Vernans do not require an interminable nine months for gestation; mother and baby work together to make things much more efficient. And so five months later, Mother gave birth. It took about an hour for us to be born, one by one.
“Great Ulysses Grant!” Father screamed, tearing at his hair. “It’s a goddam litter!”
“It’s all your doing,” Mother retorted, more than a little miffed. “The male determines the number. That’s how it is on Verna. The more sperm, the more chance for more eggs to be fertilized. And Geezerak knows you’re a regular sperm factory.”
“Great Woodrow Wilson, how could I know that,” Father said shakily as Vesta and I were born, the last two, bringing the grand total to nine, all of us girls.
“One Y chromosome,” Mother grumbled at him. “You couldn’t spare even one Y chromosome.”
“Never again!” hollered Father. “No ovavoid pills, no more you know what!”
“Suit yourself. You could take them yourself, you know. I’ll be sore for a day or two, anyway. And lower your voice,” Mother said as we all began to wail, “you’re disturbing the girls.”
In a voice shaking with horror Father said, “Clothes! Great Herbert Hoover, clothes for nine girls!”
“I’ll manage,” Mother said.
“How will you ever take care of them?”
“I’ll manage,” Mother said.
“Even choosing names for nine girls!”
Mother said distractedly, fastening liquiblots to each of us, “The girls and I settled all that before they were born.”
“What!” Father shrieked.
Frightened by him, I began to cry. “There, there, Minerva,” Mother cooed, picking me up. “Dear,” she said to Father, “it’s a ... strong communication. It’s gone, now that they’re born. I can’t really explain. Anyway, males never understand how it is between mothers and babies.”
“What have I wrought,” Father whispered, tiptoeing away.
Little did he know.
Isis was the first of us to indicate special gifts. When she was eight, Mother discovered that she had full comprehension of a teleclass in spatial calculus. I had already chosen my specialty—history—and was able to explain to my family that mathematical genius usually manifests itself quite early. It was then that Mother warned us all to be careful, that our family could not afford the bright light of publicity. Isis, soon bored with calculus, entertained herself by plotting stock market curves.
Thanks to Mother’s agronomy and hydroponics expertise, the farm had become virtually self-sufficient, and Father and Mother managed to conceal our existence for quite a while. After that, although the nine of us drew attention we had grown at very different rates and were physically dissimilar. To our chagrin, we had inherited more of Father’s build than Mother’s; but fortunately, we had also acquired fingerprints.
Father spent more and more time away, volunteering for missions of six months and longer duration, coming home for a few weeks of loving attention from Mother, then blasting off again. It was hard to blame him. During his time home nine squealing little girls climbed all over him, but he was frustrated in his attempts to enjoy us; he was unable to win so much as a game of gin rummy or any other game of skill by the time we were six. Hera knew more about the space ships he flew than he did by the time she was eleven. He was less and less able to participate even in dinner table discussions of any kind.
As we turned sixteen, Father had been gone for more than a year. A beribboned representative from the Service visited, gazed at us in astonishment, then broke the news that Father had been last seen pursuing a fellow crewman in a shuttle craft and had vanished near a black hole.
“He was a hero,” said the representative.
Hera, by now an expert in astrophysics, said through her tears, “If he’d just known to set the coordinates for—”
Mother sobbed loudly and stamped on Hera’s foot.
The representative went on to explain Mother’s survivor benefits. “Rough going, supporting such a big family,” he said sympathetically. “Even with generous benefits.”
Mother dried her tears. “I’ll manage.”
The stock prognostications of Isis were now invaluable. Mother’s investments financed travel and advanced educations for us all.
Once we completed our home-based education and ventured out into the world we thought it would be more difficult to hide our gifts, especially when we all performed spectacularly well scholastically, and later, professionally. But we had one overwhelming advantage: We were women. Scant significance was attached to any of our accomplishments.
It was Diana, now a geneticist, and Demeter, a meditech, who made the first great contribution to our future. They discovered through experimentation that most Vernan genes were dominant and consequently mutation-resistant.
“It’s why you had girls,” Diana explained to Mother. “You couldn’t have had a male no matter what.”
Venus, our biologist, joined in further research. Additional experiments showed that our life expectancy was thirty years longer than an Earth male’s; that unlike Mother, who was pure Vernan, we were more likely to bear only two or three babies at most at one time, all girls; and that they would inherit the intellectual capacity of their mothers.
Selene the poet and Olympia the philosopher made the final valuable contributions, documenting and forecasting the continuing irrationality of Earth beliefs, customs, and mores, and clearly demonstrating the need for concern—and change.
We have just completed a week-long meeting of extraordinary scope and have made our plans.
We will all marry. We will all have as many births as our individual situations allow. And pass the word on to our daughters.
Isis has shown that if we have multiple births, and succeeding generations continue at that rate, exponentially there will soon be a female population explosion.
And we are perfectly concealed. Men will continue to notice us only for their sexual and nesting needs—which is what we want them to do. And by the time they observe that there has been an astonishing number of births of baby girls, it will be much too late.
I am Minerva the historian, and this is the first chapter of our saga ...
