Gather the Daughters

by Jennie Melamed

  “It’s Mrs. Aaron. Lydia Aaron,” says Janey. “She’s outdoors, she’s sick, she’s coughing up blood. She needs help.”

  Mrs. Moses gazes at her, blinking. “So why did you come to me?”

  “We tried other houses and nobody answered. We came to you because she needs help!”

  “My husband is upstairs. He’s sick too. He’s coughing up blood. He’s so feverish I can barely stand to touch him or he’ll burn me. I’ve been tending to him for…” She slumps. “I don’t know how long.”

  “Everyone’s sick,” says Janey slowly. “That’s why they disappeared.”

  “Well, not everyone, obviously,” snaps Mrs. Moses. “I don’t have it. Yet. But yes, everyone’s sick. And it’s a bad sickness. People are dying. We’re not supposed to go outside, or talk to anyone. I shouldn’t be speaking to you.”

  “But Mrs. Aaron still needs help,” ventures Fiona. “She can’t just lie there.”

  “Why is that my problem?” exclaims Mrs. Moses, her voice rising. “I’m not her family. I have my husband to take care of.”

  “Well, can’t you at least help us get her home?” pleads Janey desperately.

  “There’s four of you!” yells Mrs. Moses. “What do you need me for? I’m not going outside, I’m not getting sick for her. You take her home, they’ll take care of her, if there’s anybody left. You’re a disgrace, all of you, running off like that. If I had children like you, I’d thrash you until you couldn’t walk. You can just leave me alone.” And the door slams shut.

  The girls stand before the door, stunned by Mrs. Moses’s tirade. Then Violet says, “Do you think we can carry her home?”

  “I—I suppose we can try,” says Janey. They walk back, quiet. Janey thinks of Pastor Saul at her shaming. We here on the island are all interconnected, and none could survive without the other. Is Mrs. Moses a particularly bad specimen, or are all adults like this when there is danger in the air? Janey would help a sick girl on the beach, even if she didn’t know her, even if she didn’t like her.

  “When this is over,” says Fiona suddenly, fervently, “we should tell the wanderers about Mrs. Moses.”

  Sarah giggles suddenly. “Yes. Let’s go tell the wanderers all about it!”

  The rest of them start laughing as Fiona turns red. “I mean—I mean, you know what I mean!” she says, starting to snicker herself.

  When the girls return to the field, Mary still has Mrs. Aaron’s head on her lap, where it rolls feverishly. Suddenly Janey remembers Mrs. Moses’s words about contagion, and the fear that flashes from her groin at the thought of Mary getting sick is so white-hot and agonizing that she frantically puts it out of her mind. “We have to take her home,” Janey tells Mary.

  “What? There was nobody who would help?”

  “There was Mrs. Moses, but she didn’t feel like helping,” says Violet darkly, and Mary shakes her head in disbelief.

  They hoist Mrs. Aaron up, stick their shoulders under her armpits, and wrap arms around her waist. With heavy, stuttering steps, they begin the walk to her house. Suddenly Violet gasps and drops her arms, which had been holding Mrs. Aaron’s hips.

  “What is it?” asks Mary.

  “There’s something inside her.” Violet’s face is white and terrified. “Something is moving!”

  “She’s pregnant,” says Sarah in the flat, brass tones of annoyance, and Violet flushes and puts her arms around Mrs. Aaron again. Mrs. Aaron moans and coughs, but her legs move, and she seems to be trying to help as much as she can.

  “If her husband won’t take her in,” mutters Janey as she knocks on the door, “I swear I’m taking her to a wanderer’s house and they can deal with it.”

  When they arrive at the Aarons’ house, the door flies open after a single knock. Mr. Aaron cries, “Oh, thank the ancestors.” His skin is the color of slate and running with sweat, and his body shakes and shudders like a speared rabbit. “I wanted to look for her, but I couldn’t…” A blood vessel has broken in one of his eyes, and it screams scarlet from his face. “Lydia…”

  “Can you…can you take her?” asks Mary.

  “Yes, I mean, I think I can, I need to get her in bed.” He looks behind him despairingly at the staircase and then says, “Or at least inside. Yes, at least inside.” He reaches out and lifts Mrs. Aaron from them.

  “Thank you, girls. Thank you. I don’t care what they say, you’re good girls.” He makes a vague gesture toward them, which Janey guesses to be one of gratitude, and he closes the door, weeping.

