Chapter Forty-Six
Vanessa
When school is canceled, Vanessa takes the opportunity to hide in Father’s library, carefully turning pages and drinking in the words of her favorite books. Her pleasure is soon overcome by sick guilt, however, that she’s somehow profiting from death. Father hasn’t mentioned their night meeting in the library and seems so nonchalant that Vanessa wonders if it was a particularly lucid dream. He goes to meet with the wanderers every morning, bringing back names of the dead. And in every heavy deposit of death, there are names of girls she once knew, played with, hated, ignored. So many names. Vanessa puts down the books and takes to her bed.
She discovers that grief is a liquid. It passes thickly down her throat as she drinks water and pools soggily around her food. It flows through her veins, dark and heavy, and fills the cavities of her bones until they weigh so much she can barely lift her head. It coats her skin like a slick of fat, moving and swirling over her eyes, turning their clear surfaces to dull gray. At night, it rises up from the floor silently until she feels it seep into the bedclothes, lick at her heels and elbows and throat, thrust upward like a rising tide that will drown her in sorrow.
As Vanessa enters her second week in bed, Father comes into the room and pulls her into a rough embrace. It is not a prequel or an invitation, but rather an attempt to wrest his daughter out of her despair. “Vanessa,” he whispers, “you must let yourself live. You are alive. I am alive, Mother and Ben are alive. You must focus on the living and not the dead. It was my fault, I put my sorrow on you and Mother and I should have kept it to myself. The girls, everyone who is lost, they are in the arms of the ancestors. Don’t listen to what anybody says. They came back, like good children. They were all good children. Dying of sorrow when everyone around you is drowning in blood is understandable, but not forgivable. Do you understand me?”
She tries to understand. She tries to let the names pass through her mind like water; not thick or sticky but clear running water, like the rain that pelts the rooftop. If she stays in the house, someone being dead is the same as them being alive, she tells herself. She feels cold glass under her hands, looks out her window at branches and dead leaves. She sits at the kitchen table in her nightgown and watches Mother’s face, the absentminded contentment as she cooks. She watches Ben while he sleeps, innocent and free, like a lamb resting after a day of gamboling. Eventually the names of the sick and the dead milling in her brain begin to blur into an opaque wash of gibberish. Nothing seems to make sense, but she’d rather be confused than dying. She lets grief drain from her eyes as she weeps, seep from her fingers and soles into the floorboards as she walks, rise from her stomach in a cleansing rush as she falls to her knees and heaves.
Vanessa idly wonders what the wanderers will bring back from their next wasteland voyage. Mother hopes it’s something to help with the bodies. Corpses are usually buried swiftly, deep in the fields, but now there are too many bodies and not enough people to dig. Next door, Mrs. Aaron died, and all they could do was drag her body outside and cover it with a blanket. There have been rains the past few days, and occasionally Vanessa will inhale the fresh smell of rain and dirt laced with a scent so indescribably horrible that she has to rush to the kitchen and bury her face in something fragrant to wash it away. Mr. Aaron is recovering, Father says, and while Vanessa feels sorry that he has to bury his rotting wife, she is also impatient for him to hurry up and recover so he can take the body away.
Mother is anxious and fretful. She asks, “What did we do to deserve this?” as if Vanessa knows the answer. Vanessa wants to sit, bar her grief from her mind, and reread her favorite books, but Mother barely leaves her side. She makes Vanessa sit and talk to her while she sews, finally mending hems and darning holes that have marred the family clothing for months. Vanessa finds the closeness of their bodies, the constant questioning tone of Mother’s voice, unnerving. Once Mother coughs into one hand, and Vanessa doesn’t even think until she is flat against the far wall. Mother sighs and rolls her eyes, and Vanessa guiltily goes back to her seat, leaving a few extra inches between them.
