Sundry Days

by Donna Callea

  We all just stare at her.

  I see that David stares at her with especially sad soulful eyes. He’s shot up recently. He’ll be quite tall when he’s a man, I think. I remind myself that he’s still very young. So young. But he’s not so young that he doesn’t feel real longing. And that makes me worry.

  He must know that he can never have Rebekah. Yet he wants her. Perhaps he always will.

  Rebekah asks David if she can borrow some of his clothes to wear to the festival parade, and he nods and goes to his room to get them. It’s traditional for children to dress up in costumes for the Easter-Esther parade. They usually wear animal masks, or pretend they’re characters from books or alien creatures. Things like that. Boys don’t dress as girls, and girls Rebekah’s age usually don’t go to the parade. No sense in reminding everyone how few and precious they are.

  Rebekah’s idea of going as a boy has no precedent.

  “So, what are you going to do about your daughter?” I ask John while Rebekah’s changing. “Are you going to let her go?”

  “Why not?” he says. “I’ll go with them. She can wear rabbit ears and a mask. She’ll blend in and be safe enough. In a way it’s good she got rid of all that hair.”

  Less of a temptation, he no doubt thinks.

  “She should probably keep it short until she gets married,” he says. “It doesn’t do anyone any good for her to be so beautiful.”

  David follows her out the door as they head for the parade. He doesn’t find her any less appealing, I think.

  Chapter 7

  David

  Rebekah Unbound

  Rebekah has just come back to the house. She comes into the kitchen, where I’m making a sandwich at the counter, and slumps down at the table like she’s really tired.

  I stare at the back of her neck. It’s a long neck, white skinned and creamy. I love the curve of it. The shape. The nape. I’d like to put my lips there. I couldn’t really see the nape when her hair was long. So maybe it’s not such a bad thing that she keeps it so short now. But I do miss her long hair.

  “What’s the matter, David?” she says, sitting up, feeling my eyes on her. “Do I look so terrible?” She’s just had another haircut. Uncle John takes her with him now whenever he goes to the barber. He seems very pleased that she dresses like a boy and wants short hair, although she still moves like a girl, still sounds and smells and acts like a girl.

  “You don’t look terrible. You’ll have to try a little harder if you want to look terrible.”

  “Very funny,” she says.

  “Don’t you miss your long hair?” I ask her. “If you don’t now, you will in the winter. Your head will get cold in the winter. Mine does.”

  “It’ll be worth it to be able to go out and not get stared at so much.”

  People might think Rebekah’s a boy from a distance now, but not close up. Since the Easter-Esther Festival, she’s been able to leave the house more, usually with someone in the family. And she’s stopped going to the old lady’s house where she used to study with other girls. She says they’d be appalled at the way she looks now. And she didn’t like going anyway. So I guess it’s better for her.

  No one is listening to us, so I take a deep breath and decide to ask her a really inappropriate question.

  “Hey, Rebekah,” I say, “would you have rather been born a boy?”

  “No,” she says, staring back at me unflinchingly, almost daring me to continue this line of questioning.

  “It’s just that I’ve heard there might be some girls who don’t ever want to be with men, just like there are some men who end up marrying other men because they don’t want to be with women. You know. Sexually.”

  “Are you asking me if I’m a lesbian, David?”

  “Well, no. Well, I guess, yes. I mean, I don’t know,” I mumble.

  I don’t really think Rebekah is a lesbian. I’m just sort of provoking her. I think someday she’s going to love me the way I love her. She has to. I just want to get it out in the open why she’s so intent on looking like a boy. She’s really overdoing it, as far as I’m concerned. And I wish she’d go back to looking like the old Rebekah.

  “I only wondered because you’re kind of different now, with the short hair and dressing like a boy. You seem happy doing that.”

  “Well, I’m not. Not a lesbian, and not happy looking like this. It’s just better for now. I’m not like my mother, you know. I hate my mother. I would never be like her. If she’s a lesbian. Which no one really knows for sure. But that’s what some people think. I’ve heard adults talk about her when they don’t know I’m listening.”

