1st 5 Pages October Workshop- Chin Rev 1

Name: Shirlyn Chin

Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction

Title: Weight of Your Legacy

Chapter 1

MICHI

CANADA

There is a short queue outside the prison clinic as usual, but today, the line is made up of correctional officers rather than sick or injured inmates. Jittery on nerves, I barely notice the difference. It isn’t until I have opened the clinic’s door that I stop myself belatedly and knock.

Inside the brightly lit office, Uncle looks up, a syringe in his hand and a frown already in place. “Michi?” he says, perplexed. He puts the syringe down. “Is something wrong?”

The CO sitting in a chair opposite from Uncle raises an eyebrow. He has his sleeve rolled up, ready for his flu inoculation shot. He smirks at the sight of me. “Harada!” he calls with false merriment. “Fancy seeing you here.” I know what Mike is thinking: come to see uncle dearest? Cute.

It is a long-running joke in the prison that Uncle – unsociable, quiet Uncle – had adopted me in a sudden fit of loneliness eleven years ago, only to realise later that the girl he adopted was as unsociable and quiet as him. A perfect match, they say, for a man who looks like he doesn’t know the first thing about being a father.

I narrow my eyes at Mike as a warning, and the twerp at least has the sense to listen. Nobody dares to piss off the doctor who is in charge of administering the quarterly government-mandated flu inoculation shots. When I first started working here at nineteen, I might have spread a rumour around prison that Uncle jabs people with extra force when he is pissed, which can render a person’s arm sore for the rest of the week. A factually true scenario, even if the possibility of Uncle being unprofessional is nil. The threat works well enough. My colleagues rarely make slights against Uncle’s awkward ways around people these days.

“Michi,” Uncle says more sternly. “Is something wrong?” he repeats.

My cheeks heat. “Nothing, Uncle,” I mumble. That’s the problem. I have barrelled to the clinic with such determination but, now that I am here, I don’t even know why I wanted to see Uncle so badly. Flustered, I thump the cup I am holding on Uncle’s table. “Just brought a cup of tea for you.”

“Thank you,” Uncle says automatically, but his eyes remain on me.  “Did you have your interview already?”

“No. I, uh.” I point to the door with a nervous finger. “I’m going there now.”

Uncle blinks once. “Oh.” Then what are you doing here?

Wishing I can get a ‘good luck’?

But Uncle is already turning back to Mike, picking up the syringe once more. “You better go then. It is impolite to be late.”

For a few seconds, I stand there, waiting for more, until Mike’s smirk turns my stomach enough that I turn to leave.  “Good luck, Harada!” Mike adds before I make it out the door. “I know you can’t wait to leave us to guard a maximum-security prison.”

Evidently, the COs lining outside hear the last remark. When I close the door, several of them shoots me dirty looks and mutters, “Yeah, good luck, Harada.”

I ignore them and proceed to the Warden’s office.

They think I’m a snob, I know, and my request for transfer only solidifies their opinion. A small part of me is proud that I’ve finally requested to transfer to Crestfield, that I am making some progress in Uncle and my plan, so I suppose they aren’t completely wrong. But most of the time, I don’t feel proud. I feel … desperate. Transferring to Crestfield doesn’t seem like a choice at all, not when failing to transfer to Crestfield is not an option.

Pausing outside the Warden’s office, I take a shuddering breath.  It could’ve been worse than enduring an interview, I remind myself. Much worse. The Warden will just be asking me about my life here, in Canada, not my life before. I am familiar with my life here. I can do this.

Raising a fist, I knock.

“Come in.” Warden Sanchez briefly glances at me as I enter. “Harada. Close the door.”

I do as instructed and make my way to the chair across from the Warden. It is a sparse office, no decorative tree or picture. The only focal point of the room is the Warden’s table, piled high with paperwork. Unsurprising, with the prison perpetually understaffed and the steadily increasing crime rate.

I keep my palms down, hoping the table separating us shield my trembling hands from view. My face, however, remains neutral, even as the Warden skewers me with his eyes, blunt and judgmental. One of the advantages of growing up with blunt and indifferent Uncle, I learn to perfect the same vacant expression when I view the world. It makes for a very good poker face. Blunt and judgmental is much easier to deal with. I wouldn’t be worrying if this weren’t the most important interview of my life – and otousan’s^[1] life.

“I have skimmed through your transfer request,” the Warden begins, opening my thin file. “Your physical is decent, I suppose. But there are a few problems, as you can imagine.”

Here we go.

“Problems, sir?” I ask, all innocence.

“Your background, for one.”

“Did I miss something, sir?”

“You really don’t remember anything from when you were little? Before you ended up in Müller Home?”

A sharp, nauseating smell of toffees momentarily chokes me. Müller Home. Sometimes it is the toffees, sometimes it is the jeering, but whatever it is, I am always prepared. The onslaught is more familiar to me than any toy or residue of my childhood. If you see some perspiration dotting my forehead, it’s just the humidity.

My voice is steady as I continue. “I remember streets, having to find shelter, people pushing me.” Seeing utterly no response from the Warden, I throw in: “Some big kids chasing me with a switchblade.”

The Warden’s eyes flicker for a bit then, just a bit, but I know I’ve said the right thing to hit some compassion deep – way deep – down.

“Then, one day, I saw the … building.” The orphanage. “There were other kids there. The caretaker saw me, brought” – grabbed – “me in. She called the social workers.” I shrug. “Aside from that, everything’s hazy.”

That’s the good thing about claiming to be abandoned at birth. Not just an orphan but abandoned at birth. Nobody can ask you who your parents are without sounding like a major jerk. And even if a major jerk in an office asks you, you have no way of knowing. A clean slate. Perfect to create a new identity.   

“After two years at Müller Home, you were adopted by Dr. Harada,” Warden Sanchez reads. As if he doesn’t know Uncle already.

“Yes, sir. At age nine, sir.” That’s the official age Uncle and I settled for years ago.

“Any memory of that?”

Seeing a long grumpy face I’ve known my whole life at the threshold of Müller Home, acting the worst act in history of not knowing me. Truly, it was a miracle that the social worker let Uncle adopt me. If I were the one who interviewed Uncle, I wouldn’t have let him adopt a puppy let alone a human being. Don’t get me wrong; Uncle isn’t cruel. Uncle is just … not exactly the most compassionate person around.  

I frown as appropriate. “I remember hating Dr. Harada’s office, sir.”