For a long time, as long as she can remember, one of Vanessa’s favorite daydreams has been that everyone on the island, except her, would die. Even Father, even Mother. Not die in piles of stinking bodies, but simply be swept away by some unknowable force, leaving the entire island to Vanessa. She would walk naked by the water, letting the sun warm her skin, not caring if her body started to change. She would go into other people’s houses and take whatever she wanted, whatever gewgaws caught her fancy, or perhaps the collections of wasteland detritus in the other wanderers’ houses. After she took them, maybe she would smash them. Maybe she would break all the windows in all the houses—except hers, so the wind wouldn’t get in. All the dogs and cats would be hers, in one big furry pile begging for her attention, walking by her side like protectors, like guardians. She could read for days and nights, every book, not just the ones Father thought were good for her. She would sleep in a pile of licking dogs and purring cats, and wake up with the entire day and the entire stretch of island all to herself, morning after morning.
Late one night, Vanessa remembers this daydream and feels choked, nauseated by guilt. How could she have dreamed of losing Mother and Father? Is she a defective, not in body, but in mind? The ancestors can be severe in their punishments; what if the entire island dies to show her the consequences of her fantasies? Every minute she closes her eyes and begs the ancestors to stop. She tells them she didn’t really mean the daydream in the first place. She begs them to save Mother and Father and Ben, at least. She steals a knife, cuts her hand, lets her bright blood drip onto the floor as tribute, like in church. I repent. She rubs the bloodstains with her toe until they are a rusty smear. Please hear me.
Days pass as she hides in Father’s library whenever she can, not reading but just staring, her arms crossed around her rib cage. Eventually Vanessa decides that the ancestors wouldn’t kill everyone to punish one girl’s daydream. That would mean they are cruel and capricious, but Pastor Saul says they are kind and that all punishments are deserved. She almost manages to convince herself.
They have enough to eat, thanks to the wanderer tributes. Despite the commandment to stay home, people appear to be sneaking out of their houses at night to leave food on their doorstep: filthy carrots, ears of corn, a dead chicken. The island can’t try to appease the ancestors with anything tangible, so they seem to be thrusting food at the wanderers in hopes they can somehow intervene. It used to be that families brought by a load of vegetables, a loaf of bread, or a cut of meat with a smile. Mother would chat with whoever came by, invite them in for some tea. Now the food waits, sparkling with dew in the morning, half ravaged by dogs and rats.
After a week spent mostly in silence, Father leaves at dawn for a trip to the wastelands. The next day, he returns in a long coat Vanessa hasn’t seen before. He looks furtive and anxious, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds. After hugging Vanessa, he touches Mother’s shoulder and says, “Vanessa, can you leave us alone for a moment?”
Hurt, she creeps up to her bedroom. Why should Mother know secrets she can’t? When Father comes in, she rolls to turn her back to him.
“Vanessa,” he says, perching on the edge of the bed. His tone is brisk, like he hasn’t noticed she’s angry. “I need you to pay attention.”
“To what?” she mutters.
“Sit up. Look at me.”
Vanessa slowly pulls herself into a sitting position. He’s holding his hand like there’s something precious in it. Peering into the palm, she sees a small white pebble.
“I need you to do something for me, but you can’t tell anyone.”
“What is it?”
“I mean, your mother, but you can’t tell anyone outside the family. Ever.”
Vanessa frowns. She has been so long confined to the house that she can’t imagine seeing anyone besides her family ever again. “What is it?” she repea
ts.
“I need you to swallow one of these every day.”
Vanessa looks into his face to see if he’s joking, but doesn’t see a smile. Examining the pebble further, she sees that it’s not a pebble at all: it’s too round and regular, with a faint line dividing it into two equal halves.
“What is that?”
“It’s medicine.”
Medicine is a syrup, or tea, and tastes murky and terrible. “It doesn’t look like medicine.”
“I can’t explain.”
“But I’m not sick.” She makes herself cough once or twice, experimentally, but all feels as it should.
