The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

by Meg Elison

  “Hi, guys. What can I do for you? Is one of you hurt?” She did her best to deliver it with light concern, in her old Dusty low voice.

  “No, Brother Dusty, we’re fine. This is Brother Randolph. We’re looking for a member of the congregation who went missing yesterday.”

  “In this snow? Are you serious? That’s awful.” She was trying to look behind them to see if Jodi’s tracks were visible in the deep snow. It had snowed all night, and there wasn’t much left.

  She could always tell them they were her own.

  “I’m afraid so. Have you seen or heard anything unusual today?” Chalmers was watching her face, his calm blue eyes boring into hers.

  “Man, I wish. I haven’t heard so much as a bird in days. It’s pretty lonesome out here.” She smiled thinly.

  Chalmers nodded. “We’re going to take a look around the neighborhood.”

  Randolph looked at him in surprise. “Shouldn’t we search the house?”

  Her blood pressure went up, and she fought it. “You guys are welcome to come in. I’ve got coffee. I haven’t been feeling well this week, so I’ve got the kettle going all the time. I’m even wearing my coat in the house.” She shrugged inside her clothes as if to dig herself in deeper and pulled her neck down into the hood.

  Her throwaway comment about feeling sick struck them like an arrow. Chalmers was suddenly inching his way down the porch steps.

  “Oh, that’s fine, we don’t want to bother you.” He tugged at Randolph’s sleeve. “If you see anyone out in the snow, I’m sure you’ll render aid. We’ll come back and check with you in a week or so.” He almost tripped in his eagerness to get away.

  She waved to them from the doorway and closed up slowly. Then she threw the bolt and put her back up against the door. She heard the snowmobile start up.

  “Jodi?”

  The broom closet in the kitchen swung open, and Jodi spilled out, trembling all over. “Thank God, oh, thank God.”

  “They’re gone. I don’t know if they tracked you here or what, but they’re definitely looking for you. How did you know they were coming?”

  “I heard it! Didn’t you hear it? That thing is super loud.”

  “Did you leave a note? Tell anyone where you were going?”

  She shrugged. “No. People disappear sometimes. They just leave. I thought they’d, like . . . just forget about it. You know?”

  “You mean guys disappear sometimes. Have you ever lost a woman that way?”

  She goggled at Dusty. “No . . . I didn’t think of it that way.”

  Dusty sat down on the sofa. “Yeah, well. There’s no mystery to those disappearances anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re just suicides. Comstock didn’t want to admit it, but it was pretty clear.”

  “There’s no way that’s true.” Jodi’s face set along angry lines. “Why would anybody do that?”

  Dusty snorted. “Yeah, you’re right. Why would they? Everything is wonderful.” It came out meaner than she had meant it. She saw Jodi flinch.

  Jodi got up and went to the kitchen. “I’m gonna—”

  “Stay away from the windows for a while. They said they were going to search the neighborhood. I don’t know if they will, but just in case.”

  Jodi came back into the doorway. “You’re not really sick, are you?”

  Dusty snorted. “No. I just told them that so they’d be too scared to come in.”

  Jodi stared at her, her brows coming together.

  “You want to feel my head?”

  Dusty expected Jodi to laugh it off, but she came straight toward her with her hand out. She laid the back of her left hand against Dusty’s cheek and waited. Looking away, she cupped her palm against Dusty’s forehead.

  “Normal, right?”

  Jodi dropped her hand. “Yeah. Yeah, just checking.”

  Keep checking. Please.

  It was casual contact, almost clinical. But her hand was soft and small, with slender fingers. It awakened something in Dusty that she had been ignoring while it slept. Something stirred and wanted and ached. She did everything she could to coax it back to bed.

  Winter

  If that missionary brought back a live plague victim from Nevada = fever is still active in some places. Maybe she got it from a corpse?

