There is a pause, and suddenly Amanda and Mary are laughing too, their peals rising toward the dimming sky. Suddenly exhausted, Amanda bends at the hips and thumps her rear into the damp sand. The netting rides up, and she feels the pricks of eager mosquitoes on her insteps. Their laughter joins together in a medley of raucousness and slowly, comfortably fades away.
“Janey, I need to talk to you,” says Amanda. “I, I really need to—”
Janey stops laughing abruptly and crosses her arms, glowering at Amanda as if she has just remembered her anger. “You shouldn’t even be talking to me,” Janey says harshly.
“It’s not my fault that I became a woman,” retorts Amanda. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“That’s debatable,” snaps Janey, and then, “Go ahead. Talk.” In past summers, Janey would sometimes smack or punch Amanda to make a point, and Amanda wonders if she is about to be pounded again.
Amanda’s ankles flame with a needling itch, and she can almost feel the infinitesimal golden feet of mosquitoes dancing. “I can’t. Not here. Can we please go to my house? Andrew isn’t home, Mr. Aaron the weaver’s roof practically fell in, he’s working through the night with Mr. Balthazar and Mr. Joseph, and I just can’t, I’m getting bitten and can barely move and can barely see—I can’t think with all these mosquitoes!” Her voice rises with desperation.
“Fine, fine,” says Janey, holding up her hands. “Fine. Let’s go, Mary.”
“I—I need to talk to just you,” says Amanda, and flinches as Mary draws back, surprised. Dear Mary. Amanda remembers the shine of her young face when the three of them used to race around together, Mary’s sweet na?veté and high, hopeful voice balancing out Janey’s rages and rants. They would sleep, the three of them, curled together like puppies, and Amanda often woke with Mary’s dark head on her flat chest, rising and falling as Amanda tried her best to breathe slowly and preserve the moment. To let Mary dream peacefully until the rays of the sun broke through their eyelids.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” she murmurs. “It’s—” She tries to think of the words. “The things I need to say to Janey are—” I want to protect you, she thinks, but cannot bear to say the words out loud for fear of sounding like yet another condescending woman deciding what’s best for the children.
“It’s fine,” says Mary with feigned lightness, “I can wait here,” and Amanda winces at the hurt in her voice. She glances at Janey, who pauses and then nods once.
Quietly they move under the moonlight, pacing the short distance from the beach to Amanda’s house. Janey must slow her long strides to match Amanda’s struggles, and silence stretches long and awkward between them. When they are near her door, Amanda tries to run and ends up on her face in the muck. Without a word, Janey reaches over to hook an arm around her belly and haul her back upright.
Panting, they enter the house, and Amanda immediately sheds the netting and lights a candle. Janey looks around uncomfortably before settling down on a kitchen chair, one knee drawn up to her chest. Amanda gazes at her and shakes her head. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“You came to fetch me, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
Janey shrugs a shoulder. Dried flecks of mud sift to the ground like dirty snow.
“You’re thinner,” ventures Amanda. Janey’s body is camouflaged with knobs and swells of mud, and it’s difficult to tell a bony angle from a flesh-covered curve. Yet the difference between Janey now and two summers ago is plain. Janey has narrowed even as she has grown taller, and her thin, lanky limbs seem to trail on forever.
“I am,” replies Janey. “I have to be.”
“Why?”
“It’s getting stronger. My body wanting to change. To bleed, be like yours.”
“It must be hard.”
“It is. Especially alone.” Janey’s eyes are accusing.
Amanda feels the sting. “What about Mary?”
“She doesn’t have the will for it.”
“Well, I guess I didn’t either.”
“You could have. You made a decision. But I don’t blame you for it. Your father was disgusting, and your mother…” They both wince involuntarily. “Anyway. It wasn’t the decision I would have made, but it was…understandable.”
Amanda nods and shyly sits on a chair opposite Janey. Her wet, muddy dress clings to her globular belly, which Janey eyes with distaste.
“Six months,” Amanda says confrontationally. “And it’s a girl.”
Janey shrugs a shoulder again.
“You hate me,” says Amanda.
“I wouldn’t have come here if I hated you,” replies Janey. “I would have hit you on the head with a rock.” Amanda ponders this statement and then sees the side of Janey’s mouth quirking up, a dimple hidden underneath a cast of dry mud. They both giggle.
“So why did you want to talk to me?” asks Janey.
Amanda takes a deep breath. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Is it Andrew, is he terrible? Is it awful to be married?”
“I love Andrew,” she says slowly. “I love him more than I ever thought I could.” Janey frowns, looking askance at Amanda. “It’s hard to explain,” Amanda says again, lamely. “But I love him second only to her.” She gestures at her belly.
Seemingly at a loss for a response to this admission, Janey puts her hands in her lap. Silence thickens the air between them while Amanda struggles to think of what to say.
“At first, I was scared when I wasn’t pregnant,” she says finally. “I was married, and that’s what comes next, you know? It’s what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want to be a disappointment. I didn’t think at all about having a baby. I mean, I know that’s what happens after a pregnancy, but I forgot about it somehow.”
Janey nods. Encouraged, Amanda continues.
“Then I got pregnant, and I felt so sick. I was so tired, I couldn’t eat. But it seemed more like an illness than that I was going to have a child. I was so jealous of the other children. The ones who could run around with their bodies neat, without all these…” She gestures at her upper torso. “All this extra. When I was a child I never thought about it, but I was never lonely. Even with all the awful things about childhood, things I would never go back to, I wanted my body to be like a child’s. I wanted to run like a child, have a child’s summers.”
“But you got away from your parents,” says Janey. “That was always what you wanted.”
“And then the baby started moving and I realized that I have a child inside me that’s going to come. I was so hoping for a son, but I did the ritual, and I’m going to have a daughter, she’s going to be mine, and I can’t—I can’t do this to her.”
“Do what?”
“I can’t make her go through what I did.”
“As a girl, you mean? But what you went through wasn’t unusual,” says Janey. “I mean, your mother is terrible. But it’s the way things are, we—”
“No. I, we, need to get away,” Amanda croaks, her voice harsh and desperate and spiking through the dim room.
“Where would you go?” asks Janey innocently.
“Off the island.”
Janey frowns. “What, you want to swim away?” She snorts.
“Janey, listen to me!” Janey’s lips tighten, and she looks down. “Don’t you understand? I can’t stay here!”