Page 13

Chapter 13

Fern slipped her duster over her head before she could chicken out, and warm air wrapped itself around her like a blanket as she stepped out of her underwear. She lost her balance and grabbed Zinnia’s arm to hold herself steady. Then she threw her clothes onto the grass like Rose.

The dog raised one eyebrow.

Holly stripped off her pajamas and waded out into the water, picking her way around cypress knees. In this light, she didn’t look human anymore. She looked too small, her bulging stomach too full, her hair in the moonlight too silver, and the birthmark on her cheek split her face too perfectly.

Rose dove forward, arms stretched over her head, leading with her enormous belly, and there was a soft splash that echoed up and down the shoreline. Fern felt more comfortable naked with each passing second. She held her hand out behind her toward Zinnia, and felt like speaking would ruin it, so she opened and closed her fingers.

Zinnia looked from Fern’s hand to the dog, clutching the front of her pink, leaf-speckled robe, then she quickly shucked it over her shoulders, followed by her nightgown. Her skin glowed in the night, her stomach smaller and higher than Rose’s, and Fern could see those lightning bolts stretched over it like tiger stripes, crackling toward her belly button.

Zinnia’s hot hand went into Fern’s, and the two girls sloshed into the river, and the riverbed squeezed mud between their toes and the water felt as warm as the air. Fern had never felt wind between her legs before. She’d never seen moonlight on her chest where her freckles stopped and her breasts began. She couldn’t remember ever being naked outdoors.

Zinnia squeezed Fern’s hand, and Fern squeezed back and then they bent their knees and pushed forward and out, their faces plunging beneath the surface of the river, sinking in slow motion, and it was so warm and so soft and Fern’s body suddenly weighed nothing and the water kissed every bug bite and ant sting, and the river untwined their fingers and gently pulled them apart and for a moment Fern didn’t know how to get back to the surface, and then she saw it, shimmering black and silver overhead, and came up spluttering, legs kicking, unable to touch the bottom anymore.

Zinnia dog-paddled a few feet away, grinning. Then she gave a concerned look at the bank.

“Dogs can’t swim, right?” she asked.

Fern didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“It’s completely impossible,” she said.

***

Fern sat on the bank in a patch of soft dirt and watched Holly and Zinnia and Rose play. They splashed each other, dove under, came back up, sleek as dolphins in the moonlight. The Home felt very far away.

Zinnia walked out of the river, stumbling a little as she made her way toward Fern and lowered herself onto the sand. They watched Rose show Holly how to squirt water from between her hands, and Fern thought, That’s how she’ll be with Blossom when she’s born .

They looked like mother and daughter until they emerged from the river with their matching rounded bellies shedding water. They locked hands to steady one another as they waded ashore and sank to the sand.

There were no bugs, there were no girls crying behind closed doors, or showers running, or toilets flushing, or sounds from the TV. There was only quiet and moonlight and beneath it all the silent sound of the river flowing by, like a great unrung bell.

“So you’re keeping your baby?” Zinnia asked Rose after a few minutes.

“And you’re marrying your PF,” Rose said back. “I thought a smart chick like you knew the score.”

Zinnia leaned back on her elbows and stretched her legs out in front of her, stomach big and heavy. She wriggled the base of her spine into the ground.

“He plays piano,” she said. “That’s how we met. I play, too, but classical. He plays jazz. We met at Jack and Jill’s. He was always real quiet and then one day he found out I played and it’s like someone turned on a spigot inside his mouth. Paul comes alive when that downbeat hits. We play together.”

Fern wished she had something like this to say about Guy.

“So you guys did it on a piano?” Rose asked, waggling her eyebrows.

“Have you ever played piano with someone?” Zinnia asked seriously. “We didn’t have a choice. Later, we did it in bed, and that was better. We did it a lot. But I was taking the Pill.”

“How’d you get those?” Fern asked.

“My girlfriend Cece stole them from her mother,” Zinnia said. “I took one every single time, but I guess they didn’t work.”

“You took them every time you balled?” Rose asked.

Zinnia nodded.

“You dummy!” Rose laughed. Zinnia looked up quick, neck stiff, shoulders tense. “You have to take them regular. You have to build them up in your blood for months before they work. It’s part of your cycle.”

