9. A catcher in the rye

Page fragments from Samla Bishap's version of Geneva Farewell. Rudy Monteverdi found them:

By the time she turned eleven she was finished with "Virginia". Maybe the name was OK for others but it didn't work for her. What was expected of a Virginia, anyway? The so-called Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, was a piece of celebrity fake news from the 16th century that inspired the naming of all kinds of people and places. Virginia Woolf gave the name a new aura in the 20th century, but she wound up drowning herself. Her mother told her there was madness in Virginia Woolf 's family. She was tempted to shout back at her mother, "They had to be mad to give her that name!"

It was a giant mistake to bring up this issue. Her mother reminded her that she was named after her maternal grandmother, Virginia Keele, who raised six children and once headed a chapter of the Independent Order Daughters of the Empire. As Virginia Keele's namesake, she was insulting her mother's own mother with these foolish thoughts when what she ought to be doing is cleaning out her closet as she was asked to do. And for heaven's sake don't bring it up with her father, he's had it up to here with her wilfulness.

She retreated to her room more determined than ever to shed the name she was saddled with by her insensitive parents. She, Geneva Farewell , would set a new course for the person once known as Virginia Werfel. "Geneva" because she liked the name and her father's ancestors came from that city. "Farewell" because it was a tender goodbye to the parts of herself she was discarding along with her birth name.

Almost at once her breathing changed. It became deeper and slower. The skin of her hands, which often burned with contact dermatitis, cooled and relaxed their redness. Her body expanded to absorb the physical essence of Geneva Farewell. A month after her change of name she was one inch taller, her boobs were starting to grow, her irises had flecks of amber and she was reading far more than Virginia Werfel ever did.

Her early reading included a banned copy of The Trials of Holden Caulfield. She got it from her friend Carmel who could never have interested Virginia Werfel in prohibited novels. Geneva was bored by the trials of this willful boy from bygone times. But there was one page in the Holden Caulfield book that she read over and over. It was the part where Holden imagines himself standing in a field of tall rye to keep small children from falling over a cliff as they played. Geneva could see herself in that role, protecting people from sudden doom. It satisfied her vanity and humility in a single stroke.

Unfortunately she didn't know anyone who was doomed. She had no siblings, though she had begged for a brother for a couple of years. There was no one at school or among her friends who cried out for rescuing. Her parents were beyond her power to save. She retreated into books to find appropriate outlets for her new role. Pretty much every book she read, fiction or otherwise, had one or more characters that required rescue.

She was born inside her amniotic sac. At least that's what her mother insisted. Her father said it was mainly her head that was encased in a caul and it was a mark of good luck. He pointed to the fact that the arrival from Sirius of the musical Message, the first evidence of life beyond the solar system, occurred the very day she was born. Geneva preferred to think of the caul as a protective layer for the exit from her mother's womb.

Geneva borrowed a handful of Doris Lessing books, including Martha Quest, from an older friend of Carmel's who trafficked in books by Lessing that few deep librarians dared touch. Martha Quest became her favourite willful adolescent. But her favourite Doris Lessing book of all was an unpublished work called The Sirian Experiments. Hand-copied manuscripts began to circulate among secret Gnostic book clubs only a couple of years before the musical message from Sirius was received. When the authorities were tipped off, they placed any manuscript of The Sirian Experiments on their shortlist of capital-offence books.

The people of Sirius were cosmic catchers in the rye. That's how Geneva saw it when she read The Sirian Experiments. They went from planet to planet trying to protect civilizations from themselves. Not all their experiments on Earth worked as planned, partly because a kind of vampire civilization, Puttoria, was draining cosmic energy that was necessary for the smooth evolution of all life forms, including humans. As catchers in the rye, the Sirians had to take that factor into account and adjust their goals.

She didn't want to be a doctor like her father, or a nurse like her Aunt Bebe, or a public relations officer like her mother. She didn't want to be a cop or a firefighter or a paramedic. She didn't want to be a politician or a minister. When she was an adult and her proper life began, she would put her books away and step into the world where she would be found by certain people who would be looking for her. They would be relieved to meet her.