MANDY LARKIN
I’m in a hunting cabin near the place I was born, I’m talking into this tape recorder to explain how all this happened. Not even Mama knows to look for me here, so I can be by myself at least a while longer. It’s maybe three weeks now—I’ve lost track of time.
Today I was all day crying over my father. It’s years since I gave him even one thought, not since I was a little girl and curious about everything, especially him. Mama claimed he was just a nothing louse that ran out soon as she told him she was having me. Growing up I believed that, I put him clean out of my mind. I should of seen long before this that Mama probably hadn’t an idea in the world who my father was. He might even be one of my uncles but I don’t think so. Maple Creek’s a pretty small place and I’ve been thinking about the men there and what I know about them, because I think maybe I got the music in me from my father. I sure didn’t get it from Mama.
I forgot to say who I am, I guess I’m too used to people knowing me. I’m sure it’s all over the newspapers how Mandy Larkin ran off, and how nobody can figure out why I did it or where I went to.
All this happened because of the music. But I don’t know how I could of stopped it because far back as I can remember, I guess from the first time I ever heard a song, I knew singing was the only thing for me to do. Up till I was eleven it was the one good thing in my life. If it hadn’t filled up the days I might of ended up like Betty Lou. I heard she jumped off that barn roof because of some boy she wanted and couldn’t have, but to this day I don’t believe it. I think it was because she didn’t have anything filling her up like I did. Betty Lou only broke some bones, but after that she never spoke another word, she just smiled and paid no heed at all to anybody till she got sent away to the loony bin. Well, come to think
of it, maybe I have ended up like Betty Lou.
When I was nine the county people somehow found out about me and came around and told Mama and my uncles I had to go to school or there’d be trouble. Mama declared she was schooling me at home, which wasn’t true, and my uncles claimed school never did any of them any good and I guess it didn’t. But they let me go, they didn’t care all that much except Mama complained about school letting me out of chores around the place.
But I didn’t go to school hardly at all and I didn’t pay much mind when I did. Back then I was just like Mama, I couldn’t see past the end of my nose. Nobody I knew read books, who cared what happened to somebody in a book? That’s how stupid I was in those days.
This time of year makes me think of old Miss Jenkins, the teacher. It was around Christmas when I was eleven, and she asked did we want to sing a few songs and what were the ones we liked best? So we sang “Jingle Bells” and “Frosty the Snowman” and silly things like that, and then I said, bold as you please, I really like “O Holy Night.” Miss Jenkins said it was pretty but too hard to sing. So I sang it to her. Miss Jenkins sat still as a cat and I’ll never forget the look on her face when I got to “O night divine” and those real high notes. And I knew how everybody else in that class liked it too, I could feel it way deep inside me. After that a boy named Whitey asked if I’d sing anything else I liked. So I sang “Shenandoah.” And that sweet Miss Jenkins, soon as I sang “Far away you rollin’ river,” she had tears running down her face and it warmed me like I’d never felt before. Mama and my uncles never did pay any mind to my singing, they’d heard me every day from the time I was small.
Whitey—we called him that for his hair—he brought in a guitar the next day and made me take it even though it used to belong to his father; he died of drinking bad whiskey so they say. The guitar was old but it had all the strings, so I took it home and buffed and polished it up. After that I could make all my own music, put guitar notes with my singing.
I was thinking today maybe Whitey’s father could be my father too. I cried for a long while thinking I didn’t know his name or one thing about what he was like, this man who maybe had music in him like I do in me, and I see I’ve got to turn off this tape recorder because I’m crying again.
So anyway. I went to school more because I could sing there and Miss Jenkins found plenty of reasons to have me do it. Some way I knew just how to sing for everybody so they liked me. It was right around then that Whitey and me went into the woods behind the school and I let him do what he wanted, he had this good feeling about me instead of like my uncles who did it only because they wanted to. But I didn’t feel anything special with Whitey any more than I did with my uncles. Feeling special came awhile later, with Jaimie.
It was the Johnson wedding that changed my life for good. I’ve been thinking these last weeks what I’d of become when I grew up if it hadn’t happened, and I guess I’d of ended up like poor Mama.
To this day I can’t say which Johnson girl got married, or who it was she married. Miss Jenkins asked me to sing at the reception and before I could say I didn’t have the clothes she said a dress from her niece would fit me just fine and Clem Johnson would pay me twenty dollars besides—he was willing to believe I was good just on Miss Jenkins’ say so.
Singing to my classmates was one thing, but I was scared to death about this. The Johnson place is the nicest house in Maple Creek, and the day of the wedding I roamed around those big pretty rooms for a long while just strumming my guitar. But I knew I had to earn that money, so finally I sat down in a corner and started playing and singing “Shenandoah.” Everybody got quiet as mice and gathered around to listen, even whichever Johnson girl it was got married and her new husband.
After “Shenandoah” I sang lots of other songs, some of them sprightly—after all it was a wedding—and I could tell what they wanted next, how to make them happy. I just knew it, I could almost hear it. I sang and sang till I couldn’t anymore. Then they crowded around all talking at once and smiling and reaching out for me, and that was peculiar and a little scary.