“It will keep you from getting sick. Mother and Ben will take them too, and me.”
Vanessa stares at Father. “Thank the ancestors! You can give them to everyone now.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Why not? Why is it secret? Why can’t we give it to everyone?”
Father sighs heavily. “I can’t discuss that with you.”
“Why?”
“Because the decisions of the wanderers are not for little girls to judge,” he says stiffly.
“But you could save everyone.”
He shakes his head. “Not the dead. Not even the sick. I can’t save everybody. I don’t have enough of them.”
“But how do you decide who gets them?” He’s silent. “How many are there? How do you decide?”
“You and Mother and I and Ben, and that’s all I can tell you.”
“The other wanderers, their families are getting them?”
He doesn’t answer.
“It’s true, isn’t it? They’ll get them. But who else? Anybody?” His face is rigid. “Nobody?”
“I can’t discuss that with you.”
“Where did they come from?”
“The wastelands.”
“Who made them? Somebody must have made them, was it the defectives? Or are they from before the scourge? What’s in them?”
“I don’t know, Vanessa. I need you to take it.”
“Are they making things in the wastelands?”
“Enough. Please, just take it.” Father’s tone is firm and he sits tall, but he cannot seem to look at her.
“No.” Vanessa crosses her arms over her newly soft, abhorrent chest.
“Vanessa.”
“I want to know why there aren’t enough for everyone, and who made them, and how you found them, and how you know what they’re for.”
“This is not a discussion. I am telling you what to do, and you will do it.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Vanessa, I will not stand aside and watch you die.”
His face hardening, Father grabs her face and digs his fingers into her jaw. Clenching her teeth, Vanessa plunges her face into the pillow. She feels a tearing pain in her neck as Father tries to turn her around, but she brings her arms up over her head to keep it hidden. He grabs the span of her shoulders and forcibly twists her about, and she shoves her fingers into his face. They wrestle hotly, and finally he pins her wrists under one hand and forces his fingers into her mouth. Some deeply planted instinct keeps her from closing her teeth on him. The pebble slips in over his fingers, bitter and powdery, and when she tries to spit it out, he clamps a hand over her lips. Back arched, hands trapped, his palm pushing into her mouth, she feels a surge of nausea and a flicker to another time, long ago. Inhaling sharply, she starts coughing.
Immediately Father is off her, sitting her up and pounding her back. Vanessa chokes and gags and brings forth the remains of the pebble, ragged and slimy, into her cupped hand. Father slips his hand under hers and slowly but firmly guides it to her mouth, his eyes on hers. She swallows the bitterness convulsively and then curls up in a ball on her bed.
“Go away,” she says. “I took it, so please just go away.”
“If you won’t take it tomorrow, we’ll do this again.”
“Go away.”
She feels the weight of him on the bed for a while. His footsteps recede, then come back. Quietly, he lays a copy of Just So Stories, one of her favorites, on the bed and leaves again. Vanessa waits until she can’t hear his steps anymore and then screams impotently into her pillow and kicks the book onto the floor.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Caitlin
Caitlin wakes up in Mother’s bed alone, with a faint memory of Mother feeding her a thin soup. The sheets are damp and smell of sweat and blood. Raising her hands, she feels the curves of her face, and then her neck, trying to ascertain if she’s still alive. She is weak, her hands floating like feathers, but she’s fairly sure she’s not dreaming. Carefully, she swings both legs over the side of the bed and tries to stand. She has to wheel her arms to get her balance, but after a moment can stay upright.
The effort of standing drains her, so she crawls back under the sweaty sheets and falls into sleep. She wakes to Father’s voice saying, “How are you feeling, Caitlin?”
Opening her eyes, she sees his face inches from hers. His beard is straggly, the whites of his eyes bloodshot and yellow. Blossoms of small, dark veins begin at each side of his nose and twine into his large-pored cheeks. Alarmed, she flips and rolls away from his heavy foul breath, sliding on the sheets and falling on the floor on the other side of the bed. Curling into a ball, she waits for kicks and slaps, but all she hears are footsteps. “Are you all right?” Father says, standing over her.
