by Donna Callea
We named him Michael.
Rebekah figured he would be a boy. I don’t know how.
A boy would be a big disappointment in the Coalition. Here, it doesn’t matter. And Rebekah is crazy over him. Me too.
It was amazing to see him being born. And I admit there is nothing so beautiful as the woman you love nursing a tiny, brand new person that you’ve helped to create.
“Hey, I’ve been there, little one,” I said to my son, when he first latched on to Rebekah’s nipple. “It’s a wonderful place to be. Enjoy.”
He does.
Me, not so much, anymore. Okay, not at all.
I’m not stupid or insensitive. I knew it would be a while before Rebekah and I could have sex. Being pregnant and then pushing out a baby from an opening that’s only supposed to be big enough to accommodate a penis is really quite a feat, if you think about it. Not to mention extremely painful.
Rebekah was in agony for eight hours. I was, too, though in a different way, worrying about her, wanting to make the pain stop.
Alex says it was an easy delivery. Easy for him to say. Michael came out naturally, without ripping Rebekah apart. I guess that’s what easy means.
Still, it takes time to recover, to get back to normal. I understand that. Except it’s been five months now.
When Rebekah was pregnant she wanted to have sex all the time. Sometimes she’d wake me up in the middle of the night all wet and ready, and climb on top of me. It didn’t matter how big her belly was.
Now, she’s like a different Rebekah when it comes to sex.
Oh, she tries sometimes to pretend she still likes it, still wants me. But it’s not the same.
It’s not as if she got depressed the way that her mother did after giving birth. Rebekah told me what happened to Dora, and I think maybe some part of her was worried that it would happen to her.
Rebekah, though, seems to be in her glory being a mother. She’s tired all the time because the baby wakes up during the night, and she says she feels like a mess. But Michael makes her happy.
The Holy One knows I love our baby, too. How can I not? The greedy little eating and pooping machine is my son.
I was the first one to make him smile. It’s impossible not to be insanely joyful when your baby smiles at you. I take care of him too. I change his diapers sometimes. I carry him around, and we have some lengthy discussions. I’m pretty sure his first word will be da-da.
But I want my Rebekah back. The old Rebekah who can’t get enough of me. And I’m worried she’s gone for good.
It also bothers me that she’s so unreasonably jealous. She thinks I’m attracted to Lily.
Which is crazy. Yes, Lily is a pretty girl. Yes, she goes around topless sometimes. Yes, I’ve looked at her breasts. But after a while, you get used to the sight of bare breasts that don’t belong to you. I have no interest whatsoever in Lily or anyone else. Only Rebekah. Only Rebekah forever.
And I don’t mind sharing her with Michael. I really don’t.
Gordon, our neighbor, comes over with wine after dinner. It’s a new vintage he says he wants us try.
Rebekah is feeding the baby in our bed, trying to get him to go to sleep for the night. And Abraham and Zora have gone to a meeting. So it’s just Gordon and me drinking the wine.
“How’s it going?” he asks.
“Good,” I say.
“Yeah? You’re not going through a dry spell? I sure did after our girls were born. In more ways than one, if you know what. I mean.”
So this is why he’s here. I still can’t get over the fact that people in New Eden are inordinately interested in what other people are doing—or not doing, in my case—in bed.
But maybe being so open about sex is necessary here, since monogamy is the basis for the whole social structure.
I look at him with what must be an obviously uncomfortable expression on my face.
He smiles, pats me on the back, and pours more wine.
“It’s okay, David. Most of us go through it.”
“Did someone ask you to come over and talk to me about dry spells?”
“Zora did. She thinks it would be better coming from someone who actually remembers what it was like to be a new father. Abraham is still in good form sexually, but it’s been more than half a century since their last child was born. He claims he can’t remember a time when Zora was ever dry. I think he’s just bragging.”
Gordon assures me that everything will get better once the baby’s weaned.
“I have to wait that long?”
