“It’s, well, it’s Janey Solomon.”
The door creaks open, and Mrs. Moses stares at them. She looks haggard and underfed, her hair greasy and her eyes underlined with stippled gray skin. “What are you doing here?” she says in disbelief.
“It’s Mrs. Aaron. Lydia Aaron,” says Janey. “She’s outdoors, she’s sick, she’s coughing up blood. She needs help.”
Mrs. Moses gazes at her, blinking. “So why did you come to me?”
“We tried other houses and nobody answered. We came to you because she needs help!”
“My husband is upstairs. He’s sick too. He’s coughing up blood. He’s so feverish I can barely stand to touch him or he’ll burn me. I’ve been tending to him for…” She slumps. “I don’t know how long.”
“Everyone’s sick,” says Janey slowly. “That’s why they disappeared.”
“Well, not everyone, obviously,” snaps Mrs. Moses. “I don’t have it. Yet. But yes, everyone’s sick. And it’s a bad sickness. People are dying. We’re not supposed to go outside, or talk to anyone. I shouldn’t be speaking to you.”
“But Mrs. Aaron still needs help,” ventures Fiona. “She can’t just lie there.”
“Why is that my problem?” exclaims Mrs. Moses, her voice rising. “I’m not her family. I have my husband to take care of.”
“Well, can’t you at least help us get her home?” pleads Janey desperately.
“There’s four of you!” yells Mrs. Moses. “What do you need me for? I’m not going outside, I’m not getting sick for her. You take her home, they’ll take care of her, if there’s anybody left. You’re a disgrace, all of you, running off like that. If I had children like you, I’d thrash you until you couldn’t walk. You can just leave me alone.” And the door slams shut.
The girls stand before the door, stunned by Mrs. Moses’s tirade. Then Violet says, “Do you think we can carry her home?”
“I—I suppose we can try,” says Janey. They walk back, quiet. Janey thinks of Pastor Saul at her shaming. We here on the island are all interconnected, and none could survive without the other. Is Mrs. Moses a particularly bad specimen, or are all adults like this when there is danger in the air? Janey would help a sick girl on the beach, even if she didn’t know her, even if she didn’t like her.
“When this is over,” says Fiona suddenly, fervently, “we should tell the wanderers about Mrs. Moses.”
Sarah giggles suddenly. “Yes. Let’s go tell the wanderers all about it!”
The rest of them start laughing as Fiona turns red. “I mean—I mean, you know what I mean!” she says, starting to snicker herself.
When the girls return to the field, Mary still has Mrs. Aaron’s head on her lap, where it rolls feverishly. Suddenly Janey remembers Mrs. Moses’s words about contagion, and the fear that flashes from her groin at the thought of Mary getting sick is so white-hot and agonizing that she frantically puts it out of her mind. “We have to take her home,” Janey tells Mary.
“What? There was nobody who would help?”
“There was Mrs. Moses, but she didn’t feel like helping,” says Violet darkly, and Mary shakes her head in disbelief.
They hoist Mrs. Aaron up, stick their shoulders under her armpits, and wrap arms around her waist. With heavy, stuttering steps, they begin the walk to her house. Suddenly Violet gasps and drops her arms, which had been holding Mrs. Aaron’s hips.
“What is it?” asks Mary.
“There’s something inside her.” Violet’s face is white and terrified. “Something is moving!”
“She’s pregnant,” says Sarah in the flat, brass tones of annoyance, and Violet flushes and puts her arms around Mrs. Aaron again. Mrs. Aaron moans and coughs, but her legs move, and she seems to be trying to help as much as she can.
“If her husband won’t take her in,” mutters Janey as she knocks on the door, “I swear I’m taking her to a wanderer’s house and they can deal with it.”
When they arrive at the Aarons’ house, the door flies open after a single knock. Mr. Aaron cries, “Oh, thank the ancestors.” His skin is the color of slate and running with sweat, and his body shakes and shudders like a speared rabbit. “I wanted to look for her, but I couldn’t…” A blood vessel has broken in one of his eyes, and it screams scarlet from his face. “Lydia…”
“Can you…can you take her?” asks Mary.
“Yes, I mean, I think I can, I need to get her in bed.” He looks behind him despairingly at the staircase and then says, “Or at least inside. Yes, at least inside.” He reaches out and lifts Mrs. Aaron from them.
“Thank you, girls. Thank you. I don’t care what they say, you’re good girls.” He makes a vague gesture toward them, which Janey guesses to be one of gratitude, and he closes the door, weeping.
Mary bursts into tears.
“Come on,” says Janey, embracing her. “Come. Let’s go back to the beach.”
Hiccupping, Mary nods through a sheen of tears and snot, and they all walk slowly back toward the sea.
Later that night, Janey gathers the older girls, the ones she trusts, and they sit in a ragged circle by the shore. She tells them of what happened with Mrs. Aaron, and Mrs. Moses, and Mr. Aaron. “There’s an illness,” she concludes. “A bad one.”
“It’s the ancestors,” breathes Catherine Moses. “They’re punishing us for running away.”
“Oh, shut up,” snaps Mary with uncharacteristic irritability.
“They’d make us sick instead,” explains Caitlin dully.
“Unless they wanted us to watch everyone else die first,” replies Catherine, stung.
“Shut up,” says Mary again. Leaning into Janey’s cold, thin neck, she whispers, “Do you think Mother’s all right?”
Janey takes in a deep breath, her ribs pushing into Mary’s side, and then lets it out very slowly, like she is breathing the life out of herself. “We have to go see,” she mutters softly.
“We have to go see,” echoes Fiona. “We can’t leave them alone.”
As if she had heard Mary’s whispers, Violet pipes up, her voice breaking. “What if my mother is lying in a field somewhere? And nobody will help her?”
“We can’t go back,” murmurs Sarah. “Then it’s all been for nothing.”
“They killed Rosie,” chimes in Vera Saul.
“Rosie is dead,” says Mary. “The wanderers killed her. But my mother didn’t kill her. And your little sister didn’t kill her either. And we need to make sure they stay alive. That there’s someone there, if there’s no one else there…We can’t leave them alone.”
“When I had the pox,” says Violet slowly, lost in memory, “I couldn’t see. Light hurt me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. Mother stayed with me for weeks. She didn’t even cook for Father or clean or do anything. She kept hauling up cold water and putting it on me. I was seeing things. Father said he thought every day I would die.”
“Someone needs to tell the other girls,” says Brenda.
“They don’t have to go. Nobody has to go anywhere,” says Janey.
“But you’re going?” says Mary, staring into Janey’s face intently.