Zinnia deflated.

“Oh, no,” she said, dropping onto her back and covering her face with both hands.

Her enormous stomach bounced in the moonlight.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no.” She laughed through her hands. “I thought I was so smart!” She sat up on her elbows and looked at Rose. “I know I make better grades in biology than you, but I didn’t have a clue that’s how they worked.”

They were both laughing now.

“How’d your folks find out?” Fern asked.

“In March I was starting to show,” Zinnia said. “I told Paul we’d have to buy some bigger clothes for me, but before we could my mother took one look and she knew. She just knew.”

“You could have lied,” Fern said.

“You don’t know my mother. The first thing she did was lock me in my bedroom. She went out to the store and when she came back she made me get in the tub and gave me a Lysol douche. She had it in the big brown bottle. She douched me and douched me until that whole bottle was gone. Nothing ever hurt so bad in my life. And the smell. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I smell Lysol. I can smell that Lysol in my dreams.”

She spat in the sand, then kept talking.

“I wonder if maybe she gave my baby a deformity doing that. We’ve got people in Chicago who’ll take it, but they don’t want a deformed baby, and my mother won’t let me come home with it. Paul said we’ll figure it out if that happens, but I’m scared. I want to talk to Paul but I’m not allowed to call him or write and he doesn’t know where I am and he said he’s waiting and I trust him but I can’t be sure about anything anymore. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

They were quiet for a minute. Fern felt like someone should say something to Zinnia, like I’m sorry or You’ll be okay , but both options sounded like Hallmark cards, so she didn’t say anything.

“Y’all ever heard of Carlton Sinclair?” Rose asked, looking out across the river.

“Uh-uh,” Zinnia said from the other side of Fern.

“The richest man in Augusta, Gee-Ay,” Rose said. “I met his kid, Carlton Sinclair the Third, when my dad set us up. Carlton Sinclair the Second promised to support my dad’s membership at the National Golf Club if I took the Third on a date. I didn’t want to, but my dad got so uptight about it I finally got my friend Penny to double with us at the Fall Fling.”

She gave a dry laugh that sounded like she was clearing her throat.

“The Fall Fling,” she repeated. “What a bunch of chumps. It was a pack of squares in a rented room pretending to be their parents, the girls all talking about varsity pins and letterman jackets, and the boys all talking about the war and how we ought to drop more bombs. But Mr. the Third and I, well, it turned out he really turned me on.

“I fell for him like a dope. He said he wanted to head out west and play his music and he even sang me some of his songs and they weren’t Dylan but they weren’t bad. When he put his bun in my oven, he said we’d go together, just the three of us, and be a family. He said we’d head to San Fran, where he’d work on his music. He said he loved me. He said a lot of things and I bought every single one of them.”

Fern tried to imagine Rose falling for anyone’s line.

“When I started to show, he told me it was time for us to split, and I was all packed up, waiting for him at the gas station at one in the morning like he said. And I waited, and waited, and waited. I waited till the sun came up.

“I called Sinclair Manor and the Second picked up. He’d been waiting, too. He told me he’d had a little heart-to-heart with the Third and convinced him to head out west solo. The Second bought him a ticket to San Francisco and gave him a chunk of bread to record his music and a monthly allowance for a pad. The Second told me to stay away from the Third and reminded me there was no way to prove it was his baby, anyway. He told me I better not ask how to reach him, but the only thing I wanted to know was the number on that check he wrote. Eventually, he told me. So now I know exactly how much I’m worth.”

The last sentence sounded ugly coming out of Rose’s mouth.

“I hitched a ride to a commune near Atlanta,” Rose said. “I lived with some beautiful people who could do amazing things with knitting needles and herbal teas, but I wanted to keep Blossom. The only person who knew I was there was Penny. Turns out Penny is a very unevolved soul. She dropped a dime to my folks, and they showed up with the pigs, and here I am. Where no one has to see me, or hear me, or think about me. And after all that, the Second told Daddy he couldn’t sponsor him for his golf club anymore. So no one got anything they wanted. Except the Third. All his dreams came true.”

“Blossom,” Fern said. “You got Blossom, and you’re going to leave here with her and start your farm.”

Fern needed this to be true. She needed Rose to be gritty.