  People who never got sick, like Roxanne and most of the people in Huntsville. Immune or never exposed = the second exposure to Huntsville broke their quarantine and killed the ones who were not immune. There are those of us who got sick but fought it off, like me. Maybe no one is naturally immune and the degree of exposure determines infection. But then no one in Huntsville would have made it. Vector was cooking in the communal kitchen and they all ate together. Some people must be immune.

  Those of us who got it might be able to get it again. Drilled Jodi about it a hundred times. She never had it, and she doesn’t remember if anyone who died recently had previously recovered.

  No good with details that aren’t relevant to her own interests.

  Jodi has been here with me for a week. She really wants to be helpful. Very industrious, very clean. Won’t waste a single bite of food, and she makes her bed every morning. However, useless to talk to. Simple + childlike = dull. Has almost no imagination, and anything outside of her experience she just won’t believe.

  Talks about television almost constantly. Wish she had watched different shows. It might be interesting to listen if she had been addicted to fiction, even if it was silly, but all she watched was reality. She repeats the plots to me, but she always leaves things out so that they don’t make sense, so then I ask questions and she remembers. An incredibly tiresome pastime. Wanted company, but shit. Miss the nurses I used to work with. Mean and hard and sometimes crass, but at least they weren’t dumb. Even Roxanne. Wasn’t book smart, but she was cunning. Roxanne = GOT IT. Understood me without my having to explain constantly. Jodi doesn’t even get jokes.

  Realized a few days ago I’m nice to her because we’re alone here, but also because she’s pretty.

  Just like to look at her. She’s probably been treated like that her whole life. Don’t like myself much when I think of that.

  She finally let me examine the baby. Palpated the fundus, was able to feel the head.

  Not receptive at all to talking about what’s going to happen when the baby is born. Not interested in my experience with the plague or in the story I got from Roxanne. Not going to scare her or torture her with the possibility, but I wish she’d at least think about it. She’s going to fall apart if she doesn’t prepare.

  The snow quit one day, and Dusty got bundled up to go out.

  “Hey, I’m gonna skip breakfast. I want to walk two miles or so to the nearest neighbor that I haven’t robbed yet. It will take me a couple of hours, then I’ll be back. Is there anything you’d like me to look for? For you?”

  She stood in the doorway, tying up her scarf. Jodi came out of the kitchen, looking frightened.

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “What? No. I’m just going to walk to another house and look for supplies. I’d like some new books. Maybe find a house that has some board games? And you need some bigger clothes . . .”

  Jodi’s face was crumpling. It was all Dusty could do to hold back a sigh of exasperation and contempt.

  “I’m fine. I don’t need anything new.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  “Well, I do,” Dusty said simply. “And I’m going. I’ll lock you in, and I doubt anyone will come looking for you today—”

  “No!” She said it like she was a moment away from a tantrum; Dusty expected her to stamp her foot. “If you’re leaving, then I’m going with you.”

  This time Dusty did sigh. She wanted some time off. Not to live alone forever, but just a short break from Jodi filling the silence with her meaningless chatter.

  Find some people, wish you were alone. Live alone, wish for people.

  “You’re very pregnant.
You want to walk four miles in the snow?”

  “You’re supposed to walk when you’re pregnant, right? Like, for exercise? So I’ll walk with you.”

  Dusty rolled her eyes. “In small doses, not in an endurance march. You’re going to get very tired. You don’t have the stamina you had before you got pregnant. This will be hard and cold, and your ankles will get swollen.”

  Jodi shrugged. “If I’m too tired to come back, we can sleep in some other house.”

  “What if there’s no firewood?”

  She shrugged again. “Whatever. I’m bored, and I don’t want to stay here alone. I’m going with you.”

  “Fine. I can’t stop you from coming with me. But I expect you to keep up. And I do not want to stay somewhere else for the night. We’re taking the sled, and you do what I tell you to. All right?”

  She smiled as suddenly as she had pouted, as suddenly as she could burst into tears when she wanted. “Yay! I’ll get dressed!”

  “Put on a pair of sweat pants under your skirt,” Dusty said, miserable by the door.

