by Edan Lepucki
“How do you know all this?” Frida had asked.
“I told you,” Toni said. “I’m a researcher.”
If Toni were here with her now, she might tell Frida that human life didn’t begin until the baby was out of the womb, until it was breathing air. Whether that air was redolent with human feces and rot, or beautiful and pure, free of everything the city had burdened them with, didn’t matter. Until the child was crying in the room with you, it was just a parasite in the female adult’s body.
But, no. That kind of language was Micah’s. Toni might agree with him, but her words, her cadence, would be different. She was gentle, and she had the gift of making Frida feel okay about being so pragmatic, so shrewd.
Toni would understand the calculation.
If Frida didn’t care about this baby inside of her, if she could see it as something inhuman, then she might be able to rid herself of it. There were no children on the Land, but there had to have been accidents. They had to have access to the morning-after pill, at the very least. Or maybe there was some herbal remedy she could take—just something to make her bleed. She wouldn’t think of it as anything but her period, come late.
I took care of it, she’d tell Cal. Wasn’t that what women said?
She wanted to stay on the Land, and now they would be forced out. Back on the estate, she and Cal would become the Millers 2.0: starting a family in the woods, their kids hunting squirrels in loincloths, blissfully unaware of the world their parents had rejected.
Cal could fall in love with that life, but Frida knew how it turned out: some new settler would end up burying their bodies. For, surely, Sandy and Bo had eaten that poison because they’d finally faced despair head-on.
Cal twitched in his sleep. If she were to tell him what she was thinking, he’d be angry, afraid, worried. Already, he loved their child. It probably had no eyes or limbs, no intestines, but already there might be a heartbeat. Politics aside, she imagined him saying, that’s where life begins. My child’s, at least.
And, well, shit. She knew she was wide awake because she agreed with him.
Frida must have fallen asleep somehow, because when Anika knocked lightly at the door, whispering that she’d be waiting downstairs, Cal had to shake her awake.
“Bread,” he croaked, and turned over. The room was as dark as it had been at midnight, not even a bird cutting the silence. How had Anika woken herself up? Cal thought certain people on the Land had alarm clocks, though if that were true, he and Frida would have heard them by now. Frida joked that Anika probably slept with one eye open, ready to grab a weapon and fight off an intruder, never really surrendering to dreams.
At fourteen, Micah had become interested in Sparta. He downloaded a bunch of books on the subject and had even emailed a professor at USC for more information. Frida remembered him telling her about the military training for Spartan boys: how they were sent in groups into the wilderness with just knives to fend off wild animals. Perhaps this was how Anika, fierce protector of the larder, had been raised. She did seem tough. Micah had probably intuited Anika’s strength and promoted her himself. Anika, she imagined her brother saying, I pronounce you Leader of the Cooks, Protector of the Knives, Keeper of the Fire.
When Frida got to the kitchen, Anika was wiping down the center table with a rag. The room was lit with two large candles, and in the weak light, wise and solid Anika looked like a sweet old woman in a storybook, the kind who might lead lost little girls and boys back to her cabin for a warm meal, offering to dry their wet socks by the fire.
She glanced at Frida. “You took your time,” she said.
Frida was surprised Anika didn’t whisper.
“It was so dark, I had to feel my way down the hallway with my hands on the walls.” Frida smiled, even though Anika remained serious. “I took those stairs very carefully.”
“I forgot what it might be like for you, being new. This place is so familiar to me, I could cook in here with my eyes closed.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Anika put down the rag. “This isn’t when I usually make the bread,” she said.
“It isn’t? Burke said you’re in here baking practically every morning.”
“More like every night. I’m down here much earlier. Otherwise, there’s no time.”
“You could do it in the afternoon.”
“I don’t like people around.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “I have trouble sleeping as it is, so night is preferable.”
“I’m sorry to mess up the schedule.”
Anika waved her off. “It’s fine.”
Frida’s eye caught a pile of corncobs at the end of the table, stripped of their kernels, as square edged as honeycombs. Next to the pile was a glass bowl filled with the white and yellow kernels, strands of corn silk stuck between them like food in teeth.
“For cornbread?” Frida asked, gesturing to Anika’s work.
“That’s just prep. We’re having chowder tonight.”
“You sure do love soup, don’t you?”
Anika raised an eyebrow, and Frida knew she’d said the wrong thing. She couldn’t let Anika think her ungrateful or picky.
“We’re not making bread this morning, just so you know.”
“We aren’t?” Frida asked.
“I know you’d love to, but that’s something you have to earn.”
Frida wasn’t sure how to reply.
“I’m not going to give you bread duty out of pity or obligation.”
“Who would you be obligated to? My brother, you mean?”
“Nepotism has never been a problem around here,” Anika said. Frida waited for her to say, Until now, but she didn’t.
“Why am I awake then?” Frida asked. She tried to keep her voice low, to control its quiver, but she knew it was giving her away.
“Relax,” Anika said. “I want us to bake a cake. You know how to do that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Frida said, swallowing a tide of spit. “I love baking cakes.”