“Right now Rebekah probably doesn’t feel very sexual. It’s the hormones, from giving birth and breastfeeding and everything else. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Except you’re the one who got her pregnant. So I guess it is your fault.”
He thinks that’s funny.
“Anyway, I wouldn’t act too needy if I were you. I used to give Helena massages after our kids were born, with no expectation that the massages would lead to anything else. But sometimes they did. Gradually things get better, and then they get back to normal. Someday you and I will be like Abraham, and we won’t be able to remember any dry spells either.”
In places like Eden Falls—maybe even in Seneca Falls, who knows?—men probably don’t care how women feel about sex. It doesn’t matter if they enjoy it. They’re just receptacles. I would hate to live that way.
“How come you didn’t tell me about the hormones that are making you uninterested in sex?” I ask Rebekah when I join her in bed. Michael is sound asleep in his crib, and with any luck will stay that way until morning.
“Who says I’m uninterested? We can have sex if you want.”
“Rebekah,” I sigh. “I always want sex. I want you to want sex.”
“It’s just that I’m tired. And I don’t feel pretty anymore. And I smell like milk and spit-up all the time. I love you.”
“I love you, too. And you’re beautiful. So beautiful. Don’t cry. It’ll be okay. You should have told me about the hormones. You know about that stuff. Gordon says it will be better after the baby is weaned.”
“Everyone is such a know-it-all around here. Zora, even Gordon. But your know-it-all mother never told me.”
“Let’s not talk about my mother. Would you like a massage?”
She laughs.
“Okay. Just a massage.”
And for now, that’s enough.
Chapter 45
David
On the Road Again
This may be the last time our wine is taken to Winnipeg. There was a big community meeting at the Gathering Place to discuss whether we should go at all. The consensus was maybe this one last time.
Because we have ties there—Dora, Willa, Caleb, my grandmother— it was agreed that Rebekah and I should go instead of Abraham and Zora.
I can’t believe that Anna Gardener has foisted herself on the poor people of Winnipeg. She’s been there several years now, though we haven’t seen her. This will be our first trip back. Our last trip.
Abraham and Zora are really getting too old to travel all the way to Winnipeg, although neither would admit it. But they did happily agree to stay home this time instead, and take charge of Michael. They consider him their grandchild.
Michael just turned six, and is really a handful. Abraham and Zora might have an easier time walking to Winnipeg than keeping our little demon out of mischief.
We’re still living with them, and probably will until they die. Which, we hope, won’t be for a long, long time. They’re our family now, and unless Rebekah and I make more Michaels—Holy One help us—the house is plenty big enough. Even if we have another baby or two, which I hope we don’t for at least a while, it would be better to build an addition than to move.
Zora and Abraham gave us a crash course in negotiating before we left, but Miriam and Edward will probably handle most of the business in Winnipeg—if there’s any business left to do there. We’re really just along for the company and the heavy lifti
ng, and maybe some protection. It’s said that there’s safety in numbers, but four isn’t much of a number. So we’re hoping it won’t come to that.
Winnipeg is a long way from Thunder Bay, a long way from the Coalition. But things haven’t been good there since the upheavals back home, and they’re getting worse, according to Abraham, Zora, Miriam and Edward. Their twice yearly reports have been increasingly grim. Which is why this will likely be the last time we ever see Winnipeg.
Funny, some part of me still thinks of Seneca Falls as home. Rebekah and I are very worried about our family there, especially my mother. But what can we do?
We’re told that Captain Blinn and the other smugglers haven’t been back to Winnipeg for years now. All ships have been confiscated by the government. So commerce has come to a standstill. And Edward says people are worried that there could be raids by Coalition forces.
It’s hard to believe that more than six hundred years after The Great Flood—which brought nothing good except an end to wars—people have to worry again about being attacked by hostile forces.
Or maybe it’s all just rumors.
