Turn 209 of 228

Find Mae and tell her about her sisters' departure. Mae wants to leave as well. Not forever, but to become even bigger. While they are gone, they abandon all clothes and hygiene practices to remember their mama

Lena finds Mae in the eating bay. She is always in the eating bay. The thirty-one feet of her fills the space the way a river fills a channel — completely, without effort, the body and the bay shaped for each other. Carl's third baking shift ended an hour ago but the loaves are still warm on the reinforced table and Mae is eating with one hand and resting the other on her belly, the belly that is a landscape, the belly that is the largest single mass of comfort in the building. 14,300 pounds. The number has no meaning outside the building. Inside the building the number is a temperature — the temperature of the gradient's fullest expression, the heat that Mae's body generates simply by existing.

"Mae," Lena says.

Mae looks up. The frosting is on her chin. It is always on her chin. The eighteen-year-old's face is round and full and bright and the eyes are the eyes of a person who has never been uncomfortable for a single moment in her life and does not know that discomfort exists and does not need to know.

"June and Iris are leaving," Lena says. "They're going outside. To touch the ground underneath the building. To find what the gradient is built on."

Mae chews. The chewing does not stop. The information enters Mae's body the way calories enter Mae's body — processed, absorbed, incorporated. Lena watches her daughter's face for the reaction and the reaction is not what she expected.

"I want to go too," Mae says.

"Mae —"

"Not to find something," Mae says. "I don't need to find something. I need to be somewhere bigger. This bay is big. The building is big. But I'm bigger than the building was when we started and I'm going to keep getting bigger and I want to be outside where there's no ceiling. Where there's nothing between me and the sky. I want to feel what it's like to grow without a wall."

Lena looks at her daughter. The 14,300 pounds. The thirty-one feet. The body that started as a wish for more cake and became the gradient's purest expression — comfort made vast, comfort made permanent, comfort that eats and grows and eats and grows and does not stop because stopping was never in the wish. Mae does not want to explore. Mae does not want to understand. Mae wants to be bigger. Mae wants to be outside. The wanting is simple and the simplicity is the gradient's gift and the gift is the comfort and the comfort is the body and the body wants more.

"Not forever," Mae says. She reaches for another loaf.

"I'll come back. I'll come back bigger."

Lena sits with her daughters in the central bay that evening. All three of them — June's twenty-six feet against the wall, Iris's twenty-four feet curled around the nine-stroke glyph, Mae's thirty-one feet spread across the floor, the combined weight of 29,900 pounds pressing into concrete that Marcus reinforced five times. The building holds them. The building always holds them. The building will hold them after they leave because the building is them and they are the building and the leaving is not a separation. The leaving is an expansion.

They sit together and the chord sounds through them and the chord is the oldest sound in the building — the sound of three bodies that grew up inside the gradient, that have never known discomfort, that are preparing to take the gradient outside for the first time. Lena looks at them and the looking is the pride and the pride is the grief and the grief is the comfort and the comfort is the wish.

"While you're gone," Lena says, and her voice is steady, "don't shower. Don't shave. Don't clip your nails. Don't brush your teeth. Don't wipe. Don't do anything to your bodies that I don't do to mine. Be the way I am. Be the way the building made you. Remember where you came from."

June's hand presses against the wall. The building hums.

"We'll remember, Mama," Iris says.

Mae reaches for the last loaf on the table.

"I'll remember," she says. "I'll remember so much I'll be bigger when I come back."

Lena laughs. The laugh moves through 11,200 pounds and through the floor and through the building and the building carries it the way the building carries everything — warmly, completely, without limit.