Leah’s island is overrun with dogs that live with the inhabitants, keeping them warm and catching them food. On her island, nobody ever drowns puppies, and they are all allowed to live and have their own families. Each child has two parents and ten dogs. The dogs eat at the table with the children, sleep on their bed with them, protect them, and escort them around. When there is a new litter of puppies, everyone celebrates like a baby boy was born, and then decides who needs more dogs.
Vanessa can’t conjure up a dream world. All she can think of is Janey’s voice whispering “Nothing will be any different.” She doesn’t know why the church meeting bothers her; she never expected to do anything but get married, have two children, and send them off to summer. She will persuade Father to give her his library, or at least some of it, and she’ll read all the time. When she is old, she and her husband will take a final draft and die. Her children, or perhaps someone else’s children, will take over their house, and her body will rot in the fields. She’s never been thrilled about any of it, but it always seemed inevitable, so she never considered any other option.
Now that there might be different possibilities, the idea of this ordained future keeps circling back to vex her. She tries to comfort herself with the idea that once her childbearing is done, she can read whenever she wants, but she still feels a sense of staleness and boredom. Nothing will be any different. All of their futures are interchangeable. Other than the defectives, they will all grow up, marry, have children, die.
The other girls are bubbling with creativity and laughter, which only makes Vanessa feel even sadder. In the evenings, she doesn’t eat much dinner. Mother fusses over her a bit and fixes her some tea with a drop of precious honey. It’s sweet on her tongue, but her thoughts remain bitter.
After Vanessa splashes her face clean from the small basin in her room, she starts to do her usual check, starting at her ankles. Craning her neck, she softly pats at her legs, running her fingers over the skin, ensuring it is smooth and her thighs are straight. Her hips are smooth and straight too, in line with her waist. She sticks her fingers between her legs, where everything is neat, bare, and dry. Resting a finger in her navel, she surveys her belly, which is flat, and then she carefully presses on her chest.
Vanessa has been wondering for a while if it was getting bigger, but dismissed her concerns as imagination. Tonight, she is sure she can feel some substance, and her heart starts beating faster. Pressing down with two fingers until she can feel the ribs beneath, she gauges the depths of each pad of fat. They’re soft like wet wool, and her stomach flips over violently. She does not want to be soft, she wants to be flat and hard as a board. There must be a way to get rid of them.
With her fists, she grinds at one of the protuberances as hard as she can, pinching and compressing it to lie flat against her chest. She counts to a hundred, and then releases it and compares it with the other one. They look the same, although the one she worked on is reddened. She vows to do this every night and every morning, first just on the right to make sure it works, and then on both. She tucks the loose cloth of her nightgown under her armpits, pulling it tighter so her chest looks flat. Father is surprised when he comes in, to find her standing in her nightdress with her hair uncombed, instead of in bed waiting for him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Janey
Janey is curled up with her back facing Mary, cold and still in the pale moonlight. She wishes Mary would fall asleep, but she can feel her staring at the back of Janey’s head, patient and worried. Janey wants to roll over, put her arms around Mary, and drift into sleep, but this seems as impossible as growing wings. She needs to be awake. Her mind is racing, always racing.
“Janey,” whispers Mary.
“What?” snaps Janey.
“You have to tell them what you told me.”
Janey is flooded with a sudden wish that she had no more to tell. That Amanda were alive, lumbering around with an abundant belly, that there were no suspicions and theories and fears spiking blackly into her brain every second. That she could simply sleep like a child.
“How long are you going to wait?” persists Mary.
Janey rolls over to face her. “I’m not a pastor,” she says. “I’m not an ancestor. Why do I have to gather everyone together? Why do I have to try to change things?”
“You’re Janey Solomon,” says Mary, with a touch of reverence. “You know things. You can’t just run around stupidly like the rest of them. You know you can’t.”
“Feel this.” Janey puts a hand on her chest, and Mary feels her heartbeat.
“What about it?” says Mary.
“Compare it to yours.”
Mary puts her other hand on her own breastbone. “Yours is slow. It always is.” Two pulses in rapid succession strike against Janey’s ribs, then a pause, then the regular rhythm starts again.
“My chest hurts sometimes. I think I might be dying.”
“Well, do something, then!” says Mary angrily. “Stop acting like you’re helpless. Start eating. That will help. Won’t it?”
“I can’t.”
“You can, it’s easy. Take food, put it in your mouth, chew, and swallow.”
“I can’t, I can’t…become a woman.”
“You’ll become one anyway, eventually. You can’t put it off forever.”
“No,” Janey says.
“Just become a woman and don’t do your summer of fruition. You’ll figure out a way.”
“Of course I won’t. Remember how Alberta Moses screamed and fought, and they made her drink something, and every time she started screaming again they made her drink something again, until the summer was over and she was married to Frank? And then, I heard, she kept screaming and they kept giving it to her, and then she bled out and that was that, that was her life.” Janey pauses. “If she even really bled out.” Suddenly, violently, Janey bursts into tears. Mary wraps her soft arms around her.
“They wouldn’t treat you like Alberta,” Mary says soothingly. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“They’d like nothing better.”
“They’re scared of you.”
“That’s why they’d like nothing better.”
“So just go through it, everyone does. You could have children. You’d love them.”
Janey convulses at the thought. “I’m never having children.”
“You might have boys.”
“That’s even worse.”
“So you’re just going to kill yourself. You’ll go to the darkness below, you know.”
“I know.”
“Why won’t you eat? I would do anything for you, why can’t you do that for me?”
“Mary, I can’t. I mean really, I can’t.”
“You have teeth.” Mary sticks a finger in her mouth, taps her teeth to make her laugh. It doesn’t work. “You have a belly.” She tickles her and it’s like poking something dead. “You have everything you need.”
“I don’t,” Janey says. “I’m sorry.” There’s a pause. “I love you, Mary.”
“I love you too. I won’t let you die. Don’t worry. When you get too weak, I’ll feed you eggs and honey.”
Janey smiles a little and hiccups. “That sounds disgusting.”
“Cheese and honey, then.”
“You think too much about food.”
“You don’t think about food enough,” fires back Mary.