But I think it’s important to find out what’s going on beyond New Eden. Rebekah, too. She’s always been fearless. That hasn’t changed. And, so far, the journey has been invigorating.
I’d almost forgotten how wonderful it is to make love under the stars.
Rebekah is still as fiery as her hair, which she wears in a long, thick braid down her back. It’s a very warm night and we’re both naked.
“Remember the first time we did this out in the open, that first night we ran away?” I ask, as I look up from kissing her, neck to navel, pausing briefly before continuing downward.
“As I recall, we didn’t exactly do it. Well, you did. I had my period and wanted to wait. But then you came all over my chest.”
“Oh, is that the way it was? And I suppose your fondling my pecker so brazenly had nothing to do with that?”
“I had no idea your penis would be that big. It boggled my mind. Is it that big tonight, David? Let me check it out.”
I start tickling her, and then she rolls over and tries to take me in her mouth, except we’re both laughing so hard by then, she ends up spitting me out. And then we get serious, and make love more intensely than we have in a long time.
With the sky above us, and the forest surrounding us, and a slight breeze on our backs, it feels as if we’re the only ones in the world.
Of course, Miriam and Edward are going at it on the other side of the wagon. But the sounds they make are indistinguishable from the other night sounds of animals and birds.
Sometimes I forget how lucky I am, how lucky we are, how different things would have been for both of us, if we behaved ourselves and did what was expected back in Seneca Falls. I guess it didn’t occur to us that our parents would be sick with worry—that we were deserting our families forever. That we could have gotten killed or worse. I don’t remember feeling guilty.
I wonder how Rebekah and I would feel if Michael someday puts himself in that kind of danger when he’s a stupid adolescent and thinks he knows everything. How would we like being abandoned by our child? Worrying about him every day he’s gone?
The Holy One only knows what kind of a world he’ll inherit. But New Eden, at least, is a far better place than we could ever have hoped, thanks to Her unprecedented blessings. A far better place than anywhere else.
“One more day of walking,” Edward announces in the morning. “You two sleep okay? Seemed like it was pretty noisy on the other side of the wagon.”
“Forest sounds, Edward. You must have heard forest sounds,” I tell him.
We’re planning to make the Birch and Bay our first stop in Winnipeg. With any luck, Grandma will be too busy doing whatever it is she does to make time for us. Then we’ll make the rounds of the shops that are still open. We’re also hoping that at least one of the pharmaceutical factories is still operational. Rebekah’s got a long list of drugs the infirmary staff requested.
But New Eden can exist without what Winnipeg has to offer.
If the rest of the world leaves us alone, we’ll be fine. We can survive.
Whether the rest of the world can survive is another question.
Chapter 46
Rebekah
Slavers
Dora is my mother. I don’t want to leave her alone and lonely in Winnipeg. Miriam and Edward wouldn’t object to bringing her back with us in the wagon. But she won’t go.
They’ve killed Tina. The slavers have killed Tina, and taken the rest of the Birch and Bay women and all the little girls they could find. All the females they could find everywhere.
I still can’t believe such a word as slaver exists.
They came in ships to Thunder Bay, and then, armed with knives and clubs and brute force, they trekked west looking for women. Any women. But they likely won’t come back. There are no more women to be had. No more women worth capturing anywhere, as far as they know.
But Dora is still here, and Willa—thank the Holy One—and David’s grandmother, and a few more, no doubt, hiding for their lives.
“We shouldn’t have come,” says Miriam.
She’s right. But here we are.
Dora hugs me when she sees me. Fiercely. I hug her back and we both start crying. Then she orders me to leave. Immediately.
“It’s not safe for you and Miriam to be here. There are still men in Winnipeg, local men, who are now completely without women. They’ve never before been violent. They weren’t able to muster any kind of defense against the slavers. But who knows what they’ll do now if they get wind of fresh females? Take Willa. Please, just take Willa and go.”
Willa has survived thanks to her brother, Caleb. Caleb of the wide eyes and grubby little hands on my breast. Caleb who has grown tall and strong and fierce.
