“Well done,” she says between heavy breaths.
More movement from the woods to the left. Sounds like an animal. Could be the man with the boat. Could be a creature. Could be a dozen of them. Will the rowboat interrupt a pack of hungry bears, searching for fish?
Malorie is wounded. The word keeps recurring. It’s on a swivel, too. Just like Tom. Just like the gray colors behind her blindfold. Just like the noises of the river and the new world. Her shoulder. Her wound. It’s happened. The very thing people would have warned her about had there been anyone around to warn her.
Take the river if you have to, but just know you might get hurt.
Oh, I don’t know if I’d do that. You might get hurt.
That’s too dangerous. What would become of the children if you were to get hurt out there?
It’s an animal’s world now, Malorie. Don’t go out there. Don’t take that river.
You might get hurt.
Hurt.
HURT.
HURT!
Shannon. Think of Shannon. Hold on to her.
She tries. A memory elbows its way into the crowd of black thoughts already upon her. She remembers herself and Shannon on a hillside. It was sunny then. She shielded her eyes with her little forearm. She pointed to the sky.
It’s Allan Harrison! she said, meaning a boy from class. That cloud there looks like Allan Harrison!
She was laughing.
Which one?
That one! Do you see it?
Shannon inched toward her on the grass. She laid her head beside Malorie’s.
Yes! Haha! I see him, too! And look at that one! That one is Susan Ruth!
The sisters lay there for hours, picking out faces in the clouds. A nose was enough. An ear. Maybe the top of one had curls, like Emily Holt.
Do you remember the sky? she asks herself, still, incredibly, rowing. It was so blue. And the sun was as yellow as it would be in a child’s drawing. The grass was green. Shannon’s face was pale, smooth, white. So were your hands, gesturing toward the clouds. Everywhere you looked, that day, there were colors.
“Mommy?” the Boy says. “Mommy, are you crying?”
When you open your eyes, Malorie, you’re going to see them again. Your entire world will come to light. You’ve seen walls and blankets. Stairs and carpet. Stains and buckets of well water. Rope, knives, an axe, chicken wire, speaker wire, and spoons. Canned goods, candles, and chairs. Tape, batteries, wood, and plaster. For years now the only thing you’ve been allowed to see is the faces of your housemates and the faces of your children. The same colors. The same colors. The same colors for years. YEARS. Are you prepared? And what scares you more? The creatures or yourself, as the memories of a million sights and colors come flooding toward you? What scares you more?
Malorie is rowing very slowly now. Less than half the speed she was going ten minutes ago. The water, piss, and blood slosh at her ankles. Animals or madmen or creatures move on the banks. The wind is cold. Tom is not here. Shannon is not here. The gray world behind her blindfold begins to spin, like thick sludge inching toward the drain.
She throws up.
At the last moment she worries if it’s a terrible thing, what is happening to her. Passing out. What will happen to the children? Are they going to be okay if Mommy just passes out?
And that’s it.
Malorie’s hands fall from the oars. In her mind, Tom is watching her. The creatures are watching her, too.
Then, as the Boy is asking her something, Malorie, the captain of this little ship, passes out completely.
twenty-seven
Malorie wakes from dreams about babies. It is either early morning or very late at night, she guesses. The house is silent. The farther along in her pregnancy she gets, the more vivid her reality becomes. Both With Child and At Last . . . a Baby! briefly discuss home deliveries. It’s possible, of course, to do it without help from a professional, but the books are wary of this. Cleanliness, they say. Unforeseen circumstances. Olympia hates reading those parts, but Malorie knows they must.
One day, the pain your mother and the pain every mother speaks of will come to you in the same form: childbirth. Only a woman can experience it and because of this all women are bonded.
Now that moment is coming. Now. And who will be there when it does? In the old world, the answer was easy. Shannon, of course. Mom and Dad. Friends. A nurse who would assure her she was doing fine. There would be flowers on a table. The sheets would smell fresh. She’d be doted on by people who had delivered babies before; they’d act like it was like removing a pistachio from its shell. And the ease they’d express would be exactly what calmed her impossible nerves.
But this isn’t the answer anymore. Now the labor Malorie expects sounds like that of a mother wolf: brute, mean, inhuman. There will be no doctor. No nurse.