  To Jodi’s credit, it didn’t take her long. In a scant few minutes, she was back out of her bedroom, wearing sweatpants as she was told. A long skirt and a down-filled jacket went over, with a scarf and hat and a small wicker basket draped over one arm.

  Dusty considered her. Jodi was a brat, but she’d been brought up in a rigid structure that only got more rigid after the plague. She would do what Dusty told her to because it was how she had always lived. At the very least, she was biddable. Dusty was grateful for that as she locked the door behind them.

  They walked to the end of the yard in silence. The snow was drifted up so high that the sled skidded along on the surface at almost hip height. Dusty knew they had come to the street by the mailbox.

  “So where are we headed?”

  Dusty pointed to the right. “There are two houses a couple of miles that way that I’ve just about cleaned out. I’d like to go the other way. I think there are more down the road a bit. The map looks like a cul-de-sac about three miles down.”

  “Ok.”

  They trudged into the street and dragged the sled slowly down the road.

  “So I’ve been thinking about names for the baby.”

  Dusty looked up at the black tree branches with little white tents of snow piled on top. “Only natural. So what are your thoughts?”

  “Well, if it’s a boy, his middle name has to be Honus, after his father. That’s an Obermeyer tradition. But I was thinking about first names. Like what about Brad? Or Ashton? Or what about Jaden? Isn’t that super pretty?”

  “It was really popular last year at the hospital. About every other boy was named Aiden, Braden, Jaden, or Kaden.”

  Jodi was silent. Dusty didn’t look, because she knew that she would be stormy.

  “Then again, most of those kids are dead. So I guess it hardly matters.”

  Didn’t mean that to sound callous. Just practical. She’s pissed again. Like it’s my fault.

  Jodi waited a few minutes before speaking. “It might be a girl, I guess. I really feel like it’s a boy, but better safe than sorry or whatever. So I was thinking about Chloe and Zoe. Or, like, a really super old name, like Abigail. What do you think?”

  “Those are lovely,” Dusty said absently.

  Nameplates in the neonate ward, the ones nurses slipped into the fronts of cradles. Boy Jones. Girl Rodriguez. Sometimes the parents had the whole name ready to go. I remember kids named Angel and Treasure, kids named Jesus and Elvis and Belle and Martin Luther and Kal-El.

  Those that weren’t named after someone famous were named after someone in the family.

  Always some idea of who the kid should be.

  “Honus and I talked about names. He really wanted to name his son George. He said that was Baby Ruth’s real name.”

  “Babe Ruth? The baseball player?”

  “Yeah. Honus and his dad are, like, really into sports. It’s all they talk about.” Jodi was grinning.

  “Are you into sports, too?”

  “Nah, that’s guy stuff. But I’m glad it makes him happy.”

  The road had markers to keep drivers aware of where they were on the Utah grid system. They had moved one square west of Dusty’s house. It seemed like they were making good time.

  In the cold air, Jodi’s cheeks were pink roses and her eyes were bright. She was clearly enjoying being out of the house for a bit.

  “Honus is such a sweetheart. He always surprises me with little presents. He’s funny and silly. I miss him so much.”

  “Where was he sent again?”

  “Colorado. Denver.” She said it very quietly, looking at the uneven trenches her legs were cutting through the snow.

  Get used to being a widow.

  “Ah. Do they usually send men out who’ve just been married?”

  “Not before. Before it was unmarried guys when they turned eighteen, and old maids who hadn’t gotten married by twenty-five. But Bishop Comstock said it had to be young men, and there weren’t that many of those. So they let us get married and have a week together and then sent him out. It was kind of like a blessing, because now when he comes home, I’ll be able to surprise him with a baby.”

  “Will he be happy?”

  “Of course he will! He wants to be a daddy, that’s why we got married.”

  “Is he handsome?”

  “Oh my gosh, yes, he is so cute. He’s taller than me, like, way tall. He has brown hair and blue eyes and the best smile. He played basketball in high school. I was a freshman when he was a senior, and I was crushing on him from day one. I used to go to his games. He was gonna play for BYU.” She looked wistful and proud, as if recalling achievements of her own.

