Whether she hears the grinding of stagecoach wheels on gravel, the roar of a spaceship, or the gentle thump and swish of fingertips against a touchscreen, we will always need Jane Eyre.  

Erin McCole Cupp

July 2016

CHAPTER 1

I should have known the fight was coming before it began.  I should have seen the signs. 

The mid-November afternoon brand of southern California sun slanted into the VanDeer's family room, but I, my dear reader, stood apart from its color and warmth.  In the yard beyond, sprinklers only the rich could afford popped out of sod in which only the self-important would invest, brute-forcing green in this sea-blasted desert. 

Inside, the VanDeers—in order of birth:  mother, one son, and two daughters—sat on the couch, loose-jawed and glaze-eyed before their favorite netcast novella.  Mrs. VanDeer had scheduled off for her children's online schooling service that day.  Now they were free to watch the rerun marathon leading up to the conclusion of Xochitl's Xaga. 

There was no room on their couch for me.  I wasn't wanted there.  I leaned against the family room's entryway and watched the VanDeers ignoring me—mostly.  Every few seconds, Clint, the boy, would lift his middle finger at me.  The third time he did that, I knotted my arms, and the state-issue HandRight I used for school jabbed my bony hip through the pocket of my uniform jumper.  This reminded me of the dictionary letter I hadn't finished reading on the bus ride home.  I slipped away from the VanDeers in search of solitude in this, their house. 

I wandered into the formal living room, past the foyer rack that held our hats and veils.  The windows darkened their tint, deflecting the brunt of the sun's uncontrolled heat.  Accordingly, the living room lights rose to their programmed level, draping Mrs. VanDeer's collection of Cherished Hours figurines in a warm glow of rosy adoration.  The figurines festooned shelves on the walls, an antique curio cabinet, and the lace runner-topped coffee table.

I crawled under the table, belly-down upon the frost-blue, knuckle-deep carpet.  I pulled out my HandRight (forgive me, reader, for treating trademarked names as common nouns, but I'm sure you do the same).  I did not need the HR's mirrorshell to curve up, because I had no three-dimensional acties to play.  Those would have cost money that the state did not have to spend on entertaining foster children.  Instead, all I had were dusty selections from the public domain:  encyclopedia entries, folk tales, classics, style manuals. 

Today I had nothing better to do than read a dictionary.  I'd arrived at the letter E.  I loved saying its big, mouth-filling words aloud:  equiponderate, exegesis, exigent.  They tasted like fresh fruit, delicacies that no one but me seemed to appreciate.  Absorbed, I was listening to and whisper-mimicking the pronunciation guide when Clint found me.  I squeaked when the toe of his shoe reached under the table and jabbed my ribs.

Ay.  Foster kid, Clint said.  Why aren't you watching the casts in the family room with the rest of us?

I saw nothing of Clint other than his soccer shoes with the retractable cleats.  I curled into the tightest ball I could form without bumping against the bottom of the table.

Because you're not part of our family, Clint gloated, his pubescent voice cracking.  That's why.

I saw his cleats emerge.  I'd been kicked with those cleats before.  On that day, Clint had told Mrs. VanDeer that my bruises were self-inflicted.  Of course Mrs. VanDeer believed him.  Why wouldn't she?  He was her flesh and blood.  I was nothing. 

Get up, Clint said. 

I obeyed, removing as much of myself as possible from the likely trajectory of those cleats.  Scurrying to the opposite side of the table, I clutched the HandRight in both hands, using my elbows for leverage against the squishy carpet.  When I finally stood before Clint, the coffee table between us, I shielded the HR by bending my shoulders inward.   

In the time it had taken me to emerge, Nancy and Jacki, the VanDeer sisters, had decided that Clint and I were more entertaining than Xochitl.  Jacki, almost her brother's height and just as mouse-haired and dun-faced, stood in the room's pointed archway, her frothy nano-grown lace sleeves folded across her narrow chest, her green eyes glittering with anticipation.  Nancy stood at her sister's elbow, looking from Clint to me to Jacki with her long-lashed China-blue eyes.  Her wheat-gold curls bounced against her stiff white collar with each jerk of her neck. 

Clint flicked a glance at his audience.  His smile curled.  He reached across and pushed my shoulder back, nearly knocking me off my feet. 

Hey, Slouchie.  You slouch like a reject cripple.

My name's not Slouchie, I said quietly.  It's Jane.

No, it's not, Slouchie, he declared, instructing his sisters, Say hi to Slouchie!

Hi, Slouchie!  Nancy giggled, waving her arms in mock welcome.  Jacki's eyes only glittered more. 

You can't change my name, I informed him with all the authority a ten year-old girl can muster when facing a bully four years her elder. 

Can too, he sneered.  I'm the man of the house.  Now give me that HR, Slouchie.  It doesn't belong to you.  My family pays taxes, so that's my family's HR.  That makes it mine.

Yeah! Nancy shouted.