David’s grandmother has survived, I suppose, because not even the slavers wanted to mess with her. She and her husbands are living in the Birch and Bay.
We’ve agreed that Willa must go with us. Caleb, too. It will be good to have extra protection on the way back. And they’ve been raised to be monogamists. In time, I feel sure, they’ll fit in.
Dora could, too. An extra older woman, a widow, would be welcome enough. She loved only Tina sexually, and in every other way, for most of her life. It wouldn’t be held against her that she was compelled to have two husbands—my fathers—when she lived in the Coalition.
But Dora says she will stay in Winnipeg, what’s left of it, with the few old men who’ve been her employees forever. And with Anna Gardener, and her ever-faithful trio of husbands, Matt, Jeff and Lars, who spend their days scrounging for food and other supplies.
Many of the Winnipeg men have left to look for sustenance from the land beyond the city. To hunt, to scratch the earth for what it can provide. They need food to survive, even if they’re unlikely to survive for very long. Some may even have wandered as far as Eden Falls, stumbled upon it. There was rich farmland there. And women. No one in Winnipeg has seen anyone from Eden Falls since Jacob was cured of his lechery years ago. So who knows what’s left there.
It’s unclear whether the slavers found any of the monogamist settlements. Probably not. We would have heard if they raided any of the communities that have ties to New Eden. Most likely they were on the lookout for monogamist outposts on the way to Winnipeg, and on their way back. But the settlements are all nearly impossible to find by outsiders. And this part of the continent is vast.
The slavers came on three ships. That’s what Dora says she heard. And there were maybe fifty of them, riding into Winnipeg on sun-cycles, followed by a caravan of horses and wagons.
“It was like nothing anyone had ever seen,” says Dora. “Frightening. Unbelievable. Horrible.”
They attacked the pleasure establishments first. When they came to the Birch and Bay, Tina fought back so fiercely, she was knifed as a result.
“I held her in my arms. There was s
o much blood. We were both covered in her blood. They took all our girls. And they left me,” says Dora. “They decided I was too much bother to take, and too old anyway.”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell my mother when I find my voice to speak. “I’m so, so sorry. I liked Tina very much. She was a good woman, a friend.”
My eyes fill with tears again, and I embrace my mother.
It’s a miracle that Willa wasn’t taken. Caleb managed to hide her in the forest for the duration.
The captured women and girls were all herded together like animals. Some were tossed into the wagons, others were forced to walk. And then the slavers left.
That was two months ago.
Dora says she doesn’t think they’ll be back. There would be no point going to all that trouble again for what can only be a few stray women left.
But there are still men in Winnipeg hungry for women. So far, they’ve not been a problem. They’re just trying to survive. And they assume the slavers took all the women worth having. Which is almost the truth. Caleb snuck Willa back to the Birch and Bay after the slavers left, and she’s stayed hidden.
“I should have gone to help Marjorie,” says Willa. “I wanted to.”
“You couldn’t have helped her. You couldn’t have stopped her. You would only have put yourself in danger. Marjorie would want you to be safe,” Dora tells her. Probably for the hundredth time. “You know that.”
The slavers didn’t kill the grumpy old doctor who was always so kind to Willa. Like Tina, she lashed out at them. But they didn’t bother knifing her. Caleb found her later, lying on the ground outside her clinic. Apparently, in her fury, she’d had a stroke and died shortly after.
There’s nothing for us to do now but unload our wine, which will at least bring some comfort to Dora and the others left at the Birch and Bay, and head back to New Eden as quickly as possible.
David’s grandmother insists that she would be a fine addition to our community, and begs us to take her with us. We gratefully leave it to Miriam and Edward to refuse.
“We’re very sorry, Mrs. Gardener, but New Eden is strictly monogamous,” says Edward. “We’re very sorry for your misfortune here, but we could never welcome a woman with three husbands.”