by Beaman, Sara
“And just who do you expect to do all that work?” Calliope asked, her eyes dancing.
“Well, Imelda is obviously my first choice,” Rina said, “because she’s so nurturing.”
“Have you considered the Sampson family?” Calliope asked. “Just think what fun Michaela would have with a little sister to use for target practice.”
They were both laughing so hard they didn’t noticed how still Joy had gotten until she said, “You saw my momma?”
Rina’s smile faded at the serious expression on Joy’s little face.
“Is my momma coming to get me?” Joy asked. Something in her voice alerted Devon and Lucia to the gravity of the situation. They stopped chattering and the room fell silent.
Rina opened her mouth and closed it again. She didn’t know what to say. She’d been so worried about how Calliope would react it hadn’t occurred to her that she would have to break the news to Joy, too.
While Rina was still trying to gather her thoughts, Calliope knelt down and brushed Joy’s wispy hair back from her forehead.
“Do you want to leave?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Joy said. “I miss my momma.”
“Your momma loves you,” Calliope said. “But she can’t come get you right now. So you’re going to stay here with me and Rina and Devon and Lucia.”
“Will Lucia brush my hair?” Joy asked.
“Yes,” Lucia said. “And I’ll be careful so the tangles won’t hurt.”
“And I’ll teach you how to whistle,” Devon offered.
“If I draw my momma a picture, can Rina bring it to her?” Joy asked.
Calliope nodded. “She’ll take it with the rest of the mail next time she rides the circuit.”
“Okay,” Joy said. “I will draw a picture of you and me and Lucia and Devon and Rina and the man Rina was kissing before she came inside. Do you think my momma will like that?”
“Yes,” Rina said, and smiled. “That sounds like a really beautiful picture.”
The Monk by CS Cheely
Irene woke in the chilly dawn, urgent, and slipped away from Paul's warm embrace. She hunkered down on the cold floor and reached underneath the bed for the chamber pot. With a glance to Paul to make sure he was still sleeping, she squatted over it to pee.
When she was done she slipped the lid back over the chamber pot, but before she could cover it completely she glimpsed a hint of pink. She reached underneath her pajamas and touched herself. Her hand came away with a dark smudge.
Irene blinked back tears of disappointment as she padded barefoot into the living room, opened a metal can, and took out a handful of rags. She hadn't boiled any because she'd been so sure, just as she was every month, that she wouldn't need them. She sniffed the rags, but in the dark she couldn't tell how dirty they were. With a sad shudder she stuffed them in her underpants, promising herself she’d boil fresh ones later.
The pale light was turning weakly yellow, and she stole back to bed to get a few more warm moments with Paul before he was up and out into the fields.
When dawn broke Paul was up like clockwork. Irene dressed and followed him out into the living room. Paul's sandy-haired brother Lazarus was there already. He gave her one of his hearty smiles, pulled on his boots, and disappeared out the door. Paul lingered a moment with her, nuzzling her through her mussed hair, his hot breath in her ear.
“Love you,” he murmured. “Love you, Irene. See you soon, love.” Then he was gone, too. Irene gathered the things to cook breakfast.
A moment later there was Lang, wrapping her baby daughter Binh against her back. Hua, Lazarus' other wife, was pregnant and would probably stay in bed a little later.
Two wives, two years, two babies for Lazarus. For her husband, nothing but Irene. She blinked back tears again.
Lang helped Irene hang the heavy iron pot in the fireplace, and together they built up a fire under it. It was a luxury to have firewood to cook with, since it was dangerous to go outside the gates of town to gather it, hard work to haul it back, inefficient to burn it. Better to buy time on the electric-powered stoves in Granny's kitchen, but Paul and Lazarus could afford not to.
Two hours later there were a dozen boiled eggs, stewed apples with muscadine grapes, carrot sticks, one last batch of sliced tomatoes, herbed goat cheese on toasted bread, and some shredded chicken left over from the night before, stewed again to be sure it was safe. They set water on the fire to boil for clean-up, and Irene tossed in a handful of rags when no one was looking.
