Future Home of the Living God(74)

“Vintage is the new au courant. And we’re back to the moccasin telegraph,” says Sweetie, coming up behind us. “Eddy has tasked our fastest kids and rehabbed gang members as runners. We get the news twice a day.”

“They’re like the old town criers,” says Mom. “They have posts at eight places on the reservation. They run there, recite the news to whoever shows up, then run back.”

“As for food and stuff,” says Sweetie, “it’s all barter. We have big town markets where nobody fights because we need to exchange stuff.”

“People go to the markets under truce,” says Mom. “You just can’t be pregnant, that’s all.”

Her voice is sharp. Sweetie sighs, throws up her plump hands, and leaves the room. I look down at my black cotton beach ball, and my eyes fill with tears, like again she is accusing me.

“I’m sorry, on edge,” says Sera. “Maybe I’m more worried about Glen than I’ll admit.”

Sera links her arms around me and we stand in Sweetie’s kitchen, you between us. The wood range exudes a gentle heat and inside of it there are muted pops and sifting noises as the flames consume the wood. For the first time, last night, I did not dream of killing Orielee. The couple of times I woke, Little Mary’s breathy purring put me back to sleep. I felt safe as an animal surrounded by hills of its own shed skins. Near morning, I dreamed of Phil. I saw him walking toward me on the highway.

“You know, Mom, my baby has a father.” Resentment and pain clog my chest. She doesn’t answer.

“I love him.”

Sometimes I fantasize he didn’t turn me in. I don’t have a choice about loving Phil. I just do.

“I know you care very deeply for Phil.”

Sera pats my back as she delivers these overly formal words, but there are tears in her voice, too, so I suppose that we both feel desperate for different reasons.

“You make me feel like there is something wrong with loving him.”

She stares at me without seeing me, like she’s making up her mind to tell me something. Then she tells me.

“Cedar, I’ve kept something from you. The survival rates for babies are dropping lower every month.”

“That’s not news,’’ I say. But the words are awful to hear. I’m very still, don’t want to pull away from her too quickly. Finally I take hold of myself. I stand up. But my head feels funny and I have to sit. I’ve entered a mental passageway and am walking down a set of lightless stairs. There is no railing. I can’t see where I’m going. I just keep placing one foot before the other until finally I reach the bottom. It is black there and I am utterly alone.

Except that what Sera says has no basis in fact. How could she know? There is no reliable source of news. Why would she tell this to me anyway, if she was thinking straight? Maybe her tension over Glen has snapped a few strings and made her fixate on doomy predictions. She’s depressed. I turn to Sera, give her a forgiving smile, and gently guide her to a chair.

“Things have been so tense, Mom. Why don’t you rest for a while? There’s no need to keep cleaning—it looks good in here. I’ll make tea.”

I pat her shoulder and fill the kettle with water. “It’s okay, my baby’s a fighter and so am I.’’

My voice is fake. She starts to cry although she doesn’t really cry, just gives a little sputter. I smooth her hair back around her ear. She shakes her head, as if to shake me off. I’m still patronizing her, talking lightly, rummaging around for tea. She answers me with one of her lectures, like the amateur pedant she’s always been. She actually tries to backtrack.

“We begin our lives at a cellular level as female—all of us—and we develop male or female characteristics in utero. And we don’t know how many human species there actually were. How can we think we’ve found everything? Your baby may be just . . . normal.”

“Right, Mom. Like you believe that! You just told me we’re gonna die.”

“You don’t seem to see the risk, Cedar.’’

“Yes I do, but what’s the point of believing it? I choose to believe we’ll make it.”

I pick up her professor voice, sit down across from her, and keep on lecturing.

“And not only that, but humanity is going forward. Maybe on some evolutionary forked road we used some form of parthenogenesis, like sharks, like the Komodo dragon. They are capable of fertilizing their own eggs. But maybe we aren’t just copying ourselves. Somehow we have begun to absorb new and genetically appropriate material. Our bodies can use it to self-engineer our pregnancies. How about a million years ago, we began outsourcing fertilization. At any time our bodies could change their minds.”

I’m trying to make Sera laugh or at least smile again because she’s terrifying me. But getting her out of a bleak mind-set is never easy. She continues. Her voice starts again and lulls on, tender and gentle, somehow managing to still be condescending. I get it. She assumes what happened to Tia is going to happen to me. She doesn’t think you will survive. But her words remind me of a teacher soothing a preschooler heartbroken over losing a stuffed animal. With a sudden rush of gall that almost chokes me, I hate her.

Wait. I love her. But I hate her. And I love her.



November 10

Eddy. Secretive and subtle, with a ferret’s long-waisted whip of a body. He’s growing out his hair and he doesn’t slouch anymore. He smiles, a lot, and brings his hand drum home at night. He plays hand drum songs and sings warrior songs out on the porch. Says his songs confuse the surveillers. His voice is reedy and penetrating. He’s singing the old songs that he learned from the old men, but also a few he’s made up to taunt the Listeners in the air. He tunes the drum by heating it gently near the woodstove.