“What isn’t?”
“The island. The way we live. I just really, really need to leave.” She shakes off his touch, then grabs his wrists and holds them tightly, hoping he can feel the desperation flowing through her veins. She moves closer to him, wondering how to convince him. Should she kiss him? Should she melt into sobs? Should she fall to her knees?
He puts his palm on Amanda’s cheek, and she feels the calluses brush her skin. “Is it the baby? Is being pregnant scaring you? I remember Mother said she had something similar when she was pregnant with me. This feeling that she had to get out.”
“I just feel like our baby might be better off if we lived somewhere else.”
“But we have nowhere else to live.” He pulls Amanda into a hug, his gentle, muscled arms squeezing her breathless. “I know it’s frustrating sometimes, the same chatter, the same people, the same food. It’s boring. The summers are too hot and then almost right away it’s winter, and spring is too short. I don’t blame you for wanting to escape sometimes. But we’re safe here, we have a life here. We can raise our child in a place that’s safe and protected.”
“I need to get out of here.”
“I feel the same way sometimes.” He laughs, running a hand through his sweaty hair so it stands up in sandy spikes. “Especially when the children are running around like crazy and you’re either running through the heat hoping for shade, or running through the rain wanting to stop and soak yourself cool. Like you did. But I’ve never wanted to go to the wastelands. I can’t believe you do either, really.”
Amanda sighs, her eyes hot with the pressure of tears. “It’s too hot. I’m going to the root cellar.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“No, I’m going alone.”
She can picture Andrew’s hurt expression as she turns her back. She knows he will sigh and rub the starred wrinkles by his eyes, run a hand through his hair again, and wonder what to do about her. He won’t say anything to his brother. He’ll laugh and report the small aches and concerns of pregnancy like any husband would. He’ll worry about her and try to think of ways to make her happy, and his concern will only make her feel worse.
In the humid darkness of the root cellar, Amanda starts to gnaw at a carrot. Then she thrusts her nails into the muddy floor, scrapes up a handful of dirt, and tosses it into her mouth.
Chapter Sixteen
Amanda
Dusk is stretching and scrolling across the island like a drop of blue ink dissolved in water. Amanda stands staring out the kitchen window, biting the dirty nails of one hand and twisting the other in her sweat-stained dress. Finally she straightens, drops her dress, and goes to retrieve the netting Andrew gave her the night before.
It’s an extravagant gift, most likely hard-won. The other men will tease him mercilessly for this. Women rarely receive netting in summer, because there is no need for them to be outside—the only exceptions being a visit to a neighbor, or a party, which the men do not see as crucial. Wives can beg their husbands for some, but most must resort to running as quickly as possible. Netting is precious, wasteland-only material, its intricate lines of soft metal dazzling the eye and confounding the blood-hungry mosquitoes.
Andrew kissed her softly when he gave it to her. “I’m not saying I want you to go stand in the rain,” he said mock sternly, and they both giggled. “But if you feel, I don’t know, closed in somehow, like I know you’ve been feeling, maybe you could go out a little bit. Where nobody can see you. I know it’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can give you.” Touched, Amanda laid her head on his chest for a few moments, listening to his heart thump steadily.
She has not quite learned how to swathe herself effectively, and she thrashes inside it to bring her arms up and fold the top end down to her head. She must wrap it tightly around her ankles, and ends up toddling about in a ridiculous shuffling gait, always one misstep from falling over. And yet it gives her more freedom than most island women have dreamed of: the freedom to emerge from her house in summer and walk leisurely to her destination. She is quite sure the wanderers wouldn’t approve. “Fuck the wanderers,” she murmurs, her lips tingling pleasantly with blasphemy.
Her steps stuttering and mincing, Amanda clumsily walks through the door. She has one pair of shoes, and she has gone three steps before she kicks them away. Not only do they drench her feet with sweat, but the wooden soles mean she can’t feel the ground at all. Her vision dulled by gray veils of wire, she is in severe danger of tripping and falling—and probably being unable to rise until someone finds her swaddled like a new loaf of bread in the morning. She groans, picturing the summer children discovering her, gravid and exhausted and half dipped in mud. Her pace slows even further as she struggles to move while keeping her balance.
The mosquitoes settle upon the netting like smoke, drawn by the heat of her exertions. The netting keeps them at bay, but their hum and whine grow louder and louder, until all Amanda can hear are seething high-pitched notes, shrieking endlessly near her hair and hovering in needle-sharp clusters at the ends of her fingers. She lets her filthy feet slide toward the beach, toward the place where, every summer, Janey likes to build her forts with Mary.
Janey rarely sleeps in summer; Amanda remembers her own moonlit, gleeful exhaustion as she would beg Janey to just stop talking or building so she could rest, sometimes simply leaving Janey in midsentence and moving toward a quieter place to curl up on the sand. As the muck between her toes turns to grass, to pebbles, to sand, she squints and tries to determine whether the two girls and the skeletal hut in the distance are real, or merely a blissful memory.
As she shuffles toward the vision, the taller girl spins and crouches. “Who’s there?” she calls. Amanda sees Mary’s smaller, wider figure stand up and move sideways toward Janey. As she nears, Janey folds into herself, as if to spring. “Who are you?” she snaps. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s me,” she says softly as she approaches. “It’s me, it’s Amanda.”
“Amanda?” Janey gawps and then stands still, staring, uncharacteristically unsure. “Amanda? That’s you?”
“It’s me,” says Amanda, close enough to see the way the moon outlines Janey’s sharp cheekbones, her brilliant hair.
Janey stiffens and then lets out a volley of laughter, bending forward in mirth. “Amanda,” she howls.
“What?” says Amanda, offended.
“You’re all wrapped up in netting, and women never…I thought you were a short fat man.”