The Y Chromosome

by Leona Gom

  Introspection makes me constipated.

  Nov. 30:

  I look at what I wrote yesterday. Love me, that’s what I could have said to Leslie. Love is all you need, etc. Not that simple. The people I want it from have all preceded me down death’s dark corridor [sic]. That bleak hotel never short a room. I dug out Linda’s photograph this afternoon, set it back on my desk. Forty-five years gone, now. Funny how I suddenly remembered the day we drove out to Drumheller, what she said, exactly, every word, and the funny frilly shirt she wore; but I didn’t remember Emily Mandel’s name today at the Centre, and for God’s sake I’ve been playing cards with her now for two years. I am old, Father William, I am old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. At my back I always hear. Our sons inherit us. Ha.

  My leg cramps are getting worse, moving up into my thighs. I have to make myself walk more.

  Dec. 2:

  So cold today. Minus thirty. My parsley in the window got frostbite overnight, poor dear, I had to amputate. I can’t find my corduroy pants, and I’ve looked everywhere. I got so frustrated I started to cry. Amanda phoned to tell me someone else I don’t know died.

  Dec. 3:

  Don’t know why, but I phoned Jenny today. Not letting myself think about it at all, just punching in the numbers, Jenny, I thought, I’m going to call Jenny.

  Of course she was surprised. It must be more than a year since we talked, and then only because of some business about Leslie.

  “How’s the weather there?” When you call long distance you should always ask about the weather.

  “Cool,” she said. “But I’m driving to San Diego tomorrow and it’s warmer there. How’s Leslie?”

  “Fine, you know her. She came to see me the other day. She said you’d told her about the … you know, when we destroyed the sperm bank.”

  There was silence on the line, just dead static snapping in my ear. “I suppose I shouldn’t have,” she said carefully. “But I thought she’d be discreet.”

  “Jenny.” And then I didn’t know how to continue, my throat sealing shut like a goddamned lid on a jar.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m glad Elizabeth had you. You made her happy. I’m sorry I acted like such an asshole about it.”

  There was silence, just the static, and I felt stupid, why did I say that, she’ll think I’ve gone soft in the head, all that.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  So that was all, her voice so neutral, just two words, over all those miles, pulses through a wire, just thank you, and what did I expect, after all, that she would start to cry in gratitude, forget all those times I treated her like merde?

  So I don’t know. I’m glad I called, anyway. I suppose I did it for me as much as anything. Nothing is altruism. Do unto others so you can feel magnanimous about yourself.

  But, oh, Elizabeth, my sweet little girl: you could have done worse than Jenny, that’s the truth, and I’m sorry I didn’t understand that. If you were alive now I’d —

  No, not the if you were alive I’d crap. Therein lies madness, if you’re lucky.

  My stomach feels strange, heavy, wobbling around inside its ageing cage when I walk, time a knife sliding down the walls of the cake pan, loosening, detaching.

  I still haven’t found my goddamned corduroy pants.

  Dec. 4:

  Started yelling at the TV today, some boring program on agriculture, and they’re talking about the big pheromone-resistance breakthrough of fifty years ago. I’m not even really listening, but then suddenly I’m sitting up saying, “Wait a goddamned minute! That was Robert Pendowski’s discovery — he won the Nobel for it.” And what they’re doing is showing this woman, Christa somebody, and saying she discovered it, as though Pendowski never goddamned existed.

  It’s not the first time I’ve seen it happen. They find some woman who was in the lab or wherever at the same time and give her the credit. It’s what they did with the polio vaccine thing, and the discovery of one of the moons of Jupiter — now they’re even doing it with events in my lifetime.

  I went raving on to Leslie about it once, something in one of her textbooks, and she just gave me her lizard-eye stare and said, “How do you know this isn’t the truth? Now that we’re doing the research and writing the books maybe we can finally tell it the real way, our way.”

  And, oh, maybe she’s right. What finally does it matter?