That’s when I first met Hank. I’d noticed him before, a tall man with a little gray beard, and thick through the chest, a fancy white shirt on him with a rope tie. He was off by himself, touching that beard and nodding the whole time I was singing. He pushed his way through to me and eased the guitar ever so gently from me and took hold of my hand; he led me away and put me and my guitar in his truck.
He drove me on toward home and asked lots of questions about how my life was. Nobody’d ever done that before and there was something so warm and safe about him I answered him honest. When I told him about my uncles he pulled off the road to ask me more and more questions, and I could feel a cold angry buzz settle in him, like he was a mad bee.
When we got to my place he talked very kindly to Mama, but he was firm that she had to let me go with him where I’d have a better chance with my life, and it was the best thing she could do for me. I’d be staying with his sister who’d look after me and see I got more schooling and he’d help with my singing besides. Mama wasn’t agreeing with any of this till Hank asked what kind of a life would I have in Maple Creek, and then she guessed maybe it was all right, being as how Chattanooga wasn’t all that far away, and I’d be coming back a lot so she could check up on me.
But then my uncles got back from town. Uncle Duane wanted money from Hank, claiming it was plain what Hank really wanted with me.
I remember so clear the veins sticking out in Hank’s neck and what he said to Uncle Duane and Uncle Sherm and how quiet he said it. You scum, he told them, you ought to be on a chain gang the rest of your unnatural lives for what you been doing to this little girl.
Uncle Duane was big as Hank, tall, a fat stomach that used to smother me when he laid himself on me. He’d slap Mama around when she sassed him, he beat up anybody that crossed him, he never stepped back from anybody. But he said to Hank in this whiny voice, Me and Sherm ain’t the only ones.
Hank came after Uncle Duane then. But Uncle Sherm stepped in and pulled Uncle Duane into the house. My Uncle Sherm never did say a word to Hank, he never said much to anybody anyhow, me included.
The way Hank stood tall to my uncles like poor Mama never could do—it turned my insides every which way.
So off we went in Hank’s truck to Chattanooga. I was almost fifteen by then. And that’s when I first knew Hank’s sister Polly. She was crippled up from a car accident that killed her husband and little boy, but she took me in like I was hers to take care of, like she didn’t have any cares or sorrows at all. At Polly’s I ate good food and wore nice clothes for the first time, and Polly showed me how to sew and how to keep myself neat and clean, she made me feel good about how I looked. She had a record player and I listened to country music all the time, even when I was working on a song in my head.
I went to school and that’s when I found out how dumb I really was, all my classmates were so much younger. I’d paid no heed to that in Maple Creek, not with two rooms of us in the school and all of us different ages. But Polly made me go every day, and shamed as I was with all those little ones, I paid attention and worked hard and it didn’t take long at all to skip over grades and almost catch up.
Hank gave me this tape recorder to carry around with me, the one I’m talking into now, so I could work on my songs and see how they sounded. He made me sing all the time, made me learn music. But I never did like to put the notes down on paper—writing songs out seemed too much like caging up a bird.
Even when I was up in the room they made for me in the attic, I could tell when Hank came into the house and Polly could never figure out how I knew; she wouldn’t believe how I could feel a buzz come from him whenever he was near. I could tell something about me bothered something inside him.
Hank never tried to do anything but hug me, and I asked Polly why and she said it wouldn’t be right, he had his girlfriends and it was better we didn’t, there was other ways we should
help each other and not every man wanted to do that to every woman. Well, that was all news to me, it was plain I had a whole lot of learning and growing up to do.
I never could of gone any further than singing for kids at the high schools and such except for Hank. When I finally got my chance to sing at Lucy’s Roadhouse, that first night I begged him not to make me go out on that little stage, all those strangers with their cold eyes just waiting to stare at me and not caring at all except to drink their beer. But Hank talked sweet and gentle till I finally stumbled out with my whole body like a frozen stick. Soon as I started singing I was all right and the people there loved me like crazy, but I told Hank I didn’t think I could ever do it again.
Then he came up with this idea, he fixed it so next time the stage would be pitch black for me to go out onto. There I’d be with my guitar and I’d start singing “Shenandoah” just like I sang it to Miss Jenkins when I was eleven. So I tried it and when the spotlight came on I felt all the people loving me right away. After that I was fine, and “Shenandoah” was my song, the people always knew I’d sing it first.
Hank and Polly have scrapbooks about all the places I sang and how the papers said I was the sweetest voice in country music. I went to Nashville and made my first album, Mandy Larkin Sings the Songs of the Mountains, and it was so popular that one fine hot night in August I got to stand for the first time in a spotlight on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
None of it could of happened except for Hank and Polly, and when I made my first money from singing I had the legal papers done to make them my managers so I could give something back. It was about then that Miss Jenkins wrote a nice letter telling me how proud she was. Polly helped me find a music box all fancy and pretty, and got them to make it play “Shenandoah,” and I sent it to Miss Jenkins. I heard she died last year, I wish I could of thanked her proper.
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