Give it back, mooch, Jacki jeered.

I heard no adult footsteps approaching.  No one was coming to send me to my room in punishment for starting this mess, much less to rescue me.  There was no one to protect me but me.  I shoved the HR at Clint across the table.  He snatched it from me.  I backed away several steps. 

Clint only laughed harder.  "You know what?  I learned about Buddhists yesterday.  I learned that they were against in vitro embryo development.  That's why all the informalized countries squashed 'em.  You know what in vitro means, Slouchie?" 

Whatever answer I gave would be wrong.  I gave none. 

He needed none.  "That means unclaimed embryos like you.  Buddhists think that unnatural things like you don't have souls." 

Lip arching asymmetrically, Clint leaned in towards me.  I like that.  I think I'm gonna go join the Buddhists just so I can kill you.  It won't be murder, because you're unnatural. 

Without thinking, I said, The encyclopedia says that Buddhists were peaceful.  Would they let you become one?

Clint's eyes narrowed.  He pinched the lower corner of the HR, dense enough to hold a terabyte in those days, between his right thumb and forefinger.  He leaned backwards, pulling momentum from his body weight, his knuckles white from the weight of the HR.  Then he pitched it at me. 

I had time only to yelp in surprise and shift a few centimeters.  Instead of hitting me squarely between the eyes, where it had been aimed, its corner caught my left temple.  I sat hard on the floor, stunned, eyes swimming and ears ringing.  My brain registered the sound of the HR landing past the rug's frontier, skidding across hardwood and cracking open against the tooled baseboards in a confetti starburst of chips. 

What the—? I heard exclaimed from the family room. 

I knew the speaker to be Mrs. VanDeer.  I also knew she would blame the broken device on me, just as she would blame my kicked ribs and my swollen temple on me. 

Then a warm trickle slid down my left cheek.  I wiped at it with my palm, saw my own blood smeared there like a red flag.  I lowered my hands in shock back to the carpet, and the fury I had suppressed during my ten years of mistreatment at the VanDeers' hands shot to my extremities.  I recognized that I would fail every attempt to please or even be ignored by this family. 

I had nothing to lose. 

I launched myself at Clint VanDeer.  I screamed, kicked, clawed.  I leapt over the coffee table, scattering those miniatures in my wake, shattering them to pieces against the lace runner.  My plum-sized fists made contact with Clint's chest with high-pitched thuds.  Like a wild animal, I dug at his jacket and heard it rip.  I tackled him to the ground and began pounding and scratching at his face, jabbing my bony knees into his stomach as hard as I could. 

Clint's hands flew up, desperately covering his surprise-wide eyes.  His legs drew tight to protect his lower regions, since his short pants did not sport any of the armoring going out of fashion at the time.  All the while I howled.  I howled like an ambulance siren.  I howled for all the times I'd been the one beaten and not permitted to defend myself. 

Then I was grabbed by my scalp with one hand and by the bow of my uniform skirt's waist with another.  Mrs. VanDeer had arrived to yank me away from her whimpering son. 

Mrs. VanDeer cried in pain, grimacing, lurching forward.   

I fell to the floor, jerked back up by my hair, still retained in Mrs. VanDeer's hand.  She clutched her lumbar with the other.  Abot!  Come here, please! 

I doubt Mrs. VanDeer would have asked so nicely had voice recognition protocol not demanded such etiquette.  I squirmed to get out of Mrs. VanDeer's grasp, but that only made her tug harder.  By the time four and a half foot-tall Abot arrived, my head felt like a split coconut. 

Abot was more decorative than anthropomorphic, but her one function was that she could carry things that Mrs. VanDeer couldn't with her bad back.  Mrs. VanDeer dropped me, flailing, into Abot's lifting clamps.  Abot's grips caught me around both arms, so I kicked and snarled, trying and failing to break free. 

Dear God! Mrs. VanDeer screeched.  Is she possessed?

My guardian dusted my germs off of her hands with the antibacterial pomander hanging from the thick gold chain about her even thicker waist.  With fingernails genetically and expensively re-engineered to be perfectly pink and flawlessly sharp, she perked the foamy lace crowding about her multiple chins.  Her two-carat diamond nose stud reflected chunks of light.  Then Mrs. VanDeer's icy eyes fixed on mine with a look that made me stop and shudder.

Pointing one pink arc of a nail tip at me, her bejeweled perks keyring shining behind her knuckle, Mrs. VanDeer said, Abot, take her to the at-home capsule.  Please.

Terror even more fierce than that inspired by Clint gripped me.  NO! I screamed.  No, not the capsule!  I'll be good!  Please, no!

Thank you, Abot, that will be all, Mrs. VanDeer said, the words to send Abot on her way. 

The more I fought, the more Abot's clamps tightened.  As I was carried off, my eyes captured an image my mind would hold forever:  Mrs. VanDeer's smile a sickening rictus, as if nothing could please her more than seeing me on my way to a deathbed. 