  Revisionism: we did it, too. History is only the version of the winners. And so much was destroyed in the riots — how can we blame them for replacing what was lost with their own truth?

  I must be mellowing in my old age. The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,/Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. Lets out light, too, that’s the trouble.

  Sigh. And so to bed. The pencil fell from his nerveless fingers.

  Dec. 5:

  My legs have gone so numb. I should go to the doctor. Want me to cut them off? She’ll say, as though that’s funny. It’s like walking around on two pieces of wood.

  And so it goes.

  Editor’s note: At this point there is an interruption in the entries, and it is likely that Adam Markov suffered a stroke. The remaining two entries are undated, and written in a barely legible script. The word “sunburn” in the first entry could also be “return,” and the line “She brought Ivy to visit” has also been transcribed as “She thought I was sick”. On the last page is printed, possibly by Jenny herself, the words: “Adam Markov died February 12, 2098”.

  my mother with the pails full of raspberries and our fingernails all red, and what a sunburn.

  some pain, and the drugs. Linda came to see me today but it was Jenny. She looked nice. She brought Ivy to visit. It’s hard to remember exactly.

  ­* * *

  BOWDEN SAT FOR A long time holding the journal, feeling an unexpected sadness settle over her. That’s where it all ends, she thought, in death.

  Finally she forced herself to get up, and she went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of milk. She walked to the window and stood looking out at the snow coming down quietly, small, repetitive flakes. They clung to the wire sculpture of the buffalo, that old creature hunted into extinction, that she could see outlined against the darkening sky across the deepcoulee.

  She had a habit, when she was upset, of reading everything as though it would offer her some direction in her own life, but in Adam Markov’s journal now she found only further complexities, ambiguities. She had expected it to confirm her promise to Highlands, but this part of the journal was so unlike what she had read before. The males here seemed more pathetic than dangerous. And she had forgotten that Adam Markov had been a part of the Women’s Front, although she must have learned that in school, and reading it now disconcerted her. He was a male, yet, as his granddaughter said, he turned against his own kind, to make possible this future.

  As Delacour, she thought suddenly, was turning against her own kind, to make possible another future. And would males three hundred years from now be applauding her courage, too? She shuddered, turned abruptly from the window. She felt cold, cold, but when she checked the heat it was normal, so she pushed the opaquer on the window so she wouldn’t have to see the snow and reached for another sweater from the hall closet. Her arm brushed the battery lamp on the shelf beside her sweater and it clattered down.

  “Merde.” She reached over and picked it up, put it back on the shelf.

  “What’s happened?”

  Bowden jumped, nearly knocking the battery lamp down again. Delacour was standing beside her, sleepily rubbing her chest. She was wearing the blue cotton weave pyjamas Bowden had given her last Christmas, which Bowden hadn’t seen her wear for months.

  “Nothing,” Bowden said. “I’m sorry I woke you. I just dropped the battery lamp.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping very well, anyway,”
Delacour said. “I think I’ll warm some milk for myself. Would you like some?”

  “No, I have a glass.” She went and sat on the sofa, watching Delacour in the kitchen pour the milk and program it warm. A detached part of her mind was making a dutiful note that the jug would be almost empty now and that she would have to order a delivery for tomorrow. “I’ve just been reading the Adam Markov journal,” she said.

  “Have you?” Delacour came over to her, sat beside her. “Tell me what you think about it.”

  They were behaving as though this were any ordinary evening, as though nothing were wrong. Still, if Delacour wanted to talk to her, about anything, it was better than silence, Bowden decided. She picked up her glass of milk, sorry now she hadn’t had Delacour warm it, too.

  “I’d forgotten that Adam Markov was part of the Women’s Front,” she said. “I was just thinking about the … courage it must have taken to do that.”

  “Yes,” Delacour said. “Of course his part was pretty minor. And he admits he was acting only out of personal rage.”

  “Still — I think he must have had a greater vision than that. Considering he was a male —”

  Delacour sipped her milk. “Yes, he was a rather special one.” She yawned, set her milk down on the end table.