“You’ve got to have bread to do that,” Rose said. “So after she’s born, I’m going to take Blossom to San Francisco and we’re going to march right into the Third’s pad and say, Here’s your daughter. And we’ll stand right in the middle of his rock-star dreams until he writes me a check for exactly the amount he got for me. And I’m going to take that check and use it to start my farm, and me and Blossom’ll never see that creep again.”

Rose sounded like Fern’s uncles at Thanksgiving, drinking beer and watching football in the living room, talking about big plans that would happen next year, or the year after that, talking about how they were going to go into the shop on Monday and tell that so-and-so what’s what. Fern couldn’t bear to look at Rose. She couldn’t bear to see her weak. The air between them ached.

Zinnia laughed.

Fern snapped her head around. Zinnia was propped up on one elbow with her hand on top of her belly and she looked at them, and she laughed so loud her voice rolled across the river.

“He’s dancing!” she laughed. “My baby’s dancing!”

Her face was wide-open, light shining through her eyes, and she struggled to her knees and grabbed Fern’s hand. She pressed it to her stomach, and it felt harder than Fern expected, but also softer, like water, like she had a river running through her, a river inside a drum, and Fern felt something swim up from the bottom of the river and double-thump her palm, light and playful, and Fern felt an answering drumbeat inside herself.

She couldn’t help it. Her face split into a grin.

It didn’t hurt this time or make her feel angry or irritated or annoyed. It felt like Zinnia said. It felt like a dance. She grabbed Zinnia’s hand and pressed it to her own stomach and her drum played and Zinnia’s right after.

“They’re talking!” Zinnia said, and they were looking at each other, smiling, because this was the most alive thing Fern had ever felt. Their babies were alive. Like the forest. Like the river. Like them.

They all crowded around, hands pressing to Fern’s stomach, and Zinnia’s stomach, and Rose’s, and Holly’s, their arms and elbows all tangled up, grinning like fools, Rose’s confession forgotten, because in that moment everything felt so right.

“Ahem.” A woman cleared her throat.

They pushed away from each other, arms and legs flailing, reaching for bathrobes and nightgowns, arms wrapping around their bodies, covering their breasts, heads swiveling, looking for the voice.

The librarian stood on the riverbank above them, the big black dog sitting beside her. Its twin sat on her other side, mirrors of each other, tongues lolling out, panting soundlessly, staring at the girls.

The librarian stood between them, hands clasped, handbag looped over one wrist, heels touching in their clunky black librarian shoes, her face bland in the soft moonlight. She wore a black jacket with red piping over a black skirt. She looked like she should be behind the desk collecting overdue fines, not standing in front of four naked girls covering themselves up with their nightgowns.

Finally, Rose said, “Can we help you or something?”

“I believe you’ve been using my book,” the librarian said. “To cure various intestinal complaints.”

Automatically Fern tried to calculate how much trouble they were in.

“Very creative,” the librarian said, and the corners of her mouth lifted in a grandmotherly smile. “When I heard that, I thought, I really must speak to these girls.”

“How long have you been spying on us?” Rose asked, rolling up her T-shirt to pull it over her head.

“Stop,” the librarian said, and Rose stopped. “You should remain skyclad. That’s what it means, you know. Exposing your body to the light of the moon.”

“You’re a witch,” Fern said.

“No, dear,” Miss Parcae said. “I’m a librarian.”

She started carefully down the bank toward them. Her dogs stayed behind, motionless. Zinnia couldn’t take her eyes off them.

“Are those your dogs?” she asked.

“My dogs?” Miss Parcae looked back at the dogs like she’d never seen them before. “I certainly don’t own them. They seem to enjoy my company, but they come and go as they please.”

“I really wish they’d go,” Zinnia said.

Miss Parcae reached level ground. Her heels sank into the wet sand and she had to swing her arms to keep her balance. She fixed Zinnia with a look.

“No one cares what you wish, my dear,” she said. “Isn’t that your problem? No one cares what any of you wish, or hope, or pray. You speak, you cry, you scream, you beg, and what good has it done you? Here you are, hidden away like unflattering photographs in some forgotten drawer, locked up for doing the most natural thing in the world.”

“Thanks for your opinion,” Rose said. “Your book’s broken, by the way.”