It was true, though she hadn’t baked one in years. In L.A., she and Cal didn’t have money to waste on things like baking powder and sugar, and then the electricity stopped working, which meant their oven became a glorified cupboard to store the extra candles they used, sparingly, at night. Soon after they met, August had tried to get her to trade for eggs and flour, but she’d have been nuts to go for it; he’d wanted their coffee and Cal’s heavy coat. Even though she would’ve only been able to batter fish with the flour, she sometimes regretted turning August down and imagined all that she might do with it. She could feel its dust in her lungs.
“What’s wrong?” Anika said. “You look like you might faint.”
“You have everything to bake a cake?”
“Cake is probably the wrong word. We have to use this oven, so I want to do something simple. It’s more of a clafoutis.”
Frida could have laughed. She hadn’t heard that word in a long while.
“Think of it as a sweet pancake,” Anika explained. “It’s French, and traditionally made with cherries.”
“I know what it is, Anika.”
“Do you now?” Anika shrugged, as if to say, You cannot impress me. “I need to get the baking crate from the cellar. Wait here.”
Baking crate. She’d said it as if this were a thing that people all over the world had.
A moment later, Frida was alone, the two candle flames emitting an uneven, wobbly glow across the kitchen. She had spent enough time in this room that she didn’t need to rely on the sunlight to arrange its details. There was the hand-scrawled sign above the dishwashing trough that read DAYDREAMING WASTES TIME! and the umbrella stand next to the woodstove held barbecue tongs, shovels, and metal tools to stoke the fire. The two cellar doors, made of beautiful pinewood, and the big black smoke stain on the ceiling. On the windowsill, a line of pumpkin seeds; some benign troublemaker had pushed them into the most recent coat of paint before it had dri
ed. It amazed Frida that not one seed had been pried off.
“Taking it all in?”
Anika stepped up from the cellar with the baking crate on her hip. She shut the doors with one hand, just as she’d done when Frida had first met her. They closed with a definitive thwap.
“I guess I’m trying to figure this place out.”
Anika hardened her eyes in that combative way she had and put down the crate. Before she began pulling anything out of it, she grabbed for a metal bowl that had been on the table all along. It was covered with a dingy white dishtowel, and Frida hadn’t noticed it.
Anika removed the towel to reveal a pile of brown eggs, speckled with shit. “Have you met the chickens yet?”
Frida hadn’t, but she’d heard about them from Sailor. He told her about the first time he was assigned to butchery for Morning Labor. He’d been afraid he would vomit at the sight of the dead animals hanging from a post behind the barn, draining blood, but he’d signed up anyway, because he wanted to challenge himself. What happened next surprised him. He was stunned by the beauty and simplicity of the process, he said. “Invigorated even.” Sometimes it felt to Frida as though Sailor were chatting her up at a bar, telling her whatever stories would keep her listening, make her suck down her liquor faster. Other times, she was less cynical; it was just that he’d truly welcomed her to this place, to their life out here.
“My favorite is Suzanne,” Anika said, not waiting for Frida to answer. “Her eggs are divine.” She reached into the baking crate and pulled out a series of Mason jars, each of them filled at least halfway and labeled with masking tape and thick black pen: FLOUR, SUGAR, BAKING POWDER, BAKING SODA, SALT. If Cal saw all this, he’d flip.
Before asking her next question, the one Cal would want her to ask, Frida steeled herself, like she used to do before running across a four-lane boulevard, the break in traffic impossible to measure, dangerously unpredictable.
“Where did these come from?” she asked.
“You just saw me go into the root cellar.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean, then?” Anika asked. She paused and reached for a brown container at the bottom of the crate, its label still intact. Frida didn’t need to see the other side to read what it said: HERSHEY’S. It was cocoa powder. It was chocolate.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. She could already smell its rich, slightly chalky scent.
“We have a saying here,” Anika said as she placed the container on the table. “Don’t get involved if you’re not ready.”
Frida wasn’t sure what Anika meant but couldn’t take her eyes off the brown container with its plastic top, its nutritional information printed along its side in black and white, and the big bold letters across the front. Back in L.A., chocolate, even the mass-produced kind, cost more than a week’s wages. If you lived in a Community, you could get it easily; that’s what Toni had told her once. She said some were still producing it behind those impenetrable walls.
Frida felt suddenly nervous. Anika was unpacking the baking crate with care. She was putting this all on display for Frida. But why?
“I want you to do everything,” Anika said. She handed her a set of nesting bowls, a measuring cup, and the measuring spoons.
Frida nodded, aware that this little cake-making party was a test, part 1 of Anika’s baking exam. It was also show-and-tell. If this morning Frida saw the Land’s cocoa and flour and sugar, then what might tomorrow bring?
Frida grabbed the largest bowl and began measuring out the sugar. She knew exactly how much to use. A clafoutis was easy, especially if Anika had an understanding of the stove and its tendencies.
Anika stepped out the back door and returned with one of the glass pitchers of milk. “I asked Lupe to milk Jessa last night and leave some for us.”
“I know there aren’t any cherries,” Frida said, “but do you have any fruit at all?”
“Some apples, I think. Why?”
“I’d like to use them. Skip the chocolate. It doesn’t fit.” She met Anika’s eyes, and for once, the woman looked away.
