There were at least fifteen people sitting around the campfire, talking loudly over one another as if drunk, passing a cup of something hot, poured from an ancient metal thermos. Frida thought she could smell mint tea, but that had to be her imagination because the air was so smoky she’d started breathing through her mouth. The scene reminded her of the beach, cooking oysters in sand pits with her parents on a trip to Northern California when she was thirteen, before they’d had to sell their second car. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting of this campfire, but it wasn’t this. This was a party.
Anika looked up at Frida when she arrived but didn’t wave her over or even nod. Peter was there, too, plucking at a guitar in a rickety lawn chair, trying to recall a song. He hadn’t seen her. Frida tucked herself behind Anika on the shower curtain where she was sitting. The perfect waterproof picnic blanket.
Anika hadn’t told Frida anything since Fatima had joined them in the kitchen; no doubt, that had been Fatima’s goal. Someone had asked her to intrude on their privacy, and she had complied. How many times had Frida wanted to tell Anika she was pregnant? Just to lean away from Fatima and whisper the news. Anika might be upset at first, but not when the reality of Frida’s pregnancy settled in. There would be a child on the Land again. Anika could be Frida’s guide. She could be the child’s aunt.
Frida had so much to say to her. She wanted to know about Ogden’s birth, for one, and ask her about diapers and clothing. She wanted to tell Anika that she was certain she was having a girl. A daughter.
Frida looked around and realized with the noise from the fire and singing and guitar, they could talk fairly openly without being overheard.
“Fatima’s in the way,” Frida whispered finally.
“Fatima’s a bitch,” Anika said. “She came a few weeks after Micah, you know, with the rest of his settlers. She was real close with August.”
“Were they a couple?”
“They claimed to be just friends. Not long after she arrived, she became Peter’s girl.”
There was reproach in her voice, and Frida realized that Anika really did hate Fatima. For taking Peter. For simply having a partner. Or for treating herself as chattel, passed from one man to the next. Or for joining their morning sessions without asking first, for babysitting them.
Babysitting. The baby. It always came back to that. She had to keep it a secret until Micah thought it was the right time. Definitely not before the Vote.
Maybe Cal was right: he and Frida could help make the Land into the place they needed it to be. She wanted to ask Anika if such a dream was possible.
Betty came over and sat down next to Frida, who had scooted over to make room on the shower curtain.
Betty rubbed her hands together, her face to the sky.
“Cassiopeia,” she said, to no one in particular.
Frida looked up but saw only white clouds.
“In theory,” Betty said, and laughed.
Lupe and Sheryl came over and sat next to Anika. Frida liked Lupe, but Sheryl—what had Cal called her?
A stick-in-the-mud. That was a nice way of putting it.
But now, looking at their backs, Lupe’s slumped, Sheryl’s straight, Frida saw a closeness between the two women that she’d never caught on to before, and it made her happy. It was the casual intimacy of old friends; they had shared beds, swapped shoes, probably undressed in front of each other dozens of times, kept talking as one of them peed. If they had looked anything alike, they might be mistaken for sisters.
Frida watched as Anika, without speaking, passed first the cup and then the thermos to Lupe, their fingers briefly touching, and she realized all three women must have started the Land together. With Sandy Miller, too. They probably had known Jane. They remembered Ogden; maybe they had advised Anika on what to do. Or they had given away children, too. They probably still avoided red and certain stories. They had accepted Micah and his way of doing business. Maybe Anika didn’t trust Micah, but Lupe and Sheryl probably believed things were better with him around. Maybe Sheryl wasn’t that bad; maybe she was just prickly like Anika.
Peter had finally found the correct chords for the song he wanted to play, and the other side of the circle began singing along with him. Frida couldn’t place the song, though she thought it was a ballad from the last century, something her father might sing as he made dinner, humming everything but the chorus. As the voices rose, earnest and off-key, Betty leaned forward and whispered to the women in front of them, “I hear Rachel’s sleeping with Dave.”
Frida could tell the women had heard Betty by the way they looked at each other. Sheryl had the cup and thermos now, and she snapped them together so forcefully that Lupe laughed.
“Settle down, Miss Sensitive,” Lupe said. “It’s not as if he’s any good.”
If Frida had been drinking anything, she would’ve choked on it.
“Dave?” Frida said, without thinking.
This time, Sheryl turned around. “Anika said you were cool.”
“She is,” Anika said, still facing the fire.
Betty put a hand on Frida’s knee. “We’re warm-blooded creatures.”
“But Dave is so young,” Frida said. These women were old enough to be his mother, but she didn’t say that. She knew she sounded prudish already, and she didn’t want to be nudged out of this locker room too quickly. “I mean…good for Rachel.”