  Mary bursts into tears.

  “Come on,” says Janey, embracing her. “Come. Let’s go back to the beach.”

  Hiccupping, Mary nods through a sheen of tears and snot, and they all walk slowly back toward the sea.

  Later that night, Janey gathers the older girls, the ones she trusts, and they sit in a ragged circle by the shore. She tells them of what happened with Mrs. Aaron, and Mrs. Moses, and Mr. Aaron. “There’s an illness,” she concludes. “A bad one.”

  “It’s the ancestors,” breathes Catherine Moses. “They’re punishing us for running away.”

  “Oh, shut up,” snaps Mary with uncharacteristic irritability.

  “They’d make us sick instead,” explains Caitlin dully.

  “Unless they wanted us to watch everyone else die first,” replies Catherine, stung.

  “Shut up,” says Mary again. Leaning into Janey’s cold, thin neck, she whispers, “Do you think Mother’s all right?”

  Janey takes in a deep breath, her ribs pushing into Mary’s side, and then lets it out very slowly, like she is breathing the life out of herself. “We have to go see,” she mutters softly.

  “We have to go see,” echoes Fiona. “We can’t leave them alone.”

  As if she had heard Mary’s whispers, Violet pipes up, her voice breaking. “What if my mother is lying in a field somewhere? And nobody will help her?”

  “We can’t go back,” murmurs Sarah. “Then it’s all been for nothing.”

  “They killed Rosie,” chimes in Vera Saul.

  “Rosie is dead,” says Mary. “The wanderers killed her. But my mother didn’t kill her. And your little sister didn’t kill her either. And we need to make sure they stay alive. That there’s someone there, if there’s no one else there…We can’t leave them alone.”

  “When I had the pox,” says Violet slowly, lost in memory, “I couldn’t see. Light hurt me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. Mother stayed with me for weeks. She didn’t even cook for Father or clean or do anything. She kept hauling up cold water and putting it on me. I was seeing things. Father said he thought every day I would die.”

  “Someone needs to tell the other girls,” says Brenda.

  “They don’t have to go. Nobody has to go anywhere,” says Janey.

  “But you’re going?” says Mary, staring into Janey’s face intently.

  “But I’m going,” Janey agrees, her gray eyes dark and full of sorrow.

  “But…” The word hangs on Caitlin’s lips, heavy and painful like an open wound. She doesn’t have to say the rest. Without Janey and Mary, the girls’ rebellion will shatter, fall to the ground in meaningless pieces.

  “I know,” says Janey. “I’m sorry.” Mary bursts into tears again, burying her head in Janey’s lap while Janey strokes her dark, oily hair.

  “We can always come back,” says Fiona, and her sentence hangs in the air, heavy with untruth. “We could!” she cries as if someone has argued with her.

  Caitlin, her mouth still slightly open, her face hanging downward, shakes her head slowly. Fiona starts to cry.

  The girls look toward the younger ones, hopping and laughing and playing near the sea, and suddenly Janey feels like she’s murdered something that was fresh and budding and alive. I’m sorry, Amanda, she thinks. I’m sorry, Rosie. And her bones feel so heavy when she rises that she waits to collapse like a corpse onto the sand.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Caitlin


  Caitlin tiptoes in past midnight to find Father snoring with his head on the kitchen table. Moving slowly, like a rodent skirting a dozing dog, she climbs the stairs and slips between the blankets next to Mother. Mother wakes with a gasp, throwing her arms out to shield herself, and then whispers, “Caitlin? Caitlin?”

  “It’s me.”

  Mother lets out a soft cry of joy. She gathers Caitlin into her soft, warm arms and Caitlin breathes in Mother’s scent gratefully. “You’re alive,” Mother whispers. “So many are sick. I thought you might be dead out there.”

  “Father will kill me.”

  “He’s been so drunk he probably thinks you left yesterday.”