Hua woke up and joined them, Paul and Lazarus came back in from the field, and they all gathered around the fire to eat.
“We've got to pull all those sweet potatoes,” Lazarus said to Paul in his booming, jolly voice. “Who can we get in to help?”
“Are you going to buy bread today?” Paul asked Irene. Paul was the elder brother, quieter but just as likely to be smiling.
Irene nodded.
“Ask the bread-maker's son. Gregory’s a hard worker,” Paul said.
Lazarus frowned. “Now that my Hua's full of baby I guess he can be trusted around here.”
Hua looked up from the egg whites she was eating, too queasy to get anything else down. “I can take care of myself,” she said, shaking her fist. “Some boy making moon-eyes at me means nothing.”
Lazarus laughed and threw an arm around her, roughly hugging her to him.
At first she smiled but then she pushed away from him. “Ugh, Laz, you watch out. You get too close-”
“You'll whack me one?” Lazarus finished.
“No, probably puke,” she rested a hand gently on her swollen belly.
“Drink the tea,” Hua's sister Lang said, looking up from nursing Binh. “I told you to drink the tea first.”
The sisters fussed over peppermint tea, Lazarus laughed and smiled on them, baby Binh sucked away. Paul was smiling, too, watching all the commotion happily. But Irene felt cold inside.
Later she pulled the boiled rags from the pot and hung them over the fire to dry. Lang and Hua were busy, Lazarus was gone to the fields, and she'd thought Paul had gone, too. But she felt his arms around her from behind.
“Oh, Irene. I'm sorry.” He knew what the rags meant. Irene tried not to cry.
He kissed her neck. “I love you forever, Irene. You know that. Forever and ever. Whatever comes.” Irene leaned back into the warmth of him and closed her eyes for just a second, letting him comfort her. She felt an answering surge of love in her heart, so strong and deep it was almost painful.
When he was gone she packed a bag of mustard greens, a huge bundle of rosemary and oregano, and a little slab of goat cheese. She left Lang and Hua to do the dishes and set off to see the bread-maker. But she had another errand first.
Irene walked the path through town fingering the little gold cross around her neck, hidden under her clothes.
There were those who thought that the Collapse was God's judgment. Her parents had been born into a time when a virulent illness swept the country, killing indiscriminately. People fled cities, piling themselves into vehicles and making for the deserted areas, the empty spaces out west and in Mexico and Canada where sickness couldn't travel.
Irene didn't remember the exodus. She only remembered living crowded, living in fear of another outbreak, at the mercy of those who seized power in the chaos that followed. When she was old enough, her parents had sent her forth, sent her out into the abandoned world, to live a new, better life. They had sent her forth to be fruitful. Her mouth twisted in sorrow at the word. Fruitful.
Irene arrived at the house she'd been seeking. The lawn was overgrown and tangled with herbs and nettles, all things the obstetrix grew for her tinctures and teas. But instead of being planted in neat rows like a garden the seeds had been scattered, and now everything was woven together helplessly. Irene had to push her way among living and dead weeds, grown waist high, to walk down the cracked sidewalk to the front door.
It was terrible to live barricaded
in like this, a foolish arrangement for a woman who had to be available any time day or night for an emergency call. Also foolish, Irene thought, to call the obstetrix a woman. She was only a girl.
Irene knocked on the door, which was shedding paint chips all over the front stoop. All the houses in town were tumble-down houses, all left over from before Collapse. But most people made some effort to clean theirs up, scrape away old paint, apply new if they could scavenge it.
Margotty opened the door and threw a hand up to shade her eyes from the early morning sun. She turned from Irene and padded back across the worn wood floor on bare feet, returning to a breakfast of cold boiled egg and an apple. No wood fire for the obstetrix, no solar panels to power a hot pot, no heat of any kind. She ate her meals cold.
Irene lingered at the door. Margotty had only just now gotten up, and Irene had been up for hours and already fed a whole family.
