Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

  This predicament is not new. The mender is one of many. They aren’t allowed to burn her, at least, though they can send her to a room for ninety months. Officials of the Spanish Inquisition roasted them alive. If the witch was lactating, her breasts exploded when the fire grew high.

  The blacksmith harpooned a polar bear. Cook made stew from the liver and heart. I did not take a portion, though it was agony to smell the rich broth. After supper the sailors grew sluggish—slept poorly—by morning, the skin around their mouths was peeling. The skin on their hands, bellies, and thighs began to slough away. They did not believe me that vitamin A occurs at toxic levels in polar-bear livers. They are saying I cursed the stew.

  THE DAUGHTER

  Doesn’t need to be convinced. What’s one absence? She has always been the good girl. Spotless record. Besides, she can’t think—her eyes keep closing. She wants to sleep for a year.

  “Cool,” says Ash. “I’ve never seen a testimony before.”

  When the Quarles family moved to Newville, Ash was the only person willing to hang out with the daughter. She warned her that Good Ship uses ghost pepper (which can numb your lips permanently) in its hot and sour soup. She took her to the lighthouse. She taught her to find creatures in the tide pools—ass-mouthed anemones, ribbed limpets whose shells fit into dents in the rock called home scars.

  They drive north in slashing sleet. Order mochas at the drive-through espresso hut. Lick the quaking towers of whip.

  “New scarf?”

  “Christmas,” says the daughter.

  “The purple one looked better.”

  Yasmine wouldn’t like Ash much; but she is all the daughter has.

  She lights a cigarette. Everything out the window is gray, the sky and the cliffs and the water, the cold curtains of rain. The cops at the hospital kept asking “How did she do it? What did she use?” and the daughter couldn’t answer.

  “So, um, I have a question,” she says.

  Ash holds out two fingers. The daughter puts her cigarette between them.

  “Can you ask your sister for the number of a term house?”

  Ash exhales, hands the cigarette back. “No way.”

  “But the ones online, you can’t tell if they’re real or traps. Can’t you just ask?”

  “Fuck no. Clementine wouldn’t tell me, anyhow.”

  “She might, if she knew I didn’t—have much time left?”

  “Yeah, but no. Too dangerous. Clem knows a girl who got such a bad infection at this place in Seattle she had to get emergency surgery and almost died.”

  “Was she arrested?”

  “Of course.” Ash reaches for the cigarette again. “But her dad hired this famous lawyer. The girl told my sister the term house was sickening. She saw a plastic bucket of another girl’s stuff just sitting there. A clear plastic bucket.”

  Hot spike in the daughter’s ribs. Taste of pennies on her teeth.

  Yasmine didn’t die either. But she lost so much blood she needed transfusions. All night the daughter and her parents waited at the ER with Mrs. Salter, who rocked back and forth in her pink ski jacket. The lights squeaked. The daughter had to pee horribly but wanted to be there when the doctor brought news.

  Yasmine’s uterus was so badly damaged it had to be removed.

  The cops came while she was still in the hospital.

  The witch wears an orange prisoner suit, not the stitched sack, and her hair looks brushed, which in the forest cabin it did not. Good thing she can’t see Gin Percival’s face, in case the face looks scared. The daughter, scared all the time now, wants there to be people who aren’t.

  Clementine is scheduled to testify as a character witness. The rest of Ash’s family thinks Gin Percival contaminated the waters. More fish are turning up dead in the nets, and the dead man’s fingers are messing up the hulls of boats.

  “Please silence your electronic devices,” says the little judge.

  At this moment Ro/Miss is taking attendance and doing the bit where she repeats the names of the missing (“Quarles…? Quarles…? Quarles…?”) in reference to an old movie the daughter hasn’t seen.

  “Doctor,” says the lemon-mouthed prosecutor, “before we adjourned yesterday you said Dolores Fivey suffered a grade-three mild traumatic brain injury as the result of falling down a flight of stairs of twelve vertical feet, which—”

  “Objection,” says Gin Percival’s lawyer, bald and round. “The doctor has already testified to these details; I can’t imagine why we need to hear them again.”

