Califia's Daughters

by Leigh Richards

  In the kitchen she paused just long enough to scribble some explanatory words on the message slate, grabbed some fruit and bread to drop into her pockets, then lunged for the door.

  Judith stood on the top step and gulped in the clean predawn air like a surfacing diver. The baby responded, moved heavily within her with a surge of tiny heels that kicked against her heart and lungs and robbed her momentarily of breath. Soon now, it would be very soon, but the urge to be out of the house was powerful and immediate. She stepped into her shoes, turned toward the upper fields, and quickly left the village behind.

  All morning she worked her slow way up the path alongside the stream, the faithful, clear water whose presence made the village possible. With each step in the quiet woods her mind calmed, her panic retreated. By the time the sun had cleared the eastern hills, she was on the knoll that overlooked the Valley, where she sat on a long-downed redwood to eat her pears and the brown roll. From her isolated perch she could see all the Valley from the water tanks down to the Gates; impassive as a god, she watched her people go about the day’s work, saw the children spilling into the yard of the schoolhouse, the brilliant glare of reflected sunlight from panes of the distant glass houses, the proud gleam of new wood that was the growing Great Hall. The only sound that reached her was the faint rumble of the mill wheel, grinding grain or running one of the tools. She could pick out figures, though, and as she watched from her high seat Dian appeared with a swirl of tiny dogs, a miniature doll with a cluster of pale ants. The woodpecker that drummed on the dead tree a hundred yards away seemed considerably more real than her sister below.

  Motionless, with the rough, soft bark beneath her thighs, she could feel the energy rise in her belly, the still-sporadic hardening of the powerful uterine muscles as they flexed, and let her go, and flexed again. In part of her mind she knew that she was foolish to spend her energies on a strenuous climb, and she had not intended to go farther than this knoll. However, another part of her was badly in need of the strength only this walk could give. Her body and spirit felt the pull of the spring on the hill behind her. She rose and stood for a moment, undecided, kneading at her lower back with both hands and surveying the miniature world far below. She took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and set her face again to the source of the waters.

  It was nearly noon when she finally entered the ancient circle of trees from whose base rose the spring. She paused on the thick black duff, the decayed needles of millennia, and listened to: silence, broken only by the scold of a squirrel, the creak of a branch high overhead, and the gentle mutterings of water moving down the hill. She stood, scarcely breathing, for a long time, so long that she began to think it was no longer there, that the remembered sound was a construct of her imagination, and then suddenly she heard it. It lay below the silence, not a sound, but the impression of a sound, a rhythm, a hum too low to register on the ears, like the working of a distant hive of bees only far, far greater, infinitely more powerful, eternal, untouchable. This was the voice of the redwood cathedral.

  Judith sank awkwardly to her knees, plunged her hot face into the small, deep pond that was the spring’s open mouth, and drank deeply from the earth’s icy water. She rose with an effort and brushed the strands of wet hair back from her face, and then she turned to seek out the fallen tree among whose roots she had sat both times she had come here before. Her first visit had been when she was thirteen and the blood of new womanhood had come upon her. The other time she had come followed the death of her tiny son. She had spent a week here then, and even now, eighteen years later, she remembered clearly how her breasts had ached, had swollen and hardened and ached and leaked and finally begun to dry up, and she had gone back to her life. And now, this late, unlooked-for pregnancy, another cycle of flinging herself into the jaws of the Fates, offering up her body and her mind in exchange for the chance of a new life. She sat, quietly watching the clear water well up into the pool and slip over the moss-covered rocks, and soon, with neither surprise nor consternation, she felt her own waters break and drip into the ground, to be absorbed by the earth below. Cradled by the soft ground and the mass of roots, Judith slept.

  Some time later, probably no more than an hour, Judith woke to the gradual realization that there was another person in the grove. She opened her eyes and saw first the horse, nibbling on the bush to which it was tied, and beside it the dog lying patiently with its chin on its paws. Judith turned her head and looked up into Dian’s face, which was without expression but for the faint smile lurking behind her blue eyes.

  “Have I given you enough time?”

  “Oh, yes, I suppose.” Judith looked wistfully over at the bubbling black pool and felt the first true stirrings of her labor. She smiled back up at Dian. “This baby’s not going to wait forever,” she said, and started laboriously to rise.

  “No, just sit there a minute. I’ll bring the horse up here.” Dian walked swiftly through the trees to unloop the reins from the branch and led the barebacked old mare to the fallen tree, pausing at the spring to fill a jug with water from the deepest part of the pool. She pushed the cork in firmly and handed the jug to Judith.

  “You might want this in a while.”

  She helped her sister climb onto the mare’s broad back and sit sideways, then she, too, mounted, her arms draped loosely around Judith’s swollen torso. With her sister’s head resting on her shoulder, Dian turned the mare down the hill by the pressure of knees and feet. Culum led the way.