“Come in,” Margotty said, her voice husky with sleep. “Close the door.” She was a scrawny teenager; long brown hair that was neither straight nor curly hid her face and draped her shoulders in a tangled shawl.
Irene closed the door and crossed the creaky floor. Margotty was perched on a stool in the kitchen, her bony knees jutting out from under the too-large dress she wore. There were no other chairs so Irene just stood.
Margotty glanced at a calendar on the wall, drawn in chalk on the drywall where a large strip of wallpaper had peeled away. “That time of the month again? No luck, huh?”
“Two years, Margotty. More than two years. Longer than you've been at Thorn Creek,” Irene said, a note of pleading creeping into her voice.
“Long time,” Margotty nodded.
“Isn't there something more we can do?” Irene asked.
“Still having sex every other night?”
Irene flushed, embarrassed to talk about something so personal with an unmarried girl who couldn't possibly understand such matters. “When we can. Paul is so tired when he comes in from the fields...”
Margotty peeled her boiled egg badly.
“I've been using the prayer beads you gave me,” Irene said, “to make sure we make an extra effort on those special nights.”
“They're not prayer beads,” Margotty said. “Fertility counters. They don't work for everyone. Some women ovulate at irregular intervals. That's why I said do it every other night all month long.”
Irene frowned. Margotty must have no idea how much work that would be. “Is there something else?”
“Two years, huh?” Margotty said. “Yeah, maybe it's time to try something else.”
“What?” Irene asked quickly.
“Different man.” Margotty took a big bite from her apple.
“What?” Irene said again.
“Try having sex with a different man.”
“No!” Irene said, thinking of Paul's gentle hands on her. “No. You think something's wrong with him?”
“Could be him or could be you. Get him to ejaculate into a cup and take it to the lady doctor, Sabina. They have a microscope over there. She can look at the sperm and tell you if there's anything obviously wrong with them.”
Irene shuddered. Margotty was full of words, like ovulate and ejaculate and cervix, that Irene would never use herself and which made it seem like Margotty tinkered with machinery instead of real, living people.
“Or just try with another man,” Margotty continued. “If it doesn't work that way, either, then maybe it's you. Infertility is rampant. They say it was bad pre-Collapse and it's only gotten worse, from what I've seen. Lots of women have your problem.”
“But Lang and Hua–”
“Got lucky. Also descendants of foreign-born women don't usually have so much trouble,” Margotty said.
“You're foreign,” Irene said.
“Mom was German,” Margotty said. “But if anything it was worse over there. I was an IVF baby, you know, in the Canadian labs.” She finished her apple and tossed the core out an open window.
“You should bring that to the composting site,” Irene said. “We need good soil for the community gardens which feed you, too, you know.”
“Sorry,” Margotty said carelessly.
“And there's got to be some other way,” Irene insisted.
Margotty said, “You could get Sabina to arrange a donor. I know she does stuff like that on the sly. She can buy sperm for an artificial insemination attempt. Doesn't work as well as coitus, of course. But with that, you can afford a lot of anonymous sperm.” Margotty pointed to Irene's neck.
Irene realized she'd been fingering the delicate cross. Margotty must have gotten a glimpse of gold. Irene tucked the necklace away quickly. Paul's gift. His mother's ornament. It was worth so much in worldly goods, and Paul had chosen to fasten it around her neck instead of cashing it in.
“I'm married to Paul, I love him. I want his baby.”
“Yeah, lots of women say stuff like that. Sorry. It's the best advice I have.”
Irene tried to hold her irritation in check. “Don't tell anyone about that,” she said to Margotty, tapping the front of her shirt which concealed the cross.
“Nothing leaves this room.” Margotty shrugged. “Patient confidentiality.”
“And not a word about the advice you gave me.”
“You know I never say anything.”
“And you could take that apple core and those eggshells to the compost.”
Margotty's shoulders hunched and her hair fell forward, cloaking her face in shadow. She looked every bit the sullen teenager.
