The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

by Meg Elison

  Dusty tugged at her sleeve. “Come on, Jodi. Please get out of here. You shouldn’t be around dead bodies, not with the baby.”

  “In the celestial kingdom, they will be together forever.” She nodded resolutely, but her eyes were troubled.

  “Good. That is great for them. Let’s please get out of here, ok?”

  Jodi turned away and left the room.

  “You should try the last door on the right there for clothes,” Dusty said.

  “I don’t think we should take anything,” Jodi said, turning to her.

  “What?”

  “This isn’t ours to take. It belongs to someone.”

  Dusty was baffled. “They’re dead. Dead people don’t own anything. We’re living, and we need it. I don’t think they’d mind, but even if they did, they’re dead. One more time. Dead. Most of the people in the world, dead. We’re gonna take what we need.”

  “Not me. My clothes are fine. I’m not taking anything.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, please.” Jodi’s mouth was a thin line of disapproval. For a white-hot second, Dusty wished she had continued the illusion that she was a man. She could have cowed Jodi into shutting up if she had that authority. As it was, they were going to have to wrestle it out. She took a deep breath.

  “All right. Your choice. Don’t take anything. I’m going to load up, and then we’re out of here. We’ll leave the other houses for another day.”

  She pushed past Jodi, picked up the games, and headed down the stairs.

  “Wait!”

  She turned back on the landing.

  “What?”

  “We should bury them.”

  Dusty turned her back and kept walking downstairs. “You bury them. I’ll wait.”

  She loaded up the sled, pretending to not pay attention. She had an ear cocked, waiting to hear if Jodi actually tried to get the bodies out of the bed. She stacked up the games and threw down her backpack. She didn’t hear the thumps of bodies. What she heard was Jodi vomiting.

  She came down the stairs, pale and shaking, wiping her mouth.

  “You good?”

  “Whatever.”

  Jodi sat down by the fire again.

  “Exactly.” Dusty stalked back into the kitchen. She looked over the shelves. To herself, she muttered, “I wonder if I can make cake without fresh eggs.”

  “You can.”

  Jodi had come quietly to the kitchen door. Dusty turned around to face her.

  “There’s tricks. I learned how as a Girl Scout.”

  So domestic. I’d be annoyed except that I benefit from it.

  “Ok. I’m gonna grab some cake mixes then. Cake sounds good. What do you say?”

  “I guess it’s ok.”

  “Good.” She grabbed three boxes of mix and tucked them under her arm.

  Quietly, Jodi came into the pantry and started picking out cans. Dusty didn’t say anything about her sudden reversal of morals. She didn’t want to fight. She wanted to get loaded up and get back on the road.

  “You warmed up enough to go back out there?”

  Jodi pouted a little. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just stay here?”

  “It’s early afternoon. We can totally make it back. Come on.” She went to the sled and stacked up the cake mixes, flat on their sides. “There’s lots of food here. We should remember and come back if we start to run low.”

  Jodi came up behind her and put her canned goods on the sled. “How long are you planning to stay in Eden?”

  “I want to wait out the winter before I move on. If I’d known it snowed like this in Utah, I might have stayed somewhere else.”

  Jodi laughed a little. “I’m from Ogden. I haven’t seen snow like this, ever. Not in my whole life. This is, like, the worst winter I’ve ever seen.”

  “Perfect timing then.”

  “Yeah. Totally.”

  The fire had died down. Dusty considered shoveling the ashes out, then decided not to bother. They closed up the house and left it unlocked, then set out to return. Dusty got ahead, dragging the sled slightly behind. They kept to their earlier tracks, and Dusty thought about the trail they had left. She deliberately walked into the snow that kept their paths separate and mussed them together. She didn’t want anyone to be able to tell that two had come and gone. Indeterminate tracks were better than an exact number. When she looked behind them, she saw a long churned-up track that might have been made by anything at all. She thought about laying the warm gun in the snow beside her, just for a moment, so that anyone who followed their tracks would see the impression of it. She dismissed the idea as stupid, but she felt uncomfortably exposed.

