Red Clocks(39)

“Lie back,” says Gin, kneeling. She smells a little like sour milk. She places both hands on the daughter’s belly and starts a gentle pressure. The hands move methodically, rubbing, pushing. Above her pubic bone they pause for a while. As if listening.

Then she unscrews a jar and thumbs out a scoop of clear jelly. “I’m going to put two of my fingers into your vagina. Okay with you?”

“Yeah.” The daughter shuts her eyes, concentrates on the goal of her visit.

The fingers aren’t in there more than a few seconds, and it doesn’t hurt. Still— Gin washes her hands again, returns to sit on the edge of the bed. Stares at the daughter. “Your teeth are very straight,” she says.

“Braces,” says the daughter, not sure why Gin feels the need to point this out. “I still wear a retainer.”

“You grew up in Newville?”

“Salem.”

“Moved here when?”

“Last year.”

Gin touches the skin above the daughter’s right hip. “How’d this scar happen?”

“Fell off my bike.”

“And this mole?”—pressing the apple-shaped one on her left thigh. “When did it appear?”

“I had it when I was born, I think.”

Gin’s finger circles the mole. Her eyebrows have quit moving, but the eyes themselves, staring moleward, are shining with tears.

It’s weird that she is feeling the mole for this long.

The daughter says, loudly, “Does it look cancerous or something?”

“Nope,” says Gin, getting to her feet. “You can put your clothes on.” She takes something down from a shelf. The termination herbs?

Offering the jar: “Horehound candy.”

“Uh, sure.” The brown nub, minty and licoricey, sticks to the daughter’s molars. “By the way, my gums have been bleeding when I brush my teeth. Could I have scurvy?”

“Scurvy is only on boats. Your body’s making more blood now—that’s why.” Gin frowns, taps her cheek with one finger. “I can end the pregnancy, but not today. I need to restock some supplies.”

“So, like, tomorrow?”

“Longer. I’ll leave a note at the P.O.”

Longer? Spasm of fear in her ribs.

“But I don’t have a box at the P.O.”

“Cotter will know about it. Ask him in two, three days.”

“The guy with the acne?”

“Yes. And the tea will taste terrible.”

The damn cat is back on her lap. She pets it. “Like kombucha?”

“A different bad. A stronger.” Gin Percival smiles. Her teeth are yellow and not very straight. She isn’t pretty, the daughter decides, but she is bold looking. A person uninterested in being pleasing to other persons. In this way she reminds the daughter of Ro/Miss. “Better leave now—dark’s coming. You know how to go?”

Follow the track to the hiking trail, then to the cliff path, then down to Lupatia, where she will call Dad to pick her up from studying at the library. Returning home clumped as ever. She isn’t stupid, but she has been stupid. Why did she think it would get taken care of today?

“I better show you.” Gin is pulling on a dirt-colored sweater. The cat springs off the daughter’s lap.

“You don’t have to.”

“Easy to get lost. I’ll take you as far as the trail.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Mattie Matilda.”





Among the different names for polar ice, the name I like best is “pack.”

It reminds of dogs and wolves. Things that hunt.

To be chased by ice, and torn apart.





THE MENDER


The mender lied. She is well stocked with fleabane and pennyroyal, has plenty of coltsfoot. But she wanted time to think. Time, at least, to abide with the idea of reaching into a body she made to unmake a future body.

When she saw the girl outside the library, months ago, it was like looking in a mirror, not at herself but at her whole family shoved together in one face. The agency had guaranteed that the baby would be placed at least seventy-five miles away, yet here she was, dancing out of the Newville library, face full of the mender’s mother and aunt.

The girl is a mirror, repeating, folding time in half. When the mender had the same problem, she didn’t solve it how Temple told her to. Terminations were lawful then, but the mender wanted to know how it felt to grow a human, with her own blood and minerals, in her own red clock.

Grow, but not keep.

The girl’s parents have kept her well. Her breath smells sweet, and her hair is lustrous, her tongue salmon-pink, her eyeballs moist. The moon-colored skin she comes by naturally, and, of course, the height.

At the hiking trail they say goodbye. She waits until Mattie Matilda has disappeared down the trail, one minute, in the purpling air, two minutes, below the blatting owls, three minutes, upon the frost-veined ground—then follows: she’ll make sure no demons touch this girl. She steps like a cat, unheard, on soil alive with blind hexapods, who ingest fungi and roots. Malky recognized the girl from her oils; he went right into her lap because underneath the lip gloss and deodorant he smelled the oils of a Percival.

From the fir shadows the mender watches her reach the cliff path and go left, in the direction of town and people. The mender goes right, toward the sea, night seeping through holes in her sweater. Closer and closer to the cliff’s edge. The shark field is resting. Stripe of moon on the flat water. Out by the horizon, a black fin. And the lighthouse. House has light so ship won’t crash. Light has beam so sea won’t swallow. Ship has watchers, wary squinters, men in raincoats scared of dying. Light will tell them Don’t come here; light will steer them other ways on water black and full of bones these men don’t want their bones to meet. Bad luck on ships to mention lawyers, rabbits, pigs, and churches. Don’t say “drown” on ships; say “spoil.”