Caitlin has a recurring dream that she dreads, of a world without summer. A world where the rains never come and everything goes on the way it did before. A world where there is heat without freedom. Sometimes she worries that she’s going crazy, like the Solomon boy who gabbled and banged his head against the walls. His parents patiently waited for him to die so they could have another, more useful child, but he stubbornly survived for years, and when he suddenly vanished everybody knew what had happened. Caitlin would rather not have that happen to her.
When she wakes from the dream, she grabs her ears and pulls until they hurt. The thread of pain running through her head brings her back to being Caitlin, who is not crazy, who knows there has never been a world without summer, and there won’t be one now.
Caitlin is almost to her summer of fruition, but with any luck she won’t bleed soon. Some of the girls look forward to the summer of fruition, and she knows she should. Afterward, she’ll get married and live somewhere else. Joanna Joseph says that everyone enjoys it, but if you don’t you can drink things that help you enjoy it. Caitlin isn’t sure what scares her more, going through it as Caitlin or becoming not-Caitlin, and waking up afterward with no idea what happened to her.
In Caitlin’s mind, the summer of fruition is as terrifying as the wastelands and the darkness below. Father talks about the wastelands a lot. Caitlin’s father is not a wanderer, but he claims they tell him terrible things. Late at night, Caitlin mulls over his stories, lengthening and embellishing them until a nightmare blossoms from the grisly seeds. She pictures scenes so horrifying that sometimes she cries for the wasteland children, even though she’s not completely sure that there are wasteland children. Although there must be, since she was one. But that was long ago, and she can’t remember it.
As for the darkness below, Mother says she won’t have to go as long as she is good. And so Caitlin tries her best to be very, very good.
Mother is very, very good. Sometimes at night, if they can tell by Father’s snores that he won’t wake up, Caitlin crawls into bed with her. Mother curls around her like a warm, sheltering blanket. They can’t sing songs or talk the way they would during the day, but Mother hugs Caitlin so tight and safe that she almost can’t breathe. It feels good, the pressure. Sometimes she can sleep, then. Caitlin has heard there is a syrup you can drink that makes you sleep through just about anything. She’s afraid to ask about it and hear a firm no, preferring to dream of a golden-thick world where sleep comes like a breath, unconscious and inevitable.
Every day after school, she tries to help Mother as much as she can. The house chores must be performed quietly, unobtrusively, never bothering or annoying Father. It’s hard to keep up with what needs to be done, as Caitlin’s house is falling down around her. Mother is skilled at quietly scrubbing and sweeping so that dirt and dust are collected and discarded, but Father has forgotten to rebuild soft spots in the wood. Every couple of years, men must apply a tincture made by the dyer to prevent mold from blossoming, but Father has forgotten that too. The walls are a luxurious riot of black and brown, plumes branching from a spot on the bottom of the wall and flaming up to lick the ceiling in swirls of tiny dark spots. She and Mother will sometimes take cloths and patiently scrub, or even use their fingernails to scrape off the stains, but their efforts never do any good. Caitlin can see pictures in the mold, the way people see things in clouds. A tree. A butterfly. A monster.
Other buildings sometimes seem almost too clean, too intact, the walls uncomfortably dry and staring and bare, the frightening freedom of not needing to know what parts of the floor to avoid. Stairs that she can run up and down with abandon, instead of deftly skipping the rotting steps.
Life must be lived this way because of Father, who does not like to be disturbed. He takes the instructions of the ancestors to keep patriarchal order in his home very seriously. It embarrasses her that everyone thinks Father beats her, but she knows that it’s just because she bruises so very easily. Father sometimes jokes that she’d bruise in a strong wind. If he lays a hand on her leg, it bruises. If he pulls on her arm to punctuate a point, it bruises. Sometimes she doesn’t even feel it. Caitlin hates the marks; it’s like her body is a tattletale, blabbing everything that everyone else’s body keeps silent. Her body is so garrulous, with its bruises and pink marks and maroon spots, that she rarely talks, not wanting to add to the din. If she can’t be smart or pretty, she can be quiet. And good.
Caitlin is a rare first-generation child. Mother and Father came to the island when she was a baby. A lot of the children used to ask her what she remembered from the wastelands, but the honest answer is nothing. She asks Mother, who says she doesn’t remember either. It would seem odd to someone else, but Caitlin thinks she is telling the truth. Mother is so wonderful, but she’s different from other mothers: thin and pale and curling into herself. If by a miracle there is nothing left to do, sometimes she’ll just sit at a table for hours, staring into space. If Caitlin asks what she’s thinking about, she’ll half smile and say, “Oh, I’m just…” and never finish the sentence. When Father is in the room she instantly reverts to shadow, skittering around the edges, magically removing plates and wiping counters without actually being seen.
It’s a little easier to get Father to talk about the wastelands, especially if he’s drunk on mash-wine. The problem is, Caitlin can’t find the right questions. She’ll ask if there was a big fire, and he’ll laugh and say “Was there ever!” in such a way that she can’t tell if he’s joking or telling the truth. She asks why he and Mother came, and he says something about the ancestors and the shalt-not about listening at walls. She asks if there are still horses, remembering the sturdy, leggy giants from pictures in schoolbooks and the Aarons’ paintings. He says, “Horses! Why do you want to know about horses?” She asks if there are children in the wastelands, and he says, “Keep asking questions and there’ll be one.”