  She needn’t have worried. It started to snow again before they got halfway home.

  Dusty looked at Jodi as the house came into view. Snowflakes lay thick on her red-gold eyelashes. One or two lit on her pink lips and melted there. She caught Dusty looking at her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  It does no good to tell a beautiful woman how beautiful she is. If she already knows, it gives her power over the fool who tells her. If she does not, there is nothing that can be said to make her believe it. Dusty did not know everything, but she knew that.

  “Come on. Let’s get in and build that fire.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Still winter

  Forever winter

  The Winter of Our Discontent

  Starting to figure out how to live with each other. Gives me space when I’m reading, and I can stand her so much better after a little time and silence. Jodi = sweet. Heats water for my bath, been able to talk her around to a few subjects of conversation that don’t make me want to scream. So sheltered = so fucking dull. So glad I have new books. Good ones I haven’t read.

  Doesn’t seem to need any time alone. Not sure she’s ever had any. Not sure she has any thoughts she doesn’t say.

  They settled into a routine. Neither of them set terms. They did not negotiate or ever directly address what they needed from one another, but the days fell into a rhythm.

  Dusty got up first thing in the mornings and saw to the fire. She banked the coals, scuttled the ashes, brought a stack of wood within reach, and got it roaring again. By the time she came to Jodi’s room to do the same, Jodi was up. The younger woman always cooked; Dusty had given up even trying. Jodi was a dab hand with what they had, never wasting and always making something filling and edible. When Jodi wasn’t cooking, she cleaned house, washed and mended their clothes, and relived television shows that she missed terribly. Dusty tried to draw her out on reminiscences of Honus, but Jodi grew silent on that topic.

  Jodi’s belly grew rounder and bigger every day, hard as a pumpkin. The two of them could share the occasional moment of joy when she would suddenly light up and wave for Dusty to lay hands on her wide, taut belly. She would never speak at these times, as if the baby were a fish that might be frightened away. She would wave, eyes wide, mouth closed. Dusty never grew tired of this, never passed up the chance. The child was alive, kicking like a soccer player, long limbed and whole.

  Now in the seventh month of pregnancy, Jodi was doing well. Dusty watched her carefully. Her appetite had increased. She got plenty of sleep. She was active and in fine spirits every day. She went out into the snow to relieve herself with regularity. Dusty could tell the baby had not yet turned. He was still head up and face forward. She considered turning him, but she thought it could wait. Dusty did not want to hope. She tried to keep hope out of her, shutting all the doors and locking them with the keys of reason and evidence and precedent. Still, she could feel it seeping in, incorporeal and deathless, refusing to be refused.

  In the evenings, Jodi would make dinner. She could indeed make cake without fresh eggs or butter or milk, and the results weren’t bad. Dusty would prod her for some kind of conversation beyond the immediate. Sometimes her efforts were rewarded. Even reminiscences from Jodi’s Norman Rockwell chil
dhood could be interesting on occasion. Dusty tried telling her own stories, but she knew that Jodi was immediately bored. They felt how keenly different they were and tried to glide over it. Dusty ended every evening by reading a book in a wingback chair in the living room. She had tried to read aloud for Jodi a few times, but Jodi would fall asleep or ask wildly off-topic questions. Dusty stopped trying. There was much they could not share. They shared Jodi’s pregnancy.

  Dusty woke in the middle of the night with her heart pounding. She thought it was only another nightmare. She had them less frequently with Jodi in the house, but they still happened. She was trying to get her heart rate back down when the sound that had awakened her returned.

  Snowmobile.

  It was running at top speed, the engine whining and echoing off every tree and still surface in the silent night. She bolted out of bed in the flannel long underwear she had been wearing and pulled the pistol off her bedside table. She put it in her waistband without thinking and it slid down her ass and into the leg of her pajamas. Cursing, she kicked it out onto the floor and picked it up again. She carried it into Jodi’s bedroom. She shook the girl awake.

  “What?”

  “Shhh! Listen.”

  Dusty jerked her head toward the sound, but Jodi’s eyes were already huge with terror.