  “Withdrawn. Can you please tell the court the results of a tox screen administered to Mrs. Fivey shortly after her arrival at Umpqua General Hospital?”

  “Sure can,” says the doctor. “We found alcohol and colarozam in her system.”

  “As you know, terminating a pregnancy is a felony.”

  Her clothes are too tight. The room is too hot.

  A plastic bucket of another girl’s stuff.

  “Objection.”

  “Can cause dizziness and falling.”

  “When mixed with alcohol.”

  “When mixed with lemon, lavender, fenugreek, and elderflower oil.”

  “A felony.”

  “Seeking a termination.”

  “A felony.”

  She needs to find a bathroom—

  “Dizzy, disoriented, prone to stumbling.”

  “When Dolores Fivey was admitted.”

  “Standard procedure.”

  Websites say nausea is only first trimester—

  “And what were the results of.”

  “Women of childbearing age.”

  The daughter needs a bathroom. Can’t think. Too hot.

  Colarozam.

  A plastic bucket.

  The shunning of a boar.

  Claimed to believe.

  When mixed with alcohol.

  A boar shun.

  So tight this hoodie this room too hot—

  Ash’s mocha breath on her cheek: “Girl, are you okay?”

  “What.”

  “You’re sweating like a freak. Let’s get some water.”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Hush,” says Ash, and shoves her down the slippery bench toward the door.

  Mínervudottír saw a narwhal come to breathe at one of the holes cut in the ice near the ship, for quick water in case a fire broke out. He was soon joined by others, their helical tusks spearing the air. The sailors watched the fire holes too and would shout “Unicorn!” when a whale appeared.

  THE BIOGRAPHER

  From narwhals she moves to notes on the Greely Expedition. In August of 1881 the American explorer Adolphus Greely and his team of twenty-five men and forty-two dogs arrived at Lady Franklin Bay, west of Greenland. They were to gather astronomical and magnetic data from the Arctic Circle and to attain a new “Farthest North” record.

  The second summer, the expedition waited on the supply ship that was scheduled to bring food and letters. It never appeared. (Neptune had been blocked by ice.)

  The third summer: no ship. (Proteus had been crushed by ice.)

  Between 1882 and 1884, several vessels went in search of Greely and his crew—at first to restock them, then to save them.

  Each time she types the word “ice,” the biographer thinks trial.

  Boots. Parka. Gloves. Rain has rinsed the frost from her windshield. Instead of driving down the hill toward school, she drives up: toward the cliff road and highway, the county seat. If Fivey tries to fire her, she’ll hire Edward to contest it.

  She has been in a courtroom twice before, in Minnesota, for Archie’s possession charges. “How can you tell when a lawyer’s lying?” he turned to whisper. “When he opens his mouth,” she said, dismayed by how obvious the joke was.

  Fiveys at the front; Cotter from the P.O. behind them; Susan in a middle row; Mattie and Ash at the very back. Mattie looks haggard and dazed. Having never needed to terminate a pregnancy, the biographer doesn’t know how long it takes to reco
ver. A hard little glass splinter in her hopes the girl is miserable.

  The new laws turn the girl into a criminal, Gin Percival into a criminal, the biographer herself—had she asked for Mattie’s baby, forged its birth certificate—into a criminal.

  If not for her comparing mind and covetous heart, the biographer could feel compassion for her fellow criminals.

  Instead she feels a splinter of glass.

  In the witness box Gin Percival sits absolutely still. Expression flat as a knife.

  PROSECUTOR: Ms. Percival, on Monday we heard sworn testimony from Dolores Fivey that you caused significant injuries to her. That you gave her a powerful drug that you claimed would terminate her pregnancy but which resulted in her falling down a flight of stairs and—

  EDWARD: Objection. Is there a question hidden in there?

