Work Text:
Koala doesn't really remember home anymore.
Sometimes, when her hands moved on their own, scrubbing the marble floors, polishing doorknobs, and cleaning windows until her arms burned, tiny flashes of memory would appear. Blue skies, not unlike the scenery outside the window. Big hands, rough but gentle, lifting her into the air and spinning her around. Laughter. Sand stuck to her toes. The sound of waves rushing in and out, pulling little shells back to the sea.
But those memories were beginning to fade. Sometimes, she wonders if they were actually real. They were replaced by much more vivid memories of the murky air on the ship that took her away, the other children crying and shouting, and walls that are so tall they look like they go all the way to the sky.
She doesn't really remember mom's face, or the toys she had in her room. The one thing she managed to cling onto was the name of the island. Foolshout. Koala repeated it to herself in her head over and over again. Foolshout Island. That’s where she's from. That’s where mom is. She has to remember. If she doesn’t remember, she’ll forget. If she forget, she’ll never find the way back home.
Foolshout Island.
At night, she says it silently, tracing letters into the dirt beneath her blanket. The marks are large and jagged, like the cactus from the island she barely remembers. When she’s done, she presses her hands against the dirt and feels the scratches. It was the only thing that felt real.
The older slaves under their master rarely spoke to her. Most of them didn’t speak at all unless spoken to. Their eyes were hollow, their hands fast, and their backs always bent. Koala watched them. She learned the rules quickly.
Rule number one: never stop working.
Even when her fingers bled or her legs shook, she kept scrubbing. Movement is safety. If she stood still too long, except for when everyone was kneeling to pay respects to the master, a boot might come down. Or worse.
Sometimes, she can hear the noise behind her. Loud voices, slaps, the sound of something breaking. She hears screaming, but she doesn’t look. She can’t look. She can’t let herself look. If she look, they’ll see her, and she can’t be seen. So she looks at the floor. She makes her body small and her breathing quieter, like a mouse, like she doesn’t exist at all.
Rule two: never stop smiling.
Some of the bad people hated frowns. They get angry at nothing at all. People die when they get angry. That included the uncle who taught her the alphabet, the little boy who made too much noise, and the nice lady who told Koala to keep her hair messy and put dirt on her face.
Koala taught her face to smile. She twitched the corners of her lips up when someone looked her way. Then bigger. Wider. She pulled her mouth with her fingers. She practiced smiling in the reflection of the polished tiles she cleaned, stretching her cheeks until they hurt too.
Rule three: never cry.
Some of the bad people liked tears. Some of them lose interest when people don't react. So, she doesn't react. She doesn't flinch. She smiles.
Don’t let the fear in. Don’t think too much. Don’t listen. Don't speak. Just keep your eyes on the floor and work. That was the only way to survive.
When the punishments came—and they always came—Koala's expression doesn't change.
She stares at the cracks in the stone. She stares at the dirt on the ground. She stares at the tiny pieces of dust that float in the air, like little bugs moving around, and counts them sometimes. She would pick a spot on the wall and stare at it so hard that the world outside her head stopped existing. If she focused hard enough, the noise would fade and she could pretend she was somewhere else. She could pretend she was back home, with her toes in warm sand and the wind in her hair. She tried to remember her mother’s voice, though she couldn't describe what it really sounded like.
Uh oh. She shouldn’t think about that now. It would make her sad. She had to stay alive. Only then, maybe, she could see Mom again.
She told herself not to cry. If she cried, they’d notice. They’ll see her, and they’ll hurt her, like they hurt the others.
She smiles whenever they walk by, whenever they tell her to clean or scrub. Her cheeks get sore. But if she doesn’t smile, they might notice. If they notice her, they’ll remember that she's just a little girl, and little girls get punished when they’re seen.
So she smiles.