“My goodness, dear,” said Mrs. Solomon. “As if you had a choice.”
Janice burst into fresh tears, and Amanda saw exasperation on Mrs. Solomon’s face, but also sadness and concern. “Darling, were you hurt? Did one of the men hurt you? You need to tell me if they did.”
Janice shook her head rapidly. “I barely even remember most of it.”
“Then why the tears?”
“I just…I just…” She trailed away, hunting for an explanation for her distress. “I just want things to be like they were before. I want a normal summer.”
“Soon you will have children, who will have the summers you once did,” said Mrs. Solomon.
“Do you miss it, Mrs. Solomon?” asked Amanda suddenly. “Summer?”
A flash of pain darted across Mrs. Solomon’s sun-lined face. “We all do, dear,” she said, sighing, “but one can’t be a child forever. Wait here, girls, I’ll be back. You’re lucky I have the ingredients; some men don’t even like it in their house.” Janice lay against Amanda quietly, her muscles twitching. Soon Mrs. Solomon came back and quietly offered Janice a cup filled with strong-smelling liquid.
Janice stared at it, her child’s face suddenly looking thin and old, and then grabbed the cup with both hands and gulped the contents down. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, waiting for the drug to take over. Amanda reached for the cup, sniffed it, and licked out the bitter dregs.
By the end of the summer, they were tired. Tired of moving between houses, tired of sleeping curled up next to the other girls, tired of wildness and play. Their nights with the men had moved from frantic sex to gentle conversations and even shared naps. The men had to go back to their regular lives during the day, farming or potting or whatever their families did, and their faces were drawn from lack of sleep. It was in this drowsy time that Amanda and Andrew started talking. She found him shy and funny, and liked the crow’s feet he was already developing, the shocking white streak in his dark hair.
She remembers lying parallel to Andrew—she can’t remember which house they were in—breathing in each other’s breath and exhaling it back to its birthplace. His callused hand stroked her slowly, tracing the arc of her hip and the trough of her waist, perusing her ribs one by one to her damp armpit, and then starting its way back again. His fingers left a surge of pleasantly prickled skin in their wake, her nerves purring and calming. For Amanda, this was the most pleasurable act of the summer so far.
His smell was alien, brutal, intoxicating: notes of soil, copper, leeks, and the fine dust that gathers on the coats of animals. She raised a finger and ran it down his cheek. He smiled and kissed her fingertip, then closed his eyes.
Looking into his face, Amanda tried to imagine him as her husband. The summer had been so frenetic and tumultuous that it had barely occurred to her that she would be someone’s wife when it ended. She had pictured herself in free fall, in a dizzy tangle of sex and sweets that would last forever.
Soon frost would come and muddy, red-eyed children would start returning home. She would put up her hair—she knew how, the girls had practiced endlessly the entire summer—and walk out into the world an adult. Her metamorphosis was complete: she already felt more staid, heavy, treading firmly on the ground.
What would she do as a woman? Have children, of course. Care for the house. Lie under her husband. Talk about boring things that didn’t mean much. Suddenly, despite her years of desperation to escape him, she missed her father keenly. He was the only one who ever really talked to her. He was the only one who ever knew her.
Feeling her muscles tense, Andrew opened his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to get married,” she confessed in a revelatory whisper.
A frown drew a divot between his eyebrows. “Well, we don’t have to,” he replied slowly.
“No, no, I mean at all. I don’t want to get married at all.”
He raised himself up on one elbow, and she rolled onto her back. “What do you want to do, then?” He put a hand between her breasts, as if to feel her heartbeat and ensure she was hale.
She thought. The silence crawled up her ankles, lapped at her knees, enveloped her waist, and then drew itself tightly over her face like a suffocating sheet. There was no sensible answer to his question. She just stared at him.
“Do you know what I’m looking forward to about being married?” he asked.
She shook her head dumbly.
“Waking up in the morning,” he said, “with my wife next to me.” He put his hand on her cheek and she could feel herself trembling.
She wondered, Do I want to marry him? I don’t not want to marry him. I’d rather marry him than marry any of the other men.
She groped for her voice and gasped softly, “My parents didn’t sleep in the same bed.”
“Well, later, I suppose.” He shrugged. “So much to do. Children to distract you.”
She blinked.
He reached out his free arm and drew her to him. She felt his taut, hairy body graze her naked skin.
“Imagine, we could wake up like this every morning,” he murmured. And even though she knew it would never be the same, that they would lack the soft, sweltering warmth of summertime, the faint breathing of sleeping friends, the sweetness coating their teeth, the blissful and ragged weight of sleeplessness, she still leaned toward him in agreement.
They weren’t the first to agree to marry, or the last. There was a wanderer’s daughter, Flora Saul, in the mix that year, and she was almost immediately won over by the handsome, quick-witted Ryan Joseph. The two girls with swollen breasts and morning nausea were also sought after early. Proven fertility was a valuable asset, worth never quite knowing who fathered your eldest child. Several girls had been picked out by the men long before at church or neighborly dinners and were doggedly pursued until captured. The men left over had to decide between the girls nobody else had wanted. In the end, the three unengaged men looked at drugged Janice, hideous Wilma, and Beth, whose sister had had three defectives, and they made their decisions. There was a man for every girl, and even if they weren’t thrilled at picking through leftovers, it was better than having no wife at all.
When Amanda finally said good-bye to the other girls, with whom she had bickered and embraced and laughed and whispered, she felt lucky. She hadn’t been forced to settle for someone she disliked; Andrew was strong, capable, and affectionate. Most importantly, she could finally escape home. While she waited for the wedding day, held when the first leaf turned, she simply pretended she wasn’t there. When Mother yelled, she didn’t hear it, her thoughts full of her future with Andrew. If Father tried to gather her up in his arms, just for a quick hug, she barely acknowledged him.