It’s a little easier to get Father to talk about the wastelands, especially if he’s drunk on mash-wine. The problem is, Caitlin can’t find the right questions. She’ll ask if there was a big fire, and he’ll laugh and say “Was there ever!” in such a way that she can’t tell if he’s joking or telling the truth. She asks why he and Mother came, and he says something about the ancestors and the shalt-not about listening at walls. She asks if there are still horses, remembering the sturdy, leggy giants from pictures in schoolbooks and the Aarons’ paintings. He says, “Horses! Why do you want to know about horses?” She asks if there are children in the wastelands, and he says, “Keep asking questions and there’ll be one.”
She never asks him questions if he’s not drunk, or if he’s too drunk. She has to time it just right. Once she got him to admit that there were dogs in the wastelands, and she was popular at school for two whole days, but then everyone started ignoring her again. Caitlin knows they wish she was smarter and could ask better questions. It’s hard with a father like Father, but she doesn’t know how to explain that to anyone else.
During times of quiet, afternoons when Mother is staring at the wall and Father is snoring in the bed, her mind is always running, running. She can’t shut it off. Strangely, the only place that seems peaceful is church. Despite the pastor’s grim warnings of the darkness below, and the inevitable sinking disappointment at how bad she is, church is predictable. People sit in the pews while the pastor strides and thunders. She doesn’t have to say anything or answer any questions, and she knows every single person in the pews has to sit there and stay quiet, like her. Sometimes she closes her eyes and falls slightly into a doze, so she still hears the pastor but sees colors and flashes of faces behind her eyelids.
On this Sunday, she is slipping off to sleep in the pew when suddenly a movement in front of her flips her eyes open so wide they feel lidless. Janey Solomon has turned and is staring at Caitlin, who nearly shrieks. Of all the people in the world, Janey scares her the most. More than Father, more than the wanderers with their secret meetings and sweeping decisions, more than Haley Balthazar, who once punched Caitlin in the stomach at recess. It’s not just Janey’s unique appearance, with her shining hair and bounteous freckles, or all the rumors about what she’s like in summertime. It’s that Janey herself isn’t scared of anything, which is the most terrifying thing about her.
Caitlin looks down at her lap, at the rough-woven dress with a moth hole. She looks up at the ceiling as if she’s found something interesting there. She even tries a jumpy little wave in Janey’s direction. Janey’s gaze doesn’t change, she just tilts her head like a dog hearing a faint noise. The light gray eyes with wide black pupils travel over Caitlin’s forearms, which have mottled bruises peeking out through the long sleeves. Caitlin feels a sudden urge to shout, “It’s okay! I bruise really easily!” but of course she’d rather die than yell anything in church. Janey’s freckled lips pull to one side. Caitlin is considering crawling under the pew when Janey turns around and faces front again. Heart racing, Caitlin slowly creeps her hand down the side of her thigh, finger-walks it across the wood like a hesitant spider, and seizes her mother’s fingers. Mother squeezes Caitlin’s palm briefly, like a reflex, and smiles vacantly toward the front.
Chapter Five
Amanda
Amanda goes into one of her staring spells in the root cellar, while she is examining carrots. She’s holding a bunch in her hand, deciding which to use in a salad for supper, and then suddenly something shifts. There’s a quiet weight to her shoulders, lost hours settling over her like a mantle. Walking slowly upstairs, she checks the clock. About two hours this time. She hesitates, then sighs and goes back down into the cool dimness.
Amanda once told her neighbor, Jolene Joseph, about the lost time. Jolene laughed and said it was “pregnancy crazy,” and that the same thing happened to her. Amanda laughed too, and didn’t mention that she’s had these spells as far back as she can remember.
