Sundry Days

by Donna Callea

  “I’ll leave my husbands here,” she offers.

  “Yes, but you’re still married to three men, and we can’t take you with us,” says Miriam.

  David sits with Anna—she’s his grandmother, after all—and tries to console her. He tells her that she has a great-grandson, that at least her family is continuing. She doesn’t seem too impressed. He asks for news about Seneca Falls, but she has nothing to offer.

  Dora, though, smiles when I describe Michael to her.

  “Maybe someday you’ll have a girl,” she says. “I did.”

  “Yes. Maybe someday. I’ll think of you, Mama.”

  Mama. Did I really call her Mama? Why not? What does it hurt?

  “I love you, Rebekah,” she says. “My life doesn’t amount to very much now. Not without Tina. But at least you’re alive and well and living someplace sane. Knowing that is enough.”

  “I love you, too,” I whisper in her ear.

  And then we’re off.

  Chapter 47

  David

  Hypothetically

  There are no mathematicians in New Eden. No one trained to figure out weighty problems involving numbers. But some of us, lately, have been pondering a hypothetical question to which there’s maybe no answer.

  Okay. Not some of us. Mostly just me, as far as I can tell. But it’s been on my mind a lot. Rebekah listens as long as she’s able. And with others, it’s sometimes a good conversation starter. Usually also a good conversation ender. But when wine is involved, friends tend to tolerate my musings for a while.

  Here’s the question: If the sex ratio in the Coalition doesn’t improve, or gets worse, how long will it take before the population there shrivels to nothing?

  When Rebekah and I left, there was only a one in six chance of a girl being born. Everyone talked about it, worried about, tried to fix it.

  Things obviously aren’t any better now, or the depraved shits in power wouldn’t have resorted to sending slavers to capture women as far away as Winnipeg.

  So how long can this go on?

  If, hypothetically, all fertile women in the Coalition give birth once a year, and every seventh birth results in a girl, and every woman has fourteen children, what would happen in, say, twenty years?

  “Nothing good,” says Gordon. “And you’re making my head hurt, David. There’s nothing we can do about it anyway.”

  “Who has fourteen children?” asks Abraham. “No woman in her right mind has fourteen children.”

  “I know. It’s just hypothetical,” I say. “I’m just trying to get my mind around what might be happening in the Coalition, what could be happening. In the future, you know? In the rest of the world.”

  We’re sitting outside after dinner, drinking wine. Caleb, too. Until recently, the rest of the world was not of great concern to the people of New Eden. But the fact that slavers have captured women in Winnipeg, and maybe other places, has everyone more than a little on edge.

  “Are we going to be all that’s left?” I ask.

  “Would it be so bad?” replies Abraham. “If the Holy One wants to leave it to us to repopulate Her Earth, then we’ll repopulate the Earth.”

  He takes another sip of wine and smiles.

  “Well, not me personally. Zora and I have already done what we can. We’re more than happy to keep trying, of course, but I think we’re a bit too old now to help out with any more populating. Generally speaking, though, what else do we have to do here over the next 600 or a thousand years? Life will go on, David.”

  “But why here? Why just you people? I mean, why us?” asks Caleb. Sometimes he forgets that he’s one of us now. He’s taking this conversation to heart, happy to be included.

  “Why does The Designer—I mean the Holy One—like New Eden better than anyplace else?”

  “You like it better than anyplace else, don’t you?” I tease.

  That’s putting it mildly. Caleb thought he’d landed in paradise when we brought him and Willa here. All it took was the sight of bare female breasts in the open air to turn him into New Eden’s happiest new citizen, and a true believer to boot.

  But I know what he means.

  “This is the best place there is,” says Caleb, with a very serious expression on his face. “I know that. I just don’t understand how come girls aren’t rare here. No matter how many people I ask, and how many people say it’s because of the Holy One, it still doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Yeah, well not everything makes sense, my boy,” says Gordon. “Like David’s hypothetical question about fertile Coalition women. Things just are the way they are.”

  There was some talk, when we got back from Winnipeg, about whether it would be necessary to prepare to defend ourselves. But taking up arms of any kind goes against what people here believe.

  New Eden is not a place where doctrine is foisted upon others. But there are two tenets which everyone agrees cannot be messed with: Sex must only be for loving monogamous couples, and violence can never be tolerated.

  We think what will save us from attack is the fact that no outsider has any idea women are not rare here.

  For all the rest of the world knows, New Eden and the other settlements like ours have the same ever-dwindling supply of females as everywhere else.

  No one has any reason to suspect that things are different here. We’re in the middle of nowhere, off every beaten path. We’ve taken care of the occasional wanderer with spiked wine. And we have no expectation that armed hordes will suddenly appear.

  Word has filtered to us from some of the other settlements like ours. They’ve heard about the slavers, and know there may be desperate men at large from Winnipeg and thereabouts. But they’re not overly concerned either.

  Sailing across two Great Lakes again, and then trekking across half a continent to collect maybe a handful or two of women from places that are nearly impossible to find, can’t make much sense to anyone in the Coalition. No matter how desperate things get. And the Winnipeg men are just trying to stay alive.