After Anika had retrieved the leftover apples, she stepped back from the table and watched Frida with provocation in her eyes. She was daring her to mess up.
As Frida cracked the eggs, poured the milk, and sliced the apples thinly, she pushed Anika and her judgment out of her mind. Forget her. Frida could, and would, enjoy herself.
“Don’t you have to get the oven going?” she asked. She tried to hide the smugness spreading across her face when Anika was forced to turn away and fulfill her duties.
Frida poured the batter into the round pie tins. She had always loved baking for the time it took, for the patience it required, and dexterity, too, if you wanted your results to be beautiful. It was about risk as well as precision: you never knew if a dessert was good until your guests were taking their first bites.
But Frida didn’t care if these cakes turned out badly. She wasn’t vying for head pastry chef. If she failed at this ghetto clafoutis, Anika might let her try baking bread because she wanted another good laugh. And if Frida made something delicious, Anika would be too busy eating every last crumb to say something snarky. Frida felt her bravery rise. She felt emboldened.
She handed Anika the tins to place in the oven. “Did you know the Millers?”
Anika held her face perfectly still, as if she hadn’t heard.
“Anika?”
“Who?” She turned to the oven, a small fire going inside of it.
Frida couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re a terrible actress, you know that?” She waited for Anika to respond, and when she didn’t, Frida decided to take a risk. “Sandy didn’t like red, and neither do you. You gave yourself away when I cut myself.”
Anika spun around, and Frida thought she was smiling. But, no, she was grimacing, and her missing tooth made her look witchy or homeless, or both: a sorceress who slept beneath an overpass and shit in the Silver Lake Reservoir.
“I hoped you’d think I was just being squeamish,” she said. She had turned back to the stove again and was pushing the tins onto a metal grate that sat atop the small flame.
“The color makes you nervous. Sandy was the same way.” Frida paused, and she sensed her own brother in her voice, guiding its tone.
Anika straightened her posture and looked back at Frida.
“Tell me what it means,” Frida said.
“You mean you don’t already know?”
Frida wasn’t sure what else to say. She didn’t want Anika to know that she’d already talked to her brother about it, or had tried to. “I saw Sandy freak out about the color only twice. But I remember both times, because it seemed strange. She was frightened, like you were.”
Anika let out a tiny mewl, then stopped suddenly, as if embarrassed. “She was my friend.”
“Mine, too.”
For a moment they both watched the oven. Frida hoped they would be able to smell the cakes over the smoke of the fire. How would they cook in here without burning everything?
“I can’t believe they’re dead,” Anika said after a moment. “It’s easier, sometimes, to think of them as just a ways off, living separately.”
“I’d do the same, I think.”
“We were both here from the beginning,” Anika said, and Frida thought of the phrase Micah had used in the tree house: original settlers.
If Frida was silent, maybe Anika would say more. She practiced a trick Micah had taught her when they were in high school. She silently counted backward from ten.
At the number five (it was always five), Anika began talking. “It started because of the Pirates.”
“I still can’t believe they’re real. That they exist.”
Anika laughed meanly. “Of course they do. How lucky for you, to be able to think otherwise.”
“I would’ve thought you were protected, by the…Forms.”
“We didn’t always have so many surrounding us. Most were
built later.”
Anika’s eyes were back on the oven.
10-9-8-7—
“Soon after we arrived on the Land, just a week or so, two of our men were killed. When we found them, they were naked, their bodies…they’d been mutilated, sliced up. They were covered in blood, just covered in it.”
Anika spoke as if she had never told this story before. Hilda used to call that kind of story a slumber-party confession: the teller experiencing shame and relief in equal parts.
“After that, for a while, there was nothing. We went about our business, building shelters, getting the garden started. And then, one day, I found a red rag tied to a wooden stake, shoved into the dirt right outside the Hotel. I didn’t know what it meant, and no one had seen the rag before, let alone the stick.” Her voice went quiet, and Frida had to lean forward to hear what she said next. “The next day, the Pirates came back.”
Frida held her breath.
“There were probably thirty of them. They were all youngish men, and, I can’t explain it—the greed in their eyes. It was like they were just sitting down to a big feast.” She paused, shaking her head. “We outnumbered them, but over half of us were female, and we were vulnerable, and scared. None of us, the men included, had experience fighting. In our past lives, we’d been scrap-metal collectors, soup-kitchen coordinators. What did we know?
“We had only a few guns, and we were running out of ammo, and they came in on horses. They rode up slowly. I remember the sound of the horses trotting across the dirt as they approached, and how we came out to see who it was. They were wielding guns. Some had knives. We’d been naïve to think we just had guests.”
Frida shivered, just as she had on the ride out of L.A., thinking about men hurting her and Cal. On the drive, she’d made herself so cold with worry she had to be covered with a blanket at all times. Now she crossed her arms as Anika continued talking.
“That first time, half of them dismounted, coming toward us while the others just lingered. I remember the smell of those horses. The Pirates themselves were covered in sweat and dirt, thick as a second skin. They wanted food, they said. They took our guns. They made John give them his boots. Four of the women…they were—”