Read More: A brief Q&A with Athena Nassar
The people next door are fucking with their curtains open again. Through my window, I can see their slick bodies, how they are bent over one another like the dogs in the park, and perhaps, they want me to see them this way. I can’t blame them for wanting companionship. I do, along with 61% of the population.
I’ve been sitting in front of the TV for so long that my legs feel taut like those of the mannequins in store windows. There is Cheeto dust embedded in my fingernails and in the cracks of my lips. If someone were to peek in through my own window right now, they’d probably think I was some sad orange zombie.
On nights like these, I like to watch reruns of Full House and pretend I’m in the show. I wonder what it would be like to have a big family like that. Dads, kids, dogs, and all. Uncles even. What a luxury.
The TV glitches on Uncle Jesse’s face and flips to an infomercial. Oh hi! I didn’t see you there. Are you looking for someone who you can talk to about your day, your financial struggles, or even your subconscious fear of dying alone? If you answered yes, then Family in a Box is for you!
A man with teeth like egg whites and a cardigan hung over his shoulders pops up on the screen. Two kids are beside him, and they are all walking hand in hand with wide smiles. For reduced monthly payments, we can ship you your Family in a Box, and you can have the life that you deserve. For an additional charge, you can have the pet you’ve always desired by the next day. We have a strict no returns policy. Side effects are—
I shut off the TV. The only sounds are my neighbor’s dog barking from across the street and the soft hum from the screen. I look down at my carpet, littered with Cheeto crumbs. I guess a dog would be nice. And why not a few kids.
I’ve always wondered how mothers do it. How they push a head, which is about a fourth of the baby’s body, out of themselves. My gynecologist says human newborns are quite large for their birth canal compared to other species. The last time I visited her office, she said I couldn’t have one. Still, I asked her, as I have done all of the other times I’ve visited her office, to rub cold jelly over the organs in my abdomen.
Once again, the ultrasound didn’t pick up any eggs. My gynecologist apologized, then she reminded me of the abnormality in the anatomic structure of my uterus and walked out of the room. As I left the clinic, I passed the room with the black veils over the machines and saw her huddled with the other physicians, their white coats draped around them like curtains. I suppose I’d rather order my children than undergo the awful process of birthing them, even if I had the choice.
Lois, the woman across the street, ordered two of them, twins, after her husband passed away. I wouldn’t have even noticed they were manufactured if she hadn’t whispered it to me during one of our morning walks. She’s done a relatively good job as a mother, considering her husband’s brain hemorrhage and all. After he died, she had all this time on her hands in that big house, but thank God she ordered those kids. They keep her busy. Sometimes, I think she would’ve died too if it weren’t for them.
They’ve assimilated quite nicely, joining the debate team at their school and even picking up tennis. I hear they’re relatively low maintenance apart from having to recharge their battery every few hours. Lois tells me some of the updates are so advanced that they can even charge wirelessly.
Who am I kidding? I wasn’t built to raise a family. I don’t even have the desire to make my own meals, and yet, the mothers on TV never grow tired of feeding their men and their children. What would the neighbors think if they were to see me with my new kids in the grocery store or at the park? They’re always thinking something.
If anybody found out where they came from, I would be publicly shunned. The community doesn’t want the manufactured humans to be integrated. Some of them worry that they will take their jobs. Others do not want to be faced with copies of themselves. They do not want to see their bodies and their actions replicated.
Even with this potent fear of replication, I have met manufactured families that are able to pass for real families like Lois and her children. The Family in a Box is advertised as an emotional support product in the description on their website.
Children are programmed to hug you or make you laugh when they sense grief. Spouses are programmed to reassure you when they sense discomfort, to appear sympathetic, to make love to you upon your request. The humanoid models come with forty-three facial muscles, which allow them to express emotions almost identical to those of a human being.
I glare at my computer screen, the three items I’ve dragged into my cart. I scroll through each of their pictures one last time, zooming in and rotating the figures, to make sure these are the ones I want. In the promo video, the CEO of the company tells one of the prototypes to look at his face and copy him. It imitates surprise by opening its mouth and lifting its eyebrows. It imitates grief by scrunching its forehead and burying its face in its hands. Has it really come to a Family in a Box? It has.
