The next day at school, Mr. Abraham rails about how lazy and slow the girls are. Yet at recess, the girls who made it to the church fly around to the others like bees, depositing reports of what was said and gathering disbelief and confusion.
Despite the strangeness of what Janey said, and all the unanswered questions, the girls walk a little bit taller for the next week or so. They feel a little more satisfied leaving the dinner table. They know something. Or, at least, they might know something. Slowly, the doubters begin to believe in other islands, simply to have something new to believe. Something dark and mysterious, something exciting. Something forbidden.
Caitlin still whimpers and cries before Father, sits hunched and shivering in the classroom, wanders alone at recess, but she feels just a little bit different. She knows others can see it too; girls who used to tease her for her smallness, her shyness, her ugliness, now meet her eyes like she’s a person.
Caitlin can tell Janey’s not done. She still looks angry and deep in thought most of the time, as if she’s heading toward something that needs to be beaten into submission.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Vanessa
For the next few days, all the girls can talk about is the Other Island. To Vanessa, this shows that their perspective is weak, for there could be dozens or even hundreds of islands. She still feels depressed by the prospect, as it leaves her as impotent as she’s ever been, but the other girls adore the concept. Each has made up an island in her head and claimed it as her own.
Letty’s is cold all year round and covered in snow. People live in snow houses and eat squirrels and winter berries. There’s no summer, but it doesn’t matter, because only the children are brave enough to go out into the cold. They hunt and gather while parents and babies huddle inside.
Nina’s island is up in the sky, floating. If you get too close to the edge you might fall off and smash into bits.
Rosie’s island has only women, and they can have babies without men, just by deciding to. The mothers farm, cook, carve, and hunt while the daughters take care of littler daughters. At night they go to a special part of the woods, where they sing and tell stories, and then sleep in a big pile together. There’s always someone awake to watch for danger while the others sleep.
Leah’s island is overrun with dogs that live with the inhabitants, keeping them warm and catching them food. On her island, nobody ever drowns puppies, and they are all allowed to live and have their own families. Each child has two parents and ten dogs. The dogs eat at the table with the children, sleep on their bed with them, protect them, and escort them around. When there is a new litter of puppies, everyone celebrates like a baby boy was born, and then decides who needs more dogs.
Vanessa can’t conjure up a dream world. All she can think of is Janey’s voice whispering “Nothing will be any different.” She doesn’t know why the church meeting bothers her; she never expected to do anything but get married, have two children, and send them off to summer. She will persuade Father to give her his library, or at least some of it, and she’ll read all the time. When she is old, she and her husband will take a final draft and die. Her children, or perhaps someone else’s children, will take over their house, and her body will rot in the fields. She’s never been thrilled about any of it, but it always seemed inevitable, so she never considered any other option.
Now that there might be different possibilities, the idea of this ordained future keeps circling back to vex her. She tries to comfort herself with the idea that once her childbearing is done, she can read whenever she wants, but she still feels a sense of staleness and boredom. Nothing will be any different. All of their futures are interchangeable. Other than the defectives, they will all grow up, marry, have children, die.
The other girls are bubbling with creativity and laughter, which only makes Vanessa feel even sadder. In the evenings, she doesn’t eat much dinner. Mother fusses over her a bit and fixes her some tea with a drop of precious honey. It’s sweet on her tongue, but her thoughts remain bitter.
After Vanessa splashes her face clean from the small basin in her room, she starts to do her usual check, starting at her ankles. Craning her neck, she softly pats at her legs, running her fingers over the skin, ensuring it is smooth and her thighs are straight. Her hips are smooth and straight too, in line with her waist. She sticks her fingers between her legs, where everything is neat, bare, and dry. Resting a finger in her navel, she surveys her belly, which is flat, and then she carefully presses on her chest.
Vanessa has been wondering for a while if it was getting bigger, but dismissed her concerns as imagination. Tonight, she is sure she can feel some substance, and her heart starts beating faster. Pressing down with two fingers until she can feel the ribs beneath, she gauges the depths of each pad of fat. They’re soft like wet wool, and her stomach flips over violently. She does not want to be soft, she wants to be flat and hard as a board. There must be a way to get rid of them.
With her fists, she grinds at one of the protuberances as hard as she can, pinching and compressing it to lie flat against her chest. She counts to a hundred, and then releases it and compares it with the other one. They look the same, although the one she worked on is reddened. She vows to do this every night and every morning, first just on the right to make sure it works, and then on both. She tucks the loose cloth of her nightgown under her armpits, pulling it tighter so her chest looks flat. Father is surprised when he comes in, to find her standing in her nightdress with her hair uncombed, instead of in bed waiting for him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Janey
Janey is curled up with her back facing Mary, cold and still in the pale moonlight. She wishes Mary would fall asleep, but she can feel her staring at the back of Janey’s head, patient and worried. Janey wants to roll over, put her arms around Mary, and drift into sleep, but this seems as impossible as growing wings. She needs to be awake. Her mind is racing, always racing.
“Janey,” whispers Mary.
“What?” snaps Janey.
“You have to tell them what you told me.”