  We won’t be going back to the city, not even out of curiosity, for a long, long time.

  So, as Abraham says, life goes on.

  But I do think of our family back home. My mother, my fathers, my brothers. What’s become of them, now that crazy, desperate men are in control of the Coalition?

  I remember a history lesson from when I was in school. After the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a long period in Europe during which civilization seemed to go backwards. It was called The Dark Ages, as I recall. It was a bad time, intellectually, economically, philosophically. There were plagues. Something called The Black Death. Maybe the population shrank then, too.

  But then, eventually, another era replaced it. I remember there was something called The Renaissance, and then later, The Enlightenment. There was progress in the form of inventions, discoveries, and cultural things like art, music and literature.

  All of this happened way, way before The Great Flood. And not everything got better, obviously. There were wars, always wars, one worse than the other, no matter what the era happened to be.

  I wonder why it is that people have always been so inclined to hurt each other and behave so badly in the end. As a whole, anyway. There are probably always good, peaceful people around. Just not enough to make up for the nasty ones who are motivated by greed and power.

  Gordon is right. Not everything makes sense. And now I’m making my own head hurt, thinking about this stuff.

  Better to think about things right here, where life, by just about any measure, is very good.

  “We’re going to make adjustments to the hydro system today,” I tell Caleb in the morning, as we walk to work.

  He nods. He’s as tall as I am now, and an eager trainee. He’s almost a grown man, I realize, like my brother Simon would be.

  Caleb has been living with us since Winnipeg. His sister is staying with Miriam and Edward.

  “Hey, David,” he says, evidently not inclined to dis
cuss the hydro system, “when you’re in love here, you can get married. Right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, cautiously, knowing what he’s probably going to say next.”

  “Well, I’m really in love with Lily. Do you think I’ll be able to marry her?”

  “You know you’re still a little idiot, don’t you, Caleb?”

  “Yeah,” he agrees. “But I really do love Lily.”

  “What do you love about her, Caleb? Besides her perky young breasts and pretty face, I mean?”

  “No. It’s not that. Not just that,” he insists. “Anyway, the weather is cool now, so she’s always covered up.”

  Caleb spends most of his free time now visiting Willa, who just happens to be living in the same house as Lily.

  “You’re a little younger than Lily, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “But you’re a little younger than Rebekah, aren’t you?”

  “Listen, Caleb, love is a very serious business here. It’s nothing to mess around with. You can’t go putting your hands on Lily. Not like you did that one time with Rebekah. You have to control your urges.”

  “I was just a kid then,” he says. “I thought you forgave me.”

  I did. Sort of. But I’m not going to tell him that.

  “Have you told Lily how you feel?” I ask.

  “No. Not yet. We’re never alone.”

  Well, that’s good, anyway.

  “But there’s something between us,” he insists. “She feels it, too. I’m sure of it. We brush up against each other, accidentally, whenever we can. We look at each other. It’s like she’s looking right into my soul. I don’t think I can live without her.”

  So. Maybe it is meant to be.

  “If you love Lily, and she loves you, and you’re both absolutely sure that you want to be with each other and only with each other for the rest of your lives, you better get everything all talked out with Lily and her parents. Sex is forever here, Caleb. Marriage is forever.”

  “I know. But, listen. I’ve had sex in Winnipeg. With a pleasure woman. Does that count? Does that mean Lily won’t have me?”

  “I don’t know, Caleb. If she loves you, she’ll probably have you. Go talk to her after work. Talk to Miriam and Edward.”

  I hope he does get married to Lily, and quickly. It’ll be good to have the big lump out of our house.

  Life is complicated. It’s unpredictable. It’s impossible to know whether it’s even continuing in a place that now seems a lifetime away.

  But here, it goes on. And that’s nothing but good.

  Chapter 48

  Susannah

  The Women’s Conference

  I don’t know how I got to be this old. I should be dead, like my sweet husbands. I should be gone, like everyone I love. But here I am in this Women’s House, where, with any luck, I’ll die before too long.

  My unfortunate sisters, my doomed daughters, may mourn me a little when I finally stop breathing. But it’s me who mourns them—these females who are neither my sisters nor my daughters, though that’s how I think of them now, poor souls.

  We are a rare and dying breed. Better to die sooner than later, I think. Sadly, they’ll linger longer than I will, servicing the men who come to this house, this Women’s House.

  It was fated to be, I suppose.

  How long could our world have lasted with hardly any girls being born?

  “How are you feeling today, Susannah?” asks Maria, as she enters my tiny room, and finds me sitting morose, in the chair by my bed.

  “Fine,” I say, which we both know isn’t true.

  “It’s the Easter-Esther Festival today,” she informs me. “No men. A holiday. So we’ll have a Women’s Conference. It’ll be fun. Come, Susannah, I’ll help you.”

  “Fun,” I grumble. I am a sour old thing. But Maria and the others want me to join them. So I let this middle-aged woman, who was just a child when the slavers captured her, help me to me feet.

  Maria hands me my cane, takes my elbow, and with her assistance, I walk the shuffling, halting walk of a frail, ancient crone into the gathering room where there’s a comfortable chair waiting for me.