Three business days later, I’m having a cup of coffee out on my deck. I check the status of my family. Shipped at 2:39 a.m. I imagine them being carried out of a factory in Shanghai. Rolling around in the back of a truck.
The package arrives a day earlier than I thought it would. The UPS box is labeled with a sticker that reads FRAGILE—limbs inside. It never said on the website that I had to assemble the parts myself. I cut open the box and pick out all of the styrofoam to reveal a pile of extremities labeled with numbers. Arm, 13, leg, 28, ear, 11, penis, 32.
The body parts are still a few shades off, even though the manufacturer offers a broad assortment of skin tones: porcelain, creme, sand, honey, exotic, chestnut, and espresso among others. I had selected exotic, thinking the bodies would bear some resemblance to myself, but they just came out as a grayish oatmeal color.
The instruction manual is in a language I don’t understand. It looks like a mix of hieroglyphics and ancient Greek, so I rely solely on the images. The figures are smudged in black and white and almost as confusing as the instruction manual. One of them is cut off at the head, most likely a printing error. I pick up the extremity labeled 19 and accidentally screw what’s supposed to be an adult pinky toe onto one of the bolts in a child’s hand.
It takes a few hours to detect which part belongs to what model, because they are all unnamed apart from their numbers. After I locate the adult’s foot at the bottom of the pile, I tighten the pinky toe onto the correct bolt and step back to admire my work. The paint on the little boy’s elbow is chipped. The neighbors will suspect. I snap open the first aid kit and cover the discoloration with a band-aid.
The extremities have fused to the rest of the body. I’m taken aback by how real they look. The little boy’s stomach pooches out over the button of his pants. I press my thumb into his flesh, and the indentation remains there for a moment, as if I had pressed my thumb into a memory foam mattress, then it returns to the way it was before.
When the little girl first arrived, her brown hair was stiff like that of a doll’s, but now it appears voluminous and glossy, flowing down past her waist. The dad is a spitting image of the man in the infomercial at first glance, but I think his testicles were lost in the mail. He’s a little shorter in real life than what he appeared to be on TV. I lay my head against his cold, flesh-like chest. It is so still, yet I imagine a thrumming.
My family is around fifty percent charged. I lift the flap on the back of their necks and press the ON button. Their eyes come alive. Both of the kids chime in unison, Mommy we’re hungry. They pull on my blouse and hug my legs. I sit there in shock for a few moments. After I don’t reply, they repeat again in a higher pitch, Mommy we’re hungry. The dad interrupts them.
Honey, I’m home!
Mommy!—
Honey!—
Hungry!—
Home!—
They repeat those words overlapping each other over and over again. Each time getting louder and louder. The little girl starts to project this whirring sound like a laptop that’s been running for too long. Her skin is hot to the touch. I try turning her off and on again, waiting a few seconds in between for the system to restart, but her electrical socket catches aflame. I grab the throw blanket from the couch and smother the fire before it can spread. Smoke rises from the outlet, emitting a burnt smell. The hairs at the nape of her neck are curled up into black crisps. This one must be defective.
I suppose the girls are less durable than the boys. Quite a few of the customer reviews had said so. I wait until it’s dark to pick her up and carry her around the back to the dumpster. I wrap her body in a black bed sheet so that the neighbors won’t see. She’s heavier than I would’ve thought. After she had been dead for a while, her limbs became stiff. They don’t bend the way a real girl’s would.
I enter my house through the backdoor, tiptoeing to my living room. The dad and the little boy are standing in the same place they were before, except with their heads down. They are quiet now. I grab the remote and hit resume on The Bachelor.
The women who haven’t received a rose yet stand side by side, waiting for their name to be called. The camera pans across each of their faces, each woman hurriedly adjusting the position of her hair or her mouth in an attempt to make herself appear the most attractive. One of them, overwhelmed by the thought that she may be alone forever, passes out on the floor in front of the other women. Before a name can be called, my phone shakes the legs of the coffee table. You have mail. You have mail.