CHAPTER 2

Abot unlocked and opened the door to the attic with her manipulating arm.  She maneuvered the clamp, still holding me fast, over her head, lifting me a total of five feet in the air.  This allowed her legs to navigate the stairs safely.  At this point I stopped my thrashing, fearful that one wrong move would tumble me out of Abot's grip, down the stairs to a broken neck.  Then, a thought came to me.  Unlikely, but worth trying.

Abot, I said in my deepest, coldest voice—geared to sound most like Mrs. VanDeer's.  Release, please.

Nothing happened.  I could not foil that voice recognition. 

My dread-inflicted paralysis gave way to trembling.  We reached the top of the stairs, and Abot turned ninety degrees.  Looking down from my near-ceiling altitude through the dimly lit cloud of swirling dust, I beheld the capsule. 

It was about seven feet tall, three feet wide, and three feet deep, edges curved all around.  It lay in state, leaned into the murkiest corner of the shadowy attic.  It was constructed in two pieces, like a vertically hinged Easter egg designed to hold a human body.  The bottom portion was of some sturdy, insulating beige polymer that reflected the low light with muted shine.  The top half was clear, so that the body placed inside could be observed during its recuperation or passing. 

Downstairs I could hear Clint crying and Mrs. VanDeer soothing him.  Foster children are always a problem, statistically, she said, never mind the tax breaks you get for having them.  What was your father thinking, expecting me to keep an unstable like her?  Everyone knows foster children are much more likely to have ADHD, PAD, SDD—

Ah, yes, the litany of disorders.  I'd heard it countless times before. 

Abot pressed a button on the capsule with her manipulation arm.  As the hinges eased open, I wondered:  why couldn't I have been adorably blond like Nancy?  Or sharp and calculating enough to pass my trouble to others like Jacki?  Or even just a boy like Clint?  Instead I was an ugly, hyper, and now violent statistic. 

Abot thrust me into the capsule and opened her clamp. I fell in a heap at the capsule's bottom.  As I righted myself, my ears rang, and my stomach heaved with dizziness.  Abot pushed the lid down, and I pressed my hands against the seam to keep it open, only to be rewarded for my troubles when it closed anyway, biting my fingers.  The capsule's seal hissed shut.  Fans began pumping in oxygen. 

Abot worked some settings while I recovered enough to pound my fists on the transparent resin lid.  Please, Abot, tell Mrs. VanDeer I'll be good!  I'll be calm and quiet, and I won't hit anyone.  Please! 

My voice seemed amplified in the tight space.  I pressed hard against the door, bracing my feet against the capsule's back.  The seal was tight.  My breath clouded the plassein for a brief second then dissipated.  I tightened my arms and smacked my open palms against the window just as a secondary locking device pulled shut with a sssssnnnnick. 

A whimper escaped my tightening throat.  Panic twinged in my fingers and toes.  Please, Abot!  I don't want to die in here like Mr. VanDeer!

The quality of the air circulating about my cramped cell began to change.  My mouth and eyes felt drier by degrees as I watched Abot bumble away.  What was that subtle, too-sweet smell? 

Please don't leave me, I begged of the void, but only with half my heart.  The air was now laced with sedatives, automatically dispersed by the capsule.  My body became medicinally soothed, but my mind remained agitated, resulting not in sedation but depression. 

Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.  The homeostatic drone of the fan filled my ears.  I slid into the rounded corner of the capsule, and my eyes drooped shut.  First I found myself in the charcoal void of sleep, but children are prone to the imaginations that help them escape the vise-grip of childhood.  I began to dream—or hallucinate. 

I now shared the capsule with a man wrapped in a brown blanket.  He had dark hair streaked with gray.  He was thin, and a tube led from the seam of the capsule into his hand.  I recognized him, but I could not remember how. 

Why are you here, little girl? he asked. 

After the briefest hesitation, I answered, I'm being punished.

For?  His voice was not unpleasant, but it had an odd rattling quality. 

My foster brother threw a computer at me, and I fought back.  Mrs. VanDeer thinks I'm trouble.  She doesn't care that Clint always hurts me.  She thinks he's perfect because he's her son, and I'm just an at-risk scientific mistake.

At this, the man sighed sadly, shaking his head.  Poor little girl.  I should have made other arrangements for you.

I didn't understand.  All I could do was say, She hates me.  I began to cry again.

She resents you.  My will said that a percentage of my legacy was to go to the support and care of Jane E, the fifth unclaimed girl from my clinic.  I had no idea she would have been so cruel to you...

I'd heard this story before but not from this point of view.  I felt my jaw drop.  I was jailed in here with the dead Mr. VanDeer!  I tried shrinking further into the corner, but there simply was nowhere else to go.  My capsule-mate put his hand on my shoulder.  I looked at his fingers.  They now were made of putrid, rotting flesh.

I looked up at his face.