  “Ah, Susannah is here. Now we can start,” says Melissa, who’s the unofficial head woman of our house. Melissa, may The Designer bless her, is the one who usually takes it upon herself to organize things around here. Because someone’s got to do it. And it’s in her nature, I suppose.

  “What are we starting?” I quip. “A revolution?”

  The others laugh. They like a good joke. As if our existence alone isn’t a good joke.

  Whenever there’s a holiday, two or three times a year, maybe three or four—I forget—we have a Women’s Conference.

  It’s good for us. If anything is good for us.

  I go along with it because, after all, it was me who started this tradition in this house. When was it? Long ago. So long ago. It’s only right that I play my part now. The others expect it. It’s the least I can do for them.

  “What are the men doing today?” I ask.

  “The Easter-Esther Festival,” several respond, all at once.

  Ah, yes, the Easter-Esther Festival. Maria told me when she came to get me. I have no memory anymore. Except for things that happened long ago. Sweet memories, some of them. And others that would be better to forget. If only I could.

  There are maybe twenty of us in this house, not counting the babies and one or two little girls. Boy babies stay with us until they’re five, the girls forever. Poor little girls. They will be required to do the same work as their mothers when they’re old enough.

  The little boys go to children’s houses run by nurturing men when they’re five. It’s better that way, we’re told. These days, most nurturing men tend to be homosexuals, bless them. Not all, though. Some heterosexual men just happen to have nurturing natures. Even now, I’m told. Volunteers among the men will be caring for all the weaned babies and little ones from this house today. Because it’s a holiday.

  How kind of the men to grant us a holiday.

  My Seth was a nurturer. Also a gentle lover. So were all my other husbands, to one degree or another. Nurturers, that is. And good lovers, too. That’s what men were bred to be back then. But it was usually Seth who took care of our boys when the rest of us went to work. Such a warm and loving man, my Seth. I wonder where he is now.

  He would be dead now, wouldn’t he? He was much older than me. The others, too.

  My dementia comes and goes.

  I’ll try to stay sharp now. We’re having a Women’s Conference, after all. The others would like me to be coherent. I’ll try.

  “I remember the first Women’s Conference we had in this town. My mother organized it. She was quite the organizer. Like you, Melissa,” I say, getting things started. “Except you’re much nicer, dear.”

  “Thank you, Susannah,” she says.

  “That first Women’s Conference here was very lovely. It was at the Town Hall. There were flowers on the tables, and we had workshops. Ellen Edelson gave a workshop on what it was like to run a pleasure shop. She could give us some tips now, couldn’t she?”

  I laugh to myself remembering Ellen Edelson, She was old then, but she had such lovely skin. Not a wrinkle on her. We were all so impressed.

  “I led a workshop, too, on how to accommodate multiple husbands.”

  I’ve told them all this many times. I repeat myself. But these women—my friends, my sisters and daughters in spirit, my fellow prisoners— don’t seem to mind. They like to hear about the old days. So I go on.

  “The Women’s Conference in Chicago wasn’t nearly as nice. Well, maybe it was just me. I was very depressed then. My oldest son, David, had run away with Rebekah. She was my husband John’s daughter, you know, from a previous marriage. Not his biological daughter. Rebekah was sired by Danny, who had red hair, like hers.

  “Some people back then thought that red-haired men had a better chance of fathering daughters. Can you imagine?
What foolishness. Anyway, of all my husbands, I loved John the best. How I wish he was with me still. But he couldn’t be, could he? Not here.”

  Then I’m silent, thinking about John. I shouldn’t ramble on like this.

  This Women’s Conference, in this house, isn’t really a Women’s Conference, of course. Or maybe it is. We’re women. We’re conferring.

  No men are coming today. It’s a holiday. No servicing men, one after the other. Just sex. No love. No affection.

  These inmates of mine, do they know what love is like, love between people who are bonded together sexually? How could they know, most of them? They’re too young. Even the ones who are not so young anymore.

  “Who wants to go next?” asks Melissa, the organizer, breaking the silence.

  Women like to talk. We like to tell each other private things, share secrets and fears. We like to commiserate with each other, bare our souls sometimes. Have a cry together. Have a laugh. It’s part of our nature, I think. Men are different.

  It’s not as if we don’t talk to each other every day, here in this house. Confide in each other. We do. But coming together like this as a group, when we know no men will bother us the whole day, is different. Special somehow.

  No sex-seeking men have bothered me for quite a long time now, thank The Designer.

  I was brought here after The Upheaval. Don’t ask me how long ago that was. Men, greedy men, came to power. A new social structure was proposed. New ordinances were passed. Husbands were separated from wives for the common good. And we women were penned up to make us more accessible, to better provide for the equal rights of men.

  I was put to use here until I was past seventy. And then they let me be. Men are desperate for women, yes. But not that desperate.

  The girl Tricia, with the straight black hair, sorrowful eyes and big belly, is talking now. I should listen. She’s saying something about maternity breaks. She wants to be left alone for a longer time after giving birth. Well, who doesn’t?