  “It’s interesting,” Bowden said cautiously, “that even one of the better males thought they should be destroyed.”

  Delacour shrugged. “It was just a choice he made, that’s all. We don’t know what a future with males would have been like.”

  “Yes, we do! It’s there in the history you teach every day! It would have been full of wars and violence and destruction.”

  Delacour sighed. “Not necessarily.”

  Bowden banged her glass down on the end table beside Delacour’s. Their rims touched, gave a sharp cry, ping, of contact. “Don’t you have any doubts at all about what you’re doing?” she demanded.

  Delacour didn’t answer. She reached over and pushed the two glasses absently a few centimetres apart. Suddenly she said, “Did you look at the appendices at the end of Adam Markov’s journal?”

  “No. Why?”

  Delacour picked up the journal, turned to a section at the end, and leafed through it until she found the page she wanted. She handed the book to Bowden. “The right-hand page,” she said.

  Bowden took the journal. On the right-hand page was a genealogical table, in fine print, covering about a dozen generations. Her eyes slid down the thickening column.

  Adam Markov — Linda Issaks

  Elizabeth Markov — Jenny Sarin

  Leslie Sarin-Markov — Pamela Lee

  Roberta Melnyk — Sharon Petra Lee — Jan Colos

  Florence Bell — Elizabeth-Lyalta

  And so on. Bowden glanced up at Delacour, not understanding. “Why do you want me to look at this?”

  “The bottom. One of the names. On the right-hand side.”

  Bowden looked down to the bottom of the page, where about ten branches were represented. What was she supposed to be looking for?

  Her hands clenched on the page.

  Jesse-Lee — Rhea

  Delacour

  “You’re a direct descendent,” she whispered, “of Adam Markov.” Her eyes moved again up the column. There seemed to be so few names, suddenly, less than a dozen, so little time, separating Delacour’s name from Adam Markov’s.

  “Yes. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “But … it’s interesting. You must feel some special connection.”

  “Not really.”

  “Then why did you show this to me? Why now?”

  Delacour reached over to take the book from Bowden’s hands, but Bowden pulled away. Annoyed, Delacour said, “You were reading the book. This is just a part of it. I thought you’d find it amusing, that’s all.”

  Bowden put her finger lightly under Delacour’s name. “And what will the next edition write here?” she asked. “Is that what you’re waiting for, to add the name that will bring it all full circle somehow?”

  Delacour snatched the journal away, slapped it shut, and tossed it on the end table. “For heaven’s sake,” she said. “I’m not interested in any kind of a dynasty. And I really don’t care who my personal ancestors were.”

  “All right,” Bowden said. “I believe you.” But she kept looking at the book lying on the end table. The Journal of Adam Markov. And in it was Delacour’s name, like some eerie prophecy.

  Delacour put her arm around Bowden’s shoulders, tried to pull her closer. “What will be in the next edition, though,” she said softly, “is your name, beside mine.”

  “Are you sure? I thought that if there are children the names of the mothers appear. They’ll write Daniel’s name beside yours. The mother and the … father.”

  She felt Delacour’s arm tense on her shoulders, and she knew she had been right and that the idea had unsettled Delacour. She had to press any advantage she could. “Please, Delacour, you have to believe me, that I want what’s best for you —”

  Delacour leaned back against the sofa, dropping her head against the headrest. Her arm slid away from Bowden’s shoulder, fell limply into the space between them. She sighed. “Look, Bowden — I know you’re only trying to help, but —”

  Something in the words, the voice, the way it sounded querulous at the same time as it alleged the opposite, tugged at Bowden’s memory, and suddenly she began to laugh. She pulled back, shook her head, dismayed, not believing this outburst, laughter at a time when nothing was funny.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing, forcing herself to stop. “How stupid. It’s because of what you said: I know you’re only trying to help. It’s what Jesse-Lee said when I last saw her, and, I suppose because I saw her name in the journal just now, well, she said those exact words, and it triggered Central, and when they came on she shouted at the communicator to shut up. I don’t know why I thought of that. I’m sorry. It’s not funny.”