  “Mother, I…” Caitlin tries to think about how to tell her of her journey, of the beach, of Janey. “There was a dog,” she says, “and he ran into and out of the sea.” And then the sudden, sure realization that she is never going back to live on the beach with Janey strikes her, heavy as a load of stones, and she begins shaking and keening like a child lost in a nightmare. Mother cannot soothe her, although she holds Caitlin in her bruised arms until dawn.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Caitlin

  Coming home from the beach is like coming home from ten years of summers. She doesn’t mind the clothing, and welcomes being washed in hot water. But at night she wakes with a start and panics, trying vainly to remember the capture and punishment that led to her reinstallment in everyday life. It is only when she is fully awake that she remembers she came back of her own volition. It is a bitter draft to swallow. When Father comes into her room she closes her eyes and removes herself back to the beach. She walks barefoot in damp sand, sits close to Janey Solomon, sucks hot clam flesh from a jagged shell, squints into an early morning sunrise that promises rest. Sometimes it takes her so long to come back to herself that cold midmorning light is shining steadily in her window.

  Mother’s obvious joy at having Caitlin back, however, warms her like a summer sun. Mother’s face, usually shadowed and afraid, glows with delight whenever she catches Caitlin’s eye, and she keeps Caitlin close by her side. They lean into each other, hug, touch each other briefly as they pass. Even during Father’s tempers, Mother keeps her head a little higher than usual, and her hands shake a little less. Luckily, Father treats the command not to leave the house as a suggestion and often stalks outside, leaving Caitlin and Mother to take their first deep breath of the day and smile at each other.

  The women of the island have set up a way for information to be passed along. Mother has a line of communication with the nearest neighbors. On one side is Mrs. Gideon, Rosie’s mother, or at least she used to be; Caitlin keeps remembering with a sick, painful jolt that Rosie is dead and Mrs. Gideon has no children now. On the other side is Mrs. Adam the dung collector’s wife. Mother goes outside the house to face Mrs. Gideon, keeping as much distance as possible between them, and Mrs. Gideon shouts the news to Mother. Then Mother walks to the other side of the house, howls for Mrs. Adam, and yells the news to her. Caitlin hears everything twice, and loudly.

  Everyone says that disease is spread through the breath of a sick person, and while Caitlin isn’t sure how far away one need be to avoid sucking in the kiss of illness, she is sure that Mother’s yawning distances from their neighbors are safe. She wonders exactly who the ancestors are trying to punish and if their final aim is to wipe out all of them.

  The pastor has always said that disease is punishment for everyone, although he usually assigns extra blame to the women, who go home and rock and weep for afflicting their children. Punishments come regularly with the seasons: colds and gripes in the winter, flux and fevers as it gets warmer. Every child must wade through the poxes, the lumps, the rashes, and the other hardships of the young. Usually they make it through more or less intact, though some are sucked under and delivered to the ancestors early. There are drafts to calm fevers, pastes to soothe itching, tinctures to paint on erupted pox to help the pain, but these remedies work fitfully and inconsistently, mostly leaving the sick to bite their pillows, scratch their lesions, and pray for relief.

  But Caitlin can’t remember a sickness like this, and Mother can’t either. So many people are sick that the names all blur into each other, except the girls Caitlin knows, like Letty and Heather Aaron. It’s hard to tell whether or not everyone is dying; some shouted news tolls the end of everyone, and other times optimistically reports recoveries. One theme never changes: the pregnant women and babies are all dying. Mrs. Gideon yells, “It’s the cruelest sickness!” to Mother, and Mother shrieks, “It’s the cruelest sickness!” to Mrs. Adam. Caitlin also hears that if the fever breaks and the sick person becomes damp, they are going to live, but if they get so hot you can’t touch them, they will die. A paste of oil and salt helps earlier in the day, to Mrs. Gideon’s relief, but later in the day it’s reported to be useless. A small amount of final draft, usually never touched until the end of life, is said to lead to a refreshing sleep, but might also kill you.

  And then, Mrs. Gideon isn’t there to tell Mother anything, and so the chain is broken. She isn’t there the next day either, and Caitlin wonders if she’s dead. Mother is too frightened to walk past the Gideon house to see. Caitlin finds life more peaceful without the regular screeching updates. She and Mother sit in the house, which is already clean from top to bottom. Even the sprays of mold have been scrubbed as faint as possible. Mother sings, and they eat bread and pray.

  The next morning, Mother falls over while she’s wiping up crumbs from breakfast. Father is sleeping on the floor by the front door, reeking of wine. When Caitlin runs over to help her, Mother mumbles, “There, there, dear,” and her nose starts bleeding.