Janey is flooded with a sudden wish that she had no more to tell. That Amanda were alive, lumbering around with an abundant belly, that there were no suspicions and theories and fears spiking blackly into her brain every second. That she could simply sleep like a child.
“How long are you going to wait?” persists Mary.
Janey rolls over to face her. “I’m not a pastor,” she says. “I’m not an ancestor. Why do I have to gather everyone together? Why do I have to try to change things?”
“You’re Janey Solomon,” says Mary, with a touch of reverence. “You know things. You can’t just run around stupidly like the rest of them. You know you can’t.”
“Feel this.” Janey puts a hand on her chest, and Mary feels her heartbeat.
“What about it?” says Mary.
“Compare it to yours.”
Mary puts her other hand on her own breastbone. “Yours is slow. It always is.” Two pulses in rapid succession strike against Janey’s ribs, then a pause, then the regular rhythm starts again.
“My chest hurts sometimes. I think I might be dying.”
“Well, do something, then!” says Mary angrily. “Stop acting like you’re helpless. Start eating. That will help. Won’t it?”
“I can’t.”
“You can, it’s easy. Take food, put it in your mouth, chew, and swallow.”
“I can’t, I can’t…become a woman.”
“You’ll become one anyway, eventually. You can’t put it off forever.”
“No,” Janey says.
“Just become a woman and don’t do your summer of fruition. You’ll figure out a way.”
“Of course I won’t. Remember how Alberta Moses screamed and fought, and they made her drink something, and every time she started screaming again they made her drink something again, until the summer was over and she was married to Frank? And then, I heard, she kept screaming
and they kept giving it to her, and then she bled out and that was that, that was her life.” Janey pauses. “If she even really bled out.” Suddenly, violently, Janey bursts into tears. Mary wraps her soft arms around her.
“They wouldn’t treat you like Alberta,” Mary says soothingly. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“They’d like nothing better.”
“They’re scared of you.”
“That’s why they’d like nothing better.”
“So just go through it, everyone does. You could have children. You’d love them.”
Janey convulses at the thought. “I’m never having children.”
“You might have boys.”
“That’s even worse.”
“So you’re just going to kill yourself. You’ll go to the darkness below, you know.”
“I know.”
“Why won’t you eat? I would do anything for you, why can’t you do that for me?”
“Mary, I can’t. I mean really, I can’t.”
“You have teeth.” Mary sticks a finger in her mouth, taps her teeth to make her laugh. It doesn’t work. “You have a belly.” She tickles her and it’s like poking something dead. “You have everything you need.”
“I don’t,” Janey says. “I’m sorry.” There’s a pause. “I love you, Mary.”
“I love you too. I won’t let you die. Don’t worry. When you get too weak, I’ll feed you eggs and honey.”
Janey smiles a little and hiccups. “That sounds disgusting.”
“Cheese and honey, then.”
“You think too much about food.”
“You don’t think about food enough,” fires back Mary.
Janey sighs. “I think about it all the time,” she says quietly. She pushes her body into Mary’s, feeling her bones imprint on soft skin. “You don’t understand.”
“I never understand anything,” Mary replies. “Not like my sister, the great Janey Solomon.”
Janey blows air dismissively through her teeth, ruffling the hair at the back of Mary’s neck. Mary shivers, and giggles a little.
“You have to talk to the girls again,” says Mary. “You have to talk to them about everything you know. Everything.”
“I can’t. They’re too…too young.”
“Wait for them to be old enough to understand,” yawns Mary, “and they’ll be adults. And then you can’t do anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vanessa
A few days later, Vanessa is leaving her house in the morning for school; the grass is still slightly frozen and crunches satisfyingly under her feet. Suddenly someone leaps forward, grabs her arm, and pulls her around to the side of the house, where she falls over and lands with a thump on her back. Looking up, she sees gray eyes in a freckled face.
“I need to talk to you,” says Janey rather unnecessarily, still holding on to Vanessa’s arm with both hands.
“About what?” asks Vanessa, sitting up and rubbing her lower back. “And why are you jumping out at me? I could see you at recess.”
“No!” says Janey, pounding the wall of the house with a thump. “It’s too important for that.”
“Oh,” replies Vanessa, shakily getting to her knees and then her feet. “Well…I’m here. I’m listening.”
“Vanessa?” Mother calls from the door. “Is that you, banging?”
“Yes, Mother,” she calls back. “I, um, I fell. Right here. Against the wall.” She glares at Janey, who gives an apologetic little shrug with her bony shoulders.
“Are you all right?” asks Mother.
“Yes,” says Vanessa. “I’m off to school now.”
“Be good, dear,” says Mother, and Vanessa hears the door close again. She and Janey stare at each other uncertainly.
“Well?” says Vanessa.
“Well,” says Janey, “we can’t really talk here.” She looks around exaggeratedly, as if people are creeping toward them to hear their every word.
“I need to be in school. Mother will know if I don’t go to school.”
“Tell her you fell asleep.”
“I fell asleep walking to school?”
“Tell her you fainted.”
“I fainted and lay unconscious all day and then woke up after school let out. And came home.”
“Well,” says Janey again. “Can you promise to meet me after school?”