Her episodes of lost time have gotten worse since the baby started kicking. At first Amanda thought her digestion was off, but then she realized that the flutters were too regular and quick to be gas. A moth beating against a window frantically, then settling with a shiver onto a windowsill. The first time she recognized its trembling, Amanda pressed her hand deep into her belly and thought, Hello, baby girl. Then she ran to the outhouse and puked into the miasmic pit. She lost time then, staring into a mosaic of sewage through a faded, lime-smelling wooden opening. When she came back to herself, she slowly walked back to the house, thinking, There’s no way to know. It could be a boy. Now she knows for sure.
Amanda is terrified that, upon having a daughter, she will turn into her mother. Mother hated Amanda from the moment she was born. Amanda found out later it was Father who fed her, using goat’s milk and a cloth, when Mother refused. Father had diapered her, cleaned her, and played with her while Mother sat in bed, staring at the ceiling and crying.
When Amanda was two, Elias was born, and Mother adored him instantly. Father was always busy repairing roofs during the day. At first, Amanda tagged after Mother and Elias, but they pulled into a shell made only for mother and son, leaving her lost and confused. Eventually she stopped seeking their company. She only laughed and talked when Father was home, when he would take her on his lap and rub her feet between his hands, and curl locks of her light brown hair around his fingers.
Amanda even slept with him in her child’s bed, with Mother and Elias sprawled out in the bed meant for two adults. As she grew, she started butting against him with her kneecaps and elbows and hips. When she was six, Father’s body stretched across the bed made her wakeful, and then she couldn’t sleep at all. Even if Father was sound asleep, she jerked at every twitch, tensed at every snort. Eventually she started sleeping curled in an impenetrable ball by the fireplace if it was cold, and sprawled on the roof like a limpet if it wasn’t. Father teased her at first, then pleaded, and then commanded her to sleep in bed at night. But as soon as he fell asleep, she slipped away.
When the other girls at school found out that Amanda was sleeping on the roof, they thought she was different and brave, a fearless rebel. She didn’t mind that designation at all. Given her threadbare clothing and disintegrating shoes—Mother only mended Amanda’s clothes when they were at the point of falling off her—it was better than being known as pitiful.
Soon even sleeping on the roof was too much proximity to Father, and she began roaming around in search of other places to sleep. She learned she could sleep in the cold, although not in the snow. Eventually she began sleeping at the edge of the island, where the brackish water lazily cozied up to land. The morning horizon was always foggy, and she could never see very far, but she liked the way the light filtered through the fog like a gentle touch, the way the outlines of trees and driftwood glowed and sharpened as the sun rises. She liked the little hermit crabs, scuttling around with one fist triumphantly thrust into the air, and the sound of fish leaping and plopping in the water. She even liked going back to Mother’s scowls and Father’s glum, sickening affection, because she knew that a few hours had belonged just to her.
Amanda doesn’t want her daughter to sleep in the cold because her mother hates her. But Mother probably didn’t plan to hate Amanda. It just happened.
When Andrew comes home, Amanda is still holding a bunch of carrots in the root cellar. Her candle has almost burned to a stub. The cellar is stone, carefully built and mortared so that muck doesn’t seep in during the summer. The fading light jumps and flickers on the smooth walls, so that the hanging chickens and piles of potatoes seem alive and threatening, things with teeth.
“Is that dinner?” he asks, laughing. He puts a hand on her swollen belly and kisses the back of her neck. For the first time in Amanda’s life, she wants him to go away.
“Dinner will be late,” she says. “I took a long nap.”
“That’s fine,” he answers. “On Thursday there’ll be h
alf a rack of mutton ready at Tim’s, all smoked and ready for the cellar. I should have asked for a whole one; his roof will hold for decades. Longer than the rest of the place.” He is covered in sawdust and twigs, and she wonders if he was crawling under a tree.
Amanda can never quite believe she married a man who does the same work as Father. Now the reminder makes her gorge rise, and she tries to force it back down her throat and focus on the conversation.
“I don’t know,” she replies. “A whole rack could go a bit off before we eat it.”
“Not with the appetite you’ve been having,” he says, grinning at her.
“Not me,” Amanda says, touching her belly. Don’t say “her.” “The, the baby.”
