Girl One(66)
Black Shoes seemed to view my silence as an invitation to explain: “I remember sitting there watching TV, back in the seventies. The Homestead. Every time one of you was born, there were photos and interviews. Front-page headlines at the breakfast table. That doctor fellow went on TV and told the world that this was only the beginning of a bold new future.” He held his hands up, a clownish mockery of wonder. “I looked at him and I thought, does he know what this means? Does he know what this means for him and his wife? For his own father, for his own sons? This man was teaching women how to take over the world, and nobody else seemed to notice. Nobody ever stopped to think exactly what we were progressing to. Thank God for Ricky Peters. That man restored a certain level of moral clarity to the whole conversation.”
“By murdering innocent people?” I asked, a reflex.
“He’s a hero. When Ricky Peters set that fire, he killed one man, sure, but he also short-circuited the wholesale destruction of mankind. That should have been the end of it all. But you girls couldn’t leave well enough alone. You’re from that place, aren’t you?” He directed this question downward at Isabelle. “Then maybe you can explain why you girls couldn’t just take your disease somewhere else. Make another little freak show for yourselves. Why you had to force yourselves on the rest of the world, come and live in good God-fearing towns.”
My rage was a low hum, slowly building.
“Vera, now, she was quiet,” Black Shoes said. “She mostly kept to herself. But that girl of hers was nothing but trouble. A knockout from the time she was little, and she knew it, too. She walked around town like she owned the place. Delilah. You have to wonder why her mother chose a name like that for her. A father would’ve known better.”
That photo on the fridge. Delilah’s long curly hair, heart-shaped face, big dark eyes. Heartbreaking.
“She got tangled up with a young man,” Black Shoes said. “A few months back. A young man who could’ve had any girl in town. Delilah always thought she was better than the rest of us, but going after him like that? I’ve thought about it a lot. Why she’d do that. Delilah wasn’t born of the love between a man and a woman. Love doesn’t mean the same thing to her. Seeing her with that young man, it devastated us all. We should’ve drawn the line sooner. But a woman who’s not part of the normal order doesn’t respect the ties that bind. She takes what she wants. That kind of woman will chew men up, spit us right out. We used to call girls like that sluts. Now they’re supposed to be miracles.” He laughed.
I stood there, the word sluts—the blunt, slick hurt of it—dripping down me, staining me.
“This is a town where we still believe in consequences.” Black Shoes raised his eyes to mine, and I could feel the air leaching away. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Madame Scientist, but on the inside, you girls work a lot like God intended you to. You can make a baby the old-fashioned way just fine. No hocus-pocus required.”
“Are you trying to say we can get pregnant by men?” And then the realization formed fully: “Delilah was pregnant.” I tried to wrap my head around it. That was the realm of our mothers—we were too young. We were still the daughters, eternally the Girls. We shouldn’t be pregnant ourselves.
Black Shoes ran a hand over his lower face. “The young man came to his senses and broke things off. But Delilah, she went crazy. She wasn’t anybody’s miracle anymore, just another sob story with a baby and no man. Not long after, that boy got sick. He started throwing up all day long. He lost weight. They thought it was the stress at first. Then they thought it was a stomach bug. Something in the water. A flu. Cancer, maybe, a tumor on the brain. But the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. You don’t know what it does to you to see a healthy young man wasting away in his bed, and nobody can tell you why. Then it started spreading to all his friends. Then to all the young men. A quarter of the population of Kithira, vomiting, sick, unable to eat a thing. Nice young wives handling things alone. Businesses shut down. Classrooms empty. We were watching our future waste away right in front of us. That was a hard time for all of us. A hard time.”
Goose bumps rose along my arms. “What does this have to do with Delilah?” I asked, even as the awe spread inside my blood. Delilah, retching from her unexpected pregnancy, all alone: Delilah, reaching into the men’s throats and guts, returning the sickness tenfold and then spreading it.
“It was her,” Black Shoes said simply. “I don’t know how, but it was her. I want you to understand that we warned Vera. We went to speak to her, me and some of the other boys from the station. We let her know what was going on with her daughter and with our sons, and asked her if she’d be willing to leave Kithira. This was a chance for her and Delilah to just walk away. But they didn’t. They made a choice. And you know something?” He leaned back. “After what happened to the Strouds, those boys got better and better. The very next morning, my nephew was sitting up in bed, eating a huge breakfast. Bacon and eggs. The greatest thing I ever saw in my life.”
His nephew. The rooms felt suddenly cooler. I thought of Delilah and Vera, alone, no relatives here, the mutated branches that had twisted away from the family tree.
His voice was so reverent and joyful that it seemed like he expected me to join in. “It’s been three weeks now and every young man is back on his feet.”