  “Can you get under the bed?”

  She shook her head. “I’m too big. No way. The closet?”

  Dusty nodded to her, and she slid off the bed and hastily began to make it. “Good idea,” Dusty said.

  She padded down the stairs and picked up the rifle that she had leaned against the door. She held both guns and sank to the floor beside the front window. She was calm. She brought the rifle up to rest it on the windowsill and pointed it out into the darkness. She hadn’t lit a candle; she had the embers of the fire. No stars, no moon. The vague, blurry impression of snow falling.

  A black shape came pounding up the porch, not sneaking, very fast. Fists banged the door.

  Dusty leaped to her feet and backed up, setting the rifle down. She held the revolver at arm’s length.

  “Fuck off!” She bellowed it at the door.

  “Jodi! Jodi! I’m looking for my wife, Jodi Obermeyer!”

  Upstairs, she heard the commotion of Jodi bursting out of the closet. She came down the stairs in her nightgown, taking the stairs so fast that Dusty held her breath. She stepped back, and Jodi flew straight to the door, screeching.

  “Honus? Honus, baby? Oh my God, Honus!” She flung open the door. The cold wind ripped her nightgown back and outlined her breasts and belly in the firelight. Her loose red-gold hair streamed back, and she slit her eyes against it, shielding her face with her hand. “Is it really you?”

  A tall figure with broad shoulders walked through the door. He pulled off a ski mask and revealed a handsome bearded face. His hair was dark, and his cheeks were hollow. His eyes glistened in the low light, and he wrapped his arms around Jodi and sobbed openly.

  “Thank God, oh thank God.”

  They stood that way, crying on one another, for several minutes. Dusty had lowered the gun and shut the door. She waited quietly. She knew she’d eventually be remembered.

  Honus sank to his knees and held Jodi’s belly, kissing it over and over. “My baby, oh my baby. I didn’t know, but I prayed. I hoped.”

  Jodi stroked his hair with both hands, smiling through tears. “I knew you’d come home. I knew it in my heart. Oh, Honus.”

  He turned his head to listen to the child within the womb, and his eyes met Dusty’s. He stood up slowly.

  “You must be Brother Dusty. I can’t thank you enough for taking care of my wife . . .” He started to offer his hand.

  “She’s not brother anybody. She’s just Dusty. She pretended to be a man in Huntsville. Tell him, Dusty.”

  “It’s true. Just Dusty.”

  Honus looked her over, top to bottom. She saw a mixture of confusion and disbelief cross his face. She thought she saw a little disgust as well.

  “You’re really . . . so you’re pretending . . . ?”

  “I’m safer as a man.” Dusty crossed her arms and waited.

  Damned if I need to explain myself to you. Be glad I’m not fucking your wife. Asshole.

  Honus’s face relaxed. He looked relieved as if he had been able to hear her thoughts and knew himself a lucky man.

  “Let me shake your hand anyway, since I surely do thank you. I’m so glad she’s safe and the baby is safe and I found them. Thank you so much.”

  Dusty uncrossed her arms and shook, still adjusting to his presence.

  “Honus, sit down. You look starved. Let me fix you something—”

  “No, you two sit. I’ll make something. I’m sure you want to be close to him right now . . .” Dusty started for the kitchen, then thought better of it.

  “Are you alone?” She looked toward the door again.

  Honus nodded. “My companion died in Colorado. I returned alone. I didn’t even tell Bishop Sterling I was taking off.”

  “Anyone from Huntsville following you? Did you steal that snowmobile?”

  “No, I came home on it. Nobody is plowing. It’s all snow from here to there. Thank God for the snowmobile. I didn’t tell anyone about your note.”

  “Bishop Sterling?” Jodi looked confused.

  “What note?” Dusty was more interested in how he had found them.

  “Bishop Comstock died and left Bishop Graves in charge. I guess he had an accident or something a while back, and now Bishop Sterling has the mantle. You know there’s hardly anyone left?” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a sheet of vellum.