“The baby,” Andrew agrees.
“I’m actually not very hungry tonight,” she says.
“Would you like me to go to George’s?” he asks. George is Andrew’s older brother, another roofer and an overall cheerful man. He has two daughters.
“Would you?” says Amanda, forcing a smile that feels like a lie. “It’s just that I’m…so tired.”
“Of course,” he says, taking her hand, and she loosens her fingers from her palm one by one so that he’s holding a hand and not a fist. That night she eats unwashed carrots for dinner, squatting on her haunches in the root cellar, savoring the metallic taste of the dirt as much as the sweetness of the vegetables.
Late that night, she hears sobbing from the house next door. From the pitch of it, she can tell it’s Nancy Joseph, who recently started bleeding and so is facing her summer of fruition. Sighing, Amanda rolls over fretfully, frustrated at her inability to block out the sound. Eventually she dozes off, but the soft weeping clings to her mind and follows her into her dreams. She dreams of a child crying desperately, skinny and hunched over, and Amanda is frozen and unable to say or do anything to comfort her.
Chapter Six
Vanessa
Mother keeps telling Vanessa her turn will come, but she still finds birthings disgusting. She’s seen a lot of them, animal and human, and the actual event itself doesn’t bother her anymore. It’s the thought of her having to do it that is awful. She doesn’t want all that stretching and fluid and odor to ever have anything to do with her. Mother says she’ll feel different when she’s older, and Lenore Gideon told Vanessa she doesn’t have a choice anyway. Vanessa suspects they’re both saying the same thing.
Janet Balthazar is breathing hard, and at every contraction her belly turns to stone. Mother is rubbing Janet’s stomach with oil, and Killian Adam is holding burning herbs under her nose, to dull the pain. The sweet, musty scent of the smoldering plants cuts through the heavy smells of blood and sweat. There’s always at least one wanderer’s wife at a birthing, and despite Vanessa’s protests, Mother drags her along to a few every year. The small wooden birthing building—which holds up to three laboring women at a time, just in case—is crammed full of daughters, brought to learn about their future tribulations. They range in age from Hilda Aaron, who just learned to crawl and has now fallen peacefully asleep on the straw with her rump in the air, to Shelby Joseph, who is having her summer of fruition this year and looks aghast. Birthings are the only time unrelated women past fruition can gather together without men, and Vanessa has seen laboring women completely ignored as a cluster of women talk rapidly, shooing the children away. But Mother never ignores a woman in pain, and the others are taking her cue. She keeps dipping her head toward Shelby, muttering instructions and explanations. Janet screams, the cords in her throat vibrating against her skin.
Vanessa is huddled with the younger girls, a loose aggregation on the straw that is trying to move farther away from Janet Balthazar but is already bumping up against the walls. “This had better not be a defective,” says Nina Joseph to Vanessa, stating the obvious. Nina’s only seven, so Vanessa doesn’t snap at her.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Vanessa says.
“How do you know?” asks Nina, and Vanessa realizes she doesn’t, she’s just parroting Mother.
“Well, if it’s not fine, then…”
“My mother had a defective before she had me and Bradley,” says Nina.
“I don’t think my mother had any defectives,” says Vanessa, although she’s not absolutely sure.
The two girls are positioned where they can see right between Janet’s legs. The candles, placed in bowls of water, gutter and flicker and paint undulating patterns on Janet’s naked skin. There’s a rush of blood and water and a resultant rich smell, and together they get up and move to one side, where all they can see is a straining, trembling thigh. When the birthing is done and the hut empty, the daughters are responsible for cleaning out the soiled straw and spreading fresh bundles to await the next deluge of blood. Vanessa is not looking forward to it. It makes her remember the time, about a year ago, when she found a pile of rags in the kitchen soaked through with blood, maroon and stiff, stinking of copper. Mother was in bed recovering from a headache. When Vanessa asked Mother if she had started taking up butchering, hoping to turn it into a joke, Mother’s face hardened. “In a way,” she said, and Vanessa had been too frightened to ask anything more. For the next few days, Mother dragged around the house, irritable and weak, and Father sat staring into the fire, his eyes shining too brightly. Uncharacteristically, Vanessa was too disturbed to ferret out what was going on.