  PROSECUTOR: Withdrawn. Did you administer a mixture of colarozam, fenugreek, lavender, lemon, and elderflower oil to Dolores Fivey?

  GIN: No.

  PROSECUTOR: I’ll remind you that you are under oath, Ms. Percival. A bottle containing traces of those ingredients was found in Mrs. Fivey’s home, with your fingerprints all over it.

  GIN: That was my bottle. Oil for scars. Only the last four things. Not the first thing.

  PROSECUTOR: Sorry, Ms. Percival, you’re not making much sense.

  EDWARD: Objection.

  JUDGE: Sustained.

  PROSECUTOR: Ms. Percival, tell me: are you a witch?

  EDWARD: Objection!

  PROSECUTOR: It’s a reasonable question, Your Honor. Goes to the defendant’s proficiency with herbal medicines and to her state of mind. If she self-identifies, even if delusionally, as a health-care provider—

  JUDGE: I will allow it.

  PROSECUTOR: Are you a witch?

  GIN: [Silent]

  PROSECUTOR: How long have you identified as a witch?

  GIN: [Silent]

  JUDGE: The defendant will answer.

  GIN: If you knew about the real powers, if you knew, you’d be—

  EDWARD: Your Honor, I request a short recess.

  PROSECUTOR: Your Honor, I demand to finish my line of questioning.

  JUDGE: “Demand”? You are in no position to demand anything here, Ms. Checkley. We will adjourn for thirty minutes.

  Accused witches in the seventeenth century were dunked in rivers or ponds. The innocent drowned. The guilty floated, surviving to be tortured or killed some other way.

  This isn’t 1693! the biographer wants to yell.

  She shakes her head.

  Don’t just shake your head.

  While she hid out in Newville, they closed the clinics and defunded Planned Parenthood and amended the Constitution. She watched on her computer screen.

  Don’t just sit there watching.

  While she hid out in her book, imagining the nineteenth-century deaths of Nordic pilot whales, twelve sperm whales perished, for reasons unknown, on the Oregon coast.

  She looks for Mattie, but she and Ash and their coats are gone.

  “Hey, Ro,” calls Susan from the aisle.

  “Hi,” says the biographer, engrossed in her ancient flip phone, which can’t even go online. She doesn’t want to talk to Susan the non-criminal, the good adult.

  Out in the marble-floored hallway she sees Mattie come out of the women’s bathroom and head for the exit.

  “Wait!” The biographer jogs after her.

  Mattie doesn’t stop. “Ash is getting the car.”

  Snow is flurrying down. On the courthouse steps they stand blinking at the little wet stars.

  “How are you feeling?” says the biographer. “How was the procedure?”

  The girl pulls on blue mittens. “I have to go.”

  “Wait, okay? I’m not going to tell anyone. Pretend I don’t work at school.”

  “You do work at school.”

  “Did you go to Vancouver?”

  Mattie’s lips are purplish in the snow light. Her eyes are lake-green. “Didn’t happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Pink Wall.”

  You mean—The biographer gleams inside. “But why—did they not arrest you?”

  “One was going to. Then I thought another one was about to, like, sexually assault me in exchange for letting me go. But he actually just let me go.”

  The baby is not gone?

  The splinter is thrilled.

  “Were you scared?”

  Mattie wipes snow from her upper lip. “Yeah. But honestly?” Inhales a shredded breath. “I’m more scared now.”

  I will take the baby on a train to Alaska.

  Row a boat with the baby to the Gunakadeit Light.

  Ask her.

  “Did they notify your parents?”

  “No.” A stricken look. “And you won’t either, right?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “I better go—there’s Ash.”

  Ask her now.

  But the biographer is halted, held mute.

  She pats Mattie’s shoulder.

  The baby will see the black ocean flecked with silver.

  I will eat dinner with the baby every night.

  FUCKING. ASK. HER.

  Her mouth can’t make those words.

  “Well, if you need anything, let me know?”

  “Thanks, miss.”

