2 of 4

The tall, wide man must be Earl. Danielle has heard about him. He beams down at the assembly, his hands clasped behind his back. "Now don't they look great, Tan? We got here the makings of three or four of the most dynamite soccer teams in history. You ever see such a beautiful crop of girlhood in your entire life? Girls, you are bee-you-tee-ful."

A hostile silence, broken by Tanya saying, "I've been trying to think what to call you, dears. You're not my daughters—you have parents, all your wonderful adoptive parents around the country. Not my sisters. My twins?"

Earl grins. "They're your clones, hon."

"I won't call you that," she says to the girls. "Let's just say I'm your aunt, your Aunt Tanya. And when a niece comes to visit, auntie has a present for you. Earl, take your boys and go up to my room. Get those big bags down."

"Bill and Ricky can handle it," he says, dismissing the flunkies with a wave.

"No, you go too, Earl. There are three bags, heavy ones. I'll be fine right here."

Muttering under his breath, Earl takes his boys and goes. Tanya waits until the door shuts behind them and then rolls her wheelchair to the edge of the little stage. "You, dear," she says, pointing at Danielle, who is nearest. "Come a little closer, would you please? My eyes aren't good enough to read nametags anymore."

Back in South Carolina, Danielle's parents raised her to be polite to elders. She hops up onto the stage and sees the metal braces on the older woman's knees. A car crash when Tanya Haynes was 29—Danielle's parents showed her all the newspaper files and sports videos last month, when they broke the news to her about the cloning. The great athlete, the most stupendous female soccer star ever, has never walked again.

"Danielle," Tanya says, reading the nametag. "I can't hold 50 hands, so I'm going to hold yours, all right? As a representative. The rest of you, listen to me, please."

The hands clutching Danielle's are lighter than hers, and the skin is looser and rough. But the fingernails are exactly the same, the distance between the joints, even the little bump on the outside of the wrist bone. She has no words for how strange it is, looking down at two pairs of identical hands of different ages. Silently Danielle measures her palm and fingers against them. Exactly the same length.

Tanya's voice is harsh. "My dears, this wasn't my idea. I would never have consented, if I had known what it meant. Earl thought that—he just couldn't stand the idea of the U.S. women's soccer team without me. And the soccer federation had its heart set on another Olympic gold. They filled up my head with all this stuff about the legacy of the sport and the future generations of soccer players, and then when Earl offered to pay all the medical bills if I'd contribute the tissue cultures. … " For a moment she falters. Then she says, simply, "I'm sorry, girls."

We're slaves, Danielle thinks—not even that, we're photocopies of an original. Danielle's entire future has been laid out for her in sports, and there is nothing she can do about it, in this chain gang with her 49 sister-selves. She wants to cry. Instead she says, "Do we apologize for being alive, then?" Then she wants to stuff the angry words back into her mouth. But several of her—sisters? twins?—nod their approval. Their sullen, hurt faces show her what she must look like.

next page... |  2 of 4

share this page

October 1 2001, Vol. 45, No. 12