“Meet you after school,” says Vanessa slowly. “Where?”
“By the shore, near the shelter Mary and I built. Do you remember where that is?”
“It’s a long walk, but yes.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
After school, Vanessa wraps her sweater around her as she walks through the fields toward the beach. She rarely goes to the perimeter of the island unless she is naked and covered in mud; it’s not forbidden to visit the sea during autumn, but she considers the shore to be a summer place.
They all know the spot where the shelter was built; the water stays shallow for ages, and even the youngest children can wade around, hunting sea creatures or flopping on their bellies. She has fond memories of being a little girl, pleading with the older girls to pick her up and toss her into the ocean with a huge splash. The water always welcomed her in a rain of bubbles and droplets, slipping cool ribbons between her toes and fingers and into her ears, wrapping her body in a chilly, playful embrace.
The water seems different in autumn, angrier, even though its soft swells haven’t changed. Perhaps it is the color, the gray of charcoal smeared across paper, reflecting the sky above. Seagulls have gathered on the childless beach, stark white and soft drab with vivid flame-colored beaks and feet. They toss back their heads and keen in sharp, halting sobs.
Crouching, Vanessa runs her fingers through the cool, damp sand. The gulls shift uneasily and glance at her. The skeleton of Janey and Mary’s structure remains, although the twigs woven throughout have frayed and blown away. It reminds her of the altar at home, but stranger, frozen and broken and meant for worshipping something inhuman. She approaches it and runs her hand down one of the supports. A splinter catches in her palm, and she winces and pulls it out with her teeth.
“You came,” says Janey, appearing from nowhere and making Vanessa jump. “I thought you might not come.”
“I promised,” replies Vanessa, wiping the streak of blood from her hand on her dress before she can think better of it. “You said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I do,” says Janey. “I wanted to talk to you after the meeting at the church.”
Vanessa sighs. “I’m sorry I called you a freak,” she says. “But you shouldn’t have reminded me that I’ll end up like all of them. I try to forget it, most days.”
“You reminded me of some things I don’t like to think about either,” says Janey. “I’m sorry too.”
They smile shyly at each other and then shift uncomfortably, shouldering the weight of renewed amity.
“Where’s Mary?” says Vanessa suddenly.
“She’s playing with someone,” says Janey vaguely. “Or helping Mother.”
“She’s always with you,” replies Vanessa.
“I love Mary,” says Janey, “more than anything. But she’s not…” She fingers the cloth of her dress. “She’s not…”
“Like you.”
“Lucky her,” says Janey wryly. “I just felt like she wouldn’t be able to add much. To what we have to talk about.” Catching Vanessa’s gaze, she says uneasily, “I’ll tell her when I get home, of course.”
“So, what do we have to talk about?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said in the church.”
Vanessa snorts, a bit self-deprecatingly. “I say a lot of things.”
“What you said about us being unable to change anything. Like we’re goats waiting to be slaughtered. Something like that.”
Vanessa nods. “Right.”
“And that got me thinking. You say it isn’t worth wondering if there are other islands
, or about the wastelands, because it doesn’t make a difference.”
“Yes.” Vanessa puts a fingernail in her mouth to chew, then snatches it away. “I didn’t say that about the wastelands, but yes. That’s what I said to the other girls.”
“But you love knowing things,” argues Janey. “All those books? Why read them? They won’t make a difference, but you do it anyway.”
“What am I supposed to do?” says Vanessa despairingly. “Just clean the house, and go to school, and watch women have babies, and listen to Pastor Saul go on and on, and wait…wait for my body to change.”
“That’s what everyone else does,” says Janey.
“Not you.”
“Those books won’t change what happens to you.”
“They’re…windows. Even if the place they let me see is impossible.”
“They teach you things.”
“They do,” says Vanessa quietly.
“Why don’t you want to think about other islands?” says Janey. “You say it’s no use, but it might be a window too.”
Vanessa rolls her eyes. “Because I’ll never know if it’s true,” she says. “Whatever I think of could be true, and so could the islands where they live on honey and babies grow on trees.”
“What if you could know something?” asks Janey softly. “I think we should try to know more. Even if in the end, it doesn’t change anything.”
“Know more about what?”
Janey arranges her skirts around her knees and then sits down on the wet sand. Vanessa imitates her and feels the cold dampness invade the backs of her thighs. As Janey leans forward, her braid swings into Vanessa’s lap like a flaming rope. “We need to know,” she says, “about the wastelands.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Vanessa
Janey thought she was the first of the children to seek out the wastelands. Vanessa didn’t mention that ever since she first heard of them, she has been trying to find out more. The enticing vision of a world on fire intoxicates her. She imagines the grass, the trees, the houses of the island exploding into flames: the warmth, the brightness, all she knows turning to tinder and shattering, sparking, collapsing into ruin and dust. She pictures sifting through the soft, sable ash for the clean white bones of her kin, walking with gray feet to survey the fallen stones of a dead church. Daydreams like these make her wonder, sometimes, if she is marked in some way, a hidden defective but a defective all the same. A streak of rot across her mind, staining her thoughts pitch-dark.
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