  The girl descends the steps, blue scarf rippling behind; and the biographer sees blue-swaddled babies shot from cannons across the Canadian border, then tossed back, still wrapped and cooing, onto American soil.

  The significance of Eivør Mínervudottír’s research was

  Mínervudottír was important because

  Was she important?

  From the Latin: to be of consequence; weigh. To carry in, to bring in.

  She brought in:

  1. Refusal to submit to cottage life

  2. Measurements of ice chlorides and Arctic sea temperatures

  3. Metric analyses of ice responses to wind speed and tide speed

  4. A theory of refreezing predictors in sea-ice leads, invaluable for navigating ice-choked waters

  And thus helped to bring in:

  1. Shipping and trade through the Northeast Passage, once considered impenetrable

  2. More ways for white pirates to steal from the not-white, the not-rich, or the not-human

  3. Oil, gas, and mineral drilling in the Arctic

  4. The shrinking of the ice

  Mínervudottír may have felt free; but she was a cog in a land-snatching, resource-sucking, climate-fucking imperialist machine.

  Wasn’t she?

  Was she?

  I DON’T KNOW

  WHAT I AM

  EVEN SAYING

  ABOUT THIS PERSON THERE IS NOT

  A SINGLE KNOWN PHOTOGRAPH OF

  or why I couldn’t bring

  myself to ask for

  my lips aren’t working

  THE WIFE

  Labiaplasty surgeons earn up to $250,000 per month.

  A little animal—possum? porcupine?—tries to cross the cliff road.

  Sooty, burnt, charred to rubber.

  Shivering, trying to cross.

  Already so dead.

  After federal and state taxes, social security, retirement, and health insurance, Didier brings home $2,573 per month. They don’t have rent or mortgage payments, but it’s still not enough.

  Clap, clap, say the labia.

  If the wife were a better budgeter, it would be enough. If she were more organized.

  The wife has been letting the house “go.”

  And letting herself “go.”

  We’ll go if you let us.

  Wife and house run away together, hand in door. Hand in dormer window.

  I’d take lonely over beaten to a paste.

  She pictures Bryan’s cousin, whoever she is, in a shack in the woods, hurled against a moldy particleboard wall. The husband is long bearded, wild haired. He rarely comes out of the woods or lets his wife come
out. They drive to town once a month for supplies. On these trips Bryan’s cousin wears sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat.

  Why does Bryan stand by and let it happen? Shouldn’t he run into those woods and find the shack and put a stop to the beatings? Shouldn’t he and the mother he visits in La Jolla, if they care so much, call the police?

  Can’t think of Bryan without broiling with shame.

  “Mommy.”

  “Yes, sprite?”

  “Cold,” he says, her dear boy who isn’t interested in saying much, who is so different from his chattery sister.

  “Let’s go put on a sweater,” hoisting him onto her hip.

  After they separate, will Didier buy pot gumdrops and leave them out on the coffee table for the children to find?

  You need to tell him.

  Upstairs, she finds a blue wool pullover.

  Can pot be overdosed on?

  “No!” shouts John.

  “I forgot, you hate this one—sorry.” She pulls off the blue wool and picks a red cotton, less itchy, from the drawer.

  Will he remember to give them their vitamin D?

  Tell him.

  Downstairs the wife sits at the dining room table with her eyes closed.

  “Momplee!”

  “Don’t yell, Bex.”

  “Then pay attention.”

  “What?”

  “I said, what will you get Daddy for Valentine’s Day?”

  “That’s over a month away.”

  “I know but I already know which cards I’m giving to people. The turtle ones, remember, that we saw?”

  “Well, I’m not going to get Daddy anything.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not a holiday we celebrate.”

  “But it’s the day of love.”

  “Not for us,” says the wife.

  “Do you love Daddy?”

  “Of course I do, Bex.”

  “Then why don’t you celebrate it?”

  “Because it’s silly.”

  “Oh.” The girl looks at her interlaced fingers and is thinking of the turtle cards, signed and sealed in small white envelopes, one for each classmate.