Miss Parcae placed one hand on Holly’s wet hair. Holly ducked out from under her touch.

“This one has the right idea,” Miss Parcae said. “There’s power in silence.”

Rose pulled her T-shirt on and stomped past Miss Parcae to grab her underwear. Fern took that as a cue to pull her duster over her head fast, not wanting to take her eyes off Miss Parcae’s dogs.

“We tried to do other spells, but we couldn’t understand the book,” Fern said.

“Then perhaps you’re not ready to read it yet,” Miss Parcae said. “You can’t beg the world to do what you want. You can’t ask it nicely. You must force the world. You must bend it to your will. That’s what the book teaches.”

“And how to wash away your freckles, and get straighter hair,” Zinnia said.

“It all depends on how deep you want to go,” Miss Parcae told her. “You can change the color of your eyes, or you can stop the world in its tracks. The question is, how much are you willing to pay?”

“Here it comes,” Rose said. “It’s always something with your generation. You owe this, you have to pay that. Y’all have banks instead of brains and calculators for eyes.”

“I’m not sure what generation you think I am,” Miss Parcae said. “But believe me when I tell you that you’ve severely miscalculated.”

“What can we do?” Fern asked.

“What’s that, dear?” Miss Parcae asked, all sweetness and light.

“If we pay the price, what can the book teach us to do?” Fern asked.

“That’s up to you,” Miss Parcae said. “But first, you have to understand all those unfamiliar words and phrases. It’s very frustrating, I’m sure. I can help. For a price.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Rose said. “Never trust anyone over thirty, Fern. They’ve put a price tag on the world.”

“How much?” Fern asked.

“Oh, not much,” Miss Parcae said. “Just eternal loyalty and complete obedience.”

A gust of wind rippled the surface of the river, and something jumped and splashed far away in the dark.

“There’s the pitch,” Rose said. “Come on, y’all. I know a pusher when I hear one. She’ll have us all in robes passing out pamphlets in airports.”

Fern looked at Zinnia.

“She’s crazy,” Zinnia said. “And if she’s not, that’s worse. Let’s go.”

Fern didn’t want to go, but she had to stick with them. She turned to Miss Parcae.

“I’m sorry we used your book,” she said. “I’ll give it back to you the next time you come.”

She started after Rose and Zinnia. Miss Parcae waited until they were struggling up the riverbank before she said, “Don’t think you can turn your backs on me.”

The two great black dogs stood and trotted toward them, low growls rumbling so deep inside their chests Fern felt it in her bones. She froze. Zinnia froze. Holly froze. The dogs stopped growling but they stood facing the girls, bodies taut, flanks quivering.

“My goodness,” Miss Parcae said from behind them. “You’re acting like I’m the devil. Girls, I want what’s best for you. I want to give you the power you need to solve your problems. I want you to be free.”

Fern wanted to turn and look at Miss Parcae, but she knew that the second she moved the dogs would be on her, jaws clamped around her throat, claws tearing open her stomach.

But Rose turned right around to face Miss Parcae.

“Heel your mutts,” she said.

“You saw what the book can do,” Miss Parcae said, coming into Fern’s field of vision. “And it can do so much more. You simply have to pledge obedience to me and turn your backs on the world of men. Is that really so much to ask?”

She stood in front of Fern and waited politely, face as placid as the moon.

“The first one’s always free,” Rose said. “That’s how they hook you, Fern. Come on.”

“I’m sorry,” Fern said through her tight throat.

“Pishposh,” Miss Parcae said. “All this fuss!”

“Nobody’s interested in your pitch, grandma,” Rose said.

Rose started walking again. She passed between the dogs, who growled low, in stereo. Fern knew they needed to stick together. She knew the dogs would sense the slightest hesitation. So she made her stiff legs move, following Rose. Behind her, she heard Zinnia coming through the grass. Fern passed the dogs, barely contained violence vibrating from their bodies.

“No!” a girl shouted from behind them.

Fern turned at the unfamiliar sound and saw Holly, standing beside Miss Parcae, forehead wrinkled, mouth frowning, fists at her sides.

“You can’t go,” Holly said, and her voice was higher and clearer than Fern had imagined. “You have to help me. I’m having God’s baby.”