  By the time they passed the lookout knoll, Judith’s contractions were strongly established. When they reached the first fields Dian was having to help her control her breathing, and when the mare’s even steps stopped outside the back door, Judith had begun to sweat. Her breaths came fast and sharp, alternating with periods of rest. Ling was sent for. Peter and Lenore helped ease Judith down from the horse. Clutching the water bottle and stopping once on the stairs to breathe through contractions, Judith reached her room.

  Darkness came early that night, brought on by the gathering clouds. While the rest of the house met over a dinner that was both subdued and excited, while the first drops of rain in six months pattered onto the dust, Dian and Ling lit the lamps upstairs and helped Judith in her work.

  It was a steady labor, now that Judith’s mind was not fighting the birth, for her body was healthy and her muscles strong. Susanna came up after dinner to walk with her mother and wipe her sweating face with cloths dampened in the spring water. Dian and Ling breathed with her, talked to her, encouraged her, and rubbed her back. After the downstairs dinner, David, the child’s father, stopped in and exchanged a few optimistic words with Judith, then left, saying that he would be back after the little kids were in bed. He and Judith had an affectionate relationship, but their love had no great depth to it. She found some of his mannerisms vaguely irritating, and he knew it and was sensitive enough not to stay with her during the whole labor. After he left, Judith sat down on the bed.

  “He’s a good man,” she said absently. “I think I’ll lie down for a while.”

  Judith’s labor went on, grew, built, expanded, took her over. By ten o’clock she was engulfed by it, aware of nothing but the endless waves of almighty contractions, one on top of another with barely time between them for her breath to return to normal. Dian was behind her on the bed, her arms and back burning with fatigue from the effort of supporting Judith’s half-upright weight, her throat hoarse from the hours of murmured words. Susanna came and went with containers of water, her hands raw from wringing out hot towels for her mother’s lower back. Ling checked her instruments for the seventh time, particularly the frightening ones in the sterile package sitting outside the door. She’d used those only five times over the years and was greatly relieved that Judith’s progress, though slow, was normal, that surgery did not seem to loom large tonight. She went to scrub her hands yet again in the basin, Susanna pouring the water, when her ears picked up an odd but expected sound: after hours of even rhythm, Jud
ith’s great breaths had caught, faltered, and then resumed.

  Ling finished washing her hands and went to examine the birth’s progress. In a minute she stood up with satisfaction.

  “You can push when you want to.”

  And push she did. David arrived again to take Dian’s place at Judith’s back, and the two women, the man, and the young girl all poured their energy into Judith. In half an hour the black wet hair was crowning. Three more pushes and Ling was saying, “Hold it, hold it, don’t push, let it come gently,” and a squashed, straining red face emerged, followed by the shoulders, and then in a rush the slippery purple body of a perfectly formed new boy baby came into the world.

  Ling ran her professional eyes and hands over the soft, hot little person before placing him on his mother’s chest for warmth. His bright dark eyes seemed myopically to study his surroundings. He blinked once at the lamplight, and then he and Judith were looking into each other’s eyes.

  “Your son, Jude,” said Dian. “He’s beautiful, he’s strong, he’s your boy baby, and he needs you.”

  “I know,” whispered Judith. She closed her eyes and began to shiver despite the warmed blankets they were wrapping around her, then, as Ling cut the cord, placed her hands on her son’s body and touched his wet hair. “I know. God give me strength.”

  Dian and Ling left an hour later, after Judith had curled up into an exhausted sleep. The house was asleep as well, even Susanna in her room with Teddy, but as Dian looked back into the room before closing the door it was not Judith she saw, but David. The young man was sitting in the rocking chair, the chair in which Kirsten had nursed Judith’s mother, holding the old woman’s new great-grandson in his arms. Dian could not read the expression on his face as he studied the sleeping features of his son and delicately stroked the thick, soft hair with his thumb, but she thought he was not far from tears. David had three daughters, but none of his sons had lived to walk.

  The following morning Judith woke slowly, aware immediately of the gurgle of rain in the spouts and falling onto the veranda roof below. Then she felt the baby nestled to her side and came fully awake. When she opened her eyes she found Kirsten seated in the comfortable chair near the window, knitting some dark red wool by the thin light.

  “Good morning,” said the old woman. “I came to see my newest baby. Let me get you some tea first, though. Someone has been crashing about in the kitchen for an hour; she ought to have a kettle hot by now.”

  She returned in a few minutes with the hot, sweet tea and set it within reach of Judith’s hand, then closed the door firmly and settled into the chair with her own cup to study Judith’s expressionless face. The rain continued to drip outside. Soon the baby stirred, seeking touch and nourishment and comfort. Judith put her cup on the table and brought him to her breast, still impassive, not looking at the baby her arms held.

  “You don’t have to keep him, you know.”

  Judith looked up, startled.

  “You’ve been through this once before, and lost. You don’t have to do it again. He would be welcomed, cherished, by several good women I could think of.”

  Judith looked down in silence at the fuzzy head. A minute passed.

  “If you would rather, I could even place him outside the Valley. I know women outside, including a few in Meijing, who would care for him well, and you would not have to see him and have him near you.”