  Mother is too big for her to carry. Caitlin pushes, pulls, and coaxes her into the bedroom, where Mother falls onto the bed and starts coughing. Mother never goes to bed dressed, so Caitlin pulls the dress over her head and leaves her naked and shaking. The warmest blanket is in Caitlin’s room; she runs for it and throws it over Mother’s trembling body, but Mother casts it off her. “It’s cold,” Caitlin tells her. “You’re naked.” Caitlin has curled up before to Mother’s body in the night many times, but never seen her without clothes in the daylight. There are silvery stripes crawling up her belly, and her breasts are sagging and soft like barely cooked eggs. She’s missing a patch of hair between her legs, the skin covered by a smooth pink scar. Mother has bruises too, in places people can’t see. Caitlin tries to pull the blanket over her again.

  “It’s hot,” says Mother. “I need water.”

  The cistern in the kitchen is empty, so Caitlin runs and scoops some from the rain barrel. Mother tries to drink it, but most of it spills down her chest. “Ah,” she says, as if refreshed, and then falls asleep. Caitlin remembers hearing somewhere that you shouldn’t let a sick person sleep, so she shakes and pokes her. Mother only frowns and continues sleeping, her eyeballs rolling back and forth under purple eyelids. Her nosebleed has stopped, the blood smeared on her upper lip like dried mud. Her body is covered in a thin sheen of sweat that seems to glow.

  Caitlin considers going down to wake Father, but immediately abandons the idea. Waking Father when he’s sleeping on the floor never ends well. She puts the blanket over Mother again and then brings over a cold cloth to lay on her forehead. Mother bats it away, and Caitlin starts to cry. Mother always knows what to do when Caitlin is sick, but now Caitlin can’t remember any of it. Her head hurts.

  Crawling into bed, Caitlin puts an arm over Mother’s chest and falls asleep there. When she wakes a few hours later, her bones are twisting and cracking and it’s become a snowy winter. She crawls down beneath the blanket by Mother’s feet, curling herself into a ball. When she opens her eyes, the dust on Mother’s soles dances and sparks. Caitlin flexes her fingers and then crunches them into fists, trying to relieve the pain. Needles of frost prick her skin. Gasping, she chokes on a sea of warm slime ascending her throat. She falls asleep coughing.

  On waking, there is cold w
ater trickling into her mouth. It’s hard to swallow around all the coughing, but the water feels wonderful. She sees a wavering face above her and tilts her head from side to side to figure out who it is. The face swims into focus as Father. Caitlin chokes on the water and starts coughing harder. Using her elbows, she drags herself under the covers, coughing and spitting and coughing more. Her feet feel naked in the cold air, and she wonders if Father will cut them off. Her face is next to burning branches, and she gropes them curiously until realizing they are Mother’s legs. As she wriggles upward to see her, the world gets blurry and she falls asleep again. She wakes up on top of the blankets, shaking and coughing again, an old song. Inhaling is a battle, like someone is holding a pillow over her face, and she wonders if Father is trying to kill her. Perhaps this is her punishment for running away. “Mother!” she screams, but it comes out as a hoarse growl. She can’t get the breath to call out again. Grabbing her ribs with her hands, she pumps them to make herself breathe faster.

  Then she is at the foot of the bed, and Mother is up and well, wearing a lovely blue dress. Mother holds out a spoon and says, “I made you some jam, since you were very good.” Caitlin doesn’t want jam, but she wants Mother. She leans in and water goes down her throat again. Gagging, Caitlin keeps swallowing, feeling her stomach turn delightfully icy. “That’s good,” says Mother, but her voice is rough and deep. Then she disappears, and Caitlin rolls over to find Mother in the bed next to her, asleep. Where is the blue dress? Another coughing fit comes, and everything goes black. Caitlin is asleep, but she can still feel herself coughing. Someone has put her in a hot bath, but it’s still summer and she should be outside in the mud. “I don’t want to wash my hair,” she whispers, and then shudders so hard she’s afraid her bones will snap. “Help!” She gags, smelling Father behind her. She tries to run, but trips over Mother and falls off the bed. “Help! Help!” she keeps saying, until Mother puts cool clothes on her and sings. “Away, past the shore,” she croons, “I will meet my evermore.” Caitlin doesn’t know that song. Breathing becomes easier, and Caitlin lets her head fall on Mother’s cool breast.