Free The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo Page B

the Cellar is at its darkest and the water starts to rise.
    Reminiscing about these things is painful, but it cleanses me. Everything gets all tangled up inside my head, and if I write it down it wraps up in a tidy thread, even if it is ugly black barbed wire.
    I’ve thought way too many times that everything could have been different if I had tried harder. If I had stifled my dangerous, antisocial tendencies.
    I could have at least tried to be a real eloi. Really made an effort to like the things elois like, studied them systematically. Trained. You may not like a food the first time you try it, but you can learn to like it.
    There were many times when I thought I was learning. I like beauty the way any elois would. It’s obvious to me that a bunch of flowers in a vase can make a room more colorful and pleasant. But I don’t really like merely decorative things. For an eloi, beauty and decorativeness are the same thing.
    I was interested in makeup as a child, too. It was exciting to change the way I looked by spreading different colors on different parts of my face. When you wanted and got the Femigirl Sample Pack for your birthday and let me borrow it, I had fun painting my face like a mask or putting leopard spots on my forehead. You were upset with me. I was playing it wrong. I played a lot of things wrong, even though I tried to follow your rules as well as I could.
    I sat with you and watched one television show after another that ended in marriage. “Elois” flouncing around in beautiful gowns, heavily made up, wigs on their heads, padded in the right places. They couldn’t use real elois—that would have been a real job, would have required memorizing lines, concentration, perseverance. The mascos dressed as elois on the TV shows tittered and giggled and fluttered and swung their hips and stuck out their lips and used an exaggerated caricature to show how an eloi should look and sound. I had read in one of Aulikki’s books that in old American movies, white people painted their skin black to portray Negroes. I wonder if some dark-skinned people who watched those movies thought that they were supposed to speak in simple sentences and roll their eyes and be childish and superstitious.
    I couldn’t be a real eloi because I had a horrible, selfish rebelliousness inside me that only caused trouble and sorrow later on. I know there’s absolutely nothing to envy about the depravities of a decadent democracy, but sometimes I find myself thinking that at least in a place like that nobody ever has to wonder about these things.
    I think of you every day. Every single day. I just know that I’m going to find out what happened to you. It’s the least I can do for you after all we’ve been through.
    Your sister,
    Vanna ( Vera )

SERVICE COMMENCEMENT ORDER
    Neulapää, Vanna
FN-140699-NLP
    You are ordered to appear for mating market commencement under the following terms of service:
    Mating Market Region: Northern Pirkanmaa
    First Day of Service: June 1, 2015
    Location: The Mating Palace, Hämeenkatu 30, Tampere
    This service commencement order will serve as a travel pass on state railways and bus routes in transit to your designated regional station.
    Failure to arrive at the appointed time will be considered a punishable infraction. Those in financial need may apply for state wardrobe assistance.
    Dear Manna,
    This memory comes back to me over and over. It comes to me in dreams as vividly as if it had happened yesterday, and I wake up in a cold sweat.
    Aulikki had brought us up to the attic at Neulapää. I still remember the spring sunlight coming through the grimy little window at the end of the house, the smell of old beams and dust and heat and insulation under the roof.
    It was May.
    The debutante balls are always held on the first of June.
    We needed dresses. There were certain rules for what prospects should wear—nothing anyone had ever officially written