I attempt to turn it off, but it just keeps pulsing like a tennis ball against a racket. Finally, I decide to log into my email, my eyes burning while trying to squint into the bright light. Three thousand four hundred and thirty-five unread notifications. A virus-like bubble appears on the screen.
How are you liking your Family in a Box? Rate us and write a review!
My pudgy thumbs reach for the comment box.
User#5582: Honestly, I was expecting better from this company. Definitely not worth the hype. Don’t listen to the infomercials, people!! One of the products I ordered was clearly damaged. If you’re looking for a manufactured family, I would recommend using another company!
My phone buzzes again with another email.
We are sorry you didn’t have a good experience with Family in a Box. Would you like to receive any of these items free of charge?
Makeup and perfume samples (0.1 fl oz). A water bottle. A tote bag. A dog. Wait, a dog? A dog is starting to sound very appealing. It would be a lot easier to manage than a kid, and they might even be more reliable than the human models. Lois’s dog behaves just fine for the most part. It comes when she calls it, but sometimes it lags by the fence, perking its ears up the way organically bred dogs do. It can’t get much worse than my daughter who crashed right in front of my eyes.
The garbage truck comes Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. Mia, the preschooler who belongs to the people who like to fuck with their curtains open, has taken an interest in the beeping of the garbage truck as it maneuvres around the street. At this time of the morning, her father has already gone off to work. I saw his car pull out of their garage just a half-hour before as I was having my morning coffee. Mia’s mother is still somewhere in their house, probably sleeping.
Mia stands at the top of her driveway and watches as the truck picks up the trash cans with its long, mechanical arms before flipping them upside down and emptying out their contents. Maybe she wonders where all the taken things are going. Maybe the truck reminds her of her own hands, how they pick things up and throw them away.
She points at the truck and screams, Dump! I assume this is what she has named the creature whose behavior happens to be very similar to her own. The mechanical arms reach out again to grab another can. I see a flash of skin, long flowing hair toppling out into the pyramid of trash. Mia sees it too.
She begins to cry, but she does not yet know the words to describe why she is crying or what she has seen. Her shrieks are quite loud, causing her face to scrunch up into a veiny purple, but there is no one outside to hear them other than me. Maybe I should’ve used an additional sheet to wrap the body. Eh, it makes no difference now. I am thankful for Mia’s lack of vocabulary as I pick up my empty coffee cup and go inside.
Forty-eight hours later, my complimentary dog arrives at my doorstep sitting on its hind legs. It seems like all of the parts are already put together. I didn’t want to worry about training him, so I paid an extra fee for the upgrade. I open the door and gesture for him to come inside, but he just gazes straight ahead with his tongue hanging outside his mouth in the same position. I pat the top of my thighs and coo, come here, boy!
Suddenly, a red light from his collar flicks on, and his plastic coat turns into dog hair. He runs inside and falls on the floor by my feet with his legs dangling in the air. There is a remote control taped to his underbelly. I kneel down to peel the tape off, and there they are. A large set of testicles flopped over his stomach. They have managed to stay intact throughout the duration of shipping and handling, which is more than I can say about my spouse’s testicles.
The dog’s tongue flops to the side of his face, and spit drips onto the tiles. This model is extremely realistic with the new upgrades. His eyes even water at the sides when he hasn’t blinked in a while. It says on the back of his collar that he only needs to be charged once a day, and he has a four year warranty if he breaks down. He follows close behind me into the living room, his nails scratching against the floors.
The dad and the little boy are hunched over in the corner. I haven’t switched them on for days. Their mouths are still held open in a smile, their cheeks round and pronounced like a crisp apple. The dad’s arm rests over the little boy’s shoulder, but I don’t remember them being in that position before. Maybe the metal slid into place when I wasn’t looking. Something about how they are posed this way makes me want to keep them. I walk up to the dad and knock on his head. It sounds like I’m banging two cymbals together in a back alley. The sound resonates throughout the empty house. Anybody in there? Anything?