  “He sounds lovely.”

  “Yeah, so, like, when he got called to Ottawa, he was super excited. He really wanted to be called to, like, Japan or something, but whatever. So I promised I would wait, and we made plans and stuff. I never thought I’d have to wait like this again.”

  “I never thought I’d do a lot of things I’ve had to do since this all started.”

  Jodi looked at her, a little concern wrinkling her smooth forehead. “Like what?”

  Dusty waited a minute, looking up and down the white road. “I think we’re about halfway.”

  “Can we take a break?” Jodi’s voice was plaintive, not quite whining.

  “We really can’t,” Dusty told her. “We need to get somewhere warm before we sit down. It’s no good for you to be in this cold, and it would only prolong your exposure if we take a break out here. We’re almost there.”

  “Ok.” Jodi launched into another long explanation of her favorite TV show, this time the scandalous real life of a group of rich-and-famous sisters. Dusty checked out and just said, “Yes,” or “Mm-hmm,” or “Oh, really?” in the right places. She reached back and put her hand on her gun periodically, like touching a talisman.

  Finally, Dusty saw the outline of a house up ahead. It was two stories tall, and the front door was drifted in. The snow was at least good for showing whether people had been in and out recently.

  “Look!” She pointed it out to Jodi, who snapped her head toward it.

  “Oh yay! We found it!”

  They ran haltingly, struggling to get through the snow in the road and to the edge of the yard. As they got closer, Dusty saw that it was a large house with a huge bay window. She smiled.

  “This could be good.”

  The door was unlocked. Jodi opened it, and they walked in together.

  Dusty went straight to the decorative fireplace with a dry stack of oak beside it and looked around for kindling. She took the magazines off the coffee table and used them to start a fire. She wrenched the flue open and sat patiently, feeding the flames until it roared. She told Jodi to sit down in front of it and warm up, especially her legs.

  “Try to stop me,” said Jodi as she shucked off her snow-caked shoes.

  Dusty stomped her feet an
d started to check the place out.

  It was obviously a family home. Stains on the couch and pictures on the mantle. A plastic high chair at the kitchen table. A tub of toys in a cozier family room, located off the side of the main entrance. She opened up the pantry and took a look. There was soup here she thought they should take, among other things. She thought she’d let Jodi check the food since she did most of the cooking. She went up the back staircase and started looking through the bedrooms. The master bedroom had a dead couple in the bed, their arms laid over the smaller corpses of their children under the blankets.

  Well, good for you. Sound decision.

  She took a bottle of frozen shampoo from the windowsill above their shower and tucked it into her pack. None of the clothes in the large closet looked like a good fit for either of them. She closed the door and moved to the next room.

  She found a handful of board games in a closet and stacked them at the top of the stairs. She loaded her bag with books, including about twenty from a young girl’s bedroom. The kid had favored science fiction and fantasy and Dusty’s eyes grew large at the sight of them. She thought she’d love to travel in some other worlds for a change. In a boy’s room, she found another stack, mostly adventures. She was so glad for this discovery that she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet at the sight of them. She thought the books alone made up for the walk.

  She heard Jodi coming up the stairs. “Hey are you warmed up then? Will you take that stack of games down to the sled?”

  Silence.

  “Jodi?”

  She came out of the bedroom and walked into the hallway. She didn’t see anyone. Her breathing got fast and ragged, and she put her right hand behind her, ready to draw.

  “Jodi? Damn it, Jodi, answer me.”

  She came close enough to see that the master bedroom door was open again, and Jodi was standing there, staring at the dead couple in the bed.

  “Jodi, you scared the shit out of me. You shouldn’t be in here. And don’t fucking ignore me when I call you.”

  Jodi turned on her, suddenly furious. “How can you talk like that in here? Don’t you have any respect? This was their house, and they died here, together. I hope they were sealed in the temple.”