Last night Mary stayed half underwater, half deluged by rain. Janey finally emerged from the water, panting, her skin blushing with chill, and flopped onto the wet sand. “Someday I will,” she breathed into the rain hurling at her face.
“You’ll swim.” Mary laughed.
“I’ll hold a knife to the ferryman,” said Janey. “I’ll kill him unless he takes us across.”
Janey and Mary have both spied on the ferryman from the rushes near the dock, watching while the wanderers board. He has a face like a stone, cracked and sharp and pitted, sprouting white hairs like a strange moss. His odd hat is perched low and hides his eyes in shadow, but his hands are strong and tense, roped with gray veins. Most of the children don’t think of him as alive the way everyone else is alive. Janey can usually make people do what she wants them to, but she is stymied as to how she would ever force him to do anything.
Banishing such a grave thought on the first summer night, she opened her mouth and drank the rainwater, coughing and sputtering, then swallowing and talking wildly about finding her own island to live on. “I’ll swim and find a better one,” she said. “Only you and me.”
“What will we eat?” asked Mary, smiling at one of her favorite games.
“We will eat chicken and apples,” Janey said grandly.
“What if there are no chickens and apples?”
“Then we’ll eat…goats and spinach.”
“Ugh. What if there are no goats and spinach?”
“Then we’ll eat fish and potatoes.”
“What if there are no fish and potatoes?”
“Then we’ll eat…” She paused. “Dogs and corn.”
Mary started giggling. “I don’t want to eat a dog!”
“Eggs and corn, then.”
“What if there are no eggs and corn?”
“Then we’ll eat dirt and stones.”
Mary’s giggling increased in pitch, in anticipation. “What if there are no dirt and stones?”
“Then I’ll eat…” She drew it out. “You!” When Mary heard the word she leapt up and ran, screaming, and Janey chased her into the water.
While Janey is smiling widely, remembering their splashing struggle, Mary begins moaning and grumbling, flipping over and shoving her back into Janey again. “I have so many bruises,” Mary informs her, stretching.
“I have more,” Janey answers, yawning and twitching her skin like a goat shedding a fly.
“Not true!”
“True!”
They bolt up, examining their legs and pointing out bruises that could easily be patches of mud. Mary reaches over to wipe the mud off Janey’s legs to prove her point, and Janey starts wiping at hers. They start giggling, since their hands are equally filthy, and Janey hears Mary’s stomach rumble.
“Let’s go see what they left,” Mary says. “I want some breakfast.”
Janey sighs inwardly, but doesn’t want to ruin the peaceful morning. “Fine,” she says tautly, trying not to snap at her sister. Reaching up, she takes a piece of bark off a nearby tree so she can shred it with her fingernails. It peels off with the grateful ease of sunburnt skin.
The nearest house is the Sauls’, tucked behind a boulder and shaded by a few larger, white-and-black trees. As they approach, the Saul dog Goldie lopes over to lick Mary’s face with his paws on her chest. Janey pats her stomach happily, and Goldie throws himself on her with glee. Running her fingers behind his ear, she carefully pulls a flea off his neck and crushes it.
“Soon there won’t be any dogs out,” says Mary.
“No,” says Janey, who is now scratching his rump so he twists back and forth with pleasure, ears back and tongue lolling. “We should enjoy them while we can.” She kisses Goldie’s nose, and he snorts and bathes her face with his tongue.
The Sauls’ doorstep is of no use, as Goldie or some other hungry creature pushed over the dish cover and ate whatever was there. They walk through their fields and to the Abrahams’, who have a plate lying under a deep, inverted clay bowl. On the plate are small, cold boiled potatoes. Mary eats two with her dirty hands. Janey plays with Goldie’s ears and gives him a potato, then reluctantly gulps half of one as a concession to her ever-brewing hunger. Janey likes that the adults have to feed them during summer, even if she won’t eat much of anything. It makes her feel powerful, like she’s an ancestor who has to be appeased, or a wanderer receiving tribute.
“You have to eat more, Janey,” Mary says.
“I’m fine,” Janey replies absently, finding another flea. “I had a bite.”
“One bite,” retorts Mary.
“I’ll eat Goldie’s fleas,” Janey answers, smiling, and then wanders to the Abrahams’ rain barrel, using a bucket to take a few swallows.
Mary rolls her eyes and accepts the bucket, gulping down the fresh water. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
Hand in hand, they walk through fields bent from the rain, the crops inclined backwards like parishioners observing a sky-bound miracle. The acrid, weighty scent of human and animal fertilizer has long since melted into something sweeter and dustier. A pen of goats is already netted over by a responsible farmer, and they pass by shut-up houses with empty dishes on their front steps. Janey spots a figure moving, and points, and then she and Mary are running. It’s only Melanie and John Joseph, but soon they’re chasing after them.
It’s the second summer since Amanda became a woman, and Janey still feels the strange void left in her absence. She is furious at Amanda for abandoning her, although part of her knows she’s being illogical. She begged Amanda not to eat, to make her childhood last, to stay with her, but Amanda shrugged and said, “How else am I going to get out of my house?”
Janey hasn’t spoken to Amanda since her summer of fruition. When she passes her, Janey looks away sharply, almost violently. As Mary’s pace increases, Janey tries to forget Amanda and focus on chasing other friends, who are filthy and full and ready to run.
Chapter Ten
Amanda
Summer is here, and Amanda is indoors, hating herself for sniveling about the heat and insects like the rest of them.
More than a year ago now, Amanda had, like Nancy, lain in her bed and cried as her summer of fruition approached. In a stroke of luck, she’d started bleeding just before the prior summer ended. Dark blood had spotted and then streaked through the black mud on her thighs, terrifying the boys, fascinating the girls, and calling forth every mosquito in creation until she rinsed herself and slapped on more mud.