Inga Balthazar skips over. She is a plump ten-year-old with glowing brown curls who always looks smug and satisfied, like she just ate an entire cake. “Mother says it’s alive, she can feel it kicking,” she announces. “I wonder what they’ll name it? Jill Saul just died, so they might name it Jill.”
“Does that mean it’s not defective? If it’s kicking?” Nina asks Vanessa.
“No, sometimes they’re born alive,” Vanessa says thoughtfully. She heard that last year Wilma Gideon had a baby that looked like a gutted fish.
“There haven’t been any defectives in my family for three generations,” Inga says proudly, obviously reciting something she’s heard. “Our bloodline is spotless.”
“No it’s not, your brother is stupid and ugly,” replies Nina. Inga bunches her small fists, but then Janet squalls, and they turn to look.
“Daddy says that they could bring things from the wastelands to make the pain better,” says Inga, “but that’s unnatural.”
“They make the pain better for other things,” Vanessa points out. “That’s not even from the wastelands, they grow the plants here. Remember when Mr. Saul the fisherman broke his arm and it bent backwards?” She didn’t see it, but part of her wishes she had.
Inga nods, looking doubtful. “I don’t know why it’s different. Maybe if you don’t have pain, the baby won’t live.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” says Nina.
“I wonder what it’s like in the wastelands,” says Vanessa. “Birthings.” Both Nina and Inga turn to stare at her, their brows furrowed.
“I thought there wasn’t anybody left?” says Nina.
“No, there are people left but it’s only a few defectives,” corrects Inga. “I mean, mostly defectives.”
“Then why would it be different?” asks Nina.
Vanessa says, “I thought everything was different.”
“Everything’s worse,” hazards Inga. “I bet you have no friends around you and no herbs, and if you take too long somebody cuts your belly open and takes the baby and leaves you dead.”
“Why would somebody take the baby?” says Nina, wrinkling her forehead.
“Father says that children are precious in the wastelands,” Inga answers. “Ones that aren’t defective. They’re worth more than gold. There aren’t many of them.”
“Why not?”
“Because of war, and disease, and murder.” Inga ticks the items off on her fingers briskly. “He said that I would live about two minutes in the wastelands, before someone murdered me.”
“If you’re so precious, why would they kill you?” contends V
anessa.
Janet screams again, louder. Another gush of bloody water, laced with black. The straw beneath her wilts and darkens like the fine hair around the edge of her forehead. She is glistening with sweat, every muscle writhing under her skin, her lips stripped back from her teeth. In the close, warm air of the shed, mended every time even a whisper of cold air drifts through the boards in winter, Vanessa can smell Janet’s breath; it’s sour, full of pain and panic.
“Why can’t they give her a sleeping draft?” Vanessa murmurs. “Mother gave me some last night. I barely woke up at all.”
Nina looks wistful. “Daddy says I shouldn’t ever take it.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
They all turn as Janet shrieks high and reedy, like a trapped sheep. “There’s the head!” cries Sharon Joseph, who is kneeling between her legs. “Push!” Janet pants in short, moaning gasps.
Something slithers into Sharon’s lap. She hands it to Shelby, telling her to suck the slime out of its throat. Shelby makes a face, and Sharon slaps her. Leaning forward, Shelby gives the baby a dramatic kiss, spits blood and white muck into the straw, and retches.
“It’s alive!” says Inga with surprise. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“You’re the one who told us it was alive,” responds Nina.
“Yes, but I didn’t expect it to stay alive.”
“It’s a girl,” says Sharon, glancing at Mother and Janet, and the three women burst into tears.
Gather the Daughters Page 4