  As she spoke, Delacour looked at her impassively, and then she pulled her brows down and closer to each other the way she did when she was angry, so that it looked as if her forehead had grown a ridge of muscle. She opened her mouth, but what came out was not words at all, but a strange sobbing, hard pieces of sound that dropped into the silence. She sat there with her mouth open as though her jaw were refusing to close, and she cried.

  Bowden stared at her. She reached forward, her hand trembling, and stroked Delacour’s knee, but Delacour flinched away from her touch and stood up, turning her back. It seemed to take a long time before she stopped crying. At last Bowden heard her take a deep, shuddery breath, and then she said, her voice struggling and angry with itself, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right —”

  “It’s stupid. I hate crying.” She turned abruptly to look down at Bowden. Her eyes were red, raw-looking, her cheeks blotchy. “I know I didn’t deal very well with Jesse-Lee’s death,” she said, her voice still rough and uneven. “Or her life, either, for that matter. I never felt she loved me. When Rhea died, I was just a reminder to her of what she’d lost. You know what she said to me once? She said, ‘You were Rhea’s idea, you know. Not mine.’”

  “But that doesn’t mean she didn’t care about you. I know she did.” But Bowden could almost hear Jesse-Lee’s caustic voice saying it: You were Rhea’s idea, not mine. What would it have been like for Delacour, growing up with those denying words whispering always in her head?

  Delacour snorted. “Care about. I care about the books I read, the, the —” she waved her hand in the air, gesturing vaguely across the room “— the water-reflector I made, the teacher’s-robe I wear. It’s not the same as love.” She picked up her glass of milk, finished what was in it, then spun the glass between her palms, looking into it. �
�Jesse-Lee had a birth-child of her own, you know,” she said abruptly. “She died when she was a baby. I only found out by accident, snooping through some records-papers. I suppose that was the child she really loved.”

  Bowden struggled to find an answer, the right words. What she did say, finally, was what she would say to the old people who still brooded about an unkindness, an injustice, done to them long ago by a mother, a friend, a mate, a daughter: “You have to forgive her.”

  Delacour only frowned, peered more deeply into her glass.

  Perhaps, Bowden thought, she should tell Delacour that Jesse-Lee had told her about her birth-child, how Jesse-Lee might have told Delacour about it, too, if Delacour had gone to see her one last time. But she decided it would be a mistake. She wondered suddenly why the child hadn’t been listed in the genealogical chart. If a baby died that young, it must not have to be recorded. If a baby died that young — she winced, flooded with the memory of another baby, of her promise to Highlands.

  “Oh, well,” Delacour said, sighing, setting the glass down. “I wasn’t an easy child, either. Maybe we get the mothers we deserve.”

  “And the child you’re carrying — will it get the mother it deserves?”

  Delacour didn’t answer, but she turned her eyes now on Bowden. They were still red and painful-looking. “I wish you understood, Bowden,” she said at last, softly, sadly. “I wish you wouldn’t be afraid.”

  “But I am,” Bowden said. “I am.”

  Delacour stood looking at her for a long time, and then she sat down again beside her. “You shouldn’t be,” she said. “Oh, Bowden —” She paused. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us in the past few weeks. And if you still want a monogamy-bond, then I’ll agree.”

  “What?” Bowden looked at her, amazed.

  “I know it seems like an odd time to bring it up, but, well, it’s true. I’ve been thinking about it. You deserve better from me than what I’ve given you.”

  “This is a … a bribe, isn’t it? If I don’t oppose you in this pregnancy you’ll offer me a monogamy-bond.” Her harsh assessment surprised and dismayed her. A few months ago Delacour’s words would have delighted her. Now she looked at them coldly, cynically — perhaps because she had offered Delacour an even crueler bargain herself. What has become of us? she wanted to cry. But she only sat there, rigidly, waiting for Delacour to speak.