Irene turned and walked toward the door.
“I hope you're leaving something, Irene,” Margotty said, and her dark voice stopped Irene, gave her chills.
“Charging for consultations, now?” Irene said, carefully keeping her voice neutral. She dug in her bag and pulled out the head of mustard greens. After some hesitation she pulled out the soft goat's cheese and handed that over, too. An offering. No, not offering, begging. Margotty pulled live babies into the world all year long. Irene couldn't risk having Margotty mad at her. She needed Margotty's help.
Irene hurried out, startling at the sight of a black cat on the railing of Margotty's porch. The cat watched Irene with somber yellow eyes as she picked her way carefully down the cracked concrete steps.
She heard Margotty call “Cinder!” and the cat leapt smoothly off the porch railing. As she threaded through the overgrown yard, Irene shivered. There was something unsettling about Margotty. Out of desperation Irene had begun to believe that Margotty had some power to grant her a baby– and to fear that Margotty could deny her one, too.
Walking along in the warming day, though, Irene shrugged off the thought and began to regret her hasty decision to give Margotty the goat cheese. A silly waste, trading good cheese for advice to cuckold her husband. Advice she could never follow. Even if she wanted to, who could she trust to do something like that?
Lazarus? He was the obvious choice. Lazarus' children were practically Paul's children anyway. But would Lazarus do it? Would he lay with his brother's wife?
Irene squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. It was terrible idea. She knew she could never, never be with any man but Paul, even for a night. Even now she missed him, wished she was at home so she could look out over the fields and see him working.
****
Margotty crumbled a little cheese and put it on the floor for Cinder. She tossed the mustard greens in her satchel, slung it across her back, and headed off to see Kathy and her new baby boy. She left the door wide open behind her. Her cold, empty house held nothing to steal, and besides who would steal from the obstetrix?
As she walked she thought about Irene's problem. Irene had probably waited too long; she was twenty-eight, nearing thirty. Sometimes mothers came to her, upset that their young daughters were pregnant too early, crying that the girls could never support a baby when they were only fifteen, sixteen themselves.
In Margotty's opinion those girls were the lucky ones. Sur
e they'd struggle at first, but they'd never have to come to the obstetrix, begging for special teas or secret positions or other snake oil remedies that didn't exist. And once you had one baby, the second came easier.
That was best, Margotty decided. A girl should start when she was young – sixteen or seventeen. Eighteen at the oldest. At that age the fertility rate was highest. She paused at the door of Kathy's house, realizing she herself was that age.
Time to start? Maybe. She knocked.
The door was thrown open by Kathy's brother, Elmo. His broad face was split by a broader smile, and she knew it was going to be good news.
“His first night and he's still just as pink and healthy as he was yesterday,” Elmo said proudly. “A beautiful baby! Thanks so much to you, Margotty.”
“Not thanks to me,” Margotty said, pushing past him. “Thanks to luck, and to biology. Surviving the first night's a good sign, though.” She weaved through the scratched, scavenged furniture and made her way to the back room where she'd delivered the baby late last night.
Kathy was sleeping and so was the baby, curled up on her chest.
“Don't they make a pair?” Elmo whispered, coming up behind her.
“Co-sleeping puts him at risk for SIDS,” Margotty said. “I told you that last night. He should sleep on his back in a separate crib.”
“Yes, yes,” Elmo agreed without hearing. “We'll watch after him, never you mind.”
Margotty scowled. During labor she was a goddess and everyone obeyed her in all things. By the next morning she was nothing but a scabby teenager who couldn't possibly know anything about raising a child. She spun about and made for the kitchen.
Elmo followed her.
“We didn't think she'd make it,” Elmo said. “When the bottom came first, I thought we'd lost the baby and my sister.”
“Well, I told you after I performed the Leopold maneuvers that it would most likely be a non-cephalic presentation, but a frank breech is the easiest of those to deliver and typically has good fetal outcome.”