  Judith still did not answer. She drank her tea, and after a few minutes shifted him to the other breast, without raising her eyes to Kirsten’s. The old voice went gently, affectionately, inexorably on.

  “If you cannot give yourself to him, then you cannot. It does not reflect badly on you. It is not your fault, it is not a weakness or failure, it is simply the way things are. But you must not keep him with you if you are unable to give him your love. That would be unfair to him. It would be like a mother without milk in her breasts insisting on nursing her child—no fault of her own, but another source must be found or the child will die.” Kirsten moved over to sit on the bed next to mother and son and caressed the tiny ear with her gnarled finger.

  “A boy baby has a hard enough time, in this day and age. We cannot allow him to have anything but the best possible beginning. It is true: this one may die,” she said, with love and brutality. “You know it. I know it. He may even know it. And we owe it to him, as a small human being, to make what days he has as full and as comfortable and as filled with love as we possibly can. If he lives, that love will make him a better person. If he dies, it will come near to killing us too. I know. I lost four sons, remember. But we can’t do it any other way. Not for his sake, we cannot. Or for ours.”

  She rose and looked down at Judith’s stricken face.

  “You think about it. If you need to give him up, do it soon, child, before he becomes a habit.”

  Before she went out of the room, Kirsten turned and looked back at the figures on the bed. As she watched, her granddaughter’s tears began to come, her arms rising to curl around the small figure of her sleeping son. Now, Kirsten thought, they would stay there. She closed the door quietly with a curious expression on her face, a mixture of triumph and self-contempt, and picked her cautious way down the stairs for her breakfast.

  SEEING HERSELF SO AFFLICTED, SHE REALIZED THAT, IF SHE SOJOURNED THERE ANY LONGER, MORE DIFFICULTIES MIGHT DAMAGE HER GREAT FAME AS A MANLY KNIGHT, WHICH SHE HAD WON BY OVERCOMING SO MUCH PERIL AND TRAVAIL.

  ELEVEN

  THE THREE DAYS FOLLOWING JUDITH’S BIRTH WERE A strange time for Dian, when the mad rush of last-minute preparations alternated with leisurely visits to Judith, Kirsten, and Isaac, with no transition between the two states. The rest of the Valley still thought she was simply going to Meijing, but Isaac now knew the truth. She’d told him the morning after the birth; he’d taken the news quietly, and although Dian could see it was troubling him, she really had no time to spare for his feelings. One minute she would be in her rooms, searching her drawers for socks without holes while throwing Isaac tips on dog care, making notes for Jeri about winter defense and lists of things that her pack of supplies was missing, when suddenly she would remember that she had told Judith she’d join her for lunch. Off she would run, sloshing through the storm to the main house and into a world of new mothers and old women, a world dominated by the need for quiet rest and a rapt attention to minutiae. She would sit in this atmosphere, eating an unhurried and undemanding meal and making gentle conversation, then eventually step out the door remembering that she had to tell Isaac what to do if Rosie came into heat early and that Jeri should be asked to check the list of ammunition Dian might bring back from Meijing and also be reminded about the family of foxes that had moved in over the hill.

  On the afternoon of the second day she staggered into Ling’s front-room clinic, deposited her dripping rain gear at the door, and dropped into a chair amidst the jars of herbs and the sterile tools.

  “If I think of one more thing to remind anyone of, my head will burst,” she declared. Ling took off her glasses and looked at her dubiously. Dian sighed, sat up, and said more calmly, “You had some things you wanted me to bring back from Meijing?” The last trading trip had been just months before, with packloads of scavenged valuables, intricate winter needlework, and tanned furs exchanged for medicines and manufactured goods, but a trip Outside would never be wasted on one purpose.

  “You do look tired,” Ling said affectionately. “I think you’ll find the trip itself more restful than the preparations, when you finally get away.”

  “If I ever get away.”

  “You will. Thank you for sparing me the time,” she added, and reached over to the central drawer of her rolltop desk for two envelopes. She handed the smaller, unsealed one to Dian. “This is your introduction, so you don’t have to convince them who you are. I’ve asked my relatives in Meijing to give you hospitality and help you with your shopping list. I made a copy of the list in English for you—yes, go ahead and take it out. As you see, t
he top part is urgent, all small, mostly medical and laboratory supplies but also an assortment of things like violin strings and pieces for the photovoltaics. The second section is bulkier necessities that you can bring if you don’t mind burdening your horse. The last part is up to you, if you feel like bringing back a packhorse. Anything you can’t carry this time, they’ll hold for us, and we’ll get it in the spring. Give the list to whomever you’re staying with on the way north; they’ll have it waiting when you come back through.”

  “How on earth do I pay for all this?” Looking through the list, she saw a number of rare and therefore expensive items, goods that had not been manufactured since Kirsten was a girl. And although she would be taking some small goods and a parcel of completed needlework, it was only a summer’s worth of trade.

  “No need to pay, we have a lot to our credit with them, from my last trip there.” Ling’s expression was a bit too bland, but Dian shrugged.

  “If you say so—but this amounts to a hell of a lot of furs and embroidery.”