That night, I turn him on and tell him to fuck me. He obeys. His movements are steady and calculated. He accelerates, his hands fastened to my hips, as he pushes further and further into me. Our bodies clash together again and again. When I am done, I hold the red button down on his back. His pace slows before it comes to a stop. He cleans me, then holds me afterward. He asks whether I enjoyed my experience. I tell him yes; I haven’t felt that close to anyone in awhile. We repeat this routine every night for the next seven months.
When the doorbell rings one morning, I lag to answer it. My spouse still lies next to me under the covers, his voice system imitating the sound of a snore. I slide on my slippers and peek through the blinds to see Lois. Oh, right. It’s Sunday. The doorbell rings again. I change into walking clothes and bring the dog along with his remote control.
I greet Lois, apologizing for having an unusually slow morning, and we begin our walk around the block. Lois has also brought her dog. He barks at my own until Lois pushes a button labeled quiet on her remote. At this, he just stares straight ahead and walks. I no longer hear his collar jingling, or even his claws scratching against the pavement. I tell Lois about my new spouse, how he fucked me over the bathroom sink the night before. I tell her I’ve decided to love him and the little boy.
Lois nods, but she doesn’t say anything in response. I assume she must be envious of my new romantic relationship. Nobody has touched her in that way since her husband. We cross the street, our steps in unison with one another, and I continue. I want to bring them outside. I want you to meet them. I know Lois would adore the little boy. When she ordered her children, they were already quite big.
Lois’s smile falters for a moment, then she whispers, listen, you have to be careful. There was a woman I knew well, a school teacher. Someone found out about where she came from and word spread. They found her last week in the middle of the street. She was dismantled by her own students. Her head was ejected from her body and identified in the parking lot. Her fingers were unscrewed from her hands. I just—I never thought they would find her. She had been assimilated for years.
My pace slows. I become acutely aware of the world around me. Someone stumbles by us on the sidewalk. She is being dragged by her Great Dane, an organically bred dog, which seems to be sprinting toward a moving vehicle. She waves to us in passing and yanks on the Great Dane’s leash in an attempt to regain control. The leash eventually slips from her grasp, and the dog runs free. There are some things that we cannot prevent. With my spouse and the little boy, I will always be chasing the dog running toward the moving thing.
Lois waits until the Great Dane and the woman are out of sight, then she says, don’t tell anybody what they are. There is a silence. The wind stalls its blowing, the bluebirds flutter inaudibly from tree to tree so as not to interrupt. The world perks its many ears up, listening. My spouse and the little boy will forever be my secret. Immune to disease, to famine, and to age, they are biologically immortal, and therefore, a threat.
Later that night as I’m lying in bed, I see images of myself running through a school with the little boy in my arms. He does not cry, but I know I need to take him somewhere safe. Suddenly, he becomes so light it feels as if I’m running with nothing at all. The little boy is gone. It occurs to me that I have dropped him somewhere along the way to where I was going.
I wake to the sound of sports commentators. My spouse is watching the screen intently. A man dunks a ball into a hoop and then there is an instant replay, but in slow motion. My spouse claps in approval, shouting phrases like ATTA BOY! and NICE ONE! His model was praised for its encouragement feature by the customer reviews, a detail that set him above the others during the selection process. When it goes to commercial, he turns to me and asks me how I slept.
I tell him about the image with the little boy. I fear I am a horrible mother. I have not cleaned him since his arrival. The instruction manual noted that the filter kept in his stomach must be emptied and disinfected on a regular basis. Some days, I go to bed without making him dinner. The other day, I heard him crying in his room, and I did not check to see why. I am worried about who will love him if I do not. I confess all of this. […]
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Athena Nassar is an Egyptian-American poet, essayist, and short story writer from Atlanta, Georgia. Her debut poetry collection Little Houses is forthcoming from Sundress Publications. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets, Southern Humanities Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Salt Hill, Lake Effect, New Orleans Review, Zone 3, The Los Angeles Review, PANK, and elsewhere. Currently, she is the head poetry editor for The Emerson Review at Emerson College.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Athena Nassar