  She’s never talked to me about her mother before, but I understand why she has good reason to hate her. Her mother deserted her when she was three. I can’t imagine what that would be like, how much it would hurt.

  “Do you want to come to my room?” Rebekah asks me suddenly, seemingly out of the blue. I nearly fall over, but I pull myself together enough to nod yes.

  There’s no one around right now to tell me not to. So I follow her into her room, which is in the new wing that Papa Ryan and Uncle John built onto the house when Rebekah came to live with us. I’ve seen it from the doorway, but I’ve never actually been in her room until now.

  “You can sit on the bed,” she says, and then she plops down next to me.

  “I hate the way things are, David. I hate my life. I don’t want to make decisions now about the future. I don’t want to have career evaluations and then study to do work that society needs and a counselor says I’m suited to do. I don’t want to get married when I’m 18 to a man I don’t know, and then, before I know it, to another man, and then to another, and another, and do my duty and try to have a girl baby. For what? I think we’re all doomed anyway.”

  Wow. What am I supposed to say to that? With a big sigh, Rebekah lies down on her back, across the width of the bed, and tears begin to fall down the sides of her cheeks. Then comes full out sobbing. When she breathes in and out, I see her breasts rise and fall through the shirt she’s wearing. I want to put my hands there. I want to feel her skin. I want to touch her everywhere, and hold her to me so tight that we melt into each other. I want to love her. I do love her. But right now, I just want her to stop crying.

  Rebekah turns onto her side, toward me, and puts her arm over her head and continues to sob.

  “I hate getting haircuts,” she says, sniffling. “I hate it, hate it, hate it.”

  I thought it was her idea to have short hair. It was her idea. She’s the one who cut off all her hair in the first place because she wanted to go to the Easter-Esther parade. But I don’t say that. She’s upset enough as it is.

  I stroke her shoulder and her back. Lightly. Just my fingertips, careful to keep myself under control. I want to tell her I’d do anything in the world for her, anything to make her feel better. I don’t want her ever to be hurt. But I don’t say anything. I can’t.

  After a while, she stops crying and looks up at me with her eyes all red and filled with tears, and her long, thick eyelashes in wet points. Her lips tremble. She has the most amazing lips. Full and plump and pouty.

  Then she reaches up and puts her hand on my head and pulls me down to her so that our mouths meet. I kiss her, tasting salt on her lips. She kisses me back, and every part of me—every single part of me—throbs, wanting her more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I think I’m going to die.

  And then I see that someone is standing by the door watching. It’s Mama. She doesn’t yell at us. She just clears her throat very loudly and tells us to stop what we’re doing right now. She tells me in no uncertain terms to get up off the bed.

  “You know you shouldn’t be here, David,” she says sternly. “Rebekah is your sister.”

  “She’s not my sister,” I say. “She’s not even my cousin.”

  “In the eyes of society, she is. You know better than to say that she isn’t. Besides, what you’re doing here is not allowed for
many, many reasons. The two of you know that. This can’t happen again. Not ever again. Nothing like this can happen again. Do you understand me?”

  I just stand there kind of quivering. Rebekah looks up at my mother, all tousled and stricken and ready to cry again.

  “I said do you understand me?” Mama says, raising her voice.

  I nod, and I see Rebekah nod, and then she starts to sob. My mother sits on the bed next to her, takes her in her arms, and tells me to go to my room.

  I figure I’m in big trouble. But I wouldn’t trade that time in Rebekah’s room for anything in the world.

  Later, Papa Seth comes into my room and has a talk with me.

  Papa Seth is the easiest to talk to of all my dads, the least likely to raise his voice.

  “Look, son,” he says, “I know this is difficult for you. But the way things are, it’s pretty much a taboo for you to be going to Rebekah’s room and kissing her on the mouth.”

  “I know.”