“No,” she says carefully, peering at him from between her fingers. He stands above her, legs planted firmly.
“Well, get back into bed, then,” he says. Moving slowly and watching him carefully for sudden movements, she crawls back into bed. Closing her eyes, she waits for a touch, or a weight, but nothing happens. Opening them again, she sees he’s still staring at her with tired blue eyes.
“Where’s Mother?” asks Caitlin. She remembers snuggling into Mother’s delicious coolness and falling asleep, but can’t remember her getting up.
“She’s out,” says Father.
“Out where?” Mother never goes out.
“She’s taking care of someone,” Father says. “She’ll be back soon.”
Caitlin feels betrayed that Mother would leave her alone with Father. She’s always in the house somewhere. But maybe he’s been sick, or maybe everyone else is so sick he made Mother go.
“Are you hungry?” asks Father. Caitlin shakes her head. “Thirsty?” She realizes she is thirsty, and nods. Father leaves and comes back with a pitcher of water and a clay cup. Caitlin gulps the water, feeling its cold nourishment trickle down her throat and into her gut, drinking cup after cup until her belly feels tight as a drum. Her fingers are shaking with effort.
“Try to sleep,” says Father. “You were very sick.”
This quiet version of Father, who does not weave or yell or swear, seems like a stranger. “Yes, Father,” Caitlin says obediently, and he nods, but keeps standing there. She closes her eyes and finds she can’t sleep with his presence in the room. Behind the darkness of her eyelids, he blares like a spotlight onto her brain. She stays still, closing her eyes almost all the way yet watching him through needle-thin cracks in her eyelids. She sees him look down at the floor, sigh, wipe his face, and eventually shamble off. Pushing herself to the head of the bed, Caitlin piles the stinking sheets on top of herself and falls gratefully into cool, black sleep.
She wakes fitfully, and it’s either dark or light out, and sometimes there is soup next to her and sometimes bread, and sometimes nothing. Mother is keeping the water pitcher full, but Caitlin never sees her. There’s a pot so she doesn’t have to use the outhouse, but Mother keeps forgetting to empty it, and eventually the room stinks of stale urine. Caitlin begins practicing standing and taking steps around the room, and starts feeling stronger. She hears Father’s footsteps sometimes. Mother must be keeping him away.
Soon she is strong enough to leave the bedroom. The sour sick smell permeates the house, but Caitlin barely notices it anymore. She walks slowly down the h
allway, and suddenly Father appears like a creature from a nightmare. Caitlin stumbles backwards a few steps.
“You’re up,” he says.
“Yes,” she says, peering around him for Mother.
“That’s good.”
“Where’s Mother? I want her.”
Father looks down. “Caitlin, she…”
“Is she out again?”
“No.”
“Good. Mother!” she calls, looking past him.
“Caitlin, she’s not here.”
“You said she wasn’t out?”
“She’s not.”
“She has to be somewhere.”
“She is.”
Caitlin’s breath is starting to choke her, high up in her throat, and she swallows and gulps a few times. “Where is she, then? Where’s Mother?”
“She can’t…she isn’t…”
“Is she sick? Is she still sick? I can take care of her now.”
“She’s not sick.”
“Where is she?”
“Caitlin, she died.”
The words fall heavy onto her head, like blows, and she raises her arms to ward them off. “She can’t die,” says Caitlin. “You’re a liar.”
“She did. She got sick and died.”
“You killed her. You murdered her! I knew someday you would hit her too hard and now she’s dead!” She has never screamed at Father before, and it feels like punching through a sheet of glass, a shattering of a wall thought unbreakable; she bleeds relief from between her clenched fingers.
“I—” Father chokes. She sees something unfamiliar on his face. “I promise you…”
Gather the Daughters Page 24