At the top of the tree she stretches and strains her neck, but all she can see is water and a cloud bank. The problem with waiting for the tree to grow is that she is growing too, putting on weight and building bone. Soon she’ll become a woman, and then she’ll never be able to climb trees again. She’s never seen an adult climb a tree. Perhaps they would break the branches away and plummet to the ground in an ungainly heap.
Vanessa watches the fog flow and dance and fray, slow and thick like blood in water. She hears her own heart beating, and her breath, and realizes there are no mosquitoes up here to whine their summer song. She starts imitating their hum in her highest voice and then sings a psalm from church, substituting nonsense words because she doesn’t want to think about Pastor Saul. “Oh, for the fooooog,” she calls, “and the dog, and the mosquitoes on a log. Someday it will snow but now, oh no! Cake and potatoes, potatoes and cake, not for a defective, so nice to make! Up all alone, so far from home, singing a song, wish I could stay long, sing my summer song.” She stops singing and listens to the faint echoes of children playing. Gathering her courage, she raises her voice gleefully and sings Father’s favorite swear word, which would get her smacked if any adult heard her say it. “So fuck! Fuck! Fuck you, Father and Mother, fuck you, little brother, fuck all the others, fuck the ferry and the fog, fuck school and fuck church and fuck the ancestors and fuck fruition, fuck you, fuck the island too.” She pauses, waiting for wrathful ancestors to swarm forth like angry bees, or for the tree and the ground to fall away while she hurtles into the darkness below. A bird chirps. Heartened, she swears and sings until her voice becomes hoarse. Then she inches out on a smaller branch, squats, and patters urine down on the lower branches, half hoping nobody is below her, but also half hoping they are. Creeping back, she settles her hips into a curve on the tree and stares at the open sky. She won’t have to leave until she needs something to eat, and that could be a long time.
Chapter Twelve
Amanda
Amanda never paid enough attention to what her mother did at home. But after marrying Andrew, she found herself in a house—her house—that she was meant to sweep when she’d never used a broom, with dinners she was expected to cook when she didn’t know how to build a fire. Other girls learned these things soon after they learned to walk, but Mother had scorned to teach her, preferring to take care of the house herself while Amanda wandered wild.
Everything she did after her marriage, even everyday moments, seemed strange. She had to wear calf-length dresses and walk instead of run, had to gather and knot her hair on her crown—not in practice, but for real—had to smile and greet adults instead of heedlessly passing them by. When she saw her old friends who were her age, but hadn’t yet had their summer of fruition, she had to smile at them like an adult smiles at a child. She hated it, and could tell that they hated her.
Not that she wanted to go back to Mother’s hatred and Elias’s blank stares and Father’s heavy embraces. She loved Andrew and wanted to be his wife. But she wanted to run and shout, and sling her arms around her friends, and sleep on the shore too.
The nights were strange and hectic, Andrew’s touch familiar yet strangely foreign and confusing. After he went to sleep, she often had trembling fits, waves of shivering bowling her over like a strong wind. They’d had lots of sex during the summer of fruition, but now, in a marriage bed, it felt wrong. Sometimes she went outside and walked in the cold dirt barefoot, staring at the white moon shining through the fog. For the first few months, she only slept after she felt Andrew get up and go to the kitchen in the morning. Then she was slammed face-first into a dark sleep like someone shoving her into the dirt, and didn’t arise until the early afternoon.
Uncertainly, she’d push the broom around the floor until dust was moved from one corner to another. Then she’d try to mend something, or cook something, and Andrew would come home to find her lost under a pile of cloth or vegetables. She loved that he always laughed and pulled her to her feet, and wore the badly mended clothes, and ate the inedible dishes. She loved him until they blew out the lanterns, and then she wanted to creep away on her belly like something boneless and primitive.
Three months after she married Andrew, Father came to visit. He had stayed away, which surprised Amanda, who had expected more contact from him. (She didn’t expect anything from Mother and Elias, and they barely even acknowledged her at church.)
Then, just when it was getting cold enough to frost over, Father showed up at the door with a smile and a dead rabbit. Amanda had never skinned a rabbit before, and Father sat at the table and watched as she sawed and winced and pulled the pearlescent sheets of membrane, which stretched taut and snapped into dull white gristle as cold maroon blood ran thickly over the edges of the table and onto the floor.
“I miss you, Amanda,” Father said as he got a cloth and knelt to wipe up the florid spatters. “I have nobody to talk to anymore.”
“You know you can always visit,” she replied, her fingers sliding over slimy ribbons of vein and tumescent, slippery muscle. “I’m surprised you haven’t before.”
“Your mother doesn’t like it.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“She says that now you’re out of the family, I should treat you like anyone else.”
Amanda frowned. “But people still visit their children, and everyone has their mothers help them when the first baby comes.” She paused. “Although I’d rather get advice from a goat.”
“Are you pregnant?” His voice quavered a bit.
“I don’t think so.” She and Andrew were starting to be concerned, after three months of regular bleeding every time the moon went dark.
There was a long silence. Amanda had stripped the skin from the rabbit’s back and belly but was having trouble getting it to detach from the joints and tiny paws. It writhed and pulled wetly in her fists. She wondered if she was supposed to cut the head off, and felt a wave of irritation at Father for not offering more help.
“It’s so strange to think of you having a baby,” he said. He was staring at the carnage heaped on the table, his hands twisting between his knees.
“It is strange,” she agreed, and sat at the table with him. Her dress was stained crimson at her waist, her arms encased in sleeves of dried gore. “I’ll have to scrub this dress with soap. Hopefully the stains will come out of the floor,” she said, trying to speak lightly.
Father nodded, looking away and shifting in his chair. “Couldn’t Andrew show you how to butcher a rabbit?”
Couldn’t you? she wanted to snap, but said, “I don’t know. If not, one of the wives can.”
“I suppose.” He took the cloth she was wiping her hands on and played with the edges, reddening the tips of his fingers. The sight made her stomach turn. “It’s a shame your mother didn’t show you more, before you left.”
“She hates me,” said Amanda. “You know that. I’m out of the house now, though, so I don’t have to care about her anymore.”
“I wish you weren’t.”
“Weren’t what?”
“Out of the house.”