  “You can’t be lusting after Rebekah.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve got feelings, though. You’re right on the verge of manhood. You’re what, 13 now? And you can’t help how your body responds to a pretty girl like Rebekah. But it’s your responsibility to make sure that when you’re overcome with those kinds of thoughts and feelings you head right to your own room and take care of things your own self. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with masturbating. It’s natural. So go at it. All you want. When you’re a little older, you can start visiting Mrs. Edelson, or Mrs. Larson, or some other nice lady who knows how to make you feel better. And some day you may even have a wife, if you play your cards right. Rebekah, though, is off limits. You can look—from a safe distance—but you can’t touch. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, then. Enough said.”

  It’s not enough, though. No one can stop me from loving Rebekah. I’ll always love her, no matter what anyone says. And it’s not only her body I want, her body I love. I know what Papa Seth and Mama think—that it’s just sex. The start of sex. I know about sex. I know how to come by myself when I feel like it, and I know what people do at the pleasure shops. But that’s not what I want. I want Rebekah. And nothing else will ever be enough.

  I don’t know if she loves me like that now. She probably thinks I’m too young. But she’s the one who asked me to come to her room. She’s the one who reached out to me for a kiss. That must mean something. When she’s ready, I think she’ll love me the way I love her, if she doesn’t already. I’ll be everything she needs. And she’ll be everything to me.

  That’s not the way things are supposed to happen around here. I know that. But if Rebekah is willing, the two of us will figure out a way to make our own rules and live our own lives. Together. Always together. Just us.

  Chapter 8

  Susannah

  What Women Know

  Ethan is a sweet baby. He nurses with great gusto, patting my breast with one fat tiny hand, as if in gratitude, as he gulps and sighs, gulps and sighs.

  “Doesn’t it hurt, having him suck on you like that?” asks Rebekah. She’s sitting with me on the porch steps, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms wrapped around her legs. It’s a perfect day, too perfect to stay indoors. There’s a slight breeze, just puffs of warm fresh air, and we’re partly shaded from the summer sun by the big maple in front of the house. Someone would think we were living in idyllic times.

  “No,” I tell her. “It feels very good as a matter of fact. But you have to be sure to toughen up your nipples a bit before the baby comes, or they can get sore and cracked. That happened to me with David. No one told me in advance. And he was several weeks old before it started to feel good.”

  “What do you mean feel good?”

  “Well, it’s almost kind of sensual—a warm, needy little mouth latched on to such a sensitive part of your body. When he suckles, we’re connected, still connected. I’m giving him what he needs. He’s grateful in his baby way. And it’s lovely.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sometimes husbands like to put their mouths there, too,” I tell her. But she doesn’t say anything.

  Rebekah is not an easy person to talk to, not at this age. She’s unhappy. She resents me, not because there’s anything really wrong between us, but because I’m the mother of this house, the person married to a man she considers her father, a wife to five other men as well, and everything she doesn’t want to be.

  She needs me, though, almost as much as little Ethan does. She’s almost 16.

  I put the baby in her arms when he’s done nursing. She doesn’t object. She smiles at him as he makes faces in his sleep. But then she turns serious.

  “Do you ever stop to think,” she asks me, “that there’s no point at all in having this baby? People go on marrying husbands and having babies as if everything will be okay. But it won’t. How can it be? And it’s just not fair.”

  “You’re right. It’s not fair. But what’s the alternative?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “But I don’t like having people expect me to do things I don’t want to do because it will somehow be better for society. When it really won’t. It’s not my fault that girls are rare and I’m one of those rare girls. What if I just want to live my own life?”

  That is the kind of thing her mother would say. I’d never tell Rebekah that, though. She’s sullen enough as it is with me.

  “You know, David loves me,” Rebekah says suddenly, as if to shock me, and make me mad.

  “Yes, I believe he does,” I agree. “But he’s very young. And so are you. And in the world we live in, the only world we’ve got, it really doesn’t matter.”

