Red Clocks(12)

She’s one of those people who think they will understand something if they hear its name, when really they will only hear its name.

“Dried fleeceflower, Himalayan teasel root, wolfberry, shiny bugleweed, Chinese dodder seed, motherwort, dong quai, red peony root, and nut grass rhizome.”

The tea tastes (the mender has tried it) like water buried underground for months in a bowl of rotted wood, swum through by worms, spat into by a burrowing vole.

The hair on Ro’s upper lip. The irregular bleeding. The scummy tongue. The dryness.

“Has Dr. Kalbfleisch checked you for PCOS?”

“No—what’s that?”

“Polycystic ovary syndrome. It affects ovulation, so it could be contributing.” Seeing Ro flash with fear, she adds: “A lot of women have it.”

“Wouldn’t he have mentioned it, though? I’ve been seeing him for over a year.”

“Ask for a test.”

Ro has a gentle face—freckled, laugh lined, sad in the mouth corners. But her eyes are angry.





How to make boiled puffin (mjólkursoeinn lundi):



Skin puffin; rinse.

Remove feet and wings; discard.

Remove internal organs; set aside for lamb mash.

Stuff puffin with raisins and cake dough.

Boil in milk and water one hour, or until juices run clear.





THE DAUGHTER


Is seven weeks late, approximately, more or less.

She stares at the classroom floor, arranging linoleum tiles into groups of seven. One seven. Two seven.

But she doesn’t feel pregnant.

Three seven. Four seven.

She would be feeling something by now, five seven, if she was.

Ash passes a note: Who finer, Xiao or Zakile?

The daughter writes back: Ephraim.

Not on list, dumblerina.

“So what are we talking about here?” goes Mr. Zakile. “We’ve got whiteness. The white whale. How come it’s white?”

Ash goes, “God made it white?”

Six seven.

“Well, okay, that wasn’t really what I was …” Mr. Zakile paws through his notes, likely ripped whole from online, searching in those cut-and-pasted sentences for the brain he wasn’t born with.

Of all divers, said Captain Ahab, thou hast dived the deepest.

Has moved amid this world’s foundations.

The daughter wants to float down into the murderous hold of this frigate Earth.

Hast seen enough to split the planets.

Seven seven.

And not one syllable is thine.

She’s been late before. Everyone has. The anorexics, for instance, miss periods constantly, as starving shuts down the blood; or if you haven’t been eating enough iron; or if you’re smoking too much. The daughter smoked three-quarters of a pack yesterday. Ash’s sister, Clementine, says tweaker girls have sex fearlessly because meth prevents conception.

Last year one of the seniors threw herself down the gym stairs, but even after she broke a rib she was still pregnant, and Ro/Miss said in class she hoped they understood who was to blame for this rib: the monsters in Congress who passed the Personhood Amendment and the walking lobotomies on the Supreme Court who reversed Roe v. Wade. “Two short years ago,” she said—or, actually, shouted—“abortion was legal in this country, but now we have to resort to throwing ourselves down the stairs.”

And, of course: Yasmine.

The self-scraper. The mutilator.

Yasmine, who was the first person the daughter became blood sisters with (second grade).

Yasmine, who was the first person the daughter ever kissed (fourth grade).

Yasmine, who made him use a condom but got pregnant anyway.

The daughter wishes she could talk to her mom about it. Get told “Seven weeks late is nothing, pigeon!”

In most areas, her mom is sensible and knowledgeable— “My poo is furry!”

“Don’t worry. It’s from that green cleanse you did. It’s mucoid plaque sloughing off the intestinal walls.”

—but not in all areas.

Can you tell me what color eyes my grandmother had?

What color hair my grandfather had?

Were my great-aunts all deaf?

My great-great-uncles all lunatics?

Do I come from a long line of mathematicians?

Were their teeth as crooked as my teeth?

No, you can’t tell me, and neither can Dad, and neither can the agency.

It was a closed adoption. Zero trace.

Are you mine?

Ephraim doesn’t have an orgasm, he stops after a couple of minutes, says he isn’t feeling it. Shifts his weight off her. The first thing she feels is relief. The second is fear. No male teenager ever passes up the chance for intercourse, according to her mom, who last year gave her A Talk that included, thank God, no anatomical details but did feature warnings about the sex-enslaved minds of boys. Yet here is Ephraim, sixteen going on seventeen, passing up a chance. Or stopping mid-chance.

“Did I, like, do something wrong?” she says quietly.

“Unh-unh. I’m just way tired.” He yawns, as though to prove it. Pushes back his blond-streaked hair. “We’re doing two?a?days for soccer. Hand me my hat?”

She loves this hat, which makes him look like a gorgeous detective.