  Jodi turned to Dusty. “We always said that if something happened and one of us had to leave, our secret note place was in our wedding album. There’s an envelope in there, like, glued to the page, with an invitation that my mom made. There’s blank vellum in there for a note, so I left one for Honus when he got back.” She turned her eyes adoringly back to Honus’s face. She had pronounced vellum vell-oom, as if she had never said it out loud before.

  “I was crazy at first when they told me you had taken off, out into the snow. They said you were acting weird and disobedient and trying to . . . well, showing interest in other men. And you just took off one night without telling anyone. So I sat alone in our house, thinking that couldn’t have been true. I pulled out our pictures and started looking, and then it hit me. I was only home for maybe five or six hours. I just went to the bishop and told him I was going to find you, dead or alive. And then I took off for this place, as fast as I could.”

  They beamed at each other. Dusty was satisfied. She got up and went to the kitchen. She pulled together a meal of hoecakes with fake bacon bits and some herb gravy. She cooked the cake on the stovetop, listening to the conversation in the other room.

  “You took that snowmobile all the way home?”

  “Dragging a sled of gasoline. I sure did.”

  “What happened to Elder Langdon?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, sweetheart. Not just yet. Ok?”

  “Ok. Yeah, ok. Did you actually make it to Denver?”

  “We . . . did. We did. I don’t really want to talk about that, either. Denver. Not yet.”

  “Well, what took you so long? You were supposed to be back months ago!” Jodi’s voice was nearing the whining point. Dusty knew she was near tears.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. Terrible things happened along the way. All I could think about was getting home to you. I am so blessed to find you here, with our baby. So blessed. I can’t believe I got this far.”

  Dusty brought out the hoecakes with a side of warmed green beans. She presented it to him, and he disentangled himself from Jodi’s arms to accept the food. “Thank you, Sister—”

  “Just Dusty, please. Eat. You look starved.”

  Honus laid the plate reverently in his lap and folded his arms. Jodi folded hers as well. Dusty watched, waiting.

 
“Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much.” Honus burst into tears. He struggled to get a hold of himself. “You know what’s in my heart. I am so grateful at this moment, for everything, for every breath. Thank you. Amen.”

  He tore into the food like he hadn’t eaten well in weeks. Looking at the sunken parts of his face, the prominent bones in his hands, Dusty thought maybe he hadn’t.

  “Drink plenty, go slow. Your body will get used to it.”

  He drank, blinking.

  They sat with him in silence while he ate. Jodi stared at him, her eyes shining with happiness and the deep satisfaction of having been proved right. Dusty found it impossible to look at anything but the fire. It was too intimate, too odd, and she found herself deeply uncomfortable being three where once were two. He didn’t want to talk about where he had been, and so there wasn’t anything to talk about.

  Dusty took his dishes to the kitchen and washed them. Jodi led Honus to the back of the house where the bedrooms were located, three along a line with a bathroom at the end. She could hear them whispering on the other side and waited for the sound of a closing door. She followed them after a minute, hoping suddenly that she didn’t have to hear them fucking before she fell asleep.

  She hoped it with an emotion that she couldn’t identify.

  She reached her bedroom door and stopped. Jodi had gone into the bedroom she had claimed, the one that had previously belonged to a teenage girl in the before time. Dusty’s bedroom stood open, the bed was made, and a candle had been lit for her. The third bedroom door was closed. Neither of them had used this one; the bed sagged in the middle, and they thought it had belonged to an older family member because of its fussy quality. Dusty put her ear to the door and heard Honus moving around in there, probably undressing for bed. She jerked away from it and looked back to Jodi’s room. She was in there, humming. Dusty looked back and forth between the two, puzzled.

  Jodi was ecstatic to see him. Why didn’t she take him to bed with her?

  Mystified, Dusty went to sleep.

  The rhythm of days started to reassert itself. Honus took more than his share of chores and offered to go out raiding on his own. Jodi resisted this at first, afraid to let him out of her sight. He won her over with his first trip, taking the snowmobile and returning in less than half the time a walk would have taken, bringing with him extra gasoline, candles, and cans of chocolate syrup.