  Left to their own devices, David and Rebekah would eventually begin having sex. It would be a natural thing. But that can’t happen. They can’t have each other. A marriage between them would never be sanctioned. So we keep them apart as much as possible and under watchful eyes.

  The latest ordinance to come out of Toronto is that girls must register at 16, and marry at 18. It’s no longer voluntary. Husbands must be no younger than 25. It’s the law. Breaking that law is now a punishable offense.

  “How could you do such a thing?” I rail at my mother when she returns home after the latest session of Parliament.

  “Well, I didn’t do it myself, Susannah. But I was for it. It was necessary. And aren’t you happy that the Parliament has also decreed premarital counseling and evaluations to be mandatory? Can’t get a marriage license now without going through the whole rigmarole. Plus no more family-arranged marriages unless there are acceptable evaluations.”

  Evaluations are necessary. I’m pleased about that. But the lawmakers, probably egged on by Mama, have gone way too far, in my opinion. Government will be controlling people’s lives in ways that seriously infringe on some of our most personal rights and freedoms. All the regions in the Great Lakes Coalition are in agreement, so the new ordinances will be enforced everywhere.

  “We’re at crisis levels, you know,” Mama primly points out.

  Yes, I do know that. Everyone knows. In a generation or two, if there’s no improvement in the female birth rate, our civilization, such as it is, will cease to be. There will be chaos, a pitiful last wave of boys and men, and then nothing. That’s what the prognosticators say.

  Right now, we all live peacefully and productively, to one extent or another. Though the total population has been steadily shrinking, the glut of men has meant a relatively strong labor force. There’s been no shortage of food or energy. The farms are fruitful, hydro-electric plants hum away, factories produce the goods we think we need, and solar-powered vehicles are relatively cheap and in plentiful supply. Every 16-year-old boy, it seems, gets a sun-cycle for his birthday. David can’t wait.

  But David and Simon and baby Ethan may never have wives. Their marriage prospects diminish each year that goes by with so
few girls being born. And no one has a clue how to fix things, except by praying harder to The Designer, and creating new laws for conscripting women.

  Rebekah will have to register at 16, marry at 18, take on as many husbands as Parliament says she should, and produce as many babies as she can, hoping that one, at least, will be a girl.

  “There’s a precedent, you know, for young people being compelled to serve their countries,” speechifies Mama, as if I were one of her constituents who needed convincing. “In ancient times, before The Great Flood, young men were routinely drafted into the military, even in democratic societies. They were needed, they served, and they willingly gave their lives. Thank The Designer we don’t go to war with other countries. We’ve evolved beyond that. But we’re now in a struggle for our very survival.”

  Meanwhile, on the so-called happy news front, Mama informs me that Danny has fathered a girl with his new wife in Rochester. We hadn’t heard. Danny stays in contact with Rebekah, but evidently hasn’t gotten around to telling her about her new half-sister.

  “It’s exciting,” says Mama. “It was all the buzz in Toronto. Maybe this will be a breakthrough. If red-haired men are good at fathering girls, we could eventually have programs to collect their sperm.”

  “That’s barbaric,” I tell her, “and it’s against everything we’ve established to hold families together.” There are good reasons why biological paternity must never be discussed—never be personally acknowledged or revealed. All men must consider themselves the father of all the children their wives produce. There can’t be any competition to impregnate. And we certainly can’t have a small cadre of red-headed studs doing their part for posterity.

  As it stands now, it’s the responsibility of women to privately decide which of their husbands will supply sperm. And that’s how it must remain. If anything, there has to be more emphasis on educating girls in the arts of reproduction, and instilling more discretion and secrecy when it comes to who fathered whom.

  If I wasn’t worried before, I am now. What if someone gets the notion that if red-haired men are more apt to produce daughters, then maybe red-haired women are more adept at birthing them? People with red hair are rare. But I’ve got one living right in my own house. She’s my responsibility.