She never asks him questions if he’s not drunk, or if he’s too drunk. She has to time it just right. Once she got him to admit that there were dogs in the wastelands, and she was popular at school for two whole days, but then everyone started ignoring her again. Caitlin knows they wish she was smarter and could ask better questions. It’s hard with a father like Father, but she doesn’t know how to explain that to anyone else.
During times of quiet, afternoons when Mother is staring at the wall and Father is snoring in the bed, her mind is always running, running. She can’t shut it off. Strangely, the only place that seems peaceful is church. Despite the pastor’s grim warnings of the darkness below, and the inevitable sinking disappointment at how bad she is, church is predictable. People sit in the pews while the pastor strides and thunders. She doesn’t have to say anything or answer any questions, and she knows every single person in the pews has to sit there and stay quiet, like her. Sometimes she closes her eyes and falls slightly into a doze, so she still hears the pastor but sees colors and flashes of faces behind her eyelids.
On this Sunday, she is slipping off to sleep in the pew when suddenly a movement in front of her flips her eyes open so wide they feel lidless. Janey Solomon has turned and is staring at Caitlin, who nearly shrieks. Of all the people in the world, Janey scares her the most. More than Father, more than the wanderers with their secret meetings and sweeping decisions, more than Haley Balthazar, who once punched Caitlin in the stomach at recess. It’s not just Janey’s unique appearance, with her shining hair and bounteous freckles, or all the rumors about what she’s like in summertime. It’s that Janey herself isn’t scared of anything, which is the most terrifying thing about her.
Caitlin looks down at her lap, at the rough-woven dress with a moth hole. She looks up at the ceiling as if she’s found something interesting there. She even tries a jumpy little wave in Janey’s direction. Janey’s gaze doesn’t change, she just tilts her head like a dog hearing a faint noise. The light gray eyes with wide black pupils travel over Caitlin’s forearms, which have mottled bruises peeking out through the long sleeves. Caitlin feels a sudden urge to shout, “It’s okay! I bruise really easily!” but of course she’d rather die than yell anything in church. Janey’s freckled lips pull to one side. Caitlin is considering crawling under the pew when Janey turns around and faces front again. Heart racing, Caitlin slowly creeps her hand down the side of her thigh, finger-walks it across the wood like a hesitant spider, and seizes her mother’s fingers. Mother squeezes Caitlin’s palm briefly, like a reflex, and smiles vacantly toward the front.
Chapter Five
Amanda
Amanda goes into one of her staring spells in the root cellar, while she is examining carrots. She’s holding a bunch in her hand, deciding which to use in a salad for supper, and then suddenly something shifts. There’s a quiet weight to her shoulders, lost hours settling over her like a mantle. Walking slowly upstairs, she checks the clock. About two hours this time. She hesitates, then sighs and goes back down into the cool dimness.
Amanda once told her neighbor, Jolene Joseph, about the lost time. Jolene laughed and said it was “pregnancy crazy,” and that the same thing happened to her. Amanda laughed too, and didn’t mention that she’s had these spells as far back as she can remember.
Her episodes of lost time have gotten worse since the baby started kicking. At first Amanda thought her digestion was off, but then she realized that the flutters were too regular and quick to be gas. A moth beating against a window frantically, then settling with a shiver onto a windowsill. The first time she recognized its trembling, Amanda pressed her hand deep into her belly and thought, Hello, baby girl. Then she ran to the outhouse and puked into the miasmic pit. She lost time then, staring into a mosaic of sewage through a faded, lime-smelling wooden opening. When she came back to herself, she slowly walked back to the house, thinking, There’s no way to know. It could be a boy. Now she knows for sure.
Amanda is terrified that, upon having a daughter, she will turn into her mother. Mother hated Amanda from the moment she was born. Amanda found out later it was Father who fed her, using goat’s milk and a cloth, when Mother refused. Father had diapered her, cleaned her, and played with her while Mother sat in bed, staring at the ceiling and crying.
When Amanda was two, Elias was born, and Mother adored him instantly. Father was always busy repairing roofs during the day. At first, Amanda tagged after Mother and Elias, but they pulled into a shell made only for mother and son, leaving her lost and confused. Eventually she stopped seeking their company. She only laughed and talked when Father was home, when he would take her on his lap and rub her feet between his hands, and curl locks of her light brown hair around his fingers.
Amanda even slept with him in her child’s bed, with Mother and Elias sprawled out in the bed meant for two adults. As she grew, she started butting against him with her kneecaps and elbows and hips. When she was six, Father’s body stretched across the bed made her wakeful, and then she couldn’t sleep at all. Even if Father was sound asleep, she jerked at every twitch, tensed at every snort. Eventually she started sleeping curled in an impenetrable ball by the fireplace if it was cold, and sprawled on the roof like a limpet if it wasn’t. Father teased her at first, then pleaded, and then commanded her to sleep in bed at night. But as soon as he fell asleep, she slipped away.
When the other girls at school found out that Amanda was sleeping on the roof, they thought she was different and brave, a fearless rebel. She didn’t mind that designation at all. Given her threadbare clothing and disintegrating shoes—Mother only mended Amanda’s clothes when they were at the point of falling off her—it was better than being known as pitiful.
Soon even sleeping on the roof was too much proximity to Father, and she began roaming around in search of other places to sleep. She learned she could sleep in the cold, although not in the snow. Eventually she began sleeping at the edge of the island, where the brackish water lazily cozied up to land. The morning horizon was always foggy, and she could never see very far, but she liked the way the light filtered through the fog like a gentle touch, the way the outlines of trees and driftwood glowed and sharpened as the sun rises. She liked the little hermit crabs, scuttling around with one fist triumphantly thrust into the air, and the sound of fish leaping and plopping in the water. She even liked going back to Mother’s scowls and Father’s glum, sickening affection, because she knew that a few hours had belonged just to her.
Amanda doesn’t want her daughter to sleep in the cold because her mother hates her. But Mother probably didn’t plan to hate Amanda. It just happened.